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Y'know, if there's one thing I love more than Jesus and/or Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip, it's travel. Not the part that involves arriving somewhere and doing stuff, but the part that involves waking up really early and lugging a bunch of heavy luggage around an airport and then waiting there for an hour or so before finally getting to sit in an uncomfortable seat surrounded by loud idiots for six hours. Oh, especially when one is traveling via Southwest, the preferred airline of hillbillies and old people.
But never mind my whining, for today I lucked out; as soon as I got on the half-full plane, I noticed an empty aisle seat right in the third row, next to a sweet, wholesome, and altogether pleasant-looking elderly couple. "Is this seat free?" I asked incredulously, because I'm just that type.
"Yes," said the woman half of the couple. "I don't know why no one's sat here yet," she added. "People just kept walking by."
"They were probably afraid you'd die and fall on them, ya old cunt!" I said, and to show her I was just joking I gave her a playful but by no means delicate elbow to the ribs. Or perhaps I said, "I guess it's just my lucky day!" I really don't remember. Anyway, I shot the shit with the old-timer a little bit, ascertaining the thrilling information that she and Pa were heading back to their home, a scant thirty miles north of Bakersfield. "Oh, God's country!" I replied. (“Meaning that you dimwitted rubes up there have nothing in your dusty little lives besides a pathetic devotion to your imaginary deity”), I added parenthetically. Or maybe I just stifled a yawn. I really cannot recall which.
Looking to the row left of mine, I could not help but notice that, despite the plane's fullness, next to the occupied window seat, the two outer seat cushions had been torn out and set on their sides. A little eavesdropping told me that they were being held for two tykes traveling alone. As I ran through my black market connections in my mind and began to make grand plans for how to spend the money two healthy children would likely fetch, one of the plane's stewards (an obvious homosexual) came by to replace the cushions in their proper positions and announce that the children had not shown up, after all. "Nothing personal," I told the old lady beside me, "but…" Without finishing the thought, I dashed over the open aisle seat and plunked myself down. The woman in the window seat expressed some mild, amused guilt over having had to turn many people away, and I pretended briefly to care, before tucking into my standard flight ritual of sitting there and reading intermittently.
So, the flight went on, and I was in good enough spirits to be amused rather than disgusted by the extremely loud and quite obese young girls behind me. However, one passenger did irk me from very early on. It was another elderly woman, this one across the aisle and one row up. As soon as the other steward (another fruit, if you ask me) began to take orders for the first round of complimentary beverages, she began, in a loud, gravelly, phlegm-filled voice, to tell her life story. "Will there be a meal on this flight? Because I've lost a lot of weight recently."
"There won't be a meal," said the sexy stew, "but there is a snack."
"Oh, because I've lost almost fifty pounds in the last year."
"Oh, I see…"
"I used to weigh 145 pounds, but now I only weigh 95 pounds."
"Well… I'll bring you some juice."
"I like Sprite."
The steward wrenched himself away and took the rest of the passengers' orders.
Now, knowing all too well the kind of food Southwest provides (or, actually, because my mother insisted), I had a bagel with me. So, as seemed sensible at the time, I ate it. Soon I noticed the old woman stealing furtive glances at it. Part of me wanted to offer her the half that I had not begun to eat, while the other, more dominant half wanted to scowl at her and meaningfully punch my open hand. But it was my third half that, as always, persevered, and I ate my bagel and did my best to ignore the crone—whose face, I now noticed, was covered with a thick layer of downy fuzz.
And still the plane flew westward.
When the steward returned to hand out the box of crackers and shit that has made Southwest the industry leader in high-class travel, the woman began to share with him another phase of her life: her children. Well, no, she really didn't talk about her children as much as she pressed home the information that her son would be picking her up at the airport. The steward pretended like he thought that was terrific news, but she refused to let it end there. "He's a short man, with a red complexion," she said. "He'll be waiting for me. He's all I've got now."
That's one lucky, ruddy midget, I thought, before she broke my concentration again.
"My daughter was killed," she said. The steward again pretended to care. The woman said something about it happening when she went to get the mail, I think, but at that point the drone of the engine drowned out her voice.
