If you’re laughing at this, my wife probably isn’t – Part Two

Since I wrote about  how I constantly embarrass my wife, I have been bombarded with remembrances:

Hey! Remember when you were punished and forced to sit in the corner by yourself because you accidentally laughed in that male nurse’s face because he had a lazy eye and thus was an obscenely close-talker at that housewarming party?

 

Hey! Remember when you screamed “Oh my God, what happened to you?” when your wife’s step-mother opened her front door and her hair was completely white because she had stopped dyeing it?  

 

Hey! Remember when you laughed in that guy’s face in the men’s room at the wedding of your wife’s co-worker because he had chafing so bad from dancing that he had to have his wife bring Gold Bond powder into the men’s room? He may have had Moves like Jagger, but go easy there Buddy – you’re not on Soul Train!

I didn’t realize that a short little baby post would lead the charge down memory lane, but so be it. Apparently, word on the street in our house is that I’ve turned into the crazy relative at the family gatherings that silently farts like a saboteur and doesn’t acknowledge it when he’s on your team for Cranium…I’m not saying that it would have been OK if he weren’t on my team, but come on. Is that the flatulent equivalent of a tree falling in the woods and it stinks, but you don’t know if it really happened because no one will acknowledge it?

Cranium: The only game where crop-dusting earns extra points.

That being said, the groom is 6’ 4” and was marrying a 4’ 10” psycho with flaming red hair and I could just tell that their wedding was going to be a doozy. During her last wedding performance, Homegirl got so wasted on whiskey sours that she almost took out the bride making her entrance on the staircase and then a table full of food when she tried to sit down. I will take a little bit of responsibility for forcing the whiskey sours down her throat until she became socially bearable, but she only talks to animals and my wife ditched me so I didn’t have a lot to work with besides alcohol. You can just imagine how high my expectations were for her trip down the aisle and the fiasco that would ensue.

As a general rule, I don’t like weddings. The food is always terrible or there’s drama with a wayward flower girl that makes me douse her with a pitcher of water but, most of all,  I hate to dance unless I’m really really wasted. Everyone always thinks that their wedding will be different somehow and that it’ll be the best one anybody’s ever attended…Blah blah blah – they’re always the same.

It should be fairly obvious and go without saying that I was a little bummed out that the ceremony went off without any craziness and then started drinking very heavily to make it through the rest of the day. I wasn’t disappointed that it went well, but I just knew when I scanned that crowd and saw 76% of them were senior citizens – to bide my time because this was definitely about to get more interesting.

Fast forward to the Bride and Groom cutting the cake so that they could feed it to each other. To my disappointment, he didn’t push the cake into his new bride’s face so I leaned over to the teenage boy sitting next to me and said “Pussy.” When I said that, I was commenting on the groom not covering his bride with icing from the cake, not realizing that he would then shout out “PUSSY.” Guess who got blamed? Not the young echo sitting next to me that called out the groom for being a wuss at his own wedding, but poor, innocent me who was simply commenting on the state of affairs in that catering hall. Apparently, the “adults” at the table thought I should have known better – but knew what? That he was a freaking parrot and would shout that out? It was really funny though…

I did my best to get that Bride drunk on whiskey sours again, but sometimes your best isn’t good enough and she wasn’t wasted so I gave up on her when she refused to do the worm. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned peer-pressure? If someone yells at you “Do the worm!” you do the worm. It’s just plain rude not to honor a request whether it’s your wedding or not.

That blue-haired crowd wasn’t about to leave any of their seats even if that place spontaneously erupted in flames, so I was left with no choice but to take over the dance floor. Like I said before, I am not a dancer unless I’m completely wasted, but I was a dancing machine at that wedding so you can just imagine the condition I was in. The last thing you wanna do is to get me started with a bunch of Golden Girls – those are my peeps right there! I am not trying to brag, but the majority of the population does not find me attractive, but senior women, with glaucoma especially, find me irresistible.

We started a conga line that the DJ had to actually play twice in a row because it took so long for some of the blue haired ladies to get up out of their seats with their walkers and canes. I was prancing around and grabbing them while screaming out “Come on you little Minx – let’s break a hip!”  Like a young Baryshnikov, I was bopping around like Peter Pan and when that DJ played “the rhythm is gonna get you” – he meant it. I got more digits and emails at that wedding than I ever have before or since. Forget the Cougars – their older sisters are like “Super Cougars” and need love too…

My harem of hotties shaking their money makers!

There was also a short moment during the reception when I tried to get the Maître D to dance with my mother-in-law…I guess I probably shouldn’t have pretended that she was a recent widow to make him feel bad, but he did seem really nice and she does love to dance. I guess not everyone thinks it’s funny when you try to pimp out their mother to the help, but I always find that to be such a gray area…

Like the helper that I am, I tried to make the best of what could have been a bad situation for everyone and I thought I was “helping out” like a crowd motivator at a Bar Mitzvah, but some others felt that wasn’t the case. Apparently, there are social cues I missed out on and I’m the crazy one here…I guess you live and learn for the next family function. Thoughts? Whose side are you on?

You down with OCD, yeah you know me…my Toiletries regiminent revisited

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am under absolute duress to be ready for anything in any reasonable amount of time. Even more than that, I can’t even get ready in an unreasonable amount of time. Celebrities don’t take this long to prep for the Oscars – but for me to run to the supermarket is a production. I have tried things to quicken the pace, but sort of like a gentle soufflé, you cannot rush certain things.

My wife always argues with me about how long it takes me to get ready, but while she looks absolutely perfect and requires very little touch-ups from the moment she rises out of bed, when I wake up I look like one of the zombies marching in back of the float in the Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance video.

My toiletry regimen alone is a great big process in and of itself: I set my Ipod for one song and then get in the shower. It should not take longer to shower than one random song. That’s not the time-consuming part. The exception to this one-song rule is if you have fallen into the cesspool (Lance) or had a plumbing pipe full of shit (literally, full of shit) explode into your mouth and onto your chest (Hal) – At that point, take as long as you feel necessary in there and no one will say a word.

Back to the routine; I like to start at the top and then work my way down. The opening act, or my first facial scrub, is just a tingly little wake-up call and then we head straight for the follow-up nourishing face wash and immediately into the Bliss face wash after that. I then grab my two thickening shampoos (it’s sort of the same philosophy that I have with Pumpkin muffins, where if one is good – two will be much better) and wash my hair. Obviously, the shampoo is dripping down my body and I would need to scrub again after it – so it just makes sense to use the body bar after the hair is done. Moving on to my Oil of Olay Age Defying soap for certain parts of the body – though never on this gentle face with a bar soap! I actually don’t understand why anyone would choose to use a bar of soap to wash their body and then use that SAME bar to wash their face. Any bar of soap that touches my feet or cleans my balls surely isn’t going anywhere near my face!

Blue Body wash is next for the rest of my body that the soap doesn’t cover. I don’t mind scents, but I feel like it needs to be blue or it won’t fully clean me. I don’t know why blue body wash strikes me as more thorough – but I just can’t use another color. Then I dry off and get my robe and waist towel (what my wife lovingly refers to as a skirt) and put on my Birkenstocks so my clean feet won’t touch the ground. Did I forget to mention that I HATE to be barefoot and just cannot do it? Nothing gets me worked up more than that. OK, the beach does – I mean you’re sitting in dirt – It doesn’t make any sense!!!

(I actually had a mini panic attack at the airport last summer when I rushed out of the house in flip-flops not thinking and then had to go through security when I got to the airport. I almost scrapped the whole trade show that I was going to for work when they told me I had to take the flip-flops off. I asked for some napkins or paper towels so I wouldn’t have to walk on the floor – but they looked at me like I was the crazy one. Needless to say the sight of me scrubbing my feet in the men’s bathroom sink immediately after going through security didn’t go over well. Two people looked at me like I just escaped from the mental hospital and another told me that I was crazy. Screw them – people can shave in the sink and hair is everywhere, but one foot on the counter sets them off? I was balancing like Nadia Comaneci because if one of my barefoot little toes had touched that disgusting airport bathroom floor – they would have taken me out on a stretcher right into the ambulance.)

For my next act, I move straight into oral hygiene and start with my Listerine pre-rinse and floss and Q-Tips to check for wax or and then grab my Radius toothbrush to start on the choppers with my Tom’s of Maine fennel toothpaste. Don’t let them fool you, if it’s not fennel – it’s not fine. I will not use a toothbrush that isn’t Radius – it just gets the job done! If you haven’t tried it – get one right now. Your brushing will shoot right up to the next level and you’ll be thanking me for it for years to come. The zesty tingle after a good brushing just starts me on the right path and keeps me going all day.

If you were just thinking that I was finished and ready to leave the bathroom, you would be mistaken. The next stop on the OCD Express is my eye serum for the bags under my eyes (regular face creams are just not gentle enough for this area) then we move on to the T-Zone cream (for the nose and forehead) which tends to be an oilier area so you have to use a product of a different consistency and then I finish up with my gentle SPF Facial cream for the chin, cheeks, and neck area.

I hit the Styling Paste to spruce up this thin crow’s nest I’m calling my hair these days, and then an extra healthy spot of Rogaine Foam. Rogaine is the only one of my toiletries I have a heavy hand with – you never know. I now head for the brush to get my hair under control and give it a “look.” With my hair, I try to go for the “messy, cover-up” look to make it look thicker, but it usually just comes across as the “desperate, comb-over” look.

