Rock Star - July 5th - Sid

Welcome back, Brooke. The dress is so Jenny From The Block, but the knee high boots will never be wrong. The acting lessons are paying off as well, since she was able to say, without laughing, that Supernova is the greatest band to emerge in years. It’s more like if Cream had formed not with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, but with Nigel Tufnel, Peter Tork and Ringo Starr and went on the Brady Bunch variety hour to find a lead singer.

I won’t comment on the band, although putting their feet up on the coffee table clearly demonstrates they aren’t nearly as well-mannered as INXS. Remind me not to let them crash at my place when they come through town. I’d hate to have to kick Tommy’s ass.

Tommy read the mission statement for the show, and then everyone signed it and it was placed in a poster frame and hung on the wall of the Mayan Theater next to an inspirational print of a dolphin jumping high out of the water with the caption, “There is no end to the amount of things you can accomplish.”

Jason told everyone that the band’s fresh new sound will sound like something called rock n’ roll, and then special guest Michael J. Fox came out and did a Chuck Berry tune to warm up the crowd.

Ms. Burke, in her best high school cheerleader at a pep rally voice, then asked the crowd if they were ready to rock. They responded affirmatively, so she introduced us to…..

Storm Large – Pinball Wizard: Storm says this is her real name. Right, and I’m Iron Balls McGinty. I had high hopes for Ms. Large, but was letdown. She reminded me of the hip thespian who gets the lead role in the local production of the latest hot Broadway production. And we all know that this Elton John tune would never make it on Broadway. And another thing – when she tries to rock out too hard, she makes that extremely unattractive face that women softball pitchers make during their delivery. But she wasn’t the worst.

Ryan Star – Iris: Somebody else compared him to David Blaine, but I think it’s the dash of Jeff Goldblum that completes the creepiness factor here. I just wish he’d turn into a fly and get caught in a high hat. OK, the song didn’t totally suck, but it doesn’t matter. He does.

Toby – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: I can’t understand a word he says, but I think he mentioned something about smashing the hell out of a song. I’ll compromise here – Toby, lose the eyebrow ring and I’ll rent a Crocodile Dundee movie and practice listening to Australian.

Patrice – Somebody to Love: The best thing about these shows is that they revive my appreciation for real rock stars. But Austin is a cool town and Patrice is giving me a good vibe (or maybe I need to stop sitting on the washer while watching TV), so I’ll be nice this week. I did watch a show about tattoos on the National Geographic channel earlier this week and I’m pretty sure the tat on her shoulder indicates that she just got released from a Ukrainian prison after serving five years of a seven year sentence for vandalizing an ice cream truck. Or she just digs crappy tattoos of mythological figure things.

Mangi – Satisfaction: Jeez, stick this boy back in whatever block of ice you chipped him out of. Even Brooke looked like she wanted his dirty Icelandic tentacles off of her.

Zayra – Bring Me To Life: She must have done something right, because the band was busy molesting Brooke when she started and they were proposing to Zayra by the end of the song. I’d watch my back if I were her – Brooke can be the jealous type and I hear she can strike like a ninja when necessary. Don’t let Brooke's stage lingerie fool you. Zayra has no chance at fronting this band, but please keep her around for entertainment value. Pretty please.

Jenny – How You Remind Me: She’s too skinny. She looks like Ann Coulter. She just got voted Most Likely To Show Up On The Cover Of People Magazine With An Eating Disorder After Getting Kicked Off The Show. She dresses like the annoying girls that roam the mall every summer. She is the exact opposite of everything I like. But in an inexplicable When Harry Met Sally way, I find myself helplessly attracted to her. I even liked her performance. I think. What I really think is that I need a kick in the head.

Josh – She Talks To Angels: He is so screwed. He’s got as much chance of meeting Supernova half way as Marty did building that bridge to INXS-ville.

Matt – Yellow: Two words – lame. And lame.

Dilana – Lithium: I can only imagine the fear those little spaghetti strapped groupie girls in the front row felt when she started charging them. Probably soiled their little Abercrombie thongs.

Dana – The Only One: Did she get those little Madonna gloves from an older sister or did she find them on eBay? As much as they would love to soil the naïve little girl, even with the belly shirt she just ain’t right for this band. And her face is too small.

Phil – Cult of Personality: Finish the chem degree, buddy. It’s the only thing between you and homelessness.

Jill – Piece Of My Heart: No, they’re not real.

Chris – Roxanne: I wouldn’t trust him to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch, let alone lead a world tour. To quote Gilby, “Unfortunately, that one sucked, Chris, man, sorry.”

Lukas – Rebel Yell: I was too distracted by two things to pay attention to the song:
1) What child star from the 70’s does he look like?
2) Does he shave the eyebrow or is it from a scar?

The Early Bottom Three: Chris, Phil, Mangi

Mrs. F’ers Bottom Three: Chris, Mangi, Jenny. Chris going home.

Sid’s Bottom Three: Mangi, Matt, Chris & Phil. Oh, I only get three? Well, crap. I guess I’ll give Matt another chance. The early vote has it right. Who will I send home? Chris. Others are doomed, but I'm cleaning house first before hanging the right pictures.

“I need to remember what it was like when Rock Star was good.”
- Mrs. F’er, while looking on the computer for video clips from Season One

Rock Star - July 3rd Mansion Show

Fresh. That’s how Tommy Lee describes the music that his new band Supernova has been recording in the studio. But based on the clip they played for their newbie rockers, I think the only way someone else might describe it as fresh is if one had just stumbled out of the depths of the Amazon jungle for the first time and had never heard of Guns n’ Roses. Why would we expect otherwise? I’m sure Tommy and Jason aren’t breaking fresh ground on drums and bass, respectively, so now it just sounds like the guitar player from Guns n’ Roses practicing until Axl makes bail and shows up for rehearsal. But that won’t stop us from enjoying the show, right?

Other impressions:
Matt reminds me of a generic former child star – not a big star, but maybe one famous for a catch phrase in a commercial who is now grown up and completely at a loss over what to do with his life and whether he should be grateful for his past or condemn it. Wow. A whole fictitious backstory and I’ve barely heard him speak.

Chris volunteers to go first in the impromptu studio audition. We don’t get to hear much, so they must be hiding something. You can’t fool me, Mark Burnett.

Jill is short and her outfit annoyed me. They seemed to dig her but to me it was like dressing Pat Benatar funny and forcing her to perform at Ozzfest.

Zayra. I absolutely love this crazy broad. Too bad she’ll be gone soon. I’m wondering if they’ll vote her off the island before the network premiere. She’s wonderfully twenty years behind her time. Picture a hybrid of Patti Smith and Gloria Estefan and Joey Ramone and Lydia Lunch and a few others I can’t think of right now. It doesn’t sound like it would work and it really doesn’t, but it’s so bad it’s good. I’m just hoping it doesn’t go back past good and back to bad too quickly. Or have I failed to learn that it's just batshit enough to work?

Toby is from Australia. Yep. Very insightful.

Magni was already making excuses on day one. I worked for a guy that tried to be a bad ass. When something didn’t happen the way he wanted it to, he would ask why, then when you told him he would say, “If I wanted excuses, I would have hired a 3 year old.” Screw him. There’s no way a 3 year old could have presented as sophisticated excuses as I did. I worked at another place where a co-worker would ask me what I was working on. After telling him, he would say, "I don't give a shit what you're doing." It was very endearing.

