DREX

www.drunkasaurusrex.com is up

2004-10-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

with a new story entitled Sweet Talker--revamped and cleaned up from a year or so ago. Enjoy

CLOSING TIME

2004-09-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

This blog, in its current incarnation, is officially done. I have put everything contained herein over on a real website that will be operational within a day or two.

www.drunkasaurusrex.com I think you can also get to it with www.drunkrex.com as well but I'm not 100% positive yet.

Sorry I haven't updated in over a week, I've been busy. The new site will bring with it, fortunately, a somewhat regularized posting schedule...although I aspire to post as often as possible, not just twice a week.

David Sedaris, California Pizza Kitchen, and Mexican Elves

2004-09-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

I took the day off on Tuesday. It was a gorgeous day in San Francisco, I had absolutely nothing to do at work that day, and I wanted to see Bourne Supremacy before it left the theaters. So I sat down at the computer in the office at my house, emailed my boss to tell her I wasn't *cough*cough* feeling well, and immediately ordered tickets for the 1:05 Bourne Supremacy at the multiplex in the new mall in Emeryville.

The errands I had to run prior to the movie took less time than I expected, so I ended up at the mall a full hour fifteen before the movie was supposed to start. I decided to buy a book at Barnes & Noble (the one I was banned from a little over a year ago for filling in answers to questions in the LSAT prep books they were seliing and for making fun of a gaggle of ugly girls in the Self-Help section) and dive into it while I had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.

Flying solo, I sat at the counter and grabbed a seat immediately to the left of the wait station where servers come up and collect the drinks for their tables. It afforded me a full view of the open kitchen and an opportunity to flirt with any cute waitresses--there was only one of those and she was a lesbian. I orderd a Corona from the girl unfortunate enough to draw counter duty that afternoon.

Her name was Julie and her nametag said she was from Dallas. I mentioned to her that I dated a girl from Dallas for a little while and had spent some time down there. She smiled awkwardly and sort of looked around hoping I would stop talking. I told her I went down to Lower Greenville last year after the OU/Texas game. She looked at me with a blank stare and finally said

J: I was only born in Dallas. I was raised in Kingman, Arizona and moved to Barstow when I was like 14 after my mom was run over and killed by a tractor-trailer outside the truck stop she worked at.

...How exactly do you respond to that?! Honestly, that's not the chit chat you expect from a the counter-person at your local nouveau fusion pizzeria. I tried to sympathize and move the conversation on

N: Wow, damn. I'm sorry...so I'll have the Original Barbecue Chicken Pizza and a double vodka tonic.
J: Barbecue Chicken and a vodka tonic?
N: A double, yep. You have great lips by the way.
J: Excuse me...my what?
N: Lips. Your lips. You have great lips. They like a thinner version of Stifler's mothers. Like if Stifler's mom and Daffy Duck had a girl and named her Julie. That is your name right? That's not bullshit too, like the whole Dallas thing?
J: What's your name?
N: Nils
J: Wow Nils, you're really suave.

Ouch. I guess not everyone can be on top of their game at noon on a Tuesday. She turned and went to the Squirrel Machine to place my order. I can only imagine what she punched in:

Original Barbecue Chicken Pizza. Add nasal discharge. Add rat feces. Add hepatitis. Wonderful. I slammed the rest of my Corona and opened my new book.

The book I bought is called "Holidays on Ice" by David Sedaris. It's a small collection of holiday-themed short stories and it's the only Sedaris book I hadn't read. The first story is called "SantaLand Diaries" and chronicles Sedaris' time as an elf in the SantaLand display at the Macy's in Manhanttan.

There is a point near the beginning of the story where Sedaris lists off the different types of elves in SantaLand:

"On any given day you can be an Entrance Elf, a Water Cooler Elf, a Bridge Elf, Train Elf, Maze Elf, Island Elf, Magic Window Elf, Emergency Exit Elf, Magic Tree Elf, Pointer Elf, Santa Elf, Photo Elf, Usher Elf, Cash Register Elf, Runner Elf, or Exit Elf."

As I read this passage, "Julie"--with her pouty pouty lips--stopped buy to replace my double vodka tonic and drop off my pizza . I looked up to thank her and realized I was surrounded by a kitchen full of Mexicans toiling in a dough-covered, summer wonderland. California Pizza Kitchen was just like SantaLand!...except instead of employing ex-felons, high school kids, and perverts as their elves, they employed an army of Mexicans. They had Mexican elves! MEXI-ELVES!! The only thing that could have made the scene better was a big fat Mexican guy with a mullet, wearing a Santa suit, sitting in a low-rider sleigh, and reciting from memory "Santa Claus and His Old Lady" by Cheech and Chong.

Peering around at the Mexi-elves working away, I was amazed at once with both the brilliant AdamSmithian division of pizza labor as well as how fitting this scene was in light of the elf-breakdown in the Sedaris' story I'd just read.

Over to the right,there was Flour, Dough and Sauce Mexi-Elf (or the FDS Mexi-Elf). He was very clearly the big Mexi-Elf on the Mexi-Elf Totempole. He dusted the pizza boards with aplomb. He tossed pizza rounds onto his worktable effortlessly and worked them into their 10" shape with the expertise of a mastercraftsman. He routinely barked curt and specific orders to the younger guy to his right...

The Toppings Mexi-Elf. FDS Mexi-Elf would finish stretching the rounds, slide them over on the boards along with their tickets showing what toppings to put on them, and the Toppings Mexi-Elf would quickly disappear from view, reaching into the small refrigerator at knee level that held all the immediately perishable toppings. Toppings Mexi-Elf would pop up in the next instance with a small Mexi-elf handful of plastic baggies that held pre-portioned amounts of the respective toppings he was to place atop the expertly stretched and prep'd pizza rounds. Once Toppings Mexi-Elf is satisfied with his pizza product, he slides it down the line one step further to...

Oven Mexi-Elf, who takes the board with the pizza on it and quickly and adroitly slides the pizza into an empty spot in the faux brick oven. Oven Mexi-Elf is a little older than everyone else...quite obviously calloused to bubbling cheese and the constant 300+ degree heatwaves blasting out of the open-front oven. Don't get me wrong, Oven Mexi-Elf is sweating like he's in the trunk of an early model Buick at a legal border crossing in the middle of summer. It doesn't seem to bother Oven Mexi-Elf though, as he periodically wipes his brow with the forearm length terri-wristbands he wears to protect from searing his flesh against the metal flashing along the mouth of the oven.

Oven Mexi-Elf was just gettin' goin' when I sat down--as the midday lunch crowd had just started to filter in. Each pizza was touched by Oven Mexi-Elf three times:

1) slide in the oven
2) pull out with large pizza spat, spin 180 degrees, re-insert
3. pull out and pan

Once Oven Mexi-Elf has the pizza out of the oven and onto the pan, he picks it up bare-handed and slides into onto the prep shelf where it is attended to by...

Slice and Garnish Mexi-Elf. This name is a bit of a misnomer however. He is not, in fact, a Mexi-Elf. Rather, he is El Salvadorian. How do I know this? Aside from the atrociously bad skin and the overbite so pronounced it would make one wonder how he hasn't, at some point in his life, bitten through his chin FROM THE OUTSIDE, I could tell he was El Salvadorian because the actual Mexi-Elves looked upon him with either pity or disdain (he was like a Central American Rudolph except without the red nose. Or the ability to fly. Or the whole quadripedal locomotion thing). Oven Mexi-Elf nearly flung the piping hot pizza at S&G "Mexi"-Elf. FDS Mexi-Elf rolled his eyes and cursed under his breath as he watched S&G "Mexi"-Elf run his slicer over the pizza a SECOND time in order to make the cut go all the way through.

Luckily, Slice and Garnish "Mexi"-Elf is the happy-go-lucky sort. He just kind of grins stupidly, slices the pizzas into 8 wedges, sprinkles some roughly chopped parsley over top, slides the pizza onto a lukewarm plate, and sets it up for the server to take to the table. He doesn't say much to anyone--smiling politely and nodding graciously when the English speaking servers thank him even though he still can't understand them after 11 years in the country. Slice and Garnish "Mexi"-Elf is plodding but efficient and will spend most of his time at California Pizza Kitchen alternating between Slice and Garnish Mexi-Elf and Dishwasher Mexi-Elf because the REAL Mexi-Elves won't endorse him for a promotion in either responsibility or pay.

I was captivated by this quartet of pizza-making Mexi-elves, until I looked farther to my left and saw another set of Mexi-Elves. Back around the corner in front of the double Viking range and the vats of boiling water were...

Sandwich and Entree Mexi-Elf and Pasta Mexi-Elf. They worked in tandem most of the time...at least when I was watching. Pasta Mexi-Elf would flip something in a saute pan for S&E Mexi-Elf if S&E Mexi-Elf was busy garnishing a completeld entree. S&E Mexi-Elf would pull a portion of linguini from the vat of water if the timer sounded and Pasta Mexi-Elf was busy saucing an order of capellini and bringing it together in a large pan.

These two, I think, regularly work in tandem. Their English skills are far superior to the rest of the Mexi-elves and I saw both of them flirt with the English-speaking waitresses at least twice. Sandwich and Entree Mexi-Elf and Pasta Mexi-Elf carry themselves with a certain grace and panache that you don't see from the Pizza Quartet. They wear chefs pants and coats and cook with flair. They are definitely fun to watch. I'd be willing to bet that at least one of them has a huge cocaine habit and four kids--not all necessarily in this country.

Between them and the walled off drink station where the servers go to re-fill your fountain sodas and spit in your Arnold Palmers is the salad station. It is manned by a pair of super-quick, super-efficient Mexi-Elves called Entree Salad Mexi-Elf and Side-Salad Mexi-Elf. If you don't think there isn't a little salad-size Mexi-Elf penis envy in this duo, you're just kidding yourself my friend.

I can see the envy and the jealousy in the eyes of Side-Salad Mexi-Elf. HE could make the entree salads! HE knows how! They're easy! He learned them during California Pizza Kitchen's Mexi-Elf training seminars when he was first hired.

To make up for the obvious slight by management, Side-Salad Mexi-Elf pumps out side-Caesars and side-House salads like a fucking machine. I saw "Julie" order a side-Caesar to go for a patron who came up to the counter. She punched it into the Squirrel, it popped up on his machine, and it was done in 45 seconds flat. No shit. My mouth was agape.

Entree Salad Mexi-Elf, of course, pays no attention to SS Mexi-Elf and goes about his business quickly and artfully creating Entree salads for eager customers. He does everything with a Jackson Pollack-like flick of the wrist. The lettuce gets flipped into his stainless steel mixing bowl (oh and you just know the fact that his mixing bowl is 3 or 4 times the size of Side-Salad Mexi-Elf's stainless steel mixing bowl drives SS Mexi-Elf up the fucking wall). The fresh cut vegetables, the sliced Thai chicken, the manadarin oranges, the various mixed beans, all of it gets tossed gracefully into the bowl by Entree Salad Mexi-Elf. I dare say he's trying to create an edible work of art rather than just a pedestrian salad. He's the Diego Garcia of Entree Salad Mexi-Elves.

Watching this well-oiled Mexi-machine pump out high quality dishes, in a short period of time, at reasonable prices brought a smile to my face and, I'm sure, a knowing nod and a proud tear to the cheek of Adam Smith...looking down from above the factory floor we call Earth. From behind the one-way, mirrored glass of his office in the sky.

The Asian Persuasion

2004-09-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

I live 3 stops north of the Downtown Berkeley BART Station--or as one train operator calls it "The home of the University of California AT Berkeley." On my morning commute during the school year, I invariably end up riding in a traincar with at least one or two bleary-eyed students trying to make an 8 o'clock class. What I've discovered over the last couple years is that these students I commute with are predominantly Asian males.

Berkeley has so many Asian students it could probably support its own little Chinatown. When I was there from '96 to 2000, they were the largest ethnic group on campus by a good two or three percentage points. Most of the Asian kids I knew lived as close to campus as they could and squeezed 4, 5, 6 people into a two bedroom apartment (it sounds bad, I know, but it was the Four Fucking Seasons compared to the shipping container they came over in with THE REST OF THEIR PROVINCE!).

Because Berkeley suffers from a chronic shortage of student housing both as a city and as a school, it is not uncommon to see groups of friends find houses in adjoining towns like Oakland, El Cerrito, Kensington, Emeryville, and Albany. It is these kids that commute to and from campus on BART and, like the other day, sit across from me in the morning half-asleep. They fall into one of two categories:

A) short, skiddish, pale-skinned, Chinese or Korean super dorks with backpacks that weigh at least half as much as they do strapped to their backs like baby Howler monkeys. They are computer science or engineering majors and are getting to school so goddamn early either because they want to be at the library RIGHT when it opens or they have an 8am Chinese for Chinese speakers class that they are taking because it's an easy A that will help pad their GPA when it comes time to apply to Cal Tech and MIT for grad school.

They smell funny. I can't quite put my finger on exactly HOW they smell funny, but if I had to guess I would probably say it's a combination of $2 Chinese take-out, long sedentary hours in front of the computer, a less than regular shower schedule, and an oral hygiene regimen that consists of a 4yr old toothbrush, water, and Altoids.

They usually have glasses (because technology has not advanced to the point where scientists have invented contacts or Lasek procedures that could possibly help their vision problems) and wide,thin moustaches that they never trim because razors and shaving cream would require them to spend money that they are saving up for the next Final Fantasy release.

B) I see this second category of the Asian Persuasion much more often on my morning commute. These are the non-Chinese, non-Korean, first generation, Americanized Asian kids. Filipino, Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Myanmarese...who the fuck knows...these are the guys who want more than anything to be NBA point guards.

They play in every intramural basketball league on campus with team names like "Rice Rockets" and "Racin' Asians." They never win the league, of course, because they're all under 5'8" and insist on dribbling like Skip-to-my-fucking-Lou before they either hoist another in a long line of ill-advised three-point shots or try to slash to the hoop where they will, invariably, call a foul when they get brushed by a defender coming out to guard their ridiculous attempt at a layup.

They all have names like Danny or Ricky or John or Henry because they are easier to say than their ACTUAL names which are more like Kwok or Hyung or Hoa or (insert sound of silverware hitting the floor). Ricky(Hoa), like his Vietnamese fishermen uncles, loves to gamble even though he's horrible at it and should be saving to pay the fines he received for illegal street racing. If he's not playing poker at the local Indian casino, he's in any number of fantasy leagues with $100 entry fees. If he's not scouring ESPN.com and the Sports Guy's columns for fantasy sleepers, he's playing Madden or Streetfighter on his PS2 until 4am with the rest of his techno music-listening, Smirnoff Ice swilling Asian buddies.

I sat across from a Ricky(Hoa) on Friday morning. I didn't think much of him at first until he nodded off to sleep and hit his head against one of the poles that attaches to the ceiling.

Ricky(Hoa) was wearing a Michael Vick jersey because Vick was on the cover of Madden 2004 and led his Madden team to the Super Bowl. He wears the Vick jersey even though he throws like a girl, runs like a special olympian, and has no idea where Atlanta or Blacksburg, Virginia are on a map. His older brothers Danny(Kwok) and Henry(silverware hitting the floor) were the guys--10 years ago--wearing the Bo Jackson jerseys because he was the best Tecmo Bowl running back for Nintendo.

Ricky has blood shot, glazed-over eyes and crusty white build-up at the corners of his mouth. I think he might have a "condition" but it's more likely that he only got 2 hours of sleep before he had to get up for the 8am O-Chem class he was forced to take because it is required for Molecular Biology majors whose parents have been pushing them from birth to become "famous-a doctuh!"

Ricky(Hoa) doesn't want to go to med school though. He wants to open a high-end car audio store with his buddies Donny(Phan), Zach(Xia), and Ronny(sounds of swords clashing). It makes sense considering the thousands of dollars they've spent to pimp out their lowered Honda CRXs...they HAVE to be experts by now!

When Ricky(Hoa) hit his head I thought he would jolt from his slumber because of the pain. Surprisingly, he just leaned against the pole with his mouth slightly open and his stale Asian nose and mouth stench wafting at regular intervals in my direction. As he rested his head against the pole, I was taken by the fact that he hadn't reacted to slamming against it.

I noticed almost immediately that it might be due to the fact that his head was shaped like a Rolo...or the inside of a plastic bucket you can buy at Walgreens to use at the beach for making sand castles. The shape was almost perfectly symmetrical--like a Mayan temple but with rounded edges. I guess maybe that's the natural shape of a head when it is breach-birthed from a sideways vagina...

The other disturbing thing about Ricky(Hoa)'s head--if there weren't enough things already--was the goatee he felt compelled to grow. I've never seen such a spotty, wire-thin, unkempt goatee in my entire life. It looked like the hodge-podgge arrangement of metal filings you get when you throw the tiny pieces of metal randomly at a high-powered magnet...like that display at the Exploratorium. I guess Ricky(Hoa) doesn't think to trim because at this point in his life he's just glad he has facial hair that's not the product of hair cut trimmings, commercial epoxy, and an industrial cooling fan.

Ricky(Hoa) was conscious enough to hear the call for the dowtown Berkeley station just minutes after he slammed his Rolo-head into the pole. He sort of rousted from his half-sleep, collected himself, wiped the sleep from his eyes, and rose to move toward the doors.

N: Hey man, nice jersey. I hope that Madden jinx has worn off
R(H): No kidding bro, he's my QB on all four of my fantasy teams.
N: Have fun in O-Chem. Hopefully all that Madden 2005 playing you did last night isn't going to take its toll
R(H): Yeah, thanks.

Ricky(Hoa), semi-confused, departed the train with a bit of a stumble and a stutter step. I watched him shuffle toward the escalator as the train pulled away from the station--assuredly on his way to get an iced espresso drink at Tully's and to pass out 15 minutes into lecture. Silly Asians.

The Pink Palace

2004-09-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

I ran into my mother's bathroom--or at least what is now my mother's bathroom--slammed down the toilet seat, dropped my pajama pants, threw off the oversized Warriors parka I had just gotten for Christmas 5 days earlier and hadn't taken off since, and took the biggest crap of my 12yr old life. I'm not joking either. This thing began well down the drain, started up the bowl like Punxsutawney Phil and circled the bottom for nearly a full 360 degrees.

I sat there for what seemed like an hour with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears trying to shut out the insufferable sounds of dripping double faucets and the halogen bulbs above the vanity mirror. I kept my eyes tightly shut for as long as I could so as to avoid the visual assault of the cotton-candy pink walls closing in around me (shit, they were louder than either the bulbs or the faucets could ever hope to be). I was also trying desperately to avoid acknowledging the tears that had been building beneath my eyelids since my father called my sister and me upstairs to tell us he was leaving our mother.

Pink walls. Goddamn pink walls. To this day, my mother swears she can't stand the color pink. This is quite confusing considering she was the one who made the conscious decision to make the bathroom walls, the master bedroom walls, the hallway, the throw pillows, and the master bedroom carpet various shades of pink.

I'm convinced my mother believes this won't be held against her because she created her little pink palace upstairs, out of sight of those whose job it is to judge our social fitness by our material possessions and our bathroom color schemes...you know, friends, neighbors, extended family, God.

Anyway, I did a pretty good job of keeping my eyes closed while I was on the toilet. Until, of course, I couldn't find any toilet paper. Groping helplessly in my self-imposed darkness and starting to itch, I could find no toilet paper on the dispenser, none on top of the tank, not even one roll in the basket where the Sports Illustrateds and the National Geographics sit to pass the time.

That's when I couldn't keep my eyes closed anymore and the waterworks started. Bandit--our Lab/Husky mix that we found on our front lawn the weekend we moved into this house just before the start of my 3rd grade year--heard me sobbing and nosed the sliding bathroom door open. He loped over, licked all the tears off both sides of my face, turned around and loped back out. I still remember that moment and when he died 4 or 5 years later on my birthday (we think from being poisoned by my bi-polar alcoholic next door neighbor), I broke down in tears amidst a flood of confused emotion.

My father passed Bandit as he entered the Pink Palace to help me. He tried to pat Bandit on the head, but Bandit ducked and went to sit with my sister.

There is nothing wrong with love between a man and his dog

2004-09-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

What are you lookin at FUCKER?!

2004-09-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Vehicular Manslaughter and the Problem with Lunchtime in San Francisco

2004-09-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I'm driving by myself I have to resist the urge to run over pedestrians in the crosswalk. I'll see them 60, 80, 100 yards down the road, but they won't see me...generally oblivious to my right foot getting heavier and heavier as I approach. They walk blissfully unaware, snug in the oh-so-false sense of security provided by the solid white lines painted on the road. These smug little street-walking bitches amble to and fro like they're starting quarterbacks and I'm some second-team linebacker in a 9-on-7 non-contact drill. Well guess what buddy, my Explorer isn't a second string linebacker, this ain't no fucking non-con drill, and if one of us is going to get cut, it's gonna be you. Fucker.

I can't say for certain from whence this urge comes. I can only say that it does, in fact, come. Maybe it's spending the last 8 years weaving through the dirt-surfers and street merchants that constitute Berkeley city traffic. Maybe it's the 4-foot Qin TerraCotta warrior look-alikes in Chinatown with complete disregard for traffic lights and stop signs who creep unfathomably slow into the intersection as I'M BARRELING DOWN A HILL IN A CAR WITH LESS THAN QUALITY BRAKES AND AN 800 lbs PAYLOAD OF DRUNKEN FRIENDS IN THE BACK!!!! Or maybe, it's just that I hate bipedal locomotion.
___________________________________________________________________

I had a roast beef sandwich for lunch today. It was lovingly prepared by a sweaty, 30 yr old Afghan who used the sliding glass of the display case to wipe off his mayonnaise-covered hands. When he turned his back to me while slicing off a disturbing amount of swiss cheese from the block he had just removed from its resting place amidst a small pool of roast beef blood on the top shelf of the display case, I noticed that the sweat had completely soaked through the back of his white t-shirt--making it translucent enough to see the thicket of back hair that would insulate him for the coming winter months like a free-range bison.

As he stood there lopping off a kilo of slices, I noticed that he kept tugging at his shirt collar and rubbing his neck. I could tell he was cursing to himself in Pashto because the number of phlegm-producing words increased dramatically...to the point where I left wondering how much of that was really mayonnaise. It dawned on me though, why this guy was always so pissed off.

When he was tugging at his shirt collar I saw the glimmer of a gold rope chain around his neck. He wasn't tugging at his collar after all. He was tugging at the back hair that was repeatedly getting caught in the chain. Mmmm mmmm mmmm, lunchtime! I'd be pissed all the time too if my PELT kept getting torn from by my flea market jewelry. So I left.

As I walked up Drumm St back to my office, my lunchtime train of thought was disrupted by a woman up ahead scream out "OH DEAR GOD!" I looked up with a start hoping a panhandling "disabled veteran" had tipped over in his wheelchair or something, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something much much better.

There, across the street, next to the planters on the north side of the Embarcadero Hyatt was a filthy stumbling homeless man. He was leaning precariously against one of the benches and one of the large planters and was mumbling incoherently to himself. Once he got his feet under him, he untied the rope keeping his pants up, dropped his pants around his ankles, semi-squatted, and started shitting all over the ground. Now I'm not sure if shit always looks more voluminous and viscous when it is streaming from the ass of a homeless man in the middle of a financial district, but based purely on puddle-size and elapsed time it looked like this man was in the final stages of bleeding out from the Ebola virus.

I couldn't take my eyes off this guy and neither could a handful of other people. I may have been the only one with a huge grin on my face, but I was certainly not the only one who was astonished by the sheer quantity of human fecal waste that had pooled around this homeless man's feet like the liquid Terminator after they blew him up in the steel smelting factory. He stood there for a few beats after the last drops had drained from his anus as if to catch his breath or shake out the cobwebs. When he was satisfied that he had his wits about him again, he decided against wiping or rubbing his ass along the ground like a Springer Spaniel. He simply pulled up his pants, tied off the rope belt, and stumbled on his way.

Everyone around was speechless. Part of me wanted to applaud this brazen-yet-virtuoso rectal symphony. Instead, I did the only thing I really could do and I threw away my sandwich.

Things I Learned Over the Labor Day Weekend

2004-09-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

#1 It is not acceptable to walk into a Big Box Supermarket retailer in an upscale white suburb (sorry, that's redunant...I know) and yell out at a very high volume:

"WHERE'S THE GODDAMN BEER!?!?"

Despite the fact that this inquisitive plea was born out of true frustration and a desire to find a cold alcoholic beverage of my choosing, asking no one in particular where the goddamn beer is as loud as you can will only lead to conversations like this one with the supermarket manager:

SM: Sir, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from using that kind of derogatory language in my store.
NP: I'm sorry, so where's the goddamn beer?
SM: Sir, customers don't come to the San Ramon Alberstons to be sworn at or have the Lord's name so wantonly taken in vain. I, for one, know that I do not come to work everyday expecting to be sworn at. Now I understand your frustration with not being able to find what you are looking for. Our store is very big. One of the 6 biggest Albertsons in all of Northern California in fact--but that does not me
NP: So where's the damn beer?
SM: Sir, if you don't stop swearing at me I am going to ask you to leave and not return. I am giving you the respect you deserve as a customer and I expect that respect in return as the manager of this store.
NP: I'm not swearing. I haven't said 'shit' or 'fuck' or 'bitch' or anything like that. I'm sorry if I offended your Judeo-Christian morality. I'm just looking for the frickin' beer aisle and you are trying to give me a sermon.
SM: Sir, I am not trying to preach to you I assure you. What I am trying to do is instruct you about how we expect Albertsons customers to conduct themselves in our store around their fellow Alberstons customers.
NP: That's great. So can you instruct me about where the goddamn beer aisle is?
SM: You really are a horribly unhappy person aren't you?
NP: No, but I'm getting there. All I need from you is a number. We can even make this like a MadLibs. I will give you a sentence with a blank and ask you for the first number that pops into your head. Ready?...well, are you ready?
SM: Aisle 3.
NP: Thank you. Jesus fucking christ it's like pulling teeth around here.