We haven’t even gotten to the deodorant (Spray? No way!) and cologne yet. Lately, I have been going back and forth between Tiffany for Men and Diesel. I’m actually a little scared of using the Diesel at full force with more than one squirt – so I go very sparingly. It says right there on the bottle in big letters to “Use with Caution” and I take that warning very seriously. Seriously, the last thing I need is to go waltzing into work after one too many squirts of Diesel and set that little minx in Accounting off into a Diesel infused stupor. Instead of her flirting with the Subway guy at lunch like she usually does, she’ll be trying to steal the pickle off my McRib sandwich! That’s the power of Diesel!

I grab the tweezers for a quick little maintenance check and to make sure there is no hair trying to escape out of my nostrils or ears. There is absolutely nothing more offensive or careless than nose hair. There’s just no excuse for it. Why don’t we use this as the general rule of thumb for nose hair from now on: If you can grab it and twirl it or if small children can jump rope with it – there’s a problem. If your nose hair is long enough to floss your teeth with – stay the hell home and trim it!

If this is you – by all means trim that!

One last check in the mirror for the once over and then I am ready to leave the bathroom and pick out clothes to wear. I did leave out one minor detail which doesn’t help my time spent in the bathroom: I have to do all of these things a certain number of times and simply cannot veer off of that. If I don’t brush my teeth forty-five times – I need to start over. If I don’t rub the Rogaine on my head into a circle seventy-five times – I need to start over. Also, if I go out of order in my routine in any way, I need to start over. That’s not a joke either – I don’t think of it as compulsive, I think of it as thorough. I will literally get back in the shower and start over.

If this sounds excessive or crazy, just imagine that I shower multiple (3 – 5) times a day. When I wake up (obviously), every time I take a shit, if it’s summer and I’m sweaty – add at least two more showers that day, before I got to the gym, when I get back from the gym…It’s actually a good thing that I’m overweight and have decided to cut out my time at the gym so I don’t risk a heart attack or I would have to get up even earlier than I already do to take another shower.

This doesn’t even take into consideration me wearing gloves to sleep in after I apply the hand cream. Since I wash my hands so much, I constantly have really dry hands. They’re so dry that when I shake hands with someone, they wince in pain because my paws feel like sandpaper. Add my blinders that I can’t sleep without and you can imagine how much my wife enjoys co-habitating with me.

If you didn’t feel bad for my wife before this – I’m sure you have now joined the growing crowd that does. I actually used to feel really bad for her too because she is so patient, but then one day I stopped. The day that I stopped feeling bad was the day that her and her crazy sister actually jumped me in their mother’s basement to try to “Cure me” of my OCD. They had seen a documentary where this lady got a vacuum cleaner dumped on her head while she was duct taped to a chair and they got inspired. She sat there crying her eyes out and the light bulb went off above their heads.

When I say that they jumped me, I actually mean that they jumped on top of me and threw me to the ground while the two of them tried to remove their shoes and put their bare feet on my face. Their fucking bare feet on my face! Who they thought that would help, I certainly don’t know, but I went all Wu Tang on them like I was back on the streets. OK, I was never actually on the streets and there are grade School kids tougher than me, but at that moment – I imagined myself a gang member or as the epitome of strength and courage: Chuck Norris.

At this point in the game when two crazy bitches get all up in your grill like that – the “don’t hit a girl” rules fail to apply. I was all Chris Brown throwing punches left and right at those girls. Luckily for them I have as much coordination as a newborn kitten and I punch like a five-year old girl, so I was mostly hitting myself. I was screaming for help to old lady Ann that lived next door but to no avail. I was bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali and was finally able to get away and run up the stairs to freedom (and another shower.) Yep – they knocked me to that basement floor and there was no way that I wasn’t going to need a shower.

I grew up in a house with a crazy kamikaze sister who would turn into the flying Whoozini and attack out of nowhere and now here I was married to another ninja attacker and her crazy wombat sidekick. Needless to say, it’s been years since that happened, but I still never turn my back on either sister at family functions for fear of a repeat performance. Sometimes life just isn’t fair!

Senior Spotlight on my younger sister

Call the Lost and Found! This was the last reported trace of my Aunt WInk’s eyebrows…

I was driving back from the supermarket yesterday when I had to pull over to let a fire truck get past me on the way to some emergency and it reminded me of one of the places my sister Marlene used to live in. This ordinarily wouldn’t be noteworthy but, my sister was just 24 years old cohabitating with our crazy 62 year old aunt in an Adult 55-and-over community at the time.

Something is definitely off track when you’re not yet feeling your late-twenties angst but your housemate is collecting Social Security; that’s no longer a roommate situation – it’s a sitcom.

My aunt Wink has shocking red hair, weighs less than most stick figures I’ve drawn, and once upon a fine summer day had to be tucked under my sister-in-law’s arm like a purse and carried out of HER own going-away party. That’s not even the most random thing about her: She’s a hairdresser yet doesn’t own a set of eyebrows. I tell you, her forehead is bare as a baby’s bottom! Try rolling your eyes at something ridiculous and when you look up – there’s not a stitch of hair in sight, just a vast wasteland. I’m not sure if they were too expensive and she’s on a tight budget or if she was the victim of a hit-and-run but somebody should dial 911 because there was a crime committed for sure. I never really thought that the Great Long Island Eyebrow Shortage of 1995 was a real epidemic, but I’m starting to reconsider my position. To combat this follicular dilemma, she uses a red crayon to color in where the eyebrows used to rest their weary souls. She has to be careful in the summer though – one wrong swipe of a sweaty forehead and she’ll be mistaken for Homey the Clown again! That being said, she is hysterical and was a perfect roommate for my sister Marlene, because crazy radiates towards crazy and those two were like magnets.

What made the pairing of these two kindred spirits dangerous was that, despite the vast age difference between them, they were eerily similar to each other but neither would ever cop to it. If my sister Marlene was the opposite of my aunt, or at least a little different it might have worked out, but she’s actually just a much younger version of her. Besides the fact that the two of them share the same first name and a natural proclivity towards excessive cursing and chain-smoking; Shave Marlene’s brows off, and Maury wouldn’t even need a DNA test to be 99.9% sure of that Baby Momma.

Marlene loved living there and she really was in her element – all the old ladies flocked to her and lived vicariously through her. It was as if In Her Shoes took place on Long Island instead of Florida and she was Cameron Diaz without the There’s Something About Mary hair. In return, she headed straight to the nearest JC Penney the day after she unpacked to purchase a new floral housecoat. It was her very own Fantasy Island and my aunt was Tattoo to Marlene’s Mr. Roarke.

Marlene and some of her peeps just hangin’

My wife and I were driving to visit Marlene one afternoon when we got caught in some really backed up-traffic. Believe me when I tell you that in Long Island this is to be expected as the norm, but this was different. All of a sudden fire trucks come blaring past us on the side street we were perched on. We were about a mile down the road from their development, but the sirens were still close after they passed us. I tried calling their house line and got the machine. Tried cell phone and got the voice mail. Thinking the worst, we tried calling another ten times as if that would alleviate the situation or make them answer.

Finally we crept down the street and turned into their development to see multiple police cars and fire engines, and lots of people outside. We parked and ran towards their front door, when we heard that all-too-familiar voice calling out: “Hey!” We turned to see the ghost of Christmas future right there in front of us. Marlene was at her post in the center of about seven various housecoats snapped up to the collar all with cigarette ashes dangling from the sides of their mouths. They were huddled together on the grass more intently than most of the football huddles I’ve ever seen.

She paused only to take another drag “Get over here, Gloria saw the whole thing” she shouted excitedly, drawing us into the circle. There was actually more smoke coming out of all their cigarettes, than from the actual cars involved in the accident. We tried to tell her that we had been calling non-stop because we were worried with the sirens, but she didn’t have her phone with her because “it happened so fast and she didn’t want to miss anything.”

Marlene and some friends just chillin’

My wife looked at her and shook her head, then at me and then looked back to Marlene:  “You need to move out of here right away!” She took another long drag from her cigarette and questioned “What are you talking about? This place is great!” There was no convincing her to move out and she stayed there living high on the hog as a life-surrogate for the seniors for another year. I guess it wasn’t technically a mid-life crisis for her, but it was certainly a funny thing for the rest of us to talk about.

SPECIAL ELECTION DAY REPOST ABOUT THE REALLY IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING US!

No photo retouching at all – this is all Jimmy!!!

 

I am not just reposting this important message because there is an Election Day Party with Jimmy McMillan (The Rent is Too Damn High guy) tonight and I am not reposting it because I’m going to see him at that party tonight. I’m reposting this because he is informed, he has a clear vision, he is smart…Who am I kidding? I’m reposting this because he is freaking hysterical and if you don’t know who he is, go and look him up right now! Seriously, you’ll thank me later and your life will be a little brighter because Jimmy is in it.

 

 

No on really cares about the Republicans or the Democrats or the ecomomy or unemployment – all the other campaigns skipped right over the most imortant issue of all. Click HERE to see the really important topics that no one else has covered and see why Immodiumabuser.com is vehemently supporting Jimmy MacMillan in this and every election!  

 

https://immodiumabuser.com/2010/10/20/the-no-means-nose-hair-movement/

 

 

Tell my wife that I’ll pretend to be surprised, but I’d really like to see this under the tree this Christmas: My very own Jimmy McMillan action figure. Forget G.I. Joe, I want the real American hero action figure! (Click here and buy one for that someone special on your list this Holiday Season)

 

Forget G.I. Joe, I want the Real American hero Action Figure!

