Ketchup on Champagne (Fever Dream '09)

The dream ...

I am floating on a giant pair of scissors, cutting smoothly through a boiling ocean of Listerine. I didn't realize scissors were buoyant but damn it they are in this adventure through the looking glass.

How, you might ask, do I know I am navigating through mouthwash (and how in particular am I certain it is Listerine and not, say, Scope)? It's a good question. All I can tell you is that in this dream the substance and brand are givens, as sure as the air we breathe. Several of my shipmates, it should be noted, are regularly dunking little cups into the antiseptic waves as they crest across the scissor blades, gargling with the stuff before spitting it back into the deep.

I am clearly captain of this fine vessel and I have the best crew you could hope for. Well ... not exactly ... My USS Scissors is manned with an odd assortment of team mascots (Phillie Phanatic and San Diego Chicken), Krofft characters of yore (H.R. Pufnsuf and Sigmund the Sea Monster) and Sesame Street regulars (Big Bird and Snuffleupagus).

This felt-heavy menagerie is fortified by the addition of Sally Struthers, a gaggle of Christian Children's Fund (CCF) kids (presumably tagging along with Ms. 'Gloria' Ginormasaur), and Rob Reiner, his Meathead 'stache glued to his upper lip and 70's wig covering his chrome dome. Archie Bunker's chair is tied down to one of the scissor handles for some reason but no Archie or Carroll O'Connor accompanies it.

Maybe the CCF kids are mine. I've been sponsoring them for some time now (no thanks to Ms. Struthers and her voracious appetite; in fact, visions of her grinning girth among the starving almost made me renege on my pledge, suspicious that at least a portion of my monthly offering went to feed her Pizza Hut jones). Mainly, that kindly grandpa looking guy in the TV spots shamed me into it. And I wanted to prove that some of us non-Christians can nevertheless sometimes act more in line with the teachings of that lean clean Nazarene than the supposed true believers.


Anyway, back to the nightmare recap, already in progress ....

The dream started out pleasant enough, as we sailed through the boiling mouthwash under clear skies and relatively calm seas. We were all singing ABBA's Fernando and eating from apple and pear trees that rise just above the tops of the gingivitis-fighting waves. I kept having to slap Sally's hands away as she repeatedly attempted to steal fruit the CCF kids had already picked and gathered for themselves. Get off your fat ass, reach out and pick your own, lady! But all-in-all, things were going "swimmingly" (in fact, the Phanatic was a bit drunk having swallowed too much Listerine during a brief anchorage taken to let the gang dive into the "wash" for a few laps around the scissors, mainly to rinse the stink off their hides).

But then the skies darkened and the seas grew rough, the clouds arrived blood red and the driving rain a blindingly bright day-glo yellow.

And now we are no longer alone in this aquatic wonderland.

Now there are wild Pterodactyl-style prehistoric birds of prey filling the hemorrhaging sky as they circle our craft, shiny from the banana-hued sheets of rain hammering down on us from the heavens. The mascots, Ms. Stivic, her CCF toddlers, the Meathead and I sit back on the scissor handles, raising our blades up into the sky to stab at them, opening the spears and cutting them shut as those filthy birds move in for the kill, dive-bomb style. We clip off a wing here, a head there - blood splashing into the Listerine like ketchup on champagne. (There's a picture - but that's the analogy my crew keeps muttering over and over: "like ketchup on champagne.")

Sally/Gloria loses an arm in this bird/scissor battle before it's all over and Rob/Meathead is stabbed in the eye by a Pterodactyl beak, knocking him back into Archie's chair. The San Diego Chicken is taken by the neck and spirited away, up into the clouds, never to be seen again.

Then suddenly, in the midst of this maelstrom, the bubbly greenish clear ocean turns thick and brown. A horrific smell slowly arises from its depths and permeates my nasal passages, finally enveloping my entire being. Listerine has morphed into shit. I take a whiff and get sick. And then I wake up, sick.

I make it to the bathroom, thankfully, and greet the porcelain receptacle with an early morning technicolor yawn. I often pine for the times I'm able to make regular and "productive" visits to my favorite "reading chair" given my increasingly severe "blockage"; however, it's a different cheek resting on the cold white ring with the flu 'round my throat. Nobody I know wants that (apologies to any bulimics reading this who might take offense; your company is excepted).

For a long time thereafter, I tried and failed to shake the dream. No tidy ending, no resolution, no reason for being.

It just was.

Erectile Tryptophania

(Originally posted 11/26/09)

Cialis commercials are getting ever more disturbing. At this point I think we're all sort of numb to the veiled metaphors around the benefits of a stiff dick, just as we were earlier indoctrinated into the "menstrual pad as field of fresh flowers" mindset. I can deal with the knowing smiles, close-ups of embracing hands, and even those ridiculous tubs. Never mind that the guys in these ads are precisely the kind that probably should remain forever afflicted with "E.D.", if only to reduce the likelihood of them spawning offspring and propagating their insipid personalities onto successive generations.



But the spot I saw this morning really creeped me out.

