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Outdoor Curling, Off-Ice

· February 9, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · 3 Comments

I originally intended for this post to be a two-parter.One for preparation, one for the Sawtooth Outdoor Bonspiel. But one of our games turned into an epic, inspiring poems retold for centuries to come. So now it’s a threesome of posts. No, wait a second. Is there another word for a group of three? Perhaps a double-team? You’re currently reading the meat of this curling-post sandwich.

Read on to find out what the beautiful town of Stanley was like and how I managed to snap my wrist! Then you can find the on-ice stuff here.

Okay, so the good news is that the weather was way warmer than expected. I spent the last three months expecting zero degrees Farenheit, and in the end I got zero degrees Celsius (and y’all thought I didn’t know metric.)

Heck, we didn’t even need the beards and goggles. But when you deck yourself out this sexy, there’s no turning back on account of weather.

The bad news is that it’s really, really difficult to curl when the ambient temperature is the freezing point of water. Because, you see, we need the water to be actually frozen. If it’s melting, the stone can’t glide across it, as it’s supposed to. We went to a hockey game and a water polo match broke out. Not that I’d trust horses on either surface.

As an example, we time our deliveries in curling, in order to give the sweepers an idea of when to sweep and to give the shooter an idea of how the ice is working. We only time the beginning of the delivery. Under normal conditions, a delivery of 3.5 or 3.6 or 3.7 seconds means the rock will end on the button (the middle of the “bullseye”) at the other end, about 25 seconds later. And if I’m timing the lead on my team and discover it’s 3.7 to button versus 3.5, then that tells me I need to slide out a little slower than usual.

At the beginning of our first game, it was 2.6 seconds to button. As far as we could tell. At those speeds, it’s hard to get an accurate reading, as the sweepers are chasing after a 20 MPH bullet. So yeah, for the first two ends, we were pretty much throwing as hard as we could and hoping for the best.

The game was scheduled to start at 5:00, but they pushed it back to 5:30 to accommodate for the weather. They should’ve pushed it back to 6:00. Because by the third end, the ice was closer to normal. Okay, maybe it was 3.3 to button instead of the usual 3.6, but that’s something we can work with.

Not that we could work with it. We scored one in the first end and then got shutout for the next five. There were a few times we’d get a little something going, but then the other team would make a perfect draw and we’d end up with squa-doosh. I was ready to throw in the towel on the second-to-last end when we were down 8-1. But then we were looking at three points before I took my final two shots. We all agreed: if we score less than five, we’ll shake hands and concede the game. Because if we score, the other team gets the hammer (final shot). And it’s really, really hard to score more than two if the other team has the final shot. But if we scored five, we’d be down by two. And then….

We scored five. Game’s now 8-6. Other team wants to shake hands, but we went dick-mode and made them play the final end. It didn’t matter. My final shot curled a foot too far, pushing our own stone back instead of their stone, as intended, so they didn’t even need to take their final shot.

The weight actually normalized a bit when the sun started to set. Although human beings might not like the temperature in the twenties, curling rocks do. That’s one of the ways we were able to mount that comeback. Once the ice behaved in a marginally normal way, we were able to make some stuff happen. The lines were still wonky. If you moved the broom six inches to the left, the rock might end up six feet to the left. But that actually worked in our favor because the other team kept missing their hits. A team can’t really score five points in an end unless the other team messes up.

Then again, you gotta be ready to pounce on the opponent’s mistakes.

After the game, we headed to one of two restaurants in Stanley. There’s usually a pizza place, too, but it was closed for renovation. We were worried that, in a town of 67, the restaurant might not be open past 8:00. Heck, I live in a city of 60,000 and it’s sometimes hard to find anyplace open that late.

Turns out we didn’t need to worry. They stayed open for us, and were still open when the next draw ended. Makes sense. Sixteen teams, four curlers apiece. We just doubled the size of their population. I guess when you live in a remote town, anytime there’s outside money coming in, you gotta accommodate them. Otherwise you’re just taking money from Henry at the hardware store, whom you’ll be giving it back to next week when you need some more propane.

Word in the restaurant was that the late draw worked the opposite of us. The speed of the ice was normal for the first couple of ends, and then the fog rolled in, which pushed people back up to 2.6-second draws. I never thought about the effects of fog on curling rocks (not something we encounter too much indoors), but it makes sense. The air’s going to get heavier and there’s going to be more moisture. Neither of those are great for speeding up a 42-pound rock sliding across a frozen pond.

Unfortunately, because we lost game one, we were stuck in the early draw the next morning. 7:00 AM, an hour and change before sunrise. A wonderful time to enjoy the comfort and extravagance of a mountain retreat. It was pitch black when the game started. Check this out:

You can almost see where you’re aiming, huh? It changed how I held the target broom. Usually I try to make the target as small as possible. I stand directly behind my broom, tuck one foot behind the other. The head on my broom is usually a neon green or garish orange that really pops against the black of my pants and shoes. Don’t want to confuse my team with where the target is. Some skips stand with their legs a foot or two wide and the next thing you know, you’re accidentally sighting in on their left foot or the open air in between instead of the broom.

I started this game doing just that. Then one of my teammates told me to spread my legs. After the commensurate and anatomically errant “That’s what she said,” I opened them up wide. When finished, I saw why they were asking. My body had been blocking the spotlights. They couldn’t really see the orange target. But if I widened my stance like a GOP Senator in a Minnesota airport, they could see the giant stick between my legs.

And there was a broom there, too. Hey-Oh!

I was told by a guy who had come in previous years to be on the lookout for the sunrise. It’s beautiful, he said, and it will, however temporarily, help you stop the nagging doubt building in your gut as to why you signed up and paid for the “privilege” of frostbitten testicles. Then again, he was there on one of those negative-five days, not a twenty-degrees-at-sunrise type of day that I got to experience.

But he wasn’t wrong about the sunrise:

These photos are brought to you by a couple of stones that I didn’t bother watching. I probably could’ve swept them to better positions, helped my team win their fucking game. But really, how can I let that sunrise go by? I didn’t come here to win games. I came to freeze my testicles!

I decided to throw on an extra layer of clothing this time. Despite months of planning, the previous night had been a bit chilly. My legs were fine. My toes, despite two layers of socks and two layers of rubber, felt the ice whenever I stood still. But the worst part was my chest and arms. One layer of thermal, then a t-shirt, then a onesie was not enough. And that had been at thirty degrees. This time the thermometer read a crisp eighteen when we left our hotel. What had been a wee bit uncomfortable last night would be a tad more hard-core today.

It was fine, though. I brought the flannel shirt I usually take camping. It’s thick. Add that to some thermals underneath and my super fancy onesie on top and I should be nice and cozy, right? Well, it was better but still not ideal.

I did finally get my chest to a happy medium, though. After our second game, we were supposed to return to the ice rink to help them out with some stuff around midday. This time I went old school. I have some of those old-fashioned wool long-john style underwear that I’ve had since I was a teenager. I don’t want to say we’ve regressed as a society, but the ugly-ass shit from World War II works a hell of a lot better than the sleek black Audi shit of today. We’ve become more concerned with looking good than, I don’t know, surviving the elements. At least the rescuers will find a very sexy corpse-sicle.

Fortunately it stretches, cause my gut ain’t what it once was. Or rather, it’s a lot more than it once was. Unfortunately it doesn’t stretch THAT much, so the downward-slope of my undergut was feeling a bit drafty. But whatever, it kept the rest of me warm. I actually just wore a t-shirt over it. No onesie! Besides, it was the low-thirties once again, so I didn’t need to ward off frostbite.

By our third game, I had perfected it. Sleek black thermal, wool longjohn, flannel shirt, onesie. Four layers! I was downright toasty.

Except for my feet. Cause no matter how protected my chest and arms were, my toes were still permanently aware of the fact that they were walking on ice. One layer of cotton sock, one layer of thermal sock, shoe rubber and gripper rubber be damned.

I tried some of those iron-oxide foot warmers, but they didn’t seem to do much. I put them outside the thermal socks, thinking the closer to the ice, the better. Maybe I should’ve put them in between my two socks. If I ever return, I’ll test that out.

Oh, and I fell on the ice when I helped during the day. You see, when the sun is out and it’s 34 degrees, it makes the ice super slippery. It’s a bad time to curl and evidently it’s a bad time to walk. I was in the act of kicking an errant rock over to the edge. The ice was in the act of kicking my ass to the ground.

The good news is that years of curling has taught me how to fall on ice. Always fall forward, never backward. Backward is where blackouts and cracked skulls happen. And trips to the emergency room with the commensurate ambulance bill. Unfortunately, when your ass gets above your teakettle, you can get a concussion on the front-end, too. Did you know it’s possible to land temple first?

The good news is that my on-ice instinct must be honed very well. The bad news is that I got my wrist underneath me at the last minute before my face planted. Or maybe it’s the good news. Because a sprained wrist is better than being knocked unconscious and whisked off to the nearest hospital, which was over an hour away. But unfortunately, a sprained wrist is substantially worse than an unsprained wrist. It looks gnarly, too.

That’ll teach me to help out.

Preparation for Outdoor Curling

· January 31, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · 2 Comments

It’s time for another curling update.

My ongoing foray into the crazy, impossible, inviting world of curling continues. Now in outer space!

Okay, maybe not outer space, but almost as crazy. A place where no sane human would ever date curl: outside.

Sure, the sport of curling started as an outdoor venture. It started in Scotland, because the crazy fucks who invented golf needed to keep themselves occupied during the half of the year when all of the water traps had frozen over.

Fun history fact: the reason Scots came up with all of the crazy sports (have you SEEN caber tossing?) is because the English wouldn’t let them have weapons. This was before weapons took the shooty, shooty, bang-bang form, so no weapons meant no pointy objects. So while the English nobles were perfecting things like archery and jousting, the Scots were busy making sports with crooked sticks and rocks. And telephone poles.

Over the past 200 years, however, people had the wise idea to move ice sports indoors, which is how I’ve always curled. But much like the NHL moving a few games a year to the local NFL stadium, there’s always gonna be some wisenheimer who creates, and a bunch of dumbasses like me who sign up for, a chance to experience it “au natural.”

Wait, doesn’t “au natural” mean naked? We’re not going to be curling nude, are we? Is it too late to cancel my trip?

Enter the Sawtooth Outdoor Bonspiel, abbreviated S.O.B. for good reason. Located in the bustling metropolis of Stanley (population 67) in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. Stanley claims the coldest average temperature in the lower 48 states. So, you know, they could probably get away with holding the bonspiel in May. But no, they choose the coldest month in the coldest spot.

It seemed like a really good idea back in September while we endured 100-degree heat in Sacramento. I’d been threatening to check this thing out from the moment I heard about it. But every year, something came up. Things like that other bonspiel in April. Or that family trip to Disneyland I was going to take a day off work for. Or, holy shit, how cold did you say it gets there? Negative five? Isn’t that when molecules stop moving?

But this year we had the typical toxic-masculinity, dick-measuring throwdown during broomstacking (the mandated drinking and bullshit session after each curling match). You know how it goes. “Dude, that sounds epic.” “Would you be in if I got a team together?” “Oh, I’d totally do that.” “What about you?” “C’mon man, gets your testicles out of the jar on your wife’s shelf!” “‘Samatta you? I’d fucking do it fucking shirtless.”

“Hey guys, we should totally open a bar!”

In the end, there were two of us waiting with fingers poised above keyboards and refresh buttons when registration opened at noon on November 1. Good thing, too. Cause registration filled up in less than one minute! I didn’t get in. According to the waitlist, my entry was received at 12:00:57, putting me second on the waitlist. Who woulda guessed so many people could get man-shamed into freezing their testicles off?

Fortunately one of my teammates made it in before me. He’s the try-hard amongst us and woulda been the fastest fingers, regardless. Had probably already calibrated his iWatch with Big Ben and called his internet provider fifteen times that morning to ensure he’s getting the proper megabytes per nanosecond. But to add to his usual alphaness, he had moved to Boise since our throwdown. Joined the club that organizes the SOB, got in their good graces. Learned all the dos and don’ts. Hell, for all I know he was sitting next to the guy who pushed the “go live” button on the website. So we were in, for sure.

To be clear, I don’t think he moved to Idaho specifically to ensure our entry into the outdoor bonspiel, but I’m also not sure it didn’t at least play a part in his decision process.

What ensued was 2-3 months of hilarious preparation. Three Cali dudes with no fucking clue about what to do when there might be white-stuff-that-is-neither-asbestos-nor-cocaine on the ground, led by a recent transplant experiencing his first autumn out of state, sending us constant updates about what 35 degrees looks like, how to dress in 30 degree weather and finally, in December, pictures of genuine snow.