 

 

 

 

If you’re laughing at this, my wife probably isn’t – Part One

I know that it might seem hard to believe given some of the foolishness I have taken part in, but whenever I start to second-guess my mental stability I’m reminded of a very comforting thought: I may be off the wall, but my wife willingly chose this. Who’s really the nutty one, you might ask? She’s calm, cool, collected and most importantly, not crazy. While I’m way out there, she’s at the normal end of the spectrum and it gives us a nice balance.

My wife’s a High School Guidance Counselor and understands the inner workings of fragile minds – thus the attraction to me…At first thought, one would think that I was an independent study or possibly an internship for her Master’s Program. Hell, I’m so wacked out – she should have enough credits for her doctorate by now.

My OCD Rituals, superstitions, neurosis, positive energy crystal worshipping, endless supply of toiletries and taking handfuls of Imodium at every turn might come off as amusing to some people, but not if that was your life 24/7. Every time someone meets my wife and says “He’s so funny” I can see the look on her face and hear it before she even opens her mouth and says the inevitable “you don’t live with him.” I don’t want to make it like she’s a saint here, because Homegirl has gotten a little Cray Cray at times too – but compared to me, she can’t help but come across as the normal one.

As I go through my days, I constantly try and find ways to make her laugh, because there is nothing more infectious than her laughter…usually I can get her to smile and a snicker here and there, but I’ll tell you a few things that she most certainly DID NOT find funny:

When she was pregnant with our first son and I took her to the midwife’s office for a check-up. While she was half undressed because she was changing into the gown for her examination, I shot past her and hopped up onto the exam table. I forced her to take a picture of me in the stirrups so I could text it to my brother-in-law while she looked at me in amazement/disgust. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best timing for my photo shoot; it should have been all about her and the baby (and it really was) but I just couldn’t resist. Like a dog dry humping a still leg, I just couldn’t help myself. Her rolling eyes reminded me that it was blackmail evidence and I maybe should have used my phone instead of hers for the picture. Also, it’s probably best not to push a pregnant woman out of the way while racing to see who can get up in the stirrups first…but lesson learned.

“Smile and Say Cheese…”

I don’t fully understand why, but guess who was annoyed when I Skype-recorded a fart so I could play it back and listen to myself…No further explanation necessary: farts are funny and come on, don’t try and pretend that you haven’t done it too. Isn’t that what Steve jobs had in mind for the Ipad all along? You can get a fart scented candle, but you shouldn’t record your own? Something is wrong with that kind of thinking. Is it OK to wire tap someone else farting? I know you can’t record other conversations, but where is the line on the recording of farts? These are the real questions people should be looking for clarity from our public officials this Election Day.


Do I even need to bring up the Rosie O’Donnell incident
again?  Now that was something she certainly didn’t find amusing then and she still doesn’t now…

Tune in next time as I go over some more of my shenanigans at my wife’s family weddings and holidays…Nothing brings out the full-on crazy like a wedding or holiday celebration. The hits just keep coming and every great once in a while, I can get her to laugh along at the craziness too…

Hurricane Sandy Retread

In honor of Hurricane Sandy ravaging these parts something fierce, here’s a repost of my Hurricane Gloria disaster story from when I was just a young pup…

https://immodiumabuser.com/2010/12/06/warning-the-post-below-contains-graphic-photos/

 

Rock you like a Hurricane!!!

 

Some people think that Sandy is a Bitch, but I’ve always thought she was pretty nice…

True Story, ABC news just announced that due to Hurricane Sandy’s impact on our region, roads are closed, trees are down and they’re anticipating extended power outages. The Governor is insisting that everyone impacted stay home and immediately log onto immodiumabuser.com to catch up on the posts you might have missed. Now I am not one to argue with ABC news, so get the site up and running before the lights go out!

If you think Hurricane Sandy is causing havoc and inconveniencing you now, think back to what Hurricane Gloria did to me when I was younger. Some emotional scares heal with time, but not for me – I still shudder at the thoughts of it. We have a long history of storms and hurricanes that impact us – such as Hurricane Irene last year.  That was a bitch of a storm and you might have had some damage and inconvenience, but that storm literally popped my son right out of my wife! I am not even kidding here– he popped right out …She was nine months pregnant and we were at the start of our ten day powerless existence from the hurricane’s wrath when her water broke. Of course I didn’t believe her since I never believe anything and always think people are kidding with me Why she would joke about going into labor during a hurricane while we were sitting in the dark because we had no power is anyone’s guess, but I really thought she might be kidding. When I finally did catch on that she wasn’t joking around, I was just grateful that she wasn’t sitting on the couch when that water broke…I don’t know exactly what’s all up in that mix but I certainly don’t want it on the couch.

 

If only I would have prepared the car in advance…

As we were trying to leave the house, I was putting garbage bags down on my seats so my wife could get into the car. She looked at me like I had two heads and tried to take them off the seats. “Oh no you don’t – I don’t know what’s leaking out of there so you’re not sitting on a cloth seat…that shit’ll stain!” This apparently wasn’t a time to indulge my OCD neurotic behavior, but come on – I’d have to trade the car in if the seat got ruined. I know that might sound mean, but come on – what am I gonna tell the valet parking guy? Don’t mind that stinky stain on the seat there… It’s not like you can bring it to the car wash and ask if afterbirth comes out easily. I’m not usually insecure about size, but I just knew that my Tide togo stick wasn’t that big. I sometimes have clients in my car and how would I explain that placenta-cocktail smell on the seat as I try to win their business? She was being unreasonable and wouldn’t sit on the garbage bags, so I tried to put the back seats down flat and lay cardboard over them if that was more comfortable. She was in no joking mood, ignored my protests and then she got in the front seat. I said a novena and did a quick glance to make sure my febreeze was still in the back seat – just in case.

The midwives don’t take you in until you’re in active labor so we were back and forth in the Hurricane as it progressed. On one trip, she almost lost it…”I’m gonna throw up, Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up.” “Not in this car Sister!” I jammed the wheeled all the way and slammed the brakes right onto some one’s front lawn and ran around her side of the car to let her out. She was like a volcano ready to erupt and I needed her out of my car pronto. No sooner had she opened her door when she exploded and started throwing up all over. The wind was blowing wildly, branches were snapping all around us, she was hunched over in this random front yard vomiting for all she was worth and then I remembered and asked: “Should I take a picture of this? Will this be funny later on?” Her head spun around and she just got out the word “NOOOOOOOOO!” before she started with more projectile vomiting….I felt like Max von Sydow in The Exorcist and had to step back and turn away before I got hit. It’s been over a year and you know what? She still doesn’t think it’s funny.

 

My wife actually has shorter hair now.

That might have been worthy of a chuckle or two when she calmed down if the woman that owned the house hadn’t been banging on the front window wondering what the hell we were doing out there…I tried to reassure her that we were not just some lunatics out in a hurricane “It’s OK, she’s in labor…She’s having a baby…” I tried to tell her as my poor wife expelled even more of her guts out but she couldn’t seem to hear me over the gale force winds whooshing by. It was like something out of a bad movie.

 

When her tank was finally empty, I put her back in the car and then almost threw up from the smell as I got back in. Apparently, some of the vomit got on her feet when she was hunched over. I tried to hand her two Dunkin Donuts napkins and she almost punched me in the face. “What are two Effin Dunkin Donuts Napkins gonna do?” So much for me being considerate. I rolled all the windows down and had to drive like Ace Ventura with my head out the window in order to breathe. She asked me to roll up the windows because she was cold and I tried to pretend I couldn’t hear her at first. I did put the heat on for her because there was just no way that I could possibly drive with the windows closed and that smell trapped in there. It was like a cross between Cool Ranch Doritos and a decaying body. I know that I don’t come across well in some of these posts and I accept that. I am not good in a crisis and have been proven to be ineffective at the mere hint of a gagging throat, but my wife is a champ. Everything turned out well, our son was healthy, and my wife proved once again why she is such a superstar!

Some of you getting hit by Sandy right now might be inconvenienced because you’re without electricity and thinking no one could have it worse. Before you complain, think of my poor wife spewing her guts out on someone’s front lawn in gale force winds just mere minutes before giving birth to a beautiful baby boy. Did I forget to mention that she also labored and gave birth all naturally, without any drugs? Guess your storm experience isn’t so bad now, is it?

 

 

For a smart guy, I’m actually pretty dumb at times…or why I never believe anything


I’m not sure what the major glitch in my twisted skull is, but I always think people are kidding with me. My team of therapists think that it’s obviously a result of my being part of an insane family, but should I blame everything on them? My being fat and my balding scalp – it’s because of my family genes. My being short – you guessed it. But crazy is something I never thought I could attribute to them until recently. I didn’t actually inherit the insanity – it was instilled in me. In any given situation, my go-to response is to assume that people are just kidding around with me. I get that not everyone is asinine like me and jokes around all the time, but I really say and do some dumb things in response to seemingly normal situations. I know, I know, that isn’t a shock to anyone that regularly reads my stuff, but in hindsight – I’m kind of like 92.2% asshole….