#2 It is unwise to stand at the edge of a 150-foot, 65degree straw-covered hill while drunk and in flip-flops. It is unwise to stand at the edge of said hill while holding a wallet, keys, a cell-phone and a beer because your basketball shorts don't have pockets. Being distracted by the wind and by people talking to you while you are standing on the edge of said hill may result in losing your footing and sliding 150 feet to the bottom on your ass and your side. This, I have found, will lead to massive scratching along your legs and a softball sized welt on bruise on your right hip/ass cheek.

#3 I do not need a microphone when I sing karaoke.

#4 Doing 50 straight cannonballs will make every part of your body ache the next day...including your ass which you will hit on the bottom of the shallow end at least 4 times because you were too impatient to wait for people to clear out of the deep-end.

#5 Losing your wallet, your cell phone, your sunglasses, and your shoes after a long night of partying sucks.

#5a The best place to lose a wallet is in the gutter of a quiet upscale suburban street. You actually stand a chance of getting it back

#6 Telling the cute bartender who started flirting with you the minute you walked up to the bar that you prefer to drink with purpose and conviction will lead to you getting ridiculously drunk off gigantic shots of Patron

#7 Watcing an action film from the first row of the theater will make you incredibly ill...particularly if the reason you went to the movie was to spend a couple hours in a dark air-conditioned room where you didn't have to move in order to stave off the worst aspects of a hangover.

#8 Diner-style chain restaurants like Denny's and Carrows are the most depressing places in this history of depressing places (more on this later)

#9 45 yr old single women LOVE me.

#10 Breaking out in a rash on your ass doesn't mean you have herpes...necessarily. You might have just sat in poison ivy. LIKE AN IDIOT!

#11 Red Bull (and Vodka) is, by FAR, the best way to find me in the center of an incident in which police officers will be prominently involved.

There are more things I learned, I'm sure. I just can't remember any of them because I was too drunk when I learned them.

The View From The Bottom: An Open Letter

2004-09-03T01:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Bruce,

Aside from bleeding and eventual incontinence, the worst part about being a Bottom during gay anal sex is insensitivity. So often Tops are Bears--bigger, gruffer, and much more aggressive than your typical Bottom. A lot of Tops will just start pounding away like your ass is some sort of penile pin cushion. I mean, I don't know about you Bruce, but I was led to believe that gay anal sex is about mutual pleasure. Unfortunately, it feels like we don't share that philosophy anymore. If you just want to fuck me in the ass like your cock is a pestle and my asshole is a mortar, you've got the wrong Bottom buddy!

Now don't get me wrong...it's not like a good hard ass-pounding can't feel great. SOMETIMES. But sometimes you want to go a little slower, a little softer, a little gentler. Maybe a little kissing on the back of the neck. Maybe a little shoulder rubbing. Maybe a reach-around. You know what I mean, Bruce? Gay anal sex is about the unspoken emotional connection as much as it is about cramming your dick in my ass. I don't think there's any debate about that. I, for one, need one just as much as I need the other.

Just because you, Mr. TOP, are dissatisfied with your job and hate that you can't come out to your father doesn't mean you can just bend me over, grab my shoulders, slam your cock in my ass and just go POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND! That's not how a real gay anal sex relationship works.

Ask me what I want. Ask me how I want it...or even IF I want it. Sometimes I just want you to spoon me on the couch while we watch a movie. Remember when we used to just cuddle up on the couch and watch American Idol? I miss those days Brucie and I really don't think you care. I think you just look at me as your favorite anal deep-throater. And you know what, I'm okay with that. I like that you are attracted to my unique...skill. BUT THAT STILL DOESN'T MEAN I DON'T HAVE NEEDS OR DESIRES THAT I WANT FULFILLED!!! I could find a new, more sensitive Top like THAT Brucie, don't you forget it!

But I don't want that. I want the old US. I want the Brucie and Me who would kiss in the kitchen while we practiced cooking vegetarian entrees and then turn off the burners on the stove as we kissed our way onto the couch or into the bedroom. Remember? Those were the nights where you went the deepest...into my heart, into my soul. It was nights like those that made me understand and embrace the fact that I wasn't just a Bottom. I was YOUR Bottom, Brucie. Your Bottom!

I need you to be more sensitive Bruce. I need you to care. I need you to want me and need me...and SHOW it. This is a gay anal sex partnership. Not a gay anal sex dictatorship. I know you know I get most of my pleasure from gay anal sex by pleasing my Top, but even the bottom-most of Bottoms needs a little pleasing from his Top once in awhile. I'm no different Brucie. I'm not different.

So please Brucie, think about what I'm saying. It took a lot of courage for me to write this. I know how mad and offended you get sometimes, but this is important to me. No no no, it's important to US! So please, try and be a little more sensitive to my needs. And my ass.

Yours always,

Alphonse

DUCK!

2004-09-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this at 11:30PM Pacific, still in my office, still trudging through a 500 page legal brief to be filed Friday morning. It's the third night of 4 that will have me here past midnight. Fortunately, when we work late someone always orders dinner. Tonight we ordered from a rib place and I got a pulled pork sandwich with onion strings.

It was delicious. To the tastebuds.

Unfortunately, it didn't mix well with the 5 diet cokes, 2 cups of coffee, tuna sandwich, and cinnamon bun I consumed earlier in the day. Within 15 minutes of the last bite I was farting so bad I wouldn't be surprised if someone down the hall had called the San Francisco Hazardous Materials Team to investigate a pungent, noxious gas lingering throughout the floor. It got so bad at one point earlier, I actually wondered if it was possible to leave my body and go outside for some air for a minute.

During the crescendo and finale of my gastro-intestinal ballet, I was fortunate enough to have to run upstairs for a quick status conference with all the attorneys I was working for. 10 minutes turned into 25 which ultimately turned into 40. By the time we adjourned I had held back enough pressure-packed gas that, were I to let it all out at once, I could probably re-light the Olympic torch in Athens...FROM THE ISLAND OF CRETE!

The meeting mercifully complete, I grabbed the papers I brought with me and consulted my notes as I waited for the elevator to take me back down to my office and the warm embrace of my favorite bathroom stall in all of San Francisco. The doors opened and, head still buried in my notes, mind still foggy from three consecutive 16+ hr days, I boarded the car, turned to face the doors like anyone else and groped for the "4" button. I wasn't finding it--since I wasn't paying attention--so I looked up briefly to find it.

As I looked up, I noticed the reflection of one of the cleaning crew in the stainless steel doors. She had been standing directly behind me the whole time. I don't know about your office building, but mine seems to only employ middle-aged, Chinese or Spanish speaking women no taller than 5'1" to work it's cleaning crew.

Well, I wasn't expecting to see anyone in the car this time of night so her reflection startled me. It startled me so much, in fact, that as I groped for the "4" button and caught the glimpse of her in the stainless steel, I kind of gasped and let all the gas I had been sitting on for the last 40 minutes come rocketing out in one glorious, senses-assaulting jet of ass-air. It was a fart the Jet Propulsion Labratory would have been proud of. And it was directed squarely in the face of the 4'8" Chinese cleaning lady standing behind me. Ouch.

Now, I'm not sure how you say "I don't get paid enough for this shit" in Cantonese or Mandarin, but I'm pretty sure it's not "eeeeeeeeecchhhhhhh."

IKEA, Biblical History, and a Fucked Up Email Conversation

2004-09-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

this is an email conversation I had with a good friend of mine this morning. She sends me funny news items that she thinks are right up my alley. She's like my own personal Fark.com This one was pretty entertaining.
___________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: Rhonda [mailto:xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:31 AM
To: Parker, Nils A.
Subject: IKEA news

Hundreds of shoppers drawn by a discount offer rushed into an IKEA branch in western Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, causing a stampede that killed three and injured 17, security officials said. A Saudi and a Pakistani were among those killed, the officials said. The nationality of the third person killed was not given. After furniture giant IKEA's branch in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah announced that it was offering credit vouchers to the first 250 clients Wednesday, some shoppers camped outside Tuesday night. Once the doors opened, the crowd surged forward, causing the stampede. Ameen Jamal, a senior executive for IKEA Saudi Arabia, said more than 8,000 people had gathered outside the store before the opening. He didn't have other details

-----Original Message-----
From: Parker, Nils A. [mailto:xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:32 AM
To: Rhonda
Subject: RE: IKEA news

can ragheads not count? You'd figure if the ad mentioned the first 250 people once the line got to...oh, I don't know...THREE THOUSAND!!!...you might just pack up your flying carpet, tighten your turban, saddle up the camel and go home.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rhonda [mailto:xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:35 AM
To: Parker, Nils A.
Subject: RE: IKEA news

What can I say? Particle board makes people do crazy things…
-----Original Message-----
From: Parker, Nils A. [mailto: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:35 AM
To: Rhonda
Subject: RE: IKEA news

it's probably just that IKEA has a whole line of furniture products the color of desert sand. I'm pretty sure that's why the Jews wandered the desert for 40 years...looking for queen-sized sleigh beds with a birch finish.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rhonda [mailto:xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:39 AM
To: Parker, Nils A.
Subject: RE: IKEA news

And who can blame them? Faux wood, an allen wrench, and cardboard backing – what more can a tribesman need?

-----Original Message-----
From: Parker, Nils A. [mailto: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:39 AM
To: Rhonda
Subject: RE: IKEA news

jihad?

...some assembly required

Roll Call 8/30/04

2004-08-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

I had to work late Monday night, so I was stuck taking a 10:30pm Pittsburg/BayPoint train and transferring to the Richmond line at 12th St Station. While some--including myself at times--might find this annoying and inconvenient, it was a boon for me this time. More people to baselessly judge and catalogue! With no further ado, here is Roll Call 8/30/04

# of grandparents on vacation visiting their grandkids who are scared shitless by even the slightest movement of a non-white passenger: 2

# of 45 yr old woman trying in vain to look younger by dying their hair blonde and wearing knitted pink ponchos and New Balance running shoes: 1

#of tall, mousy-yet-unusually-pretty girls standing shyly by the exits who I would have sex with: 3

# of those girls who are likely to file a restraining order against me once they get to know me...and I don't stop calling and hanging up: 3

# of short, slovenly Asian computer science students returning from class at either SFState or SF CityCollege: 5

% of those Asian students with at least one piece of sexually explicit anime in their backpacks: 80

likelihood the backpacks they're carrying were freebies from Comdex or MacWorld Expo: 100%

likelihood that at least two of them forgot to turn off the rice-cooker before they left the house this morning: 100%

# of abnormally thin women reading science or fantasy fiction and wearing Russian Cossack hats: 2

# of hot black chicks in short black dresses, dreads, and 13-hole mid-calf combat boots: 1

# of short, drunk, jean-short wearing Mexican day-laborers who decided to sit next to or behind the hot black chick and use the need to look at the System Map (http://www.bart.gov/images/quickplanner_map_lg4.gif) as a reason to peer over and look down her dress: 3

the color my envy of said Mexican day laborers would be were it analogous to the Homeland Security Terror Alert System: ORANGE

# of people seated in my immediate vicinity who should NOT raise their hands when asked if they are, in fact, "sure": 4

# of those closet fecalphiliacs who transferred with me and sat near me for a second time: 3

# of 50+ yr old flush-cheeked white couples riding BART because they came into the City for dinner and got a little shitty: 3

# of those couples who constantly consult the System Map to see where they are going despite having lived in the Bay Area SINCE BART FUCKING OPENED IN 1972!!!: 3

# of 20-something couples that look like they've watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind waaaaaay too many times: 1

likelihood that both members of that couple work in retail or food service to fund their dream of becoming documentary filmmakers: 100%

# of hispanic guys who are chatting boisterously with one another despite never having met prior to this BART ride: 4

# of gay couples sleeping peacefully against each other: 2

# of those gay men who could probably kick the shit out of anyone on the train car: 3

# of aging hippies with long frizzy graying ponytails who are riding BART not because they are environmentally conscious but, rather, because they lost their cars and their cats in a bourbon-soaked 3-team parlay with USA on the moneyline v. Argentina, Thousand Oaks -1.5 v. Curacao in the Little League World Series, and USC -17.5 v. Virginia Tech: 1

# of filthy long-haired white-trash vagrants who nearly broke the train car doors as they tried to jam their mountain bikes into the car as the doors were closing: 2

# of the bicycle-riding C.O.P.S. stars who sat in the handicapped seats, mumbling to themselves, and picked dirt and grime from under their fingernails with a small spackling knife they pulled from their fannypack: 1

# of middle-aged, middle-management white males sporting full facial hair to combat the effects of male pattern baldness: 6

# of those Al Borland impersonators who were sitting quietly in their seats doing nothing because listening to music or reading the paper would obscure the voices in their heads telling them to go home and kill their families: 4

# of cute white girls with panic-stricken looks of abject fear painted on their faces as they realized that all the other white passengers were getting off at the second to last stop on the Richmond line and they still had one more stop to go: 2

# of those cute girls I would have sex with even though they'd probably file a restraining order against me once they got to know me...and I wouldn't stop calling and hanging up: 2

Airport Run

2004-08-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

My friend Jen flew into town today for a nice 4-day weekend visit. She booked the first United flight of the day into San Francisco. When she first told me she was coming, she mentioned that fact and apologized earnestly if it was going to be an inconvenience. I told her it wouldn't be. She asked if I was sure, thinking, I assume, that I was just being polite. I told her it would be my pleasure. I wasn't lying. It would be.

SFO is a locus of crossing paths and chance meetings. It's a way-station for a vast contingent of businesspeople from around the Pacific Rim as well as across the globe. It plays temporary host to a whole assortment of travelers--with plans as varied as their life stories--who, with little make-up, not unconvincingly resemble more than one or two of the alien characters from the cantina scene in the first Star Wars. In fact, that may be the best way to picture San Francisco International Airport without the use of a video camera and 15,000 words: it's a living, breathing, ever-changing version of the Star Wars cantina. You think I'm kidding, but a couple years ago during Thanksgiving weekend I'm almost 100% sure that I saw the blue keyboard-playing aardvark-looking dude eating chowder out of a breadbowl at the CrabPot just inside Terminal 3.

So naturally, who--or rather, what--is the first person I see as I come off the escalator that connects the walkway from the parking garage to the baggage claim area? Well, I don't know exactly. I'm not a biologist. I'm pretty sure it/he is a Man, but there is a good chance that he is representative of a distinct, recently-classified sub-species of the genus Homo named Homo reallyerectus fireislandia.

A gawkish, heroin-thin kid (maybe 20, 21), his beady brown eyes were set a little close together and deep into his head like a cross between Ted Danson and a corpse. His face was covered with freckles--not your normal red-headed Annie freckles though. He looked like he stood behind a screen door during a diarrhea fight. His eyes were partially obscured by foppish, blazing red curls that spilled out from underneath an ill-fitting Zebra-patterned Brett Michaels Every Rose Has Its Thorn cowboy hat (http://www.bretmichaels.com/).

He wore a tight-fitting white Filipino wedding shirt (http://home.sprynet.com/~amolin/scan0002.jpg) unbuttoned 3/4 of the way down. Exposing his diarrhea-freckled chest in a shallow 'V,' the shirt was open to just below the concave area between his solar plexus and the top of his shockingly defined abs that is formed by an eating disorder during 4 torturous, misunderstood years in high school and a subsequent and dedicated cocaine addiction during his abortive stint at art school.

I spotted him from a pretty considerable distance--as he was coming off the escalator that fed arriving passengers from the terminal down to baggage claim and then on to either the taxi stand or the parking garage. I had just hopped off the escalator from the parking garage and was making my way to the United arrivals board. What caught my eye first--besides that ridiculous fucking cowboy hat--was the long, lucid strides he was taking as he made his way toward me. He walked with a loping, almost non-jointed ease that seemed impossible without the assistance of a cocktail of banned narcotics. Moreover, he spilled toward me in a pair of skin-tight, low-rise, bell-bottom jeans that--but for the filthy mustard yellow pumas he had on his feet--made it look like his lower body was being swallowed and digested by a bifurcated denim boa constrictor.

He came off the escalator, I noticed, with no luggage. Nothing. No hand luggage. Not a backpack, not a messenger bag, not any sort of recycled and/or hemp-derived protest literature receptacle. Well, obviously, he didn't look like he was employed by any entity at SFO--unless Ringling Brothers bought the Dirty Hippy Circus between now and the last time I was there and leased performance space in Terminal 3 between the See's Candies stand and that piss-ass bar/cafe with the $14 double bloodies specials--so I was somewhat at a loss to explain his presence in baggage claim.

Then we crossed paths. I came upon him just as I turned the corner from the United arrivals board. As he oozed past me, it came together. I caught the distinct aroma of Bacardi and his cologne: Aux de M4MCraigslistCasualEncounter (http://www.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/search?areaID=1&subAreaID=0&query=m4m+airport&cat=cas&minAsk=min&maxAsk=max). The scent of urinal cakes and glory holes was unmistakable.

I was truly at a loss for words. Seeing one of these specimen immediately post-anonymous-coitus is akin to stumbling upon a family of snow leopards in the wild. I didn't know what to do...until he tripped. Over a baggage claim carousel. That's when I laughed, pointed, and pulled out my notebook.

M.S.B.P.

2004-08-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

I know that to really understand how the world works and to really understand why things happen, one must first be truly honest with one's self and be personally accountable for one's actions and one's role in the events that affect and shape one's life. After all, the reason people flock to organized religion and law and psychology in the numbers that they currently do is because more often than not, they refuse to try and find their own answers to the "why" questions that haunt them. For my part, I realize that my hyper-competitive nature and my affinity for gambling regardless of the stakes are really the two things that facilitated the situation I was in.

When my parents separated--I think I've mentioned that before--we went to family counseling. My little sister and I were told that it was to see if we could work things out as a family. In reality, it was a generally pointless exercise meant only to soften the blow of a separation that was well down its inexorable path to divorce. Well, during these tear-soaked sessions, my dad revealed--to everyone's surprise including my mother's--that he was one of only 4 documented cases in the United States of Paternal Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (or P.M.S.B.P. as it is commonly referred to in medical journals).

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (http://sids-network.org/experts/msp.htm) predominantly affects women--more specifically, mothers. It manifests itself in the unintentional intentional infliction of pain, duress, or trauma on the typically younger children of the women it afflicts.

According to my father, he was the first recorded case on the west coast of the United States, let alone California. Because the syndrome tends to abate as the children get older and more self-aware and, as such, most trauma occurs during the very early years of a child's development, it was no surprise to me or the therapist that neither my sister nor I had any real recollection of incidents with our father that were consistent with P.M.S.B.P. Regardless, the family counselor told my sister and me to go home and think real hard because it would be important to understand what happened, understand that everything's okay now, understand that none of it was our fault, and understand that our father does and has always loved us.

So that's what we did. We went home, sat in the family room with my mom, and racked our brains. The counselor said I was going to be the most important piece in this psychological treasure hunt because my sister may very well have been too young to remember anything on her own and would need my more developed memory to jog hers. At first, nothing came to mind so I started thinking about all the good things about my dad and all the cool stuff we did. That's when things started to click and, consequently, where my hyper-competitiveness and penchant for gambling come in.

Until I was 10 and my sister was 8, my dad stayed home with us so he could complete his PhD in German linguistics at Berkeley. We would read, go to the park, play catch, watch old John Wayne movies when he felt like procrastinating, and play games. Games. Now things started to fall into place. I had gone to the hospital with my dad when I was little. It was always because of some game or some contest with my sister. I always thought we were at the hospital because we were rambunctious and klutzy. Maybe not.

The first incident I could recall sitting in the family room was the time I was 5 and my dad bet me $2 I couldn't eat Gatorade powder as fast as he could. He went to the pantry where my mother kept the Gatorade in a big mason jar (don't ask me why), poured out the contents equally into two bowls, told my 3 year old sister to say GO!, and stared me down...knowing I would do whatever I could to whoop his butt. My father knew me very well. GO!

We were off! My dad gave up half way through I remember. To show him I was the king, I ate the whole fucking bowl. I would have eaten the bowl itself too if I had strong enough teeth...just to rub it in. My dad graciously admitted defeat, handed over the $2 that he knew I would squirrel away in my piggy bank so I could buy toys from the Service Merchandise catalog that came two or three times a year, and went back down in the basement to conjugate more fucking verbs or whatever it was that he did.

Not 10 minutes later. Houston, we have a problem. I remember sort of sheepishly yelling down for my dad to come upstairs because I needed help. Because I was embarrassed and not yelling loud enough, he couldn't hear me. My sister could, though, and she came waddling in to see what the ruckus was. She saw me, took 10 toddler seconds to let it all sink in, and started crying hysterically. She went running for my dad. He came up about 2 minutes later with my sister half sobbing, half trying to gasp for breath. The sight must have been horrific.

There I was, five years old, perched precariously over the toilet, little blue corduroy pants half way down my legs, trying desperately to fight back the alligator tears welling up in my eyes. Apparently a cereal bowl of Gatorade powder does not sit well with the gastrointestinal system of a 5 year old boy. For, a mere 5-10 minutes after my triumph, I was met with an urgent and vexing set of circumstances that I had heretofore never faced.

The Gatorade had both upset my stomach and shot through my system like a Japanese bullet train. I had to puke and I had to take a crap. AT THE SAME EXACT TIME. And, like the sunrise, taxes, death, and Jews in Hollywood, nothing I could do was going to stop it. The dilemma, I remember, was "which one do I do into the toilet?" I couldn't decide. I didn't know what to do. I guess I let my body decide...because as I danced the dance of 5yr old indecision, my stomach decided it had had enough

BBBBLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! BBBBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

right into the toilet

Now here's the problem: once you lose control of one bodily function, the others fall like Eastern block countries. In the middle of puking, my colon decided to do it's Old Faithful impression...ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit (literally)...so I quickly tried to sit down on the toilet. Unfortunately, I remember, my soft little 5 yr old bottom was slick with diarrhea. This made me slide quite a bit to the left edge of the seat when I first tried to sit down and made it so, as the next Anal Old Faithful eruption came, I was in a position to shoot Gatorade powder-infused diarrhea all over the opposite side of the toilet and the side of the vanity next to the toilet.

If things weren't already bad enough, now the dynamic duo has decided to join forces and attack at the same time. Grainy, burning diarrhea is rocketing out of my little behind which I am desperately trying to keep from slipping off the already poop-covered toilet seat while, at the same moment, my stomach is rejecting the gatorade powder like Emeka Okafor against a high school girls team and sending waves of vomit out of my mouth and into the seat of my half-pulled down blue corduroy pants and my little tighty whities.

All this took place within a 90-150 second timeframe. When the Old Faithful eruptions ceased and the Vomitorium closed for the afternoon, the eerie silence bespoke a defeated 5yr old boy and added a very interesting feel to a scene that looked less like a small apartment bathroom and more like studio space rented by Jackson Pollack.

My dad came in with my sister in his arms. He looked at me. He looked at the floor. He looked at me. He looked at the vanity. He looked at the seat of my pants. He looked at the wall across from the toilet. He looked at me and finally said, "get in the bathtub." That's when the waterworks broke loose. I remember he told me it wasn't my fault and that I should stop crying, but I couldn't. So he put my sister down, peeled my vomit and diarrhea stained clothes off my sweaty, trembling little body, picked me up, put me in the tub, and started the shower.

It took my dad like 40 minutes to get me totally clean. By the time he was done scrubbing me like a rape victim, my skin was pruned to the point where it hurt to walk on anything other than the shag carpet in the living room. "Okay, let's go."

And off we went to the pediatrics wing of Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. He carried both me and my sister into the waiting area. I remember the nurse at the window offering me a lollipop and eagerly accepting it only to yank it out of my mouth in horror when the sweetness of it hit my taste buds and made me realize that the roof of my mouth felt like it had been raked by a backhoe and my tongue was so tingly I could barely feel it.

Next thing I remember is sitting with my sister on the edge of the bed-thingy in the examination room counting the animated baseball players swinging bats on the wallpaper across from us. I was counting outloud--because that's what five year olds do I guess--and my sister would follow along mimicking me, "one, two, free, four, figh, fourty-teeuuuuu" and then giggle to herself.

It wasn't until I was in the family room with my mother and sister recalling this that I realized that, like most of the other times I would go to the hospital with my dad because of some game-playing accident, my sister and I would be alone in the exam room for what seemed like 30, 45, sometimes 60 minutes at a time. I spent the rest of the night in my room with the light off running through my memory until I fell asleep.

At the next family therapy session, the counselor asked me if I could remember anything related to my dad's P.M.S.B.P. I said I could and I related in shorter form what turned out to be a passel of strikingly similar tales of challenges, bets, games, and mishaps. Apparently, my mother had only known about a couple of these incidents because as I went through the list she became visibly more upset until she finally scooted to the edge of the couch and looked out the window toward the vacant lot across the street, weeping quietly to herself.

It wasn't until about 6 or 8 weeks ago that I found out what the real deal was...with the doctor visits, with the protracted periods alone in the exam room, with my mother crying at that, what turned out to be final, therapy session...

