CRUISING THE HUDSON (part I)

Is there anything more relaxing than cruising your own boat up the majestic Hudson River? Yes: sitting inside a bunker in the mountains of Tora Bora as concussion bombs rain down around you.

There is an old adage that quips that the two best days of a boat-owner’s life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. But what about all the magical days in between, when he has narrowly escaped death? Every day that I cheat the Grim Reaper (which happens more often than you might think, especially if we play Scrabble) is the best day of my life.

My friend Dave and I have co-owned this boat for 11 or 12 years. It’s a 1988 27-foot Carver yacht. Dave is an engineer, he knows about motors, systems, boating safety and rules of the sea. I bring to the table the skill of explaining to the insurance company why there is an uncharted shallow coral reef in the middle of the Hudson River.

My mental picture of a yacht is one of a large, pristine vessel with portholes and a small helicopter pad, a guy with a mustache and a captain’s hat at the helm (the fake helm; the real captain is piloting the boat from the bridge), with eight supermodels basking on the bow. These are girls who have had their actual bodies airbrushed free of any imperfections, and go “WOO-HOO!!!” while they shake their outstretched thumb and pinkie at me.

In real life, our boat leaks a little from the bottom and a lot from the top. Basking on the bow is mold. The craft is extremely sleek and streamlined, the result of me breaking off everything that stuck out even a little bit, over the years.

Yes, of course I saw the episode of Dick Van Dyke where Rob and his neighbor, Jerry the dentist, buy a boat together. Of course, Rob knows NOTHING about boats and screws everything up, and they crash the boat and he and Jerry the dentist have a falling out (don’t have a falling out while on a yacht by the way), and even Millie Helper has some disparaging words for Rob.

In real life I play the part of Rob, and Dave plays the part of Jerry. My actual neighbor, even though not involved in any way, insists on making a few comments about my nautical skills.

Learning to dock the thing was an experience in itself. In teaching me Dave was so patient, I wondered how he was able to remain calm. Looking back, I realize now that he was attracted to the comedy of the situation. There are no brakes on a boat, not even a friggin’ parking brake. As soon as the other boat owners could recognize my face at the controls they quickly abandoned what they were doing to take up their defense positions next to their boats. People who might have thought that they wouldn’t touch our boat with a ten-foot pole were forced to reconsider just to keep our vessel from broad-siding them. I could sense that Dave wished that we had purchased a submarine instead, where people couldn’t see me approaching without SONAR.

So I brushed up. I boned up. I honed my skills. I got a captain’s hat. The first thing I learned was how to tie a decent knot. A bowline knot makes an ironclad loop that will not slip. I practiced it everywhere in the house. It’s a great knot to know, but now I can’t lower the blinds. A fellow boater called out to me the other day and said it looked like we could do about 25 knots. I replied that I could do four, including both my shoes.

I learned where the life vests are located, under the driver’s seat. How they knew that I would be hiding there at the first sign of adversity is a mystery.

I learned what horn signals mean: three short blasts means you are going into reverse. Five short honks is a warning, meaning stay clear, you may not be sure what the danger is. Five short honks followed by a loud crash means: “Yup, just found out what the danger was.”

I learned what the flags on the boat mean. We keep a pirate flag ready in case we need to commandeer and board a jet ski, which looks like fun.

I learned what the buoys signify. The old saw, “red, right, return” means that the red buoys numbering higher should be on your right as you return to the harbor. This makes the liberal assumption that you will eventually return to the harbor.



Incidentally, a cabin cruiser is a vessel usually 24 to 40 feet long, with at least one sleeping area below and an area on the bow for sunbathing. Sometimes a larger one carries with it a small dinghy, a light craft for going ashore. Often the girl sunning herself on the bow is a little dinghy also.

THE BEAR IN THE GARAGE

I was sitting with the wife, cat on my lap, ranting about people with excessive tattoos trying to attract a disproportionate amount of attention to themselves without really doing anything intelligent or creative to earn it, or like bikers who ride extremely loud Harleys, or teenagers who blast the bass in their cars so that you can hear it three blocks away trying to make people look at them without providing any good reason to do so, and that’s why you should NEVER look, when I noticed that the cat was looking at me with rapt attention, as if I had a bunch of tattoos or a loud car stereo. The cat seemed to be thinking, “Yes! Right! You nailed it!”

