NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

We went to a Thanksgiving party which was cleverly disguised as a 50th birthday party, but at which you can still give plenty of thanks that you are still vertical.

It came out that back in the day, one of our friends was a Miss Teenage New York. It’s no wonder since she is so beautiful, but apparently she hated every minute of it, and only did it to fulfill some unmet fantasy of her mother. Which gave me a great idea for a reality show, where they stage a beauty pageant for young girls, but the actual competition is really for the mothers backstage, without them knowing about it. The audience votes and prizes are awarded for things like, “Biggest Pain in the Ass.” “Stagemom Who Looks Most Like Olympia Dukakis.” “Stagemom Who Looks Most Like Michael Dukakis.” “Stagemom Who Seems Most Bipolar.” “Stagemom Who Cries Most For No Reason.” Stagemom Who Smiles Most at Inappropriate Times.” “Stagemom Who Brags Most About Never Spanking Her Kid, But Yet Her Kid is By Far the Brattiest.”

I could go on and on. I even have a title for this: “The Biggest Loser.” What do you think??

By the way, they are starting these pageants way too early. They even have a pageant for babies. The backstage area is rife with hectic banter, the babies frantically involved with hair and makeup. And when I say hair, I mean just the one:

“What should I do with my one hair? Should I go with the ribbon, the headband, or that little ‘flapper’ hat? Should I put it in a bun? And if so, a hot dog bun or a hamburger bun?”

“I should have gotten botox.”

“Does this diaper make me look fat???”

“What should I do for the talent portion? I am thinking of taking a crap standing up.”

The swimsuit competition is a bummer, but they have them anyway because they are popular with creeps, some of whom are major sponsors.

I think eventually they will start the competition even earlier, at the zygote stage of development. Call it the “Miss Conception” pageant. The whole thing will be done through ultrasound photos. The “Miss Photogenic” award shines in this pageant. “Hey- I don’t think that’s even a girl- that is either a penis or an elbow right there.” “Hey what about this for a talent- two heartbeats!”

Even the current Miss America pageant is more of a tribute to winner’s coach and plastic surgeon than to the girl herself. They put her together like a Mr. Potatohead. One surgeon attaches the nose, another the boobs, one pins her ears like a Doberman pinscher, and another sucks the fat out of her ass and puts it into her calves. Sometimes they take out a rib or two so food can’t stick to it, and then somebody attaches a boatload of hair. Someday there will be the first ribless, assless, thighless contestant, which will resemble a sea cucumber, only hot and with unusually white teeth.

They also have a coach that tells her how to answer the questions so that she just looks dumb rather than just stupid. Remember this question and answer?:

Q: A fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?

A: I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and that I believe our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq, and everywhere, such as, and I believe that they should our education over here in the US, should help the US, or should help South Africa and help the Iraq and the Asian countries so that we will be able to build out our future for us.

That kind of complicated answer has to be coached by a qualified professional; you can’t leave it up to her to make it up by herself. Obviously before the pageant they meticulously went over the countries in the world by using a big puzzle, which she then took into her bedroom to study, the night before showtime. On her way, she tripped over the cat, spilling countries everywhere and asunder. When she put it back together, it resembled the above answer.

And don’t get me started on the Miss Universe Contest which should NOT be so named unless they are going to open up the competition to other planets. If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, let’s see some of them. Let’s see some exposed antennae in a wardrobe malfunction. Let’s see a disqualification of an eight-armed juggling contestant during the talent portion. Let’s find out once and for all if they are just here for their green card.


Incidentally, the Miss America representatives dislike the phrase “beauty pageant,” since the Evening Wear and Swimsuit competitions comprise only 35 percent of the scoring, and also since some of the girls are ugly. The other 65 percent of the scoring is based on the size of their cans. By the way, if you are scoring at home, congratulations.

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LIVE SPORTING EVENTS

LIVE SPORTING EVENTS

I feel I have let down an entire franchise, their fans and their players. My friend Phil squanders at least one set of tickets every Giants football season on me and my wife. At first I thought he enjoyed my company. But when I was extremely annoying game after game, season after season, and he still invited me, I grew suspicious. Then I realized it was my record. I am lucky like a rabbit’s foot (a rabbit’s foot is luckier for humans than for rabbits). Dating back to the 1986 championship season, I estimated that the Giants’ won/loss record for games I attended was 26 and one. Every once in awhile I am called upon to save the Giants’ season at a critical time, and this was one of those moments.

