I Don't Need No Doctor

My doctor wants to hook up with me.

I went for a routine physical exam the other day and the doctor found almost nothing wrong. I was hoping for better news. I’m at an age where my contemporaries begin to alternate tales of their highly successful offspring with a litany of maladies and they suffer from and the medicines that sustain them.

I’ve got nothing. Soon our gatherings will consist of my friends sitting around the table sorting their pills into those S M T W T F S containers while describing poor urine flow, with me just rolling my eyes and eating all the foods they can’t digest any more. Meanwhile, I think my doctor covets my healthy body.

I use Metamucil but that’s not a sign of age or even a problem anymore; it’s part of staying healthy and being young. Their new “commercial oozes sophistication … packed with images of hypnotically gliding, smiling young women getting ready for a night on the town… Along with the new campaign has come a drop -- from 55-plus to 35-plus -- in the age of the product's target audience.” Metamucil is starting a youth movement.

I don’t drink alcohol very much. I put that on the checklist. Before the exam I had to go through this list and note that I don’t smoke, I don’t pee too much or too little and I have no sexual dysfunction. I wasn’t sure why I even filled out the form because the doctor repeated most of the questions during the exam; twice I was asked “so… no sexual dysfunctions or any problems there?” Trying to say it in a way that didn’t reveal a non-medical interest.

At the time I just assumed that she gets a kickback from any Viagra/Cialis/Levitra prescriptions she writes. (Did I mention my doctor is a woman?) Looking back later, after the other incidents, I thought she – what? - wanted me to prove it? Was she just confirming that I could perform if she decided to actually hit on me?

I was always bad at reading signs that girls were interested in me. After any chance to react to it had passed, someone would ask me, “Didn’t you know that Shirley likes you?” “Likes me, likes me?” “Yeah.” “Shit! Why didn’t you tell me?”

I eat a lot of blueberries. And cruciferous vegetables. And other good antioxidants and vitamin packed foods. I don’t know if that’s why, but my blood pressure is to be envied and my cholesterol numbers are posted as an example to others of the perfection that can be achieved if they really try. My PSA, the measure of prostate cancer risk, is 0.45 where less than 4.0 is good.

I’m very happy about that. I mean, I’ll take bad cholesterol to get myself into the aging-illness bingo game. But I don’t want cancer. A little swollen prostate might be okay, but I had no luck there either. As an aside, guys, it may be a little embarrassing to have a female doctor check your prostate, but it is more than made up for by the fact that she has slender, feminine fingers. In years past, when I went to a male urologist for this exam, I selected a Vietnamese man because he had tiny exploring digits.

My doctor is a short, thin woman, getting even smaller with age (She’s a bit older than I am and, I think, covets my youthful body). She examined my prostate and then looked at me with a smile and said it was “not enlarged at all - smooth and soft and perfect.”

Here is where I started to detect something uncomfortable – not in my prostate, just in the atmosphere in the examining room. Looking back, I recall that she said that about my prostate like she might tell me “your eyes were as clear and blue as a mountain stream - the ones they get water from to make ice cold beer.” As if she could peer into my soul and see what moved me. But I still didn’t really catch on at that point.

I use sunscreen. Even when I go to LA to hang at the beach for a week. People at work make fun of me because I come back less than tan. That’s one of the reasons that the doctor found a minor problem to tell me about. I have a vitamin D deficiency. She said it’s common in the Midwest. We don’t get enough “good” sun and we use protection. (Was there a huskiness in her voice when she said “use protection”?)

She gave me a prescription for vitamin D. That’s right. There is prescription strength vitamin D. That is so lame. When the guys are sitting around talking about their Flowmax prescriptions, I’m just going to keep that vitamin D thing to myself. I asked her, “Can’t you just prescribe that I need to move to Southern California and live on the beach?” She said, “I can. The insurance company won’t pay for it, though.” She smiled, letting me know she liked my sense of humor and she could keep up.

Then she found the other thing. I have small cyst on the bottom of my right breast. “It appears totally benign,” she assured me; “just a normal, subcutaneous cyst.” I was relieved, but she wasn’t done. “However, you could have somebody check it out, if you want.” I looked at her, letting her know that I was cool, but, sure, I could let somebody check it. “I can send you to my ex-husband. He’s a surgeon. He will probably just remove it.”

She went all that way to not only make me feel vulnerable and like I needed her, but to let me know she was not married. That’s when sitting naked on her examining table with nothing but a thin paper sheet separating us became very awkward. I stared at the brochures about cancer and thought about baseball and dead puppies.

She left the room soon after and I got dressed and went out to get my prescriptions and the referral to her ex-husband. But I couldn’t shake the disturbing feeling.

My doctor wants to hook up with me.

Send In The Clowns

When I was in the second interview for the CFO job I have now, the President/CEO of this architecture firm was in the room. He was clearly bored by all the accounting talk and I thought I was doomed. Then he turned to me and asked, “What do you do for fun?” I said, “I write comedy for Gary Burbank.” My boss saw the chance to be the only architecture firm in town with a comedy-writing accountant and he grabbed it. Humor makes mind-numbing financial tedium more palatable and SOME people in our federal government need to learn that

.“The Treasury Department revealed Friday that it is scrapping plans to hire a cartoonist to lighten the mood of its employees who manage the nation's $1 trillion-plus debt…”

I was referred to this story via Dave Barry’s blog. Dave captioned it with “Instead, They’re Going to Hire a Clown”. But, really, why would they hire a clown when Joe Biden is just down the street? (I was going to say “why would they hire a clown when Tim Geitner is right upstairs” but Tim is actually more of a weaselly racketeer than a clown.)

"Our training staff felt that at a time when employees are working extra hours, it might have been helpful," said Kim Treat, a spokesman for the bureau…. The contractor would have to be able to "create cartoons on the spot" about jobs at the bureau, according to the text of the solicitation.