This is the same cat who normally spends its time trying to create puncture wounds in hard to reach places, such as behind the couch. I looked back at it and it winked at me, so I realized that it might be yanking my crank. Humans are transparent; my wife she did a slight eye roll then “Yes, deared” me. But cats are an inscrutable lot, and my crank is much more easily yanked by them.

I enjoy playing with the cat; he likes strategic board games with a lot of game pieces. Sometimes we play a simple game where I just annoy the crap out of it, and it tries to bite the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger, where it’s the most painful. Where did it learn this- are there a lot of animals out in the wild with a fleshy area there? I thought most animals don’t even have a thumb. This cat, angry that it does not itself have opposable thumbs, vehemently opposes mine. It is purring loudly when we play this game, which leads me to believe that a cat is happiest when it is trying to kill you.

Unlike a cat, other animals don’t want to hurt you, they just want to eat you. For instance, a snake doesn’t go for the fleshy area between your thumb and forefinger, it just kicks you in the balls and then swallows you whole. You know exactly what a snake just ate because it takes so long to digest. If you’re looking for that roast beef sandwich with a coke that you just bought at the deli, check the snake. There he is, looking up at the ceiling trying to avoid your eyes, with a big bulge in EXACTLY the shape of a roast beef sandwich and coke, traveling slowly down his body.

When I was looking for the possible Mountain Lion in my back yard that time, I never thought once that it would lunge at the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger. I thought of the old adage, that the wild animal is more frightened of YOUR thumb and forefinger than you are of ITS thumb and forefinger.

I read that if you encounter a wild animal in the wild, you are supposed to open your jacket and hold it out by the sides, widening your profile so you can look more threatening. In my case I was wearing only swim shorts, but I figured that when I held the shorts open to widen my profile, the sound coming from me enduring a major-league wedgie would scare the thing off even before it looked at me.

The one thing you are not supposed to do is run, because the tiger will immediately think that you are going to get THE LAST piece of wildebeest at the cafeteria, and wants to get in the line before you.

Animals in general are becoming less fearful of humans. Did you see the video of the bear cub climbing around in someone’s garage? It scared the hell out of me, because there is so much crap in my garage, how would I even know if there are bears in there? My brother-in-law Jeff encountered a bear while napping in a hammock at his house in the Poconos. The bear gave him a look like, “Dude, you’re in my hammock,” but Jeff had already run into the house so fast that now there is a hole in the wall shaped exactly like him.



Incidentally, you should NOT try to suck the poison out of a snake bite. Because then it’s in YOUR mouth, and when the guy you sucked it out of slaps you on the back to thank you, you’re screwed. Instead, apply a tourniquet above the bite so that the poison does not spread through the bloodstream. If you must suck poison, suck the poison out of the snake itself- that would be a public service.

A REPORT FROM THE MOTHERLAND

On our recent trip to London I came to the realization that it would be much easier to point out all the differences between our two countries, but more rewarding to revel in our similarities. I choose the former, of course, since I don’t have all day over here.

The first thing is the language. I consider myself a student of English, about a C- average. Over there they have a different word for just about everything, so any knowledge of English is a waste of time. “Water closet” means the bathroom, and as a reminder, everything is smaller over there, so it may not be a walk-in closet. “Pissed” means drunk, not angry. Once I ran into an angry drunk and I had no idea how to describe him. “Fanny” means vagina- they don’t know whether they’re coming or going over there, enough said. Enough except for this: “bangers” means sausage, first sensible thing they said all day.

Currency is another tricky issue- the British pound cost us about a dollar sixty-five, not very friendly. The money itself is actually that much bigger, so it doesn’t fit into your wallet. The coins are fairly easy, a two pound coin is bigger than a one-pound coin, but all those little ounces or whatever they’re called don’t have any logical rhyme or reason, so you have to look closely to make sure you aren’t over-tipping. The bills all have a picture of either Queen Elizabeth or Harpo Marx, it’s tough to tell which without my glasses.