The thing that dug into my spine was the manner in which the ad kept swinging back to a portrait of the family dog on the wall. The mutt is smiling. Winking. Like he was in on the gag, wise to the source of his master's new swagger. Or perhaps just relieved that Mr. Limp Dick wouldn't be taking his failures in the bedroom out on the the ol family pooch anymore ("Stop taunting me, you beast! Tail in the air - you think I don't know what that means! Take this!!"). Perhaps. But the dog's shit eating grin really got to me in all the wrong ways, digging into my psyche like nothing this side of those Charles Schwab rotoscoped monstrosities. Its metaphorical fingernails dragging across the chalkboard of my sensibilities.



At the end, the newly empowered Peter starts rattling off all of the unfortunate side effects of Cialis (marathon hard-ons, massive boils on your testes, loss of bowel control, elephantiasis of the nostril, stink eye, etc.). And in the middle of this "happy fun ball"-like disclaimer speech, focus switches back to the stairway with the family portraits, centering again on that damn dog. Or am I just imagining all this? If so, why?

This was to be my Thanksgiving post before I got so rattled by that ad from our friends in the pharmaceutical industry. It was to be a typical "happy, happy" tome. You know - one of those heartfelt "I'm thankful for my friends, family, health, etc." bullshit pieces of sentiment that folks haul out of the basement a few times a year as a break from the hard work of shoveling shit on one another. But I decided to put the kibosh on that nonsense. Perhaps I should be thankful I'm not afflicted with "E.D." (but it's more than counterbalanced by the fact that I wouldn't know it if I was).

My memories of childhood Thanksgivings are, like many things of that era, hazy. They were mostly pleasant, I think. I don't recall any major meltdowns or other high drama (we saved that for the other 364 days on the calendar). There were likely many levels of tension going on during those gatherings that I was (thankfully, blissfully) oblivious to. Once the food was eaten, Thanksgiving was over in our house: I don't remember us doing much afterward. We weren't a "gather 'round the TV and watch football" kind of family. Nor were we a "head out to the yard to throw the ball" brood. Chow down and veg.



Occasionally we had extended family members over. Sometimes members of Dad's booze crew stopped by. I don't recall anyone overtly smashed, though - no vomiting into the stuffing or falling face first into the pumpkin pie.

I often think my unfocused memories of events in my childhood home were more a function of the thick haze of smoke drifting like a London fog throughout the confines of that place. My remembrances aren't faulty - they're just nicotine stained. Maybe that's why smells don't trigger any sense memories for me (not like sounds - music takes me back to moments past every day). The smell of turkey doesn't remind me of childhood Thanksgivings simply because it's no longer enhanced with Camel and Alpine tar-based herbs and carcinogen-laced spices.

Anyway, back to thankfulosity and gratefuliousness.

At the end of the day, I'm not terminally ill (that I'm aware of yet, anyway), I've got friends and family I don't hate (most of them, in fact). I'm gainfully employed in a profession that often doesn't suck (not relative to a lot of other ones out there). I mean, I could be working in a slaughter house or as a sideshow geek in a traveling carnival, if I had the aptitude for such endeavors. Thankfully, I don't. At the very least, I lack the requisite drive and desire to excel in such rarefied environs.



So there's that.

By the way, I'm not looking down on those fine individuals pursuing careers in slaughterhouse management and executive geekdom: remember, without slaughterhouse workers, very few of you'd be enjoying your turkey this day (and without sideshow geeks, you'd have one less thing to be thankful you're not).

Well, better hit the hay - Black Friday awaits ... Americans at their best and brightest. I figure if I get to Walmart early enough, I can take advantage of the 'doorbuster' sales I'm sure they'll be having on their line of Caskets (such as "Dad Remembered" or the "Lady de Guadalupe" - steel jobbies both, guaranteed to be worm resistant). Order online and have 'em shipped to your home or the home of the lucky recipient. Oh, and be sure to order soon so that it arrives before Xmas; you wouldn't want to disappoint! Truly gifts that keep on giving.

Leonard

Leonard was a hefty sort and a sad sack - the only overweight member of my Dad's rum buddies (or more correctly, whiskey chums). He was trapped in a miserable but inexplicably lasting marriage to the rarely seen "Bubbles", a hoity-toity gasbag forever berating him for being who he was: a falling-down chronic alcoholic prone to balling his eyes out at the drop of a hat.

But Leonard had his uses, at least to Dad and his pals: he had a vehicle, a truck. That was a valuable commodity to this crew, most of whom no longer had ready access to such devices (wrecked, repo'd, sold for liquor money; they all had a story).

Leonard's truck was a means to get to the state store or the bars, and was essential to his continuing inclusion in this band of boozers, since he rarely had any duckets to kick in for beverages. (Bubbles came from money and held tight to the family purse strings. She had long since put the kibosh on doling any out to her lush of a husband and he had to settle for scraps or whatever he could steal from the cookie jar when her back was turned.)