There is no such thing as Paternal Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. And, even if there was, my father didn't have it.

Apparently--and my mother knew about it--my father had been cheating on her while she was at work and he was finishing up his PhD. He was cheating with a pediatrics/obstetrics nurse at Kaiser. A nurse, in fact, who was assisting in the delivery room when my mother gave birth to my sister. He wasn't subconsciously getting me sick or inducing gastro-intestinal explosions because he couldn't help himself and just wanted attention from friendly helpful hospital staff. He was doing it so he would have an excuse to go to the hospital and fuck his little nurse. THAT was why we spent so much time alone in the exam room. THAT was why I never remember my dad actually filling out any paper work. And, THAT explains why my mom was unaware of so many of the incidents that came to light in the final therapy session.

What made her cry so...I don't know...so, earnestly and heart-breakingly was that all these incidents spanned a period that was at least twice as long as he had ever admitted to cheating on her for. He had been cheating on her for the better part of their marriage. He had never been faithful. He probably had never really loved her. The combination of these facts, assumptions, and realizations sent my mother into a tailspin of depression.

Since that day, I guess about 8 weeks ago, I have had to get up early so I could get her out of bed. Sometimes I wake up at 3 or 4am in a panic and run upstairs to make sure she hasn't done anything...drastic. She always took a shower without much trouble, but getting her out of bed and getting her to eat breakfast were major major chores that took hours sometimes. I constantly had to remind her that she had kids and friends and co-workers that loved her and supported her and wanted nothing but the best for her. I had to gently but firmly remind her that she had a family that depended on her. Now, I am not a crier, but in these last 8 weeks I have shed more tears with my mother in my arms than any person ever needs to shed.

I know that it has made me perpetually late. I know I've lost focus and stamina. Any time I have a chance to catch up on work I've fallen behind on, all I want to do is catch up on sleep and forget that any of this is happening. I can't say that I'm sorry that I've missed so much work and been perpetually late for everything though, because my mother is the most important person in my life. I have not and will not think twice about hoisting her, literally and figuratively, onto my back and slogging through the muddy, unstable ground of depression and despair until we get to brighter days and firmer ground. She's my mother. I owe her everything. This is the least I can do...

And that is--except for the more...ahem...floral parts of the description of the bathroom scene--exactly what I told my 1st period Spanish 3 teacher (Mr. Mueller) near the end of 3rd quarter sophomore year when he found me after baseball practice one day and told me I was failing because I hadn't shown up for 27 of 39 class days.

I cried. He cried. I apologized. He sympathized. I asked for mercy and help. He told me to take the final and write a three-page paper in Spanish on the status of Puerto Rico as an American protectorate. I thanked him profusely. Two weeks later, he gave me an A-.

Fuck Berkeley. I should have gone to Hollywood.

Roll Call

2004-08-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Americans love numbers and statistics. 755 home runs. Fantasy football leagues. The Olympic Medal Count. 2.4 kids per household. 1600 SATs. 4 out of 5 dentists agree that 8 out of10 dead hookers buried under my house stood a 30% greater chance of survival had they flossed twice a day. Don't ask me why Americans are so enamored with statistics (because you won't like the answer), just understand that, for better or worse, they have been sewn into the fabric of American social and political discourse.

If you've ever read Harper's Magazine or The Atlantic Monthly, you've probably seen their regular 1 or 2 pages spreads somewhere between the Table of Contents and the first lengthy article that function essentially as laundry lists of quirky-yet-insightful statistics gathered from seemingly disparate sources:

From the September 2004 issue of Harpers

Number of words in the first sentence of Bill Clinton's memoir and that of George W. Bush's, respectively: 49, 5
Percentage of pages in Hillary Clinton's memoir that mention her husband, and vice versa, respectively: 45, 20

While any sensible reader can detect in these quanitfiable quick-cuts the considerable left-leaning tendencies of Harper's, it does not change the fact that they are at once both entertaining and informative (regardless of what it is you take from them) in spite of the sometimes politically self-serving undertones of the figures they present.

Harper's calls their page the "Harper's Index." The Atlantic Monthly's has two pages of this kind quite often called "Primary Sources" and "The List." I've named mine "Roll Call."

"Roll Call" is a statistical snapshot of the passengers in my traincar during my commute home on BART every Monday. Before I begin, though, allow me to set the stage.

A typical BART car seats 68-72 people (depending on how old the car is). During an average rush-hour commute, there are usually 9-10 cars per train and an additional 10-25 people standing in the aisle or around the doors of each car. That translates to--on average--a train carrying 750-950 people. (http://www.geocities.com/transitfan/BART.html)

I travel home on the Richmond Line(http://www.bart.gov/images/quickplanner_map_lg4.gif).
Without delays, my commute lasts 37-40 minutes and takes me from downtown San Francisco, under the bay, through the industrial wasteland of West Oakland, through the commerical wasteland of Downtown Oakland, then kicks almost due north through the hippy haven of downtown Berkeley, the middle-aged ex-hippy haven of North Berkeley, and finally up through El Cerrito and into everyone's favorite pit of despair--Richmond*

The path and time of my commute offers quite a unique cross-section of Bay Area life. At 5:30pm on a Monday, every race, gender, sexual orientation, income tax bracket, and education level is likely to be represented. This hodge-podge of BART commuters is what really makes "Roll Call" possible...well...that AND my baseless, non sequitur, ad hominem attacks on people I've never seen before IN MY LIFE! But that is neither here nor there. With that, the first installment of Roll Call:

--# of people reading a local newspaper: 16
--% of those people actually either asleep or reading the Sports or Entertainment sections: 87.5
--# of women wearing bright orange tops: 3
--# of filthy street people that look like a cross between an unemployed mall Santa and Nick Nolte's mugshot (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/nolte1.html): 2
--# of those people with wheeled baskets filled with useless shit and hemp products: 2
--likelihood that the two St. Nick Noltes either know each other or have scuffled over prime spots on Market St. to beg for change: 1000%
--# of people listening to iPods: 7
--# of people using PDAs: 3
--# of PDA users who are actually playing solitaire: 3
--% of solitaire-playing PDA users with male-pattern baldness and social circles consisting primarily of regular FARK-party attendeees and local pub trivia afficionados: 100%
--likelihood solitaire-playing PDA users got laid last night: 15%
--likelihood solitaire-playing PDA users got laid last night without a credit card and two forms of ID: 0%
--# of seemingly normal people: 9
--# of large, stunningly handsome, white males listening to music, staring intently at every person on the traincar, and furiously taking copious amounts of short-hand notes: 1
--# of passengers dressed in black from head to toe: 3
--% of black clad passengers that are female: 66.667
--% of black clad passengers that are female by birth: 33.333
--% of black clad passengers that are staring unblinkingly out the traincar window: 100
--% of black clad passengers that like to be bound, gagged, and spanked during sex: 100
--# of black men: 5
--# of black men dressed like Will: 4
--# of black men dressed like Carleton: 1
--% of white women sitting adjacent to black men dressed like Will who reached for their purses or bags when the black men sat down: 75
--% of white women sitting adjacent to black men dressed like Carleton who reached for their purses or bags when the black men sat down: 25
--# of morbidly obese white men sweating profusely, wearing jeans with a cell phone clipped to their belt loops, and sporting backpacks that are way too small for their immense torsos and are, as such, pinning their arms back like butcher's twine around the wings of a Thanksgiving turkey: 4
--# of people who boarded the traincar, saw an open seat, saw an sweaty obese white man sitting next to it, and decided to stand: 11
--# of middle-aged ex-hippies wearing flannel and long unkempt hair pulled sloppily back in a ponytail: 3
--# of those middle-aged ex-hippies also wearing corduroy pants: 2
--likelihood that they are all sitting together: 100%
--# of women I smiled at as they exited the train: 14
--# of women who smiled back: 8
--# of women who smiled back that were engaged or married: 7
--# of women who didn't smile back that were wearing engagement or wedding rings: 0...bitches.

*in high school we played football in the same league as Kennedy High in Richmond. One year--I think my sophomore year--we played Kennedy at their place and had our bus escorted by a phalanx of Richmond PD squad cars because there had recently been a shooting...AT EVERY SINGLE KENNEDY HOME GAME THAT SEASON!

Things That Should Be Invented For People Who Drink A Lot

2004-08-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

#86

Time-Sensitive, Breathalyzer-activated credit cards:

More specifically, a system whereby online credit card purchases made after 2 a.m. local time cannot be processed without the would-be purchaser taking a state-certified breathalyzer test and passing said test with a BAC level lower than the maximum allowed to operate a motor vehicle in the would-be purchaser's home state.

Time-sensitive, breathalyzer-activated credit cards can significantly reduce the occurrence of, what experts in the industry call, "what the" purchases. "What the" purchases are typically items and services that, when seen for the first time upon delivery, make the purchaser audibly exclaim "WHAT THE (insert regret-laced expletive here)!?!"

Examples of "what the" purchases might be:

A. ...oh, I don't know...say...a pair of tickets to a college football game 1600 miles from where I...I mean the purchaser, the purchaser...where the purchaser lives.

B. Or, say, a trio of first-class airline tickets for non-stop international travel purchased prior to confirming availability with all relevant traveling and hosting parties.

C. A no-money down $37,000 car loan through my...I mean the PUR-CHA-SERS...credit card company.

D. Pain medication from Costa Rican pharmaceutical distributors.

E. Porn. LOTS AND LOTS of Porn.

And One!

2004-08-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

There are really only three things in this world that make me lose perspective on what is important in life: sports, stupid people, and injustice (if by 'injustice' I mean 'bad calls made by game officials against my team') These three things have been, more often than not, the wellspring from which many of my more questionable actions have originated. This story involves all three.*
___________________________________________________________________
Watching Arizona play Cal is like watching a hurricane make landfall. You can see it coming, but there is nothing you can do except hope for the best and brace for the worst. Seeking shelter from the storm that is Arizona basketball, some friends and I went to a sports bar in the Marina district of San Francisco. Bracing for the worst, we ate nearly 100 buffalo wings (10 cent wings specials are a gift from God) and drink A LOT. Hoping for the best, we drank even more. By the time all hope was lost and Cal had been flattened by Hurricane Wildcat, we had put away a twelve pack of pitchers.

For the most part, the evening proved uneventful. At least until the 8 minute mark in the second half. And if you exclude the stream of frustrated invective spewed at the television screen by the people at my table. AND if you don't count the little run-in we had with the boyfriends of some UofA girls seated at a table behind us.

The only thing more frustrating in sport-spectatordom than hearing idiotic cheers from a gaggle of empty-headed sluts is when that gaggle of empty-headed sluts is pulling for the other team. That was the case with a group of UofA girls sitting directly behind us. At one point I actually heard this exchange:

EmptyHeadedSlut #1: so we're in the blue shirts right?
EmptyHeadedSlut #2: yeah, I wish they were in the white ones though because you can see their muscles and their butts better
EmptyHeadedSlut #1: Who's Number 22? He's CUTE!

That was all I could take. I told them they should shut the fuck up or go to another bar. They thought I was being cute apparently because they just giggled and whispered to each other (no doubt confirming with each other that my friends and I were way better looking than the douchebags they were with and undoubtedly had much much larger penises).

To my frustration and dismay, the girls continued to cheer on Arizona. This compelled me to turn around and ask them rather loudly if they did not, in fact, have some Girls Gone Wild video to shoot somewhere. This did not go over well with the boyfriends. They got up quickly and came over to our table. My buddy CV and I stood up. There ended that little stand-off. They warned us to "be nice" and "show some respect." We laughed at them. (author's note: for those of you unfamiliar with the University of Arizona, there is nothing more incongruous than the words 'respect' and 'UA co-ed.')

So, there is just over 8 minutes to go in the second half and Cal has somehow trimmed the lead to 6 points. Luke Walton brings the ball down for Arizona. The clock is running and he dishes to Salim Stoudamire on the left elbow. Richard Midgley for Cal, though, steps in the passing lane and starts down the right side of the court ball in hand. He's got a clear lane to the hoop. The drunken Cal fans are going nuts in the student section. Somehow, that floppy-headed honky Ric "Pea Soup" Andersen gets back on defense. He tries to get in front of Midgley to draw a charge, but he is CLEARLY late. Midgley goes up with the finger roll, crashes into Andersen, and hits the shot. Both men hit the floor and the whistle blows. It's gonna be an "And One!" Cal's gonna have a chance to cut it to 3. The ref blows the whistle again and begins the motion for a blocking foul and the "And One" call when he switches up his motion, points the other way, and calls a charge.

FUCK!!! I nearly broke the table. CV and I are up out of our chairs screaming at the television. People are staring. The UofA bitches are snickering and clapping. My face is red with the fury when they show a slow-motion replay. It is CLEARLY a blocking foul. They then cut to a shot of the ref calling the foul. I was filled with so much white-hot rage I couldn't see straight. I could've melted steel with my rage. So I did what came naturally and hurled my empty pint glass at, and through, the flat screen television in front of us--the one that dared display the despicable events that had just transpired.

The bar fell silent except for the inappropriate laughter of my friends. I freaked. We couldn't see the game anymore. I started yelling for someone to change all the TVs to the Cal game. The manager came storming over in an absolute fury. I couldn't understand him, however, because all I could hear was myself yelling at the waitress or somebody to change all the TVs to the Cal game. I only caught snippets of his rant. Something about 8 thousand dollars and getting fired. Finally he said the magic word. "Police." I sobered up in a hurry. The manager--who incidentally had a body-odor funk trail like the Hale-Bopp comet--was saying that the TV cost $8000 (it was a 36" flat screen) and that his boss was going to fire him and that if I didn’t stop yelling about turning on the Cal game he was going to call the police. Now it was making sense.

Armed with this new-found knowledge, I accompany the manager back to the bar. As we walk and I try to breathe through my mouth to avoid his overpowering man-stench, half the TVs click over to the Cal game. I feel like I have asserted my Alpha-male dominance once again. It turns out, however, that half the sober people in the bar were there for the Cal game too. I wasn't the only one. They asked that the TVs be turned. I'm convinced, though, that my berating was the catalyst. Anyhow, I delay answering most of his questions directly in order to concentrate on the action in the game. I am assisted in my endeavors by my relative incoherence and a steady stream of customers at the bar. I catch all the action until all hope is lost and I can't watch anymore--about the 2:15 mark.

At this point, the manager asks for my ID and my credit card. I steadfastly refuse to hand over my credit card and instead pull out one my business cards. I inform the manager that the person on this card is, in fact, my legal attache and can be contacted regarding these issues during regular business hours. I then pull out a fake ID my roommate made for me back in college. He looks at it for a loooooooong time before he starts taking down the information. I watch with increasing paranoia as his pen moves across the cocktail napkin in front of him. He gets everything down:

Name: Ellison, Lawrence
DOB: 2/23/64 (authors note: I am 24. This DOB puts me at 39. He didn't bat an eyelash at this)
Address: 2 Maverick Ct., Woodside, CA 94062
Phone: 415-466-7225 (authors note: 466-7225 spells GO ORACL)
Re: $8000 plasma flat screen tv. broken. pint glass. Cal game

(my roommate had a hard-on for Larry Ellison and Oracle database software in college. I don't know what else to tell you. We worry about him sometimes)

Anyhow, the manager hands me back my ID and assures me that my attorney will be hearing from him in the next couple of days. I nod solemnly, trying to hold back laughter. I try to order another beer and he tell me to go fuck myself. My friends shuttle me out of the bar and take me home. The worst part about the whole thing was that the pint glass was MINE. One came free with every purchase of a pitcher.

*I posted this once before on the Tucker Max Messageboard. I cleaned it up a little and added some stuff for clarity.

Kill 'Em All--Reposted

2004-08-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

My buddy Graham is leaving town for a month or so to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Last night we met up at a bar in Berkeley so he could give me some shit he was storing for a mutual friend and so we could assail our bodies with unwise amounts of alcohol. We met around 7:30, sat outside on the big patio, had some beers, and got to talking.

The conversation went from his great-aunt choking on a chicken bone and then dying because the surgeon sliced her jugular when he tried to excise the bone, to malpractice suits and nationalized health care, to the litigious nature of American society, to the history of Venice as a city-state, to the optimal size of republics, to killing everyone except small enclaves of 1000 people spread significantly apart over the globe. This is where the conversation got interesting:

G: 1000 people is just about right. Small enough where you sort of know everyone but big enough to get a cross-section of skills and abilities.
N: And enough genetic variation to avoid becoming another England.
G: Hey dude, I'm English.
N: Yeah, what's your point?
G: Seriously though, over the past few months I have become more and more enamored with the idea of just killing everyone except for like a 1000 people.
N: I see at least 50 on this patio who could go.
G: Oh no dude, they ALL go. How many of these graduate student dickheads do you think could grow enough food to feed themselves let alone 1000 people?
N: Probably none.
G: PROBABLY!?! Dude, they study post-modernism. All of them. I don't care if they're in med school or the School of Architecture. Somewhere they've used the term "post-modern" incorrectly or they own some bullshit book about it. Dead. All of them.
N: SWEET!
G: I know dude, things would be so much simpler.

At this point I noticed that we were getting some looks. Nothing too bad, just some shithead European exchange students who probably heard us say "post-modern" and got erections. Graham, fortunately for us all, continued...

G: You know where we'd have to start don't you?
N: Stanford?
G: No. Well yes, but no. The retards.
N: HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
G: No seriously. Think about how much time and energy and resources are wasted on members of society who don't give anything back. Retards are parasites. Plain and simple. I don't know why human life has so much value to people. THEY'RE RETARDED! THEY DROOL!

This last part was met with a couple "ughs!" from the peanut gallery. I snuck a peek and saw that a few people were listening intently with their mouths agape. Graham had an audience but I don't think he noticed. I, however, did.

N: Would you stop at retards? I don't think I would.
G: Of course not. Man, if my wife gave birth to a retard I would smash the baby against the sidewalk and then off my wife.
N: What? Why?
G: It's not gonna be MY genetics that turn my offspring into a mongoloid. She pops out a tardpup and she's history
N: Oh man, that is awesome. You should start a movement.
G: Nah, people are so touchy when it comes to killing retards. Even parents whose lives have been ruined by some drooling, uncommunicative blob resist the idea. I just don't get it
N: So who's next? I'd say ugly people. I'm convinced that eugenics wasn't born out of racial hatred or resistance to miscegenation. It probably started because someone was tired of seeing so many goddamn ugly people.
G: I think you go for the parents of the retards next. When a rabid dog bites someone you destroy the dog don't you?
N: Then you sell it to a Laotian vegetarian restaurant.
G: Dude, that's fucked up.
N: THAT'S FUCKED UP!? YOU WANT TO KILL RETARDS AND THEIR PARENTS!
G: Yeah, but I have a legitimate reason--the survival of the Republic and the human race as we know it.
N: If that's the reason, then I would kill 12-18 year olds that have no potential. Kids who have detracted from society to the point where they will most likely never give enough back to balance the scales or who would run the risk of perpetuating their wasteful existence by having kids of their own. Those kids? DIRTNAP!

I noticed that people were leaving or moving far away from us. It's not like we had AIDS or something, we were just speaking the truth.

N: Next on my list would be the blind.
G: Really? I think the blind could serve some purpose that would put them lower on the Kill List.
N: Dude, what purpose do they serve other than to slow down fucking traffic when they cross the street or be great piano playing R&B/Soul musicians. Songs in the Key of Life? Nope. Songs in the Key of DIRTNAP!

This got Graham laughing hysterically. It was almost disruptive. God bless alcohol and a broken moral compass.

N: I'd probably do the deaf next but they're tricky. Since they can see you'd have to sneak up behind them. That's too much work. So I guess I'd go with the Stanford basketball team next and then France.
G: See Nils, now your just trying to be funny. I'm serious about this. We have driven this crazy train so far off the evolutionary track that the only way to get going in the right direction is a quick and decisive corrective movement. You know how raising interest rates by multiple percentage points or the bottom falling out of an industry can create a market correction that changes the way people invest and manage their money?
N: Ummm, sure
G: That's what this would be. A mass extinction but without the meteor or the nuclear winter. I think it would work.
N: You're really drunk aren't you?
G: Yep.

It was at this point that we decided to make our exit and go to a bar that served cocktails and shots and various other concoctions of high-octane forget-juice. Graham and I had several. Of everything. That's all I remember.

My roommate woke me up this morning as she left for work around 6:30. I was on the living room couch. Fallen over. Fully clothed. From the waist up. With a half-eaten Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger in my hand. There were fries and at least a dozen monster taco wrappers scattered all over the coffee table. I had ketchup all over my face and a huge brown stain down the front of my Mexican-waiter shirt from when I spilled most of my last Irish Carbomb.

R: Nils, get up and get in your bed.
N: What time is it?
R: Early
N: What stinks in here?
R: YOUR ASS!
N: Oh.
R: Jesus Christ Nils, put some pants on. You look like a retard.

Sidelines Vol. 1

2004-08-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

When you spend your twenties saying stupid shit with a bunch of friends who say similar stupid shit (our term for it is "talking sausage"), you end up with a wealth of dialogue snippets and diatribes that bear repeating. Some of them are "guess you had to be there" moments, others are "what the fuck is the matter with you" moments.
___________________________________________________________________

My buddy Dave came back into town the other day from a six-week geological fieldcamp in Montana that kicked the shit out of him. 15 hours a day, 6 days a week for 6 weeks all for 6 units. Six! You want me to work that fucking hard...IN SCHOOL...you better add a fucking '-teen' to that six. But I digress...

His plane landed at SFO around 2pm and he took an airport shuttle into the City where my car was so he could drop all his luggage off. While he waited for me to get off work, Dave went down to a pub across the street from my office, had a few beers, and grabbed a bite to eat. We drove back to Berkeley around 5:30 and headed straight for a bar called Jupiter where our good friend is the manager/bartender. On the way there, Dave mentioned--both verbally and anally--that he needed to find a bathroom.

We pulled up behind the bar about 20 minutes later and Dave bid a hasty retreat into the welcoming embrace of the Jupiter staff bathroom and its endless supply of two-ply toilet paper. While he dropped the Cosby kids off at the pool, I sat down at a table across from the bar and ordered a couple of beers. The girl who brought the drinks over had just been hired that week and happened to be a friend of a friend who I'd hung out with a few times socially. We started chit-chatting about the job and other stupid bullshit that I don't remember because this girl is Argentinian, 5'1", 95lbs, ridiculously pretty and speaking to me with a sweet accented voice that made me want to buy her a corndog.

Dave finally strolls up with a huge grin on his face, basking in the afterglow of his anal exorcism, completely unconcerned about my conversation with the Argentian waitress, and announces "I think I have post-partum depression." That's the last time I have beer in my mouth when Dave comes back from taking a crap.
___________________________________________________________________

The final round of the Masters this spring was a magical moment for many sports fans. Some will never forget where they were when they watched Phil sink that putt on 18 to win his first major championship. I know I'll never forget where I was. At home. On my couch. With Dave. After getting kicked out of a bar. For being, and this is a quote, "classless, tasteless, and rude."

The course at Augusta National is replete with historical golfing landmarks. You probably recognize many of them by name and sight thanks to all those softly-spoken, weepy soundbites from that eunuch Jim Nantz on CBS during the buildup to the tournament.

Sarazen Bridge... Eisenhower Cabin...Amen Corner. Beauty, history, and grace. Join us, won't you? A tradition unlike any other. The Masters. On CBS.

I can just see that fucking pansy Nantz rubbing his nipples while he does those voiceover promos. Fucking twit. Anyway...

One of the landmarks of which I speak is Ray's Creek. Ray's Creek is a small brook that functions as a hazard on the right side of the 12th hole at Augusta. Over the course of Masters weekend, at least one of those overstuffed idiots from CBS' on-course coverage team gives a quick report from right in front of it. Usually something about club selection being critical on that hole or something about what Tiger Woods ate for breakfast. Something stupid, that's all you really need to know.

For some reason, this year Ray's Creek was really dirty. I don't recall if it's always been like that, but this year it was remarkably dirty. It looked like the chocolate river in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" or as Dave loudly put it while we were seated at the bar:

D: DUDE, RAY'S CREEK LOOKS LIKE THE GANGES!

N: Oh shit, it totally does. All that's missing are Indian children splashing around while their mothers wash the laundry

D: Do you think Vijay Singh bathes in Ray's Creek every morning?

Dave and I start cracking up at the bar. We can barely breathe we're laughing so hard--completely oblivious to the annoyed patrons around us and the Indian bartender who was serving our drinks.

N: Dude, Vijay Singh isn't even Indian. He's from Fiji! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

D: I know. I still bet he bathes in Ray's Creek. HAHAHAHA With his visor on HAHAHAHA but no shirt HHAHHAHAAAHA so he can clean under his man-titties! HAHAHAHAHAA

N: he uses his putter to reach the hard to reach places. Scrubs up nice and good like an Irish Spring commercial.

I think it might have been the putter comment that pushed the bartender over the edge, but there's no way to be sure

B: Please leave you two.

D: Wha?! Why?!

N: Dude, Dave are you serious?

D: Yeah dude, I don't want to leave. What did we do?

N: Dude, Da--

B: I am a Sikh. I am also Indian and I do not like what you gentlemen are saying. I find it offensive and shocking coming from people in Berkeley. No one else has ever treated me like this in my years in Berkeley. Vijay Singh is a Sikh like me but he is NOT Indian. We are not all the same you know. You both are classless, tasteless and rude and I want you to leave my bar right now. Just pay for your drinks I don't want your money for tip. It is dirty. Please go.