Things were going well, and the Giants had engineered a seemingly safe comeback in the late stages of the game. But a last minute scoring drive by the opposition left me with my jaw hanging lifelessly like an empty windsock. My wife looked at me like I had just tracked in dog-do. I glanced over at Phil and he had a look of disgust on his face like I just dropped a cigar butt into his Cheerios. Even his 8-year-old kid looked at me like I had just stolen his Halloween candy. I looked around the stadium and everyone was looking at me like I had just run over their cats, and the ones who hated cats looked at me like I had failed to run over their cats.

I myself was stunned, and I immediately looked to blame others. For instance, how come the Giants have no cheerleaders? How do we know when to cheer? There are specific rules about it. You are supposed to cheer very loudly when the home team is on defense, so the opposing quarterback can’t hear his cellphone ringing. While the Giants are on offense, you are supposed to cheer in a kind of whisper, and clap so that your hands stop when they are an inch or so apart. Even that is too loud and Eli Manning flaps his arms, telling the crowd to “Hey- hold it down over there.” He flapped his arms so fast that he actually lifted four feet off the ground, and flew around the backfield. The crowd that witnessed this was amazed, because they figured the Giants would just go for the field goal. Then Eli landed flawlessly behind center in just enough time to get a delay-of-game penalty.

I wanted to watch it on instant replay, but they don’t replay things instantly in live football. Luckily, since the Giants have so many penalties, they replay each down at least twice, so I am MORE than satisfied. They do have a huge Jumbotron on each side of the stadium. If the Giants make a spectacular play, you can look up afterward on the big screen and see a replay of a Geico commercial. At the stadium in Dallas they have a Jumbotron so big that runs the length of a football field. I happen to know this because there is a football field right underneath it.

In Seattle, the crowd does a thing called “The Wave.” It is a cheerleading phenomenon whereby everyone in the stadium, in succession, rises from their seat and waves their arms. From far away it looks like a big tidal wave. I was at the beach and thought I saw the same thing, but it was just an actual wave. At Giants Stadium they do not have the wave- any spontaneous acts of cheering that don’t involve the words, “You DICK!” are frowned upon. But New York fans have their own version of the wave where somebody finally has to get up to pee, and everyone gets up in succession to let them out, throwing up their arms at the same time because their foot has been stepped on.

Once you get to the Men’s Room you run the risk of standing behind a slow pee-er. I always look for a guy who looks like either a Mormon, a recovering alcoholic, or somebody who has been out all day in the sun and is dehydrated. But I always end up behind a human fire hose directly connected to the water table. The worst is getting behind a guy who has a kid, because then he stands there and teaches him how to pee. And god forbid the kid is hard of hearing, and has to turn around to hear what his dad is saying.

And all this is if you even get into the stadium. It takes so long to park because if you are a TRUE BLUE Giants Fan you must arrive two or three meals before the game and “tailgate.” This is a ritual that involves a barbecue, a cooler of beer, an underinflated football, and the parking space that I WAS GOING TO TAKE. Ironically cars don’t have tailgates anymore, so most people “hatchback.” Tailgating has become so high-tech and overblown, it’s hard to believe anyone would ever leave ribs and a barcolounger to go watch the game in those uncomfortable seats…. People even had these giant blue Giant blow-up dolls. The people who blew them up were also blue in color.


Incidentally, legend has it that Wellington Mara purchased the team in 1925 for $500. It came in a big box with a lot of instructions, and he had to put it together himself with some help from his big brother. It was either buy the NFL franchise or buy France, and I think he made the right decision.

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CatchMeLater

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HALLOWEEN NOSTALGIA

HALLOWEEN NOSTALGIA

I can’t get over how different Halloween is now than it was when we were growing up. There is just no longer the inner desire to try and procure by any means available as much candy as is humanly possible. Is there a glut on the candy market? Are many more moms now candy-shunning vegans? Or is it just laziness?

We live in a picture-perfect neighborhood, all the neighbors dress up their homes for Halloween, they have more than enough chocolate-related products, and the only thing missing is children to give them to. This year we had three trick-or-treaters ring our bell, and they made the trip all the way from the house on our right. They did not make it as far as the house on our left, as I found out the next day. The house on the left had one group of seven, who didn’t get as far as our house. We had three bags of candy, and my wife said we should have given each kid an entire bag and gone to bed.