Leonard had mad skills behind the wheel as he weaved down the road bouncing from curb to curb, emphasis on mad. Terrifying, in fact. As one of the few people to ride with him sober in those days, my survival attests to his mastery of the art of lubricated locomotion. (I was 8, 9, 10 years old and wasn't prone to knocking back shots at 9am on a sunny August Tuesday like the others along for the ride in this deathtrap.) Leonard had a six sense when navigating to the state store (the truck pretty much drove itself).

His visits would start with a knock on the door. He'd plop down on the couch, forcing Dad to sit upright from his usual semi-horizontal position. Leonard would start with a bit of small talk, all the while licking his lips and shooting glances plaintively toward the corner where the old man kept his bottle. Medicine for the sick. If the bottle was empty, he would suggest a road trip and if it wasn't, he'd suggest a glass (I think he used a glass but my memories are kind of foggy; Dad usually didn't bother at this point). Either way, soon would be the booze a-flowin' and the tears would surely follow. Bubbles doesn't understand, woah-is-me, yada-yada.

Watching that fat drunk waddle-stagger to our bathroom after knocking back a bottle with Dad was a treat. He'd have done Chevy Chase and Dick Van Dyke proud with his prat-fall antics, though perhaps Chris Farley would be a more apt comparison. Leonard'd start out by invariably catching his shoe on the braided living room rug, nearly doing a header into the dining room. Next, he sluggishly danced with a leg raised in an attempt not to step on the tail of my sleeping dog Snooks (a failed attempt on several occasions I was present for - the damn dog didn't learn). Once past the dog for good or ill, Leonard would grasp for the dining room table and chairs to slow his stride lest the momentum tumble him into our 'china' cabinet. Safely through the worst of this journey, he'd stagger out into the hallway near the toilet, on two occasions tripping over the cord that coiled out from under the telephone table there, falling back on his ass.

Only once did Leonard alter his route to the can and he paid dearly for this deviation. For some reason on this one trip, he made the journey via our kitchen rather than directly through the dining room. Bad move. He was confused by this wrong turn, puzzled by the sight of a fridge where the hallway phone table should be. In a daze and about to topple over, Leonard made the mistake of using the stove for leverage and placed his hand firmly on a lit burner (I was getting ready to make coffee). You never heard such a banshee cry! It caused Snooks to hightail it out of the living room to safety under my parent's bed. I'm surprised Leonard ever went to the bathroom again in our house. Certainly he avoided the kitchen. And that's Leonard. Glad ya got to know him.

Hal

His name was Hal Lambert. Hal-o-wishes. A charter member of my Dad's drinking entourage, he was forever decked out in his pork pie hat and dapper threads, a gentleman in the 1950's sense of the word. Kind of sophisticated for Dad's crowd. Sophisticated, that is, when he wasn't throwing up in the corner or crying like a baby into a pillow on our couch (both happened more than once). Looking back, Hal reminds me a bit of William Burroughs. Did that make my Dad Jack Kerouac? Probably not. I think the resemblance ended with the gentile nature and omnipresent hat. And of course their mutual addiction to mood altering drugs. With Hal, it was booze while Burroughs was hooked on pretty much everything (opiates were his "drug of choice" when pressed). The fog forever enveloping my childhood memories is usually as thick as pea soup, but if I strain my psyche particularly hard, things more or less come into focus for an instant, exposing my revisionist history. Then the fog rolls back in again, protecting me from things I'd rather not know. But it also has an insidious way of hiding the detail that is a necessary ingredient in the pictures I'm trying to paint here. I guess ya can't have it both ways. I get the feeling that Hal-as-Burroughs is one of those false fog-infused recollections. My memories momentarily a bit more lucid, I see he most resembled Mr. Magoo (who, it should be said, was a sharp dresser in his own right). I'm pretty sure they attended the same Driver's Education class and shared a similar field of vision, Magoo's courtesy of two bum retinas and Hal's brought to you by the makers of Bourbon everywhere. Having experienced the spine-tingling terror of being the lone sober passenger on a liquor run with Hal at the wheel, I can attest to his routine Magoo-like supernatural escapes from the jaws of vehicular death. Hal's wife Darlene was anything but gentile. Boisterous with the bluest of collar, Darlene was a "tavern jacket" type who could go toe-to-toe with the best of them when it came to knockin' back the sauce. She was tall, "big boned" and prone to strut, he was diminutive of stature and perpetually hunched over. Opposites who attracted, bonded by the booze and little else.

Darlene would have fit right in on the local bar bowling team. Hal would have looked more at home pacing the sidelines of a football game, Tom Landry/Bear Bryant style. Well, he would were they prone to vomiting into the Gatorade and weaving drunkenly onto the field at inopportune moments.

This odd couple often graced our home, to drink and talk and cry (well, Hal cried; that wasn't Darlene's style). And then one day, Darlene up and died. It was a strange death, apparently in her sleep. Hal waited several hours before calling an ambulance (I think he may have dialed our home first and chatted up my Dad while awaiting Darlene's rigor to kick in).