As if being the coldest place in the known universe wasn’t enough, they also schedule draw times when the sun isn’t out. Even if it’s below freezing, the sun can melt the top layer of ice, which will make it very slippery. It sucks for curling, too, as the rock wants to sink into the water. You have to throw a lot harder, with a lot less control. A year ago, I curled in Southern California when it was 120 outside. As hard as they cranked the coolers, they couldn’t get the ice below 26-28 degrees instead of the usual 22 degrees. The result was virtually unplayable ice.

The S.O.B. accounts for these potential issues with nature by scheduling two draws in the morning and two at night. You might play your first game at 6:30 AM and your second one at 9:00 PM. At least there’s supposed to be free beer for the fifteen hours in between. We saw videos of previous S.O.B.s where the temperature for the first stone was -5. The high that day was 12. Yikes!

All kidding aside, I’ve been to the snow plenty of times. I can handle temperatures in the twenties with just a layer or two. One time we rented a cabin for New Year’s and it got down to the teens. I wore a light jacket when we went for a walk.

But I don’t know if I’ve ever been in negatives. Plus, this time we’re not just walking from the car to the house. We’re standing out on a frozen pond for two hours at a time. And while the other guys on my team are going to be walking back and forth and sweeping a lot, I’m going to be standing around getting no cardio. Hey, wait a second!

Guess I’m not just throwing two t-shirts and a pair of jeans in a duffel bag for this trip like I do for the majority of my bonspiels. We’re going full-sized suitcase and nothin’ but jackets.

The try-hard wanted us all to dress alike. He’d been assured that teams at this crazy bonspiel come up with costumes. You’re supposed to pick a motif and go all-in. So long as the motif isn’t tank-tops and g-strings. At a normal bonspiel, tank tops might actually be a thing. You’d be surprised how hot it gets when you’re sweeping a lot. But cargo shorts are about as skimpy as I’ve seen people go for the lower torso. Nobody wants to see g-strings. Actually, scratch that. There are a number of very attractive professional curlers, of both genders, who would probably look damn good curling in a g-string. But inevitably, the people most likely to wear a g-string are the people you probably don’t want to see in a g-string. It’s like when I was 19 years old and excited to see the nude sunbathers in European cities. But all I saw at the English Gardens in Munich were a bunch of 90-year-old scrotums hanging down past 90-year-old knees. Then it started to rain and the 90-year-old dudes took shelter under the same tree as me and started bending over to put their clothes back on. Some things you can never unsee.

In addition to this new “team costume” dictum, we also needed to come up with a team name. It’s tough. You want to be funny but not obscene. Original, but not obscure. There are tons of variations on the words sticks and stones and sweeping (rhymes with sleeping) and tapping and hitting and magical buttons. Okay, I haven’t seen any references to the center of the house being a clitoris, but maybe I just haven’t been to enough bonspiels.

Since we were going to be curling in sub-freezing conditions, some of us wanted to go the shrinkage route. I wanted the full team name to be SHRINKAGE!!! (with each exclamation point being a smaller font size than the previous one). Try-hard thought it was too vulgar. A bit too on-the-nose. Double entendres are fine. Single entendres are tacky.

He similarly kiboshed Shrinking Sticks. And Frozen Dicks. And Cock Up My Ass.

Okay, we didn’t actually suggest the last one. Not really curling or freezing related. But I’m sure he would’ve turned it down.

We finally agreed on Shrink n’ Dinks. I tried, once again, to amend it to Shrinkin’ Dinks, but was again denied.

It turns out there’s a beer made in Idaho called “Cali Creamin’.” Seeing as we are the only team from California, Try-hard thought Cali Creamin would be a good name for us. It’s a super well-known beer in Idaho, so most people in attendance would be in on the joke. Although really, how is Shinkin’ Dinks too offensive but Cali Creamin’ is perfectly acceptable? I had questions as to this particular line d’entrende.

Then we had to decide on costume. Try-hard wanted us to throw random NFL jerseys over our layered clothes. Not really sure if that’s a motif or a path of least resistance. Although I suppose it fits our original team name, because if any group of men have got a case of the Shrinkin’ Dinks, it’s all those ‘roiders in the NFL.

But while broomstacking one day, the other three of us decided to look up warm clothing options. What we needed, somebody posited, was something like a onesie. You know, those red jammies with the white footsies that kids wear. If only there were grown-up onesies.

It turns out there are grown-up onesies. Complete with the back door. They have wonderful wording on them, such as “Moose Caboose” and “Bear Cheek” and “Special Delivery.”

We decided to go with “No Peeking” for the lead, “Trap Door” for the second (in absentia), “Special Delivery” for the third (not shown) , and I would go with “Tail End” to wrap up our order. After the fact, our third went for “Tailgate.” Had he told me, I might’ve switched to “Moose Caboose,” but mine was already ordered.

Then we wonder… should we let the other guy know or should we just order them?

We ended up splitting the difference. We didn’t let him know until after the were ordered, so he couldn’t say no. But eventually we let him in on the secret. He was whining that he wouldn’t know what else to pack.

Which put us right back to team name. We now wanted to make reference to the back door. In curling, there is a shot called “Back Line Weight,” where you throw just hard enough to make it to the very back of the house without going out. It’s useful when you want to knock the opponent’s stone back but not remove it entirely, so that if the other team tries to knock yours out, there’s backing. So I suggested “Back Line Weight” or “Beware the Back Line.” Somebody else suggested “Back of House” or Back House Strategy,” both of which refer to the area of the house (bullseye) behind the button (middle).

The guy in charge of our name combined a few of our ideas and the next thing I knew, we were listed as “Back Door Strategy.” Uh, hello? Shrinkage is bad, but blatant anal sex references are okay? I’m surprised he didn’t go with “Creamin’ the Back Door.”
This time the three of us who enjoy the entendres pushed back. Back Door is too over the top. In the end, after months of round and round, we went with “On the Butt-on.” It’s a curling shot. When all else fails, just put the stone on the button. Of course, if it was so easy to do, then I’d win a lot more games.

At this point, we were ready to go. Seventy layers of clothing and 4-wheel drive rentals and onesies with back doors and “Put it On the Butt-on” in more ways than one.
Come back next week for a recap of how it all went.

Part Two Here.

Part Three Here.

Drinks on Friday

· January 23, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , , · No Comments

I went out for some drinks last Friday night.

That’s it. End of story.

Oh, you want more?

At my age, that could pretty much be a post by itself. What was once so mundane as to be rote now requires a notarized writ of release, followed by a full physical and psychiatric evaluation.

But at least I get to spend the rest of the weekend patting myself on the back. Which isn’t easy to do with a goddamned hangover. Does anyone have any Advil?

It’s not like I’ve become a complete recluse. I’ll have a beer before bed sometimes. Our household made it through not one, but two bottles of Booze Nog in December. Scratch that, I just checked the fridge and we only made it through one and a half bottles. Maybe by the end of February we’ll find the promised land.

The kitchen table isn’t the only place I drink. Wife and I are pretty good at coordinating calendars to allow one of us to escape for an evening once in a great while. Just never together at the same time, as that would necessitate a second mortgage to pay for a babysitter.

Yes, thirty-year-old me, I have to plan and coordinate my drinking endeavors weeks in advance. Yes, even if it’s just happy hour. You got something to say to me? Guess what? You’re also going to have gout in the future. Enjoy your shellfish while you can, motherfucker!

I usually meet a particular friend for drinks after work once a month or so. Back when we were single, we met a few times a week. We’d have a couple pitchers of beer on a regular day, maybe add a third or a fourth on a Friday or a Monday. The first Monday of the NFL season was often brutal because they do a double header. That’s seven hours of football. Do you know how much Bud Light one must consume to stay glued to a barstool for seven hours of football?

Sure, we could’ve taken a breather. Only watched one game. Maybe jog around the block during commercial breaks. But that’s heathen quitter talk.

Occasionally, a text would emerge from one of our phones around 6:30 the next morning to the tune of, “Upon further reflection, perhaps those last two pitchers of beer weren’t strictly necessary.”

The first four pitchers weren’t mentioned.

But that was then. This is now.

Now we meet once a month, assuming we can fit it into our schedules. We both work 7:00-3:00 jobs, so we meet up at 3:30, have two beers, a firm handshake, and we’re on our merry ways.

Two beers, I said. Not two pitchers. But you wouldn’t know it, the way my body feels the next day.

To be fair, the beer I drink now tends to be of higher alcohol content than the old stuff. Since I drink less often, I might as well enjoy it. The goal is no longer to gorge myself on as much liquid as possible. The goal isn’t to merge with the barstool over the course of an evening.

So in terms of alcohol content, my per-beer average is up. But I only tell myself that when I’m standing in awe of my lack of tolerance.

I used to scoff at those BAC charts that tell you how many drinks you can have based on your weight. For instance, I’m 220ish pounds, so it tells me that if I have three beers in an hour, I’ll be impaired. At my fifth beer, I’m inebriated. That used to be a joke to me. Who is wasted after only five beers? Lightweight!

Hey, I just had to double-check those BAC numbers. Did you know that there are some BAC charts with a designation beyond “Legally Intoxicated” at .08? They list “Possible Death” starting at .30. I mean, that’s good to know, but it seems odd to put on the chart. Presumably, I’m looking at this chart to see if I can drive a car. So I’m probably in the .06-.10 range. Who the hell is checking their BAC when they’re in the .30 range? Can they even read at that point? I think the BAC people just put that in as a challenge.

One year at Camptathalon, we had a Breathalyzer. Don’t ask. We decided against making a competition of it. Sure, the primary competition most floated was a “guess your BAC” game, which shouldn’t be too dangerous. But a bunch of dudes, miles from civilization, trying to compete for the “best” result on a Breathalyzer is rife with problems.

“What’s that? A point-three is potential death? Hold my beer. (And grab me the Everclear.)”

Fortunately I don’t have to worry about possible death. Every chart I’ve seen ends at ten drinks in one hour, at which point my 220-pound ass is only blowing a .16. Possible death doesn’t show up as an option unless you’re under 100 pounds and have eight drinks in an hour. And really, if you’re a grown dude that’s less than a hundred pounds, you might need something to take the edge off.

So I met my friend for a few happy hour beers at around 3:30. I had two pints of beer (sixteen ounces, not those imperial 20-ouncers) followed by a “small” beer, which I assume to be in the 8-10 ounce range. We said our goodbyes and I was off to my next adventure around 5:30.

That next adventure was “Curling Night in America,” one of the worst ways to watch a curling match. It’s a program that NBC runs where they film some non-competitive games between the United States and some hand-selected teams that we invite over because we know we can beat them. You won’t see U.S. vs Canada or U.S. vs. Sweden. Instead, you’ll see Japan and Australia and Italy. Not places known for their curling prowess.

As if blowouts aren’t enough reason to avoid a sporting event, these things are also pre-recorded. The curling matches they’re showing now took place last August. We could totally look up the results if we wanted to. But we don’t, because they’re pointless exhibition games.

I know, who’s ever heard of NBC showing tape-delayed Olympic sports, huh? But “Curling Night in America” is even worse than, say, the Miracle on Ice or, I don’t know, every single Olympics broadcast EVER. Seriously NBC? It’s one thing when the Olympics are on the other side of the world and going on live when we’re all asleep, but the 2016 Olympics were in fucking Brazil, and you still tape-delayed most of them.

But “Curling Night in America” is even worse because it’s edited to fit into a two-hour block. So they’ll randomly skip an entire end of curling, the equivalent of an inning in baseball. So imagine you’re watching the World Series game. They go to commercial after the second out in the first inning and when they come back it’s the bottom of the third. And the score is 3-2, but they don’t bother telling you how the runs were scored. That’s “Curling Night in America.”

It gets even worse at the end of each broadcast, because you know precisely when the game is going to end. They try to build suspense, going to commercial right before the final shot of an end, a make-or-break rock that might tie up the game and force an extra, sudden-death end. Will he make it? Will she miss by an inch? Oh, so enticing.

But then you look at the clock. If it’s 8:35, they’re going to make the shot. If it’s 8:50, we’re coming back from this commercial break to see a miss and be done with it. How lame. That’s why sports are supposed to be broadcast live. If you know ahead of time that the pitcher is only going to throw one more pitch, it takes some of the joy of it. The NFL doesn’t say “Any Given Sunday.. except not this Sunday.”

But “Curling Night in America” works as a good recruiting tool for my curling club. The other people in the bar don’t know we’re exaggerating the oohs and ahhs. So once or twice a month a bunch of us head out to a local cantina and make a ruckus.

That’s where I was headed after my two-and-a-half beers last Friday night.

But first I had to stop for a coffee.