When I was a kid you made damn sure you had enough energy to get up and down the driveways of at least 20 or 30 houses. Even if it was up a hill. Even if there was five pit bulls guarding the door, a chicken-wire fence, and a chicken. If something about the house seemed a little scary, hey- IT’S HALLOWEEN! It’s supposed to be scary. There were no pedophiles back then, just gym teachers and clergymen. The most dangerous threat was the presence of other rogue groups of kids who might seek to unlawfully gain access to your candy.

And if god forbid we ever received anything healthy, like a candied apple or something, you should expect it to end up in your mailbox, minus the candy. And don’t even talk to me about a box of raisins. We never went out while it was still light out, especially if we didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the costume. Since it was impossible to see through your mask anyway it didn’t make much difference.

This year our young guests arrived with UNICEF boxes, which I hadn’t seen since the last time I trick-or-treated myself, age 18 or so. I remember getting the boxes in school, and spending about an hour and a half trying to figure out how to put the damn thing together, tab A into slot B, fold here, etc. I can’t even get a newspaper to fold the right way, so I just scotch taped the damn thing into the general shape of a box and called it a day. When I was through I couldn’t find the slot that the coins were supposed to go through so I had to cut a new one.

When the kids arrived with UNICEF boxes, I had to wrack my brain to figure out how much to put in it- back when I was a kid you would put a penny or two in. Adjusted for inflation over the years, I figured out that today you would have to put $187.30 into each box.

I keep trying to think of a way to make Halloween work better financially for me. In my own mind I think of candy as a charitable donation. I wrote on my 1040 that we gave away 6.2 million dollars in $100,000 bars. One year a kid took so much candy we claimed him as a dependent.

The day after Halloween re-donned my Jesus outfit and went on a mission of “Reverse trick-or-treating,” whereby I give candy to the neighbors who may have run out already. You can’t keep that stuff in the house, especially if you are Jesus, trying to set examples about gluttony and avarice. No one likes a corpulent Christ, a meaty Messiah, a swollen savior…. I know I was only pretending to be Jesus, but it gave me some great ideas. Like what about a handy reference section in the back of the bible, with a conversion table that tells you how many locusts make up a plague, or how many inches in a cubit (about 18).

Incidentally, if an owl sees you through the window, it is considered to be bad luck for you. If the owl sees you naked through the window, it’s his own bad luck. If you are an owl yourself and another owl looks at you through the window, it’s a “push.”

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NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Halloween isn’t a national holiday but it should be. When else can grown people get all dressed up, drink to excess, say scary things to one another and eat fattening foods? Well besides their wedding day? We went to a party on Saturday night at Matt’s vintage guitar store- what a cool idea to have a party in a place where one can do the MAXIMUM amount of damage to irreplaceable objects? About 500 beautiful guitars were hanging up in a row, and I pictured myself getting really drunk and knocking one of them over. But that one bangs into the next one and knocks it over, and all of a sudden all the guitars are falling over like one of those playing card displays that goes around and around the room each card knocking over the next... Or like one of those movies where the Hells Angels are all inside the bar and they come out just in time to see Chevy Chase or somebody knocking over all their motorcycles. Or like the economy.

I went dressed as Jesus, because I hate wearing a mask or a wig. I don’t mind stockings or a push-up bra or Manolo pumps (size 11EE). I understand that Jesus didn’t wear stockings or a push-up bra, but I figured who’s going to know? My wife was dressed as Janis Joplin, but she did not realize that it was a costume party. There was another jesus there already, and they were about to hold a jesus-off, but I whipped out my drivers’ license with my birthday listed on it, and won that one hands down. Plus I out-annoyed the other jesus with bad jokes about me talking things over with my staff, and that back at the manger there is a sheep in wolf’s clothing (hey it’s Halloween for them too).

I grew a beard just for Jesus, and it’s one of the few things I have ever done for him. Only it came in half gray, and made for a geriatric jesus, a senior savior. So I got my hands on some “Just For Men.” The directions said to brush it onto the beard and leave it on for less than 5 minutes. Unfortunately, at that moment water from the rain outside started streaming in through the improperly installed windows. 35 minutes later, I looked like Osama Bin Laden. And my beard did not grow in evenly- it looked as though some parts of my face got more sun than some others. Another thing I always forget is that food always ends up in my beard, and I wonder if the same thing happened to Jesus. I went back and looked at the famous painting, “The Last Supper,” and sure enough you can make out what looks like a sprig of broccoli in his beard.