Perhaps Hal had been drunk and was confused (that was always a good bet). But we often wondered whether he'd finally had enough of her noise and simply wanted some peace and quiet. As mentioned previously, Hal knew his way around a pillow and likely could wield it in anger just as skillfully as he did in sobbing drunken sorrow. But this was merely idle talk; Darlene had any number of legitimate reasons for casting off this mortal coil at a relatively young age (I couldn't hazard a guess as to exactly how old she was - maybe late fifties). Booze and cigarettes likely played a starring role.

We saw Hal occasionally after this sad event, he prone to crying more than usual and just a bit more blind to boot, thanks to an amplification of his natural melancholy fueled by Darlene's passing and distilled (both metaphorically and literally) through the usual spirits that represented their life blood. I can't say for sure when Hal joined Darlene and Dad in that great liquor store in the sky. I imagine it's just one of many details lost in my particular fog of time.

The Neighborhood Handyman

My Dad lay passed out in a neighbor's upstairs bathroom in the tub. His toolbox had been propped open next to him, a half empty bottle of whiskey poking up among the pipe wrenches and other equipment in it. I stood over him, frozen. What should I do? Run down the stairs and out the front door, pretending I never came back? Try and wake him up? This latter move might just be worse if he's as in the bag as his slobbering snore indicates. The choice was made then: I ran.

And thus ended my Dad's very short career comeback as the neighborhood handyman. But it all started a month or so earlier. Well, not exactly. Really it had been ongoing for many years.

Dad had steadily become unemployable to the regular nine-to-five rank and file over the years leading up to the tub incident. It wasn't all that big a town we lived in and he managed to drink his way into and then back out of pretty much all the companies that needed a plumbing supply salesman.

Even the alcoholics among Dad's sundry bosses had gradually thrown in the towel with him after a few dances. And by the second or third generation of Dad's career transitions, a high percentage of his hiring managers were raging alcoholics (that's bound to happen when you go job hunting primarily from the vantage point of a bar stool). Those whose boozing buddy loyalty instincts outweighed their fiduciary responsibilities eventually either drank themselves to death or at least out of any positions of influence that could protect Dad's ass from the boot.

Dad drifted into odd jobs and seasonal work after his chosen profession up and ran from him. The only one of these part time jobs I remember distinctly was his stint as a 'peace officer' with Northwest Protection Service (I can still picture his 'police' jacket with company logo and fake badge hanging up in the hall closet).

He got minimum wage to sit in a chair overnight next to the outdoor summer sale merchandise racked up in front of Kmart. There was enough shit that I guess it was cheaper to hire a guard than to haul it in and out of the store each day.

I'm not sure what Dad could have done had criminal types decided they wanted to make off with the inventory (it's not like he had a weapon; not even a club or mace). I guess he could have taken his lit cigarette, dropped it into his ever-present bottle of whiskey, and heaved it after the would-be thieves, Molotov Cocktail style. (By day, mild mannered couch-bound lush. But when night arrives, he is transformed into Whiskey Man: crime fighting Northwest protector of truth, justice and the American swing set.)

Regardless, Dad sat vigilant guard over bicycles, patio furniture and lawn mowers. Lt. Columbo, Sgt. Friday, One Adam-12, Serpico. The one incorruptible cop. Dum Da Dum Dum. That's my Dad! Couldn't wait for career day at school!

The truth is, I loved Dad's Northwest Protection job more than all the others, simply because he often brought his work home with him in the morning in the form of pilfered toys for me. I was on the receiving end of a pitch-n-catch trampoline-style baseball backstop along with a number of other items we otherwise couldn't have afforded. He was a fountain of ill-gotten gifts all around for the family during this summertime blue-light sentry duty. Likely the store would have suffered fewer loses had they simply left the stuff unguarded.

But that kind of work wouldn't pay the bills and didn't last long in any event; he needed something steadier. One of our neighbors, Austin, was a commercial artist and he volunteered to draft up some brochures hailing the "Return of the Neighborhood Handyman" in an attempt at a career revitalization for the old man. It was very nice of Austin and I really wish I had kept a few of those pamphlets around as a keepsake.

Austin's kids and I distributed these handyman leaflets like newspapers to doorsteps all around our neighborhood. The picture on the cover was a caricature of Dad, a tall lanky fellow, staggering under the weight of an overflowing tool belt filled with screwdrivers, tape measures, pipe wrenches, saws, etc. It was a bit like the picture on the left here.

Austin should have sketched in a couple of fifths of booze tucked safely away in Dad's pockets on the front of those pamphlets if he had adhered more strictly to the adage 'truth in advertising.' Whiskey topped Dad's list of the most essential tools of his trade and it didn't even make the cover! Sadly, he'd prove that out in this failed attempt as an independent business man, much to my embarrassment and his continued economic decline. Which brings us back to where we started. The tub. Almost.

The first customer who came calling was a homeowner several blocks north of us, a person we didn't know who had nonetheless been taken by the unique advertisement placed on his doorstep. The guy wasn't disappointed: Dad fixed their leaky faucet quickly and efficiently, with yours truly by his side as faithful assistant. (It was summer and this eight year old was either bored or goaded into servitude, I honestly don't remember which.)