Anyway, the flight went on in much the same way for the next four hours, with the woman telling the steward over and over again that her son, who is short and has a reddish complexion, would be picking her up. This pleasure was compounded by the woman's stealing furtive glances in my direction, a situation I remedied by shielding the right side of my face with my hand, so that I could not see if she was looking at me or not. Nonetheless, at one point, a bony hand touched my knee, and I looked up to see that the old woman wanted me to open her complimentary pack of Oreos for her. I did so smilingly, but I think she picked up the strongly negative psychic signal I sent her way. Then, at some point late in the flight, either by design or obligation or whatever, the one female flight attendant took over our part of the plane, and was pleasantly brusque enough to the old woman to keep her from spouting out the same information again. I was relieved, or would have been had the one person in my row not broken out her personal DVD player and began playing some action movie at top volume without bothering to use headphones. It was at that point that I remembered that there is a reason I always bring a parachute with me on long flights, and it was not long before I was floating gently down beside the Colorado River.
I hitched a series of rides with a series of truckers back to LAX long-term parking, where I quickly found my trusty VW and began to hightail it for Koreatown. It was about a block into my drive that I noticed my car was making a distinctive fump-fump-fump-fump noise, one I had not heard since my reckless, curb-scraping college days. I pulled into a Burger King parking lot, fumbled briefly with my weird, German jack, then gave up and called AAA. Twenty-odd minutes later, the tow truck pulled in and the trusty AAA man was busy replacing my ruined tire with the full-size spare that had been such a major selling point for me back in February, when I bought the fucking car. It came out during the course of our chit-chat that I deliver pizzas, and we bantered back and forth about the pros and cons of our jobs. He strongly recommended I get a job driving a tow truck, as at least you don't have to put wear and tear on your own vehicle. Them, for some reason, he added, "Hey, look at me: I've been in prison, and I can do it!" Moments later, the job was done, and we parted. I expect I'll forget all about this day as soon as I possibly can, but I shall always remember what's-his-name, the tow truck guy.
The end.
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I’ve heard things over the years from various friends in the service industry regarding the tipping habits of various races. The ones who were more definite about this subject I tended to dismiss as bigots, and my four months of pizza delivery had backed up that theory; my impression thus far had been that ten different people of the same race and even the same economic background may all well give different tips, and that no race has yet shown itself to be any stingier or any more generous than the next. However, I have reached one conclusion: if you thank a Hispanic man for a big tip, he will wink. Strange but true. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to reading "The Bell Curve."
Oh, also--the reason Asians are good at math? An extra bone in their ankle. Thank you.
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At the height of the Yukon gold rush, the city of Dawson was as populous as Seattle and as rip-roarin’ as San Francisco. A nugget of gold the size of a pimple could buy you a moose steak as thick as your torso, a nugget the size of a plantar wart could fetch a dozen bottles of rotgut and half an evening with a twenty chubby fifteen-year-olds, and a nugget the size of a bunion would get a man a team of horses, a big fur coat, a case of good champagne, two or three lithe Indian boys, and a bye in the first round of that Friday’s mublety-peg tournament. For, as all-consuming one might expect gold to have been, the true kings of the Klondike weren’t necessarily those who’d staked the biggest claim or tapped into a mother lode. No, when it came down to it, it was really all about mublety-peg. That is all I have to say on the subject.
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Murder in the Big Town (a Boyle Mystery)
The noonday sun pouring through my office window was turning the Old Fashioned on my desk all kinds of crazy colors. I guzzled it down so as to stop that from happening and waited patiently for the next kooky dame to come in. They always did, those kooky dames. Suddenly I heard gunshots. They sounded like they were coming from the lobby. I got so scared I had a heart attack. I'm fine now, but during the two weeks I was recovering, the police managed to solve the case on their own. My ex-wife always told me I was too unlucky to make a good detective. I'd always tell her back that I was trying to be a detective, not make one. I think all that tedious semantic bullshit was a big reason she left me. But, of course, she was diagnosed with type two diabetes, so who's laughing now?
The end.