Of course driving on the right side of the road is something I missed very much over there, since I wasn’t in a car. There they drive on the WRONG side of the road, and almost ran me over about 50 times. Sometimes they actually had to chase me onto the curb to make it a close call. Spray painted onto the pavement at all pedestrian crossings is a sign that says, “LOOK RIGHT.” I tried about 10 different looks and settled on one that made me look witty, urbane and continental but I still was almost killed daily.

Fashion: girls here wear high heels, four to five inches, even if they are out jogging (no one jogs in London). Women are the same height standing or sitting down. Contrast with America, where people are often the same size lying down as standing up. All the men were wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and I have to say they did look smarter. I often see NBA athletes wearing fake glasses now at their press conferences, and it does NOT make them seem smarter, since you can still hear what they’re saying.

People don’t seem to have their noses buried in their electronic devices as much in London as they do here. I will never forget when I went to a New York bar one time and there were four girls sitting around a table, each one attentive only to her phone. I fantasized that they were texting each other: “Isn’t it great that we FINALLY got together?????”

People in London will come up to you and say something. I was startled by this odd practice, and it took me a while to get the hang of it. In New York if someone talks to you, it is often to ask if they can squeegee your windshield, even if you are walking. I’m used to being in my own little world. Even when I had just finished a major temper-tantrum at Heathrow Airport because there was NOT ONE sign telling us where to go when we got off the shuttle, and I was sulking in the corner, no less than THREE people came up to me and asked me if I was all right. Which made me feel even worse.

Mass transit in general was much cleaner and well-organized, other than Heathrow. The subway seats are cloth, something you couldn’t get away with here, because people need a place to put their gum. You can’t have any nice public furniture here in the U.S., because people draw penises on them. Americans will draw a penis on just about anything, and a person who is apt to draw a penis is never the same person who is great at art. Thousands of years from now when people are trying to decipher hieroglyphics in subway cars they will ask themselves, “Who is this guy with the big nose?”

History itself is something that Europe does awfully well. We visited the Tower of London, which was originally built in the 11th century when the Normans conquered England (there were many more people named Norman back then, so it wasn’t as embarrassing as it seems now). The Yeomen Warders (known as Beefeaters for no discernable reason) recount the comings and goings of various notorious kings & queens. I learned about King Henry VIII; my previous knowledge of his life was limited to the fact that he married the widow next door (she had been married seven times before). It’s a great place to take children, since the focus is on torture and death.

At the British Museum they celebrate centuries of British colonization resulting in the amassing of untold treasures of history. The exhibit on Mesopotamia was an eye-opener, especially since they apparently had the iPhone in 150 BC, eons ahead of their time. Ironically, they still do not have the iPhone II.

The weather wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We went to Kew Gardens with our friend Mike, who is celebrating (if that’s the word) his and Jess’ first year anniversary living abroad. He is an expatriate now, just like Gertrude Stein, only taller. She was a broad too, obviously. Kew Gardens is in Queens in the States, and ironically it is the Queen’s in England, since it is a Royal Botanical Garden. There were more people saying the word “blooming” than there were plants actually blooming; instead it was like a really nice park. But since it is always cloudy and chilly they built a place called the Temperate House. It’s all glass and was probably sponsored by Windex. The indoor habitat gardens were also really neat, with some wonderful succulents. I just like saying that word, and I urge you to try it also. There was also a man-eating plant exhibit, and I tried to stick Mike’s finger down a pitcher plant. He almost took the bait, thinking there might be beer in it. There was a sign by the Venus fly traps that said, “Unless you are a slow-moving fly please stay away from me.” The same could be said by Nick Swisher in the outfield.

Everything is smaller in Europe. When our hotel room was discovered, during the Elizabethan Era, people were only four feet tall, having just finished evolving from cats. By the way, what an idiotic theory that is, that evolution. If people evolved from bugs, why are there still bugs? And why are there so many of them in our kitchen? And why did God consider it an improvement to have only two legs instead of six or a thousand, or not to be able to fly? I’m still angry about it. Hey at least we get to walk around erect.