I think I might have already told you about the girl that worked at the sunglasses kiosk last year. I thought she was pretty hot, but couldn’t think of who she reminded me of. Then I figured it out – she was a younger, brunette version of Charlize Theron. But I was never a big admirer of Charlize, and subsequently it kind of ruined the sunglasses girl for me. This is important because the five second clip of Josh reminded me of another singer and as soon as I figure out who it is, I’ll know whether I like him or not.

Storm proved she can belt it out for five seconds during her clip. Which is good if I need a jingle singer. I’ll defer further judgment until I hear more.

Phil was proclaimed a genius for doing an imitation of my 3 year old niece when she doesn’t want to eat her vegetables. Sure it’s cute for a few seconds, but I don’t think the boys will want to take her or Phil on tour with them. However, I’m not a super producer like Butch so don’t listen to me. Ever.

Ryan decided to give himself an edge over the other rockers by choosing to be the only one not sing in the studio. That seems to be as effective as my strategy of trying out for the Tour de France by sitting home and eating marshmallow fluff and watching Wings reruns. (For any new readers or for those scoring at home, that is the first Wings/Crystal Bernard reference of the season.)

I don’t think any of them saw last season because they all seemed surprised that they were staying at a mansion with a pool. They did the food and champagne thing, with Zayra loading up on the calories before her imminent departure. Just like in real life I wasn’t paying attention to introductions, so I can’t help you there. Next year my New Year’s resolution should be to focus more on that kind of stuff, but I figure if you see someone enough you’ll eventually figure out their name, and if you don’t see them then you really never needed it in the first place. But I digress. Next they picked rooms and Ryan had problems finding a bed like it was a game of musical chairs. Finally a cameraman walked him by the hand to his bed, tucked him in, and smothered him with a pillow. Well, at least that’s what I was hoping for. Hopefully he sucks so they can get rid of his whiney ass.

The rockers were so busy outside working on their tans that when Toby came in to take a leak, the same cameraman that smothered Ryan pushed him into the song room so they could get this thing rolling. In the meantime, Jenny was suffering of a mystery illness, so Storm was sent over to Tom Sawyer her into taking that lame Nickelback song that nobody else wanted. The other songs were distributed through an elaborate decathlon of events that included Rock, Paper, Scissors, a push up contest, arm wrestling, double dutch jump rope, tetherball, Simon Says, Red Rover, thumb wrestling, beer pong, and judo.

Chris, having not listened to Simon, got stuck with Roxanne, and we are left with clips of him warbling like drunk otter. Hopefully he can trick up the song with some chunka-chunka-uh’s like JD did in season one to stay alive. Ryan whined some more about the song he got while the others contemplated how many years they would get for involuntary manslaughter if they accidentally, yet violently, knocked him over the wall and into the Hollywood sign to an early demise.

See you at the fake Mayan Theater.

Rock Star Season Two - A Preview

I’m not on the cutting edge of technology. I’m more like the grandpa you have that still watches Ed Sullivan reruns on his giant console TV with the VCR that the family gave him sitting on top still in the box. My picture taking has been limited by Mrs. F’er since I lack digital camera skills. The plethora of dials and buttons frightens and confuses me. I feign blindness and walk into street signs when strangers on the street offer me their camera and ask if I can take their picture. My pick up truck has a cassette player, and only because the 8-track option was unavailable on the 1999 models. I’m the only one on the train that isn’t rocking out with an iPod, and I get icy stares from other passengers when I get on with a jam box on my shoulder loaded up with Run-DMC’s greatest hits. It’s nothing to be proud of, and I envy all of you that have figured out how to make popcorn in the microwave while I have to build a campfire every time I want a tasty handful of Jiffy Pop.

But things are about to change. I lost the rabbit ear antenna for the TV during the move and was forced to sign up for something called DirectTV. It also came with something called a DVR which I understand is something like a VCR except you can’t get fined if you forget to rewind the tape. I’ve been practicing with it and spent my entire holiday weekend watching multiple episodes of Full House. Not because I wanted to, but somehow I programmed it only to record shows with John Stamos or Bob Saget. Like I said, I’m practicing. But with any luck and some help from the Mrs., I think I might be able to record the upcoming season of Rock Star. Last season, I didn’t have a DVR, but instead had to rely on my crack staff of pre-schoolers to finger paint storyboard summaries of each episode and my own hastily scribbled and subsequently illegible notes. It was all that I could afford with last year’s Leper Pop budget.

I was even going to do some research this year and paid a shoeshine boy on the corner for an annotated myspace listing of all this season’s contestants, but haven’t had time to look at them. I’ve been busy at work teaching basic communication skills to summer interns who seem to enjoy answering the phones in a language they call IM. Then when they go home at 5:30, I can start my work. Back in Texas, I never did learn the native language of that state and found it difficult to make friends with the locals, so I had plenty of time to play with internets. Now I’m back in Chicago with friends that are usually too drunk to remember that I annoy them and with family members that want to make up for 14 years I was gone by stuffing me with massive portions of polish sausage and pierogies. It’s all put a dent in my quality time with my dear readers – all four of you – but Rock Star is starting this week, and we’ll get together then, son. You know we’ll have a good time then.

Two days, baby. Cover me in marshmallow fluff and bring it on.

A Night at Sean Kelly's

The last I time I left y’all, I was rolling out of Texas with a banjo on my knee. The one that we couldn’t dump at the garage sale. Reminds me of a girl that I once worked with who I ran into at a party. I apologized and got her a new drink and offered to pay for her dry cleaning. I think she misunderstood because I’m still getting bills from her dry cleaner to this day. But I digress. We started talking but instead of the normal boring chit chat that I so despise (like Mia in Pulp Fiction), I learned that she was taking banjo lessons. Apparently it was something she always wanted to do and now she was doing it. It was just quirky enough to be kind of sexy. I’m weird like that. But by default, that also made her too cool to go out with me. In any case, I’m sure she looks swell in her nice dry cleaned clothes at whaatever hootenanny she’s performing at these days. Speaking of hootenannies (or is the plural hootenannae? (someone contact the English department at University of Tennessee and let me know)) I was in New Orleans last month, but didn’t have a chance to post on my latest experience; however, walking back to my hotel late one evening I heard hootenanny type sounds coming from an Irish bar named Sean Kelly's. I’m not sure what the Irish call a hootenanny, but I’m sure they have a name for it and I’m sure there’s drinking involved. But I digress. I followed the sounds and even though I’m not a fan of the generic folk musician at Irish pubs, this particular performer rocking out on a bouzoukis drew me into the place. I didn’t know what a bouzoukis was until I met her. I always thought it was a flaming Greek appetizer or some sort of military weaponry. It’s really a Greek instrument similar to a mandolin except an octave lower. So I guess imagine playing your Hooters records on 33 instead of 45. If you’re too young to catch that reference, then just pretend the batteries in your Walkman are about to die. If you’re too young to catch that reference then pretend that your iPod is really jacked up and plays stuff too slow. I suppose I would have to also explain the Hooters reference (the band, not the restaurant), but I’m not really up on my mandolin playing indie or emo bands. Again, I digress. I grabbed a seat at the bar amongst the other ten or so patrons that littered the joint on a Monday night. The blonde on stage continued to entertain us with a mix of songs and witty, yet insanely improvised stream of consciousness ramblings, sometimes stopping down in the middle of a song to share what was on her mind. I love people that just let their mouths rip with whatever pretty and twisted thoughts that might be haunting their brain, and she was capturing my heart with every whacked out word. It was like Robin Williams with a guitar, except not as obnoxious or hairy and without that annoying manic preacher voice. Within a matter of minutes, she had either sung or spoken about Rush (one of her favorite bands), a Geddy Lee strap-on nose, Michael Jackson, a leprechaun, the Iraq war, Lorena Bobbit, her neighbor’s Christmas light display, and Margaret Thatcher. Soon thereafter, she confessed her hobby of writing twisted holiday songs, and went off-mike to sing us her version of I Saw Mommy Fondling Santa’s Balls so as not to offend the refined folk stumbling through the French Quarter. Just when you might think she is merely a novelty act, she asked if anyone had a request and someone randomly asked for song number four on the middle CD she had displayed for sale. She had to look it up, but then proceeded to deliver a beautiful ballad that would have brought a lesser man than myself to tears.