The second customer was not so fortunate. These were neighbors we were friendly with, just around the corner. I knew the kids there, as did my sister. Theirs was a big house, they were fairly well off as I recall (the father was a physician). They had a complex job for the old man, something related to the installation of all new fixtures in one of the upstairs bathrooms. It was monotonous work and I wandered off to do kid stuff after watching Dad for a bit.

That was a mistake.

When I came back to the neighbor house a few hours later to see how Dad was progressing, well ... he was tubthumping, but I already went over that. And then I ran. I'm not sure if the neighbors stumbled upon Dad snoring among the rubber duckies or if he finally came to and managed to slither away sight unseen. I do know that he never went back to the neighbor house to finish and never received any payment from them for services rendered prior to his siesta. The argument that ensued between Mom and Dad made it clear that no check would be forthcoming, and the phone never rang for his handyman talents from that point forward.

I felt guilty a long time afterward for leaving Dad to his own devices. On the off-chance I forgot, Mom made sure to remind me loud and often. I had left my post. That's why he got shitfaced and screwed everything up. Makes sense.

Thus became the Exile of the Neighborhood Handyman. A one hit wonder. We hardly knew ye

A Fortified look through the Past

I'm officially cheered up with my new favorite web site, Modern Drunkard Magazine.

I came across this gem when attempting to google up some repressed childhood memories through good ol' brand association (in this particular case, Gallo Tavola Red jug wine: good for staining the insides of mothers and coffee mugs alike, at least in my experience). I really just wanted a picture for the dysfunctional family scrapbook I'm compiling. (What do braided rugs, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, a haze of smoke, cheap jug wine and whiskey have in common? My living room growing up!)

I finally found what I was grepping for on Modern Drunkard but it's tough to come up with an appropriately specific query for the product "Tavola Red" when it translates in Italian literally to "red table wine." As you can imagine, that's like looking for "pilser beer": there's gobs of it. Plus Ernest and Julio became yuppie snobs in the 1980s and cut back on a lot of their more, well let's just say 'foundational' stock (thanks a lot, Gordon Gecko).

My vino suppler of choice never wavered from their roots. I speak, naturally, of Mogen David, whose motto, "when nature needs a little boost..." captivated me from the get-go. Well, it should have been their motto. MD did get a little fancy with all the different flavors of 20/20: give me basic grape - no plum supreme or ... well, whatever you have in stock, but I preferred grape. I'd like one day to tour their vineyard, or their chemical processing plant (I think they may be one and the same).

My MD 20/20 phase was short lived, mainly played out in my early 20s in the Navy and then only when we were sufficiently broke to be priced out of clubs and bars. We could always scrape up enough scratch for a cheap room - can't bring the stuff back to the ship! - and a few bottles of Mogen David's fortified fun ('Tuesday' was an especially good vintage, I recall).

The mall arcades and movies took on an enhanced hue with a few swigs of the grape stuff. Since we couldn't afford bars and clubs - would we be drinking purple turpentine otherwise? - we terrorized the mall denizens instead.

I do remember one horrifying Saturday night around 11:45pm when we realized it was almost midnight and we were out of MD. We staggered across a heavily trafficked six lane highway at full stride, racing to beat the buzzer when Virginia's Sunday blue laws ticked into place, and the drug store booze fridge ("best served chilled") was padlocked until Monday. That would have put a real crimp in our Saturday night. We did make the cut but ended up dropping half the six bottles we purchased in our drunken glee (polishing off the others as we stumbled back toward the mall).

Sometimes we mixed it up and substituted 20/20 with Wild Irish Rose (WIR). WIR was an appropriate acronym as that was precisely the sound reverberating through your head the next day after a night ingesting that putrid shit (WWWWIIIIRRRRRRR!). When our first two choices weren't available, we just kept going down the list: Thunderbird, Night train, etc.

For whatever reason, beer was never considered - not enough bang for the buck, so to speak. We'd save beer for clubs, bars, etc.

Ahh, yes - Good times, indeed.

We were stuck without car, money or confidence in anything. Told time and again that our kind was despised by the townies before we ever set foot on dry land there (we jokingly referred to the town as No-fuck, Virginia). On top of that, we had the mark of the beast, the scarlet letter: our bad haircuts with the telltale taper above the collar, marking us as military. This was 1984 in a town where the younger locals grew their hair long precisely to 'clarify' such things. Some of the more creative among us attempted to wear "civilian" wigs, but that just made you look as desperate as we all felt anyway.

Wandering the highways and byways of Norfolk and Virginia Beach in groups of three, four, five with shitty clothes and pasty complexions borne from months in the bowels of floating gray prisons.

No wonder we became wine-o connoisseurs. Sort of a very low rent East Coast Sideways running on an endless loop, with the Military Circle Mall and its surroundings substituting for northern California wine country.

Yes, revisionist history is a fine thing, whether political or personal. Of course. Just like Sideways. Definitely. Memories should be like cars: you get to trade them in on new ones every so often. The depreciation rates, though, will vary.

Shoeless Billy Mays

Originally posted August, 2009

Say it ain't so, Billy ... Coke? Meth, I could see (it's the people's drug, after all, and you were nothing if not a man of the people).  But elitist coke?

