Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

from July 23, 2007

I just came back from Atlantic City and I know that you are all eager to here what I have to say. Heck, if I were you, I’d be just dying to know what I had to say. But I guess if I were you I might also be able to find something better to do, so maybe I’ll just get to it before you realize that you could be, I don’t know, doing something outdoors. I’m just saying…..

Anyway, I’ll get to my wacky (ha!) adventures in Atlantic City in due course. I’ve got a few things to hit this time around.

1- MY NEW HAT. When I was a kid I had a great hat. It was a Caterpillar Truck (CAT) mesh baseball cap. It was white mesh, a dark blue front, a white band over the brim, and a yellow CAT patch. It was the classic redneck truck driver hat and I wore it everywhere. (I sound like a dorky little kid, I know, but I bet you were no better either.) The hat got worn into the ground and eventually thrown away. This was the late 70s into the early 80s, and since then mesh hats have pretty much gone the way of shirts with your name decaled onto the front, which I also wore. They became sort of the Napoleon Dynamite of headgear. Well, much like long, girly hair on guys, the mesh hat is back. My new hat is a Mets cap. It has white mesh in the back, classic blue with the orange logo on the front, orange trim on the brim, and a small Mets logo on the back. Officially, it is the “Mets Truckstop Cap” and I love it. Deep inside of me the little dorky twelve-year old grinning.

2- HARRY POTTER MANIA. The seventh and final, I hope, Harry Potter book went on sale this weekend. A couple of people got copies early in the mail. From the way Scholastic, J.K. Rowling, the media, and everybody is carrying on, you’d think that the plans for our government’s secret time travel machine had leaked out. Lawsuits are threatened, web-sites shut down, thugs beating up little old ladies- enough already! Repeat after me- IT IS A CHILDREN’S BOOK! And not a particularly good one, either. If I hear one more dickwad compare it to Lord of The Rings I’ll go ballistic. Anyone who ever read Tolkien would realize that Harry Potter is not even a fraction as literary. OK, it is good kiddie fare, but WTF is up with the guys in business suits on the subway reading this?

3- STEAM PIPE EXPLOSION IN NYC. It wasn’t me, I swear.

4- THE HAMAS MICKEY MOUSE. I hope you all saw this. God I hope so. It was the funniest story I’ve seen in a long time. First of all, I am not making this up. Second of all, this is absolutely disgusting and I am not making light of the horrible hate and anti-Semitism behind this. I am simply laughing at the crap they televised. Do not accuse me of insensitivity, because you all now how deeply caring and compassionate I am. (Hear that ladies? I am a sensitive modern man.)  It was a guy in a second-rate Mickey Mouse suit singing about how he wants to kill Jews and how Muslim kids should be martyrs. The funny part was in the last episode. Farur, The Hamas Mickey Mouse, was offered a ton of money for his land from “a Jew.” Farfur refused. The Jew yelled. Farfur refused. The Jew beat up Farfur. Farfur refused while they cut to the young host of the show looking afraid. I’m not too sure “The Jew” was really Jewish. He looked black. Plus the actor worked for the Palastinians, so that may have been the tip-off. He wore a suit that was straight out of Saturday Night Fever. Remember the white suit with the huge lapels Tony wore? Reverse it so the suit was black and the shirt was white and there it is. The black 1970s disco Jew yelled some more and killed Farfur for his land. The young host came back and explained that Farfur had become a martyr.

Now that I reread that it doesn’t seem so funny. I guess you had to see it.

5- SUNBURN. I’ve got it, which segues into:

ATLANTIC CITY!

I was there for three days. Had a blast!

Among the highlights were:

– Sitting by the rooftop pool on my first night when some women decided to make it a topless pool. Security didn’t try too hard to stop them, and they were booed when the girls put their tops back on.

– T-shirt confusion. On Friday I walked down the boardwalk in my FDNY shirt. For the third time in my life, I was stopped by a man to tell me how great a job we did. The first two times happened in Cleveland in 2002. I was wearing a FDNY hat and heard over and over how great we were during 9/11. I let them know that I wasn’t really a fireman then, but this time and I thanked them and wondered how low they must think the standards are if I cold be a fireman. I also, for the first time, showed my LHS pride by wearing my LHS shirt out in public. Sure it was in another state, but who would want to wear it and answer all the Lafayette questions you get back home? I’m not stupid, despite what you think. So I wore the shirt on the boardwalk, the one that simply says “Lafayette H.S. Staff.” A woman came up to me and thought she had found a fellow citizen of Louisiana. Someone else saw only the “staff” part of the shirt and thought I was with the crew setting up for a boardwalk concert.