Unfortunately I had some work to finish before a meeting the next day, so I couldn’t stay out all night, follow her home and ask if she could keep me. Besides, I was wearing my tags and she surely would have returned me to Mrs. F’er (don’t expect a cash reward, perhaps just a dirty look). I felt bad for leaving so soon, but mostly because I didn’t want her to think that I thought she sucked or something. I’m weird like that, too. So I made sure to write a glowing, detailed review of her performance on a cocktail napkin and leave it on the windshield of her car. I wasn’t really sure which car was hers, so I just made my best guess (a 1999 Toyota Rav4) and made my way back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel (highly recommend Chateau Sonesta – old school all around with great A/C, awesome beds, big rooms and a statue of Ignatius J. Reilly (they should consider putting Big Chief tablets in all the rooms)), instead of getting to the work at hand I surfed the cable system for CNN Headline News so that I would know where to find the lovely Robin Meade in the morning, built a house of soap out of a bunch of little soaps borrowed from a housekeeper’s cart, had an imaginary business meeting with Crystal Bernard to discuss her next Lifetime project, played some air mandolin while thinking about how cool the Lovehammers would be with me on mandolin, and then did some research on Beth Patterson. She calls herself the “patron saint of least favorite children” on her myspace page. A reviewer on her record company page describes her stage presence as "a cross between a cobra and a puppy" and "innocent savagery." And how can you not dig a chick who doesn’t take herself too seriously and poses in her own t-shirts on her merchandise page? Here’s a sample.


Now to put it all in perspective, I haven’t bought any of her CD’s or t-shirts (although I’ve been watching her rock out here). But consider this a public service announcement on behalf of your local music scene before we delve into another season of Rock Star. There are plenty of rockers out there with a ton of talent that will never make it – not because they’re not good enough (actually, that’s exactly why), but because they weren’t in the right place at the right time (like married to Britney Spears) or don’t appeal to the mass market (sometimes that’s a good thing). You can take advantage of that by taking a chance and dropping into a bar to watch the next Marty Casey without having to worry about elitist bitches buying all the tickets and kicking your ass if you stand in front of them at the next show. Now go on and git and let me know how it works out for you.

Whisker-A-Go-Go

After I posted my self-portrait with my homeless man beard, it created quite the controversy. Some people thought it rocked and invited me to exclusive parties that I never knew existed. Thank you. I never knew that most soirees had a quota of bearded weirdoes to fill. Some people were disgusted and immediately hurled on their keyboards and sent me the bill. I’ve negotiated a deal with Dell and you should be receiving them shortly. Others didn’t give a crap. I can respect that. Most just pointed and laughed. But it was hard to distinguish how that was different than before I grew the beard. I could tell that my bosses were growing concerned since sending Captain Lou Albano out to meet clients didn’t exactly match their image of the firm, but they were afraid to say anything. That could be my favorite part.

I was pretty proud of the damn thing, so I did what any manly, hairy-faced guy would do and entered a beard contest. However, that’s obviously nothing one can do half-assed. It’s not like a wet t-shirt contest where you have a couple too many lemondrop shots and end up nipping out in full color on your ex-best friend’s myspace page. I studied all the beards that won previous contests, compiled a spreadsheet, sized up my local competition, groomed it like nothing I’ve ever groomed before, sprayed it with flaxseed oil, drank a shot of Pantene Pro-Vitamin Shampoo every morning, slept with it tucked carefully between the hardcover pages of Atlas Shrugged, and whispered motivational sayings to it when I thought nobody was looking.

Pretty soon the big day arrived. I took out my surfboard wax and put a fine sheen to it. I had plenty of wax since I don’t have a surfboard but I like to be prepared. Like, what if I get a surfboard for my birthday and everyone wants to go surfing that day, but I don’t have any wax and it’s Easter Sunday and the surf shop is closed? But I digress. I shaped it to perfection, put on my lucky boxer shorts and other assorted men’s furnishings and went to work. The competition wasn’t at the office but I couldn’t get the day off to properly prepare so I had to drag my ass in for a few hours. That shook my confidence a bit, but the show must go on. After work I managed to get to the arena early to relax, shoot some pool, and rub my beard on admiring cocktail waitresses. They swooned and my confidence was aroused. At least that’s what I think it was.

Then he walked in. I had heard of this bearded great and his name was on the top of my spreadsheet as the one to beat. We both breezed through the early rounds of the competition, easily dismissing opponents that sported everything from laughingly landscaped jawlines to the peach fuzz of misguided, yet eternally hopeful pretenders. The final round arrived and we faced off – literally. A hush fell over the crowd as they realized the history they were witnessing. After an intense pose-off we both stumbled wearily to our corners and waited for the judge’s decision.

I had a feeling that I had been beaten, and the final decision confirmed it. I had been defeated. No, I had gotten my ass kicked. I sat dejectedly in the corner with my O’Doul’s while the cocktail waitresses flocked to be rubbed with his beard. Mrs. F’er even got in on the action. I knew it was over and tried to remember where I had stored my razor 4 months earlier. Then my nemesis came over and shook my hand. It was as if he could tell what I was thinking and said, “You growed it, so you own it.” Those words of encouragement inspired me to believe that I should keep it. But I realized that I could never make the commitment necessary to take the beard to the next level like he had done.

I did keep the beard for my drive to Chicago. I would let it flail in the wind one last time as I drove the interstates to our new home. It was just like BJ and the Bear, except it was a U-Haul instead of a big rig and Mrs. F’er is way cuter than that monkey. When we arrived at Mom’s house to drop off our stuff, the neighborhood watch folks notified local authorities. After I convinced them that the truck was not full of crystal meth and I was not stealing my mother’s collection of beanie babies, I asked for a little help unloading but they apparently had other hippies to provoke. Mom took to calling me Charles Manson even though I repeatedly told her I preferred Jim Morrison. So I kept it couple extra days just to torment her while reminding her that I could have opted for a tattoo of a pole dancer down the side of my neck. And then it was time to go apartment hunting. I decided that I looked like one of those crazed cult leaders that might convince all the other tenants to meet me in the community rec room and drink some Kool-Aid so that we could go meet our supreme leader Andy Kaufman. Although I believe crazed cult leaders are protected under the Fair Housing Act, I didn’t want to take any chances so I donned the scissors and began hacking away. Several hours later, the whiskers had filled the sink and I looked like I was twelve years old again. Suddenly I realized how the guys in Metallica must have felt after they cut off their hair and sold out, man.

