April 26, 2016
I live in the city. That’s all you need to know: the city. Not the country. Not trees and streams but buildings and pavement. This isn’t Wild Kingdom.
Specifically, I live in a thankfully non-hipster part of Brooklyn South. This means it’s:
A- still pretty nice
B- impossible to find mustache wax
C- becoming very Chinese. But that’s a different story.
So I was driving home last night and the last thing I expected to see in my car’s headlights was a giant possum.
Possums are nothing but fur and pure evil
It’s a residential area, albeit a busy one. Someday it will be nothing but big condos and no parking, but for now it is still mostly medium-sized houses and homes, albeit with no parking. And I wasn’t kidding about condos. They are knocking down the houses left and right and replacing them with condominiums, giving no thought to where all the new residents will park. Some nights I drive around for three hours (or more!) until I find a parking spot. No joke.
But on this night I had only been looking for a spot for a few minutes when, as I drove down a one-way street, an animal sauntered in front of the car. It didn’t run, it didn’t trot, it didn’t even walk fast. It just moseyed out from between two parked cars like it didn’t give a damn who or what was coming down the street. It swaggered!
At first I thought it was a cat. There are lots of them in this area. But then I saw the long, rat-like tail and at this point the creature stopped as my headlights hit it, and I stopped so I actually wouldn’t hit it. It looked at me- not at the car, I am sure it looked right at me, in the driver’s seat, right into my very soul- and I saw that it was no cat and certainly not a rat. It was as long as a large cat (not counting the tail) but much heavier and more thickly furred. It was a big, really big, possum. After only about two seconds the possum decided that it didn’t care at all about me or my car, and with what I am sure was a possum version of giving me the middle finger, continued across the street, still swaggering with confidence. I drove on.
And found a parking spot just a few houses up the block. Yes!
But almost no. I parked but I had to walk back down the block to get home.
Past the possum.
Sure, I could have gone a different way, but let’s face it, I’m rather lazy, and if it came down to walking a half a block out of my way or taking my chances with a possum from Hell, I’d take my chances. As big as that animal was, I was bigger. Not as rabid, I hope, but definitely bigger.
As I walked back, my thoughts were “where does something that big live around here?” and “is it under that car? I swear I just saw something move under that car, oh shit, is it the possum? Oh my god what if it comes after me?”
Dear Reader, I made it home alive. But I still have no idea where a possum that size could call home around here. I also worry about what it’s eating to get so big.
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Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
Tom Brokaw Is An Old Fart
4 OctOctober 4, 2017
Tom Brokaw, though semi-retired, is still one of America’s most respected journalists. He anchored the NBC news for 22 years from 1982 to 2004. He’s covered every major story and worked on every major newscast spanning three decades. He’s written books and produced documentaries. He is very well-respected.
He’s also a cranky old man.
How else to explain the following “you kids stay off my lawn-style rant”? Brokaw has a short commentary series that airs on certain radio stations across the country. It is known as both An American Story and The Brokaw Report. The segments are less than a minute long and the topics are whatever is rattling around in his dusty head. In the segment below, Tom registers his disgust and offense at the apparently brand new to him trend of people wearing ripped jeans. Listen to this and try not to laugh at his righteous, moral outrage.
Click here to listen to Premium Prices for Torn Jeans Are an Insult to the Impoverished. Go ahead, it is only 39 seconds.
“It is poverty chic mocking the poor.”
It really seems as though poor Tom has just begun seeing this brand new fad of “mostly women” wearing ripped jeans. I can’t wait for him to discover crocs. But he really believes that wearing torn jeans is, somehow, an affront, an insult, a spit right in the face of poor people. He really is out of touch. He seriously sees it as people playing dress up as poor people. He thinks poverty cosplay is a thing.
Plus he still says “trousers.” The last person I remember casually using the word “trousers” in normal conversation was Mr. Armour, my third-grade teacher, but he gets a pass since he was in his 70’s. In the 1970’s.
Poor Tom Brokaw, worried about all the sad, offended poor folks with their broken hearts and hurt feelings at the sight of a hipster in torn jeans.
Notice his perfectly unwrinkled trousers, even when slumming with the poor folk.
Lest you think this is just an isolated incident and I’m blowing Tom’s old man cred out of proportion, here are the titles of some of his other rants.
I’m sure you think I made up the spoiling grandkids one but I didn’t.
And also, congrats to Fancy Ol’ Me! This was the first time I used the word “lest” in a blog post. Probably the last too, unless I turn into my own version of Tom Brokaw.
Does this look like a man who is out of touch with the poor?
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