Imagine you are working extra hours for the 20th day in a row. The cartoonist approaches your desk and hands you his latest cartoon. “I have drawn an amusing scene to capture the futility of your efforts and mock the way in which you waste the taxpayer money in this mindless bureaucracy. Don’t get up. I can just insert it into my behind with all the others your coworkers have placed there”

What Treasury needs is a full-time regular financial type employee who can bring the funny. Dear Tim Geitner, let’s talk, I could be available for the right price. What? That racketeer remark? Just a sample of my work, Tim.


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Litterally Evil

I had an idea to create a cat litter called Sani-Cat. Once it was on the market I would start a rumor that the company was run by devil worshipers. The proof? "Sani-Cat" is an anagram for "Satanic".

It might seem counter=productive to spread such a rumor about my company, but "there is no bad publicity". Besides, who owns cats? Crazy ladies and witches. Okay, there are a few other people, but crazies and witches, friends of Satan, give you 80% of the market (look it up).

So, imagine my chagrin at finding that Sani-Cat is already out there. But I've never heard of it before, have you? I'm thinking of calling them and selling them a great marketing idea.

Every Breath You Take, Every Movement You Make.."

Pushing my cart through the produce section of Kroger yesterday, maybe I should have been prepared for a romantic proposition. But I was preoccupied, merely looking for a bag of salad mix, not a date. The woman came up from behind me and I was slightly startled when, from just over my right shoulder, she said, “I’d better go home with you; I need some of that.” She caught up with me just as she finished her sentence so I was able to see her indicate exactly what she needed. She was nodding her head toward toward my lower torso – no, no, it was toward the two bottles of Kroger brand “Fiber Laxative Caplets” I had in the child seat section of the cart.
The woman was a Kroger employee, about my age, looking a little worse for wear and not very concerned about her appearance for someone spouting pickup lines by the packaged fresh herbs. She was hunched over her own cart filled with random items she was restocking to the shelves. I didn’t know quite how to respond to her seductive offer to split some fiber caps at my pad. I was buying them for my wife (I don’t use them…I have Metamucil powder) and they were on sale. So, to explain that I had good reason for mass laxative quantities, I said, “They’re buy one get one free.”
“Well, you buy the first one and I’ll take the free one,” she said with a cackle. Oh god, was that a wink she threw at me there?
The incident had me so unsettled that I forgot to get the honey-roasted almonds and the pecans I wanted from the produce shelves. I hurried on to the next aisle and there she was, rounding the corner and coming the other way, stocking boxed dinners. I saw her smiling up at me as I accelerated past her.
Later I remembered my almonds and pecans, but only one at a time, so I had to return to produce twice. My stocker was there both times, still trolling for love among the vegetables. The second time I returned she said, with a knowing smile, “ I see you’re only shopping for things in the first two aisles.” She straightened up slightly as if to say, "See anything you like?" I grabbed my nuts and went to check out without looking back.
This odd incident reminded me of one that occurred at a different grocery store some 20 years ago. A much younger woman, actually a girl, probably 16, who also was a store employee, kept appearing in various spots around the store. Each time I saw her, she was looking intently at me and smiling in a way that suggested she wanted to speak to me but was too shy, or perhaps intimidated by me good looks. I had no inclination to strike up a flirtation with a teenager, but it was nice to know I still had some appeal at twice her age. Finally, the girl followed me out of the store and as I was putting my sacks in the trunk, she came boldly up to me under pretence of collecting my cart and asked the question she’d been longing to put to me: “Are you Greg Meyer’s dad?”
So maybe today I misunderstood a woman’s intentions again. And maybe I should ask my wife to go with me to the grocery for protection.

I Rot the Songs

In a group I belong to, 3 of us out of 10 friends have the same birthday in December. My older friend Bill (Everything You Know About English is Farkakteh) celebrates the day after I do. I have several other friends born around the same time (late November through mid-December), meaning all are Sagittarians. I am more into words than astrology, so what interested me most about this calendaric coincidence is that it would make a good country song: “All My Friends Are Sagittarians”, kind of like “All My Exes Live in Texas”. Now, the majority of people I know are not Sagittarians, but “Some of my friends, but not all and none of my close family, are Sagittarians” doesn’t work so well as a song. Also, I know that ‘friends” does not rhyme with “Sagittarians”, but “exes” doesn’t exactly rhyme with “Texas” either (though it works better than Steve Miller’s “rhyme” of “Texas”, “facts is” and “justice”), but I pronounce the words as “frenz” and “Sagittarienz”, giving the song a hip-hop flava. What I want to write is a country, hip-hop, pop, folk fusion song. I am struggling with it because I can write a parody song given some one else’s tune, but coming up with a completely original song is tough, which is why I’m a number jockey in Cincinnati, not a tune smith in Nashville.
Much of the typical Sagittarian traits apply to me: Interested in philosophy and religion, impulsive and independent, procrastinate, natural comedians (sometimes exaggerating their adventures to entertain people), but sometimes offend by speaking without thinking, and can be argumentative or blunt. Sagittarians are susceptible to hip troubles and leg pain. Okay so far, but also, Sagittarians are great athletes, big-game hunters and fishermen. HA! All these traits ought to be worked into the song, unless they don’t rhyme. But like I said, I’m having trouble; in fact I pretty much just have words that rhyme but have nothing to do with the zodiac or my real friends. Here’s what I have so far:

CHORUS:
All my friends are Sagittarians
We have affinity for philosophy,
Sometimes we act like horse rear ends
Comedians, contrarians, some quinquagenarians
All my friends are Sagittarians



I know some Rastafarians
Braided, bearded, hairy men
Need ganja? They are carryin’
They grow it: they’re agrarian

This woman’s name is Marian,
She is a librarian
‘Til her body turns to carrion
She’ll be Sagittarian

CHORUS

One pretends she’s a thespian
She also is a lesbian
She won’t eat meat or marry men
She’s a vagitarian