– Paying only $2.83 for gas. I filled up my tank, two tin cans, and my pockets for that price.

– Seeing a great show. I snagged tickets to a Beatles tribute band, called Yesterday. Great show! They did all the early Beatles stuff perfectly. They looked like the Beatles, sounded like them, acted like them, and the music was great. We sang, danced, screamed, all that good stuff. Then I got to meet them and they were pretty cool. “John” and “Ringo” came from Las Vegas, “George” came from Oklahoma, but “Paul” came from good old Brooklyn USA. He lived in both Bay Ridge and Coney Island so I had a neighbor. (Wisely, I didn’t say I work at LHS.) If you get a chance to see them, do it.

– Just relaxing. Swimming, gambling, walking the boardwalk, hanging at the beach (where I got the sunburn), it was a good time away. Shame I didn’t win much. Or at all.

It may not sound like an exciting weekend, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. My whole plan was to relax, and that’s just what I did.

So I covered my hat, Harry Potter, the steam pipe, Hamas Mickey, and Atlantic City. The usual sort of sloppy stew I usually write. Sheesh.

from July 16, 2007

             Why am I doing this at 3 am? First off, I get a lot of typos when I write this late and/or early, take your pick, so I get good at using the delete key. Secondly, summer must really agree with me because I’m sleeping late, going to bed late, and generally fucking up my biological clock so this seems like noon right now. Except for the vague fuzziness when I try to think hard I feel fine. Sort of a low grade Mr. Know-It-All sort of feeling, if you get what I’m going for here. (And you probably don’t since maybe I’m making too much sense. Here is what I mean: I feel fuzzy and slightly wooly in the head since I am mentally tired (but not physically- oh damn, here I get into the parentheses thing again. You (the readers) must hate that. Shit I did it again. Sorry. Give me a few lines to write my  way back out.) Anyway, I feel slightly hung over, which I am not. At all. But Mr. Know-It-All is drunk, hung over, whatever all the time. Hence, feeling as I do, (Heh heh, “hence.”) ( Sorry about the parentheses.) I must feel about a tenth as bad as I imagine that guy feels all the time.)  And that must have made some sense, right? That’s the third good thing about doing this so late and/or early, take your pick- any typos, nonsense, at least not the intentional nonsense, or errors in judgment/common sense/syntax will be blamed on the lateness/earliness of the hour, take your pick. And I read that back, as I am wont to do (who the Hell says “wont” in 2007?) I find two things- I am starting to use slashes about as indiscriminately as I do parentheses, for which I apologize in advance, and that this paragraph needs to be edited. Which I am not going to do. I tend to feel that everything I write needs and editor, if for no other reason than to say “what the fuck is wrong with you?” and I refuse to bother. Oh- another thing: I am dropping the F-bomb like the Taliban blowing up civilians in the Mid-East . Blame it on the hour.

            And you, Mr. and/or Mrs. (see?) Astute Reader, may have spotted another thing. (Or two. One of which is that I am starting sentences, yay,  and paragraphs too, with “and.” I have two things to say about that. One- shut up. Two- what about the “yay” semi-faux Elizabethan dialect? I dunno. Did I mention I started this at 3 am?) Like I was saying before I digressed, (take that, Liz), I said that Mr. and/or Mrs. Astute Reader, who celebrate their 18^th wedding anniversary next month, may have noticed something. I then digressed, (again, take that, Liz), and I am now going to reveal what the aforementioned eagle-eyed Astute Reader couple, Charles and Gladys, father of Libby and Roy, owner of Shep the unimaginatively-named sheepdog, have spotted: I am indenting.

            Oh, it is not unheard of for me to indent. Indeed, there is an example of it at the beginning of this paragraph. But my blogs have an internal logic. (“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “I’ve read this shit. Unless it has to do with a big ape or some knob I don’t see any logic.” You also say some other nastier things that I won’t print here in order to save your reputation. But to one of you will remain nameless, I say- just name the time and place.) Ooooookaaaaay…… back to internal logic. I have some. I won’t reveal it all, a good magician must retain his aura of mystery, but I will tell you this much- it is an art of distraction. Watch the hand that isn’t waving the wand. Oh, jeez, sorry, that’s magic. I was going to tell you about my blogs.