Sorry it took so long to confess, but I didn’t want to mislead you if you’re looking for me at the next Lovehammers or Captain & Tennille show. Stop by and say hello - I’ll be the guy without the beard.

In Memory
January 28, 2006 - June 2, 2006

Sid F'er's Clearinghouse - you may already be a winner!

Sorry I’ve neglected you so long, dear reader. If you haven’t been following along on our ever growing message board, I’ve been busy moving to Chicago. Turns out that U-Haul wanted $600 for a truck from Dallas to Chicago, so being the efficient money manager that I am, I decided I’ll just make a few trips with whatever I can fit in the back of my pickup truck. It’s taking a little longer than expected, but I’m nearly done. If you’re in the area and have a few hours (16), swing by and I’ll give you a few boxes to stick in your back seat. And I know for a fact that all of you don’t have Miatas, so I don’t want to hear it. Lazy bastards.

I decided to use the move as an opportunity to clean out all my crap. When I moved to Texas fourteen years ago I took whatever fit in my Nissan Sentra. So after I loaded up some clothes, my stereo, and some Little Debbie snack cakes, I had to break the news to my girlfriend that there wasn’t any room left for her. She offered to ride in a rooftop carrier, but I must not have fastened it quite as securely as necessary as I believe I lost her somewhere around Joplin, Missouri. Somehow over the last years I’ve managed to acquire mounds of ridiculous stuff such as dishes and beds. And a wife (She's not ridiculous, just a little silly). Mrs. F’er refused the rooftop carrier option and also insisted that we take a bed with us, so I capitulated and ordered a giant 17’ truck. For those people who are spatially challenged, a 17’ truck will hold pretty much whatever you would be able to fit into a parking space about 8’ tall. I like a good challenge.

The first step was to decide what could be tossed. Mrs. F’er obviously did not understand the importance of my Special Export beer truck driver shirt or my Hogballs basketball jersey, so we had a Wings trivia contest. I kicked her ass and the shirts got packed. Next I decided to “help” Mrs. F’er clean out her shoe closet. We had slightly differing opinions on what was necessary and reasonable, so we decided to kickbox for it. I had forgotten that she trained at a kickboxing gym last year, so she started packing her shoes while I put a bag of frozen peas on my face to reduce the swelling.

Next was the garage sale. Our old house was in a prime location – surrounded by illegal immigrants looking for used Molly Hatchet t-shirts and maps of Arkansas so that they can quickly assimilate to their new culture. We had garage sales in the past, so we had the process down. We set the alarm clock for the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. on Saturday, and I feign a severe case of bird flu to avoid getting up while Mrs F’er threatens to sell my beer can collection unless I drag my ass out of bed to stop her. We’re on the far end of our street and have not advertised the sale, yet the professionals are swooping the neighborhood positioning themselves to be the first in line as we place our valued John Denver 8-track collection on the driveway. After most of the crap is displayed, I take my signs down to the corner to direct the rest of the our city to our humble abode. Before the signs are even displayed, cars begin squealing their tires to make the turn down the street before anyone else. It’s like walking into a random bar and finding out the lingerie show is just about to start. That happened to me once and I learned what a lingerie show is. You have a couple very marginally attractive women in lingerie walking around selling raffle tickets for crap you don’t even want to win, but you’re drunk and think you’re going to score if you just buy enough tickets from them so that they can fulfill their dream of buying some wicked platforms and start stripping for the big bucks. I think I won a VHS porn tape that night. I never owned a porn tape before that, but it sucked so bad I couldn’t even include it on the ten cent table at the garage sale. But I digress. By the time I finish posting my signs and return to the house, there is a huge traffic jam with police directing cars and traffic reporters circling overhead in helicopters. I park 3-1/2 miles west of the house in the first available parking spot and hike back to assist Mrs. F’er and fix some Bloody Mary’s. Being the anti-social personality that I am, I usually just hide around the corner until Mrs. F’er hollers for further assistance. My Spanish is slightly better than hers, so I was called to negotiate on the washer and dryer with a local chica. Most of the locals have some rudimentary English skills, but this woman had none. I had sold my Spanish dictionary at the previous garage sale, so I was on my own. After speaking with our customer for a few minutes, I proudly returned to Mrs. F’er and reported that I wasn’t sure, but I had thought that I just might have sold the washer/dryer set for three roosters and a dozen homemade tamales. And there was a better than zero chance that I had agreed to personally fold her laundry for the next 12 months. I was sent back to lurk harmlessly around the corner. Business slows to a crawl by 10:30 a.m., and by noon we’re so bored that we mark everything down to ten cents just to get rid of everything and wrap things up. By 2 p.m. we realize that our stuff sucks so bad that people don’t even want it for a dime (except our wedding unity candle and a dead cactus), so we take the possibly usable stuff to a local charity and the rest to the curb for the next trash pickup.

Next, we sold four of our bikes. One to a friend, one on craigslist, one on a local bike forum, and another on eBay. Of course, we took the eBay money and turned around and bought another one, but we still reduced the fleet by three. The remaining bikes got loaded in the back of the pickup truck, which was subsequently loaded onto a trailer and attached to the back of the truck. It made us look like a really cool bike racing team, or a couple of dorks with a bike addiction.

Finally, Mrs. F’er’s car went on the auction block. I thought about doing a lingerie show and selling raffle tickets for it, but I couldn’t quite fit into my old baby doll PJ’s. So that nixed that idea, and instead we sold it to a dude at the bike shop who promised not to remove the Swinging Lovehammers bumper sticker. If you run into him, tell him the F’ers said hello.

Anyway, to make a long story not very short, in a massive game of Tetris, I managed to pack all of our remaining possessions into that 17’ truck, with a good 8” to spare, pointed the truck north, and rolled out of town with a banjo on my knee. Nobody would take the damn thing at the garage sale.

The Rat's Ass

Do you love somebody? Do you kind of like somebody? Do you hate somebody’s guts? Is there somebody out there that you give a rat’s ass about? Is there somebody out there that you don’t give a rat’s ass about? Well, do it, then! Give them a rat’s ass. Or, get a rat’s ass and withhold giving it to them just to piss them off. That’s the beauty of The Rat’s Ass. It is the epitome of versatility.

I know you’re probably wondering what The Rat’s Ass is. It’s only the ultimate gift of love or hate one person could possibly give to another. It is a remarkable product that I have created centuries before its time.

Why waste your time giving flowers, candy or stuffed animals to your sweeties. Those gifts convey such ambiguity. I’m surprised they’re not at the root of more domestic violence cases. Think about it. When a man sends a woman flowers, what is she to think? Does he love her or is he hinting that she get off her ass and do some work in the garden? Or maybe he thinks she smells like a pile of manure and the flowers are his attempt to save the olfactory of her co-workers. Flowers tend to die. Is he implying that their love is short lived? Roses have thorns. It’s obvious that such a gift is a metaphor for conditional love and that there will be prices to be paid down the line. It’s just not worth it.