So, not all my friends are men
Some are more ovarian
And even imaginary friends
Of mine are Sagittarians

CHORUS

We’re characterized as mutable,
Think everything’s disputable
We’re blunt, unlike our arrow,
Don’t follow the straight and narrow

We’re impulsive but procrastinate
We’re honest but exaggerate
Legs hurt from the brains we’re carryin’
We are proud Sagittarians

CHORUS

See, it’s pretty lame. I invite you to make a much better song, produce it and upload to YouTube and link to it in the comments. When some record label or artist buys it, we’ll split the profits. Or just write some lyrics in the comments. Here’s some leftover words you might use:
Bavarian, Aryan, clarion, barbarian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, non-sectarian, sectarian, Wagnerian, centenarian, grammarian, libertarian, vegetarian, proletarian, seminarian, Unitarian, veterinarian, authoritarian, disciplinarian, egalitarian, humanitarian, octogenarian, parliamentarian, totalitarian, utilitarian, septuagenarian, begins and ends, portends.

(I was going to use the Sagittarius image from this site, because it's pretty right on, but I couldn't get past the misuse of "your" instead of "you're".)

This is Serious

No jokes today. America's most critical institution is in a financial crisis. They are trying to repackage their poorest products and find buyers for them. When will the government step in and bail out Hershey's, who can't afford to put cocoa butter in all of their chocolate candy? Without adequate real chocolate supplies, what will we consume to make us feel better about our life savings being lost in bank failures? What are Obama's and McCain's plans to save the chocolate industry? Start demanding answers! Get out and Choc the Vote!

Sacked

“Paper or plastic?” at some point became a punch line in our culture because it was a question heard everyday at grocery stores. The customer was in control; we had options; everyone was happy. Then, I don’t remember when it started, there was a subtle shift that the stores hope we didn’t notice. “Is plastic okay?” is the query posed now at Kroger. It appears that we still have a choice, but the bagger is standing there, a smile on her face, your beans in her hand, hovering over an open plastic bag; how can you say, “No, I want paper” and crush her youthful enthusiasm? It is a psychological ploy by Kroger to force the plastic bags upon us.
I don’t know why Kroger is doing this, but I fear that I am the only one who sees it and I am trying to fight back on my own. (VOICEOVER: In a world gone mad, with people slowly being forced into plastic bags, one man dares to….). And for some reason their choice of agents to spread the plastic dogma is a cadre of 14-year-old baggers who have taken to this mission like a Facebook groupful of Obama internet supporters..
I fix my gaze on the young woman and politely pronounce, “Paper please.” There is no overt reaction but I see the quick glance between checker and bagger. I know one of them is pressing a secret button that flags my Kroger shopper card with the label “troublemaker.” I have no environmental, do-gooder, green freak reason for demanding paper bags. I do it to fight the creeping fascism of floppy plastic bag pushers whose agenda is surely driven by some unholy, faceless, corporate corrupt motive that I have yet to ferret out - but I will.
One day I went to the pharmacy counter to buy some Sudafed (actually I bought Kroger Nasal Decongestant, which is psuedo-Sudafed). They copied down everything on my drivers license and called the local police to see if I’d ever been convicted of making meth (I’ve been exonerated every time). Then I paid for the stuff and they put it in a small paper bag, put the receipt on it and triple-stapled the bag shut so I couldn’t get the pills out and start cooking them up in the deli section. I finished my shopping and went to the checkout. There was the usual checker and bagger, but, as I approached the aisle, a third worker came out of nowhere and started helping me load my groceries onto the belt. She cleverly diverted my attention by putting eggs and bread precariously in front of applesauce jars and whole melons. Then she grabbed my psuedo-Sudafed, which was already paid for, bagged, receipted and stapled and said, “Do you want your medicine in a bag?” I was dumbstruck; then I manged to mutter, “yes, I mean no, er, no, I don’t.” So she took the paper bag and stuffed it, all by itself, into a plastic bag. Then I swear I saw her glance at the checker and bagger, place her index finger on the side of her nose
and flick it forward ala Redford and Newman in “The Sting.”
The next time I went into the store, I visited the meat counter where I picked up some hamburger packaged in a foam tray and thoroughly sealed in plastic. I put the already wrapped meat into one of those clear plastic bags they keep on rolls at that counter. I finished my shopping and went to the checkout. As usual I told the bagger, “paper, please.” But, as my groceries went down the belt, the checker in the next lane reached over and started to help bag my stuff. She grabbed my meat and started to place it in a plastic bag. “I’d like paper, please.” I said firmly. She paused briefly, “Oh…”, but then recovered and said, “well, let’s put the raw meat in a plastic bag, okay?” The raw meat was already double covered in plastic, but, obviously, if I went against her, I was trying to spread e-coli to the checkout team and probably the entire store population. I meekly nodded and submitted myself to her will. Emboldened, the bagger stuffed my beer, which comes with it’s own carrying box, into a plastic bag. The bagger and the checker high-fived each other, not even trying to mask their glee.
Yesterday I was back in Kroger, determined to get nothing but paper bags. As my groceries went down the belt, I planted my feet, squared my shoulders and faced the bagger, anticipating the “Is paper okay” mantra. But he had a new line. He placed his arm around my shoulder.
“I want to say one word to you. Just one word.”
“Yes, sir”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Plastics.”
I blinked.
He nodded and stuffed my sweetmeats in a plastic sack. "'Nuff said. That's a deal."
The terrorists have won.

Blubber, Mukluks, Gazebo!

I received this email from a poetic spammer:

roost creep appanage? dye, tonsil repetition.
fleming canticle joy fleming nave inclement, abacus
remark herpetology otherwise f umber.
baghdad firehouse baghdad
guildhall galatia galatia? boletus, galatia roost.
armature herpetology nave clothe galatia describe, italic
sidestep guanine alphabetic inclement turnabout.
spoon colonial herpetology
turnabout inclement baghdad? fleming, joy italic.
creep fecund.