The party was fun, and I enjoyed jamming with the guys. As Matt was saying, since drunk people have no conception of time, each song can last an eternity. The songs have no discernable beginning or end, only a middle. Sometimes after a 20 minute lead break, no one can remember what song we started on. Most likely you will hear 5 or 6 people singing a different verse at the same time, although sometimes a moment of kismet will cause one word to overlap. Typically a song lasts until someone has to go to the bathroom. Sometimes it goes on just past that point, but hey- that’s rock n roll. One Led Zeppelin song would still be going on right now except the lead singer passed out.

The strange thing about Halloween is that after a while you forget you have the costume on, and you may find yourself engrossed in a very serious conversation. And if someone from another country that does not celebrate Halloween walks in it could be very confusing. He could see Jesus talking to General Custer with an arrow through his head talking to an M & M about global warming. He may wonder what qualifies an M & M to converse freely about global warming, but if the polar ice caps could be made to melt in our mouths and not in our hands, it may do some good.

Incidentally, traditional games such as “bobbing for apples,” already known in Ireland during the festival of Samhain, became popular in the U.S. in the middle 1800s, when immigration dramatically increased. Participants would fish for apples bobbing in a water-filled tub using only their teeth. In a variation for senior citizens, players would fish for their teeth in a water-filled tub using only an apple.

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INTERNAL MEDICINE

INTERNAL MEDICINE

I recently turned 50, and I just had a routine medical procedure done. I don’t want to gross anyone out, so I won’t say what it was. Suffice it to say that they stick a tube up your ass and look around for half an hour. If they like what they see, they invite you back to do it again over and over. The tube has a camera in it, and they take pictures that you can post on Facebook if you like. If you are on Assbook, so much the better. They print the photos out in color, and they are really quite beautiful. Mine had a thing on it that looked like the Sea of Tranquility. I looked at it with a magnifying glass, and I thought I could make out a little American flag that someone had planted there years ago. It turns out that eating more fiber will get rid of the Sea of Tranquility.

The better your medical coverage, the more painless the procedure is. Working as I do for the television industry, my basic plan covers a colonoscopy that utilizes not exactly cutting edge technology. They took an actual VHS camcorder from the 1970s and barged it right in there. When it came time to change the tape, enough said.

First the nurse subjects you to a battery of questions, most of them “true or false,” relating to your medical history. She asks you if you have any allergies. And I told her yes, I am allergic to people sticking anything up my ass. And also, cats. “Are you on any medications?” Yes, I am currently on a prescription called cyclobenzazoxlazone. It doesn’t say on the bottle what it’s for, but I have been taking it since 1987 and I haven’t had whatever it cures since then. They ask if there are any medical problems in my family, and I tell them my parents are both dead so I would say a big YES on that one. They ask if I have any diabetes, and the answer is never even ONE diabete.

Then the anesthesiologist waltzes in and asks the exact same questions, and just for fun, I mix up the answers. He doesn’t even notice. But I feel like he knows a lot of personal information about me, and I know nothing about him. So to even it up I ask him some questions: Who was the 27th president? (Taft) What is the capital of North Dakota (Bismarck). He got them both right so it was time to begin.

This isn’t one of those deals where they ask you if you want to watch the procedure on TV, like my knee surgery. I didn’t want to watch that either, so I asked him to flip to The Price is Right, and he totally agreed. The anesthesia is very fast-acting, so he asks you to count backwards from one. When I woke up, the damn thing hadn’t even started yet- turns out I had fainted from him putting the IV needle into my arm. This is an unpleasant examination, and I don’t think it’s any less unpleasant for the doctor either.

The preparation is the annoying part. You can’t have breakfast the day before the procedure for instance. I got around this by delaying my dinner from the night before until 7AM the next morning. You are not allowed to eat any foods in a solid form the whole day. So instead I cooked my hamburger so well done that it ended up in a gaseous state, then I just inhaled it. You can eat Jell-o, and it didn’t say you couldn’t have Jell-o shots, so I did plenty of those. In fact I had a lot of intake in liquid form. Then starting at 6PM you have to drink this stuff that gives you diarrhea. Obviously it also gives me diarrhea of the mouth.