Dave and I just sort of looked at each other, quietly slid off our bar stools, and made our way toward the door like an ashamed version of Michael Corleone in Godfather I when he kills the police captain and Salazzo--eyes straight ahead, looking at no one, feeling the glances of the other patrons, feeling like it's taking forever to get to the exit. We reached the open front door--FINALLY-- and as I started making my way down the stairwell Dave stopped inside the doorway at the top step, turned around, put one arm straight up in the air, scrubbed under his armit with the other and started singing:

D: YOU'RE NOT FULLY CLEAN UNLESS YOUR ZESTFULLY CLEAN!

I don't think we'll be welcome back in that bar anytime soon...unless my anonymous call to the Homeland Security Department bears any fruit.

Shoe Shine King

2004-08-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

People who commute on BART usually carry something with them to occupy their time. Some people read. Some listen to music. Some sleep. And some play on their laptops or engage in some other sort of pretentious behavior...like knitting. I'm sorry my little patouli-soaked dirt surfer, but knitting scarves and hats for the homeless with your recycled bamboo needles and your organic, pesticide-free vegan wool isn't going to change the fact that you feel guilty about your privileged upper middle-class childhood or that you are bitter at your parents for still being happily married and sending you to private schools. GET OVER IT! We all know you're headed home for a Will and Grace marathon with the rest of your granola-eating, bi-curious, cutter friends. Anyway, I listen to music and read the paper on the train.

Being a writer and a BART-observing enthusiast, I am somewhat conflicted by this. I'm virtually certain I have foresaken hilarious conversations just behind me for AC/DC's Stiff Upper Lip and the cryptoquip in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. Luckily, sometimes the funny just comes to you. Like Friday morning. When a youngish family of three boarded my car huddled together and cowering in fear; followed closely by a drunk, yammering black man in an olive-green pin-striped suit with a pea-green collarless dress shirt, green and gray gator boots, a gray fedora, and a briefcase. This is one of those brilliant moments on BART when you fold your newspaper, slide off your headphones, sit back and let the magic happen.

The family of three--a young boy, his good-looking, olive-complected father, and his short frumpy unremarkable mother--slid quickly into the seats closest to the door (the ones for the blind and disabled) with a visible sense of relief. One got the sense from looking at them that they felt like the seats offered some sort of security and respite from the drunk guy in the olive suit. Boy were they wrong. The family sat in the one place that had the most open standing room of any place on the traincar. It was a Friday morning, so the train was at its typical less-than-full Friday capacity. This meant the drunk black man in the olive suit had a whooooole bunch of open area to work with. He was going to play the jester, and this was going to be his stage. I was giddy with excitement.

I can't really say that Olive Suit ever started talking in the context of this story because I could tell that he probably had never stopped. What I can do, is start with the first full thing I heard him say as he boarded the train on the coattails of the family:

Olive Suit: Yous all married? I used to be married 10, 20, 30 years ago HAHAHAHAHAHA but I gave that shit up! I's a playuh! Straight up man, I ain't gonna lies to yuh. I's a playuh! Sheeeeeeiiiiit, I's with two a my hoes last night. Yeah I'm still drunk so what HAHAHAHAHA cuz I's a playuh cuuuuuzzzzz
Wife: Yep, we're married. And this is our son. How long were you married sir?
Son: I'm five and a half!
W: Do you miss her at--
S: I'm five and a half!
OS: Daaaammmmnnn, you's a big kid. You keep eatin the way you do and you be like big man over here (gesturing toward me). Inn't that right, big man?!
N: Yep, 20 more years like you're going and you can be big, unshaven and hungover too.
OS: HAHAHAHA you funny big man you funny.

The wife confused me at first. You would think as a mother of a young child you would try to shield him from someone like Olive Suit. You would cover his ears, ask Olive Suit to watch his language, move seats, something! Instead, the wife was actually sitting on the edge of her seat leaning forward and listening intently to what Olive Suit was saying. Her husband was slumped down in his seat the whole time either avoiding eye contact with Olive Suit or looking desperately to the other passengers trying to figure out what was going on. Her son was just bobbing up and down having fun with a big smile plastered on his face. I was waiting for him to tug on his mom's shirt and say something like "wow Mommy, this clown is funny. Do they have clowns on all the BART trains?"

OS: So this yo husband?
W: Yep, and this is our son.
S: I'm five and a half!
OS: Where you from brutha?
W: He's from Turkey.

The husband nodded in assent and gave Olive Suit a forced, awkward smile that belied the facts that a: he probably didn't understand half of what Olive Suit was saying and b: he just wanted him to go away.

OS: From Turkey!? Naaahh, yous a turkey girl? Why you give up on 'merican men? Whas wrong wit 'merican men? You don't like em no more? C'mon sweetheart, I'm all man and I am definitely allllll-'merican!
N: Ohhhh shit. That's awesome!
OS: You know it big man. You know it big man.

Olive Suit stumbles over to me and runs me through his intricate Olive-Suit-Is-The-Man-And-Just-Banged-Two-Women-And-Is-Still-Drunk handshake.

W: American men are fine. We met when I was in Turkey when I was 21 and we fell in love. Then he came back to America with me and we had a little boy.
S: I'm five and a half!

That's when it hit me. SHE'S A MORMON! It all fit. Upon a second glance, she looked like Lazy-Eyed Mormon's younger sister. Bad, pasty white skin. Ratty hair. Squat, lumpy body. All she was missing was the lazy eye and the graying snaggletooth! I figured it all out in a span of like 30 seconds.

She went to Turkey for her mission. She met a guy. He was receptive to her mission and to her advances. She saw in him God's plan for her. He saw in her GREEEEEEEN CAAAAAAAARRRRRD! It made perfect sense. He probably did understand everything Olive Suit was saying, he just didn't care. I mean look at her...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

There was a bit of a lull at this point in Act 1 of Theater on the BART Tracks. Olive Suit was swaying gently and drunkenly with undulation of the moving train. Suddenly, he drops to his knees, flattens his briefcase, flips the locks--I see this and I'm getting ready to jump behind my seat Boyz n' the Hood style--and he pulls out a fabric swatch (his briefcase had 3 Sports Illustrateds and the fabric swatch. That's it).

OS: This is gonna be my next suit. You like it? I think it's HOT! I gotta question fah ya though. What color fedora you think I should get? (the swatch was royal blue with thin silver and purple stripes running vertically and horizontally, respectively)

This is one of those instances where, if you are uncomfortable in a situation with a stranger, you beg off by showing no interest and saying something like " I don't know, whatever. I'm no good with that kind of thing." Instead, Mormon Wife TAKES THE SWATCH AND STARTS EXAMINING IT! When she showed it to GreenCard Husband my eyes lit up with glee like a 6yr old on Christmas morning. THIS IS GREAT! YOU COULDN'T MAKE THIS UP IF YOU TRIED!

W: Well why don't you get a blue one like the color of the suit
OS: HAHAHAHAAHA. No bayyyy-beeee, you can't get blue wit dis! You gotta get a purple one, like the stripe in there. I was testin' you, girl! Yo man can dress, he look good. Ask him to teach you what's up.

Olive Suit had been standing a good 15-20 minutes at this point and I think he was getting a little tired of bobbing and swaying everytime the train took a turn or slowed to enter a station stop. He picked up his briefcase, sat it down on it's bottom edge, and took a seat on it. Unfortunately, his weight wasn't centered and the briefcase fell to one side. He went the other. Hard. Everyone in that part of the train stopped. Everyone but Olive Suit

OS: Come ooonnnn big man, help a brutha up! I know you been drunker'n me befo' big ass white motherfucker. Shit.

I helped him up in spite of his disgustingly sweaty hands and the forcefield of Eau-de-Degenerate-BudLight-Swiller perfume he was shrouded in.

OS: I used to be a boxuh! Over in Oakland, 'n Hunters Point 'n shit. You could be a boxer one day too little man. Show me you jab!

Olive Suit leans forward toward the family with his hands extended. The little boy's eyes light up. His parents--both of them this time--recoil in horror hoping he either doesn't fall on them or puke on them or both. Well Olive Suit is having a hard time keeping his balance at this point. He's leaning forward in an awkward position, the train had just entered the underwater tunnel connecting Oakland to San Francisco, and the conductor had just accelerated the train to it's 71 mph cruising speed.

Olive Suit is a problem solver. He grabs the kid under the armpits, lifts him up from between his now petrified parents, and plants him in the middle of the open floor space. The kid is loving it. Olive Suit puts his hands out:

OS: Okay little man, show me yo' jab. Gimme a combination. Hit me wich yo lef' now da right now the right again now da lef'

Little Man is doing everything he said and swimming in the attention. I've seen Special Olympics medalists look less happy. Olive Suit wasn't pleased with how Little Man was punching though

OS: Naw, naw, naw you got no balance. You gotta setcho' feet. Drive witcho' hips and bring yo hands through.

Little man didn't get it. He's five and a half, what the hell does he know. Like I said though, Olive Suit is a problemsolver. He picks up Little Man again, spins him around, plants him in the floor, bends over, moves his legs how he wants them, grabs Little Man's balled up fists, tells GreenCardHusband to put his hands out, and starts guiding Little Man's punches firmly into the outstretched palms of his father.

IT WAS AWESOME! Combine the visual with the now overpowering stench of sweat and Bud Light oozing from his suit-sheathed pores and you have quite possibly the most tragically funny commutes in the history of BART.

The train started to slow as we approached Embarcadero Station--the first San Francisco stop. It's where I get off everyday and, apparently, where Olive Suit gets off everyday

OS: Well, dis me. Yeah I got my own business. 17 years. I'M DA SHOE SHINE KING! I got me a little stand right at the top of Embarcadero by the Hyatt wit the turnin' restaurant on top. Dat's MY business. I own that shit. Remember that...you too big man. Dat's MY business. I'M DA SHOE SHINE KING!

One of these things does not look like the others!

2004-08-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

Someone's frightened of large black men with mohawks...

(Christen, Lauren, Ellen, Aunt Sharon, Uncle Bob...oh and Mr. T)

Nicholasnames

2004-08-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

There are five common male names in English nomenclature that produce more nicknames than any other: Robert, Richard, William, Johnathan, and James. These five names and their attendant derivations are responisble for probably 25% of the male section of my high school yearbook. While each of these names is normal and passes through our lips on a daily basis with little, if any, notice, I will forever look askance at any Robert, Richard, William, Johnathan, or James who refuses to take or use a nickname. It is unacceptable. It is unco-operative. It is un-American. The one I am most suspicious of is James.

James is a haughty little bitch. His angst and hostility toward the world and toward adopting a nickname undoubtedly have roots in his childhood. At some point, probably 5th or 6th grade, James had two other James' in his class. To differentiate between them, his teacher called one Jimmy, one Jim, and one James.

Jimmy became the class-clown, doing just enough to get by and stay out of serious trouble until he turned 18, went off to a state school for college, and became a career undergrad thanks to hydroponic weed and Saved by the Bell re-runs on the Superstation.

Jim played all the sports and idolized his loser father. He was the first to successfully lie about sleeping with a hot girl from another high school. Jim drank a lot, did stupid shit, got by because his parents were loaded, and ended up doing nothing with his life

James had nowhere to turn for a distinctive male identity. So he fled into the warm embrace of his home economics teacher and her amazing apple strudel recipe. James made a lot of female friends all the way through high school and into his years as an undergrad at Vassar. His female friends bonded with him like he was one of the girls and constantly wondered aloud when some lucky girl was going to snatch him up--all the while secretly speculating as to when he would come out of the closet.

Like any American male trying to feign heterosexuality, James was at once saddened and concerned by his lack of male friends. Luckily, in the middle of his sophomore year at Vassar, James found companionship and solace in the form of Shakespeare in the Park...with other "men" who also refused to take nicknames--Phillip, Ronald, Andrew, Edward...you get the picture.

Oh you don't? Well let me give you one so you know what I mean (you need to be on Friendster to check this one out): http://www.friendster.com/user.php?uid=56555

Yeah, exactly. Shit, the man wrote a friend of mine a note that said, and I quote:

"bright cacaphony
burning into my synapse
perchance we will meet"

Are you fucking kidding me?! Combine that little gem with the progression of the very desperate, very maudlin of circumstances that ARE his life, and it's no fucking wonder James owns a cape. More often than not, he has multiple capes--one of which must be black or dark red crushed velvet.

James was the first person in his school to move from Dungeons & Dragons to playing Magic: The Gathering and owning a full deck. He was (and continues to be) a regular at every Rennaisance Fair he could get his mother to drive him to and he uses words like "damsel" and "indeed" far more often than is either acceptable or comfortable in contemporary American speech.

It's no suprise that James' speech is affected, though. He refuses to use slang or contractions. If you could see the dialogue bubbles over his head when he speaks--like in comic strips--I guaranfuckingtee you 'theater' and 'center' would be spelled with an "-re." It's like he grew up in the English countryside or the sitting room of William F. Buckley's house.

If Madonna were a man, she'd be named 'James.' And, just like someone needs to tell that pretentious, gap-toothed twat that she's FROM FUCKING DETROIT!!!, someone needs to tell James that he grew up in Orange County next door to a kid who is now the #2 Skimboarder in the world. His name is Josh...NOT FUCKING JOSHUA EITHER YOU POMPOUS FUCKING DOUCHEBAG!

My favorite part about James is the part he tries to hide. The deviant part. The dark, self-loathing part. Just because his entire wardrobe can be described as "long" and "flowing" and just because he owns a hardbound copy of Canteburry Tales IN THE ORIGINAL MIDDLE ENGLISH does not mean that the man doesn't listen exclusively to opera and industrial metal or jab safety pins through his erect penis while staring entranced at his full-sized Michael Hutchence poster and sitting on hold with Ticketmaster trying to get 4 together for the Nine Inch Nails/Marilyn Manson/Slipknot concert coming to the Staples Center this fall.

James projects this faux intellectual intensity that he desperately hopes will at once intimidate and intrigue people. The reality is it just makes him look like an idiot. Dude, it's NOT INTIMIDATING! I wouldn't approach anyone who was sitting alone in the back corner of a cafe who looked like he was trying to push out a turd! So take your Chai Latte and your Foucault reader, and take a big stinking intellectual dump on your own time. You're starting to scare the waitresses.

What is Art?

2004-08-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago my friend Will was in town for the weekend and staying at my place. That Saturday morning, after a pretty rigorous night of partying, I came out into the living room to find Will on the couch watching porn on the XBox. The only thing that could have been more disturbing was if he was jerking off when I walked in...and I'm sure that was only a matter of time. I registered my disgust audibly and it was met with laughter and a shit-eating grin. Will knows I don't like porn (the .avi files he was watching belonged to my roommate who, along with his girlfriend, are...how shall I say...connoisseurs), so being the antagonistic prick he is, he likes to put it on whenever he has the opportunity. I contend that porn is boring and superficial. Will argues that it is art. Wait, what? Yep, art. This conversation was going to be fun.

Over the next hour or so, Will tried to convince me that anything that is not a naturally occurring phenomenon should be considered art or, at the very least, an art form. Bridges, macaroni and cheese, highway overpasses, motor home bathrooms, corn dogs at the Texas State Fair (that one was mine). We went through a litany of thing many of which I granted him either on the merits or for the sake of comedy. I had to draw the line, however, at pornography.

N: Porn is NOT a legitimate art form, Will! It's the holding pen for the cocaine-addicted incest survivors of this country. I'm convinced porn is a secret government program meant to keep all these miscreants in one place.
W: One place? You do realize that not all porn stars know each other or live together?
N: Sure they do. It's called Van Nuys. These people fuck first and foremost for money dude, and that makes porn ineligible for the classification of art or art form.
W: Nils, for a smart kid you sure can be close-minded. Art is about personal individual expression. It's not about convention or standards of normalcy or the perceptions of the audience. Just because they fuck for money does not mean what they create is not beautiful or meaningful.
N: Thank you, Eve Ensler. Are you done with your little vagina monologue? Can we go get some fucking breakfast please? I'm fucking starving.
W: Dude, you know what I mean. Porn at its very basic level is the artistic expression of personal sexuality.
N: WILL! THAT GUY JUST SHOVED HIS WHOLE HAND IN THAT GIRLS PUSSY! That is NOT art.
W: Okay, maybe that part isn't art. But the dialogue in this picture is top-shelf. I know that's what drew me to the Anal Spelunkers series.
N: No, what drew you to it was the fact that you're a sexual fucking deviant.
W: Now that was just mean. It's not my problem that my artistic sensibilities are more cultivated than your own. And honestly, I'm not going to take criticism about art from someone who still covers his bedroom walls with signs he's stolen from campus construction sites.
N: Shut the fuck up dude. Just finish your movie so we can go. Woud you like some privacy Larry Flint? The Jergens lotion and toilet paper are where they usually are…under your fucking pillow.
W: Nah, I'm fine. I'll just use your couch cushions.
N: You're such a dick.
W: Don't worry dude. I'll flip 'em over when I'm done.

The Greatest Halftime Show On Earth

2004-08-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

I wrote this about a year and a half ago after going to a basketball game with a friend of mine. I posted it on the Tucker Max Messageboard and have brought it back here by request and so it gets another moment in the sun.
___________________________________________________________________

Last night I went to the Warriors-Celtics game in Oakland with a buddy from work. The Warriors were getting demolished in the first half so all I had to look forward to was my next drink. We were sitting courtside 7 rows back and, as such, had access to the Club Bar. The Club Bar is never crowded like the concession stands and doesn't have that ridiculous "2 drink maximum, last beer served at end of 3rd Quarter" rule that has so often killed my buzz. My buddy and I took turns getting four drinks at a time (2 Belvedere and Tonics and 2 Crown and Cokes) throughout the first half. By halftime we were shit-housed.

The buzzer sounds at the end of the second quarter and out runs this gaggle of little people in green and white jerseys. I thought I was seeing things. Half the kids bolted to the sideline and a 5 on 5, full court game broke out. Apparently, when I was paying too close attention to one of my crown and cokes, the hoops had been lowered to seven feet and somebody had tossed the ball up for tip-off to a 10 minute scrimmage. Three minutes in and the game had gone nowhere. No one had made a basket. It wasn't until the 5-minute mark that anyone hit the damn rim when, finally, the biggest kid on the floor purposefully grabbed a rebound, started looking around and freaked. He launched the ball toward center court into the hands of the opposing team.

It's at this point that I got suspicious. I got out of my seat, drink(s) in hand and walked OVER the 6 rows of seats in front of me to get a good look at the kids. I almost fell over. It turns out that we were witnessing a scrimmage of the under-13 Bay Area Special Olympics Basketball Team. Tards! Real tards! And there were 16 of them …though I can't be sure because I was counting running and fidgeting little people in a drunken fog. Most of the tards were just standing around waiting to get the ball, but a couple of the kids--conveniently split between sides--had real skills. One kid had a real nice jumper. Another--I'm not sure if he was Lebanese, Iranian, Mexican (how can you really tell when it’s a tard with a unibrow)--has the Tim Hardaway Killer Crossover down to perfection. His only problem was, once he finished with his dribbling exhibition, he had no idea what to do with the ball. Someone would eventually have to come over, grab the ball, and make yet another in a series of ill-advised tard shots.

Time is winding down now and the score is 10-4. I'm screaming at the team in white to get it together and take some good shots but they won't listen to me (it might be worth noting here that upon discovering we were watching tard basketball, my buddy and I each picked a side and bet the next round of drinks on the outcome…I picked the white team). As I am yelling at the top of my lungs for the big tard to "Box out! Box out, goddamnsonuvabitch, Box out!" the PA announcer comes on and says, "OK people, we're coming down to the wire in FIVE, FOUR, THREE…" It's 10-4 and this really skinny tard on my team has the ball and is driving down court. I start yelling "PULL UP, PULL UP," and he pulls up just inside the NBA 3point line at the top of the key and BURIES a jumper at the buzzer. The best part of my skinny tard's shot was that as he shot it he made that little bounce and wrist cock that pro and college players make when they know their shot is going in. As it goes in, his whole team--both sides of the tard scrimmage--mob him in a big, sloppy tard-pile. The crowd is cheering. I'm going fuckin' crazy even though my team just lost and I have to go to the bar and drop 30 plus tip on 4 under-sized cocktails. I'm shouting, "MONEY, THAT WAS MONEY, MY BOY IS MONEY!"
People are staring. My buddy is seated crippled with laughter. I start cracking up with him sloshing my drink on the seats in front of me. Then, out of nowhere, almost on cue, the tardpile scatters and all the kids race to center court for a team photo. You couldn't have beaten the smiles off their faces. The photographer snaps a couple of great shots, tells them he's done and, I swear to god, the whole team takes a victory lap around the court! They're getting high fives from the media guys on the other side of the court and fans sitting behind the players benches. Not willing to miss a single MOMENT of this, I leap over the 6 rows in front of me again (spilling my vodka tonic down my leg) and give each one of them a high five. It was awesome! They made a full circuit, stopped, waved to everyone with that limber, non-jointed tard wave that has become the trademark of tard greetings, and bolted off the floor. I challenge ANYONE to come up with better halftime show entertainment than pre-teen tard basketball.

I'm Not Laughing with You, I'm Laughing AT You

2004-08-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

One of my roommates and one of my best friends work as lab techs at a large biotech firm in the Bay Area. As the nature of lab work requires a lot of sitting around and waiting for shit to incubate, they--along with the rest of the people they work with--have a lot of time to kill. Because everyone works pretty closely and because they are all a bunch of nosy bitches, the lab as a whole gravitates toward shit that one or two people have found to occupy their time.

Last year it was browsing the "Missed Connections" and "Casual Encounters" sections of Craigslist. This year it's setting up profiles on Friendster and Match.com, trolling for suitable mates, and sending them through the vetting process that is the ruthless public scrutiny of everyone in the lab.

The other night, I was chatting with my roommate and she started showing me some of her co-workers' profiles as well as those of the people some of her co-workers have either "winked" at or gone out with. Like anything else on the internet, the cross-section she showed me ran the gamut. My favorite? A 28-year old guy whose unsername is "Puppysmile."

Anyway, she told me I should put one up because it's funny to see who "winks" at you and partly, I'm sure, because she wants me to get a girlfriend. So I did.

www.match.com

my username is naparker

have fun

Cinco de Drinko

2004-08-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

I love Cinco de Mayo. I love going out in the city. I love free booze. I wrote a little song about. Like to hear it? Here it goes...
_____________________________________________________________________

On a day celebrated by Mexican-Americans in commemoration of the Mexican Army's single victorious battle over the French (pause here, pick your jaw up off the floor, catch your breath, and read on) at Puebla in 1862, I went out drinking Monday night with an Irishman (Jack), a Pakistani (Samir), and a Puerto Rican (Cesar). How the fuck does that work? It was their treat, though. So I didn't give a SHIT how it worked as long as it involved alcohol. Lots of alcohol.

We start the night around 8 at a new English pub around the corner from my office. It generally sucks, thus requiring me to find/create/instigate my own fun. As we make our way to the back of the pub we pass a table full of white guys in sombreros and ponchos drinking pitchers of wine margaritas. As I am more interested in getting my drink on at this point, I merely make a mental note of the ridiculousness inherent in their situation and head to a back table. They'll get theirs.

Jack broke up with his live-in girlfriend of 2 years that weekend and he was ready to get fucked-in-half drunk. He's been my copy-vendor for the last year or so and not once had I seen in him the determination he exhibited when attacking his beers and his shots. I drink quick. He drinks quicker. We spend the next couple of hours getting trashed and bullshitting when it comes out that Jack was an Army Ranger in the first Gulf War. I am floored by this revelation and proceed to pump information out of him while, at the same time, pumping alcohol into him. He told us some stories that could make your testicles bid a hasty retreat into your abdominal cavity. The most interesting tidbit that came out, however, was how to kill a man with a knife:

Step 1: from behind, slit his throat
Step 2: two quick slashes across his chest like an "X"
Step 3: stab him in the nuts (pause for collective male wince)
Step 4: plunge knife into the inner thigh, severing the femoral artery

Steps 2 and 3 might seem superfluous to those of us who lack the penchant for bloodlust, but they have a purpose. They are intentionally non-fatal to trigger the victim's instinct for escape. This gets the adrenaline pumping instantaneously. Multiple wounds + adrenaline + severed femoral artery = 30 second bleed out and flatline. SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!

Jack immediately became the coolest person in San Francisco. Samir and Cesar have heard these stories before since they work with him. They weren't as impressed. Their lack of awe bothered me. So I told them they'd be well-served to display a sufficient degree of amazement or I would gut them like Luau pigs with my new-found knowledge and mash their intestines into poi. Everyone got a big kick out of that one. But I was serious. I was also pretty drunk. So it's really anyone's guess.

The rest of the time at the pub was pretty uneventful except for a couple moments:

---our waitress was this mulatto princess named Jennifer. She had ass, attitude, tight clothes, and she was serving us lots of alcohol. I was enamored with her and told her so every time she came over. Once, as she went to the bar to get us what turned out to be the last round in a long line of rounds, I got up and yelled to her. "HEY, JENNIFER! DO YOU KNOW HOW GODDAMN HOT YOU ARE!? YOU SHOULD BE THE POSTER CHILD FOR MISCEGENATION!!" I thought this was the funniest thing in the world. So did most of the white people in the pub. No one else got it.