All I can say is "Bulbous bouffant, macademia".

Plethora mallomar blogging at Humor-Blogs.com and vote for my entries.

The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Twist

Where I work we have some inspirational posters. Not these cheesy ones or these parody ones; we have our own cheesy posters illustrated in-house by our own graphics people, featuring cheesy quotes researched by our in-house Chief Inspirational Officer.
There is one such poster I see often because it is on my floor, between my office and both the kitchen and the bathroom – the two places I spend most of the day. This poster has a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “The human mind, once stretched to a new idea, never returns to its former dimensions.” (The actual quote is "Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.") Either way, this is a good thought poorly stated. The image I get is a brain being stretched like a favorite t-shirt that has been mauled in the washing machine, rendering it misshapen and twisted, never to be un-stretched back the way you liked it. (“A brain, once washed, never returns to its former dimensions”?)
Instead of “stretched”, which implies an asymmetrical change in shape, Ollie should have used “expanded”, which implies growth in all directions: “The human mind, once expanded by a new idea, never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
Of course, if the human, mind, once expanded, never shrinks back, then why did I need to take LSD repeatedly?
To my comparison of ‘stretched’ and ‘expanded’, Ollie said: “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.” Which circles back to the LSD issue. Righteous, dude.
Whatever mind expansion he had going on, it was freaking him out: “It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us. Perhaps we have co tenants in this house we live in." How’s that bipolar thing working out for you? Ollie had some issues, yo.

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Legally Bland

Many people find it contradictory that a CPA can write humor for the radio and do standup. Yet it is this disassociative identity disorder which got me my current job; comedy writing came up during my interview and the CEO said, "you will fit right in with the sick people we have here" (I may be paraphrasing, but I'm not kidding). If you don’t think a CPA/CFO can be funny, you haven’t seen the financial statements I prepare.
For some reason, when a writer needs a character to be really boring, the character is an accountant. But the fact is that the most boring. Professionals. Ever. Are lawyers.
I know of a few accountants that have become comedians: Fred MacAuley, Gary Gulman, Bob Newhart and me. I can’t name one lawyer who became a comic…because I didn’t Google it (so don’t fill the comments with examples).
Comedians aside, the only reason people don’t identify lawyers as boring is that the stench of scum-sucking and bottom-feeding repels us before we ever detect the eau d’ennui that clings to them. When the Stereotype Board was handing out assignments, lawyers had their hands so full with “Shady”, “Shyster”, “Ambulance Chaser” and similar plaques and certificates that when “Boring” was bestowed to them, they turned to the accountants and said, “here, hold this”, and we did.
Accountants are people who wanted to be lawyers but didn’t want to deal with the three years of law school. We spent too much time partying and being fun guys to qualify for law school anyway. And it must be that Law School has courses on Advanced Boring.
My “lawyer = boring” theory was confirmed today when I attended a seminar on “The Legalities of Doing Business in China”. You probably fell asleep just reading the title of that. The seminar was given by lawyers, for lawyers. I was there because my company does business in China and I needed to know something about the taxes and regulations. It was one long day of legal terms: “forbearance”, “binding” and “regulatory”; I thought I was at a gastro-interology seminar.
The guy who was put in to bat cleanup (speaking after lunch and trying to keep us all awake) was the most boring of all. What’s more, he kept losing his place in his notes. He droned on about, “to secure…uh…rights..to, uh, intellectual property is….uh…paramount and…you, uh, need to do due diligence on…uh... your trading partner and….uh….blah, blah, blah….uh….blah, er, I mean, blah.”
Ben Stein! That’s who! Ben Stein is a lawyer who became a comedian. And what sort of character does this lawyer/actor play? He’s the boring guy. (This is the only video of Ben's most famous role I could find. It is obnoxious, so just watch the first part.)

Lawyers don't get Humor-Blogs.com but they vote for my entries.

A Little Bit of Soap

Daniel Radosh, in his book Rapture Ready*, writes about Steeple Hill (a publisher of “inspirational”, i.e. Christian based, romance novels) issuing to its writers a list of taboo terms, including, “Geez/Jeez (can use ‘Sheesh’ instead)”. The reason for the taboo is obviously that those exclamations amount to taking the Lord’s name in vain; “Jeez” (sometimes spelled with a “G” when they messed up chiseling in a stone tablet) was the nickname favored for Jesus by his crew. His boy, P-Dog (later “Rock”) gave him that one, though P-Dog denied it thrice. This bit of Christian pop history was overlooked by Radosh in his book.
But I digress. The “Jeez – Sheesh” reference took me back to childhood. We lived in a neighborhood with several Catholic families. One of them, two doors down from us, had a girl and a boy near the age of my sister and me. Their mom would baby sit us while our mom was at work. This would later be known as “daycare”, though if this woman had been running an actual service, I would not have been (at 4 and 5 years old) running around loose with Jimmy Fox, the bad kid down the street. I would not have been on unsupervised excursions to smash Christmas lights in the street (the old-fashioned, big ones made a tremendous “pop”), steal playing cards from the drug store or poop in the backyard because we were locked out of the house.
But I digress; those stories can be told another day.
The dad in the Catholic babysitter family was at work most of the time, which was a blessing, because he was one angry, scary dude. If we were all eating together and one of the kids, his own or us, did or said something he didn’t like, he sucked the food off his fork, then used that saliva-laden utensil to whack the offending kid on top of the head. Occasionally he would get exasperated and utter some twisted command like “don’t chew with your mouth full” or “don’t talk with your mouth open.” Woe be unto the child that laughed at this, for the spit-washed fork would be upon his head! That’s not the scary part, though. When his kids did something really bad, there would be beatings – I can’t remember if he used a belt, a hairbrush, a stick or all three, I just remember the trembling fear that one day he might forget I was not his son and do the same to me, because he threatened exactly that.
Somewhere in between the semi-harmless spit-fork and the fierce beatings was the classic washing-the-mouth-out-with-soap. This was not reserved for their own kids; I tasted the business end of a bar of Ivory when I bit my sister in the back one day (I don’t remember what inspired that bite, but I remember the consequence still).
One day the four of us children were talking and laughing about something and their boy, Ray, said, “Sheesh.” Then he froze. The atmosphere that had been light and airy became dense and shrouded – suddenly his dad filled the room, dark and rumbling like a storm cloud. Ray was hustled away to chew on some soap and receive a whipping while his sister, Jeanne, explained to us that “sheesh” was just a substitute for “Jesus” and uttering it in vain merited the same damnation as using the Lord’s actual name (or his nickname, “Jeez”). I watched my mouth after that, and kept it closed. I assumed "Gosh” was forbidden but I wondered about “golly” and “goodness”, since “good” is derived from “God”. (Right, Bill?).
The whole thing has stuck in my mind all these years and was retriggered when Rapture Ready informed me that “sheesh” was allowed by the strict guidelines of Steeple Hill and not equivalent to "Jesus". I wish Ray’s dad were still alive and I could take that book and show him …. And whack him on the head with it, then make him EAT the goddamn thing whole. Jeez!