Let’s examine the tender act of bestowing a luscious box of candy, preferably chocolates. It seems harmless enough. The sweetness of the chocolates represents corresponding emotions between two people. You can believe that if you choose. Or, you can believe the truth. The truth is that the giver’s motive resembles that of the mean old witch in Hansel and Gretel, only this time she doesn’t want to eat Hansel, she wants to fatten him up so that he is unattractive to the other witches, so she won’t have to worry about losing him. That security coupled with Hansel’s diminishing self-esteem caused by the sudden weight gain allows the witch to treat Hansel like shit, inflicting endless emotional torment on him. And don’t think she won’t.

OK, maybe I’m being a little profuse in my assumptions. But, what about zits? Zits can be the side effect of the intake of too much chocolate. Where do you think the phrase, “Hey, pizza-face, get me another beer” came from? That’s right, from a box of chocolates (indirectly). If that sounds like love to you, stay away from my daughter.

There are countless other acts of charity in the name of nabbing a loved one - far too many for me to comprehend. Here is a list of some of them with their possible (probable) ulterior meanings:

Stuffed Animals – representation of artificial life implying artificial love. Your relationship is as fabricated as the polymorphic fibers that surround the stuffing.

Lingerie/Undergarments – “How about if you put out a little more often, huh?”

Balloons – Since most of a balloon’s volume consists of air or helium, which is invisible, so are the feelings of the gifter towards the giftee. Without the air, all that is left is a wrinkled sheath of rubber. I’ll leave the interpretation of this visual for the imaginative.

Jewelry – “Let he among you without sin cast the first stone” (or something like that). Most jewelry contains some sort of stone or stones. The act of giving jewelry is analogous with the act of pelting another with stones. The bottom line is the giver is declaring his or her superiority over the recipient, since only non-sinners pelt sinners.

Automobiles – “I think of you as a prostitute or man-whore.”

Cash – “I think of you as a prostitute or man-whore.”

Meat – There is nothing wrong with giving meat. Little conveys the meaning of love more than a box of frozen Porterhouses. Warning: if you ever decide to give your lover meat, you had better be prepared to say the words “I do”.

Obviously, the aforementioned gifts are capable of informing your sweetheart that your affection is genuine. But, as you have been shown, there is plenty of room for error and miscommunication. Can you afford to jeopardize your most heartfelt relationships by employing such precarious gift giving rituals? Don’t be an idiot.

With The Rat’s Ass, your feelings are literally spelled out for your honey, friend, enemy, boss, acquaintance, postman, or whomever else you want to give it to – or not give it to (explanation to come).

The Rat’s Ass can be construed as a form of a stuffed animal. What makes The Rat’s Ass different from the example of a stuffed animal gift defined prior is that, by cutting off most of the rat, I have, in turn, cut out most of the doubt inherent in the typical stuffed animal gift. The Rat’s Ass is fully equipped with a revolutionary feature I call the Torsonic Panel (see illustration). The Torsonic Panel covers the rat’s innards that would normally be exposed after The Rat’s Ass was detached from the rest of the rat. Just like the mess that is your emotional state, the rat’s entrails are barricaded by the Torsonic Panel as it acts as a message board to convey your true feelings to the beneficiary. Here lies the preeminent flexibility The Rat’s Ass provides. It can be a gift of love or a gift of hate or a gift of anywhere in between. Your message dictates the severity!

The Rat’s Ass is the perfect gesture of whatever emotion you want to throw at people. From Love to Like to Uncomfort to Itchiness to Uncontrolled Drooling to Hate to Indifference. It’s all covered.

Say you can’t stand a guy named Humus. You don’t care if this person lives or dies and he’s always bugging you. You’ve tried to be diplomatic, you’ve hinted that you want to be left alone and you’ve sent him a dozen rotten eggs. Nothing has worked. He just does not get the idea. Instead of having wasted years of your life tap dancing around the subject, all you needed to do was get yourself The Rat’s Ass with this appropriate message:

This Rat’s Ass was never and will never be given about Humus.

Whenever Humus bothers you, you simply taunt him with The Rat’s Ass that is not being given about him. He will be crushed and will eventually leave your life. But, remember that you can’t not give The Rat’s Ass if you don’t have The Rat’s Ass not to give. So you need to buy one from Leper Pop.

Consider this scenario. You’ve discovered that your longtime lover is secretly having an affair with a carnival worker. You want to end the relationship with definite closure, but you are worried that your partner will try to hang on because xe is very dependent. Simply send your soon to be ex The Rat’s Ass with this message:

You suck, this is the last rat’s ass I’ll ever give about you.


If xe doesn’t figure it out after that, you have a stalker on your hands, and you had better contact the authorities. Warning: The Rat’s Ass does not work on all stalkers!

Then there are the instances where you want to express your love. Do I really need to explain how to use The Rat’s Ass to accomplish this? Without getting too detailed, I will give you a number of sample messages you can use as references:

I give a rat’s ass about you. (obvious)

I love you. If I didn’t why would I risk declaring it on The Rat’s Ass?

You are the only one for me. The proof is in The Rat’s Ass.

I love you. What more do I need to do? Please get off my back.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I give The Rat’s Ass
Just about you.

So………do ya wanna do it?

I’m drunk and horny, even if you are only a goat.

With this Rat’s Ass, I thee wed…

The uses of The Rat’s Ass are infinite. There is no better method for revealing your true feelings about the people around you.

Now that I’ve convinced you that you can’t live without this extraordinary tool of communication, how do you get one? It’s simple. Just complete the order form that follows this article and send it to me with a check for around fifty bucks and I’ll get one out to you as soon as the check clears.

Remember, The Rat’s Ass is hand made. Also, keep a look out for other fabulous Rat’s Ass merchandise like:

The Rat’s Ass Pen and Pencil Set
The Rat’s Ass Toilet Paper Dispenser
The Rat’s Ass Ear Muffs
The Rat’s Ass Computer Mouse
The Rat’s Ass Enema Bag
The Rat’s Ass Onion Bloomer
The Rat’s Ass Surgical Bandage
The Rat’s Ass Lawn Mower Blade
The Rat’s Ass Big Note Maracas Book
The Rat’s Ass Nipple Ring
The Rat’s Ass Bag of Rat’s Asses
The Rat’s Ass Book of Commonly Used Elegies
The Rat’s Ass Alarm Clock
The Rat’s Ass Phlebotomy Kit
The Rat’s Ass Fondu Set
The Rat’s Ass Overhead Projector
The Rat’s Ass Chimney Cozy
The Rat’s Ass Rifle Cleaner
The Rat’s Ass Blunt Object
The Rat’s Ass Glass Bottom Boat
The Rat’s Ass Zipper
The Rat’s Ass Pearl Farm
And much, much more…….

Chorus Abhorrus

My daughter has been singing some strange songs around the house lately. By strange, I mean unfamiliar. If that’s the case, why didn’t I say “unfamiliar” instead of “strange”? I don’t know. They are unfamiliar to me, not to her. If they were unfamiliar to her, I doubt she would be singing them. Like Czechoslovakian folk tunes – I never hear her singing those, because she is not familiar with them. Nor am I, so if she were singing them, I would not know. Maybe those are the songs she’s been singing. I don’t think she’s Czechoslovakian. I have never seen her wear a babushka.