When I was younger, I was very gullible and would take everything at face value and believe it 100% only to be fooled time and again which has now twisted my adult mind. My mother would take us out to eat and then pretend she didn’t have any money to pay the check. A reasonable response to a situation is not a big deal, but me at 10 years old was not reasonable. I would sweat profusely and freak out which left me traumatized. She liked to get me and my sister riled up and then laugh at how we would get. She’d literally leave the table and pretend to call someone on a payphone because it would make me so anxious. She’d would come back and tell us to leave the restaurant quickly so they didn’t notice (even though she had already paid the bill) looking over her shoulder to play it up the whole time. My sister fell for it the first time, but got smart to the game quick. One would think after the tenth time of it happening, I might have caught on or stopped going out to eat with her, but no – I wasn’t that quick on the uptake. I didn’t realize that we hadn’t skipped out without paying until we were almost home…This bulb was never shining at 100 watts if you know what I mean.

 

Leading up to my sixth grade graduation ceremony also was a stressful time for me. In reality, all I had to do was stand there while they called my name, but in my little bubble of the world, it felt like I was playing a major role in the orchestration of this event. I had tried for a solo first and would have been happy to just have been in the chorus as they sang We are the World but the music teacher (dream crusher) and I had differing visions for what talent was and he opted out of having me perform in public…You know it’s bad when the hearing-impaired kid gets a solo and I was shut out of even a chorus role but I didn’t let it get me down.

As if that wasn’t enough drama, my mother toyed with me over the weeks leading up to the ceremony by telling me that she was going to wear a hat made entirely out of fruit. I would have looked back now and thought that it was hysterical, but to an anxious little boy that had just been told dead cats had more rhythm and harmony than him – that was the last thing that I needed. It was another event and another opportunity for me to sweat profusely through my little boy tee and dress shirts – a habit I somehow never outgrew as I got older, although now when I sweat through my shirts it looks like saran wrap around chopped meat. I fidgeted uncomfortably for that whole ceremony and ran out the door to avoid any pictures or chance of seeing my sister sitting with my mother looking like Carmen Miranda. Of course, she didn’t wear that hat and I should have caught on when she wasn’t wearing it on the car ride over, but I was picturing her opening the trunk as we arrived and me passing out right there. I’m not sure if I was just really gullible or just really stupid…

 

As a result of all these (and more) times I was fooled, I developed a knee-jerk response to never believe things that normal people do. I don’t have the sense or sensory response to tell when I should believe anyone, so now I just don’t believe anything. Here are a couple of examples:

 

I went to see my spiritual advisors one Sunday morning to seek out the guidance I so obviously need when I realized that Barbara wasn’t there and that Susan was really jammed up and busy. I don’t usually do this, but I decided to see someone other than my regulars. You might think it strange to have not one, but two spiritual advisors – but a twisted mind like this needs more than one. These aren’t your run of the mill psychics like the one on the street who said I had a spiritual parasite and I went back and paid her another $90.00 for research on the off chance that it was true. These are professionals and they’ve been on-point with me many times; if they say jump – I say how high. I never stray from them, but I went against my better judgment and thought maybe a change could be good and tried someone new. I’d never met her before and had no knowledge of her skills so I saw down and thought it would be as comforting as it regularly was.

I wasn’t even seated with her for more than a minute as she shuffled and laid out the tarot cards when she looked at me with a quizzical gaze. The first words out of her mouth were “You think they’re something medically wrong with you, but it’s nothing serious – are you in pain?” I replied “Well, it’s probably just a brain tumor, but I get headaches all the time…” She looked at me like I had two heads and said “That’s not funny to joke about – I have a brain tumor!” Knee-jerk response anyone? I replied as if it was an instinct “You’re such a liar…who has a brain tumor?”

 

She laid down the deck of cards from her hands, placed each palm slowly on the table, and said calmly “What kind of sick person would joke around about having a brain tumor if they didn’t really have one?” “I would” I said and then leaned over to the psychic seated at the table next to her and inquired “Does this lady really have a brain tumor or is she just messing with me?” Another look of puzzlement mixed with disgust as the other psychic said “Of course she does, who would make that up?” “I would” I repeated to another strange look from her. Needless to say, it was kind of hard to get a good reading after that and apparently it’s rude to fact-check an “alleged” ailment from one’s peers. We started on the wrong foot and I was terrified to say anything else to her so there was no turning back. Maybe she really did have a brain tumor but come on – I may be old-fashioned, but it’s not really considered “nice” to act like that.

 

When I was in college, I never knew anyone’s last name. Hell, I was lucky to know some of my friends’ first names. I won’t blow her spot by saying who it is, but one of my good friends used to hook up with a fraternity guy named Shit Stain. Take that in for a second. I’m not one to judge, but how exactly does a girl have sex with a guy named Shit Stain? “Give it to me Shit Stain…Me Love you long time Shit Stain…” it just doesn’t flow and imagine what those neighbors think. That’s not the point of this though – the point is that I didn’t know his real name until almost two years after Graduation when I randomly saw him and his mother at the mall by the Fat Camp. I was walking and saw them so I said “Hey Shit Stain” when I realized that I didn’t know his real name and probably shouldn’t have call him Shit Stain in front of his mother. She was like “What did you call my son? His name is John.” “It is? I had no idea” I told her. He was obviously embarrassed and then his mother was like “Why did he call you Shit Stain?” They walked away and I’m sure that car ride home was really fun. When I asked my friend if she knew that Shit Stain’s real name was John, she tried to act like she knew it all along. I’m still not convinced she knew before I told her, but like I said no judgments; some girls will let a guy named Shit Stain hit it and quit it….

So, as you can tell, not knowing people’s names was always a problem with me in college. One day I was on my way to audition for the show that the Theatre Department was putting on when I saw the Dean of the college sitting in the waiting area. “What’s that Fat Fuck Dean Marine doing here?” I said to a bunch of my friends who had shocked looks on their faces when I entered the auditorium. No one said a word; they just kept looking at each other like a deer in headlights. I asked again “No one knows what that Fat Fuck Dean Marine is doing here? Is she auditioning too” Another round of stares until Katie opened her mouth to speak. She looked kind of mad and with a nasty tone infused through her response, said “that’s my mother you’re talking about.” Of course I didn’t believe her. “That Fat Fuck is your mother? She shook her head in response, but I just couldn’t process it. “What are you talking about? That Fat Fuck is your mother? You’re such a liar!” “She is” she replied and I turned towards another friend John and said “Is that Fat Fuck Dean Marine her mother?” When he shook his head yes, not quite sure what to say “I turned back to her “That Fat Fuck is really your mother? I can’t believe it” She was pissed by this point and said “Stop saying that!” “I’m sorry I just cannot believe that Fat Fuck is your mother.” She walked away shaking her head and disgusted as the other people in the circle attacked me “What is wrong with you? You just called her mother a Fat Fuck like six times. She’s never going to forgive you – Why did you keep saying it after she said it was true?” Is that really her mother? I don’t believe it…I thought she was kidding. And she is a Fat Fuck – I can’t stand her…” Needless to say Katie and I weren’t buddies anymore after that – it’s kind of hard to get past calling someone’s mother a Fat Fuck…that cuts deep. And really, how was I supposed to know that Fat Fuck was her mother?

 

One would think I’d learn my lesson after all these years, but I am constantly opening my mouth while my foot is being strategically placed into it. Stupid is as stupid does, and I’m not that bright…

Me and some loonies re-enacting The Goonies

I was watching The Goonies the other night for the hundredth time and it reminded me of a CLASSIC moment in my life that could have been a deleted scene from the film – I want to set it correctly so instead of mood music, I’ll start off with a quote from a classic Goonies scene:

Francis: Tell us everything! Everything!

Chunk: Everything. OK! I’ll talk! In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max’s toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog…

Now that we’re sufficiently jazzed up, I’ll proceed…

As I’ve mentioned before, the apartment we lived in was on a really wild street in college. It was a line of one party-house after another, leading down the yellow-brick road to the Promised Land (the bars, obviously). My house was diagonal from Lisa’s and we’d usually alternate where each night’s after-hours would take place based on who had beer in the fridge. That, or if it was one of the days that the pizza place had cut me off from getting a delivery because I passed out after ordering and slept through the delivery guy at the door again – we’d be at Lisa’s.

The two most hated words known to man!

It was just past 2 AM and I was stumbling back to my apartment after the bars closed. As I was ambling down the way in my drunken haze, I saw Lisa’s Roommate Sue puttering around ten times drunker than I was. I thought Sue must be on some really good shit to be that out of control, so of course I went right over when she told me after-hours was at her house. You know that instinct that tells you something is obviously wrong and you shouldn’t do something? I don’t have that! It’s notoriously absent in me sober – nonetheless when I’m drunk.

(To clarify before I go any further – no, this is not the night that Sue was drunk and ran over her and Lisa’s other roommate Kathy with the car when she got out to pee on the ski slope. Read that back: Kathy actually got ran over with HER OWN car when she crouched in back of it to pee. It was late at night, they were wasted, and Sue couldn’t see where Kathy was peeing when she moved the car because she didn’t want to get caught because the car was ACTUALLY on the ski slope. I didn’t believe this story since they came right back to the bar after it happened until Kathy pulled down her jeans to show me the road rash. Those two were like the blind leading the blind-folded.)