*Rapture Ready is a well-written, well-researched examination of Christian pop culture, both amusing and enlightening. Sheesh, it’s good!

Geez, please guide people to Humor-Blogs.com and make them vote for my bloggings.

How To Eat At Maggiano's

If you don’t have a Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant near you, you may have a similar Italian restaurant that serves family style meals. (I see there are no Maggiano’s in Maine, which is probably because they are satisfied with all Dunkin Donuts, all the time).
The family style dinner, for one price per person, includes two items from each category: appetizers, salads, pasta, entrees and desserts and is served to groups of four or more. (The reason Maggiano’s is not in Montana is that you can’t get four or more unibomber loners to gather together at one table). You can also add two vegetable servings to the meal for $2 per person. (This is the reason Maggiano’s is in Texas: death by gluttony is an acceptable form of capital punishment there).
This concept may seem simple; you order the meal and share it, right? Wrong. You see, if you eat all of any of the items on the meal, they will bring you more. Whatever is left after you are all satiated and/or comatose, you can take home. So the strategy is all about optimizing the leftovers quantity. We once had a 50-person potluck to attend and we were able to supply the entire potluck group with what we carried home from Maggiano’s the night before. No one else brought anything. And my wife and I still had lunch for a week on what remained.
The key to leftover maximization is to understand that the quantity of food in each course is apportioned to feed multiples of four. Granted, the portions are generous, but, if you go with four people, you will eat the food they bring and have little, if any left to take home – usually no more than would serve the offensive line of a football team. If your group is six people, however, they will bring you food for eight. Now you’re getting somewhere.
That was our MO for the first few times we ate there. One time we had only one other couple to go with, so we co-opted a young couple at a nearby table who were on a prom date. “But I can only afford the cheap pasta dinners,” the young man whined. “Shut up and help push these tables together,” we shouted as we relieved him of the money he was holding back to buy condoms and Mike’s Hard Lemonade after the prom. We kept their share of the leftovers just to compensate for the aggravation. One time my in-laws didn’t want to go along with the other four’s choice of appetizer, so we traded them to another table for Joe and Rita, an elderly couple whom we have now convinced that they are our parents; we take them to the restaurant whenever we need added ordering power.
After a while, we learned a better strategy than using one odd couple to get extra food, and all you need is four people in your party. What you do is, when each course comes, instead of eating both and being satisfied, you all agree to eat just one of the items, then order more of that one, then eat parts of the two dishes. Now you have one full serving of each course leftover, equivalent to the average amount of food served on a Carnival Cruise ship each week.
I sold this secret strategy to some young men who attend college south of the Ohio border. This is why there is no Maggiano’s in Kentucky; those guys put them out of business.

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Spam, Spam, Eggs, Spam and Watches

I was just looking at my gmail and found that there were 20 new messages in my spam folder. They seem to arrive in groups by topic. One day last week a group of people must have met and agreed my anatomy is inadequate because I got several ENLARGEMENT offers at the same time, all from different senders. One day I got several offers of EQUIPMENT to enhance my sexual experience. Today, my equipment and supply needs must have been determined to be satisfied. I received one offer for "GROUP SEX - hot lesbian slut gets punished by her girlfriend for f-ing another boy". I was confused by the reference to "another" boy. Another in addition to whom? And there doesn't seem to really be a "group" having sex. Am I to infer, by virtue (and I use that term loosely) of having received the email, that I am invited to be the other boy, as part of the group? I don't intend to respond because I don't want the slut to get in further trouble.
The main need they seem to have identified for me this week is watches: REPLICA WATCHes and FAKE ROLEX WATCHes. There are 5 of those offers in the last few hours. Oh, I see I have three spams with the subject "Angelina Jolie Naked" (one of them is from "Kahlil Sue-Elle", whom I believe is from Krypton). I'm not sure I'm interested in Angelina Jolie Naked right after she gave birth to twins. Wait, there's another word there that is not in bold. What it says in full is, "Angelina Jolie Naked - WATCH." Another watch offer? Well, if it's an authentic FAKE ROLEX WATCH, with Angelina Jolie Naked on it, I'll think about it.