Incidentally, the British Empire once reigned over one-fifth of the world’s population at the time, and at its height was over 70 feet tall. Begun in the late 1600s, the Empire had territories on six continents, with important colonies in India, America, Australia, Hong Kong, the Caribbean and many other locations around the world. After the end of World War II, Britain realized that it had spread itself too thin, and could not adequately defend all its holdings against internal and external pressures. In 1947 India was granted its independence, and throughout the next half-century Britain divested most of its peripheral interests, concluding with the independence of Hong Kong in 1997.

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL

We are always looking for something different and interesting to do for a date on a Saturday night, a practice which I am ending right now. Why do you need to do something different all the time? Every time we go out to eat, as I am ordering my veal francese, someone invariably says to me, “Why don’t you have something different for a change?” Sometimes it’s even the busboy or someone from another table who says it. And I say, “Because I LIKE veal francese!” And the busboy says, “Well good luck because this is a Chinese restaurant.” Only he says it in Spanish.

Anyway Courtney & Bob from our double-date foursome had the bright idea to check out the new ping-pong place in Pleasantville, since they had a coupon. I don’t use a whole lot of coupons unless I’m on vacation and get one of those coupon books at the hotel. “10% off every large pizza.” Then I get the pizza and there is half a slice missing. You don’t usually get a coupon for anything good, like a home, or a Rolex, but in this case we jumped on the idea, since a night of ping-pong sounded like fun, and in all the years that I have visited Pleasantville, nothing unpleasant has ever happened to me there. Except I did get kicked out of a bar once, but since I was drunk even that was pleasant. This ping-pong place is co-owned by Will Shortz, who edits the New York Times crossword puzzle, so we figured we could be in for a celebrity sighting also.

What I did not realize until I got there was that this is NOT a ping-pong place. This is a Table Tennis Facility. Any time you walk into a Facility, you know they mean business. We saw a bunch of guys (there were no women) who looked extremely serious about Table Tennis. As we looked around at the tables, laughing and smiling, they looked upon us with disdain and scorn, and stuck us in the “dipshit area,” which is where they put the players who look like their balls might disrupt the other players, and you can stick your own joke here. My wife was wearing heels, which was a dead giveaway. The only sport played in high heels is women’s beach volleyball. Or did I just imagine that??

Immediately I could see that nothing I know about the game of tennis would translate to ping-pong. The net seemed ridiculously low for one thing, until the security guy came over and told me to get the hell off the table. We played mixed doubles, and it felt like good-natured fun for a while, one couple against the other. Then things started to get serious, and I got down to arguing every line call, like I do in tennis. Since we didn’t have instant replay I suggested we play the exact same point over, really slowly, and get another look at it.

I dusted off my famous “no-look” serve, where I cagily pretend to look off to the side where there is no earthly reason to look, and fire a ridiculously fast serve that barely clears the net and sails effortlessly past the opponents paddle. I banged the first five tries off the side of the table whereupon they bounced backwards and hit me in the nuts. This is the kind of harmless fun that always results in injury to me, and I knew I should have worn a cup or at the very least a bicycle helmet.

At that point who should walk over but Will Shortz. My wife recognized him immediately which impressed me for a few moments, until I realized that his photo does not actually appear anywhere in the New York Times, and she would have no reason to know what he looks like, other than that she might be stalking him. Guess what he was wearing? That’s right! Shorts! And a Sudoku tee shirt. Which led me to believe that he may be starting a clothing line. Shortz’ Shorts!

By force of habit I almost called him “Will Shortz, that Son-of-a-Bitch,” since I have never mentioned his name without the qualifying phrase. This is a guy who has made my life miserable every day for years, trying to stump me with his abstruse clues. Does the question mark at the end of the clue mean he is making a joke or is it part of the puzzle’s theme?

Before I could stop myself I asked him if he knew a four-letter word for Scandinavian goose. He made a face to Bob and Courtney as if to say, “No, but I know a four-letter word for ‘idiot.’” At least I refrained from asking him if Brian Eno has ever thanked him personally, and unless you do the Times puzzle every week you won’t know what I mean by that. He actually seemed willing to hang out and chat, and he played a few points with us. I wanted him to teach me how to put topspin on the ball, and he said that the pips on our paddles were not up to snuff. I hadn’t even considered the paddle pips before, and wasn’t sure if he was just yanking my crank. He told us that they were facing inward instead of outward, like the Gladys Night variety.

