Tag Archives: Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride

My Trip With Marvin Ming to Atlantic City

15 Nov

from July 24, 2008

I’ve written about my old friend “Marvin Ming” before, chiefly, the time when we tried to set him up with a lesbian by sending her a map and a toy flower. (Look up the blog, I think I called the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. If I didn’t I should have.)

I’ll give you a bit of background before I tell about our trip to Atlantic City.

Marvin (not his real name) was (and most likely still is) a Chinese man who hates Chinese people. This extended mostly toward his mother, but he had problems with all Chinese, including himself. In a nutshell, he didn’t want to be Chinese, he wanted to be……………….. a Klingon. Yes, a Start Trek bumpy-headed Worf. He had a stoic manner and a concept of honor that would have made a rapist out of King Arthur (and if you believe certain Roman legends…) and he took Star Trek’s Lt. Worf as his idol.

For example, he once got rid of his bed and started sleeping on a thin weight-lifting bench in order (and try to hear this in Michael Dorn’s best Klingon growl, low and throaty, as he would say “tribbles”) “to remove temptation.” Now I never asked him which temptation he was referring to. I have an idea or two, and I’m sure you do also, but I never asked. Given his stoic manner and the fact that he lifted weights in his bedroom, the temptation was either girls or masturbation. And since he showed no interest in girls (except the one lesbian) my money was on masturbation.

A curious side-note to that story is the fact that while he hated Chinese people, especially his family, he loved Asian women. All but his mom, whom always seemed to be doing the wrong thing, either bringing shame on the family by playing Bingo, or simply being Chinese.

Marvin tended to smell, and the girls in the store got together to ask him to start using deodorant. Actually, they got together and got me to tell him. Then, as now, I was a sucker for a woman, and I, in the most personally embarrassing moment I have ever had, told Marvin that everyone in the store wanted him to shower because he stunk. I was then treated, and I should have been struck blind, to the sight of Marvin spraying himself with Lysol under his arms and in his crotch.

He had a brother who was marginally more normal. One time his brother owed Marvin some sort of debt, so he brought Marvin into the store where we worked and made him work for him. He sat in the break room and made his brother sweep the hall, lift boxes, whatever Marvin should have done. And his brother was OK with this. In fact, it was so funny that everyone was OK with this, except the boss, who was not OK with this, because OSHA and their insurance were both completely not at all OK with this, and Marvin sent his brother home after only an hour or so. But the debt was cleared.

Marc and I were invited, via Marvin, to a birthday party of a friend of Marvin’s whom we had never met. We went. When we arrived it was his friend and his father, plus us. I sat in the living room and waited for the rest of the guests. When his father brought out the birthday cake I realized there were no other guests. It was his father, Marvin, and two total strangers.

Marc and I actually spent most of the night with the guy’s father, who turned out to be a major league liar. We didn’t know for sure at the time, but I suspected that this guy’s father (Art Lieberman) did not write the old song “It’s Judy’s Turn to Cry” and several episodes of The Twilight Zone. He was full of crap. He them took out his pride and joy, a computer with a trivia program that, even back in the late 80’s was ten years obsolete.

So Marc and I answered every question while Art told us stories.

QUESTION: Who played Ralph Kramdem?
MARC: Jackie Gleason
ART: Let me tell you about Gleason, when I worked for him, yada yada yada, I wrote the episode where Alice gets a job.
ME: Wow. Is the game over?

His son was no better. We went into his room where he was showing “movie props.” He handed us a misshapen lump of metal that he claimed was an original Star Wars lightsaber. It looked like slag from a construction site. If I had a pipe from under my sink and a marker I could make a more convincing prop.

Marvin was impressed.

The highlight of the night was Art showing us his videotape collection. Back when I had tapes, I was proud of my collection. I must have had upwards of 300 tapes. (All categorized, like BIG apes, GIANT dinosaurs, and ants. Yep, that was a category.) But old Art, he had, no joke, an entire room of his house lined wall to ceiling, every wall, with videotapes. This impressed me then. Now it scares me. But looking back, Marc and I were both impressed with the collection. He had seemed to videotape every single thing that had ever been on TV. No wonder his wife was out of the picture.

So what did he pop in the VCR, the moon landing? JFK’s assassination? The first broadcast of The Colgate Comedy Hour? No. He put in a dreadfully blurry copy of The Night of 1,001 Stars. This was a TV special which claimed to have 1,001 stars. I guess, technically, it did, but for every John Wayne there three Horshacks and an Epstein. And the stars did nothing. There was a big stage with a curtain. The host would say “Number 863, Barbara Bel Geddes!” and Barbara Bel Geddes would come through the curtain, smile, bow, and walk off. “And now, star 864, McLean Stevenson!” Smile, bow, walk.

And that pretty much ended the night. We left, and some afterward the family moved to Arizona and that was the end of that.

I’ve been leading up to the story of my trip to Atlantic City with Marvin and his parents, but you’ll have to wait for Part Two.