This was hardly the first time I caffeinated in between drinking sessions. On one Friday night when I was a new teacher. I went to happy hour, then hit Starbucks on the way back to school to announce the football game, then went back out to re-buzz after the game. Then it was back to coffee in the morning. I swallowed the cat to catch the bird. I swallowed the bird to catch the spider. I swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I swallowed the fly because cocaine is too fucking expensive.

That’s what that song is about, right?

Of course, back then, I wasn’t drinking the coffee to my buzz. Far from it. I might have been trying to mask it. Or I might’ve just wanted a coffee. Whereas this time, I was thinking,  “Holy crap, I’ve already has a few beers and now I’m going out to get more beers and it’s almost my bedtime. Where can I find some meth?”

Unfortunately, I had to settle for coffee. With cream.

Not milk, mind you. Full fucking cream. I could’ve suckled up to a cow and not noticed much difference. I never get cream. I’m a black coffee guy. But I wanted more calories in my stomach. I wanted more volume in my stomach. If I could’ve ordered a coffee milkshake, I would have.

The hipster batistas were giving me the “gee I wonder why you’re getting coffee” look. Then, as if I wasn’t feeling old already, they asked what I was doing this fine Friday evening. I told them where I was headed. Each one blinked back.

“You know,” I explained, “the pub over on J Street.”

The blinks continued.

How the hell have they not heard of this place? It’s been there for… well, I don’t know how long it’s been there. But I’ve been going there a good twenty years. It was the hip, cool place to hang out after work when I was a restaurant server. Back in… the last century.

Holy crap! Do you mean to tell me the skeevy, decrepit bar filled with septuagenarians that my grandpa went to in 1980 didn’t start as a skeevy, decrepit bar filled with septuagenarians? Was the wrong side of the tracks, at some point, the RIGHT side of the tracks? Hmmm…

This might explain why people keep throwing their hips out at our Learn-to-Curls.

After I power through the large half-coffee-half-cream, spilling a bit for good measure as if the nose-ring-clad, twenty-something baristas hadn’t rolled their eyes at “grandpa” quite enough already, I was on my way to what might as well have been Howard Cunningham’s Leopard Lodge.

Where I promptly ordered a full plate of fish n’ chips. Can’t be too safe.

I also ordered a beer. When I handed over my card, the bartender asked if he should keep the tab open. I told him to keep it open. Mainly out of habit, but partly because it feels so wrong to limit myself. After all, the night was still young, at least according to the clock on the wall and not my internal clock. But maybe the pre-recorded curling match will feature a surprising come from behind and I’ll buy a round for the whole bar. Perhaps being in a bar that I frequented at 28 will make me feel 28 again. Who knows, I could have five more beers and Uber home in the wee hours of the morning.

And then get the look on Wife’s face in the morning when we’re have to come back downtown to get my car, which will probably have a parking ticket by then.

Aw, who was I kidding? I knew exactly how many more beers I was going to have and I had enough cash to pay for it. Sure enough, when I bought that second beer, tummy full of deep-fried breading n’ chips, I closed out the tab.

Then the moment the curling match came back from its final commercial break and the Japanese failed to send it to an extra end, as we knew they would, I beelined it for my car to head home. It was 9:00. I was exhausted!

Then came the harrowing drive home. Hoo-wee. A fog had settled on the land. Only it wasn’t fog. It was dark. I think they call it nighttime? Glare from car headlights blinded me. And it’s hard to recite the alphabet backward, even if I’m sober.

I was practicing all the lines I would tell the cop while I dutifully put my hands at the ten and two positions, except when they were prying open my droopy eyes.

But I also did the math in my head. I ordered my first drink at 3:30. It was now 9:15. I had consumed four-and-a-half beers.

Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt. The beers at the first place were strong, so maybe it’s the equivalent of three of the 4.5% beers mentioned on the BAC chart. And I think the English pub was pouring imperial pints. So maybe those two beers were closer to three.

Still, that’s six beers over a course of six hours. One beer per hour. Okay, the Fuller’s ESB is a whopping 5.5%, so let me be manly and up that number all the way to Shit, I’m going to be bold and round up to seven. Seven full beers!

Let’s put aside the fact that I used to do seven beers in an hour. Not that I’m proud of seven beers in an hour, but hell, even the 100-pound dude would still be marginally alive at that point. Seven beers in an hour, according to the chart, would put me at a .11. Back in the 1970s, that would’ve been barely above legally drunk.

But this time, I didn’t have those seven beers in an hour. I had them in six. The BAC chart says I burn off .015 BAC, or one drink, per hour. So even if I had drank them all in one hour, I would’ve burned off .09 of that .11. Notwithstanding the fish n’ chips, coffee, and cream.

That .02 is also the number the chart gives me for drinking one beer in an hour. Which makes sense, since I’ve effectively had one per hour, with only a slight addendum. Some charts are nice enough to say that, at .02, driving ability might be impaired. Of course, those ones put everything on the chart as “possibly impaired.” They’re trying to make a point.

The more honest ones don’t list the possibly impaired until .04. Because the first thing the cop’s going to do is smell your breath. And the .02 probably ain’t gonna show up.

If a cop had pulled me over that fine evening, I would’ve told him to take me into the drunk tank and he would’ve thought I was just trying to play the “fugue state” game from Breaking Bad.

“Sorry, sir. All you’ve had tonight is fish n’ chips.”

Like I’m Beavis and Butthead in the episode where they get non-alcoholic beer.

“You’re not drunk. You’re just a dumbass.”

I couldn’t agree more, Ozzifer.

How Not To Advertise

· January 15, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , · No Comments

My favorite church is up to it again, y’all.

For the uninitiated, I live close to a megachurch. It’s got it’s own empire or something. I mean, I can only assume it’s dotted all the t’s and crossed all the i’s and blown all the proper DMV employees to ensure it stays a non-profit, but it had to be the most conglomeratey non-profit ever to non-profit. What would Jesus drive, if not a Porsche.

What’s that?  We’re not supposed to orally copulate DMV employees? And it’s not even the proper level of government to grant tax-exempt status? Oops. Color me chagrined.

But seriously, this megachurch used to be competing with another megachurch nearby. Then the one near me bought the other one out. Then the two of them merged with a third, just as the good lord intended.

Did I mention that they regularly move their services to the home of the local basketball team? No, not a high school gym. I mean the 20,000-seat NBA arena.

Good thing the bible doesn’t say anything about pride or gluttony.

But that kind of business expansion requires some powerful advertising. Fortunately these guys have some pithy Pontius Pilate on staff. And they must have bought stock in a printing business. Because on a regular basis, they post wonderful posters, often with unintentionally hilarious phrases beckoning us all with messages of how much better we’ll feel if we come.

As God intended.

Which is how they became my favorite church.

Oh sorry, did you think they were my favorite to attend? You haven’t read much of my stuff, have you? I’m contemplating publishing a bunch of my posts under the title “An Asshole Looks at Forty.”

So if you came here looking for a liturgical discussion of my favorite proverbs, you can run along. If you want to know if the patience of Job exceeds the patience of a Hand Job, you’re in the right spot.

For those who enjoyed that and stuck around… well, shit, you might want to leave, too. Because shit’s about to get a bit darker. But it’s not my fault. It’s the church’s fault.

You see, unlike my previously favorite advertisement which was based on the premise that Jesus abhors mobile technology, the new sign makes me feel uneasy. I still chuckle, but it’s more in the “Holy shit, do they know what they’re implying here?” Instead of the usual,  “<SNORT>. Come!”

Okay, here it is: “If I Only Let God…”

I don’t know how comfortable I am with that.

There’s a certain level of appeasement going on there.

I think this was the attitude present leading up to World War II.  “If we only let Hitler… remilitarize the Rhineland. If we only let Hitler… Anschluss with Austria. If we only give Hitler… a little bit of Czechoslovakia,” then we can have peace.

No, I’m not comparing God to Hitler.

But I kinda think this church is.

Even if we’re not talking about appeasing, there’s an uncomfortable level of symbiosis there, an unhealthy cession of responsibility and agency. And yeah, I know that’s step number one of the twelve step program, so this isn’t the only church that says we gotta stop taking responsibility for our own actions. That’s why I don’t join a twelve-step program. Aside from the fact that I don’t wanna give up the booze.

But that’s why this advertisement rubs me the wrong way.

It sounds like the internal struggle that victims of date rape and domestic violence endure, doesn’t it? “Well, I don’t really want to, but I feel like I need to let him…” of “I can’t leave him. I deserve this because I never let him…”

But it’s okay if it’s God, right? I mean, he has a great track record. What with the destruction of the Garden of Eden and the flooding of the entire Earth and the plague of frogs.

But shhh, church goers. Put on a happy face. You know how God can get if we don’t let him watch the football game.

Maybe I’m being overly harsh, that I’m purposefully misinterpreting the message of this sign. Except that underneath the big “If I Only Let God…” there’s some smaller subscript. You have to be close up to read it. Presumably it’s only for the true believers who have already been enticed by the big message.

The subscript completes the sentence in a number of ways.

“If I only let God love me.”

Okay, I can live with that.

“If I only let God change me.”

Now I’m feeling a little uneasy.

“If I only let God use me.”

That’s it. I’m tapping out.

Don’t come whining to me when the whole congregation ends up in South America with some Kool-Aid.

One Tooth Down

· January 7, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , · No Comments

Daughter just lost her first tooth, which means it’s time for the Tooth Fairy to come and visit. Another round of parenting fun.

Sorry, did I say fun? That’s not the word I was looking for. Is there an adjective that means anything you do is going to be a monumental fuck-up and make you the laughing stock of the parenting community and a cautionary tale spread throughout all of suburbia until the end of time, alongside razor blades in apples? What is that, if not fun? I’m sure the German have a word for it.

First of all, when they hell did kids start losing their teeth so early? 

I had Daughter late in life – just shy of my fortieth birthday. I was marginally aware of some parenting things in my twenties on account of two nieces I was close to. And I have some oddly prescient memories of my own upbringing in the 1970s, nut-hugger shorts and all! Bowl cuts before they were white supremacist!

I’m pretty sure I lost my first tooth around the end of first grade. I know this because when I lost my first tooth, well, I lost my first tooth. I was trying to chew through a helium balloon string on my hand when my tooth went flying into the grass. I was freaked out that I wouldn’t get my money from the Tooth Fairy. So I went home and wrote a note, an action I wouldn’t have been able to do in Kindergarten.

I was young for my grade. I was born in October, so the memory in question would’ve made me about six-and-a-half for me. They’ve changed the laws since then, so now I wouldn’t be in the grade I was in. I’d be one of the older kids in my class instead of the younger. I would’ve lost my first tooth at the end of my Kindergarten year instead of my First Grade year. But I still would’ve been six-and-a-half.

My daughter is five-and-a-half. Granted, she’s somehow always been physically advanced. Each of her teeth came in on the early end of the range. She’s regularly in the 90th percentile for height, which I don’t understand because I’m 5’8″ on a good day, Wife tops out at 5’5″, and we’re both taller than our parents. Never did I think I’d be trying to gear a progeny toward volleyball and basketball to take advantage of her height.

Although it’s going to be volleyball, cause the kid’s inherited my (lack of) running stamina.

But the crazy thing is that Daughter isn’t the first in her Kindergarten class to lose a tooth. Far from it. She’s a May baby, so she’s somewhere in the middle of the age range, maybe a little on the younger side. There are a fair number of six-year-olds in her class. But most of them are losing their teeth before they turn six. Heck, the September and October babies are already down three or four teeth. That was second-grade shit back in my day!

I know this isn’t the only indication of kids developing physically more quickly these days. Puberty is hitting two to three years earlier than a century ago. Middle school used to be the puberty years. Sequester the seventh and eighth graders to protect them from the olders and to avoid traumatizing the youngers. But puberty usually hits around fourth or fifth grade these days. And then I end up teaching 16 and 17 year-olds who are well beyond their “learn by” dates. 

Diet gets a good deal of the credit or the blame. After all, a century ago everybody ate dirt or, even worse, vegetables! I don’t think beef was even invented until after Sputnik launched. And if Junior’s on a regiment of pizza and Ding-Dongs, he’s going to growing tits and pubes. 

Except it’s not like we were withering away in the Carter years. We might have waited in lines to get gas, but there was no delay at the McDonald’s!

But now we put probiotics into our food. Or maybe it’s the soy in our milk. Or chickens genetically altered to resemble Pamela Anderson. Seriously? A half-beast is a full pound? Put a bra on that hen!

Maybe it’s the rBST in our milk. I have no idea what rBST is, I only know that I have to pay extra to get milk without it. And then I’m supposed to ignore the fact that this organic milk has an expiration date months later than milk should naturally last. I think the non-rBST organic milk in my fridge is going to last longer than Daughter’s other 27 teeth. 