I gave him a gander at my patented “no-look” serve. “Ha!” I whispered to Courtney. “He didn’t even get a paddle on that one!” “It never hit the table!” She pointed out. “Even on YOUR side! You almost broke the fluorescent light!” After he blew about twenty past me I started with the name-calling, and he finally left.

We were late for our dinner reservation, but on the way out Bob noticed a ping-pong serving machine. We went over to check it out. Bob set it to “20,” not knowing what the number referred to. We switched it on, and it turns out the “20” meant “20 zillion MPH.” Before he could pick up a paddle the thing hit him five times in the forehead. He spent the next ten minutes hitting balls as fast as he could move the paddle, just in self-defense. They were coming so fast he couldn’t finish the sentence, “TURN THE GODDAMN THING OFF!” All he could get out was, “TURN…” so I kept turning around in 90 degree increments as I laughed my ass off. Finally I regained my senses and unplugged the thing, since I didn’t want to get too close to it. Everyone who had been playing before was at the front desk as we were leaving. They couldn’t have been nicer, wishing us a pleasant evening and inviting us to return any time, by which I could tell that they really meant, “Don’t ever come back here, at least without a pair of shorts and a Sudoku tee shirt. The heels can stay.”

Incidentally, ping-pong was originally played in England at the end of the Victorian Era, when people had a lot of time on their hands, and little to use them for. It was originally called “whiff whaff”, but since that sounded dumb they changed the name to the much more sophisticated-sounding “ping pong.” Europeans dominated the game in the early 1900s, but in the 1960s, Japan became the world champions, followed by the Chinese in the 1980s through to today. That started to change in 1988 with the introduction of table tennis as an Olympic game. The Olympic Committee is now also considering tag and see-saw.

MUSIC UNDER THE STREETS

So I get on the Times Square shuttle and this guy is sitting there with an electronic piano taking up three seats and noodling extremely loudly. He was not a particularly good noodler either. If a cat had chased a
squirrel onto the keyboard it would have come closer to tuneful. He wasn't playing jazz music, where you can hit a bunch of wrong notes and claim you did it on purpose because you were trying to form a complicated dissonance. Plus he had a tip jar there and I thought: Jesus he should be paying ME to suffer through these non-musical stylings- At least make him swipe his metro card twice more for taking up three seats. I took a couple dollars out of his jar just to cover my expenses.

That early in the morning I just want to be left alone with my thoughts. After a little time alone with me, my thoughts tactfully find another place to be. After I wake up and trudge out of the train into the station, the Judy Collins lady is chirping away with her very thin, wan, nails-on-a-blackboard voice, which sends me into a sneezing fit. I've looked at her from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow, I want to brain her with a golf umbrella.

Sometimes playing in the station is the blues singer dude, who is actually pretty good. His voice sounds like 30 yards of unpaved gravel, so it's hard to tell when he is actually singing and when his setting forth a snarky diatribe about how cheap we commuters are. He has an air of authenticity, and if you can see somebody's air you're probably standing too close. I'm not absolutely positive he is the real deal, since he is not skinny. I think to REALLY LIVE the blues, you have to have missed a meal once in a while. I wouldn't qualify since although I've missed a meal here and there, it can usually be attributed to bad aim.

Now and then there is a lady singing a capella REALLY loud. Today she was singing, “Killing Me Softly With Your Song,” which might have been true if only the homicide were quieter. If this annoying lady actually appears on the coroner’s report as my cause of death you heard it here first. The songs sound vaguely religious but it's hard to decipher it through her Island patois. My only experience with religious music is when we used to sing "Jesus Loves Me, Yes I Know" in Sunday School. How do I know Jesus loves me? 'Cause the Bible tells me so! All you have to do is read the Bible and Jesus will LOVE you! How many people would commit to that? You can have a zillion friends on Facebook who “like” you, but if they had a button for "love" they would run for the hills, no offense.