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A Day in the Park. (Or, Gnats to You)

15 Nov

from July 22, 2008

So I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thereabouts. (“Thenabouts”? This is time, right, so it should be “thenabouts.” My spell checker, surprisingly [to me] lets “thereabouts” go right by. Whoosh! Lets it go right past. “Thenabouts”? Not so much. You can’t see this [you lucky stiff. I can see it all, and yuck.] but every time I type “thenabouts” it has that dopey little red squiggle underneath, you know, your computer’s way of saying “hey nutsack, that ain’t a word.” [The irony, {I parenthetically aside} {Though that last one is in those fancy brackets.} is that “yuck,” and “nutsack” also have those little squiggles under them. Now I’m willing to concede that maybe, just maybe {I put it in italics because it looks nice} “nutsack” isn’t a word, though it sure is in my house, but “yuck?” Get the fuck out of here, Word Perfect. {BTW- this computer does not use Microsoft Word. I use Word Perfect in Microsoft Word mode. Screw you Bill Gates.} Oh shit, I was talking {typing} about the irony here. I think, let me go back….. aha, irony. So the irony is that while the computer puts the squiggle under “yuck,” which is a perfectly cromulent word {Google that} it didn’t put the squiggles under “ain’t.” I don’t care if Carmen Electra got fellated by the Pope, or the other way around, whatever, “ain’t” isn’t a word. Squiggle it, Dell Dimension E310! Go ahead, look at it! What the hell is that apostrophe for? NOTHING! IT ISN’T A WORD!]) <– Go back and check, that was one heckuva long parenthetical aside but I think I got it right, brackets and all.

So where was I? Oh, I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (Squiggles be damned, I’m going with “thenabouts.” It makes perfect sense. If I’m talking about a location, like “Police sources tell News Twelve that the bomb was placed under the Pope’s cassock, or thereabouts,” then I can, with the perfect logic that only typing at 3:15 am can provide, use “thenabouts.” Just watch me.)

I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (See?) For privacy’s sake I will leave the location undisclosed. I would not like to be thronged by hordes (or hoarded by throngs, come to think of it) (Or thong-wearing throngs or hoarding hordes either) during my leisure time. Nor will I disclose my exact purpose for being there, though I am willing to concede that it had to do with softball. (Was that too big a hint? Shit, I am no good at that mysterious stuff.)

BTW- which I think means “Blog Tells What,” by the way- I am perfectly aware that I can add “thenabouts” to my computer’s dictionary and therefore (or thus. Which do you prefer? “Thus” sounds more literary, but “therefore” has more letters and thus and/or therefore pads out the blog.) and thus/therefore (C’mon, you knew that was coming.) get rid of the squiggles. Out of sheer stubbornness I am not going to add it. If I did that would be the equivalent of me telling the computer that “thenabouts” is a real word, putting my imprimatur upon it, so to speak. And that ain’t right. (How about some props for “imprimatur.” I don’t have a clue what it means!) (Yes I do. I was just being modest.)

For those of you keeping track at home, I have now typed “thenabouts” eleven times, counting that one. I typed “nutsck” three times and have twice used the Pope as a cheap joke. (Why, I ask, are you keeping track at home? I thought only Al Gore, Bill Gates, Yahoo, and the U. N. did that sort of thing.)

OK, was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (Twelve times.) It was a nice day, the sun was setting and I was sitting in my camp chair (the nice one with the cup holders in the arm rests) and had my radio (the nice one which gets the TV channels too) on my camp table (the nice one with the cup holders in the top) and shit, I lost my train of thought. Not then, now, as I type right now.

Well, anyway, it doesn’t really matter about all the cup holders I had today, four in all. I only had one diet Pepsi and I only used one cup holder, the one in the right armrest of the chair. (Now that I think about it, I may have not maximized the usefulness of those cup holders. Who is to say that I have to only put cups in them? Today, for example, I didn’t use them to hold cups at all, just a bottle of soda. Though if you use a really broad [and I am not using “broad” in any sexist way, dolls] definition of the word “cup” then perhaps the bottle was a cup, in that I was drinking directly out of a container holding a liquid.) And here I will pause and admit that I got a bit lost in this last paragraph and will now move on with what I laughably consider the ” narrative.”

Here are the salient points thus far: I was in a park.

It was in said (unnamed) park that I was sitting, surrounded by cup holders, (OK, it was Owl’s Head Park) watching a softball game.

I was sitting there about an hour and a half when the biggest swarm of the tinniest gnats you ever saw took up residence about six feet above my head. These things were tiny but there were lots of them. Could I count them all, I bet that the number would not total 587. What would be the odds of that?

They didn’t come near me, they just sort of swarmed there. The swarm swayed to the left, then back. Then to the right, and back. (I might have heard a tiny little gnat symphony leading them in their aero-ballet.) But no matter what they always ended up above my head. Not one landed on me.

So I got up and moved the chair (with the two cup holders, one of which had a bottle of diet Pepsi) and moved the table (with two unoccupied cup holders) and moved the radio (though since it was on the table I should have included it in the description of the table, it being one actual movement, not two distinct movements- i.e. I did not move first the table and then the radio, I moved the table with the radio upon it. I feel that it is very important to be clear on this point.)

I moved myself and the four cup holders (and radio) and their associated camp furniture about ten feet to the left. So did the swarm.

Again, I would like to note that no gnat came close to me, they just swarmed above me. (See how nicely I am moving ahead with the narrative, just like I promised six paragraphs back?)

It was thenabouts (thirteen) that I decided that I had enough of this shit and packed up and left. (Much as many readers of this blog have also done by now. Though had they stayed they may have noticed that it has settled into a little less manic state.) (But screw them.)

Anyway, it was a nice day and I would have liked to stuck around and relaxed some more but those tiny damn gnats made it impossible.

To sum up, gnats bad, “thenabouts” good. (And yes, this blog was far more about “thenabouts” than gnats. I know. They were just the McGuffin, sort of.)

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