It wasn’t until a day before my daughter’s chorus recital, when ex-Mrs. Rub told me it was the following day and we needed to have her to the school by 6:30 in the evening that I realized my daughter was in the school chorus. I think I may have been aware of this fact, but honestly, I pretend my way through life so much, I’m not always sure what is reality and what is that giant potato in the shape of Abe Vigoda doing on my couch! Oh, no worry, he is merely petting the dog. This, the chorus recital, not the Abe Vigoda potato, explains my daughter’s singing behavior of late.

I arrived at the school multi-purpose room (MPR), with the son by my side, at approximately 6:45 pm on the night of the recital. The MPR, as some call it, is basically a gymnasium with fold out cafeteria tables built into the walls, so that the room can serve as a food oasis during lunchtime in addition to being an incubation center for the athletes of tomorrow. I asked the Principal about this exotic building naming convention. She informed me that if the children knew they were eating their lunches in a gym, they would be scarred for life and would never be able to dine in public, rendering the future of the restaurant business doomed. I doubted her claim, but she was wielding a yardstick, so I did not argue. To change the subject, I asked her if she minded being at the school at such a late hour in the day. She suggested a tour of her office to show me how, in the good old days, they used to administer corporal punishment to the naughty, naughty students. I took my seat.

After enduring some inane chit-chat with the son, where we both decide the other is an idiot (and both correct), a scope of the room for hot moms and a discussion of some kid scheduling details with the ex (about exactly what, I’m not sure – some things don’t change), the chorus, all dressed in white tops and black bottoms (some pants, some skirts), entered the MPR gymnasium food court. Mr. Hoek, the musical director, dressed in the same manner, only larger sized clothes, led them in.

The chorus consisted of two boys and about twelve girls. Boys of that age (fourth grade) aren’t into singing much – not in front of people, anyway. Peer pressure ridicule looms large for them. There are not many other afflictions worse than getting ribbed by the guys for doing something seemingly “girly”. Boys don’t realize that the payoff of singing could be an in road to the affections from the ladies. They don’t realize it because they don’t care at that point in their lives. In a few years they will care, and they won’t care so much about getting the business from the fellas. Weird, huh?

Mr. Hoek, a very tall and slender man, with short brown hair, Jimmie JJ Walker facial hair and wearing black Converse MPR shoes, welcomed us to the performance. He explained that their first number, The Concert Etiquette Rap, was a lesson to the audience on how to behave during the show. Apparently, there has been a history of unruly and horny parents causing distractions. The song preached the basic etiquette: be quiet, pay attention, applaud thunderously, etc. I think they went a little too far with the refrain, “Keep your pants on, Daddy-O, that school marm just ain’t no ho!” I stopped searching the room for hot moms when I heard that, so maybe they know what they’re doing.

The children’s performance of this song was adequate. It was a rap song. Honestly, I cannot tell the difference from a good rap song and a bad rap song. It’s hard for me to give you a judgment of their performance on that song. I CAN tell you that their singing during the rest of the show was pretty bad. Most of them were out of tune. Their tempo, as a group, was off and inconsistent, for the most part. Any attempt at harmony was ear hell. The two boys were lip-syncing. Thinking back, I should probably have thanked them for that. Overall, it was pretty much terrible, by adult standards. We were subjected to a kazoo orchestra performance for one song, which sounded like a bunch of bees with speech impediments. Considering bees make their buzzing sounds with their wings and not with their voices, you can imagine how atrocious that sounded. Some members of the chorus, during one song that my mind has blocked out of my memory so I don’t commit suicide, played soda pop bottles containing water at different levels to produce different tones, while the others sang. Fortunately, the soda pop bottles were in tune. Unfortunately, that only exacerbated the inconsonance of the singers. The show was the longest forty-five minutes I ever suffered. None of this, of course, applies to my daughter. She was wonderful, but you couldn’t hear her very well. Why is it that the untalented ones are always the loudest?

The highlight of the evening was when they were about to sing Dona Nobis Pacem. Mr. Hoek, who evidently doesn’t teach singing, and is merely baby sitting fourth graders after school for an extra grand a year, asked the audience if anybody knew Latin and could tell everyone what the English title of the song was. I waited to see if anybody was going to answer. I had been secretly translating the title since I saw it on the program.

The translation of Latin into English is no easy task. You must follow stringent guidelines. First, you have to figure out what all the words mean. It helps to have memorized each Latin word’s English meaning. If not, you need to, at least, know the meaning of similar English words derived from Latin words. I favor the latter method. In this example, “dona” sounds like donate, donor, donation, etc, so there is a good chance it means “give”. “Pacem” is similar to pacify, pacific, pacifier, etc., which are all words relating to “peace”. As for “nobis”, who the hell knows? Although, I did remember that “nobis” meant something like “our”, using the former method described above. Once you have determined the possible meanings of the words, start mixing them around and manipulating their forms, if needed, to form some sort of legible sentence, and then hand it in.

I must warn you, some Latin teachers will tell you that each Latin word in a given sentence has a specific suffix that will tell you what part of speech it is, and where it belongs in the translated English sentence. However, I speak English, and that is not what suffixes do in this country. Nice try, Mrs. Latin teacher. You can’t always trust them. They’ll even make up English forms of words, like gerund, just so they can give you extra useless endings to have to remember. I’m not buying it. Gerund. I’ll believe that right after I believe the buying of the Brooklyn Bridge from a guy in the street is a good investment.

I had determined that the three words in the sentence were “give” “peace” and “our”. “Give peace our” didn’t make much sense (although I had turned in goofier sounding sentences back in high school). I jumbled the order until I ended up with “Give our peace”, which sounds better, but not quite correct. So, I added “to us” to the end to get, “Give our peace to us.” That version didn’t sound quite complete. I added, “you bastard”. “Give our peace to us, you bastard”. That was it. I did it. It was during the kazoo mess that I figured it out. I was prepared with the correct answer, in case the question came up.

The last thing I wanted to do was to blurt it out immediately after Mr. Hoek asked the question and look like a bigger dork than I am. So, I sat back calmly. Once I realized there were no other scholars in the group, or at least none that needed to show off as much as I did, I declared for all to hear, “Give Us Peace” was the name of the song. Luckily, I had forgotten the sentence I had determined, and at the last second, made something up. Mr. Hoek gave me a verbal A+ (I’m not sure what he said, exactly, since I was basking in my insolence, but he probably said something like, “What are you doing here, you should be at Harvard or curing cancer or something!”) Finally, four years of sitting in Latin class in high school had paid off. I could tell by the look on my daughter’s face that she was thinking, “Oh no, that’s my dad. I wish I was dead!” I’m kidding of course…

Abe Vigoda Potato: Excuse me, Mr. Rub.

Moist Rub: Yes, Abe Vigoda Potato?

Abe Vigoda Potato: First off, I’m not a potato.

Moist Rub: Rutabega?

Abe Vigoda Rutabega: No.

Moist Rub: Then, what are you?

Abe Vigoda non Potato nor Rutabega: I’m Abe Vigoda, himself.

Moist Rub: Oh. Good. I thought you were a potato.

Abe Vigoda: Well, I’m not. I can’t help the way that I look. I’m very old. I’d like to see you when you’re my age.

Moist Rub: Not if I looked like you, you wouldn’t. Are you sure you’re not a root of some sort?