So yeah, I don’t have the foggiest idea why kids are losing teeth the first week of kindergarten. All I know is that, as a parent, five years old is way too early to be losing teeth. We’re still adjusting to schooling. I mean, shit. I’m still trying to figure out how to explain what a sight word is. Now I’ve got to play Tooth Fairy, too? 

Oops. Spoiler. Hopefully there isn’t some random 6-year old that found this on her very first Google search. At least I won’t spill that other big secret. You know, the old dude in the red suit. 

Hey kids, Iron Man is TOTALLY still alive at the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Although, if my prescience about my own mindset forty years ago is legit, it seems that I gave up on the Tooth Fairy long before than I stopped believing in San… uh, “Iron Man.” It didn’t take long for this nascent free marketer to question how the fairy economy worked. After all, if Mr. Fairy ain’t using these teeth as a natural resource for some larger picture, then why the hell is he sneaking into my room in the middle of the night to take my Chiclets? Perv!

I held out my belief in the other guy much longer. I mean, the dude runs a sweatshop, and ain’t nothing more ‘Murican than making a bunch of cheap shit in a foreign land with near-slave labor. Plus, using Pascal’s wager, if I stop believing in Santa and it turns out he’s real, I’m losing out on a ton of shit. The Tooth Fairy? Meh. If he holds out on me because I no longer believe, I can find a quarter lying on the street and come out even.

Not that it’s a quarter anymore. But back in my day… 

Which leads to the worst part of any tooth loss and subsequent visitation from the smallfolk. Anyone know what the going rate on a pearly white is?

I know for damn sure that it’s going up much faster than inflation. The Fed better not be adjusting the interest rates based on lost teeth. Or maybe they should, then I can get a better COLA.

And I know from when my nieces were in this age range that the Tooth Fairy pays more for the first tooth than for subsequent teeth. Not sure why. He clearly knows nothing about the Law of Supply. If he wants us to keep producing his resources, he’s got to up the price, not lower it. What is he, some sort of drug dealer, giving us a sweet deal on the first go-around so that he can milk us for years to come? 

Seriously, Tooth Fairy, what the hell are you doing with these things? Because you’re acting shady as fuck.

We opted to give Daughter five dollars for the first tooth with the intention of lowering the payout to one dollar in the future. Wife’s been asking around and we’re “in the range.” Daughter told me that her best friend got three bucks for the first one. Unfortunately she told me this after she lost her tooth, and I’d been carrying around a crisp 5-note for two week by then. And it would be awkward to go buy a pack of gum to get change and complain that the singles are as dirty as a stripper’s g-string.

Hey, how do you tip strippers in countries that don’t have paper for their basic currency? I don’t think the g-string will keep the Loonie in place, and there’s no fucking way I’m tipping a fiver every time. Shit, a five-pound note is worth almost ten dollars. That’s one expensive thong! Well, a five-pound note was worth ten dollars before Brexit. Now it’s worth substantially less. Probably about the value of a baby tooth.

But the problem with giving Daughter a five-dollar bill, or three one-dollar bills, or really any sort of monetary denomination, is how little impact it will have for her. I’m not saying she doesn’t understand the value of money. She does, to a certain extent. Maybe not as much she will at seven, when God and nature decreed children to lose their teeth, but she understands that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that when one has a finite amount of money, one must assess the opportunity cost of a purchase versus holding onto said money for a potential later use. 

It’s not the concept of MONEY that she’s missing. It’s the concept of cash.

Seriously, how much cash does one use these days? We take Daughter grocery shopping with us. She hits Home Depot and Target with us on a weekly basis. We go out to eat, we talk about online orders with her, we donate to SPCA. She’s used gift cards at Baskin-Robbins and Starbucks. 

What we don’t do in front of her is take out paper currency and hand it over to a cashier. We don’t get change. I often give her whatever change accumulates in my pocket at the end of the day and she stores it in a Moon Jar. But if her primary notion of cash is that it is to be put away and never exchanged for goods or services, then she’s not going to get too excited when the Tooth Fairy leaves her some pointless green piece of paper. If he really wants kids to be happy about turning over their teeth, he should be leaving a Target gift card. Or maybe some Bitcoin.

We just started Daughter doing chores. Only we don’t pay her cash. We place a dollar amount for each item, and when she gets up to a certain amount, we get her a gift card. She gets to choose where. Unfortunately, her last choice was IHOP. Is it too much to have her get a BevMo card? Then I can tax it just like I do her Halloween candy.

We must not be alone in this regard. Because as the excitement of cash has diminished the Tooth Fairy experience has been replaced by a shit-ton of pomp, circumstance, and fluff. We used to put the tooth underneath the pillow and voila!, a quarter replaced it the next morning. 

Now there’s a booklet (basically an oversized wallet) and an envelope and a tooth “pillow” that’s really just another stuffed animal, as if Daughter doesn’t have enough of those. We put the tooth inside the booklet, along with a note welcoming an odd man inside my baby daughter’s bedroom, tied a bow around it and put it under her pillow. Then beside the bed, we put the tooth stuffed animal, under which we placed the empty envelope.

Then we learned the secret handshake of the Freemasons and Illuminati and she was off to la-la land.

Then we (children, look away!) took the tooth, put the fiver in the envelope, wrote a note FROM the Tooth Fairy thanking Daughter for her note TO the Tooth Fairy and for the very nice tooth and how we/he can’t wait for her to lose more teeth so we/he can return to her bedroom while she sleeps and give her more money. But not in a pervy way.

Wife even found a special Tooth Fairy card

(Now you’ll note I knew I lost my tooth in first grade because I could read and write, but then I said my kindergartner wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy. The difference is that I wrote my letter by myself, whereas Daughter’s letter was about 90% letters provided by us. The joys of half-way through Kindergarten. “Mommy, Daddy, how do you spell Thank? How do you spell You? How do you spell Tooth?”)

After all the notes and pillows and incisor sleight-of-hand, we have to figure out what to do with the damn tooth. Do we flush it down the toilet like a dead fish? Is there a spot for it in her baby book? Not that we’ve kept up on her baby book since she was, like, a week old. Plus if we put it there and she someday decides to peruse said book, she’s going to wonder why we, instead of the Purveyor of Fine Bones store in Fairytown, are the ones in possession of it. 

Seriously, whoever came up with this whole thing didn’t really think it all the way through.

Wife put the tooth and the note in an envelope. Not sure if future teeth will go in there as well, but I assume that someday, when Daughter’s older and the gig is up, we’ll look back on it and laugh. She’ll read the note she wrote as a sweet, innocent, 5-year-old and be saved from her teenage cynicism for an evening. Then she’ll see the tooth and think her parents are freakazoid hoarder sickos. 

And then we’ll tell her that, congratulations, she gets to start paying her own health insurance the following month.

When Daughter woke up, it was pretty much as imagined. She was super jazzed to see that the tooth was gone. And ooo, there’s a note from the Tooth Fairy. Can we read it to her? And let’s snuggle with the tooth pillow and can we read the note again?

Oh, and what’s this in the envelope?

“It’s five dollars.”

She promptly puts it on the floor next to her and goes right back to the note. I should’ve just given her a fucking quarter like the good old days.

Oh well. Now it’s on to bunnies fucking chickens to celebrate our risen Lord. 

Who wants therapy

Best Decades of the Decade

· December 30, 2019 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · No Comments

Everyone seems to be coming out with “Best of the Decade” lists recently. Best books, best movies, best songs, best political scandals, best masturbatory practice. Turns out it’s masturbation. For the millionth decade running.

The decade isn’t over for another year, but whatever. I thought we had finally figured this shit out in 2000. I know we like the big round numbers in our base-ten system. But last time I checked, it’s base-ten because we count from one to nine.

The 2010s are coming to an end this week, not the decade. So all of these numbnuts should be making their “Bet Food Recipe of the Teens” instead of “of the Decade.” But then we wouldn’t click on it because we’d assume it’s a list of recipes the writer liked when they were a teen. And if they’re a Baby Boomer, we already know that the first two ingredients will be bacon fat and cocaine.

But I don’t have a “Best of the Decade” or a “Best of the Teens” list, primarily because my short-term memory is a sieve. Crap, I can’t even remember what my last post was about. When I was wrapping Christmas presents, I found a birthday present I was supposed to give Wife back in July. I thought about wrapping it for Christmas, but it really is more of a summer gift. Anyone want to take wagers on me finding it again next December?

So if I were to create a list of items from the past ten years, it would be a nightmare. Who the hell remembers what TV shows they watched nine years ago? Do they jot things down as they go? This blog technically could serve as notes on what I was interested in at any given moment, but it’s not like I’m going to go read all my old shit just to curate my decade. Heck, I keep threatening to put some of my best blog posts together to self-publish, but I can’t get my head around looking through my old posts for the sake of cutting-and-pasting, much less gleaning what year they canceled “Selfie.”

(My blog post about them canceling “Selfie,” btw, is one of my most viewed posts. I doubt it has anything to do with the tv show. Just that when you google “Wombat selfie,” there aren’t a lot of options.)

I’ve actually perused some of those lists, because dammit, they’re called click-bait for a reason. But every time I do, I see things to which I react, “That was 2011? I could’ve sworn that came out in 1985.” It’s one of the problems of growing older. When I wrote about “All I Want for Christmas is You” last week, I didn’t have to look up what year it came out, because I was in college. I can remember who my roommates were, which told me it came out my junior year, and I backfilled from there. But if a song came out in 2004 or 2014, it’s all the same to me now. Imagine my shock when my students had no idea who the Black Eyed Peas were. What do you mean, “Let’s Get it Started” didn’t come out two years ago?

So, let me see… Best TV Show of the 2010s: Quantum Leap. Best Song: Yesterday. Best Movie: Casablanca. Best blog post? Certainly not one of mine.

But hey, I’m an amateur historian and my long-term memory’s doing perfectly fine. So maybe I should use the last days of this decade (the Teens, dammit!) to list off the best decades.

2010s. Ha ha, just kidding. This decade has more or less sucked. Not necessarily from a stuff happening standpoint, but from a historical perspective, this decade will pale in comparison to its predecessor. The 2Ks had 9/11 and a “Great Recession” and the first black president. This one had Marvel movies. We might have topped off the decade with a newsworthy impeachment, but it’s the second one in the past twenty years. And the Republicans might be right when they say this will become the norm going forward. Thirty years from now, when we’re following the seventh impeachment in the past fifty years, we’ll probably trace it back to a blow job in the 1990s, not a snow job in the 2010s.

So yeah this decade might not be as shitty as, say the 1930s or the 1970s, but it ain’t gonna make any “Best of…” lists. Even if I do love me some Mumford and Sons.

Wait, Sigh No More came out in 2009? Wow, this decade really can’t get a fucking break.

3rd Place (Tie). 1980s/1950s.

These two decades are more or less interchangeable. Each started a half-decade after the end of a war that most of the population was trying to forget about. In the fifties, it was the World War II vets looking to hide their own experiences in a world of conformity. In the eighties, it was the draft-dodgers and other hippies realizing that peace, love, and understadning are great, but they pale in comparison to junk bonds. Each decade was marked by an alleged conservatism championed by a doddering old president parlaying his pre-politics career. And when we’re busy sweeping turmoil under the rug, the society really gets to thrive! Optimistic music, advancements in television (color in the 1950s, cable in the 1980s). And can you really rank leather jackets and day-glo sweatshirts against each other? If one of those is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

Each decade has one huge year from a historical perspective.  In 1957, you had Sputnik and the Little Rock Nine and the Dodgers and Giants moving west. In 1989, you’ve got the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. I’d probably take 1989 in that toss-up, but the rest of the decades were no slouch, either. Hungarian uprising, Suez crisis, and Kitchen debate in the 1950s, Challenger, Iran-Contra, and MTV in the 1980s. At least the signature moments of the 1980s weren’t fraught with the fear of nuclear annihilation. Unless you count a “WarGames” scenario. We’d traded “Duck and Cover” for “99 Luftballons.”

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.

And both decades helped in the whole freedom,  standard-of-living thing. The Civil Rights movement and the aforementioned fall of communism. Not that things were wonderful for African Americans in 1960 or Eastern Europeans by 1990, but I’d rather be in either of those situations than a decade before.

Beyond that, we’re splitting hairs. I’ll take “I Love Lucy” over “Family Ties,” but I’d listen to Billy Joel in a heartbeat over Elvis.

And if I had to choose between Marilyn Monroe and Christie Brinkley, could i just have both?

2nd place. 1920s

This seemed to be a pretty kick-ass decade. No war, and at least from an American perspective, the last war was relatively easy to get over. The flu was substantially worse, but if your best friend died of the flu, you’re probably not walking around with the 1,000-yard stare for the next ten years.