Lisa, Sue & Kathy lived in the top half of a two-family house. When you entered the front door, the stairs led up into the living room which connected to the kitchen, then led to a hallway where the three bedrooms and bathroom were located. Sue and I were following through on our promise to drink absolutely every single beer in their house before the rest of our crew arrived since it was only the two if us. I randomly looked up and happened to see something I hadn’t noticed before. Although the living room ceiling was about sixteen feet high, there was a barn door with an X on it about ten feet in the air. I asked her what it was and she replied “probably goes to the roof – what else could it be?” and the very same light bulb appeared over both of our drunken head’s at exactly the same time: DING DING – Obviously, we should go on the roof!

Conventional wisdom should tell you that if you’re only 5’ 7” tall, you’re not going to be able to reach a door that’s ten feet in the air without a boost. Conventional wisdom also forgets to inform you that if said boost doesn’t work and you’re going to start stacking random pieces of furniture to reach said door – there is absolutely no wisdom present: conventional or otherwise. It is actually the opposite of any other word for used to describe or related to wisdom, yet it didn’t hinder us.

The adornments in furnished apartments are usually mismatched, cheap, and rickety but their furnishings were an especially random assortment of hodge-podge. In addition to the usual suspects (beat-up old couch, smelly loveseat, scratched up side-table) there was a weird rocking chair that never really “belonged” in the room. It also never “belonged” sandwiched in the middle of our “furniture ladder,” but that’s not really the point now is it? We let nothing stand in our way as we jammed one item on top of another to get to that door. Common sense obviously wasn’t on the guest list for this after-hours party, but we persevered and got our makeshift Tower of Babel up to the doorway. Being the absolute gentleman that I am, I let her climb up first. Obviously, I truly believed that it would collapse as soon as she mounted it, but also, it was her house so letting her go up first was the respectful thing to do. Like I said, she was much drunker than I was so she didn’t protest…

Sue was a limber little thing and she made her way up the sofa, championed past the cocktail table and over the rocker like it was her job. I had been watching her ascent and thinking to myself “That really doesn’t seem sturdy and there’s no way it will hold her…” when I realized that my beer was empty and went to get another one in the kitchen. She was passing over the second kitchen chair we had stacked on the pile and then got by the ottoman when she reached the barn door. She pried that door off like a cat burglar and tossed it onto the living room floor. The huge crash from the door hitting the ground caused her to look around and realize that I hadn’t been holding the furniture ladder steady for her. Holding it steady? I wasn’t even in the same room! Didn’t I just tell you that my beer was empty?  Did I not say that out loud? Also, she tossed that door over her shoulder to get it out of her way and THEN looked where I was – good thing I ditched her or she would have popped me right in the noggin with that friggin door! She was neither surprised nor mad that I had abandoned her. She told me to take the case of beer out of the fridge so we could take it up to the roof with us; it’s really not saying much, but she was the brains of this operation.

I grabbed the beer and headed back into the living room to see two feet crawling into the entryway the barn door had been covering up. She peeked back out the now open doorway and asked what I was waiting for. In truth, I hadn’t actually considered going on the roof at all because I’m deathly afraid of heights. I just assumed that the furniture would collapse or she’d lose interest or fall and hit her head before she could get the door off, but now I didn’t want to miss seeing what was up there. I thought it could become our new terrace or outdoor lounge but actually, I was just really drunk and didn’t think it through at all. I started my climb and the way it shook and creaked when she went up was a distant memory and I was laser-focused on not dropping the beer and not falling, but mostly I was worried about the beer. It took a bit, but I made my way up and that’s saying a lot for a guy that has no coordination or athletic ability when I’m sober, so forget about my dexterity while intoxicated.

When you looked into the hole – which was really dark; neither of us had thought about a flashlight – but due to the high ceiling lights in the living room, we could make out rows of beams with insulation in between heading to five steps leading up to two bilko doors which opened out onto the roof. We walked across the beams, got the roof door open, and headed up. The storm hadn’t let up at all and it was actually even windier on the roof – which thankfully was flat and didn’t have any peaks on it. We got out there and started dancing around in the rain like fools; she looked like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance and I looked like I got hit by a flash of lightning with my flailing arms and supreme lack of rhythm…

We walked over to the edge of the roof to survey the land and low and behold – we saw Weezie strolling up the street with Spento. They had just come back from the nightly late-night jaunt to the diner and were looking for an after-hours spot. “HOOKA!!!” I screamed down at her and she looked all around before finally realizing that we were up on the roof waving.  A normal person that sees two drunken fools prancing around on the roof like Santa Claus should have an immediate reaction to stop these two fools and get them down – not Weezie. “How do I get up there?” she screamed back. “Go inside and follow the furniture trail.” She went into the house, surveyed the situation, and marched right back out again “come down here and help me up – that’s not sturdy…”

We went down to the living room and Weezie immediately latched onto that Coors Light suitcase of beer like she was going to the chair. Just then, Sue and Lisa’s roommate Kathy came in and said “What the fuck? Come on!!!” “We’ll be quiet – you won’t even know we’re here” we chimed as we started heading back up. We got all four of us up the furniture and through the doorway. Weezie went up first and she sat on the steps leading to the roof like a bird on a perch with the beer as Spento made his way in next, followed by Sue, with me at the rear. As we were making our way through, Kathy was making her way to her bedroom to go to bed as she was in no mood for drunken nonsense and had to be up really early the next morning.

To give you an idea about the beams…

Weezie sat facing the entryway with a vice grip on her Coors Light tighter than Kate Winslet had on that driftwood at the end of Titanic when she looked up. “Spento, you better walk on those beams…”No sooner had the words escaped her mouth than Spento took one misstep and it was like it happened in slow-motion. I thought for sure that I was back on the dust because he hit that insulation in between the beams (which wouldn’t support the weight of a fart, by the way) and he dropped through it in a flash. Not only did he go through the insulation and the floor – but he went feet-first right through the ceiling like an atom bomb; those kicks came shooting through Kathy’s bedroom ceiling just as she was opening the doorway. He brought with him a storm of insulation, sheetrock, and whatever the hell else was in between the ceiling and attic all over her, her bedroom, and all over us in the attic. Weezie screamed like they were bringing back prohibition as the dust storm erupted through the attic and bedroom absolutely covering us in that shit. As the cloud approached, I ducked behind Sue to try and shield me from the caustic material, but it was to no avail – it got us all.

As if that wasn’t crazy enough – Spento didn’t go all the way through and he got lodged between the beams. “I’m stuck…I’m stuck” he said, which made us laugh even harder. His stomach was ripped open and bleeding as he was lodged between those beams while Weezie kept drinking, Sue tried to help, and I tried not to piss my pants…Needless to say, Kathy was not amused but actually really pissed off and didn’t see the humor in the situation like we did…She pushed his feet up and Weezie and Sue helped pry him out from the beam’s vice grip, while I tried to stop laughing. Never one to argue with an obvious sign – we took that sign to mean we should head back down and stay off the roof. Granted, the more obvious sign should have been his blood signaling the need for medical attention, but I digress.

We climbed back down without any other incidents and with nothing left to sit on, we were forced to had to dismantle some of the items off the furniture ladder. Kathy yelled at us non-stop because had he fell ten seconds later, she would have gotten a Converse to the cranium – yet we couldn’t stop laughing… I was literally crying from laughing so hard that I felt like I might actually have a stroke.

Weezie was quiet for a long time after and was almost catatonic. “Hey Hooka, What’s wrong with you?” I offered. “I’ve been here for six years, that’s a long time…but…if that was me…I’d transfer…I’d transfer right out of here…I know you’d tell everyone. You’d tell everyone.” Was all she could mutter and I knew she was dead-on-balls accurate because if that had been her that went through the roof, I’d have gotten a megaphone and went up and down the street immediately after the insulation dust settled…

I have never laughed like that in my life – even when my aunt was ejected out of the wheelchair at Disney. The best part of it was that because Lisa, Sue and Kathy were moving out at the end of the semester, the landlord had been showing it to prospective tenants all the time and he came over bright and early the next morning. Besides Kathy, guess who else didn’t find it as funny as we did…Then guess who didn’t get their security deposit back…Lisa was just as pissed off as Kathy was but not for the damage, not for the disturbance, and certainly not for the concern over Spento’s health – she was mad that she missed seeing it. To this day I still break up every time I think about it…if only there were camera phones back then…

For that one quick moment, I got to live out my own Goonies moment, and the only thing that could have made it any better would have been if Spento did the truffle shuffle when they got him out of the floor…I did feel bad a couple of days later as I kept replaying it in my head over and over and laughing because not once did we ask if he was OK – we just laughed…I guess that is selfish, but I never said I was good in a crisis. It has been years since this happened, yet I still just pictured it again and burst out laughing like a fool as if it took place this morning. I almost felt this bad: (cue another great Goonies scene)

HEY YOU GUYS!!!

Chunk: Then my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then once during lunch I got nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out… But the worst thing I ever done — I mixed all this fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then… then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa — and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.

 

Can I get a side of whoop ass with that toast Jan?

There’s really not anyplace to eat near the fat camp, especially late at night. After closing down the local bar, we were always hungry and looking for someone to take us to the diner. It was the only place to get something to eat 24 hours a day and I could never drive because I was always completely drunk. The food was unbearable if you were sober but, like I said, it was the only thing open late-night and thankfully, we were never sober in there. We went there so much that Jan the waitress became quite fond of me. When I say that she became quite fond of me, I mean that she would put up with my nonsense because I was always drunk and obnoxious…

Jan was very patient with the drunks and she made really good toast. She had a tendency to screw up my order, but I usually attributed that to my pickiness and slurring drunken speech – not her waitressing skills. Jan was in her mid-fifties, had big hair like Flo from Mel’s Diner, had extremely long nails, and had a deep raspy voice from many years of chain smoking. I know exactly what you’re thinking and you’re right; she was hot!