The anesthesia wears off quickly, but you are still not allowed to drive or use heavy machinery- anything over, say, 15 pounds. The doctor also told me not to sing, but I think that was unrelated to the procedure.

Incidentally, March is National Colon Cancer Awareness Month. Hopefully it also the month of something less ridiculous-sounding. The colon is 5 to 6 feet long, which means it can probably dunk a basketball. If you have a semi-colon it’s about half that; the semi-colon is the one that winks at you at the end of cute emails.

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PHILANTHROPY

PHILANTHROPY

My band played at a gala benefit recently for the Hudson Valley Writers Center, for which my wife is a sitting Board member, mostly because of her back. Even the band had to wear a jacket and tie. Nobody said anything about pants, so I didn’t wear any. Every time I put on a jacket and tie it feels like I am pretending to be something I am not, namely a functioning member of society. One look at me should tell you that I just don’t belong in formal wear. It always seems like I am back at my Senior Prom, maybe because it’s the same jacket. This was even more like a senior prom because of all the senior citizens.

And I don’t know how to act among rich people either. For instance, the table setting has too much silverware. A knife and a fork is all I know how to use. I don’t even need a spoon, since anything you can eat with a spoon you can just slurp into your mouth by tipping the bowl. There is always a really small fork, which I avoid because I’m afraid they will serve me a really small dinner. But I guess they have to put it there because babies could be eating there also. There are usually two knives: one is really dull, and the other even duller. In order to kill someone with this knife you would have to turn it around and beat someone over the head six or seven hundred times, and after the first couple hundred times they would just end up getting annoyed. There is also a really small plate, and invariably just as I am about to put something on it someone takes it away. The better the restaurant, the more plates they have that they take away before you are able to use. Usually there are two or three glasses. I think one is for wine, one is for water, and the other one they never fill so it’s a mystery. Which one is for beer? If only I could get them to fill the beer glass like they fill the water glass- after each sip I took of the water a guy would appear from underneath the table and fill my glass as I was putting it back on the table, and then quickly duck back underneath. And then I’m looking for butter for my bread, and somebody hands me a plate of oil. I didn't have any use for it eating-wise, but I did dip my reading glasses into it because they are hard to open. Am I supposed to put it on my bread? When I bring my car in for a tune-up, do they put butter in my crankcase? Well my mechanic sometimes does so bad example.

I don’t know how to converse with rich people. Since they are not concerned with the problems of the proletariat, their discussions are loftier. As soon as someone says, “Did you see that piece in the ‘Times’…?”, I am always too embarrassed to join in. I only saw a piece of that piece, since my attention span is so short. The “Times” always has so many words in it, but aptly named, since it takes so friggin’ long to read. Rich people can talk about food for hours. The word “hummus” always comes up, I’m not sure why. Rich people all seem to know what a “haiku” is. There are specific rules for a haiku, and if you break them people will scoff at you. There was a piece in the “Times” about it.

They had a silent auction to raise money, in case there were deaf people. They also had a louder auction, and then an even louder one. Thank god they didn’t have one of those auctioneers who talk really fast. So fast that if you raise your hand to ask them to repeat something you have already bought it. They had a couple speeches, but you could only hear every other word, because the P.A. was malfunctioning. I had to spring into action and hook the microphone up to the band’s P.A., which was about 500 feet away. So then you could hear the speaker talking, and then it came through the P.A. really softly about three seconds later. I’ve found that people don’t know how to talk through a mike. They always hold it really close to their mouth, confusing it with an ice cream cone. Some orators even took a lick or two from it. And every time they pronounced a word that begins with the letter “P,” pieces fell off the chandelier. And for god's sake don't blow into the microphone. Did you ever blow directly into your dog's face? A microphone reacts the same way- it doesn't like it and it makes a loud noise. But then it forgives you and licks you.

But we played, and people danced, and they seemed to have a good time, although it’s really hard to tell with rich people.

Incidentally, the history of auctions dates back to biblical times, where maidens were auctioned off in a “descending auction,” where the price started high, and came down to an affordable option at some point. But, as in a singles bar, the more alcohol they served, and the later it got towards closing time, the price went back up again.

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