So when you’re not whining about the war and you have no clue that the worst economic calamity of modern times is knocking on your doorstep, what are you going to do with yourself? Well, there’s a whole bevy of things to choose from.

Everything was new and exciting and approachable by an emerging middle class. You could go watch Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play some baseball in the Bronx. Sports not your thing? How about checking out this emerging movie industry? Over the course of the Jazz Age, movies became longer and more intricate, with fully formed plots and rising stars., like Rudy Valentino, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. By 1927, you’ve even got talkies. It can’t get any better than that! Seriously, I show silent movies in my US History class, and you’d be surprised at how often they keep modern teenagers’ interests. The comedies are legitimately funny and the horrors – I mean, holy crap, have you seen Nosferatu? Off the screen, Hollywood also had its fair share of unsolved murders and scandalous producer/engenue affairs that would make Harvey Weinstein blush. Seriously, Mary Miles Mintner was like 16 when she started banging William Desmond Taylor, and she was all of 19 when she might or might not have murdered him. And I’ll let you Google the Fatty Arbuckle Trial.

What else was there to do? Well, I called it the Jazz Age, so you know, there’s jazz! The most genuinely American music might have existed before 1920, but this was the decade  it hit the masses. Under the guidance of Duke and Satchmo and Jelly Roll, it transitioned from quaint Dixieland to fully-orchestrated swing. Whatever music you listen to today, from rock to hip-hop to country, owes its lineage to 1920s jazz.

And you could listen to it on the radio, a technology that hit its saturation point in the 1920s. Same with electricity and telephones and refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. It’s not quite TV On Demand or the Internet, but I imagine it would’ve been a fun decade to live through.

Of course one glaring problem prevents this decade from reaching number one: Prohibition. The fact that, out of any decade in history, this is the only one you couldn’t get a goddamn drink when you wanted one is a definite black eye. It’s like picking the one George Lazenby movie as the best James Bond flick. Or the 2000 Baltimore Ravens as the best Super Bowl champion. Seriously, how can you be the best football team if you didn’t even have a starting quarterback?

Although, to be honest, even the worst part of the decade is one of it’s cooler aspects, right? After all, none of us would be able to single out the 2000 Baltimore Ravens if it weren’t for Trent Dilfer.

Speakeasies and bootleggers and Al Capone. And bathtub gin! Who’s with me on the alcohol-induced blindness!

The magic and the mysticism of the Roaring Twenties all stemmed from the lengths people would go to get illegal booze. It’s like a decade-long high school party. As long as you live in a big city. For everyone else, you were shit out of luck. Have some bathtub gin and a smile and shut the fuck up.

And for that reason, on general principal, the 1920s cannot be the best decade.

First place. 1890s

Ah, you didn’t see me going here, did you? Thought I’d stick with the 20th century? Maybe pick some random obscure debate like the 1650s? Great time to be a Puritan. Not so much if you enjoyed sinful things like Christmas or theater.  Or if you were a witch.

But a turn of the century that didn’t include a Y2K scare that turned us all into hoarders who felt very foolish the next day? That totally sucked. It’s bad enough when you wake up next to someone whose name you don’t remember on New Year’s Day. It’s so much worse when you wake up in a sea of Vienna sausage tins.

The 1890s were generally an optimistic time. The gilded age, le belle epoque, the fin de siecle. How the hell were they supposed to know they were less than twenty years from the self-imposed hellscape of trench warfare?

The Nifty Nineties were the birth of the modern age. I often start my Industrial Revolution unit by asking students the most important invention in their lives. Most of them say their phone (invented in 1876). A few try to go highbrow by picking electricity (light bulb invented in 1879). Then I ask them how their day-to-day live might be different without, say, a toilet. Thomas Crapper perfected the S-bend and the ballcock by 1880. And sure, the toilet might not be as useful if I couldn’t play Bubble Witch on my phone while sitting there, but if I had to take one…

You’ll note that none of these inventions actually came about in the 1890s, but the saturation point of inventions used to take much longer. The key is that most cities underwent redesigns in the 1880s to make use of things like telephones and electricity and sewage. Street cars and subways could get you where you needed to be. The Eiffel Tower popped up in 1889, and the Ferris Wheel came a few years later. Parks and spectator sports and newspapers. And think about the impact of the bicycle, invented in 1885. All of a sudden you didn’t need to buy a horse in order to get somewhere faster than a run.

And keeping with the themes of cable tv and jazz radios, impressionist art really started the whole “indivualism in art” thing. It might be fun to catch an art show or artist’s party. Just go easy on the absinthe and leave as soon as Van Gogh gets there. Dude was whack-a-doodle.

Oh wait, he died in 1890. So much the better.

Whenever my students ask me the “if you had a time machine” question, I always set the clock at 1890. Not that I would necessarily go back to that precise point, but I wouldn’t go any earlier. I think, with a little bit of practice and concentration, one coming from the 21st century could fudge their way though the 1890s. There would still be a number of differences, but we’d at least be able to recognize certain things. It might be tough not being able to google everything, but again… flush toilets!

Most of these descriptions could fit the 1900s as well. Plus the first decade of the twentieth century sprinkled in a first flight and the best president in our history for good measure. And if I could cheat as much as those saying the decade ends this week, then sure, I guess I could just bullshit 1890-1910 as a decade. Or really, 1896-1908. But if I have to split hairs, I’m taking the first half of that era.

After all, there was just a tad bit more historical going on in the 1890s. It had one of the worst economic depressions up to that time, and maybe second only to the 1930s. Not saying depressions are fun or anything, but it was the first depression with skyscrapers that businessmen could throw themselves out of. Nothing like a thoroughly modern suicide.

And if you go to the end of the decade you have that “splendid little war” between the United States and Spain. Sure, there was a war in the 1900s, too, but it featured Japan and a Bloody Sunday. Plus I’m American, so huzzah! Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt, the one main draw of the next decade, got his rise to fame in that war. Heck, he had a much more dynamic nineties than aughts. Civil Service Commission to police chief to San Juan Hill to Governor. And if you extend the decade to 1900, as you should, all the way to Vice President-elect.

Oh, and Wizard of Oz wouldn’t exist without the election of 1896.

Pretty impressive for a decade to have both a depression and a war, but still be seen as an optimistic time. The Nifty Nineties, the first decade to earn a nickname. The first decade that was, well, a decade, at least as we think of them today. When the approach of a year with a magical zero at the end makes us all try to define the previous ten-year span and make stupid predictions for the next one.

Except I have one prediction that I know will come true, at least for me. Expect the next 24 hours, 365 days, and possibly even more, to listen to a hell of a lot of Barbara Walters impressions.

Tonight! On Twenty-Twenty!

Christmas Songs and The Christmas Song

· December 23, 2019 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · One Comment

‘Tis the season to be… hearing the same damn songs over and over again.

Fa la la la la, la la, la la.

I’ve written about my general dislike of December music before.

But whatever, if I have to listen to it, I might as well get a blog post out of it.

And trust me, I have to listen to it. It was bad enough when I just had a wife that liked it. At least she has the decency to listen to it in her car and when I’m out of the house. Now there’s a five-year old involved, and she has no such compunctions. I was able to put my foot down up until Thanksgiving, which blessedly was later than usual this year, but the month of December in my house has been a steady slog through one hundred variations on the same twelve songs.

Really, John Legend? You had to remake “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”? Because one full-of-himself warbler wasn’t enough? But to be fair, you might’ve outdone Lennon in one respect. I didn’t think it was possible to screech more over the top than Yoko Ono, but you’ve proven otherwise. Holy crap, Legend sings with more vibrato than an opera singer sitting on a vibrator during “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Speaking of former Beatles, someone remade Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime.” Not sure why that needed to happen.

One carol that needs to be remade is that stupid Frank Sinatra song. Because every time I hear him start “Whoopidy-doo, and dickory-dock, and don’t forget…” I feel like he needs to sing “to whip out your cock.” But he never does. And since he died twenty years ago, it’s probably never going to happen. But come on, there has to be some b-roll recording of it, right? In a vault next to the Trump pee tapes?

I just looked that Franks Sinatra song up and it’s called “The Christmas Song,” which seems to contain about as much effort as the lyrics. Or the singing.Frank Sinatra is a masterful singer. His cadence and his timbre can convey any emotion from love to sorrow to jubilation. To mailing it in, which he was clearly doing with this song. I don’t blame him, but the general “ah, go suck on a dick” is prevalent throughout.

That song, by the way, might be the worst fucking song in existence. I was going to say “the worse Christmas song” but “worst song in existence” pretty much covers that, right? At least half of the shittiest songs are December specials. That’s what you do when you know your song can’t rest on its own laurels. Throw in a reference to snow and it’ll play once a fucking hour every December for the rest of time.

And of course, let’s continue to rehash, one month out of every year, what did and did not constitute date rape in the 1940s. Say, what’s in this drink? Ask Bill Cosby.

But this year I’ve narrowed in on two specific Christmas songs. Or Christmas carols. I’m not sure about the distinction between those two designations, but whatever it is, “All I Want for Christmas is You” and “Last Christmas” are on the cusp of graduating from one to the other.

It’s hard for me to categorize these two because, in my mind, they are still too new to be Christmas classics. Of course, “too new” just means that they were released in my lifetime. If I can remember a time before Mariah Carey traipsed around in a skimpy Santa costume, and if I remember “Last Christmas” as just a minor follow-up to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” then these can’t be classics. Who cares if they came out 25 and 35 years ago, respectively. Classic rock stations shouldn’t be playing Guns n’ Roses, goddammit! And don’t get me started on all of the YouTube playlists that call 1980s music videos “Golden Oldies.”

Did the Boomers go through similar situation with all of the Beach Boys and Elvis tunes becoming standard Christmas fare as if they’d been around as long as “O Tannenbaum”? Even the aforementioned “Christmas Song” was recorded in 1957. Shit, Rudolph wasn’t even a character until Montgomery Wards needed an advertising ploy to compete with the Sears catalog during the Great Depression.

So fine, I’ll admit to my biases and acknowledge that maybe three or four decades is enough time to pass for a song to lose its novelty. In my daughter’s mind, there’s no difference between Elvis singing “Blue Christmas” and George Michael singing “Last Christmas.” Both were dead before she knew what was going on. She was about as old when George Michael died as I was when Elvis died. Is Bing Crosby still alive? Probably not.

But hey, Andrew Ridgeley is still alive! And it turns out he was playing on that song, too. I lost an argument about whether it was a Wham! song or a solo George Michael song. Turns out it was the former, so yay, Andrew Ridgeley!

But both of these  songs have problems that should prevent them from crossing over into proper carols.

Let’s start with Wham! I was predisposed to disliking Wham! in the eighties. After all, I was a hetero-normative kid growing up in the suburbs. And no, I’m not saying we knew George Michael was gay. How could anyone have known, what with the feathered hair and day-glo pink wristbands? But I didn’t know what homosexual or heterosexual were, even if “fag” was the pithy insult du jour. Or du decade.

But I had an older sister, and she though George Michael was dreamy. So did some of the girls in my grade, because that’s a thing fourth graders do. I had a major crush on the girl from Goonies. Although, oddly enough, not the hot cheerleader one, but the androgynously nerdy one. But still, if George Michael was gonna make the girls swoon, then I might as well throw him in with Andy Gibb and Sean Cassidy. To quote Frank Sinatra when he heard the Beatles, “Mice make women scream, too.”

No wait a second, that wasn’t Frank Sinatra talking about the Beatles. That was some older generation dude talking about Frank Sinatra. What comes around goes around, I suppose. Still, I bet no critic anywhere knew Sinatra had such brilliant witticisms as “Coming down the chimney down” up his sleeve.

What does that even mean? Is it like an escalator, where there’s an up chimney and a down chimney? Or is “down” such a powerful indicator that it must be repeated? Did somebody ask a question in between that has since been lost? “He’ll be coming down the chimney.” “Where?” “Down.” Although chances are, that person would be asking about chimney, not down. But whatever. Whoppidy-doo and suck on my cock.

The biggest problem with “Last Christmas” is that it isn’t really a Christmas song. Yes, it presumably takes place at Christmas, but there’s nothing to distinguish it. If he sang “Last Arbor Day, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away,” would it change the basic feel of the song? As opposed to Sinatra, where hanging up a sock for Fourth of July just means you’re doing laundry.

“Last Christmas” is the song equivalent of Die Hard. And yes, I know this is the biggest debate that is not a debate Next week, is a hot dog a sandwich?

When asked, I come firmly down on the side of “Die Hard” being a Christmas movie. But it’s kind of disingenuous. What I really mean is that I’d like to mix “Die Hard” in with the normal drivel of Christmas movies. I can only see Santa save a troubled marriage or a rude guy learning the real meaning of Christmas so many times before I need me some Hans Gruber falling from Nakatomi Plaza.