Jan, Is that you?

One night I was out with my cousin Leaky and her friend Diana. She was a nice enough girl, but she was extremely intimidating and she didn’t take shit from anyone. She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm – which she let me know often – and was actually more like a bodyguard than a friend. Let me try to paint a picture and tell you about Diana – she was built just like a FedEx drop-off box, had both her eyebrows, her lips, and ears pierced with all manner of metallic symbols and objects, a razor-thin moustache over that constant frown, and she had really short curly red hair like a certain little orphan whose name rhymes with Fannie. Picture a female Mr. T without the jewelry and you’re not far off. I used to like to refer to her as “the Enforcer” but obviously not to her face since I was afraid of her. I really do say it about a lot of people, but she truly was crazy.

Put a curly wig on top and it’s not that far off from what she actually looks like.

To illustrate her insanity, we were in her car after picking up another friend, when she saw a guy randomly walking down the street. She threw on the brights and gassed it to the floor! The guy saw her veering towards him and bolted off while she was screaming out the window “Why are you running? Why are you hiding behind that car” as she was holding the horn down and swerving at him. Did I mention it was after midnight on a weeknight on a random side street? I was like; “Hello crazy, of course he’s running away like Carl Johnson – You’re chasing him down a dark street”…Needless to say the guy went running scared through someone’s yard towards the next block over to get away from this lunatic.

So back to the diner – Diana agreed to take us because she hadn’t been drinking and I was starving and whining non-stop about going. As we walked in the diner, I could see the look of grave concern on Jan’s face and I just assumed that she was as puzzled about Diana’s hair and clothing choices as we were. Apparently, I was much worse than usual in my level of drunkedness. I thought I was acting all subtle and smooth like jazz but, in hindsight, there was nothing subtle about me stumbling in the door and screaming: “Jan, I will fuck you on this counter RIGHT NOW if you bring me some rye bread toast immediately.” I’m not saying for sure whether she wanted it or not, but that was the quickest toast I have ever gotten in any diner, anywhere before or since.

Everyone in the diner thought it was funny and was laughing: everyone except for Jan. Jan proceeded to scold me and threaten to throw me out…”You can’t act like that in here. You better behave or you’re out again” to which I started giggling uncontrollably. Then she got mad and screamed “Out! You’re not doing this tonight” and had her hand strategically positioned on her hip while the other hand waived me towards the door like an air traffic controller with a flare. I begged her to let me stay since I was starving and anyway I didn’t have the keys to the car – I should have taken her advice and left then- little did I know.

Not one of my shining moments…

I really needed to pee so I took a bite of some of that delicious toast and stumbled off to the bathroom urinal to relieve myself. The next thing I remember was someone grabbing my arm and I went all Wu-Tang. I was swinging like Marky Mark in The Fighter because you do not mess with a guy at a urinal in the Men’s Room. That’s how I remember things going down.

What ACTUALLY happened was that I was peeing at the urinal and leaned against the wall for balance and apparently blacked out/fell asleep in the process. Sensing something was wrong since I obviously don’t shit in public with all this Imodium AD flowing through my veins, my cousin thought I needed someone to check on me. I think you can see where this is leading…

She senses something might be off, yet sends Diana in to see if I’m OK. She came in, saw me passed out and grabbed my arm so as not to startle me when I came to. Needless to say, when she grabbed me it startled me and I immediately went all funky bunch and tried to throw a cuff or two. A normal person in that situation would be a little more understanding when a drunken person with absolutely no coordination is throwing punches – not Diana.

Once I went all Iron Mike, Diana responded like Jackie Chan. She threw an elbow, somehow kicked me in the face as I was falling and then threw me onto the floor. She threw me onto the filthy public bathroom floor! As if that wasn’t enough – she dropped on top of me with the sharpest elbow on the East Coast and started punching the drunk out of me. Homegirl got all out crazy and was giving me a full throttle beat-down right there at the urinal. She seemed heavy before – but with the sheer might and gravity of her torso pummeling me, I really thought that deuce and a half of Diana might literally break me. Remember what Bane did to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises – well He’s got nothing on Diana!

Bane or Diana?

I’d like to tell you that I connected with a few good shots in on her as she was picking up her next title fight belt, but the truth is I didn’t connect with anything but the bathroom floor. She was doing a real number on me, but in my defense, I was mostly just trying to get my pants buttoned up and put my junk away. Not the best visual, but imagine my fear about having my privates hit that very public and filthy bathroom floor! No amount of penicillin is gonna make that go away.

Usually in circumstances like this, there is a savior – someone who sees the wrong in this situation and does what they can to assist because it is the right thing to do – not that night! You know who my savior was? Not my cousin, who was laughing at my screams while she finished eating my toast back at our table. No, my savior was Jan who heard the commotion and screaming (mine) and came running in. She kicked the bathroom door open (almost hitting me in the face with it, by the way), grabbed me by my ear and proceeded to drag me out the bathroom towards the front door like I was a rolling suitcase. Turns out she wasn’t saving me at all – she was throwing me out! I thought she was coming to my rescue and was like “Thank God, she’s kicking the shit out of me! What took you so long?  Wait, why are you throwing me out – she attacked me!!! Hey that hurts – let go of my ear! Can I at least take the toast to go?” Needless to say, the view from my perch on the front steps where she deposited me was not pretty.

As I sat on the front steps beaten and defeated, I tried trying to compose what was left of my tattered pride and shake it off. I had just been the victim of a drive by ass kicking, and there they were eating and having a good laugh at my expense. I’m sure it would have bothered me more if I hadn’t passed out again while I sat there on the steps leaning against the glass door.

Rye Bread Toast, how I love thee…

Jan actually did bring me some toast out on the steps a little while later – which made me laugh because it confirmed what I already knew to be true: she wanted me….she’s lucky the bully beat down took every drop of energy I had in me or I might have tried to make a move on her…Granted, she didn’t apologize for dragging me out by my poor little delicate ear, but the toast was all I needed to know everything would be all right…

This has absolutely nothing to do with this post – I just thought it was funny.

For all my Homies to get to know mes


Of all the questions that people ask me about this site, nine times out of ten there is some variation of “Your poor wife, how does she do it?” as the very first question. The second question is which is the best post to read if you’re new to this site and haven’t had a chance to catch up on all the older stuff posted here. If you fall into the latter category than today is your lucky day!

I’ve created a list of what I think are the essential posts you MUST read in order to get to know this site. Others are really funny as well, but this is where you should start. These are in no particular order, just a random collective to get you up to speed. I must advocate caution while ingesting these posts, as some of them are really funny. In the lab, some of the test subjects were known to lose control of themselves while reading – so avoid liquids while consuming them at all costs!

As an added treat, I will be reposting some of the oldies in between new posts here on the site….if you’ve already read them, it’ll be a refresher. If you’re an Imodium virgin and this is your first time getting a piece – Enjoy it! If your favorite isn’t listed here, let me know in the comments which one you’d have picked…

 

When I was mistaken for a retarded person TWICE in less than a half hour!!!

Assaulting Tom Cruise-Part 1: Hit and run

Assaulting Tom Cruise-Part 2: Great, now Rosie O’Donnell thinks I’m a scumbag

Just for the Holiday Season: My Famous Baby Jesus Story

One of my many Ah-Shit Moments (Literally!)

Who does this shit happen to?

Like I’ve heard so many times before “Wow, That’s a long one!”

Wanna hear something ironic? Imodium AD actually tried to stage an intervention with me!!!

Our Honeymoon Part One: Ain’t no joke, our bed broke (Twice!!!) and I had to call a bloke who was sippin’ on a coke; All because I gave her a poke!

Our Honeymoon Part Two: Forget finger lickin’- my masseuse was testicle flickin!!!

Drop a note below and let me know which one is your favorite.

Tony No Here?

The first time I broke my ankle; I had surgery and was laid up for a few weeks. Normally, when one is incapacitated, their wife comes to the rescue and plays Florence Nightingale. It involves a lot of spoiling and a little sympathy, but not this time. Apparently, when you’re clumsy and constantly getting hurt in alcohol-related injuries, it gets old real fast.

Forget the crutches, I was a sore sight to begin with!

 

After the surgery, I couldn’t walk at all and was laid up. My wife went back to work and little old me was kinda stranded. I am a yenta that talks non-stop 24/7 and now here I was without anyone at all. Even poor Smokey, the super Shih-Tzu, had enough and was avoiding me. I tried calling my wife at work, but she was busy. I tried calling my people at work, but they were too busy for me as well. I started ordering stuff online just so the UPS guy would come and I could have someone to talk to…

I put myself on liquid restriction to keep from having to go to the bathroom and I was starting to get dehydrated. I was so thirsty, but wouldn’t drink anything because I didn’t want to keep getting up and down to pee. When it came to eating, my wife left me a few snacks on the coffee table. I figured I would call the local pizza place for lunch and since I couldn’t move off the couch, I had my wife leave the front door slightly ajar for the delivery guy when she left for work.