          (Another indent, and more parentheses, man am I on a stupid roll. I can smell a slash coming up soon!) When I indent, I am, generally, drum roll please, (a lot of commas here), writing a bit more seriously than usual. Another hint is the general lack of capital letters in the subject. Which I haven’t written yet. So we’ll see. “But,” you cry, “this isn’t serious at all. You’re wasting my time again. Why do you write this shit?” I think the better question is “Why do you read this shit?” I know that the attraction for the ladies is obvious, but the must be something more.

             Let’s take a look at my friends list, for that is where the trouble lie. (Again with the formal syntax? (And didn’t I promise a slash a while back?)) (That double parenthesis back there is no mistake- go back and see.) A caveat here- the order that my friends are in is not really any indication of where you rank. Some of it is, some of it isn’t. Don’t sweat it, it doesn’t matter. Another caveat- one of my friends may not actually be a friend and may actually be a fictional creation. I’ll leave it to you figure it out, but I’ll give you a hint- she’s a looker!

            So you’ve looked at my list, guessed who isn’t real, wondered why there are so few, and come back here. Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered. Anyway, what could be the problem here, you wonder. I know you’re wondering. I can smell it. Well, it isn’t so much a problem as some situations. Specifically three/four situations. (That slash is perfectly accurate. It may look like I threw it in like I always do, but not here. That one is scary accurate.

             Now there are six people, three/four situations, and you are one of my friends. Logic dictates (sound like Spock here) that the odds of you being one of the situations is pretty good- you have a 4/6 chance of it being you. (Is that right? Did I get the odds right? I can reduce that down to 2/3 chance, right?) Well, to quote a movie quote- never tell me the odds. (First one to name the movie and character wins. I’ll come up with a prize later.) But I can reduce the odds. Ignoring the fictional friend, and some may consider me a fictional friend, not everybody reads this. Out of six, I think only four read my stuff. And out of the four, one of you falls in the odds-defying category of not having a situation. Figure out the odds yourself. ‘Cause I sure can’t. And hey- paragraphs are getting shorter here on page two. It’s very nice here in page two land. Page Two’sville, I think I’ll call it. But since I wrote this in Word and Myspace doesn’t have pages here this’ll just be more nonsense but trust me- it made some kind of sense when I wrote it. Time check- 4:01 am, and man can you tell how late and/or early this is.

              I’m not going to do it, by the way. You think I will, but I won’t. you even expect it. But I won’t Uh uh, not me. (That last, by the way, was a quote from Paulie to Henry in Goodfellas, my favorite movie ever this month.) I am not, and I will remain steadfast, I really will, not explain the situations. It wouldn’t be fair. Sure, I could say that one of the situations involves some steamy, kinky sex with a friend, but what good would that do? Besides, it isn’t true, dammit. (But I bet it pricked you up when you read that.) No, seriously, there is no reason to air dirty, or clean for that matter, laundry in semi-public. Suffice it to say that these things are on my mind.

             I just reread this and man, I spent an hour on this. A whole friggin’ hour. You probably won’t take more than a few minutes reading this shit. The fewer the better. The smart move is to just delete this and try to sleep. I really should. Time check- 4:11 am. I wrote nearly two pages to get you up to the climax, which was the last paragraph, and all I really did when you got there was fart in your faces. One can only hope that, as Odysseus found out, it is the journey, not the destination. (And was Odysseus pissed about that journey. Away from home for twenty years, fighting a war for ten, lost at sea for ten, all of his friends dead, his mother killed by her own hand, his son grown up without him, his kingdom looted, his skin parched by the sun and no good souvlaki anywhere.) So blame it all on the lateness/earliness of the hour. I don’t know what I’m doing. As opposed to all the times I do know what I am doing and the blogs still come out this way.

             BTW, or by the way, use whichever one you like, it’s all the same to me, I never use that thing at the bottom to say what I’m reading or whatever. I just picked that book up today and since it sounds all literary-like I thought I’d put it on. If the book sucks I’ll let you know.

            Time check- 4:22 am.