In reality, “Die Hard” is a movie that takes place at Christmas, but it isn’t a country movie. If you wanted to bust it out in June, nobody would look at you sideways. As opposed to, say, “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” which can only be watched after Thanksgiving. The same can be said for “Last Christmas.” It’s a song about a bitter jilted love that just happened to take place last Christmas. It should not become a permanent fixture.

To say nothing of the fact that George Michael died on Christmas day, so it feels kinda creepy to hear him tell us that, on a previous Christmas, he gave us his heart. Am I to assume he was an organ donor?

The same gripe doesn’t apply to “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

Again, I was predisposed to dislike this song. I was a hetero-normative college student in 1994. My musical diet was a steady supply of “MTV’s Alternative Nation” mixed in with the occasional classic rock. Mariah Carey? Are you fucking kidding me? She might as well have been Celine Dion.

That being said, when that video came on MTV or VH-1, the four dudes I lived with might grumble a fair amount, but we never turned the channel. If Amy Grant or Joan Osborne came on, we couldn’t switch to ESPN fast enough. But Mariah Carey? Somebody would say, “Not again,” and then we’d all sit there in silence, staring at the screen. We might or might not have then excused ourselves to the privacy of our separate rooms.

Because, in case you missed the subtle undertone there, Mariah Carey is attractive. But that wasn’t enough to get us to stay on the channel. Heck, Amy Grant is cute, but that doesn’t make me want to convert to born-againism. And if any other Mariah Carey video came on, not that I can remember any other Mariah Carey songs, we wouldn’t be watching. But holy crap, “All I Want for Christmas is You” is a whole ‘nother level of hormones. Bear in mind this was before every Halloween costume went “sexy,” so “Sexy Santa Snowgirl” was profound for this twenty year-old.

Even if she would only show one side of her face.

My biggest problem with this song has nothing to do with the beat or the lyrics. It’s totally a Christmas tune. It’s about getting presents and making lists and even mentions Santa Claus and snow. Check, check, and check. My main problem is that, if it becomes a Christmas standard, then everyone’s going to start covering it. They’re going to sing it door-to-door. And Mariah Carey’s voice can be matched by maybe three human beings on the planet.

At least the professionals are aware of this. You’ll note that, unlike a song like “Yesterday,” where the goal of most covers is to be as faithful to the original as possible, covers of “All I Want for Christmas” try to change as much as possible. Speed it up, slow it down, change the key. Whatever you do, don’t lead the listeners to expect the vocal riffs at the end. Even Idina Menzel, one of the three aforementioned human beings who might be able to go toe-to-toe, or tonsil-to-tonsil, with Mariah Carey, makes sure nobody’s going to mistake her version for the original. She puts her vocal riffs at the beginning and turns it into a rockabilly beat with an understated spoken-word ending.

It’s the amateurs who don’t show the song its proper respect. And if it ever enters the standard rotation of “Silver Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” then it shall be woe unto thine ears and a pox upon the house of Carey.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Who in their right mind would try attempt such a thing? But you will only ask that if you’ve never been to karaoke night. Because Steve Perry is another one of those once-in-a-generation voices, but that doesn’t stop millions of drunks from belting “Don’t Stop Believin'” out of their asses on a nightly basis.

The same goes for Mariah Carey. We have a neighborhood gathering every December at our local park. It’s dubbed as a food bank donation and caroling, except the people that organize it only show up for about three songs, then they grab all the food and run, presumably with a tax deduction to make the angels weep. They bring a portable microphone/speaker set and encourage the kids to sing into it. They hand out lyric sheets that the grown-ups politely refuse because who the fuck doesn’t know the words to “Jingle Bells,” but then they sing some made-up bullshit third verse that nobody knows about Fannie Bright or Fannie Flagg or Maggie May. And we all mumble through them like it’s the Apostle’s Creed and then belt out the chorus like we were just reserving our voice for the good part.

Anyway, when they were packing up, the lady running things sang another couple songs through the microphone. One of them was “All I Want for Christmas is You.” It was a karaoke version, something which shouldn’t exist for the sake of all mankind. C’mon California, you can ban freelance journalism but not karaoke versions of songs that should never be sung in a karaoke bar? It would go much farther in protecting our collective health than banning second-hand smoke.

Anyway, she was an above average singer, so for most of the song it wasn’t bad. Grooving, fun. Some people hummed or sang along to the approachable parts of the catchy song. But then the end approached and I looked at the singer, wondering if she was going to try for it or take advantage of the escape valve. After all, she could sing the final “yoooooooouuuuuuu” an octave lower and it fits perfectly fine. Our ears and the additional years tacked onto the end of my life would thank her.

But when I looked at her, it was obvious she wasn’t takin’ no bullshit lower octave. She sucked in her breath, raising the mic above her, and lifting her head toward the heavens in both arrogance and apology. She was preparing to tear down the walls of Jericho. Bang the eardrum loudly, Joshua!

It’s that moment in a football game when the place-kick holder stands up and you realize, holy crap, they’re going for an all-or-nothing fake kick. You see the defenders already past the offensive line and, as you become precognitive. You can see the entire crash-and-burn before it starts to unfold, even if the scrawny punter doesn’t see the linebacker bearing down on him.

This lady never saw the three-hundred pound gorilla of Mariah Carey’s eight-octave range.

Have you ever seen that South Park where John Stamos’s brother couldn’t quite hit the high note in “Loving You”?

Do do do do do-doo. Uuuhhhhhhhhhh.

So yeah, I have some problems with these two songs becoming December regulars. Because, as curmudgeony as I am about Christmas songs in general, and as little inclined as I was to listen when these two came out, I actually like them. And I’d like to keep it that way.

Nobody ever remade “Jingle Bell Rock” or “Little Saint Nick.” Nor does anyone bust these out when they’re going door-to-door.Not everything can be a Rudolph or a Frosty or an “Away in the Manger.” Although really, amateurs shouldn’t be singing that last one, either.

Let’s put “Last Christmas” and “All I Want for Christmas is You” into that same genre of less-is-more.

But somebody, please anybody!, needs to remake “The Christmas Song.”

And put in the real lyrics!

Best Buffett in Vegas

· November 19, 2019 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · No Comments

Just hopped down to Vegas for the weekend to catch a Jimmy Buffett show.

Not sure I’ll do a concert review this year. I’ve only seen two shows , and they’re both bands I’ve seen and written about before.

But we traveled to see both bands, so I guess I can write about the travels and the concert together.

I saw Mumford & Sons in South Carolina in March. Did I forget to write about that? Hmm…

South Carolina was very Caroliney. Lots of barbecue places, although most were mediocre until we found an excellent one in Columbia. Also, Columbia is the home of the University of South Carolina. Home of the Cocks. I guaran-fucking-tee I’ve written about my love of the Cocks before.

Wait a second. That came out wrong.

And the concert was awesome. I think I’ve written about Mumford at least twice before. They are spectacular in concert. In fact, I’m seeing them again in a couple months. This time nearer to my home.

But enough about Mumford and the Carolinas. Let’s talk about Jimmy Buffett in Vegas.

Phil Collins was also in Vegas that night. We thought about trying to fit them both in, but their concerts started within a half-hour of each other. Really, Aging White Dudes? Are you not aware that some of your fans might want to double dip?

Oh well, I can’t tell you anything about Phil Collins. But boy, if you’ve ever wondered if there are any places that might make Buffett fans more Buffett, well, I found it for you.

Parrotheads Descend Upon Sin City.

I’ve been to Jimmy Buffett concerts before. I’ve been to Vegas before. Both are experiences in their own regard. So when I saw that Jimmy would be playing in Vegas, well, I just had to go.

Evidently I wasn’t the only one.

Holy shit!

You wouldn’t think a single fan base could make a dent on the Vegas ambiance. Vegas has a few hundred thousand visitors on a normal weekend, right? Some people are there to see Reba or the Jonas Brothers or Barry Manilow or, occasionally, Phil Collins. Heck, I’m guessing the mummified corpse of Frank Sinatra is performing somewhere. Not to mention the sporting events, be they NBA All-Star Games or Ritualistic Ear-Biting.

In addition there are, allegedly, other recreational activities that might draw people to the middle of a fucking desert.

Normally, any one set of those travelers don’t make much of an impact. The Air Supply fans and the Drake fans each orbit around amongst each other without affecting the overall gravitational pull that is Vegas. I bet when Tupac got shot, he was right next to some drunk frat dude with an ironic trucker hat.

So I didn’t expect to see the neon footprint of Parrotheads wherever I went. In fact, it was so far out of my mind, that when there were four people dressed like pirates when we took the monorail (MONORAIL!) to the Flamingo area for brunch, I didn’t even think they might be there for the concert that was still nine hours away. I just thought, “Huh. Pirates.” It’s Vegas. What’re you gonna do?

But as we took the skybridge from the Monorail (MONORAIL!) station into the Flamingo, we saw a giant banner for a “Son of a Son of a Pool Party,” to be held from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm.

Now, you might think this is just a great cross-promotion. Get all the people that are heading your way for the concert later tonight to show up early, spend some extra money. And, yeah, to a certain extent, that’s what was going on.

Except not entirely. Because the concert was at the MGM Grand, not the Flamingo. Granted, I’m never really sure which casinos are currently affiliated with which other casinos. But when I was in the Flamingo, I could use my Caesar’s loyalty card. Then again, when we told the aggressive timeshare salesguy that we were staying at Hilton, he said, “That’s our competitor. How about I give you a deal to stay here next time?” This despite the fact that it’s always been known as the Flamingo Hilton and there was still a sign at the Uber drop-off that referenced “Flamingo by Hilton.”

Regardless of if it’s a Hilton or a Caesar’s, I don’t think either of those are affiliated with MGM Grand. So while this was an attempt to get the Parrotheads out early to spend some extra cash, it was not an attempt by the property where the concert was actually happening. It’s counter-promotion, like the Puppy Bowl at halftime of the Super Bowl. Except instead of half-time, it’s beforehand. And instead of cute puppies, it’s drunks who should have stopped wearing swimwear like that about thirty years ago. Present company included.

I never found out which pool had a Phil Collins pre-party. It might be tough with all of the bald heads.

Then again, the Flamingo does have the Vegas Margaritaville restaurant. So the symbiosis did make a certain amount of sense. In fact, it’s a bit of brilliance. There’s a reason Jimmy Buffett is one of the most valuable musicians despite never having a number one hit. He knows that his fans are in town, he knows they like to drink, and he knows they tend to run older and higher on the socio-economic scale than the average fan base. And they can’t all fit inside the Margaritaville restaurant. So how about a pool party?

Oh yeah, he also opened a weed dispensary in town with the same name as his band, the Coral Reefers. Its grand opening was the weekend of the concert. Not bad for a dumb redneck from Alabama who just sings stupid party songs.

But the Parrotheads weren’t just at the pool party. We went across the street to Bobby Flay’s restaurant, Mesa, and wouldn’t you know it, Parrotheads everywhere. We went to see Potted Potter, a show at Bally’s, at 2:00 in the afternoon, and there were Hawaiian shirts everywhere. And hey, dude in front of me? Do you mind taking off your foam shark hat so that I can see the Ron Weasley wig?

To be fair, there might’ve been a lot of Phil Collins fans traipsing around the Strip as well. But they’re not as easy to spot.

I actually felt under-dressed. Or maybe I was overdressed, seeing as I had socks. But my major faux-pas was my lack of a Hawaiian.

I packed a Hawaiian, of course. I think of you show up to a Jimmy Buffett show without a Hawaiian shirt, there’s a good chance you’ll end up in Parrotjail.

And heck, half my wardrobe is Hawaiian. The Tommy Bahama outlet store is my own personal, inexpensive Disneyland.

But my Hawaiian (with parrots, natch) was still back in the hotel room. Because the concert was still over nine hours away. And I was going to be eating and drinking in between now and then.

These people… were they going to stay out all day? Were they going to start drinking heavily and still make the concert at 8:00? This is Vegas, can I bet the over/under on how many of them aren’t going to make it to the show? Also, any chance I can figure out what seat the dude with the balloon-flamingo hat and the “pet” foam shark on the pipe cleaner-esque “leash” has? Because I’ve kinda got nosebleed seats and would like to know where there’s likely to be an empty seat tonight.

Did I mention it’s easy to spot the Parrotheads?

But here’s another cool thing about Jimmy Buffett. This wasn’t the last I saw of the pirates from the monorail (MONORAIL! ) or flamingo-balloon-hat lady or Pet Shark Dude. They showed up at the show. Just maybe not in person.