---this prompted the 22 year-old pip-squeak floor manager to come over and warn us to pipe down or get out. I inform him that we are not going to listen to a word he says until he stops shopping at ROSS, goes through puberty, and can kill my buddy Jack here with his bare hands. He thinks I am joking. I am not joking. He somehow musters the courage to tell us to get the fuck out or face, and I quote, "the beating of your lives." At this point Jack stands up and I am praying to all that is holy and true that he will put into practice the knife lesson he taught me at the table earlier in the night.

Unfortunately, he tries to be "diplomatic." He's not getting anywhere with the low-rent Doogie Howser though, so he turns to veiled threats. Jack leans forward and whispers to him (he relates this to me later), "we are just having some fun. Why don't you do the smart thing and back off. I have at least a $400 tab going back there and if you try and kick us out I won't pay it. I will get my credit card before you have a chance to swipe it. Believe me…I will." Apparently this is enough to convince Neil Patrick Harris to go back to rolling silverware or straightening coasters or doing whatever the fuck he does as floor manager.

---Funnily enough, we decide to leave 20 minutes later. Fortunately for me, the gaggle of honkies in Tijuana Gear hasn't left. I ask the guy at the head of the table if he owns a mirror. He tells me to shut up. I tell him that he and his entire crew look like a living, breathing promotional video for the benefits of eugenics and partial-birth abortion. This doesn't amuse them. Another guy starts mouthing off and asks the foolishly rhetorical question, "What are you trying to say?"

I inform him that what I am trying to say is that each one of their fathers should have pulled out when they had the chance. That San Francisco would have been entirely better off had each one of them just been a blowjob. That their parents should have been sterilized 30 years prior and short of that each one of them should have had their skulls crushed and brains sucked out during birth.

The dork at the end of the table snaps back at me. "Man you're such an idiot. I'm not even from Frisco." I was absolutely dumb-founded. How do you respond to that? I mean, honestly! So, I do what comes naturally and snatch one of the pitchers of frozen margarita off the table and start chugging it. I get about two gulps down and realize that these are wine margaritas. I register my disgust with the drink and the party full of idiots by spraying the contents of my mouth across the table. At this point my buddies are laughing hysterically and someone at their table has gotten up to get Doogie. Needless to say, we leave.

Outside the pub waiting for a cab, Samir (the only married guy in the group) gets the brilliant idea of going to a strip club. I hate strip clubs. HATE. THEM. I am, however, outnumbered. So I relent with the single stipulation that the place has to serve liquor. In San Francisco, this means we can only go to topless clubs. They agree. We get in a cab and tell the driver to take us to the Hustler Club.

We pile out directly in front of the club and MOB down the stairs past the doorman collecting the cover. We get to the bottom of the stairwell and Jack starts waving his credit card in the air and yelling. "I'M A VIP GODDAMNIT. A V.I.FUCKING.P. I WANT CHAMPAGNE. I WANT BITCHES. AND I WANT THEM YESTERDAY GODDAMNIT!!" The manager meets us just inside the club and tells Jack that he needs to calm down. That the Hustler Club is a classy establishment. That his customers expect a certain degree of decorum. This sends me into a fit of laughter. The manager, who has introduced himself as Larry, asks me what I think is so funny. So I tell him. In a very loud voice. "THIS IS A GODDAMN TITTY BAR. YOUR SUIT IS OFF THE RACK FROM MERVYN'S AND YOU HAVE GLOW-IN-THE-DARK PLASTIC SHOTGLASSES. WHO ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING!!" Larry is not pleased with me but, I don't know why, seats us in the VIP section. Not more than 2 minutes later 4 girls with 4 bottles of champagne come over.

Apparently, Jack has given Larry his company AMEX to cover the bill. Normally this would provoke a cautionary note from the cardholder to his fellow spenders. In this instance, however, the handing over of the credit card was accompanied with the equivalent of a Papal Bull. We had carte blanche. In Jack's words, "Go to town fellas. Go to town." I don't think he was aware of how much things cost in a topless club. Samir had 3 dances. From the same girl. Jack and Eric both had 2 from different girls.

I sat there and drank champagne and vodka tonics with a little topless strumpet in my lap. She was hotter than shit. She was also dumber than shit. SURPRISE! Her stage name was Meghan but her real name was Amanda. Creativity was not her strong suit. She spent 2 hours trying to give me a dance and telling me that I was the cutest guy she'd seen in the club in a long time and that there are certain things "not on the menu" that she would "give me." At this point I decided that if she wasn't going to leave me alone I was going to fuck with her. I alternated between arrogant prick and sweet romantic pushover nearly every two minutes. Nothing worth noting happened over the next hour or so, but some of my lines were priceless. These are in chronological order:

--baby, you're dealing with a future lawyer. In 3 years you'll be paying ME to fuck YOU.
--Amanda, you have got to be the most beautiful woman in here hands down. How do you not have a boyfriend? I would pay to be your boyfriend. I bet you get that a lot.
--girl, I don't pay for SHIT. Do I LOOK like a black man?!
--how about this. We will rock-paper-scissors for a dance. Best out of three. You win I pay you the cost of a dance. I win, you give my buddy Samir here a free dance. You aren't going to win though because I am WAAAAAY smarter than you.
--Amanda, I would love to take you out for a nice lunch tomorrow afternoon. Maybe take a walk in Union Square. Feed the pigeons. Talk.
--the only way I am going into the champagne room is if you BEG me and let my Labrador retriever eat peanut butter off your body.

I don't know how, but this girl ATE MY BULLSHIT UP. She couldn't stop laughing and smiling. I felt like a king. A king with a very full bladder. I got up, took a leak, bullshitted with the bathroom attendant, got some air. I came back in the club and saw from across the room that she was trying to surreptitiously look through the gym bag I was carrying. So much for feeling like a king.

I go back to the table and I tell her I saw her looking through my bag. I'm fucking fuming at this point and I'm about to go tell Larry what happened when she starts bawling in the chair. Big, 5-year-old, you ran over my puppy, tears. I ask her why she's crying, if it's because she's afraid she's gonna lose her job? She blubbers to me that that isn't it at all. She just really liked me and was trying to find some I.D. because she couldn't remember my name and didn't want to seem insensitive….

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHHT! I wasn't buying it for a second. It was, however, a perfect opportunity to try and fuck a stripper. I immediately put on the sensitive, charming, romantic hat and started spewing hallmark cards. My performance was positively brilliant.

2am rolls around and it's time to leave. The lights start to come up and Jack and Samir are over at the bar settling the tab (Cesar had gone home an hour earlier). I start to walk over there and a stripper catfight erupts over by the restrooms. These two flesh-peddlers are beating the shit out of each other. One girl (a black-haired white girl) is grabbing the other (a big-breasted Latina) by the hair and smashing her head into the carpet. The Latina is gouging the white-girls legs with her nails in retaliation and drawing blood. Finally, Larry comes over to break it up and try to shoo me out. I tell him I'm with the guys at the bar.

I walk over there and ask them what is taking so long. Jack's card is being declined. The tab is $4100. I am speechless. So I go over to where Amanda is sitting and tell her I want to take her home. She says she will pick me up outside the little pizza place up the street at 3 and goes back into the dressing room to shower and change. I head back to the bar and Samir has finally convinced the bartender to just run the card on the manual slide, take the slip to the bank the next night, and Jack will rectify the situation with AmEx the next morning. Little did Samir or I know that while Jack was outside earlier in the night going to the ATM he also called AmEx and had them put a hold on the card. Genius. Pure fucking genius.

Samir, still unaware of Jack's antics, is fuming mad. He wants to go into the dressing room and see the girl who gave him 3 dances. Larry just laughs at him and starts pushing us physically up the stairs. This infuriates Jack who starts yelling and threatening. I am laughing uncontrollably. This is a bad thing because it makes my stomach hurt. I throw-up all over the stairs. Now Larry is pissed and calls all of his security staff up to the front. At this point we figure it's probably a good idea to leave and we start jogging up the stairs. We are met at the top of the stairs by a guy who looks like Stone Cold Steve Austin. He pushes us into the street and tells us never to come back. He turns to head down the stairs pulling the door closed behind him when Jack snaps, runs at the door and kicks the hell out of it. It slams. Against Stone Cold's hand. He kicked it so fucking hard it crunched the bouncer's fingers, rebounded all the way open, and closed again. We could hear him screaming as we bolted around the corner for the pizza place.

At this point Samir decides it would probably be wise if he cabbed it home--being married and all. Jack and I walk into the pizza place and bust out laughing at the absurdity of the last 3 hours. This of course hurts my stomach some more and I run outside to throw-up in the street. Again. I go back inside, order two slices, and come back to Jack still laughing. Out of nowhere we here a voice tell us to shut the fuck up. We look over and it's two San Francisco County Sheriff's deputies scarfing down pepperoni pizza. Being quiet, finishing my pizza, and going home was the wise move. Do you think I made that move? I didn't think so.

I look over at them and I ask them which part of the regular police exam they failed; because the sheriff's office is where failures and fatasses go if they want a job that lets them carry a gun. I ask them which ones they were. The Failures? Or the Fatasses? They immediately get up and tell me to get to my feet. I tell them to go fuck themselves. I am waiting for a stripper to pick me up so I can fuck her brains out. The shorter of the two deputies tries to pick me up by my shirt collar when Jack bolts up.

I tell the deputies that Jack was an Army Ranger and can kill each of them with his bare hands before either of them would even have a chance to draw their guns. This elicits a smile from one of the deputies. He tells Jack that he was in the Army. 12 years. I laugh and ask if it was in the Motor Pool or the MPs. This doesn't amuse the other deputy and he threatens to arrest me. I inform him that not only does he not have jurisdiction, but that he probably can't spell it either. The Army deputy tells us to leave and, for once, we do what we're told. Sort of.

I still have a slice left. As we walk out I hurl it against the side of the Sheriff's van in full view of the deputies. Jack and I sprint down the street and down the alley to the back door of the Hustler Club. I start banging on the metal door until somebody answers. It's Samir's girl. I ask her if Amanda left and she says no. I tell Samir's girl to tell Amanda to hurry up and meet me out back. She finally comes out. Jack is long gone and I am hiding behind a dumpster in case the deputies roll down the alley. I pop out, trying to act nonchalant after hiding behind a fucking trashbin like a bitch, and tell her to take me home. Absolute shot in the dark, but she says okay. This girl is a fucking whore. A lying, stealing fucking whore. I hate lying, stealing fucking whores. So I decided I would hate-fuck this lying, stealing fucking whore.

We get back to her place--a two-bedroom she shares with two other strippers. We go in her room and start going at it. I last like 5 minutes because I am shit-housed drunk and exhausted. She gets up to shower the stink off her. As she closes the door I see her little metal box on the bureau across the room. It was the one she was carrying in the club that she put all her money in. I remember that she was going through my bag earlier. I get a brilliant idea. I throw on my clothes as quick as I can, grab the box and run out of the apartment.

I have no idea where I am. Somewhere in The Avenues but where exactly I don't know. I start running toward downtown until I see a cab. It felt like I ran 2 miles. It was probably only 3 blocks. I get in the cab and tell the driver Berkeley. I catch my breath and starting cracking up. This hurts my stomach. Again. And, again, I puke. This time out the window. The cabbie asks if I'm okay and I shrug him off. Then I get the great idea to call my friend Stydie and tell him what I did. He didn't answer so I left a message.

Amanda's little metal box had just over $700. I am giddy. Fifteen minutes later we are driving over the Bay Bridge listening to Tumbling Dice by the Stones when I get another brilliant idea. I roll down the window and CHUCK THE LITTLE METAL BOX OFF THE BRIDGE AND INTO THE BAY. I giggle all the way to Berkeley. Until it's time to pay the driver. $47.60. I look in my billfold and there is no money. I am officially stupid. Now I have to go to an ATM, so I have the driver take me to the nearest Wells Fargo. Unfortunately, I forgot to activate my new ATM card. I am officially stupid and officially fucked. I have him drive me back to the BART station where my car is parked with assurances that my checkbook is in the glovebox. Cabfare + tip? $58.80. FUCK. And, no little metal box.

I get in my car, gun the engine and take off. I go screeching around the corner, Hollywood-Stop a major intersection and go shooting up the hill. Just as I made the dog-leg right up the hill I saw a police car flip a bitch and come back in my direction. His sirens weren't on and I didn’t see any flashing lights, but I was CONVINCED that the pig was coming after me. I floor it. I'm doing 65 up tight, twisting, hilly roads at 4A.M., drunk and exhausted. Wise it was not. I get to the top of the hill, make the right, and red-line it for the last 1/2 mile stretch to my house. I don't know if the cop is behind me, but I am SURE he is tracking me. I bring the car to a screeching halt, grab my bag, and run inside. I sprint down the stairs, into the back yard, up into the sideyard between the houses and lay down flat in the bushes waiting to see if the cop would roll by and stop.

That's where I woke up at 9AM. 5 hours later.

Unintentional Humor at its Finest

2004-08-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

One of the questions nearly every law school application asks is whether you've been convicted of a felony or an alcohol-related misdemeanor. In applying to schools across the country a couple years ago, I wrote this piece to add to my packet. I found it today and could not stop laughing
_____________________________________________________________________

On May 7th, 2001, I pled guilty in Marin County Superior Court to the charge of Driving Under the Influence for which I was arrested several weeks earlier. On the evening in question, I got into an argument on the phone with my girlfriend of one year. She was up the coast about 100 miles in Sea Ranch, California visiting her mother. Upon hanging up from that conversation I went out with a handful of people to celebrate the recent employment of one of our friends. Over the course of the evening I had several vodka tonics and a series of conversations in which my friends and I determined it would be a good idea to drive up to Sea Ranch and iron things out with Kate, my girlfriend.

As such, I left the bar and started driving north toward Sea Ranch. Feeling completely sober, I approached the first of several exits one must take to get to Sea Ranch from Berkeley and followed what I thought were the appropriate signs. Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn and found myself lost just south of San Rafael. Driving up Highway 101 at this point, I reached into the glovebox for a map and let the car swerve to the right as I did so. Behind me 100 yards or so was a California Highway Patrolman. Having witnessed the car swerve, he turned on his lights and pulled me over. Smelling alcohol, I'm sure, he asked me to step from the vehicle. He administered a field sobriety test which I passed. He then administered a breathalyzer test which I failed.

At my court appearance on May 7th I pled guilty to the DUI charge and agreed, as a first-time offender, to attend and complete an alcohol education/awareness program. I enrolled with Occupational Health Services in Oakland and completed the program in short order. While I--and people who know me well--can confidently say I do not have a problem with alcohol, I participated actively during the Saturday morning sessions and learned valuable lessons about myself, about the nature of addiction, and about impaired driving.

Since this unfortunate and disappointing incident, I have not gotten behind the wheel after having even the slightest amount of alcohol nor have I gotten in a car with someone who has been drinking. While no one wants to be convicted of DUI, I have taken several positive things from this otherwise negative experience and used them to make me a better person. Ultimately, I am focused, excited, and ready to spend the next three years studying that which I broke when I got behind the wheel after drinking---the law.

Observations from the Display Rooms

2004-08-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

I went to IKEA tonight to shop for a dresser and a bookcase. It took me the better part of three hours to look at every single dresser and bookcase they stocked and come to the realization that I'M EMPLOYED!

I am not going to pay money to build my own fucking furniture. What the fuck is this? The New Yankee Workshop? I don't have a full beard. I don't have a closet full of long-sleeved flannel workshirts. And I certainly don't have an impenetrable New England accent that's rendered even more indecipherable by the constant screeching OF A FUCKING TABLE SAW UNDERNEATH A GODDAMN BOOM MIC! I want my furniture fully assembled, delivered at my leisure, and placed exactly where I want it by a team of gloved men who offer me something cold to drink while I sit back and watch them toil.

As I came to that conclusion over the course of three hours, my concentration understandably waned. Taking periodic breaks from looking at poorly constructed Swedish bedroom furniture, I was able to look around at the other shoppers. This is what I discovered:

1. lesbian couples love IKEA and shop like men. They know what they want generally but, like obscenity or gay men in a 24 Hour Fitness locker room, they won't know specifically until they see it. Once they find what they're looking for they check the price, double-check with each other that this is for sure what they want, and then head down to the "self-service bins" to pick-up their unassembled selection. Watching it happen at least a half dozen times last night in practically the same fashion each time was both shocking and refreshing

2. fat girls should not be friends with other fat girls because all they do is tell each other they look cute in clothes that are clearly too small for them. That is just patently offensive to those who have just eaten and those who lack the intestinal fortitude to handle the sight of cellulite and cottage cheese spilling forth from those places inexorably squeezed outward by the physics of ill-fitting belly shirts and low-rise Frankie B jeans.

3. when married men come to IKEA with their wives they shop like recently-neutered puppies. The wife walks ahead knowingly with a list and the credit cards, while the husband follows behind obediently feeling like he's done something wrong to deserve what he's going through even though he knows somewhere inside his bewildered mind that it's all for the best.

4. while I recognize that pink is in as the color of kitschy home furnishings this year, women between the ages of 16 and 33 need to realize that decking your apartment out in pink will not change the fact that YOU'RE STILL ALONE BECAUSE YOU'RE UGLY AND FAT!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one to grow on...

Fun with Cellphones

2004-08-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

I just got a call from my god-daughter Ellen. She was on her mommy's cell phone. She called to say hi. This was our conversation just a minute ago:

E: Hi Neeny-boy, it's Ellen.
N: Hi Elly-bell, whatcha doin'?
E: Nuffin' hey guess what?
N: What?
E: Dee-tee showed me how to use mommy's phone!

Ellen couldn't pronounce her sisters names very well when she was 2 and 3. Christen became Dee-tee and Lauren became RoRo. Those names have stuck...much like Neen.

N: really? that's very cool.
E: Yeah, I called daddy and gramma and Oma and Kelly and Tante Yenni and--
N: Tante Yenni?! In Germany!?
E: I don't know where she is silly it doesn't say on the blue-lighty screen. All it said was Tante Yenni.

I guess Christen heard Ellen say those last few words

C: ELLEN!! You called GERMANY!?!
E: I told you I don't know already jeez!
N: Ellen?...Elly-Bell?....
E: okay bye Neeny-boy <click>

Ellen (4), Christen (11), Lauren (9)

Anytime

2004-08-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

I am friends with all of my ex-girlfriends except for two.

There's Tiffany, who cheated on me in college with a guy in my House, got pregnant as a result, and came over one night a few years later to go down on me. I called her a Cum Dumpster during climax. She ran out crying and slept on the golf course.

And then there's Sunny. She's Thai. She's ridiculously attractive. And she's a waitress. None of these things have changed since she fucked the Receivers Coach of my high school football team while we were dating in college. She met him at a fundraiser my high school threw for the athletic program. Apparently they hit it off. Whore.

Our relationship was, by all accounts, a tumultuous one. It ran hot and cold like a Motel 6 shower. One week things could never be better. The next one of us would want to shove the other down an elevator shaft. The breaking point came--naturally for us--over something completely ridiculous.

One evening I decided to go to an A's game with my friend Will. As she recounted angrily in a voicemail message I would receive later that evening, I neither informed her of my decision nor--and this is a quote--"asked her permission." I really didn't think much of the decision to go because we didn't have any plans for that evening. Of course in her head Sunny had already planned a quiet romantic evening at her place. Operative words being: "IN HER FUCKING HEAD!"

The game was unspectacular as I remember except for the surprising and pleasant lack of cell phone calls. Not a single one. Very unlike Sunny. As it turns out, MCI Worldcom was having some service problems. This meant that calls weren't finding their destination and were being routed to voicemail. When service got restored later that evening (on BART somewhere between MacArthur and Ashby stations) any dropped calls that were routed to voicemail started to queue up in my phone. Grand total? 6. All from Sunny. SIX! I showed Will. He laughed right in my face. Dick.

Like any string of voicemail messages born out of the paranoid fantasy that you are being ignored and/or cheated on by your boyfriend, Sunny's messages got increasingly...well...violent. I was pretty toasted at this point in the evening so I found most of them hilarious. I would even re-cue them and let Will listen. Then I listened to Number 6. The MOAB.

S: Nils, I am through with you. I'm tired of you ignoring me all the time and spending time with your friends. When I hear you are out with Will or Don or Draper it makes me want to scratch your eyes out with my bare hands. Fuck you. I'm fucking Freddy B too. You know the coach guy you introduced me to at that stupid high school fundraiser you dragged me to. I fucked him at the party and I've been fucking him ever since. We're in love too so fuck you.

Ouch. I would have been really hurt by her little diatribe if I wasn't swimming in unrelenting anger instead. I let Will listen to the voicemail. He stopped laughing. When I saw Will earlier this summer in Portugal, this little incident came up and he told me what was going through his head at the time:

W: See Nils get yelled at. Laugh at Nils. See Nils get cheated on and dumped. See Nils boil with white hot rage. Stop laughing at Nils. Stop making any sudden movements. Get off train.

When I got back to Berkeley I made a beeline to Sunny's apartment. She was waiting. Eagerly. We went at it for what felt like hours but what turned out to be only 30 or 40 minutes. Of course it didn't serve any greater good or purpose to yell and scream at each other like a Sicilian family reunion. I mean, maybe it was therapeutic but I would be lying if I said I didn't want to hurt her the way she hurt me. Unfortunately, I am not a soulless cock-swallowing Southeast Asian hooker...so my words would have to do. They would have to do, that is, until my eyes fell upon something I gave her for her birthday during the honeymoon phase of our relationship.

Sunny LOVES Brian McKnight. Any and all things Brian McKnight are usually good enough to salve wounds, stem the flow of tears, and calm the screaming she-beast. Her favorite Brian McKnight song is "Anytime" so for her birthday I had a caligrapher in Chinatown paint the lyrics on a piece of really cool parchment paper. Then I had a friend of mine who worked the doors at the Paramount Theatre (where McKnight was going to play a couple weeks later) get it signed. I framed it in bamboo and no-glare glass.

Beside being a cool gift, the whole thing was actually quite beautiful...at least until the little Thai hooker cheated on me. In the middle of yelling at her for being a lecherous, disease-communicating, curry-eating cunt (Note to female readers: if you don't like the C-word I have a piece of advice for you--DONT FUCKING CHEAT!), I spotted the framed piece on the wall above her bed. I charged past her, leapt onto the bed, grabbed it off the wall and threw it against the hardwood floor.

It shattered like the hopes and dreams of an ugly girl with ovarian cancer. Cheap fucking Chinatown framejob. When she realized what I did I thought she would descend into an even deeper darker realm of insanity and attack me like a fucking puma. Instead, she crumpled onto her bed and started sobbing uncontrollably. Yeah, that's right bitch. Fuck you. I grabbed the paper off the floor and walked out.

...

Anyway, I was cleaning my room Monday night and I came across the tattered parchment in the back of one of my nightstand drawers. I had completely forgotten about the parchment and what I did to it when I got home that night. Below is a transcription of the lyrics on the parchment paper. What I did to it that night is in bold italics.

Anytime
I can't remember why we fell apart

oh wait, yes I can, you cheating slut
From something that was so meant to be

meant to be a huge pain in my fucking ass
Forever was the promise in our hearts

If by forever, you mean up until you cheat on me you prostitute
Now more and more I wonder where you are
Hopefully it's floating face down in the Sacramento Delta.

Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?

Yes you cross my mind. Now cross into oncoming traffic CUNT!
Do you ever wake up reaching out for me?

Yep, with my hands in the universal "choke the stupid bitch" position
Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?

Only when I am swept up in a wave of homicidal fantasy
I miss you

Go fuck yourself

Still have your picture in the frame

It's easier to hang on the dartboard that way
Hear your footsteps down the hall

I hope you get mugged
I swear I hear your voice driving me insane

that little nasally, whiny bitch voice would make Harvey Firestein wince
How I wish that you would call to say
you have cancer

Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?
only when I watch rape porn and snuff films

Do you ever wake up reaching out for me?

No! you manipulative conniving trollop.
Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?

I'd pick up roadkill off the highway before I helped you with anything
I miss you, I miss you

Kill yourself whore

No more loneliness and heartache

I'm going to fuck your sister
No more crying myself to sleep

fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
No more wondering about tomorrow

nope, because I'm going to kill you in your sleep tonight slut
Won't you come back to me?

so I can fuck you in the ass and then kick you the fuck out of my house
Come back to me Oh, ho, oh

come back to me and I'll tie you up in my basement and throw dog shit at you

Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?

Anytime I need to visualize killing someone, yeah.
Do you ever wake up reaching out for me?

Reaching out to rip your heart out of your chest you soul-crushing tramp
Do I ever cross your mind - anytime?

I hope you cross in front of a moving BART train

I miss you

Die bitch

...not one of my finer moments, I'll admit. Whatever. I'm not the philandering prostitute. Yeah, so we don't get along.

Drunk Dial Disaster

2004-08-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I drifted to sleep around 11:30 upon the soothing wave of words from Dr. Drew's monotone STD advice and Adam Corolla's gravelly indignation. I was unceremoniously yanked from my descent into REM sleep about 15 minutes later by the buzzing of my cell phone on the nightstand. It was my friend Becca. I answered...foolishly.

In that short period during which I am drifting into sleep, I am more vulnerable than a baby bird. If I were the Prime Minister of Israel and pulled out of my creeping slumber by a phone call from Yasser Arafat, it would not be unlikely that the Palestinians would have a State by morning. When Becca called I thought she was my ex-girlfried Kate, I thought I was in D.C., and I was convinced she was being chased. That last bit made me shoot straight up in my bed.