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A quick movie idea: “Meat and Potatoes.” A buddy movie about two cops, the buff and hunky Jack Meat, and his overweight, inept partner, Chucky "Potatoes" Russet. The two of them have to crack a case of some sort, preferably involving jewels, I think. If any of you steal this, I'll kill you.
See, I've been trying to come up with some saleable ideas so that I may someday have enough money to pay off my mounting medical expenses. I’ve come up with a few so far:
White Guy Gets Hit by Lightning and Joins the NBA
Talking Animals Adventure
Retarded Man (or Hippy) Becomes President
Club Kid Grandma
Little Girl is Accidentally Conscripted into the U.S. Air Force
Goofball Academy (in 3-D!)
The best I've thought of is "Product Placement (The Movie)," which is kind of a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy buddy movie about a 16-ounce jar of Sue Bee clover honey (Lara Flynn Boyle) and a Sea-Doo "Bounty" personal watercraft (Owen Wilson) who are on the run from her bullying former boyfriend (a tube of Aquafresh, played by Jared Leto), a wisecracking cop/pint of Häagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche ice cream (Martin Lawrence) and a vengeful and mysterious bucket of Glidden "High-Gloss Contemporary White" paint (John Goodman and/or Goldie Hawn) who has come back from Sea-Doo's past in an altogether vengeful and mysterious way. Even though Sue Bee and Sea-Doo are nothing alike, they're forced to come together because—let's face it—they've got all these fucking people chasing after them. Or products. Whatever. All that matters is we get the companies to shell out a few bucks, work out some sort of tie-in with Burger King, and—presto! —we've got ourselves a giant wad of cash and a great big war-torn world in which to spend it.
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Sure, I may be an alderman, but I am a husband and father first, and then an alderman second, and third maybe a fan of “The Munsters”, but it is as a husband and father that I am shocked and disgusted by the continuing decline of the American family. Case in point, those people who choose to air their dirty laundry on sordid talk shows like the one hosted by self-proclaimed “family man” Gerald Tangy. I happened to accidentally watch the entire one-hour broadcast of The Gerald Tangy Show this morning, and I took the time to write down a couple things I found particularly objectionable and/or representative of the country’s precipitous moral decline.
1 A seven-year-old girl screamed at her mother and announced to the world that, for the last several months, she’s been ditching school and working as a prostitute. “An’ I make goot money, too!” she yelled. “How the fuck else you think I be ‘fordin’ all this gold?” The mother just sat there looking very tired and obese.
2 A grandmother-mother-daughter trio made it clear that, despite the pleas of their menfolk, they had no intention to stop dressing all slutty and flirting with bowling alley patrons. Explained the grandmother, “Shit, motherfucker, you know I look good! The rest of these people is just jealous!” Following which she lifted up her micro-miniskirt and showed the studio audience her genitals. “I know you like that shaved pussy!” she shouted, much to the audience’s delight.
Tomorrow’s episode is—I believe—entitled, “I’ll Slap You, Bitch!” I won’t be watching. Will you?
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I'm thinking of getting my eyes done. Nothing drastic. I'd just like them to be significantly smaller and closer together. Tiny little dark dots, like some sort of old-fashioned cartoon character. I have a consultation on Monday.
Elsewhere on my body, I've been packing on the pounds this year in preparation for my new career (hopefully) as a big fat guy. We'll have to see where it all leads me, but I've had feelers out, and I’m hearing good things. Cross your fingers for me, since I'm no longer able to cross my own (because they're so fat).
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There are some new bumper stickers available in the gift shop: "I am ambivalent about NY", "My other car would rather be fishing", "Ask me about your grandchildren", “If You Can Read This Bumper Sticker, You May Be Mere Seconds From Causing A Multi-Fatality Highway Pileup”, “Meat is Murder, as is Abortion,” “Honk if You Love Shrill, Ear-Splitting Noises,” “Honk if You Love Honking”, and “Your Dogma Just Ate My Smegma.” Buy armfuls as gifts and impress your friends with your largess.
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I happened to examine the label of a bottle of Pepsi Blue tonight. You know what the first three ingredients are? Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, and cancer. Thought maybe you should know that.