If you’ve never seen a Jimmy Buffett show before, he usually plays in front of a giant HD screen that shows pictures and videos that go with whatever song he’s singing. Lots of tropical beaches, bucolic mountain vistas, and fun-in-the-sunners. “License to Chill” featured a video selfie of Jimmy Buffett kayaking. “He Went to Paris” had shots of the Eiffel Tower.

“It’s Five o’ Clock Somewhere” started with a clock with a whole bunch of fives. Then it showed some boat drinks. Then a pool. The pool totally looked familiar… Holy crap! I know that pirate!

What followed was three minutes of footage from the pool party that day. The pool party at a competitor’s hotel. How cool is that? All you have to do is spend money for his concert and at the pool party put on by his restaurant, and maybe his pot dispensary, and you can see yourself up on stage at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Shit, to do that at a Bruce Springsteen concert, you have to be Courtney Cox.

One more kinda cool thing. There was no opening band. Tickets said 8:00 and by 8:17, Jimmy was out on stage. He’s gotta be considerate of all of the old fogeys he made drink for ten straight hours.

He played for two hours, with only a 6-minute break to go grab a drink or a what have you.

I know the break was about six minutes because he played a video to keep us entertained. The video featured a ukulele player playing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” complete with lyrics so that we could all sing along. And sing along we did. You haven’t heard horror tinged with comedy tinged with “aww, that was sweet” until you’ve heard 20,000 people try to time “Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!) Bismillah! No, we will not let you go.”

Why did Jimmy have this random video of a random ukulele player playing a Queen song? Because the guy had opened for him in Dublin. How cool is that? Buffett liked the guy and liked the performance, so he gave him free exposure to this crowd. And sure, that’s often the point of an opening band, but who the hell pays attention to the opening band? That’s just background music for getting frisked by security, right? And those assholes usually end up playing way too long. Some even get surly that we aren’t there to see them and are only paying marginal attention to get a clue as to how much longer their asses are going to be wasting our earspace.

But this guy, Jake Shimabukuro, is playing right in the middle of the show, when we’re all in our seats. And he’s only playing one song, so we don’t get tired of him. And it’s a song we all know and can sing along to. And even better, he didn’t even have to show up! That’s the fucking trifecta of expanding an audience right there.

If only I could get Jimmy Buffett to promote my blog.

Mid-Eighties Circus. 

We usually stay at the south end of the Strip, but this time we were on the north end. So I was able to check out the Sahara, which has been refurbished since the corpse of Frank Sinatra played there. And Circus Circus, which most assuredly has not.

I’ve been coming to Vegas since the early eighties, when my age was still in single-digits. And we always stopped or stayed at Circus Circus. Back then, my mom could give me $10 in quarters and I’d go full Latchkey for HOURS on the upper floor. Carnival games, arcade, circus acts. What’s not to love? I remember feeling sorry for my poor mom, who had to be downstairs in the boring casino, missing all the fun up there.

Back then, Circus Circus was actually a destination, a worthy anchor of the northern end of the Strip. There were maybe only ten casinos, most of which had been there long enough to have streets named after them. Circus Circus didn’t have its own street, but it was an anchor, nonetheless.

Boy, its hallowed days are gone.

Unfortunately, this affects their business model, as well. Because there wasn’t shit going on on the Saturday morning we went there.

Those who have followed my travels before know we sometimes bring our daughter’s stuffed animal on our trips, so they can “take pictures” and “report back to her.” Except on this short weekend away, where we went straight from work to the airport, oops!, we left Giraffey at home. No problem, we figure, we’re staying by Circus Circus. Let’s go get her a new friend.

Except the upstairs wasn’t open until 10:00 AM.

WHAT? Sure, maybe the circus acts aren’t going to run 24 hours, but the carnival games? And I know they need employees to run those games. But at least the video arcade should be open, right?

Wait, they don’t do video arcades anymore? Is Pac-Man no longer chic? Boy, where have I been? Downstairs in the boring casino, I guess.

Speaking of the casino, we figured maybe we could just gamble for a little bit until the upstairs opens. I just needed to get a rewards card and… never mind. The reward card center doesn’t open until 10:00 AM, either.

So much for being the city that doesn’t sleep. At least one end of the Strip not only sleeps, but sleeps in as well.

I just threw five bucks in a machine while Wife visited the bathroom. Without the benefit of Big Brother tracking me.

When she returned, I had it back up to five bucks. So yay! I broke even. Although if I had been using a rewards card, I would’ve made a point or two. Whatever, I just pushed the button to collect my winnings.

Then something crazy happened. Instead of the familiar dinging sound I’ve come to expect when the ticket prints, there was a strange whirring. Then something shot out the bottom of the slot machine.

Holy Shit! Those are quarters! Coming OUT of a slot machine. It really IS 1986 in here!

When I realized what was happening, the things went through my mind in rapid succession:

1. What the hell is happening? Where is my fucking ticket? Is this thing possessed? It’s, like, spewing out its innards!

2. OMG! Those are quarters. How fucking cool is that? It’s so retro. Like I’m a fresh- faced 21 year old again (at least according to my i.d. at the time). Tonight were going to party like it’s 1999, baby!

3. What the fuck am I supposed to do with 20 quarters? How fucking annoying is that? I hate coins. If I have a dollar bill, it’s worth a dollar to me. If I have 99 cents, I might as well have nothing. In my world, ten dollars in coins is worth less than a single dollar bill. Because the coins in my pocket at the end of the day just go on the nightstand to die. Or they stay in my pockets where the laundry fairy takes them as compensation for cleaning the sacrificial dirty pants I left in her hamper-shaped altar. Back in the old days, when my i.d. said I was 21, I used to hold onto coins until I came to Nevada, but now slots don’t take coins anymore, so the one value coins had is now gone. Wait a second. If these slots pay out quarters, maybe they’ll… Nope. No coin slots. They take in paper money and pay out coins. Even when you win, you lose.

So I grabbed one of those buckets next to the machine. Remember those? Not that I needed it for a whopping twenty coins, but dammit, they done pissed me off with their coin bullshit. They’ll be lucky if they get this bucket back without my DNA in it.

Don’t get me wrong. The idea behind the retro slot machine is a good one. Think of all the all of the old video game consoles on the market these days. But a ticket-or-coin option would’ve been appreciated. Or maybe at least a warning sign.

Unfortunately it still wasn’t 10:00, so after cashing (coining) in my winnings, we headed for the Monorail (MONORAIL!). Still had to get a new stuffed animal. So we high-tailed it to Margaritaville to buy a couple of plush parrots. I’m sure Jimmy Buffett appreciates our business.

Daughter ended up naming the parrots Jimmy and Buffett. She then took them to show-and-tell at school. CPS, I await your call.

People. A couple shorties to finish off. Two people who stuck out. Maybe not for the best of reasons. Unless you are entertained by idiots, in which case, they stood out for the BEST reasons!

First was the guy sitting next to me at Mesa. He had clearly watched a fair amount of Food Network in whatever podunk area of the country he came from. And being at Bobby Flay’s restaurant gave him carte blanche, or rather creme freche, to make random requests out of his ass.

His wife ordered some pink concoction. Maybe it was a Cosmo, but it looked foofier. He tried it to see if he liked it before ordering a drink of his own. Of course, the server had to stand there for the experiment. Diner decided it was a bit too sweet and wondered if there was something a little less sugary.

Boy, that’s a tough one. Are there any drinks less sweet than a Cosmo? Can’t think of a single one. Sorry. We all know that cosmos are the driest drinks around, right? Certainly not Martinis or Old Fashoneds. A straight shot of scotch whiskey might as well be a swizzle stick when compared to the stifling bitterness of the Cosmopolitan. The mummified corpse of Dean Martin drank cosmos all the time.

He then asked if they could take a drink like that and add some bitters. I wanted to jump out of my seat to assist the server’s explanation that bitters aren’t actually bitter. But whatever. Dude probably heard it on a Bobby Flay show once, so who are we to question his culinary knowledge.

I didn’t pay attention long enough to hear what he ordered. The next time he caught my attention was when his burger was delivered. Tight before he asked if they had any “straight mayonnaise.”

Straight mayonnaise? I didn’t even know condiments had sexual proclivities. Sure, mayonnaise might look like semen, but I’m sure these Vegas condiments are only creaming meat, as God intended, and not some other condiment. Then again, I don’t partake in mayonnaise much, so maybe I’m just out of the loop on the Mayonnaise Agenda. Or is it a War on Mayo-mas?

But what do you expect from someone who orders mayonnaise? No mayo deserves to be anywhere near a well-cooked burger, regardless of whose bread it likes to butter.

It turns out, of course, that this guy wanted regular, unadulterated mayonnaise. None of that garlic aioli crap. Unflavored. If he’s going to dip or smother his food in sweet lard, he wants the pure stuff. Black tar heroin.

I only hope he didn’t want the mayo for those fries on his plate. If I end up yacking in my Irish Coffee, I’m adding it to his tab.

But no, the server explains, they don’t have straight mayonnaise. The closest they have is a subtle aioli.

Food connoisseur passed, disappointed.

Umm… not to side with Patron Guy in this endeavor, but if you have garlic aioli, how do you not have mayonnaise? What’s the base of the aioli? I hope Bobby Flay isn’t shipping his dips in from far away.

Go ahead, Server, double-check on that mayonnaise. It might be listed as creme fraiche.

Dude number two came running up to our Uber driver as we were heading to the airport Sunday morning. Where, he wanted to know, might he watch an NFL game.

Uber Driver feigned ignorance. “No hablo ingles.” Pretty convincing, too, as Wife and I were worried we might have trouble communicating with him. Not that you need to communicate with your Uber driver. That’s what Google Maps is for. But still, sometimes it’s more convenient to explain where we’re going.

Turns out he knew enough English to say and hear what he needed to say and hear. And I’m pretty sure he could understand “TV” and “Futbol.” Even if he pointed to where one could watch soccer, he’d be doing Dude a solid.

But that’s not his fucking job. He doesn’t need to tell Dude where to watch an NFL game on a Sunday morning in Las Vegas. Even if the answer is “Literally Anywhere.”

Seriously Dude, you see that high-rise buildings? Or that one? Right, the ones with the neon.  They’re called “Casinos.” And in these “Casinos” are things called “Sports Books.” The “Sports Books” take “Bets” on “Games” and then have giant “TV’s” where you can “Watch.” So if you’re looking for a particular game, pick a direction, any direction, and go into a high rise, any high rise. Then look for the wall with twenty giant screens on it.

They have NFL Sunday Ticket, too, so you can even watch obscure teams like… what’s that? You want to watch the Raiders? You mean the team that’s going to be the Las Vegas Raiders next year?

Yeah, I’m guessing you could watch them on local TV.

Maybe even at Circus Circus.

Everything I Needed to Know (I Learned in the Parking Lot)

· November 5, 2019 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , · No Comments

The school I work at has a Fall Break after the first quarter. It’s great. I get a random week off that nobody else  gets off. Including my daughter, who is now in kindergarten.

So this week, I’ve actually still been in the house when she wakes up. I’ve let Wife go into work early since she’s usually on “get the kid ready” duty.

And I’ve now entered the very strange world of “child drop off and pick up” at elementary school.

Seriously people, how the fuck hard can this be?

I had dropped off once before, when I took her first day of kindergarten off work. She’s Late Start, so only half of the kindergartners were showing up at that time, about thirty kids total. The othergrades, as well as the other forty kindergartners, were already inside their respective classrooms, so I didn’t get to see too much of the crazy. My lasting impression was that there was WAY too much athleisure wear amongst the mothers. But whatever, I live in suburbia hell, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see all the stay-at-homers jonesing to get rid of the anchor that’s been weighing down their social lives for the last five years.  Now they can finally get back to the  Pilates that allowed them to entice their hedge-fund husbands in the first place.

Pick up on the first day of school was also a bit subdued, so it wasn’t until this past week that I truly saw the insanity that is drop-off and pick-up at a suburban elementary school.

And really, let me just say before I get too much further, that Late Start Kindergarten is a fucking weird-ass time warp. Three days a week, Daughter starts school at 10:05 am. On Mondays and Fridays, she starts at the regular school time of 8:50 am. What a great introduction to her next thirteen years of institutional indoctrination.

“Hey kids, don’t get too used to any one way of doing things! Routines are for suckers! And, oh hey, did we mention there’s a rally this Friday? What’s that? You’re having a test this Friday. Just put it off till Monday. I’m sure the students will do fine.”

Sorry, that might’ve been a little more teacher bitching than student.

Of course, the early starts don’t show up late twice a week to be equal opportunity annoying. Because early start equals early release, and then they get to have a margarita meeting. Uh huh. I’m sure you’re doing a ton of cooperative planning after school on Friday, kindergarten teacher. Wink, wink.