Over the next 90 seconds, I was able to get my bearings and realize that she was not, in fact, Kate nor was she being chased. Rather, it just sounded that way because she was drunk and she was talking a mile a minute. This is when I knew I was in trouble...yet I stayed on the phone. FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS! Like a baby bird, I swear. Becca had just returned from an evening of drinking with her friend Sabrina and Sabrina's boyfriend Dan.

Sabrina is a nice enough girl. I've only hung out with her a couple times--both of which I spent surreptitiously examining her eyebrows...which she had ruthlessly plucked like a self-loathing cutter. Both times I've hung out around her she had them penciled back in like someone just told her a childhood friendwas coming to visit. During our sporadic conversations, she usually had something interesting to say. Which was good. Dan, her boyfriend, however, did not. Which was bad. Dan is an ex-Marine turned lawyer (all of them are lawyers in fact). I've only met him once and immediately got the sense that he didn't want to be there and was in a race against the hands of his watch to get the hell out.

Becca and I have been pretty good friends for the last few years. We are actually quite different in a number of pretty important respects, but we have a good time when we hang out. We go to Warriors games and jokingly mock the poor minorities in the upper deck who can't afford tickets in "the lower bowl." We go to movies--less to enjoy a good film and more as an opportunity for me to offer a running commentary on the crappiness of actors specifically and American cinema generally. And, we hook up every once in awhile--usually when one or both of us has been drinking. This is where things get sticky...figuratively you sick fuck.

Becca likes me. No, I mean she LIKES me, likes me. It's pretty obvious to casual observers and it's an issue that we have never really dealt with head on. After we hook up, nothing is said about it...at least not until she gets drunk and brings it up in passing with something like "every time we hook up I think we should have a talk, but..."

She knows I'm not interested in a romantic relationship by virtue of the fact that I have dated women during our friendship and have not done anything that can be perceived, even remotely, as boyfriend-like. I think Becca also knows that--even if I was interested--the major differences I alluded to above would render it over before it ever got started. She has, I believe, accepted that we are always going to be, to borrow a cliche, "just friends." Unfortunately, the romantic feelings she had/has and the expectations she has for relationships of any type between men and women were poisoning her perspective on our friendship.

Not having dealt with this issue directly--the nature of our friendship being the crux of it--came to a head last night. I was groggy as shit, but even I could sense that it was coming. Like the collapse of the Dolphins in December or the A's in Game 5 of a first round playoff series, it was inevitable.

It started with Becca asking me why I think Dan never tells Sabrina how much he likes her and spiraled downhil from there This is a pretty accurate paraphrase of the pertinent parts of our conversation:

B: What's wrong with men do they not think about these things do they not have these feelings are they just cold human beings who don't have or express emotion why doesn't Dan tell Sabrina how much he adores her I mean I see her every day and we tell each other constantly how much we adore each other why doesn't he do that is that just a guy thing do guys think it's gay or something

N: Wait. What?

B: Well they've been together for quite awhile now and he's never said anything about how he feels about her not once and Sabrina is sit left wondering with no idea I mean what IS that do YOU do that you DO you DO DO THAT what's wrong with you you never tell ME how much you like ME I think I can count on one hand the number of times you've complimented me or said something nice to me
N: You're my friend. They're in a relationship. Expressing things like that are things you do in relationships.
B: And we're NOT in a relationship what do you call us then
N: We're friends
B: THAT'S NOT A RELATIONSHP!!?!
N: Of course it is, but it's not a romantic relationship like Sabrina and Dan.
B: So what, it's still a relationship and I'd like some goddamn appreciation for picking up your poo-stained sandals in my driveway, washing them off, and bringing them to work with me
N: Wait. What? <I said that a lot last night>
B: YOUR POO SANDALS! THE ONES YOU LEFT IN MY DRIVEWAY FOR ME TO CLEAN UP! Do you even care that I picked them up and cleaned them do you even care about the shoes
N: Of course I don't care about the shoes, that's why I threw them out of my car when I drove away
B: SEE! AND I WANT SOME GODDAMN APPRECIATION FOR THAT

At this point, we launched into a good 20 minute conversation about whether I cared about the poo sandals or if I was capable of caring about anything at all. Yeah, that was fun. Then, of course, it came back around to what was really bothering Becca.

B: Look Neen, this isn't about us this is about Sabrina and Dan but since you've made it about us I want to know why you can't tell me you adore me. I adore you and I tell you practically every time I see you
N: Yeah, and I hate it every time.
B: What? Why? That's what people do in relationships. They tell each other how much they care about each other how much they like each other how much they adore each other.
N: First of all, we're in a friendship not a relationship as most people intend it to mean. Second <and this is where I started to lose it>, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!? LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE!!? That's what people do who care about each other?! What world are you living in? Look, what you are seeking is emotional validation and I'm not playin' that. You want me to sit here and emotionally coddle you because you are insecure in our friendship. You overanalyze things and don't think I actually like you. Shit, you just said earlier that you think I only hang out with you when I have nothing better to do because you always ask me to do stuff before I get a chance to ask you
B: Well? It's true isn't it before last Friday you never asked me to do something before I did. I can count on one hand the number of times just like I can count on one hand the number of times you've said something nice about me
N: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? A 7th GRADE PISSING CONTEST!? I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP SCORE WITH FRIENDS! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT SPENDING TIME WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND HAVING A GOOD TIME WASN'T A GOOD ENOUGH INDICATION THAT OH, I DON'T KNOW, I FUCKING LIKE YOU AND THINK YOU ARE A COOL PERSON! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

This little outburts was followed by a lengthy silence. I don't know if Becca had just temporarily passed out or she was gathering herself inside her little foxhole of denial.

N: I never have to deal with shit like this with my friends. We hang out because we want to. Unlike most women who actually can't fucking stand each other, we talk and do things because SURPRISE we actually like to spend time with each other. I have never told a single one of my friends that " I adore them" or that "I really like them." You know why? Because it's understood. Friendship is about actions. They know how I feel because we hang out. Because I am there for them when shit goes down. Because WE'RE GODDAMN FUCKING REAL LIFE FRIENDS
B: Oh what, so now I'm not a friend see you said you don't have to put up with stuff like this with your friends implying that since you are putting up with it from me that I am not a friend

<fucking attorneys>

N: Pardon me for not using a fucking modifier at 12:45 in the morning and tired as hell. I don't have to deal with this with my other friends. My other friends seem to be fine with how we conduct our friendships because everything's all good from where we're standing.
B: Look, friendship is about doing things for each other. It's about sometimes doing something you don't want to do because they want it. It's about changing your diction because the other person likes it.
N: Becca, friendship is distinctly NOT about those things. I am your friend in spite of those things I may not like or might want to change in an ideal world. Being your friend, I would never ask you to do something you didn't want to do. Shit, right now you are asking me to change how I conduct my friendships. I would never do that. I am going to be your friend in spite of realizing that I am going to have to deal with little drunken emotional outbursts like this from you. I understand that being your friend involves accepting the whole fucking package--the good and the bad. I recognize that there is a lot more good about you as it relates to our friendship that there is bad.
B: No! No! No! As my friend if I tell you that every now and again I want you to tell me that you adore me because I like how it feels then you should as my friend do it not only should you do it but you should want to do it.
N: Don't hold your breath. Becca what you are asking from me is to emotionally coddle you. Validate your role and presence in our relationship
B: NO I'M NOT!
N: Yes you are, that's exactly what you are doing. You are unwilling to accept that like normal functional friends the fact that we spend a lot of time together and do stuff is a good enough indication that I like you and think you are a good person. That is not my problem. That's your own dysfunction and something that you'll have to deal with. I am going to conduct my friendships the way I always have and the way I do with my other friends. You can accept that or can't. I accept that you want me to change how I approach things and I am not going to ask you to change that. You just need to understand that you won't budge me. So this will be a source of conflict if and when it comes up again.
B: I just don't see why you can't do this for me
N: It's just not natural. It's not something I do. I don't spend time with my friends shooting the shit or drinking or doing shit and then say "I really like you Don. I think you're great." HOW FUCKING WEIRD IS THAT! Where do you go from there? What real purpose does it serve? It totally short-circuits normal conversation. I can't think of a single conversation I've had with a friend over the last 5 years where that kind of sentiment would fit naturally into the conversation.
B: So what! It makes the other person feel good shows you're thinking about them that you care that you're HUMAN
N: Normal conversation and interaction between friends is like a long tennis volley. Somebody kicks off the interaction--serves if you will. Every succeeding shot, while capable of being judged singularly on its merits, is affected and partially defined by the fact that it's a response to the previous one.
B: Well I guess, but it would depend ultimately on whether it was being played on grass or clay...
N: I'm done here
<click at 1:10AM!!!>

So much for functional male-female platonic relationships. No more hook-ups for Becca. And I'm never answering my phone when I'm in bed ever again.

2004-08-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Just because it's been so long

Good Work

2004-08-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a glimpse at the stupid shit I did this weekend. I was sober for nearly all of these, so take that for what it's worth.

On Saturday morning I went to Urban Outfitters with a friend of mine who was looking to update his wardrobe. He left empty-handed because he didn't realize that "XL" at Urban Outfitters means "Tall Gangly Unshowered Emo-Kid" not "Large Angry Mammal." I, on the other hand, left with:

a pair of brown and orange Pumas
http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shopping/product/alternateviews.jsp?iProductID=5048&count=0&edpno=113983
and an 18" Red Velvet Jesus Piggybank http://www.seantconrad.com/years/2002/pages/ab_bbq/ab_bbq46.jpg

As we headed back to my car, I held Red Velvet Jesus out in front of me with two hands and exhorted passers-by for change with the reminder that "Jesus Saves." No one got the joke...
___________________________________________________________________

I agreed to run the bar at a party some friends of mine were throwing Friday night. It was a pretty impressive setup, all things considered, so I had my hands full once the party really got going. By 1am everyone was hammered. Girls were making out, people were dancing to really bad Dancehall mixtapes, guys were wrestling on the grass. At some point near the end of the night, a girl who had earlier introduced herself to me as "Delightful" and had been making ridiculous amounts of eye contact with me every time I made her a drink over the course of the party came up to the bar and told me to lean forward so she could tell me something:

D: You look tense. Are you having at least a little fun?
N: Sure, I'm having a good time
D: You look tense, you should let me give you a massage
N: Thanks, but I'm more of a giver than a taker when it comes to massages. My neck and shoulder and back muscles are generally always really tight as it is so I doubt it would really help.
D: Well I wasn't planning on using my hands.
N: <pausing confusedly. Thank you Vodka-Tonic> That's nice. But I promised Graham and Daniel I would tend bar and help them clean up.
D: ......

"That's nice?" WHAA?!?!
_____________________________________________________________

Before the party started, I walked down the hill with Daniel to get some dinner. Daniel is a 6'3" 350lbs Nigerian bouncer with Alopecia, dark DARK skin, and a ferocious appetite for all things Asian (food, women, clothes, anime, women). As we passed the computer science building, Daniel spotted a chewed up surfboard in the bushes that ring the building. He waded into the waist-high shrubbery, yanked out the board, threw it onto the pavement, and jumped up and down on it until the fins snapped off. He then placed the board in the middle of the street on what is a very steep hill, laid down on his belly--engulfing the surfboard in all his large, dark, Africanness--and said "Push."

Who am I to argue? Daniel-and-surfboard took off like a shot under the force of my right foot. They slid down on a relatively straight path and came to rest in the middle of the intersection at a 4-way stop. From the bottom of the hill a good 120yds away, we had this exchange:

D: That was awesome. Your turn
N: Hell no
D: Pussy
N: Fuck You
D: Your turn
N: Fine

Daniel lumbered back up the hill surfboard in tow, positioned it in the middle of the street, and held it in place with his gigantic foot while he beckoned me over with a huge grin on his face. Reluctantly, I laid down on my stomach. Before I had a chance to really get settled and find my bearings he fucking launched me down the hill. Asshole.

Apparently, I found a better line down the impromptu street-luge track. I went sailing through the 4-way stop. As I made it into the intersection, I was abruptly turned askew by a well-placed manhole cover. It sent me careening shoulder-first into a moutain bike that was leaning against the storefront on the northwest corner of the 4-way stop. I came to rest at the 3 o'clock position flush with the bike and the front wall of the store. I rolled off the board to look at the bike. "U.C.P.D." Shit.

With my luck as good as it is, it should be no surprise that the rider of the offending bicycle--one Officer Diaz--was sitting mere feet away polishing off a slice of pizza and sipping from a can of Coke.

OD: What are you doing?
N: Surfing?
OD: Into my unit?
N: Your unit?
OD: My bike!
N: Oh, I'm sorry. It was an accident. Totally my bad.
OD: Are you drunk?
N: Not yet.
OD: Have you been drinking.
N: No sir.
<at this point Daniel comes trotting down the hill laughing>
OD: And you expect me to believe you?
N: Do you think I would have been able to stay on this fucking thing if I was drunk?
OD: Watch your language sir.
N: Sorry Officer.
<Daniel's not laughing anymore. In fact, he is quietly inching his way into the convient store on the opposite corner of the intersection. Dick.>
OD: Go.
N: You want to give it a try?
OD: Now.
N: You sure?
OD: Do you want to go to jail?
N: Well, no.
OD. Then go. Now.
N: Yes sir....DANIEL! GET OUT HERE YOU BIG FUCKING PUSSY!
___________________________________________________________________

I am always amazed at how frantically people rush into the BART station when they hear a train coming overhead. It doesn't matter what time it is, what platform it's coming into, what direction it's coming from. They scurry mindlessly like rats to the train's Pied Piper.

This morning I was walking up to the El Cerrito Del Norte station next to a very pretty Filipino woman who had parked next to me. I struck up a light conversation with her as we walked. The conversation turned harmlessly flirtatious rather quickly. She was going into The City--like most everyone else--and actually worked just down the street from me.

We had exchanged names and were about to exchange phone numbers when the familiar low hum of a BART train came within earshot. I swear if this girl was a dog her ears and tail would have stood straight up. She even cocked her head in anxious recognition like Scooby when Velma tries to bribe him with a Scooby Snack. Before I could say anything she broke into a powerwalk, pushed her way through the turnstyles, and vaulted up the escalator.

I didn't do a thing. I just kept to my normal pace because I knew I'd see her in a couple minutes. How did I know that? BECAUSE I COULD HEAR THAT THE TRAIN WAS COMING FROM THE OTHER FUCKING DIRECTION AND WAS HEADED TOWARD RICHMOND--NOT SAN FRANCISCO! What's wrong with these people? Can't they recognize when something is coming from the south and not the north?

Well, I guess I have my answer.

Anyway, I found her on the platform a few minutes later still flushed from her sprint:

N: Why'd you take off like that?
F: Didn't you hear the train coming? I didn't want to miss it in case it was the DalyCity Train.
N: Yeah, I heard it coming. But it was coming from the wrong direction.
F: Yeah but you only know that because the platform's still full and the Richmond train just left.
N: No, I could tell by the sound.
F: Really? How?
<and this is where I--unintentionally--busted out quite possibly the greatest single litmus test for the intelligence of riders on a major metropolitan mass-transit system>
N: Jesus baby, haven't you ever heard of the Doppler Effect?!

Good work, NP. No lumpia for you.

The Punjabi Perspective

2004-08-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

An old friend of mine from my first couple years in college flew into town Saturday night to attend a Sunday afternoon wedding just outside San Jose. I picked him up at the airport and within 90 seconds I wanted to open the door and kick him into oncoming traffic. How was I ever good friends with this guy? Let me ellaborate.

His name is Vijay. He came to Berkeley from India by way of Van Nuys and now works as a software programmer for a life insurance company. He lives just off Venice Beach down south and spends the majority of his free time--by his own admission--playing multi-player, first-person shooter computer games over the internet and avoiding anything resembling proper personal hygiene.

I had forgotton--thanks to a 2 1/2 year hiatus--how much Vijay talked and how full of shit he was. The first thing he said when he got in my car at the airport was "Man, great to see you. What a trip, brother. What's it been? 2, 3 years? Wow man, so much has changed. I can't believe I'm back in SF." (He actually said 'brother' and 'SF' in the same breath).

I was thinking to myself "Dude! It's the Bay Area. Nothing's fucking changed. Dude, YOU haven't changed. You're wearing the exact same fucking clothes you were wearing the last time I saw you--TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO--and you have the same long greasy hair and ridiculous Zorro-style facial hair!" Instead, I nodded my head and plaintively grunted assent as I made like I was concentrating on maneuvering through airport traffic.

In case you were wondering, this was the first time I wanted to throw him from my moving car. It would not be the last.

At this point, though, I still wasn't really aware of how miserable my night was going to be. I got my first glimpse about an hour into the visit when Vijay implored me to call all of my friends that he knew because he "wanted to see as many people as possible while he was in town so he could shoot the shit and talk about old times." He said those exact words, I swear. So I called Don--one of my best friends.

N: Don. Hey what's up dude? What are you doing tonight?
D: I don't know yet. It's A.J.s last night in town so we'll probably do something.
N: Sweet.
D: Is anything going on tonight? What are you up to?
N: Well that's kind of why I called. I'm getting off the freeway to Berkeley right now. I just got back from the airport. I picked up Vijay. He's in town for a wedding and we're trying to see what people are up to.
D: Vijay? Vijay who?
N: Vijay. From the co-ops.
D: HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHHHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
N: You guys want to get together a little later for drinks? Shoot the shit. Talk about old times.
D: <long pause> HAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHA .

After a round of similar calls, Vijay mentioned that he wanted to have dinner with another friend of his named David. This was the second time I wanted to kick him into traffic. David is a short, fat, red-headed computer programmer. He's half Iranian and quite possibly the most annoying person in the 510 are code. He has more hair on his back than on any other part of his body--COMBINED--and has made it clear to everyone he knows that he prefers anal sex to any other sort of sexual contact.

The prospect of dinner with Vijay and David should have had me fleeing the scene like a parole violator in a COPS episode. Instead I said sure and headed with Vijay--WHO STILL HADN'T SHUT THE FUCK UP--to an Indian restaurant. Dinner lasted an unmerciful 90 minutes with Vijay and David volleying computer-programming anecdotes back and forth in an attempt to one-up each other as to who has a tougher job and lives a more stultifyingly boring existence.

They tossed around words like "firewall" and "DLL" and "database management" and "sysadmin" with nerdful giddiness. At one point David actually spit a mouthful of tika masala halfway across the table in a fit of laughter after Vijay told him about somebody at his office patching the wrong something or other during a "standard fix" and then running something or other and bringing the whole system down. As they knowingly laughed the laugh of computer nerds, I seriously contemplated stabbing myself in the leg repeatedly with my curry-stained fork just to prove to myself that I was, in fact, still alive.

After the computer talk stopped, Vijay started holding forth on what it takes to be "successful in the real world." What it takes to "prove to everyone that you can do the 9-5 thing." How he has devised a plan to go to grad school, "be an entrepenuer by the age of 30" because he "can't work like this for much longer." If he's going to work for a company that's not his own, it has to be "by [his] rules." He is looking for a new programming job because he wants to be making twice as much as he is now in 3 years and he wants to "continue to grow professionally because [he's] really stagnating in his current position and not having his skill set being used to its full potential."

That was enough.

"DUDE! Vijay. You are so full of shit. Do you hear yourself? You have no idea what you're talking about. Where'd you come up with this shit. I feel like I'm listening to someone audition for the role of Gordon Gecko in a high-school production of Wall Street: The Musical. "REAL WORLD?!" What do you call the last 26 years of your life? FUCKING CANDYLAND?! Dude, you talk about how awesome L.A. is and how happy you are, but all you've done tonight is talk about Venice Beach girls you would never talk to because you're a fucking chicken shit and because you spend all day playing fucking computer games. You love your work but you are quitting and trolling your friends for job opportunities. You love your social life and the free-wheeling nature of L.A. women, but you couldn't name a single great club in the Basin and you haven't been laid since your whore of a girlfriend broke up with you--DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION! DUDE, you're a nice guy and you mean well, but you need to get fucking real. Give me a call when you wake up, get a clue and cut the fucking bullshit."

I slid out of the booth, threw back the rest of a now-flat bottle of Taj Mahal beer, and left. After I bailed, I made my way to a party at my old house intent on getting those three hours of my life back. At the party, Vijay's words started to worm their way into my brain. I should be writing full time. I shouldn't be wiling away my mid-20s busting my ass doing mindless work for a bunch of fucking attorneys. As I got drunker some of Vijay's words started ringing truer. I refused to let this happen. I started thinking about friends I went to school with and I broached the subject with friends at the party:

N: Anthony, do you feel like you're not going anywhere?
A: Yeah.
N: Really? Why?
A: Well Sara took my car keys before I left the house. Bong rip?
N: No dude, not like that. I mean like with your life. Do you think you're not going anywhere?
A: <pause> Bong rip?
N: No, dude. I don't smoke.
A: Nothing? Not even pot?
N: Nope.
A: Ever?
N: Ever.
A: Really?
N: Yeah dude. Answer my question. What are you doing for work now? Are you still looking?
A: Nilsio man, I am dating a HOT Iranian girl who loves me and my cock. I'm playing in a band that I'm writing the lyrics for, and I'm driving a car that I won off my brother in a Euro Cup bet.
N: Nilsio?
A: Yeah dude, it's your new name.
N: I have enough names. So what about work? I mean you've broken up and rejoined your band once already . What about work?
A: I'm working at a butcher shop.
N: A butcher shop?
A: Yeah dude, it's good honest work.
N: Like Brady Bunch Sam the Butcher, butcher shop?
A: Yeah dude, it's awesome. I sliced bacon yesterday. I work like 3 blocks from my house. I go home for lunch everyday, smoke a j, jerk off, listen to some music, eat a bowl of cereal, and walk back to work.
N: Dude, that's sweet.
A: I know man, that's my I'm not trippin about "purpose" or "career path" or shit like that. Bong rip?
N: No dude, I don't smoke.
A: Oh yeah.

Then I thought about my buddy Dave. I would have called him but it was a Saturday night--his day off from the field camp he's attending in Montana as part of his requirements for graduating Berkeley with a degree in Geology. I remember he was planning on going fly-fishing that day. Dave's on the 9-year plan. He got to Cal in '95. I don't think he's done more than two semesters in a row. But, he's lived in Austin, Portugal, Antibes, Sevilla, and Tucson. He's been engaged twice, he parties like he invented it and, in talking to him in the past, it is clear that he has zero regrets.

Finally at 12:30am, completely drunk, I called my buddy CV. In Portugal. He runs a bar in Lagos and spends the entire summer either behind the bar or on the beach. Surprisingly, he answered:

N: CV, what's up man?
CV: I just got in. Got e-tarded at Bahia Bar.
N: How's life?
CV: Dude, I'm a bartender in a Portuguese tourist town.
N: Dumb question
CV: Yeah.
N: Tell me something, I had dinner with Vijay tonight. He got to tal--
CV: Vijay? Vijay from Cloyne?
N: Yeah.
CV: HAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
N: He got to talking--
CV: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
N: Shut the fuck up. So do you feel like you've got purpose in your life? Do you feel like you're wasting valuable time in your life? Like wasting your youth?
CV: Wasting my youth? I RUN A BAR IN A PORTUGUESE BEACH TOWN. Dude are you serious? Did you call me at 8:30 in the morning to ask me that?
N: Well yeah. I mean, what about graduating? The future?
CV: Nils, since I left Berkeley a couple years ago my penis has had so many different women visit it, I should start stamping their passports.
N: But what about your future? I mean after Portgual.
CV: You better be drunk.
N: Well...
CV: <click>

Now I remember why these guys are my friends. I'm such a fag.

Nils Has a Soul, Go Figure...

2004-08-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

This whole post is inspired by an email exchange I just had with a good friend of mine. Here's the email I sent:

-----Original Message-----
From: Parker, Nils A.
To: Katie
Sent: Fri Aug 06 13:43:03 2004
Subject: RE: Blog
I haven't cried in a long long time, but this actually brought tears to
my eyes. I had completely forgotten about this:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/94

___________________________________________________________________

I was just reading Jeff Merron's Page2 article about Olympic Bests and Worsts on ESPN.com (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=merron/040804) and he brought up something I had completely forgotten: The Derek Redmond Story (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/94).

If you don't remember it, Redmond was an English track phenom who at the age of 19 clobbered the British 400-meter record but was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Seoul Games due to an Achilles Tendon injury. He qualified with ease for the '92 Games in Barthhhhelona and was heavily favored to win Gold (You can read all this in the second link by the way, but I'm going to recount it anyway because it's therapeutic) when, in his semi-final heat, he tore his right hamstring.

Before the curve onto the homestretch--about 200 meters from the line--his hammy gave out and he crumbled to the ground. Medical staff rushed to him with a stretcher and wanted to shuttle him off like they do in soccer matches. Redmond wanted no part of it. He wanted to finish the race. He got to his feet and started hop-hobbling down the track. Television being television, they had two camera angles on the whole scene: one a wide shot showing the whole track and part of the infield, and another a tight close-up showing every excruciating detail of the pain and the tears that, at this point, have covered his face.

Then, out of nowhere, his father comes racing down from near the top of the stadium (which has an amazing view of the entire city if you ever find yourself in Barthhhhhelona), leaps over the railing, darts past security, runs onto the track, and puts his son's arm around his neck to help him down the track. Both of them are in tears at this point. The crowd is roaring and cheering. The racers who were long since done are standing at the finish line clapping. As they near the finish line--the applause and cheers crescendoing--Redmond's father lets him go so he can cross the line on his own...finishing the race like he had earlier promised his father and himself.