Abe Vigoda: I don’t think it was very nice of you to have criticized your daughter’s chorus the way you did. They worked very hard on those songs. They’re young and learning. Learning the capacity of their voices. Learning to sing together in a group. Learning how music can be meaningful in their lives.

Moist Rub: I understand all that. But, you weren’t there. It was pretty bad.

Abe Vigoda: Some people think that a child singing is the most beautiful sound in the world.

Moist Rub: Sure, if that child happens to be in The Osmonds or The Jackson Five…

Abe Vigoda: No, regular children. Their voices resonate with the beauty of innocence and sincerity, of love and compassion, of humanity and a carefree existence – all which is lost in adulthood.

Moist Rub: That must be why everybody was clapping. I guess I was too busy translating Latin to have understood the true magnificence of their performance.

Abe Vigoda: I guess you were. Next time, try to experience it for what it is, and not for what you expect it to be.

Moist Rub: I don’t think I will be able to.

Abe Vigoda: Sure you can. Try.

Moist Rub: OK, Abe Vigoda. Thanks for setting me straight. Now, can you please do me a favor?

Abe Vigoda: Certainly, Mr. Rub.

Moist Rub: Please put some clothes on. You’ll be less apt to be mistaken for a potato.

A Bicycle Built For Two

Not to turn this into a bike log, but it’s better than bitching about work. So I leave my laptop in my bag, blow off my work, and hop on the bike this weekend. About 1/8 of a mile into the ride, I nearly run into the side of a minivan. Normally I don’t have to worry about traffic on that cul de sac, but today’s garage sale was attracting a steady flow of 1989 Dodge Caravans all looking for a deals on 8-track tapes and broken lawn chairs.

[Side note: While going through all our crap and prepping for our own garage sale a couple months ago, we found something they call a unity candle from our wedding. You do your vows and then jointly light a candle that’s supposed to represent the Second Circle of Hell. Well, we found our hell candle and the following conversation ensued:
Mrs. F’er: You want this?
Sid: Not really, do you?
Mrs. F’er: No.
Sid: Really?
Mrs. F’er: No. Is that bad?
Sid: No. Garage sale it is.
A week later, a strange woman in a Dodge Caravan paid us $1 for an official “Mr. & Mrs. F’er, May 17, 1998” candle.]


But I digress. At mile 3, I cut through a local park and was going to photograph the place for the blog but I didn’t think that standing in a park wearing spandex and sporting a homeless guy beard while taking pictures of teen girls on the playground would endear me to the local residents of Flower Mound, recently voted a top ten place to raise a family. So I pedaled onward.
Mile 5 presents the busiest intersection – FM 2499, which requires Frogger-like skills to cross without becoming roadkill. I pass Flower Mound High School and arrive at Peter’s Colony Road. I envision Peter Griffin from Family Guy standing naked in a nudist colony and laugh. Sometimes I picture a bunch of cartoon penises wearing powdered wigs and those 18th century colonial hats. There are a few churches in this area, so on Sundays I have to be extra careful to dodge all the cars filled with the Lord’s love racing to get to church on time (and then subsequently motoring home to catch the Cowboy’s kickoff in the fall). I get to mile 7 and get the ride the fastest downhill on my route. Although unlikely, a crash here would turn my supple skin into ground beef, so I try to focus and avoid thinking about cartoon penises and whether Betty was really hotter than Veronica in those Archie comic books.
After a few turns at mile 8 I hit the steepest climb on the route, a short uphill through the exclusive River Oaks Estates subdivision, where it looks like they negotiate group discounts on Hummers, sporty convertibles, and illegal immigrants to handle their landscaping needs. When I’m in shape, I only require one finger to discretely nudge a lung out of my throat and back into its proper position. When I’m not in shape (like now), I usually fall over onto a lush lawn and have to use both hands to violently restore them to their internal organ status. I guess the Tour de France will have to wait this year. Hell, I guess the local Kiwanis bicycle rodeo might have to wait. Luckily, a long rambling slight downhill run that follows gives my cardio system a chance to recover. Unluckily, what goes down must go back up and I begin the long rambling uphill on Shiloh Road into an uncooperative headwind. I get passed by a fellow cyclist (slightly more fit than I) and decide to jump on his wheel and draft for a bit. I’m able to hang at his pace for about a minute, but my cardio system isn’t onboard with the idea anymore and insists that we go it alone. Bastard cardio system. Finally I approach Hawks Road around mile 12 and enter the gateway to my little cycling nirvana. The next 18 miles I pedal through Bartonville, Argyle and Double Oak and will probably only pass a dozen cars, and the cars will be far outnumbered by the horses that hangout on the various ranches, estates, and horse properties. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words and I’m too tired to type that much, so join the ride and enjoy the scenery. Click on the pictures if you need to see the full size version.






We really do have Longhorns in Texas. I want those for the front of my truck.














Jackass.


Damn kids.



Eventually, I make my way back to civilization and I’m welcomed back to McMansionville, where the homeowner’s association fines you if your farts don’t smell right.

I don’t live there. I couldn’t afford the fines. All the homes have pools, but nobody is ever in them. The kids are in their rooms playing Xbox on their plasma televisions, while their parents are in the study filling out their college applications. This is also the point where I need to start paying attention again and start hip checking the soccer moms in their Excursions, Tahoes, Yukons and Suburbans for a little room on the road as they race to pick up Jacob and Emily from gymnastics class.

Back through Peter’s Colony Road and the images of patriotic genitalia, past the high school, Frogger past 2499, through another few neighborhoods and I’m back in the park. This time there are other people out there, so I snap a shot.



How much more family friendly can you get than flying a freaking kite in the park on a Sunday afternoon? Where’s Norman Rockwell?

Three more miles and I’m home. I stink, but I feel good. I take a self-portrait.


You remember the Donny & Marie Show? She’s a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock n’ roll. Me and the wife are like that with bikes. I lean more to the roadie side and she’s more a mountain biker, but we do both. I prefer to zone out, clear my head, sing some Neil Diamond tunes, and knock out some miles. Mrs. F’er prefers to get dirty, jump rocks, fall down, and get bruised up so that I look like a wife beater. When our schedules coincide, I’ll jump some rocks with her and she’ll take the occasional ride to smell the cow shit with me. Life is good. So in compliance with the Equal Opportunity Biking Act, here’s a photo from her ride on Friday with her boyfriend.


Thanks for coming along. Next time you might want to try pedaling a little harder.

Movin' On Up

You might have noticed that my posts have not been as frequent or extensive as in the past. I can explain. You see, many years ago, I got set up with a girl who was new to town. We’ll call her Iguacu. This is very soap opera-ish, so pay close attention. You see this girl (Iguacu) came to town to manage a BBQ joint when her ex-boyfriend needed help staffing the expansion that was going on. But the ex-boyfriend had a new girlfriend. The new girlfriend thought that her buddy Sid might like Iguacu and arranged the meeting. It would also occupy Iguacu and hopefully distract her from fanning old flames. It did, in fact, work out and I eventually phased out my own old girlfriend who had recently been convicted of embezzlement and was busy repaying her debt to society.

I kind of liked Iguacu, so after about six months you can probably guess what happened….

Blog Reader: Awww… they got married and she became Mrs. F’er!