Jesus loves everyone the same amount, too, it’s very suspicious. It's like when you are a parent and you have to pretend you love all your children the same, when EVEN YOU have to admit that one of them is a complete mini-douche who should be on house arrest with an ankle bracelet. I want Jesus to love me less than, say, Mother Theresa, but more than, say, Hitler. That seems fair.

The street musician guy who wears a gold crown is an enigma. He plays an extraordinarily tinny-sounding guitar, and sings in an extraordinarily tinny-sounding voice. I guess it’s a Caribbean thing, the whole crown-wearing thing. I suppose he certainly could be the actual leader of a small island nation somewhere, somewhere where the subjects are too loyal to tell him he can’t sing, but he looks like he just took his family to Burger King. The kingdom also needs a new PA- the station announcer blaring, “THE NEXT TRAIN WILL DEPART FROM TRACK FOUR” had better tonal quality.

A real subway treat is the Ebony Hillbillies. These guys can really play. Energetic bluegrass music, even in the morning, can literally put a smile on your face. The fiddle player is so talented. The percussion guy plays the washboard, and he has the abs to prove it. Between him and the guy who plays washtub bass, their laundry has probably gone to shit, but check them out, these cats are a lot of fun.

This is not a musical act, at least yet, but I did see a small crowd gather around a housecat who was perched on top of a guy wearing a hat. I took a photo of him, and a lady yelled, “TIP HIM!” So I did and he almost fell right off. I quickly realized he meant a cash tip, but I had no idea whether I should tip the guy or the cat, or how much. The guy was just standing there doing nothing, but then again, so was the cat. The service wasn’t that great, since my dinner had not even arrived yet, not that I ordered one.

People kept coming up and paying the guy so they could take their photograph. I walked up and whispered to him that I wanted a piece of the action, for doing nothing. He told me to take a friggin’ walk. I patiently explained the situation to him, and he reluctantly issued an apology and struck a deal with me. In the end, he gave me twenty-five bucks and I kept my laser pointer in my pocket.


Incidentally, the term “bluegrass” music was popularized by the Blue Grass Boys, a band started by Bill Monroe in 1939. Once Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatts joined the band, its popularity took off, in some part due to Scruggs’ innovative three-finger picking style, which I sometimes use on my nose. What used to be called “hillbilly music” or “mountain music” now had an iconic sound, and enjoyed nationwide popularity. Monroe named his band after his home state of Kentucky, the “Blue Grass State.” Had Bill Monroe discovered bluegrass music while playing guitar on my lawn, it would have been known as “crabgrass music.”

TWIB VIDEO BLOG- THE MOUNTAIN LION

Here is another video blog that Laurie & I put together based on the true and frightening story of my almost run-in with a vicious mountain lion....

Thanks to the New Castle Community Media Center~

THE WORLD IN BRIEFS VIDEO BLOG:

THE MOUNTAIN LION

HAPPY ST. PADDY’S DAY TO YA

St. Paddy’s Day, short for Saint Padrick, is, let’s face it, pretty awful. The music is awful, the food is awful, and the only way to get through it is to drink to excess. What is corned beef for instance? I like regular beef- I don’t want people going around corning it. I also like corn, and if you should get the urge to corn that, it’s okay with me. Also all the food is dyed green, making it, a.) resemble vegetables, and b.) gross-looking. On the other hand, at least when you go out for a drink there are plenty of people there, and I can watch drunk people all day long- they are SO CUTE!

My wife made me promise to DRIVE CAREFULLY on the way home- drunk people are like little kids on a ski slope- they have no sense of danger, and it's inevitable that one will slam into you at some point. The whole way home I fantasized that instead my car would be hit by a deer, only the deer would also be drunk, on some frigging fermented berries or some crap, just my luck.

We WERE in a car accident on St. Paddy’s Day many years ago, hit by a drunk driver. We sustained some serious injuries, and of course some humorous ones. We settled a lawsuit with the other driver; this was in the days before lawyers came on TV telling me how they were looking out for MY rights. One TV lawyer wears a huge hat- have you seen this guy? It’s not raining or snowing, but this guy has a ginormous hat as though he might ride a horse into court, dismount and then brand the defendant after tying three of his legs together. Another TV lawyer looks like an undertaker, wearing a big handlebar mustache. Basically every lawyer is rooting for your bad luck.