Could it be the rat-ah-tat-tat, slam-boom, loud and superfast patter was not nature's gift to you, Mr. Mays?

Man. Bummed.

This is for me like finding out Joe DiMaggio was corking his bat!

If Billy could be seduced by the dark side where does that leave the other pitchmen and women?

Are any of them clean?

ShamWow Vince?   The Snuggie Lady?   The Liberator Catheter 'Cath' Chick?  Billy's partner Anthony?

Do the television advertising executives need to institute mandatory drug testing?  (I mean apart from the ones already in place for legal drugs a particular shill might be hawking.  When the Viva Viagra men's glee club force down those blue pills like they were tic-tacs, that doesn't count.)

This Mays-as-cokehead revelation could be just the beginning.

Next thing ya know, pictures will start popping up in the scandal rags of all our favorite pitch people gallivanting at the annual Infomercial Players Convention in Vegas, caught-on-camera snorting lines off a dead hooker's ass using Liberator Catheters as straws.

And then of course cleaning it all up with the help of some OxiClean and a few ShamWows.

It would end up being like the old Chicago Black Sox Scandal, only now 'as seen on TV.'  'The scandal with sleeves!'

Grainy home movie footage will follow - Paris Hilton-style - going viral on the net:

[Scene: Some Vegas Hotel Suite, final night of the Infomercial Shill Shabang Convention. Vince, Billy, Anthony, Snuggie Lady, and 'Cath' are bent over the king size bed, all wearing multi-color Snuggies and snorting blow through long catheter tubes, the dead hooker sprawled out below them serving as receptacle for their illicit consumption.]

Zoom in.  Assume Les Stroud of Survivorman is operating the camera. What?  Hey, he's got lots of camera experience!  And he knows how to deal with snakes and jaguars and bears, which might come in handy here.

Shamwow Vince is rattling on at hypersonic speed straight into the camera, nude except for his red Snuggie and his headset mike, pacing around all crazy-armed wild-eyed energy and dilated pupils: "Look at that mess. That's blood running out of my nose, mixing with the grey matter oozing from that dead hooker's head there.  It's soaking right into the carpet - that's gonna leave a mess (and evidence). Ya gettin' that camera guy? But with some OxiClean - wanna spray some there Billy? .. and a ShamWow, it sucks it all out - no muss, no fuss, no cops."

Then Vince pulls out his SlapChop and an Eight-ball and proceeds to chop them up a few more lines of Bolivian Marching Powder.  But only after getting into it with Anthony, who wants to use a Smart Chopper for the job instead, claiming it wastes less 'product' and results in a 'finer' drift of snow, free from the 'rock' left behind by the SlapChop.  Toe to toe, fisticuffs at the ready.  Gotta give it to them, even ripped out of their gourd these boys are loyal to the brands they so proudly represent.

The Vince/Anthony tussle resolved (both Choppers would be employed), the gang hunkers down for a few more snorts of coke and - what the hey, it's a party after all - a line or two of the finest Afghani smack.

Vince stands up again suddenly and half struts/half weaves toward the camera - you awake, Les?  His TV rap tattooed to his psyche, ol' Vince can't help but let his buddies know that like all things, this party is time-boxed: "If ya hurry, ya can have a taste - for the next 20 minutes, or until this hooker starts to smell, cause we can't be doing this all day, people."

'Cath' is already agitated by the other pitchmen and their wasteful use of her catheters - why not use a rolled up $20 like normal people?  Vince's sharp tone and clock watching have put her over the edge. "All day?!? We can't be doing this all day?!?   It's only 5am, ya hooker beatin' Eddie Haskell-lookin' shithead! - Now, I gotta go 'Cath'"  Vince doesn't back down from her.  "Not in here ya don't - in the toilet with ya, Cath, ya urinary tract wacked bitch!'

Every once in a while the Snuggie Lady pops her head out of the blue velvet 'Snugcoon' that envelopes her as she lay 'cross the sofa in the corner.  Just as quickly, she grabs another handful of pills from the candy dish and washes them down with a tug from the half gallon bottle of cooking sherry she keeps clenched in her fist.  The others know not to disturb her (or even to glance in her general direction). Oh, no - that wouldn't be wise: she'd been huffing Billy's Orange Glo all afternoon and is in no mood for socializing.

Enough fun and games, time to feed the hooker into the Magikan trash disposal system that Anthony and Billy had brought along for just this purpose. That'll tidy things up just right. Maybe a little 'energy booster' before cleanup - "Hey Liberator Chick, pass over another 'cath'!"

[End Scene]



Of course, this is all just wild speculation about a future that nobody wants. The consequences of falling down that slippery slope from high atop the Infomercial Celebrity Ego Mountain. I can only hope this scene remains firmly in the realm of fiction.

Consider it a forewarning - a cautionary tale, if you will, of the ultimate price paid when putting too much pressure on our heroes and taking away their P.T. Barnum-fueled innocence. For in so doing, our innocence shall be taken as well.

Vince and Billy have been tarnished by scandal, let's hope they don't take the whole ship down with them.