No, the fake titty whore kicked me to the curb and didn’t even have the decency to return the remote control for my garage door. That’s cold. It’s like disclosing to her the location of the Batcave and then having her draw a map for the Joker. But I weaned myself from the free BBQ and learned to hunt and gather food elsewhere. Looking back, I think I really liked the free BBQ and beer better than her anyway.

Shortly thereafter, I had to get my moppish locks shorn so I made my way over to the mall to visit my hairdresser. I always enjoyed my time with her during my appointments - she was hot and actually seemed to “get” my twisted brand of humor, and I dug her pink hair, nose ring and funky shoes. Unfortunately, word of her styling talents were getting around and her prices were rising faster than the price of gas during an oil embargo. Just as I was resigned to finding somebody new (I couldn’t justify $37 for a men’s haircut), I found out that she had just broken up with her boyfriend. So I asked her out and must have caught her by surprise because she agreed to go out with me. I kind of liked her, so after about six months you can probably guess what happened….

Blog Reader: Oh, no! She kicked him to the curb, too!

No, I took her to Mexico, suggested we get married, caught her off-guard again, and the following year she became Mrs. F’er in a beautiful ceremony just a few blocks from where President Kennedy got his head blown off.

Remember those rising prices I told you about? Well, eventually it changed the demographics of her clientele from fun, young upstarts like me to snooty, obnoxious types that deserved a pair of scissors in the temporal lobe. Rather than lose another woman to the big house, I agreed when she proposed a new career in massage therapy where clients mostly just lie down and shut the hell up. She was digging that but realized that spending day after day listening to the CD’s of new age soundscapes might lead her to dig out those old scissors and take a stab at her own temporal lobe. So she went back to college while continuing to operate her massage practice.

Mrs. F’er pursued her interest in forensic science and even did a gig with a crime scene unit. Believe it or not, real crime scene investigators do not run around in Versace suits and Prada shoes and solve exciting murder cases in 60 minutes every day. In fact, they spend most of their time attempting to lift fingerprints off storage sheds after meth addicts bust in looking for Neil Diamond 8-tracks to pawn. But when there were dead bodies around, Mrs. F’er was more interested in what the medical examiner was doing. So she finished her degree and got a job as an investigator for the medical examiner’s office, where she gets to examine dead bodies, take gruesome photos, and type up reports based on her investigations in the field before the bodies get shipped off to the morgue. In her spare time, she enjoyed hanging out in the morgue with the pathologists doing the autopsies. That means she knows how to kill me or you and get away with it. I don’t mess with her and neither should you.

Life was good and then about a year and a half ago she announced she wanted to apply to medical school. I had made the offer the previous year when she had finished her undergrad – “OK, Mrs. F’er – medical school is on the table, or you can take the job at the medical examiner’s office… deal, or no deal” She didn’t take the deal and started poking dead bodies. I put a rubber glove on my head and blew it up with my nose. So I was kind of surprised a year later when she knocked the glove off my head and brought it up again.

The first step was taking the MCAT (Medical School Admissions Test). I figured it was like the SAT – you read some passages about penguin habitats and answer some questions and then you’re done. Turns out that the test is all about biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, and carburetor rebuilds, as well as the obligatory penguin habitats. Surprisingly, people pay for the privilege to take this exam. She locked herself in a room for four months and spent the entire time memorizing chemical reactions, discovering new elements on the periodic table, reenacting cellular mitosis, and calculating the centripetal force on her ass when I take a corner at 40 mph in the F150. She took the test last April, a year ago, and then had to wait three months for them to get around to finding a scantron machine to grade it. The score was competitive, so next began the application process.

To apply, you send your MCAT score to the school, along with transcripts, letters of recommendation, a pepperoni pizza and the all important personal statement. The personal statement gives you 500 words to explain why the hell you would ever want to go through the time, pain and expense of medical school rather than just get an MBA, buy a gray suit and a Blackberry and make the same money without worrying about uninsured patients or malpractice suits. Oh, and also try to explain why you’re different from the other 8,000 pre-med biology majors that have the same MCAT score, the same killer GPA, and have been volunteering at clinics in Africa every summer since pre-school. So Mrs. F'er focused on her love of examining dead bodies and her time on the vaudeville circuit as a professional cat juggler. You also have to send them money.

She applied to all eight Texas schools so that we could take advantage of the fine public universities that our tax dollars paid to support over the last 14 years, as well as about 12 out-of-state schools as a backup plan. After you apply, the admissions committee reviews your package and throws out your application if your MCAT score sucks, if your GPA sucks (e.g. anything below 3.975 out of 4.0), if they think you’re lying about inventing penicillin, or if they are offended by your cat juggling experience. If you make the first cut, then they send you a secondary application where you tell them that you weren’t kidding about all the stuff on the first application, tell them why you want to go to their school in particular, and send them more money.

Depending on their mood and the weather on the day your application arrives (and whether they feel cat juggling would add to the diversity of their student body), you may or may not be granted an interview. So here’s what happened.

Unfortunately, all Texas schools had already met their quota of cat juggling death investigators and sent violent rejection letters that caused me to shed a tear as I saw the dream of in-state tuition shatter before my eyes while out-of-state schools rubbed their hands together with evil glee in anticipation of out-of-state tuition payments. Those schools granted her a total eight interview invites, five of which she accepted. Which means you then take time off of work, rack up some unreimbursed travel expenses, tour the school, meet the deans, confirm with a straight face that everything you wrote on your applications was sincere, and attempt to explain to admissions committees how you would solve the health care crisis despite the fact that your own government doesn’t have a clue. If you survive that without cracking, then you might get an offer. Mrs. F’er, after dealing with me for the last 8 years, breezed through this phase and received four acceptances and a wait list. Or as she put it, “Holy crap, I’m going to medical school.”

Which brings us to today. She narrowed down her choices and ultimately picked a school in Chicago. While this was going on we also had to do some major prep work to sell the house, and we put it on the market last month after hiding all the porn, packing up my extensive cabbage patch doll collection, and repairing all the damage from the last time Moist Rub, Stiv_OO, and Captain Break-It visited. Despite my attempts to quit my job, they’ve made arrangements to transfer me to the Chicago office and continue my servitude. As of today, the house is under contract, and we may be moving as soon as Memorial Day. Which is a little unsettling since we don’t have a place to live and, while the offer from Mom is nice, it’s a little creepy living as a married couple in the room you grew up in.

Beginning after Labor Day, Mrs. F’er will spend the next two years learning and memorizing every detail of the human body so that she can pass the first step of the licensing exam and explain to me what the hell they're talking about on House. After that, she will get to spend about 60-80 hours a week for the following two years dodging body fluids while doing rotations at hospitals around Chicago. Then she will get to apply for a four year residency and hang out with cool people like you see on Gray’s Anatomy. If all goes as planned, about eight years from today she will be released into the wild and get to spend the rest of her life doing autopsies.

To recap, I asked out my hairdresser so that I didn’t have to pay for a $37 haircut, and now I’m paying four year’s tuition at a private medical school. I haven’t done a present value analysis, but I have a feeling it would have been cheaper to pay for the damn haircut. But I’m pretty proud of her and it will all be worth it after the loans are paid off and I can retire early and buy my own BBQ joint to hang out at.

By the way, Wednesday is her birthday and we're taking donations for the Leper Pop Scholarship Fund. Thank you for your support.