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No Pun Intended

If you look at some of the blogs that I have links to, you might think that I like words. My sister does too. She reminded me about our family’s oft repeated line, “What’s that up the road, a head?” which never failed to amuse us. In our family you could do that – for one, you could use phrases like “oft repeated” – and you could reuse a word related joke or, dare I say it, a pun over and over. If I told my mother I was going to get a haircut, she would say, “Why don’t you get them all cut?” She would say it every time. It was her “Freebird”, her “Who’s On First”; she had to say it - and I waited to hear it.
Now that I’m the parent, with a routine full of witty wordplay, my daughter, who is otherwise very intelligent and well-educated, does not like puns and would surely never tolerate serial punning. (“Yes I would, and don’t call me Shirley” – sorry, had to say it.) If my wife asks me to “put strawberry jam on the grocery list,” I want to say “But that will make the list sticky.” I want to say that every time. When I was a kid I would have; now I bite my tongue. I don’t even say it the first time because that is just asking for abuse.
Puns are like mathematics: people claim to hate them and then use them without realizing it. I had a friend in college who hated puns, but told this joke: “There are three guys. One is running into a room, one is in the room, in bed with a woman, and one guy is running out of the room. What nationality are the men? --- The guy running in, him Russian. The guy in bed, Himalayan, the guy running out, him Finnish.” So, forget whether “Himalayan” is a nationality, that joke is funny (to me) and it is all puns. If you are making genital-related jokes about George “Bush” and “Dick” Cheney, those are puns. I know, “and Barack Obama is half Caucasian but no one is going to call him whitey”. And no one is going to say my puns are funny if they are not grounded in sex or crude humor.
Which gives me an idea: A new service that is like phone sex - but with puns. For example, you might call up and a woman answers:
“Hello, this is Anita.”
“Anita who?”
“Anita Betterjob.”
“Anita, did you hear about the woman who is suing Victoria’s Secret because she was injured by a thong?”
“No. Is she okay?”
“Well, she got rid of the underwear, of course, but the scar hasn’t healed. So, the thong is ended, but the malady lingers on.”
And Anita would laugh. Every time.

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Focus on the Funnies

Evangelical Christian leaders are calling for the King Feature Syndicate to cease publication of the semi-popular comic strip, “Hi and Lois” which they say is promoting an anti-Christian, secular view of how the world began. The July 4th cartoon shows Hi telling his children, “Every year Americans try to recreate the birth of our nation …based on the Big Bang Theory.” James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, stated, ”This is a clear repudiation of Christian Faith and the Biblical teaching of Creation. If King Features does not cease publication of the strip, we will call upon all Christians to boycott newspapers that publish the comic.” Pastor John Hagee remarked, "Damn it, you know this means another hurricane."
Cartoonist Dik Browne, who draws the strip said he had no intention of offending anyone and that his joke was about the birth of the United States, not the creation of the universe. Dobson responded, “The United States is a Christian nation and Dik Browne has used us as a metaphor for the Universe and can’t deny that.” Dobson went on to outline how Focus on the Family has long suspected the comic strip of being anti-religion. “What do expect from a man who dropped the ‘c’, which stands for ‘Christian’ from his name? The strip’s name, ‘Hi and Lois’, an obvious play on ‘high and lowest’, represents the struggle between the highest and lowest beings, God and Satan. This is further reflected in Dot and Ditto, the good and evil twins. And Mr. Browne clearly supports the dark side: The older son, Chip, displays unrepentant disrespect for his parents and he promotes Satanist rock and roll music. The most egregious symbol of Godless heathenism is the baby, Trixie, who openly worships the Sun god, which she calls ‘Sunbeam’. King Features, named for Jesus the King, should be ashamed of distributing this vile attempt to brainwash our young people.”
Commenting on the July 4th Big Bang reference in the comic, TV evangelist Pat Robertson remarked solemnly, "I expect that God will smite Hi. Don't be surprised if he and Lois meet a horrible fate in a future strip, probably a Sunday funnies edition."
King Features has not had any comment on Dobson’s remarks.

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Hey Baby, I’m Your Handyman

A friend of mine tells a story about a phone call she once made to her brother. Her 5-year-old nephew answered the phone and she spent a few moments chatting with him and then inquired as to whether his father was nearby and could come to the phone. Since she grew up on the West side of Cincinnati, she phrased the question like this: “Is your dad handy?” Her nephew replied, “Nope, Mama says he can’t fix nothin’.”
That’s one of those amusing family stories that gets told and retold and I would have found it funnier if I hadn’t known that the brother’s lack of handiness was due to his being an unemployable alcoholic. My vision of the poor nephew growing up in poverty and squalor dampened my appreciation of the humor.
But I tell the story here to support my belief that dads are expected to be handy, in the sense of being able to build things and fix stuff, which I am not. My wife and daughter are not handy either, though it doesn’t matter for them; they are women. Not that women can’t do that stuff; many do and I say, “More power tools to ‘em.” It’s just that women in our society are not expected to do those things, but men are.
Contrary to this norm, I don't fix the car or patch the drywall or mend the child's broken bones. We must resort to hiring professionals for these tasks. Oh, I can accomplish some repairs: I recently overturned a lifetime ban from household plumbing, which was imposed by my wife after an unfortunate run-in I had with the kitchen pipes, resulting in a large roto-rooter bill. Last month, I replaced the faucet in my daughter’s bathroom and, if it remains leak-free one more month, I am allowed to try and figure out what’s wrong with the garbage disposal.
Some household repairs are fairly easy, like replacing a doorknob. Nevertheless, when the closet door in the entryway got stuck closed last week, I found it more challenging than expected. I’ve replaced doorknobs before, so I knew that the first step was too remove the old knob. However, this closet doorknob did not have any visible screws, bolts or latch springs: things that are essential to undo in order to take off the knob.
In the family we bought this house from, 20-some years ago, the husband was handy. In fact, he built the closet I was dealing with and put the door in. Perhaps for aesthetic reasons, he put the knob with the screws accessible on the inside of the closet. I took smug satisfaction in knowing that, if I had done that, it would not have been from a misguided sense of style, it would have been ignorance!
So the task seemed hopeless, but I am resourceful; I removed the hinge pins, thinking the door would just open on the other side. Unfortunately, you need a little room, such as is afforded when the door is open, to remove it that way. The door was still stuck.
It was like one of those puzzles we heard or made up when we were kids: “You are in a room with no windows and no doors. There is a table in the room with a mirror on it. How do you get out?” The answer is, “You look in the mirror and see what you saw. You take the saw and cut the table into two halves. Two halves make a whole and you use the hole to get out of the room. That was brilliant when I was seven, but homonyms were useless to me now.
With the hinge pins out, I did have a little more room to see the broken latch. I stuck a screwdriver in the space between the door and the strike plate and was able to press it against the latch and lever back toward the door. The latch moved! Two more such moves and the latch slid out of it’s hole, the door opened and the broken latch flew out onto the floor followed by a spring and a random piece of metal.
Strangers assume that, because I’m tall, I must have played basketball in school. I did not, because, while I love playing, I lack most of the required skills other than proximity to the basket. One time in college, playing with my buddies, I got the ball at the top of the key, dribbled down the lane, avoided defenders on either side of me and laid the ball up and in. My friends were astounded. I, too, had no idea how I’d done it, but I was thrilled with my performance.
That is the same high I felt when the closet door popped open. That feeling was short-lived. You may recall that I had removed the hinge pins. With no connection on either side, and with the door frame built to prevent it opening in, the door had nowhere to go but out toward where I was crouched down with my handy screwdriver.
Hearing a loud noise, my daughter, who is home from school for Summer and happened to be handy, in the sense of nearby, looked up from her book, saw me supine under a slab of wood, and asked, “Dad? What are you doing?”
In a somewhat muffled but sarcastic tone I stated what I thought was obvious, “I’m fixing the closet door.”
With perfect timing, she paused, said, “Good job,” and went back to her book.
I may not have taught her to be useful around the house, but I’ve passed on some comedy skills, which can be handy in a crisis. I could not have been more proud.