...

I was 13. My parents' divorce went final earlier that summer and I remember watching the heat on Sportscenter. Like every four years, NBC fucking butchered their Ameri-centric Olympic "coverage" by airing softly-lit 8 minute bio pieces on every single American competitor who either has a shot at a medal or has overcome some sort of obstacle instead of, oh I don't know, ACTUAL FUCKING OLYMPIC EVENTS!! As such, the heat either wasn't on or I just plain missed it that afternoon.

I don't know why, but I watched the whole race unfold standing in front of the television in the family room. The Sportscenter anchors weren't really narrating the clip I remember, they just sort of let it tell its own story. I remember standing there transfixed, my mouth slightly open, and tears streaming down my face. Everything about it reduced me to a frozen, mute well-spring of tears.

I'm not a crier. I haven't cried in a long, long time. In fact, I wasn't even a crier when I was a baby. My mom says that when I was really little (if that's even possible) when I wanted something I would just scream. She says I still haven't stopped with that either. Regardless, when she saw the tears coming down my face it scared the hell out of her. She started rushing back and forth between the family room and the bathroom, returning each time with a different item from the medicine cabinet.

Finally, through the tears, I had to stop her. "MOM! What am I going to do with Vick's VapoRub and a box of butterfly bandages!? I'm crying! I don't have LUPUS!" That settled her down ultimately, but not before she went into the kitchen and made me a grilled cheese sandwich. HUH!?

Anyway, when I came across this story today it brought tears to my eyes again. I sent the link to my mom as well and reminded her of that day. As traumatizing as that moment was for her, I think she looks back on it periodically for reassurance that her son does, in fact, have a soul. Who'd of thought?

And before the comments come in on this entry, yeah I choked up remembering this incident. Yeah, I'm 25. Yeah, I'm male. So what. Fuck you!

BART Buddies, Part Deux

2004-08-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

These two entries are things I wrote about a year ago but ring absolutely true when it comes to misadventures on the BART system. Some of you might remember them:
_____________________________________________________________________

Walking to the BART station one morning I crossed the path of a little kid--probably 9 or 10 years old--on his way to school. He was wearing one of those big puffy NorthFace jackets and a pair of old-school Jordans. I tried to get his attention so I could find out where he got his shoes, but he didn't hear me. I thought he was ignoring me until I got closer and realized he was listening to an iPod through high-end Sony studio headphones and eating an Extreme Sausage Sandwich from the Jack in the Box across the street. I have never been more envious of a 9 year old black child in my entire life. Now I understand why people get mugged for their clothing.
____________________________________________________________________

When it rains BART stinks, literally. One rainy day last October was no exception. As I boarded the front car at Embarcadero I was struck, once again, by the oh-so-familiar "wet-BART" smell that will, to varying degrees, saturate the entire train by the time it reaches its destination. The odor, I have found, is a combination of wet clothes, uncomfortable human body heat, and the ethnically-flavored, gastrointestinal discharge of the passengers on board. It can be overwhelming to those who lack the capacity to breathe through their mouths.

Eventually we pull into 12th St. where we are met by the typical rush-hour crush of riders transferring from the Pittsburg-Bay Point train who were too goddamn impatient to wait the extra 7 minutes for the Richmond train they ACTUALLY wanted to board in the first place. It is a particularly heavy commute day, so every available seat and much of the standing room is taken as we depart the station with a jerk.

Being so crowded, I decide to look up from my newspaper to see what the cat dragged in. Sitting across from me is a woman--I think--who, upon examination, can only be described as functionally retarded. Under her over-stuffed backpack and clear, rain-soaked poncho, she is wearing a lime-green Teletubbies sweatshirt. It does not fit well. To accompany this trend-setting fashion statement, she is wearing a pair of pocketless maroon sweatpants that she has tucked neatly into a pair of fully-extended gray sweatsocks. The socks, in turn, are wedged into a beat-up pair of knock-off Teva sandals. I'm telling you, this woman is a sexy beast.

The best part of this woman's ensemble is what she decided to wear on her head. Oh no, not a hat. Not a scarf. She's decided to use the Style Section of the Tribune as her protective cover. In case you need some help with this image, let me tell you, the irony is delicious. Even better though, is the fact that she refuses to take it off her head while she is on the train. At one point it starts sliding off and she actually repositions it atop her head.

If this isn't enough, it seems our "special" friend has the sniffles. She has to blow her nose constantly--at least once every minute. I don't take much notice at first, but after Snot-Rocket 14, I make the mistake of looking up from my paper and trying to figure out what her problem is. As I crane my head upward she brings her hand up to her nose for Snot-Rocket 15. I cannot believe what I am witnessing. She is blowing her nose into her bare-hand! This isn’t just some dainty, excuse-me, pseudo-sneeze either. This is a monster, SARS-laden, mucus missile. I almost threw up on myself.

At this point, if you are a normal human being, you should be saying to yourself, 'Wow, this couldn't get much worse.' Unfortunately, you would be wrong. So very, very wrong. Upon blowing bio-hazard all over her palm and fingers, our "special" friend decides to examine the evidence and, once she is satisfied with the results, wipe it down the front of her poncho--her CLEAR poncho. I am absolutely speechless--revolted beyond description

It takes everything I have not to stare directly at her with the disdainful look of a PETA protestor at a fox hunt. To avoid making eye contact with her, I begin looking around the car. To my surprise, everyone in the vicinity is watching her. And, like me, they all have looks of horror and disgust painted on their faces. I couldn't tell you what any of them are thinking, but I assure you the thoughts are NOT pleasant.

I spend the rest of the ride fighting my gag reflex and wearily awaiting the next snot salvo. Fortunately for everyone, when we arrive at Ashby station in Berkeley she gets up, collects herself, and bids a hasty retreat from the car. The doors close and instantaneously the front half of the car explodes in a chorus of "Omigod's" and "What the hell's?"

There is a phenomenon in human psychology through which survivors of the same major traumatic event develop intense, life-long bonds similar to those felt by members of a normal nuclear family. Friendships, adoptions, even marriages have been born from these associations. I dare say, we are no different. When we see each other on the train, we share a knowing glance and a disturbing chuckle. Our "special" friend has scarred us for life…and no one can take that away from us

BART Buddies

2004-08-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I sat across from a Mexican guy wearing a purple and black flannel work shirt and a mullet. He had a small igloo cooler between his legs and a Starbucks messenger bag slung over his back (CAN YOU SAY "FREEBIE"!). He had rings on every finger save his thumbs and he was listening to music on an ancient SONY Walkman. He rocked awkwardly with the beat (which you could hear faintly over the din of the moving train) and tried pitifully to lip-sync with the lyrics. I'm pretty sure he was listening to Mexican rap because the only word he could mouth consistently was "PUTO!"
_____________________________________________________________________

Here's a tip for anyone stuck standing on a crowded BART train on their commute home: don't stare unblinkingly at the person 16 inches away from your face even if he looks like a cross between Adam Arkin and Larry David with a tan. It's even more wise not to stare at him if he has 8 rings through the hard cartilage of each ear. It's even wiser not to stare at him if he has hair GROWING DOWN THE TOP RIDGE OF EACH EARLOBE THAT COMES VERY NEAR TO MESHING WITH THE THATCH OF HAIR SPROUTING FROM INSIDE EACH EAR THAT ITSELF BLENDS INTO THE HUGE MUTTON CHOPS HE'S SPORTING!!

I could tell he was getting pissed because I never said anything; I only stared intently at his left ear from above the newspaper I was reading. I'm just glad we didn't get off at the same stop. He probably would have tried to kick my ass and that was a prospect I was genuinely afraid of. I'm sorry, I don't care how big you are, when someone with that much body hair gets angry with you, it's time to make yourself scarce
___________________________________________________________________

Conversation is rare on BART. So when it happens everyone is listening. The people around you may be reading their newspapers intently, or knitting feverishly, or dozing contentedly, but they're listening. They're ALL listening. That's why flirting on BART is so difficult...unless you don't give a shit like a co-worker of mine. Then it becomes HIGH-larious.

Quite often I ride home on the same train as this co-worker. Her name is Tandy and she is one of the bigger jokers in the paralegal department. She's the type of girl who talks about her bowel movements like she would talk about the weather just because she knows how uncomfortable it makes the people around her.

One the rare occassion that we find two seats together on the same car, this girl flips the switch and launches into some sort of inappropriate conversation. The first time we rode together and she started in like this, the topic of choice was 9/11 and the likelihood that it was all faked--like the moon landing and the Holocaust. Her best line that night was "I don't know why people find this so hard to believe. David Copperfield makes shit disappear all the time. All he needs are some mirrors and an orchestral accompaniment."

Back near the end of June we ended up riding home on a very warm Tuesday night. We sat down and as soon as the train pulled away from the station she started flirting with me. As best I can remember, this is how the conversation went before we were interrupted by her cell phone ringing:

T: What's your name again?
N: Nils. Sorry, what's yours? I'm bad with names the first time I hear them.
T: It's Tandy. Like Candy, but with a T instead of a K.
N: <pause trying not to laugh already> Interesting name. Were your parents into electronics?
T: No.
<loooong pause>
N: It's just that Tandy is the name of an old electronics company that became Radio Shack a few years back.
T: What's Radio Shack?
N: You've never heard of Radio Shack? Where are you from?
T: Well I just moved to California a few months ago so there are certain things I'm still learning.
N: Oh well that makes sense I guess. Where'd you move from?
T: Los Angeles.
N: You do realize that Los Angeles is like the biggest city in California?
T: No, not that Los Angeles. I'm from the Los Angeles down by San Diego. So have you ever had sex on a train because I haven't although I've had sex on a boat, a plane, in a car, on a motorcycle but it wasn't moving so that doesn't count I guess, ummm, oh on a moped but that wasn't moving either so I guess that doesn't count too
N: Actually I'm a virgin.
T: WHAT!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
N: I'm Catholic.
T: Ohhhh, so you can't have normal sex but I can still put it in your ass right?
N: Excuse me?!
T: Yeah, aren't Catholics the ones who have tons of oral and anal sex because it's not normal sex and not a sin? I read about that somewhere.
N: DUDE! That's Catholic girls NOT Catholic guys.
T: Oh.
<cell phone rings>

I rue the day that we commute home next to each other uninterrupted. I'm afraid she's going to turn me into a hate crime victim.

Las Vegas Lessons

2004-08-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have made numerous mistakes on my trips to Las Vegas. I’ve given a “dancer” my room key. I’ve rubber-cemented the room furniture to the ceiling. I’ve been in a screaming match over the number of drinks I was allowed to have at the blackjack table at one time (The answer is one and it will not change if you call the pitboss a failure at life). Those little missteps, however, pale in comparison to the biggest mistake I ever made: driving.

DO NOT DRIVE TO LAS VEGAS.

I cannot emphasize this enough. My first trip was for Super Bowl Weekend when I was 22. Five of us—me, CV, Will, Dave, and A.J.—jammed ourselves into Will’s crap-ass Chevy Lumina and left late Friday night. The whole drive was a certifiable disaster but Will took the cake.

While CV did his Michael Andretti impression down I-5, Will played DJ in the front seat chortling along with every damn song. The only thing more painful than his singing was the torrent of Guinness and Jack in the Box farts that seeped from his ass like a natural hot spring. His farts had me questioning all that was holy and true in this world. They smelled so bad that, at one point, they actually woke up A.J. A.J. slept through the Northridge earthquake in 1991, but Will’s farts jerked him out of his sleep like they were his own personal gastro-intestinal reveille.

We pulled into the Luxor parking lot at 7a.m. defeated men. Fatigued, sober, and drenched in Will’s ass-perfume, we wanted nothing more than a shower and a bed. We missed the entire Saturday recovering from the drive! Never again. Kids, don’t make the same mistakes we made. Learn from them and fly. It’s the only way.
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Las Vegas is a mecca for celebrities during titlefight weekends. I can't really explain it, but for some reason famous people flock to the desert when they find out that a couple of bruising heavyweights or a pair of feuding, wiry Mexicans are preparing to beat the ever-loving crap out of each other. During those weekends, the casino floors of the better hotels are an orgy of celebrity, ridiculously hot women, and small groups of drunken friends who call each other by idiotic nicknames while they blow their winnings on hard-way bets at the craps table. I, of course, am perpetually a member of that third group.

There are three things you need to do if you want to maximize your celebrity sightings:

1. Stay at the hotel that is hosting the fight (usually Caesars, MGM, or Mandalay)--if the fight is at Thomas & Mack stay at one of the top tier hotels
2. Don't play the cheap tables. I promise you Shaq and Adam Sandler aren't playing the $5 tables at the San Remo.
3. Follow the hot chicks. When you're on the casino floor spot the groups of disgustingly hot women. They have celebrity radar. Their senses are keener than truffle pigs. It's truly amazing, trust me on this one.

Following this holy trinity of fight weekend rules, I have bumped into, seen, and played cards with quite a few celebrities--from the guy who played Rafter Man in Full Metal Jacket to Roy Jones Jr. My favorite run-in was at the MGM right after the De La Hoya-Vargas fight. I was playing $100 hands of blackjack with a bunch of random people who were neither famous nor hot. I had just returned from the bathroom where I think I took a leak next to Owen Wilson…or was it Luke? I don't know, who cares? As I sat back down, something caught my eye. Maybe it was the gaggle of grandparents shrouded in a fog of Preparation-H fumes that was passing by. Maybe it was that low murmur that floats through a crowd when someone sees a famous person. Or, maybe it was this man's deep, bronze tan and perfectly coiffed silver pompadour that produced a glowing aura like the corona surrounding the baby Jesus. Regardless, I did what came naturally. I stood up and shouted:

"Oh hell yes! Tony Curtis, SWEET! Hey Tony! T-Money! T-Curtis! Antoninus! What's up, baby?! What's up singer of songs? I juggle too!" My Heineken-fueled greeting was met with silence. From EVERYONE. Tony Curtis froze in his tracks and scanned the tables until his eyes fell upon me standing on the footrest of my chair, blathering incoherently, and gesticulating wildly. He stood there for a couple seconds just sort of staring at me. I was sure he was going to have me ejected from the premises. Instead, that familiar look of fear and disgust I have encountered throughout my life melted from his brilliantly-tanned face and was replaced with a smile and a wink as he gave me the classic halfwave-to-thumb-and-forefinger-sixshooter greeting.

It was AWESOME! T-Curtis and I had a moment. I was the king of the blackjack table. For 20 minutes. Until I lost all my money doubling down on 12 (twice) and all my blackjack-playing privileges for spilling my beer all over the place (again). I'm not very bright.

Stand for Once

2004-08-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

We'll call her Linda. Because Linda is a fat girl's name. She works in an office doing some type of administrative or clerical work, but she is NOT a secretary. Ohhh, nooooo. She's an executive administrative assistant or an Accounts Receivable Supervisor. Linda wears blouses and skirts that hang just below the knee. She does not wear them because they are feminine or sexy. Rather, she wears them because they belonged to her older sister and she is too cheap to update her wardrobe.

The icing on the outfit-cake is the leggings with white athletic socks and white Reeboks. The leggings are typically black--because everyone knows black leggings with white socks and sneakers peeking out from underneath an outfit from the first Bush administration is SUPER SEXY! I, for one, find nothing more erotic than seeing a woman dressed like a bloated Border Collie.

Sometimes, though, the leggings are tan. The packaging calls them "nude," but you and I both know there is NO way Linda's legs look like THAT when she is--uggh--naked. We all know her legs are long bulbous tubes of bleu cheese; a pale, pasty white streaked with bluish/purplish veins snaking their way up toward her blubbery gut.

Linda works from 8:30 to 5 everyday and takes an hour for lunch at EXACTLY noon because that is when the rest of the overweight Lindas go to lunch. Linda also commutes on BART. If she walks to the station, she takes the same route. If she drives, she parks in the same spot. To buffett herself from the chill of Bay Area mornings, she wears a long puffy coat (usually grey, brown, or pink) that looks like it came out of the wardrobe room off the set of the first season of Roseanne. She comes armed with a tote bag and an unwieldy purse that, without fail, she fights with every morning trying to find her ticket

The tote bag is Linda's magic satchel. Given to her at any one of many Secret Santa gift exchanges, the Tote Bag is a light beige in color and procured by the gift-giver free of charge with a purchase of $20 or more at a local Barnes & Noble. It replaces her old black tote bag that had the words "Tote" and "Bag" actually written in rainbow-lettering diagonally across both sides.

Linda's job is not important and she never brings work home, so there are only a few things she can put in the magic tote bag. First, of course, is her lunch. Lunch is leftovers from dinner the night before. It is crammed efficiently into Glad reusable food-storage containers--the poor man's Tupperware. Next is any combination of knitting, kids' fieldtrip permission slips, and Danielle Steele novels. The purse AND the tote bag are quite burdensome, the carrying of which exhausts Linda before the day has truly begun. Linda is trash.

The essence of Linda doesn't really shine through, though, until her commute home. Like Cinderalla at midnight or the Hulk when he gets angry, Linda turns into an unstoppable commuting manchine at the stroke of 5pm. If anyone ever bothered to timed her, I'm pretty confident she could set a world-record in power-walking for the trip from her secretarial carrel to the BART station platform two blocks from her office. She bobs, she weaves, she ignores traffic signals and oncoming traffic. She will not be deterred from catching the 5:09 Fremont train (authors note: all Lindas live in Fremont because that is where fat trash lives).

Once she gets to the BART station and has positioned herself in her usual spot at the very end of the platform, the Commute Game truly begins. She counts how many people are standing in front of her poised to board the same train--some are familiar faces who she can reliably count in or out. It is the random-face factor that concerns her most. How many of these assholes know the rules? she wonders to herself. Do they know that they should be lined up on the right-hand side of the black platform tiles? Do they know that they can't just sit down on a bench and hope to slide in wherever?

Linda comes up with a tentative number of passengers in front of her who will board the Fremont train. At 5:08:30, the train roars in, the last car easing to a stop at her spot on the platform. Linda quickly counts the number of empty seats in her car and makes a split-second calculation as to which way-left or right-she should turn once she enters the car. I've heard of military operations conducted with less precision and calculation.

If there are more than 4 people in line ahead of her, Linda turns into Ben Wallace once she enters the car. She's got her knees bent and her cumbersome bags hung at the elbow to help her box out. She's not above using a well-placed totebag-elbow to get past a less decisive commuter. I've even seen Linda cut the corner on a quadrapalegic and use the wheelchair as a screen. I was at once disgusted and impressed.

Why does Linda put so much effort into her commute home? you might ask. To get a seat. Pure and simple...to get a seat. Nevermind that she just SAT DOWN FOR EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS! Oh no, she's tired. It's been a long day in front of the computer watching her vericose veins spread and her IKEA shelf-shaped ass widen just a little further. She needs to take a load off. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that it wouldn't hurt Linda to, oh I don't know, STAND FOR ONCE IN HER GODDAMN LIFE!

Maybe I'm being unreasonable. And, to be honest, for a second I thought that might actually be the case. Then yesterday evening happened. Linda was sitting in the seats immediately to the left of the entrance to the train car. It is generally understood--thanks to the NUMEROUS signs stating as such--that these seats are to be surrendered to the elderly and the disabled if such a person were to board that car. Well, these are Linda's favorite seats because they are right next to the doors and allow her to exit before everyone else and beat them through the turnstyles down inside the station.

Yesterday evening, we pulled into 12th Street Station and a blind man entered our car. I didn't notice him until he boarded but Linda spotted him as soon as he came into view on the platform. This is all part of her Seat-Strategy. There are 8 seats by each door dedicated to elderly and disabled passengers. During commute hours, all these seats are typically filled. Linda's strategy is to identify as soon as possible if any such person is going to board her car and then quickly bury her head in her knitting or her Danielle Steele novel so as to feign that she didn't notice said person upon their entrance. Yesterday was no different. The only problem was that two of the eight seats were filled by people who were asleep, three others had elderly Asian women, and one seated a mother with a stroller. This left two seats filled by people who should have, without a second thought, surrendered their seats to the blind man who was, at this point, desperately groping his way toward a place to sit down. I stood to offer the blind man my seat at the rear of the car but another passenger closer to him came up and guided him by the elbow to his seat.

Well, if Linda had orchestrated it to make the other person in the handicapped seats get up by feigning concentration on something else, why might you ask did the other person not get up? I wondered the same thing. When my stop came and I rose to leave, I realized why. IT WAS ANOTHER FUCKING LINDA! As I walked past them and toward the door I told them in my outside-voice that they were not very nice people. I believe the words pathetic, and slothful, and hideously-dressed might have been used. They looked up at me in horror like I had just told them I took a dump in their totebags. Whatever.

I hope they get hit by a bus.

Air Travel = Funny

2004-08-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

I flew back to San Francisco today. I asked one of the secretaries at my office to book me a flight out of Newark through D.C. that would get me home at a reasonable time. What does she give me? A 6:25 am departure out of Newark arriving 25 minutes before my connecting flight. Thanks bitch. This meant I had to leave at 5am. I stepped out the front door and was met with humidity that had already crept past 70%--perfect for wool slacks and a thick cotton dress shirt. I am dumb.

Adding to the comfort level of my trip home was a packed 60-seat plane the size of a Plymouth Voyager. If the Nazis had passenger jets in 1941, they would have used the plane I was on to transport the Jews to the concentration camps. We were crammed in that damn plane like our last names ended in "-stein." I hadn't been that uncomfortable since I was awoken by a New York City police officer asking me why I was throwing liquor bottles and seat cushions out of a moving RV.

I was one of the lucky ones, though. I had an aisle seat! That meant only my entire left arm was jutting out into the aisle and only my entire right leg was jammed into the seat in front of me. Space was so tight that I had to type this like I had flipper-arms, with my elbows attached to my sternum. I was a sexy manimal.

If that wasn't bad enough, our departure was also delayed by 20 minutes. There were two people to blame for this added bonus: some skinny douchebag in a knockoff Armani suit and a fat half-breed with a trombone. I can't fault the skinny douchebag too much, however. His secretary called him as he boarded to inform him that his connecting flight was canceled and there were no other flights going to his destination through Dulles today. What I can fault him for, though, is standing stalk still in the middle of the fucking aisle while taking his phone call. It's not like the plane didn't already feel like we were all bits of meat fighting for position inside a sausage-casing. I honestly didn't even notice the traffic jam he was causing until someone behind me yelled, " HEY SEACREST! SITDOWN OR GET OFF THE FUCKING PLANE!" God bless sweaty angry Italian women.

The half-breed was truly to blame for our extra "together-time" on the ground. At 6'3" and 300+ lbs, this guy was probably half black, half Guamanian. I could tell he was Guamanian because he smelled like salami...don't ask me, man. It's not my fault pacific islanders love processed smoked meats. Half-Breed looked like he could be Adam Duritz' older brother. In a certain light though, he looked like the bastard son of a black man in the Air Force who lost a bar bet and went hoggin.'

He sported long, braided black hair that hung down to his ass and Fu-Man-Chu moustache-goatee combo a la Tank Abbott. He wore TIGHT brown shorts, top-sider deck shoes, a gold Hawaiian shirt, and a large gold chain with attached gold conch shell. This Guamanian nightmare was a P-I-M-P...until he decided to bring a fucking trombone onto this Plymouth Voyager with wings.

If you've ever been on a small jet you know that the overhead bins are remarkably narrow--so narrow, in fact, that they preclude the secure storage of, oh, I don't know...maybe A FUCKING TROMBONE! Well Manila Gorilla insisted it should fit because it fit on his last flight--A 777 FROM LONDON!! I was so stunned by this Grand Canyon-sized leap of logic that I couldn't speak. I was unaware that people this dumb did not die in childbirth. The flight attendant, of course, told him she would have to check it for him and, naturally, he refused. This little dance of the morons was what really added twenty minutes to Auschwitz Airlines flight 1939.

I now officially hate Guam. I am going to make it my life's work to eradicate the "Pacific Islander" bubble from all standardized forms. You delay my flight, I erase your cultural and ethnic identity. Fucker
___________________________________________________________________

Power walking through Dulles to get to my connecting gate, I crossed the path of a father and son in full Boy Scout uniform. I probably wouldn't have noticed them--or at least found the scene somewhat endearing--had the son not been at least 18 and didn't have a slightly modified Hitler-stache...EXACTLY LIKE HIS FATHER! The father was carrying a Boy Scout backpack over one shoulder and the son was sporting all his merit badges. I'm sorry, but 7:30am on a Tuesday is too early for that much unintentional funny.

I tried to walk past quietly on the way to my gate. I failed. Luckily I was walking next to a guy who saw exactly what I did. I turned to ask him a question. LOUDLY:

"Hey dude, I didn't know the annual NAMBLA convention was held in D.C.?"

We both laughed but the Boy Scouts didn't notice. This didn't sit well with my walking partner, so he pulled out a Daisy Cutter. He pulled some magazines out of a plastic shopping bag he was carrying, handed them to me, ran ahead, turned around, stopped the Boy Scouts dead in their tracks, opened the bag wide in front of them and yelled at the top of his lungs, "TRICK OR TREAT!"