But I went out anyway. On St. Patrick's Day your feet stick to the floor of the bar. Most of it is beer, but anywhere you turn could be spit, vomit, urine... I think I saw some amniotic fluid at one point, and some stuff that might have come out of someone's duodenum. Everything is dyed green so who the hell knows. I realize now where the Earth's crust comes from. God forbid there is a murder on St. Patrick's Day, because there is so much DNA on the floor you'd be testing it for months. Luckily there is my big fat footprint sitting in it so the cops could finger me that way, the least fun of all the ways they could finger me.

I tried to walk from one end of the bar to the other so I could go to the bathroom, but the bar was so crowded I ended up being extruded at the other end like from a tube of toothpaste. I was man-handled. I think I was also woman-handled, and possibly leprechaun-handled. I checked to see if my wallet was still there. Not only was it there, but I actually had picked up another one, too. I was touched in an inappropriate place, namely the coat-check room. I felt cheap, especially after looking in the wallet. Drunk girls were getting caught in an eddy of green, going around in concentric circles for about 20 minutes before the tide shifted.

There were a lot of firemen, I guess left over from the parade. I think it's good to have a day for the firemen to feel appreciated, because they could be in danger at any given time if somebody did something stupid like leave French fries cooking on an oven burner on high and walk away for about half an hour and start a nice fire in the kitchen cabinets. I'm not mentioning any names, but I don’t think I ever got full credit for sending my little sister through graduate school on the insurance money my father got. I thought I noticed some other weasels trying to ride in on the wave of good tidings for people in uniform. People were wearing bell-hop uniforms, gas station-attendant uniforms, I thought I saw a McDonald's uniform.... It's going too far if you actually have a medal on one of those. Or a rank- sometimes I see a doorman with three stripes on the uniform, and I wonder if he got a promotion from door-corporal.

It seems a shame to celebrate the heroism of firefighters on a day when everybody is too drunk to realize it. I scoured the calendar to find a different day that we could use. By the way, since when did Secretary’s Day become Administrative Assistant’s Day? Remember when you had to stop calling people stewardesses and start calling them aerial wait-staff? This seems like a rare case where all the male secretaries got together and wanted to seem a little less girly, and got them to change the name. Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State and she doesn’t seem girly, does she? You don’t hear her complaining that she wants to be called Administrative Assistant of State, do you?

I had a friend Dave in high school who was a volunteer fireman. He had to pay for his own scanner and emergency lights. When a call came over the radio he had to jump in his car and get moving- his emergency lights were a strobe and a UV light- I think they were from a discotheque. To this day every time I see those lights on the dance floor I pull over.

Anyway, I finally made it to the bar. There was a barmaid there who looked just like Sean Young- right down to those cute nostrils of hers. Am I the only one that noticed that Sean Young has cute nostrils? That's probably why she smells so good. However, Sean Young had that aura about her where she might be bipolar or even tripolar, like you might wake up and she would be hovering above you on the bed with a little-used garden tool, your whole life flashing in front of you and all you can think of is that if you had used that damned bulb pruner ONCE and left it out there to rust like all the others you wouldn’t be in this predicament. Plus the garden would look a little better than it does….

Incidentally, Saint Patrick’s Day is a celebration of the “Patron of Ireland.” Saints sometimes become “patrons” of the city or place where they were born, and unlike regular patrons, can get service even though they are not wearing a shirt or shoes. Often Spanish or Portuguese explorers named a newly discovered town after the saint who was born on the day they first visited the place. Saint Patrick’s Day is sometimes seen as the end of Lent, when you can resume doing whatever disgusting thing you gave up 40 days ago. Legend has it that Saint Patrick used a shamrock to explain to the Irish pagans what the Holy Trinity was. Knuckleheads STILL didn't get it. Finding a three-leaf clover is still considered lucky, as long as you don’t have to sit through the whole Holy Trinity story.