Inept handyman = Man, end thy pain

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the image above is from t-shirt humor

Lift Us Up Where We Be long

Erectile dysfunction treatment commercials are the feminine hygiene ads of the New Millennium: ubiquitous and embarrassing. But there is that one Cialis ad that I do pay attention to: the one where the couple has some sort of other-worldly sex, after which they wake up in matching claw-foot bathtubs on a ridge overlooking the ocean. You can’t watch that without wondering if perhaps Cialis has something in it besides the average E.D. ingredient (which I assume is just calcium, for strong bones).
I am not bragging, but I’ve never experienced E.D. I’m not bragging because I feel like that makes me weird and uncool. The E.D. med commercials have been on for years now and featured some of my favorite sports stars and even Bob Dole, who always has that pen in his hand, so you know he likes to keep busy. The E.D. guys on TV seem to attract a lot of pretty – and horny – women. I’m not interested in getting together with anyone besides my wife, but a little attention doesn’t hurt. I went to my doctor and asked him what is wrong with me. “I’ve never had erectile dysfunction, Doc. Why everyone else but me? I’m not normal.” I wanted to have a need for some Cialis, because I could use a day at the beach, so I asked if he could give me something to cause E.D. He said, “Here’s what I use to cause E.D.,” and he showed me a picture of his wife. That was just rude.
Then he told me, “JohnnyB, you do realize that some men just use those drugs recreationally, right?”
“Recreationally? What, do they go to some Viagra Dude Ranch and sit around a campfire in a circle, like a bunch of jerks, holding…um...hands, and singing cum-baya?
I didn’t end up getting any meds. I just went back home and watched a few, Levitra, Viagra and Cialis ads I had DVR’d so I could get the vicarious thrill of having a limp willy.
Then I noticed perhaps the strangest thing of all about the commercials. At the end, there is a disclaimer in text at the bottom of the screen that says something like, “This product will not prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.” Who out there thinks that an erection pill is going to have the benefits of a condom? Oh yeah, that would be men – men whose entire blood supply is being medically redirected to a region below the belt line, leaving the brain totally lacking in oxygen needed for reason and logic.

erectile dysfunction = I end soft unit (recycle)

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A Place For My Stuff and Stuff For All My Places

My wife and I took a long weekend to get away from our stuff for a while. We were going to drive to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but what with the price of gas and all the trouble in Darfur, we decided to stick to Southern Ohio.
We spent our time on two quests. The first was to stuff ourselves by discovering some diners, drive-ins and dives, featuring comfort (fatty) foods. The best of these were Beaugard’s Southern BBQ in Wilmington, Ohio and Joe’s U.S. Route 40 Grille in Springfield, Ohio, where we asked what kind of food they had and the waitress said, "Everything". (It is true - the website is woefully deficient in showing what they offer). The worst was the Oasis Café in Xenia, Ohio, where the waitress hid her mouth with her pad as she listed the salads and soups. This should have been a clue.
The second mission was to acquire more stuff. This was done initially by going to Columbus and buying some Ohio State paraphernalia to brand us as Ohio State parents, as much as this goes against my SoCal DNA. Second, we did what I have to describe as “antiquing”, because that is a short, descriptive term, so it’s convenient, even if not accurately descriptive of what we did. We went to a giant antique mall to shop, though we are not buyers of antiques in the common use of the term: old furniture or valuable works of art. We were in the market for collectibles; old knick-knacks and worthless, nostalgic possessions.
The term “collectibles” was coined by the antique mall industry because it conjures the image of “valuables” while drawing in buyers with lesser means. But collectibles are merely things that can be collected, like dust or grass clippings. “Collectibles” is a half-step up from “recyclables”, which is just trash with a reprieve.
My wife and I already have several collections that we were seeking to add to. For reasons too mushy to elaborate on, we have a collection of bunnies, or, more accurately, representations of bunnies. We have fabric bunnies and wooden bunnies and plastic bunnies and pictures of bunnies on plates and cups and bowls. If the bunnies are named Peter or Wiggly, the representations are more valuable expensive.
We have bottles that once contained milk from dairies we’ve never heard of. But they have amusing slogans or, perhaps, pictures of bunnies. We have collections too numerous to list, which all started at some antique store or another. We have a collection of little notebooks in which we could catalog the collectibles and where we collected them. But we haevn’t.
We also have collections that weren’t spawned in antique malls. I have my old Sports Illustrated magazines in the basement, between the comics and the Playboys. I collected each of those at different phases in my life, with some overlapping.
A collection is anything you have more than two of, just as it takes at least three cats to make a crazy lady. And once you have a collection of item X, according to my wife, you have to buy more. You can easily do that on eBay and save gas, but then you would miss a world of opportunity. In 1968, I saw Don Drysdale break the record for consecutive shutout games. Walking down a random aisle in the antique mall, I spotted a Sports Illustrated that had Drysdale’s picture on it, with a row of 9 zeroes above his head. I had gone 40 years without realizing that I wanted and needed that magazine. I never would have stumbled on it while cruising eBay. Furthermore, I may have that issue in my basement - Don Drysdale, somewhere between Donald Duck and a pair of double D’s - but I would never have thought to look for it. It was much easier to pay $4 for it in a store than try to dig it out of a box.
We also bought an old bottle, that had once contained chocolate milk, because it had a cute picture of a cow on it. How would we have known to look for that on eBay? We collected some nice memories, but not much stuff. In regards to stuff, it was not a very successful trip, considering the cost of gas to get around. However, we did eat all our vegetables at every meal, which, someone's mother would have assured me, benefited the starving children of Africa.