My Fancy Footwear for a while…

I called the pizza place and lo and behold, they didn’t open during the week until 3 PM. Here I am starving and no pizza…I called all around town and the only other option was to order Chinese food – which I don’t eat. Since I don’t eat chopped cats, I ordered white rice, steamed vegetables, and steamed chicken with no sauce on it. No sauce whatsoever. Plain, Plain, Plain and everything in separate containers. I actually can’t eat Chinese food at a restaurant because when I order stuff plain and steamed with no sauce without fail they always say “Oh, you try lose weight” or “Oh, you on diet?” I always have to be like “No, I don’t eat spices or cats, so I need plain white rice and no sauce whatsoever!” which usually gets them to laugh in my face again – always a crowd-pleaser, I am.

So I called the Chinese place which was open and willing to deliver, but once I ordered my white rice, steamed chicken and steamed vegetables – my order didn’t meet the fifteen dollar minimum required for delivery. I said “OK, send double white rice – you can never have enough white rice” but that still didn’t do it. Come on, how cheap is Chinese food – I mean, what does a guy have to do here? “For God’s sake – just charge me the delivery fee anyway or buy lunch for the driver or do whatever you want, but please deliver the food – I’m stranded here and I’m starving.” He laughed at me and then relented to which I was all grin on my chin.

Everything’s nice when you have White Rice!

 

A little time goes by, and the delivery guy starts knock knock knockin on heaven’s door. I yelled from my perch “Come in” and he nudged open the door. Once he saw me looking like a poor sap sprawled out with my foot up on pillows, he gasped “What happen you foot?” Oh snap, not only did I get a lunch delivery, but I also got someone to talk to! What started there with those four little words can only be described as a beautiful and pure friendship built equally on desperation for white rice and any sort of human contact whatsoever.

Needless to say about thirty minutes goes by with me and my new friend talking up a storm. He got me silverware and napkins from the kitchen, and was the best listener ever. We agreed that since I would be laid up for a couple of weeks at least and had no other lunch options…that he would bring the usual every day and since I couldn’t meet the delivery minimum – he would bring lunch for himself as well. Everybody wins.

He would bring the food, walk Smokey, and then throw the garbage in the dumpster whenever he had to leave for another delivery. Thank god not that many people were getting lunch orders, because I was in heaven. We talked about my study abroad, my dog Smokey’s adventures, his family and extensively about how competitive the Chinese food industry was. I’m not even kidding – it’s hard out here for a Chinese pimp! Did you know that there are more Chinese food places than fast food places in the United States? Those bitches get cutthroat!

 

The best part of my recovery was that right before surgery, I’d received a shipment from Ebay of the absolute best thing in the world: I’d gotten all nine seasons of Dynasty (Need I remind you that it’s the best show ever?) I was immediately drawn back in and obsessed once again. Guess who else was sucked right in with watching Alexis and her exploits? My new friend Lee. He left for a delivery one day and he just couldn’t believe what Sammy Jo was up to. “Just you wait until season six with the Moldavian Massacre” I promised as he closed the door behind him…It was the perfect friendship.

I didn’t want to rush my recovery  because I was living high on the hog, but I was able to get up and around on my crutches so the doctor cleared me to go back to work. I was sad to see my new friendship lapsing, but we’d still be ordering from that same place and we’d still see each other…

A week or two later, my wife and I ordered Chinese food and I was in the shower when it arrived. She opened the door (to my delivery friend) and he started to walk in with the food like usual. She was caught off-guard and shut the door over so it was open only a bit. He was obviously shocked and offended by this brazed act of rudeness, but she had no idea why he was trying to come in. He poked his head through the crack in the door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and said “Tony no here??? You want me walk Smokey?” I’m not sure if she was more shocked at me or him, but she was flabbergasted, She paid him, put the food down, and then yanked open the bathroom door as I was coming out of the shower. “What’s going on with you and the Chinese delivery guy? He just tried to come in the house.”

“You didn’t let him in? What’s wrong with you?” At that point I realized that I probably should have told her about my daytime company before now but I somehow knew she wouldn’t approve…

“What’s wrong with me? He tried to come in the house!”

“He’s been in this house more than your mother has.”

“Why was he in the house and when did he walk Smokey?”

“Honey, how was the dog gonna get walked, I can’t take him. It never occurred to you that while I was bedridden there weren’t piles of shit mounting up around the house? He’s my friend; he hangs out with me when he brings our lunch…”

“What are you talking about? He eats here too? Now I can’t even order from there anymore…”

“Honey, what are you talking about? He’s gonna think we’re mad at him now if we don’t order from there anymore…”

“There’s something really wrong with you …”

The lesson I learned is not to tell my wife when I make new friend and have them over during the day, but to make sure that I am not in the
shower when they’re coming back over again…To my delivery friend I say “We’ll always have season five of Dynasty my friend…They can’t take that away from us…”

We’ll always have Season Five my friend…

I hobbled on and off those crutches and in and out of that boot for close to two years when I broke the ankle again, but we’ll save that for another time…

I Hate Birds Part Four – No love from the dove: It wasn’t a pisser when that bird popped me in the kisser!

As I have bemoaned many times – I hate birds. Indulge me as I share another example why…

I used to do event planning and would attend many trade shows to meet prospective clients, but just as importantly, to meet new vendors. If you’ve never been to one of these trade shows, picture a huge hotel ballroom with rows and rows and rows of booths full of everything from cakes and flowers to event venues to Yiddish poets and strolling minstrels.

The person that was supposed to go with me bailed at the last-minute, so my wife filled in to help me out running the booth. It wasn’t a big setup, but there was a huge crowd and one person can easily get overwhelmed by it. We got set up and were meeting a ton of people – everything was going great…

All of a sudden, I see this really tall glimmer of red sparkles through the crowd…The crowd parts and then this magician struts up to our booth in a bright red sparkly jacket and top hat. He was covered in sparkles and definitely not blending subtlety into the crowd. I’ve dealt with a lot of entertainers, so I was used to “eccentric” but I’ve seen showgirls with less razzle-dazzle than this guy…He stepped up to me and thrust out his hand to present his business card, but I was so distracted by all the sparkles that I dropped his card on the ground.

I bent down to pick it up and was on one knee facing the floor to see where the card landed so that I could pick it up. All of a sudden I hear the magician scream “Huzzah!!!” which caught me off guard and I looked up to see what had happened…

Once he thrust the card at me, he reached back in his waistcoat where a dove was waiting (I get it you’re a magician it’s normal, but who keeps a bird in his pants? That’s just disgusting and weird!) and then he thrust that bird forward. I guess it was supposed to be impressive or a trick to be like “WOW, here’s a bird.” That was the intention anyway – what happened was a different story altogether.

I heard him scream “Huzzah!” and thrust my head up to see why this wacko was screaming only to have him and the dove connect with my face – He punched me right in the eye with that bird! HE PUNCHED ME RIGHT IN THE EYE WITH THE BIRD! I was so taken off guard and frankly, almost blinded by that filthy beak, that I toppled backwards onto the floor screaming like a lunatic “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY WOULD YOU PUNCH ME IN THE EYE WITH THAT FILTHY BIRD? WHO DOES THAT? WHY WAS IT IN YOUR PANTS?”

At this point, with me screaming at the top of my lungs and sprawled out on the floor of our booth, you’d think that at least someone would at the very least ask if I was OK…Not there…there were tons of people staring at the commotion asking if the bird was OK, saying “Oh, that poor bird” as if I wasn’t the victim here. Where was the magician you might ask? He was also on the ground – not checking if I was OK, but trying to see if the God damn bird was OK…that sweaty thing was hobbling around cooing in some sort of fowl distress code cocking it’s head from side to side like Stevie Wonder. Magic Mike (not the Magician’s real name) was like “It’s OK; you’re OK…It’s OK.” To the bird, mind you, not to me…Granted, the bird was probably brain-dead because it took a pounding to the head like it was fighting Iron Mike Tyson!

I was trying to remember that I was in a work setting and regain composure, but I had just been the victim of a drive by shooting courtesy of that filthy foul assassin and was legitimately almost blinded! And did I mention that filthy bird touched my face? I got up and made a run for the bathroom to wash myself and Magic Mike was like “Hey, you forgot my card…” Obviously, I got your number buddy and even if he was the best magician in the world I could never call him after that. Needless to say I spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing my face in the hotel bathroom sink…My face was red and irritated and I had to go to the Front Desk to get a real bar of soap because that dispenser soap just wasn’t cutting it.

After I finally emerged, pretending nothing had happened and hoping there weren’t any other magicians positioned to attack or member of PETA mobilizing, it was pretty hard to be professional. As is to be expected when one has just been assaulted, I was a little jittery. My wife was standing by the whole time – laughing at me really – thinking “who else would that ever happen to?”… Another day at the mill for me though…Note to all trade show exhibitors:  helmets are not crazy – better to be safe than sorry.

My days in Grease Part Two: WOW, THAT TEEN ANGEL JUST DROPPED IT LIKE IT WAS HOT!!!

Earlier, I told you about my antics in a college production of Grease and now I’m back with another helping. After getting slimed by Crista like I was on Double Dare, I wasn’t sure it was safe (or sanitary) for me to ever have a part in Grease again. Despite that, I ended up stepping in to direct the official Fat Camp version of Grease with my friend Rhea after the original director hired had an emergency and couldn’t come to camp.