Now keep in mind, this is the United terminal at Dulles International Airport on a Tuesday morning. It was not sparsely populated. Everyone--and I mean EVERYONE--stopped what they were doing to turn and look. I thought the father was going to punch this guy. Instead, the son choked up and asked 'what the man meant.' (Holy Shit! Were they part of a "special" troop? Do they even have those? Were those merit badges for things like "Not Shitting Yourself for a Week" or "Tying Your Shoes without Drooling Down Your Leg?" Oh man, this could rank right up there with that time in Vegas I watched tard cheerleading on ESPN.) As the son looked to his dad for reassurance, Trick-or-Treat guy fell to the ground in fits of laughter, mumbling something about always being prepared. There are some really fucked up people in this world...

___________________________________________________________________

I'll make this part short if for no other reason than I have neither the energy nor the intestinal fortitude to recount in full the issues I had with my flight into San Francisco.

I will start by mentioning that United flight 869 from Dulles to San Francisco offers connecting service to Hong Kong. That means lots of Chinese people--in this instance lots of Chinese nationals returning home. Do you know what's worse than a room full of Chinese nationals who had to get up so early that they didn't have time to shower before leaving the family shipping container? A PLANE full of Chinese nationals who had to get up so early that they didn't have time to shower before leaving the family shipping container. Do you know what's worse than that? SITTING NEXT TO TWO OF THEM! I've never beckoned the sweet release of death so earnestly.

There's a simple equation that explains where I'm coming from:

Recycled plane air + Chinese national stench + airline omelet breakfast = PLEASE KILL ME!

Kids Are Smart

2004-08-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

I've been spending the last few days with my cousins up in north Jersey. Because of work, I haven't seen them in almost two years so I was caught by surprise with how much bigger and more articulate and more savvy all of them were. There are three girls: Christen (almost 11), Lauren (9), and Ellen (4). I was there when Christen was born back in '93 so we have kind of a special bond. Lauren is the super smart one, so I always test her on things. She hasn't been wrong yet. And Ellen is my goddaughter--so I get to spoil her whenever I'm around. Over the last three days, these girls have said some of the funniest, truest shit I have ever heard. Here's a sampling:

--we were all in the pool on Saturday afternoon doing flips and handstands. I did a handstand and when I came up from under water Ellen, the 4 year old, yelled at the top of her lungs:

Neeny-boy, you have a super-duper gigantic monster weiner!

I have no idea where she came up with that because I had long black basketball shorts on when I did the handstand and only my thighs and lower legs were out of the water. Regardless, I nearly drowned laughing--which was the worst thing I could have done. She picked up on it, understood why I was laughing, and took it to the next level:

Neeny-boy, your weiner is the size of the HOUSE! Neeny-boy, your weiner is the size of the whole backyard! Neeny-boy, your weiner is the size of New Jersey!

Ellen is smart.

--later that evening we were about to sit down to dinner when Christen chimed in with a killer smackdown. Her dad--my Uncle Rob--came in from outside with meat from off the grill. He set it on the counter and kissed my Aunt Sharon. Just then Christen entered the kitchen and saw them kissing. Her reaction was quick and fierce:

Daddy, what are you doing? How can you kiss mommy like that. Look at how big her butt and her belly are getting. It's gross!

I nearly fell out of my chair. Rob tried to scold her but couldn't do it effectively because the smile on his face was too big. Sharon got beet-red and finished preparing the mashed potatoes. The next morning Sharon got up early, hit the stairmaster, did some crunches, and had a Slimfast for breakfast.

11yr old 1, 41yr old ZERO!

Lauren, the middle girl, is absolutely adorable and frighteningly smart. She's quick-witted and she sees through people's bullshit better than some 25 year-olds I know. She's not the sports type, or the clothes type, but she likes animals and loves bugs. Yesterday afternoon I took her and Christen to see a movie and during the drive I asked her if she liked any boys in her class. This was her response:

Neeny-boy, boys are like bugs. They're fun to play with until they do something to annoy you and then you want to squish them to death.

I've taken to calling Lauren the "Black Widow." Not surprisingly, she loves the new name.

Glen

2004-07-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

My daughters will never date men named Glen. I trust Glens even less than I trust Mikes or Matts and you couldn't PAY me to entrust them with anything of even the slightest importance. Matts are date-rapers and test-cheaters. Mikes skim off the register and steal your girlfriend. Glens, however, are on a whole other level of fuckedupedness.

Glens have wispy, prematurely thinning hair, permanent skin and fingernail discoloration from a lifetime of chain-smoking, and they look at least 10 years older than they actually are. They are the fat, pasty-white guys at your 15 year high school reunion who are camped out at the end of the open bar swilling gin and inhaling the Chex Fiesta Mix like the bottom of the bowl holds the secret to eternal youth.

The product of an inordinate amount of time spent indoors, in the dark, prone in front of the television staring at late-night Ronco infomercials, Glens are those guys with zero muscle definition who look like heaps of Jell-O poured into molds purchased from the Failure-At-Life Store.

Glens befriend the bartender and the waitstaff--making painfully-forced small talk as they get drunker and drunker in an attempt to block out the comments their classmates are making about them under their breath:

--Who’s Glen?
--Jesus, what happened to Glen?
--Hey, I didn't know we went to school with Louie Anderson
--God must really hate Glen
--Hey, that fatass is eating all the Chex Mix!

The indignity is almost too much to bear, even for Glens. But, when you consider that the only reason Glens attend their reunion in the first place is the free food and free booze, it should be no surprise that Glens are the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Glens live at home in the basement surrounded by half gallon milk jugs and Tupperware containers of varying shapes and sizes filled with their bodily fluids. Why is this? you might ask. Well Glens rarely take care of business where business is normally taken care of. They are always too something--too tired, too sweaty, too lazy, too comfortable, too pre-occupied. It is, after all, much easier to roll to one side and rub one out into yesterdays lunch Tupperware than it is to go to the bathroom or the bedroom and risk missing Ron Popeil "set and forget" another fucking Lamb shank in his counter-top rotisserie oven.

Glens also like the weird porn. I'm not talking bondage or foot fetish either. I'm talking anal bukkake gangbang and fisting pregnant Asian women who are missing appendages.

Hop Sing she rike you put you hand in da poo poo hole rong time. Shove big hand rike jackhammah make Hop Sing scleam velly roud and want to rick you finger.

Glens love to visit Thailand. They go in small groups with people they meet on the internet--armed with $5000, a small duffel bag, and a stack of mail-order bride catalogues [dog-eared, highlighted, and underlined] that have a number of pages mysteriously stuck together:

Hmmm, BT4565. "Penny." 5'2" 95lbs. Loves to cook and clean. She's 18 (wink, wink) and dreams of moving to Hollywood and meeting Dustin Hoffman

Glens are mouth-breathers and I want them nowhere near my end of the gene pool. They are the Dutch Elm disease of the family tree. Let a Glen park his lemon Jell-O ass on one of your branches and you might as well soak that limb in napalm and strike the match…at least it's quicker.

Everybody's Kung Fu Fighting

2004-07-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

I sleep with a flat-head screwdriver. It's lodged between the mattress and the boxspring because I've seen too many Jean Claude Van Damme movies. I have convinced myself that deep in REM sleep and snoring like I invented it, I will sense the presence of a malignant force and--in one fluid badasskungfumotherfucker motion--pull the screwdriver, flip out of bed, and shove it through his neck.

Paint the fence, Daniel-san, paint the fence.

Who am I kidding?! I'll probably just pretend I don't hear him and hope he doesn't try to steal my anal virginity or my Raiders season tickets; if I even wake up in the first place.
_____________________________________________________________________

Do I get credit for having an impeccable sense of style even if I'm too lazy to put in the effort necessary to pull it off?

I'm inclined to say 'no' unless I pursue a career as a wardrobe stylist or an interior designer. Unfortunately, I hate Liza Manelli and love sports...so I'm kind of screwed.
____________________________________________________________________

Lazy-Eyed Mormon just told me that her uncle said the reason she was single was because she doesn't like football! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAAA! FOOTBALL IS THE REASON SHE'S SINGLE!?! How about the fact that she's 5 feet 7 inches of pasty-skinned, lazy-eyed, snaggle-toothed, double-chinned Mormon idiocy? Oh, well yes...there's that.

Stepping in Shit

2004-07-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

It's 9:10am and I'm already in trouble with the judge for disrupting court proceedings. Let me give you a piece of advice: if you are exhausted in court and need to find something to keep yourself awake do NOT tell yourself all the dirty jokes you know--especially if you're renowned for cracking yourself up. It also helps if you're not fucking retarded...
___________________________________________________________________

Just before the end of lunch, I went to the men's room to take a leak and wash my hands. The stench was over-powering. Whoever was in the handicapped stall was exorcising some serious rectal demons. As I was washing my hands, the owner of the offending ass emerged from the stall repeatedly looking back over his shoulder with a worried look on his face. I noticed this in the large mirror in front of me and turned to see what he was worried about...

The toilet was overflowing. Large, lincoln-log type turds were floating up over the bowl and onto the green tile floor amidst a river of toilet water, and urine. It didn't seem like it would ever stop. The man stood nervously next to me and started frantically washing his hands--obviously trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't know what to do, so I did what came naturally:

"Jesus Christ buddy, what'd you eat for lunch? A family of four?!"
--no response
"If you can do this to a public toilet, I can only imagine what you do to your toilet at home. It must be a Superfund site."
--no response (his head hung over the sink getting red with embarrassment or rage as he finished drying his hands)
"If I get shit on my shoes, I'm sending you the bill. Do you even work here?"

With that statement he shot me a very stern look, turned and headed for the door. As he reached for the handle, it was pushed open from the other side by one of the clerks from the Records Dept. The clerk shuffled around the man and said, "Pardon me, Your Honor."

Oops.
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While at trial here in DC, we are working at the offices of co-counsel in a small building near Dupont Circle. They employ as the head of their Office Services Department, a short, shameless black man named Darrell with the personality of a diva--in a non-gay way.

Darrell has yellowing eyes, a missing top front tooth, and a taste for Bud Ice Tallboys (by his own admission as well as the sweet stench of an Anheuser-Busch plant that he wears every morning like cologne). Darrell is always chatty and always smiling--probably because he's drunk. In fact, this man talks to anything with a vagina...and I mean ANYTHING! Coming back from court this afternoon, Darrell came downstairs to help me haul some boxes back into the office. I was pushing the hand truck and he was walking in front clearing a path down the sidewalk when a "woman" passed us going the same direction.

This "woman" was a big girl. A BIG girl. A BIG BIG BIG girl. She was very dark, very fat, and very ugly. She is the kind of girl that might make you and I say "oh sweet jesus, my eyes! My eyes!" Darrell? He shouted at her, "Heeeeey Baaaaaby," then gesturing back toward me, "where you goin'? Come back here and meet my friend Bernard!"

Bernard!! I nearly pissed myself--partly because Bernard is a funny name and partly because she stopped in her tracks like a buffalo that heard a noise in the grass to consider Darrell's proposition. At this point, I just start pulling the cart toward the front door of the building laughing hysterically and watching Darrell spit game; completely oblivious to anything else...like, for instance, the fact that the glass front doors were closed. Two steps later--SLAM!--the side of my head and my shoulder go straight into double-paned glass. Nice work, NP. Nice work.

Court is Fun

2004-07-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Spending three straight full days in a courtroom listening to expert testimony about semiconductor chips and fighting the impulse to throw yourself in traffic, you start dreaming up some really fucked up things. I noticed this early on and started jotting down the thoughts that crossed my mind. Here is a Greatest Hits Album from the last 3 days:

July 26, 2004 (11:30am EDT)
"Chinese food for lunch today. I'd love to find a restaurant that gives you fortune cookies with fucked up fortunes inside. You could call them MISfortune cookies. I wonder if anyone's ever thought of it? (authors note: it turns out--thank you Google--that I was not the first person to come up with this idea. Apparently I'm not even the TWENTY-first person to come up with this idea ) I could come up with some funny shit:

--you're significant other just slept with your next door neighbor
--Congratulations, you have cancer
--You're adopted
--Your family hates you
--Your pork chow mein was made with cat.
--Rape isn't a crime. It's a past-time
--that's not baby fat...you're just ugly

July 27, 2004 (2:46pm EDT)
"I wonder what would happen if I cracked a beer in the middle of court? I should bring in a small igloo cooler with a six-pack of Tallboys...no no no. I should arrive in a suit with a beer helmet on. OR, I could roll a pony keg up to counsel table and ask anyone who makes eye contact with me if they want to do a kegstand."

July 26, 2004 (1:55pm EDT)--25 minutes after chinese food
"I wonder if the judge would get upset if I farted. A LOT."

July 23, 2004 (8:25am EDT)
"I just found out that the attorney for opposing counsel who is examining our expert went to Stanford for undergrad. I immediately hate him. I consider him the most despicable kind of human being and I have not stopped staring at him with utter and complete disdain since I found out. If I catch him looking at me I am going to jump over the table and hit him in the face with a binder."

July 27, 2004 (10:50am EDT)
"I think the court reporter and I have developed a connection. I'm sitting right near her and she keeps looking over at me and smiling. She's pretty cute...I wonder if I can distract her enough to make her mess up the transcript? 'Dr. Farr is it your testimony that the manufacturing of semiconductor chips require that goddam he's cute I want to have sex with him in the bathroom at lunch strict adherence to MO-220 Industry Standards.'. OH NO, she has a big round potbelly! No wonder she wears so many pants suits!"

July 27, 2004 (3:44pm EDT)

Opposing counsel looks like they were pulled from a comic book convention or the ticket line from the opening night of Lord of the Rings. When I look at them I am at once intrigued and disgusted by the type of pornography these people most likely watch...especially Gus Johnson.
Johnson is probably in his mid-50s with beady eyes, a lipless grin, a pale ashen-colored face and a long sloping angular nose reminiscent of New Yorker political caricatures from "Talk of the Town." His suits fit like tarps over mounds of dirt--it's not all his fault really. He's a fucking mess. He's the kind of fat man who looks like he would leak out onto the floor into an amorphous pool of blubber if it weren't for the constrictive, form-shaping nature of men's business apparel.
I don't know if it's just me but I'm pretty confident that if I went to Bangkok next week and asked the cab driver to take me to the section of town with the fellating 10 year old schoolboys, I'd probably run into Gus Johnson

A Tranny is Not Just a Car Part

2004-07-27T04:23:00.000-07:00

I had dinner at Pepper's last night in D.C. That, in and of itself, is nothing extraordinary. My BBQ chicken sandwich got its "bbq" straight out of a bottle from the Safeway across the street, my Guinness was served in a plastic water glass, and I actually think I saw the cook slice open the Ore-Ida bag that held my "signature waffle-cut fries." What made this dinner special was the scenery.

If you weren't already aware, 17th St NW on the other side of Connecticut Ave. is D.C.'s own little Castro District. Like The Castro, this little stretch of 17th is remarkably clean--even the homeless look showered and shaved--and well-appointed. Rainbow flags and flower boxes dot the stoops and storefronts along both sides of the street. It hosts a bevy of over-priced, faux-Italian bistro style restaurants that almost dare passers-by not to come in and spend too much for too little for fear they might seem cheap or pedestrian in their tastes.

Coming from San Francisco, what surprised me about D.C.s mini-Castro was the degree to which it seemed a complete cliche of gay culture. I spent most of my time during dinner people-watching--people dining on the patio around us, people walking up and down the rain-soaked sidewalk, people serving our food. They all seemed to be wearing their Gay Costumes. Nearly every single gay man I saw had short, neatly cropped hair and wore tight fade-front BR jeans and a tight sleeveless t-shirt. I was unaware that sleeveless t-shirts were issued to all gay males once they joined the Gay Army.

I was similarly surprised by the lack of lesbians. Fag-hags outnumbered lesbians by a good 6 or 7 to 1. How would I know, you ask? I'm from San Francisco motherfucker. I own standard-issue San Francisco Gaydar. It was hilarious watching these gaggles of people chatting and laughing and carrying on. Each gaggle had their requisite D.C. gay boys, one super-butch lesbian, and--somewhat oddly--a phalanx of obviously straight girls who think that gay guys just have more fun and won't hit on them (note to straight girls: no one is going to hit on you. Why? BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKING UGLY!)

There was one great moment from last night, however. About half-way through dinner, one of the guys I was having dinner with called over the waitress to get another plastic-cupped Guinness. He started lightly flirting with her because...well...he could. She reacted like a startled doe. Her eyes widened and she froze in her tracks. Apparently she hadn't been flirted with by a man in some time. This girl was pretty young looking and you got a sense from her reaction to my buddy and to her surroundings that a few months ago she got e-tarded at a Queer As Folk Marathon, hooked up with a girl for the first time, woke up in some house off of 17th Street, and hasn't been able to find her way home since then. I guess Gretel and Gretel ran out of breadcrumbs.

The whole exchange felt like a scene from a Lifetime Movie of the Week. An undercover agent infiltrates the compound of a psuedo-religious cult in order to save a young girl who was drawn in using ill-founded means. He finally gets her alone in a backroom during work detail and exposes himself to her as one of the good guys who is there to get her out. I think the awkward silence at our table lasted a good 30 seconds. As we sat there frozen, a woman walked past our table and, in an effort to maneuver around our waitress-en-tableau, clipped my head with her elbow. The bitch just kept walking! I turned around and stared but she was completely oblivious. Finally, I yelled out "hey lady, usually cold-cocking someone is worthy of an apology unless you're French and don't need an excuse for being a complete bitch!"

As the word 'bitch' flew from my lips, she spun around and came charging back toward my table. I wasn't worried until she got closer and I noticed her abnormally deep voice. And her five o'clock shadow. And her Adam's Apple. Uh-oh. She started screaming. She's bellowing at the top of her lungs like an enraged Harvey Firestein. "You are the rudest person I've ever met!" "I bet you don't even have a girlfriend!" "No woman would stand for someone like you who doesn't know how to treat a lady!" Mind you, at this point my buddy is nearly falling over in his chair laughing. I have a screaming transexual to my left and a cackling attorney to my right. Good times.

Then she broke out the clincher: "As a woman, I find your conduct abhorrent and reprehensible!" I couldn't take it anymore. "As a woman! AS A WOMAN! Dude, YOU'RE A DUDE! You have facial hair! You have an Adam's Apple! Fuck that, that's thing's so goddamn big you must have an Adam's Apple Orchard. You sound like the illegitmate love child of Kathleen Turner and Isaac Hayes! If you're a woman, I'm Marie Antoinette you fucking freak! Now get your tranny-ass away from my table before I call the tranny police, the manners police, and the fashion police to cart your broken-down ass to tranny jail. You're a disgrace to trannies everywhere. Get out of my fucking sight."

That put her over the edge. Now she's bawling and screaming. The only thing that saved me from getting clobbered and probably sent to jail for assaulting a she-male was the friend I was eating with. The whole time this tragic comedy is playing out he is bent over, crippled with laughter. Finally, when I told the tranny that the fashion police were going to cart her broken-down ass to tranny jail he fell over in his chair, hit his head on the concrete patio, and knocked himself unconscious.

Now I have a sobbing tranny on my left and an unconscious attorney on my right. GOOD TIMES!

Lazy-Eyed Mormon

2004-07-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm on the road this month for trial in a case that, before the day I left, I had never heard of. Working with attorneys I've never met in a town where the people I do know work all day and head to the shore every weekend, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work closely with a fat girl from one of our other California offices. Her name is Katrina and she's a lazy-eyed Mormon. She's got graying, snaggled front teeth, the fashion sense of an 8-year old Down's Syndrome child, permed red hair, and a huge HUGE ass. She's the anti-viagra. Don't try to throw the football through the tire swing when she's around.

She wore denim capris the other day and I think I threw up in my mouth. There's nothing worse than inadvertantly looking up from what you are doing and catching a glance of a gigantic, denim-clad ass passing in front of you. It felt like I was staring into a denim sun. I quickly averted my eyes so as to avoid the onset of blindness. Unfortunately, all that did was direct my gaze toward her pale, sausage-like calves that--you could tell by the stubble pattern--had been shorn sometime that morning (undoubtedly by an industrial-grade Black & Decker lawn product). A little side note:

there is nothing more unappetizing than the freshly-shaved legs
of a fat girl who doesn't get much sun. Because her skin is translucent,
you can see the black hair follicles that have retreated just below the skin
after being cut by her (Fat)Lady Bic. Their retreat actually leaves tiny
dimples in the skin that make Fat Girl's legs look like they've been walked
on by golf shoes. It's a horrible, horrible sight and one I don't wish on anyone

Anyhow, as I fought off yet another wave of fat-enduced nausea, my eyes fell upon another horrible sight--her feet (Jesus Christ, I can't believe I am forcing myself to relive this experience. Isn't this what they make incest-survivors and rape victims do in therapy to get past their mental blocks?) Her toes looked like vienna sausages with knuckles and hair. HAIR!! And, like most fat girls swimming in denial, she had her 10-pack of vienna sausages bound inside a pair of Payless Shoe Source sandals that were at least 2 sizes too small. They looked like corsets, the straps of which dug into the pasty flesh of her feet like butcher's twine around a pair of stuffed pork tenderloins.

This is what I am sitting across from everyday all day for the entire month of July. I can't even make eye contact with this land manatee because her left eye looks toward the door. LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M SPEAKING TO YOU! GODDAMNIT LOOK AT ME! WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?! THERE'S NOTHING OVER THERE! I'M OVER HERE, IN. FRONT. OF. YOU.

Fun with Hotel Staff

2004-07-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've been living out of a 5th floor hotel room in D.C. for the last three weeks. Room service sucks, the cable package sucks, the pay-per-view movies suck, the porn sucks, the coffee maker sucks, and the comforter smells like someone wiped their ass with it and soaked it overnight in bleu cheese dressing. Mercifully, thanks to the demands of trial and poorly prepared attorneys, I spend little time in my haven of discomfort. Last night, after my keycard demagnetized twice in a span of 15 minutes and room service refused to take my order because I called five minutes after they closed (due to the time I spent convincing some Sudanese reject that I wasn't trying to make her life difficult or stash keys so I--and I quote--"could have loud pahtees in room with many friend."), I decided to have a little fun.

I sat in my room fuming over the indignity of not being allowed to purchase chicken tenders and a bowl of crap-ass soup. Finally, after twenty minutes of pouting, I threw the room service menu against the opposite wall, got dressed, and walked down 17th St to a CVS that was open til midnight. I strolled down the cosmetic aisle and bought two of the brightest richest reddest lipsticks I could find. As I made my way to the counter I started to get a little self-conscious--like the first time you buy condoms or tampons for your girlfriend. What would the clerks think? To balance out the lipstick, I grabbed a Mountain Dew out of the fridge case and a bag of Funyuns. That's when I realized that instead of giving off the impression of being a transvestite, now I was exuding the aura of a transvestite who was going to run home, dress up, and beat off to a pirated copy of Lord of the Rings in front of my computer.

Not good. I should have known better considering where I was. This CVS just happened to be on the periphery of D.C.'s gay neighborhood. A muscular 6'5" white guy with close-cropped hair buying two tubes of bright red lipstick from the CVS on Connecticut and 17th at 11:30pm? For you, that might be weird. For these clerks, that's called Tuesday. So I tossed the Mountain Spew and Funyuns on the floor in Aisle 4 and slapped the lipstick down on the counter. They didn't flinch, of course, and I was back at the hotel before midnight.

To preface this even further, my first few days in the hotel I noticed that the staff was an extraordinarily devout group of disenfranchised African immigrants. Nearly everyone wore some sort of necklace with a cross dangling from it. There was a bible on the coffee table in the lounge. At the bar, there was a bible next to the drink menus and stackable plastic ashtrays. I heard the word "Lord" in the lobby more times over the last three weeks than I'd heard in the last three years of my life. Ultimately, I figured if I was going to fuck with these people, that's how I'd get to them.

I got back to my room just before the midnight edition of Baseball Tonight went into the opening montage. This was going to be great. I was going to fuck with the entire staff of a major hotel chain AND I would get to hear Rob Dibble and Peter Gammons bemoan the state of the Red Sox organization (again) after choking (again) against the Yankees (again) in the first game of a critical weekend series (again). Turning up the volume on the TV, I grabbed my toiletry scissors, the Gideons Bible on the bedside table, the bag of lipsticks, and I went to work:

Step 1: cut out every page except page 666. You'd be surprised how long this takes with a pair of toiletry scissors. I've spent 4 years in a law firm in front of a computer and I think shearing out the pages of a complimentary bible is going to be what gives me Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Step 2: write something on every page. In lipstick. This part kept me up until 4 a.m. The hard part wasn't coming up with something to write. The hard part was writing it in lipstick on 750 pieces of thin bible paper. To make things easier I settled on a trio of phrases:

               1. JESUS HATES ME

               2. END IT ALL LORD

               3. THIS YEAR'S THE YEAR

Step 3: pick up all 750 pieces of lipsick-covered bible and throw them in the air like I just graduated. The blast radius was beautiful. They scattered gleefully all over the hotel room floor like a psychotically hate-filled Rorschach ink blot. I slept like a baby.

Step 4: before leaving for the office in the morning, place the gutted bible in the middle of the bed, open to pg. 666.

Step 5: laugh hysterically to yourself all day

I got back to the room around 8:30 tonight. It was UNTOUCHED. I called down and inquired as to why my room wasn't clean. The Sudanese refugee on the other end replied, "maid service refused to clean your room sir. They say it is bad luck because you are a sinner who is going to hell and eternal damnation." I was agape. I didn't know what to say--partly out of shock, partly because I couldn't stop laughing. Finally I collected myself. I said, "well yeah, that's all well and good but tomorrow someone better clean my fucking room," and I hung up.

to be continued, I guess...