antiquing trip = piquant, tiring

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Java Jive

I like coffee. I also crave the patina of coolness that comes from hanging at Starbucks, wifi-ing your way to work and grooving to a fresh CD of some aged jazz legend dueting with rappers and pop stars. But I have a problem at Starbucks. It's not that I don't speak Fritalian or that I can't afford the overpriced lattechinomochalous; it's that I like coffee. Black coffee. I don't even ask them to leave room for soy milk or a shot of maple syrup or a stuffed bear. Going to Starbucks and getting just black coffee, though, is like going to Dunkin Donuts and buying a donut; it's embarrassing, as if you can't think of something more creative and hip.
I just want coffee to wake me up and start my day. But this morning I saw this story. Instead of waking up and smelling the coffee, all I have to do is smell the coffee to wake up. In the same way as you get cancer from second-hand smoke.
So this morning my friend comes and asks if I want some Starbucks. I go with him and just wait while he orders. "You don't want anything?" "No," I say,"you know I don't like to just get black coffee here."
"But that's what I'm getting -- c'mon, we can be freaks together."
"Can I just smell yours?" I ask.
"What?"
"I just want to smell it." I take his coffee and pop the lid and stick my nose down practically touching the liquid as I inhale the aroma. "I read that this is just as good as actually drinking it. The smell wakes you up."
"So, you wannna give me 2 bucks for your share of the coffee?"
"What? I only smelled it."
"If you're getting a contact high off my coffee, you ought to pay for it."
I thought about it for a bit. I did feel bad, as though I'd just taken some fable he wrote and used it in my blog as my own material.
"Okay, I owe you. Here's two bucks." I took two bills out of my wallet and snapped them a couple times. Then I pocketed them.
"What was that?"
"I took the aroma of your coffee - and bought it with the sound of my money. Here's your tip," I said as I bounced a quarter off the table and back into my hand.


coffee aroma = fear moo face

I Hope You Dance

Ken Griffey Jr. will soon hit his 600th home run. It won't be long after that that his career in his home town of Cincinnati comes to an end as the Reds turn to youth to rebuild a team. Nevertheless, yesterday I was more concerned with the career of another Cincinnati native son, when I told my family, "I think I am really going to miss Shane Sparks on 'So You Think You Can Dance'." Shane has been a judge and choreographer over the first three seasons of SYTYCD, but is now involved in other projects. When I talk about SYTYCD or Mr. Sparks with the guys (my boyz) I see the look in their eyes: "Why does he know so much - or even anything - about dance?"
I developed an interest in dance because of my daughter, who learned and performed and competed with the Studio For Dance in Cincinnati. Allie is an only child, who declared early on that she was not going to play "any sport involving a ball". So I ended up driving the minivan to dance competitions, toting dance bags, costumes and makeup, while the other dads were off coaching soccer games or watching their sons play baseball. The dads who did show up at the competitions tried to adopt the proper masculine response to a room full of satin and tulle (I swear I don't really know if that's what dance costumes are made of) by complaining conspicuously about having to watch this dance stuff ("stuff" here serves as a polite euphemism). The more troubled men would run up and down in front of the stage, as if it were a ballfield sideline, exhorting their little girls to "Dance faster! Don't let Amber get ahead of you! Knock her down! Don't be a pussy!", the last comment being inappropriately screamed out during a number from the Broadway show, "Cats". Meanwhile, I sat serenely enjoying the the whole spectacle, knowing that no matter how much testosterone they generated, they could not push back the tide of estrogen in the room. My life had prepared me to accept this state of being. And, I must say, sitting in a room full of women watching girls dance to "Singing in the Rain" is not such a bad way to spend a day as compared to, say, watching soccer in the rain. Besides, there were refreshments.
My daughter no longer dances with the studio (though she did take a tap class at Ohio State and you can see the class perform here and here. My daughter is the tall one on the right.) Looking back, I don't regret a minute of the time spent watching her dance all these years. And I still enjoy "So You Think You Can Dance", which she got us started watching, and I openly admire Shane Sparks. Some guys try to make excuses for me: "Well, Shane is hip hop, dude. Hip hop is a guy thing, so you cool, JohnnyB." True enough, but I also like Tyce Diorio and, girlfriend, I think he might be gay. I don't care, Shane might be too. Makes no difference, I'm still glad I discovered Shane in one of his other projects over at "America's Best Dance Crew" last season; I've got a new dance show to watch. Ken Griffey Jr. never was and never will be as athletic as those dancers. And sitting in the living room with my family, watching dance on a 92 degree summer day in Cincinnati is nicer than sweltering at the ball park. And the refreshments are cheaper.

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Shane Sparks = share spanks