Four Horsemen

So I was just visiting my local pharmacy to pick up the usual monthly supply of happy pills when Nurse Ratched behind the counter apparently decides to test my prescription to make sure it's strong enough by fucking with my head, draining whatever vestige of optimism I had in the tank today (whether organic or brought-to-you-by-Wyeth):

Ratched (seated behind the counter): "What do you want?"

Me: "I'm picking up a prescription refill I called in yesterday."

Ratched: "It's today."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Ratched: "It's today, it's not yesterday."

Me (confused): "Isn't that always the case?"

Ratched: "It wasn't yesterday."

Me: "Huh?"

Ratched: "We don't keep them around."

Me: "I do this every month - can you check the bin?"

Ratched: "It's not there, we don't keep them around.  You'll need to call it back in."

Me: "Can you just check the bin?  If it's not there, I'll wait for the refill."

Ratched: "We're not taking waiters right now."

Me: "What?  Please, just check the bin."

Given the loopy nature of this non sequitur-laced exchange, I looked around expecting to see Milo Minderbinder (or perhaps Charlie Kaufman).  Instead, I found the Lord.

The man behind me was decked out in full-on Jesus attire, complete with long hair, beard, sandals and a dark afghan poncho that stood in nicely for a biblical-grade flowing robe.  He smelled biblical too, or so I imagined since I don't recall any mention of showers or deodorant in the good book.

Mr. J. H. Christ seemed sympathetic to my plight, but not to the point of using his godly powers to smite my adversary.  Maybe turn her into something useful like a pillar of salt or a pint of Cherry Garcia.  Clearly he was more concerned about getting some antibacterial crucifixion cream (damn rusty nails!) or perhaps some anti-psychotic medication to quiet the voices.  Maybe both.  He wouldn't want to antagonize the person standing between him and his meds, even if she might just be Lucifer's bitchy sister.

I turned back to the surreal exchange I was having with Her Satanic Majesty of Pharmacopia.  Before reengaging, I first craned my neck in an attempt to see beyond the glare of the evil eye she was shining my way beneath her obscenely thick, arched eyebrows.  No sign of any pharmacists working in back. Isn't it illegal to leave all these dangerous drugs solely in the hands of  Susie Cash Register here, without licensed supervision?  If I was the squealing type, I'd drop a dime on them to the DEA. 

But I just wanted - no, needed - my particular drugs, so back to the matter at hand.

Perhaps I was asking in the wrong way. Maybe she fancies herself some sort of Soup Nazi derivative (a Pharmaceutical Eva Braun).  Possibly I didn't follow proper protocol.  "No pills for you!  Come back in three days!  Next!"

So in the spirit of the Soup Nazi, I tried another tact: "Effexor, S. Buzzard, quantity 90, ordered 02/25."  No dice. "That was yesterday. It's the 26th."  

My last strategy was to just be annoyingly repetitious until she caved.

"Where is the pharmacist?"  "She's not here right now."   "Yes, when will she be back?"  "Later."   "She's at lunch?"  "She's not here."   "Can you please check the bin?  Please?  Please?"  "It's not there, it would have been put back."  "Okay, but maybe it was put back into the bin.  Can you check it?  Please?  Please?"

I was persistent and finally Little Miss Sunshine meandered the twenty feet down to the bin of prescriptions waiting to be claimed.  Lo and behold, mine was among them, as I had strongly suspected all along.  She seemed stunned.

"It's not supposed to be here.  They're supposed to put them back. You're lucky.  This time."

Now I know perfectly well that being one day tardy doesn't result in a prescription's expulsion from the pick-up bin back into the bottle (I don't even think they are legally allowed to put the stuff back).  I've been a week late lots of times when I called in refills from the road traveling for work.  Maybe with a new crew (I didn't recognize this evil witch), there are some new rules here.  Maybe they do put them back now. Maybe, this one time, something more was at work.

Indeed.  I looked back and Jesus gave me a knowing smile as if to say, "It is accomplished. You're welcome, my son."   Divine intervention?  Oh, God, though - that smell!  Christ needs a bath!

As if on cue, the Lord started convulsing in a fit of gags, coughs, half-heaves, and slobber, pulling out one of the nastiest "handkerchiefs" I've ever seen to mop up the excess "juice" spilling over into his beard.   Something else caught my eye across the front of his dark afghan poncho. Bugs. Lots of them. Little fuckers - like fleas - crawling free-range in his own little patch of Afghanistan.

The Jesus-did-it smile disappeared suddenly and his holy eyes rolled back into his head as he marched up to the counter.  He needed drugs of some sort pretty badly, that much was clear from his tone to her: "Ahh, mmm, Pick up, mmmehrerh, for Sid Marvin, Yes, err, emmmm, no waiting here!! Watch out now!"  I can only imagine what might happen if Sister (Un)Christian gives him any shit (the picture on the right might provide a clue).  She was staring back at him, wordless.  I wasn't waiting around for the big show.

I grabbed my meds quickly and hightailed it out of there.