As we were discussing the play over many drinks at lunch, Rhea convinced a more intoxicated version of my regular self that I should be the Teen Angel. Figuring it would be a blast, I forgot for a second that I can’t sing and immediately agreed to it. Who doesn’t love a Beauty School Dropout and, really, does it matter if it sounds good?

After a few rehearsals, the show started coming together nicely but we felt like my entrance was a bit boring and should have a wow factor (or about as wow as you can get at Fat Camp)…We discussed it and were throwing out ideas about how to spice it up, when her face lit up and she said “Oh My God, the Teen Angel appears to Frencie to offer advice and look out for her, so how funny would it be if he was dressed like a Fairy Godmother in a big frilly dress? Sarcastically, I replied “Why don’t you just hang me from the ceiling like Peter Pan while you’re at it” and as soon as it was out loud, we both knew how funny it could be. I had said it more as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the cooler it sounded to lower me from the back balcony over the audience while I entered singing.

Imagine the looks I got as we went from one woman’s store to the next so I could try on dresses and find the “perfect” one. Tell me which part you think is more embarrassing: A) That I was guy in all these women’s stores trying on dresses or B) That when questioned about what we were doing, Rhea said “What’s so weird about it? It’s for Fat Camp” as if that answer provided any sort of clarity.

It’s always so hard to find the right fit…

Back at camp, we spoke to the maintenance guys and they thought it was hysterical and got to work on creating a swing for my entrance. My vision was of a chariot being lowered from the rafters by professional machinery; their vision was a piece of wood with a rope tied to it. Guess what we got? The latter vision. Obvious red flags should have went up – but I was sober very little that summer and you know how I commit to a role!

On the night of the show, I got into costume and went up in the balcony to wait for my sound cue. As I sat there hunched over, so that no one would see me or realize that I was up there, I couldn’t help but have second thoughts about this whole stupid idea and the scenario that was playing out. I had a bad feeling about my entrance and then became horribly aware of just how awful I looked. Sure, I was a guy in a woman’s dress and floppy wig, but it wasn’t even funny-ugly – it was just an ugly sight. I had frills everywhere and realized a little too late that maybe pink wasn’t my color after all. With my albino white skin and that light pink dress, I looked like a deformed porcelain doll…I was in good shape back then with a full head of hair mind you, but dressed as a woman, I looked like Lady Gaga without the ya ya’s. Who lets a guy with a flat chest wear a dress and forgets about the knockers?

I looked like Lady Gaga without the ya ya’s!

As we were coming up on my cue, the guys holding the ropes couldn’t even look at me without laughing. I was seated on the swing waiting for Frenchie to say “If only I had a guardian angel tell me what to do” and I then I would say “You got your wish sister!” and launch into Beauty School Dropout. That’s what’s was supposed to happen – but as I said “You got your wish sister!” everyone in the audience turned and looked up at me and the music started to play. The guys that were supposed to lower me on the swing over the lip of the balcony and then down to the ground pushed my backside instead of pushing the swing, causing me to fall out of it.

No one screamed louder than me because it almost scared the shit out of me as I was pushed off the swing and grabbed at the ropes to hold on. As I fell, one of the guys holding the rope grabbed my hand and I was dangling there like Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger. Needless to say, trying to sing the song through the screams (mostly mine) and hysterical laughter (everyone else’s) was to no avail. The music played on and at first, I still tried to keep singing the song as they were trying to pull me back up into the balcony.

As I was dangling there like a pendulum, I couldn’t help but think a) good thing I wore underwear and b) good thing the pair of underwear I chose wasn’t my festive American Flag G-string and then c) fucking let me go already!

I checked afterwards to make sure, but it’s not actually written in the stage directions on the script to scream “Asshole, let me go” at the crew members during the show but sometimes you have to improvise. I also never learned the old tuck and roll trick either because when I got my wish – and they released me – I dropped the rest of the way down and hit the ground like a rock to even louder laughter and clapping. I wasn’t really mad that not even one person in that audience tried to catch me or tried help me before, during, or even after the fall, and I also wasn’t mad at the piano player who didn’t think to stop playing the song at all during it either. I know what you’re thinking “It could have been worse” but that’s not the end of it.

I didn’t get hurt in the fall unless you count my pride – cause that bitch was a-hurtin’ fo Sure! I also didn’t get hurt by the dangling swing that I fell out of repeatedly smacking me in the face and noggin as I dangled there. All of that might not have been so bad or embarrassing if at the exact moment that I was shifted out of the swing and started to plummet, my dress hadn’t gotten caught on the balcony ledge and started to ceremoniously rip off me layer by layer. After they finally let me go and I fell to my descent, the remaining tattered material just gave way around me. Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark let me tell you something: you are not innovative – I was falling out of the rafters during a show years before you!!!

I did my best to try and keep some parcel of my dignity intact as I did what I could with the performance but imagine how difficult it was to try to get up off the ground and make your way to the stage in boxers and a few strands of taffeta around your neck and chest. God only knows when and where I lost the wig, but I was a mess. I held my head up high, tried to keep from laughing and sing the rest of the song and exited stage right.

After bearing witness to one of the best spectacles she said she has ever seen, my sister Marlene came backstage with her arms overflowing with the multiple pieces of material she had recovered from the wall, floor, and along my trail through the auditorium. With tears in her eyes and trying to hold in her laughter, she said (handing me the pile of material) “I think you forgot this out there…Words cannot even describe…Was it supposed to happen like that?…I thought you might have really gotten hurt there for a second there but…” and then we just burst out laughing. We didn’t even wait until the end of the show, we literally left right then and went to the bar. Not the best tactic if you’re the director of said show, but I had enough and needed alcohol immediately.

I must have been out of my mind to think that it would work in the first place – me and coordination go together like asparagus and a golden shower…Even though it didn’t go as smoothly as I had planned – I was more like Frank the Tank than Frankie Avalon – it was really funny and everyone loved it. You know the old saying: It may not be Broadway, but even at Fat Camp – the show must go on!

I was more like Frank the Tank than Frankie Avalon!

 

True Confession – I made a senior citizen shit her pants!

It’s not something I’m extremely proud of, but I once made my 75 year old Aunt Margie shit her pants! Shortly after eating lunch, there was a rumble in the jungle going on in my stomach and like Madonna said – I needed to Express Myself. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one straddled with a quick-hitter after lunch, because while my sphincter was rocking, my Aunt Margie came A-knocking. She was at the bathroom door asking me if I was almost done and her voice was kind of shaky – but at 75 it was always shaky and she never came back so I didn’t give it a second thought. Big mistake on her part.  

This is not a Knock Knock joke

She unfortunately found out that a senior citizen shitting her pants in the hallway and then trying to quietly change out of those soiled undies with the five other people in your small two bedroom apartment not finding out is next to impossible. Of course, as is the case with anything potentially embarrassing or delicate – no one told me what had happened. I came out and didn’t pay it any mind when she rushed past me into the bathroom.

 

I was sitting on the porch with my mother, sister, and grandmother when Aunt Margie finished in there. As a point of reference, my grandmother was not one you would ever describe as a “sugar coater,” so it really was only a matter of time before I found out. We were about to head off to the mall when she suggested that Aunt Margie come along with us and she passed.

 

“Why aren’t you going? You said you had a few things you needed?” my grandmother asked her.

 

No response from my Aunt Margie, but my grandmother was not one to let that be it.

 

My grandmother (nudging her on) “Why don’t you go with them? It’ll be good for you to get out of the house for a while.”

 

Poor Aunt Margie never could catch a break with my grandmother and grunted back “You know that I can’t go out of the house since I had my accident – I can’t go to the store right now!” that shut her right up and dead silence took over because everyone knew what she was talking about except for me.

 

A normal person would have let it go – but this is me we’re talking about. I said “What are you talking about, what happened? What accident? Come with us…” With that, my sister gave me that knowing glance that speaks volumes without the need to utter a sound. As if it was a telepathic message between us, I understood: Aunt Margie shit her pants. The problem was that I was immature and once I realized the context of her “accident”, I burst into an uncontrollable fit of hysterical laughter. When you see something like that in the movies, everyone in the crowd usually joins in on the laughter and the moment passes by…Not that day. Not a word, not a sound – just me laughing as my poor Aunt Margie crept back into the house. My mother actually made me go sit in the car by myself while she followed in to apologize for my behavior (an act she was quite used to, by the way).

 

My Aunt didn’t appreciate my inappropriate laughter that day as much as she didn’t appreciate it the day that she was telling me about her ill-advised lunch trip to McDonald’s. She went with my cousin Tina and proceeded to down a nine piece when she suddenly choked on a nugget, forcing Tina to perform the Heimlich on her. It wouldn’t have been as bad if she hadn’t projectile vomited in the middle of that McDonald’s or brought the rest of the McNuggets home and offered them to me as she told me what had happened. I’m not one to preach – but let’s send a safety message to seniors everywhere: if you have no teeth and insist on getting McNuggets – either cut them or gnaw them with your gums before you try swallowing it whole!          

 

Aunt Margie didn’t hold a grudge about the spilled fudge and we moved past it, but I did feel really bad despite my case of the inappropriate giggles. In my defense, A) I’m immature and someone shitting their pants is funny and B) I was always taught that if it’s an emergency and you gotta go – You keep banging on that door or sit on their lap if they won’t move because when the fuse is lit and it’s gonna go off – Every second counts!  You cannot leave things like that to chance or depend on the kindness of a dipstick seventeen year old ADD moron reading People magazine!