I half expected to run into the Four Horsemen galloping down the antacid aisle as I hurried toward the front door.  At the very least I figured I'd spot Kirk Cameron and his Left Behind film crew hard at work by the photo counter, working their way toward the pharma apocalyptic epicenter in the back, careful not to step into the fiery pit over which my counter gal ruled with pitchfork in hand.


When I got back home I thought to myself, "Self, we need to change our pharmacy."  God and Satan can do battle there but I'm moving on.

Remember, though: Sid Marvin Saves. Amen.

1983

Father time's goddamn Lunar calendar has shed its skin again and drawn another ring around my trunk, forcing me to symbolically drop into the musical fetal position of my early 20s. Well, very early 20s - 20, 21 to be exact. 1983.  The first year I recall being relatively happy most of the time.

Which is odd because I spent a good deal of '83 on what constituted a floating prison with 5000 other people, 4995 of whom I didn't know or, worse, really didn't want to know. Strangely, it might have been great because I'd finally felt free. Free of what? Of the 20 years that came before it, I guess. It was my first real job, I did it well, and it was interesting if morally abhorrent (thus began the compartmentalization of my ethics).

Maybe it was all the great music I could buy really cheaply there (for some reason, very few others on the ship cared for Nina Hagen, The Jam, Elvis Costello, etc. yet the ship's store always seemed to have cassettes of their albums available, marked down because they presumably couldn't get rid of them).

Maybe it was that I saw a bit of Europe for the first time: Italy, Greece ... well, Italy and Greece, anyway. Qaddafi and troubles in Lebanon put the kibosh on planned visits to Israel, Egypt and Spain that year.

Really, though, I think it was the four months at the beginning of the year I spent at the Navy Intelligence School and Oxymoron Emporium in Denver, Colorado. There wasn't a lot of Navy in Denver (that was Air Force country) and it was more like college than the military, at least from my perspective. Slam dancing Thursday's (New Wave night) at Thirsty's and Friday/Saturday (not New Wave nights, but we slammed anyway) at After The Gold Rush, both 3.2 bars where us under-21 types could drink. I saw Wall of Voodoo live and hung out with other New Wave aficionados for the first time. Good memories.

Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom and The Jam's Snap compilation have been getting extra heavy play on the iPod, my feeble attempt to ignore father time's clock ticking off another year, one more I won't get back. One step closer to the proverbial grave.

These two albums bring me back to a specific year - 1983, in this case - more than any other music that I actually enjoy. There are a great many tunes that dredge up strong memories of the past, specific pinpoints in time; however, in almost all cases, they are songs I at least vaguely dislike and rarely have purchased (except when the memory overpowers the distaste and I need to hear the piece of shit jingle to help get me back to the moment).

Elvis and the Jam bring it all back home.

True Blood

So last night I'm laying in bed watching an interesting documentary on the life of Joe Stummer, the late leader of seminal punk band the Clash. What I found kind of telling, however, were some reactions to Joe's days prior to the Clash. There were grumblings by a few punk purists that Strummer was a "poseur" because he'd been an art school "hippie" type performing in rhythm and blues bands before he "became" a punk.

Never mind that to be a "punk" in the late 60's/early 70's probably meant you were a prison bitch rather than a musician, I'm not sure exactly what these naysayers expected Joe to have been. I guess he should have been hanging out with the Velvets, Stooges and the New York Dolls, but I don't think he had the coin to pull up stakes and move across the pond to America.

Personally, I admire the guy more for his ability to invent and then re-invent himself. All the greats do it, with perhaps Bob Dylan being the grand master at that game. Declan Patrick MacManus, better known as Elvis Costello and perhaps my favorite musician, is another ever-changing chameleon. Being "true to one's self" doesn't mean you need to do it for the rest of the world; in fact, it usually means you can't.

To me, substance is far more important than "truth." Or, more accurately, truth is more important than "facts." One of my favorite books of the 21st century is James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. When it came out that this "memoir" was much more a melding of some fact and a lot of fiction, Frey got crucified (mainly because he fooled the lord god Oprah). But the quality of the writing didn't magically dissipate. On the contrary, I admired it that much more as it showed Frey had a sense of imagination alongside his way with words. That it seems Frey is a pompous ass or that thus far the book appears to be this particular pony's one trick has likewise not diminished the work in my eyes.

My ultimate journalistic hero isn't Edward R. Murrow, it's Hunter S. Thompson. Murrow is close to the summit but Hunter and his Sherpa Ralph Steadman have firmly planted their flag at the top of the world in my opinion. Hunter's "Gonzo Journalism" was based on the adage that you should never let facts get in the way of your search for what's true. It's the substance of the story that matters more than the traditional view of "truth" (and Hunter used all manner of substance and substances in his quest to bend reality to this end). Not journalism, you say? Bullshit. Read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 for some of the best political reporting you're likely to find before or since. How much of it is true? All of it, more than almost anything I've read. How much of it is fact? Who cares.

Perhaps today's guru of the wise, Mr. Stephen Cobert, had it right when he coined the term "truthiness" in 2005 as that thing you know in your gut is the "truth" despite all absence of evidence, logic or fact. That he's being facetious doesn't make it less true.