But that late start, on the days that she has to do it, are fucking brutal. What the heck kind of school starts at 10:05? That’s just early enough to not be able to do something substantive or make plans beforehand. We can’t go to a movie or mini golf. We can’t start an art project or teach the kiddo how to write a blog post.

But it’s late enough where I can’t just let her get ready for school at a leisurely pace. Seriously, I can have the kid ready to go by 8:00. 7:30 if she’s going to daycare in time to ride the bus. But even if I let the kid dawdle and get distracted, even without gentle nudging or voice-of-God “How freaking hard is it for you to brush your freaking teeth?”, she’s still going to be ready to go by 9:00. Then what the fuck am I supposed to do for an hour?

Naturally, I just plop her in front of the TV. What better way to get that brain geared up for a focused day of learning than two episodes of “Vampirina”?

Then it’s into the car for delivery time.

It occurs to me that, when I was Daughter’s age, I walked to school. I lived about as far from my elementary school as we currently live from Daughter’s. Given the rules I grew up under, she’d be a walker. Hell, everybody would be a walker, because elementary schools don’t do buses anymore.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to go all old man on you. No hiking my pants up to my nipples and saying that back in my day we hiked a hundred miles up a mountain just to find some snow to walk through. Uphill in both directions.

Quite the opposite. Like, holy shit, I have a five-year old now. Who in the fuck would think she can be responsible for getting herself to school? She can barely remember to go to the bathroom before heading to her state-mandated, hermetically-sealed, black-box-constructed car seat. Hell, I get worried when she wants to go to the mailbox by herself. What if some Formula 1 driver is driving two hundred miles per hour down the sidewalk of our six-house cul-de-sac? No fucking way I’d let her walk to school unless it was right next door. And even then, I’d put a GPS tracker on her.

Shoot, I wouldn’t even feel safe with her walking to the corner to get on a school bus to take her the rest of the way. Maybe that’s why schools stopped putting fifty kids in a huge death contraption driven by a loadie.

But back in 1979, my mom said, “See ya later,” and I hoofed it five blocks down one hill, then took a left and went up over another hill. Or sometimes I took the short-cut, a trail that went near bee hives and shit. And that was before California changed the birthday cutoff, so I was still four when kindergarten started. I was six months younger than my daughter was on her first day of school. What the fuck were you thinking, Baby Boomers?

Look, I know y’all were (and still are) the Me generation, and my generation became the Latchkey Kids and y’all are the reason we now have strict laws about when and where children must be supervised and that they need to be in a car seat when they get dropped off at high school graduation. I know all your hippie asses just needed to get back to smoking your weed after your five-year sabbatical, but really? You thought a bunch of four-year-olds should be responsible for getting their own asses to school? Put down the bong.

In my own mother’s defense, she said she freaked out and watched me walk to school from the back porch for the majority of my kindergarten year. She knew that I was a little spaz that was prone to simple distraction. One time in preschool, we were walking to the beach and I walked into a parked car. Oops.

Good thing I’m older now and am not likely to distraction and/or tangents, right?

Sorry, what was I writing about?

Oh, right. Student drop-off.

Morning drop-off is pretty simple. Kindergarten parents are supposed to stay with our children outside the gates until the teacher comes to pick them up. The rest of the students can go through the gates to wander around the school. Supervised, of course. What do you think this is, 1979?

So the drop-off line of cars moves pretty quickly. A car (or daycare bus) drives up to the curb, the back door opens, the student unbuckles himself from the seventeen-point harness car seat, and walks toward the school. Then the parent drives off for some Pilates and weed.

And truthfully, I don’t know all the nuances and protocols of the drop-off line since it’s only for non-kindergartners. For now, we have to park a half-block away and stand there with my kid until the teacher deigns to finish her morning constitutional.

Then there’s that really awkward moment after the teacher’s taken our children from us. Do I leave as soon as my child’s made it past the gate? Should I watch her make it all the way into the classroom? What happens when my kid’s first in line but the parent next to me’s kid is last? Do I shout out, “Peace out, motherfucker! You snooze, you lose!” and then run for my car? Technically, he’s handed his kid off, too. Are we both free to leave?

Am I supposed to talk to those other parents? I’ve come to know some of them because our kids have gone to birthday parties together and such. But it’s not like we have much to talk about. Should I ask the athleisure-wear lady where I can get some dank yoga? Or should I inquire if the unemployed father has found a job in the last 24 hours? Or would it be more appropriate to ask him about the best porn sites are these days?

Evidently none of us know how to act. Because we just put hands in pockets and shuffle away, trying not to make eye contact with each other. Like that awkward “both people leaving from the two sides of the glory hole at the same time” moment. Because now we’re just a bunch of grown-ups standing around outside an elementary school. And I didn’t even bring my trenchcoat!

So I just shield my face from prying eyes and high-tail it back to my car, past the long line of cars still dropping their kids off at the curb. Tardy much?

Then comes pick-up time. And this is where I’m fortunate that I have to pick up my kid at the gate. Because that long line of cars is now stretching to infinity. That whole “slow down long enough to kick the kid out” of drop-off is no longer present. Now they have to sit and wait for school to end. And wait. And wait. And wait.

The curb fits maybe ten cars at a time. So the first ten cars to get there can just chill and wait for school to get out. Presumably, they can turn off their car, because I can only assume they got there a half-hour after school started. Maybe they just dropped their kid off and never moved. Squatter’s rights.

Again, I don’t know what the protocol is for the non-kindergartners. I assume the kids get out and have to walk up and down the curb to see if their parent happened to get one of the sweet spots today. And if not, do they just hang out? And I assume that once one car leaves, it is immediately snatched up. Kinda like pick-up at the airport. And we all know how much of a shitshow that is. Now replace all the exhausted travelers with squirrely five- to eleven-year olds and, I’m sure you’ll agree, NOTHING bad could happen.

The rest of the cars are behind those go-getters stretching far into the street in both directions. Fortunately for both the children’s safety and the merging cars, this well-oiled machine is moving along at a glacial rate. And of course, all the cars remain turned on and idling. Huzzah for the environment!

One time at pick-up, I unintentionally tracked it. I pulled up and parked my car on the main street, about fifty yards from the intersection with the chock-full-in-both-directions street that Daughter’s school is on the corner of. As I was getting out of my car, Daughter’s daycare bus rolled up.

Wife and I have been curious about how the bus pickup process worked. So I figured this was a good chance to see how the daycare bus picks up the other kids. How they line up, how they board, what kind of Quaaludes the driver is on to have to sit through this idle hell each day. You know, the stuff that’ll make me feel better on the days I can’t be there.

I crossed the street right behind the bus, which had come to a stop six or seven cars away from the merge. I walked into the school, headed to the kindergarten pick-up space outside the gate, double-checked back on the process of the bus. It hadn’t moved. Of course it hadn’t moved! No students had been released from school yet. None of these cars would be moving for another ten minutes. It’s like the old “Camping out at Ticketmaster” days. .Not sure why all the cars are still running, but whatever. Maybe they are hoping that this is the day all the kids get out early.

The only thing that had changed was the line behind the daycare bus, which now stretched past where my car was parked. Seriously, how long have those first few cars been here?

After checking a few times, I got distracted. I don’t remember why. Maybe I ran into the glory hole parent from earlier. We shuffled our feet and looked at the ground and asked how lunch was and if either of us got anything done after the entire morning was screwed up by a 10:05 drop-off.

Kid was let out. Huzzah!

As I’m walking her away from the school I look at the curb. No sign of the bus yet. Bus is still out in the street. Cool, cool. Maybe I can still see how this whole thing works.

“What are you looking at, Daddy?”

“Oh, I was just curious where you get picked up by they day care bus.”

“Want me to show you?”

Absolutely!

Daughter walks me all the way down to the far end of the curb. There’s a little awning there with some students gathering underneath. Daughter says hi to a couple of kids.

The curb is still filled with idling cars, but not very many children are getting into them. Most of the children are tromping up and down the byway like we are. There seems to be a logjam. The earliest parents seem to be correlated with the latest children. Do go-getters beget lollygaggers?

We head back toward Daughter’s classroom. Still no bus. I can’t really delay her much longer without an explanation, and she’s way too young to comprehend glory holes, so we just head back to my car.

We pass the bus. Daughter waves to the driver. We cross the street just behind the bus. It’s idling, maybe six or seven cars away from the merge point.

Yep, you got it. It hasn’t fucking moved at all. I want to ask Daughter how fucking late the bus usually picks her up. Unfortunately she little concept of time.

But I should be able to extrapolate it or l out on my own. Let’s see, it’s been fifteen minutes and the bus has moved about five feet. By my calculation, they should be picking her up about a half-hour past next June.

But I’ll never know for sure, because after a super illegal u-turn to teach Daughter to respect the power of moving automobiles, I was off like Donkey Kong. At least, to help foster Daughter’s respect for the dangers of driving, I waited until I was at LEAST a quarter of the way through the illegal u-turn amongst children and parents before checking my phone for the latest porn site. Also, I had to wait until I had popped the bus driver’s qualuudes.

In all seriousness, I’m pretty sure I was home before the bus made it to the curb. Which means that all those other cars of all those other parents were still sitting in that line, too.

And the daycare bus has an excuse. It’s their fucking job. What the hell are all of those parents doing? Many of them were there before me, presumably because they don’t want to waste time. Except they don’t really care about the wasted time once they’re there. Or else they’d park and walk their athleisure-wear asses the half-block to and from school. It’s kinda like pilates. Then they’d be home by now, smoking their weed.

Then maybe the daycare bus could pick my kid up before midnight.

New math, indeed.

Tax Error in my Favor

· October 23, 2019 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , · No Comments

About a month ago, something weird showed up in my mailbox.

Money.

Okay, not actual cash money, but a check.

And no, this isn’t a post about this obsolete technology that is a check. I’min my middle ages. Not only do I know what a check is, I remember a time where I had to pay all of my bills by check. Heck, I still write a couple checks a month myself. One to transfer money from my personal account to the joint family account and one for my car payment. Because for some reason, I can never remember my login for the bank that the car loan is through. Plus those checks I had printed up ten years ago gotta be good for something. And maybe if I use enough of them, I’ll be able to order new ones with my actual address on them.

So it wasn’t the fact that I saw an actual check that was surprising. It was that this particular check came from the federal government. Those checks look extra special, don’t they? It’s obvious straight away that this ain’t no jury summons. This ain’t no social security statement that tells me how much money I might be making if I retire, but only if I bring them the heads of twenty-five Baby Boomers who are totally fucking up the accounting model that they made when the life expectancy was 68.

But straight up cash from the government is obvious. They make that tell-tale rainbow color visible through the little window on the envelope, so that, even though you’re only looking at your name and address, you know there is a “Pay to the order of” written just out of view. And sure enough, this turns out to be bona fide money coming the government into my grubby little bank account.

Not sure WHY I’m getting money from the government on a random autumn afternoon, but hey, if you don’t ask questions, nothing bad can happen, right? Clearly El Presidente hasn’t been listening in on my private conversations. Then again, I did criticize California in a blog post once, so I guess that counts for a bonus these days.

This check wasn’t coming from just any old part of the federal government, though. The return address wasn’t for the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of the Interior. Not even the Department of the Treasury.

This one came from the Internal Revenue Service.

Yikes! I didn’t even know they sent checks out. I thought they were a black hole that sucked finances in, never to return. Or to be put to good use. Unless we bring back Space Force.

So we opened the envelope, and there it was. A check for roughly $356. No explanation whatsoever. Just two line items on the check stub: Tax overpayment ($349) and interest ($7).

So Wife and I begin the conversation. When might we have overpaid?

We got dinged for underpaying once. We had dutifully filed our taxes in, I’m going to guess, 2013? And then, nice and timely, we get a notice in something like 2017, saying they didn’t like one of the deductions we had taken. So now, four years later, they ask if we happen to have all the proper documentation for it. It turns out we did, because Wife is way better about holding on to shit than I am. But IRS still didn’t like what we said, so they took a couple dollars off but we still had to pay them a shit-ton of money. Plus interest, because it’s clearly our fault that they waited four years to make up some cockamamie bullshit.

Hey, Space Force ain’t gonna build itself, am I right?

But this time we’re facing the opposite situation. Now they’re saying we overpaid. My first thought was they were belatedly accepting our explanation and returning our penalty. But no, Wife told me the amount we owed the IRS back then was substantially higher than the amount the IRS was now paying us. Shocker, huh?

So we held on to the check. We were too scared to cash it. Maybe if we never cashed it, they couldn’t charge us interest when they realized they had sent it out, right? I mean sure, they’re much more likely to charge us for the interest we could have been earning if we had chosen to cash the check. But still, it might be a felony to cash a check that the government didn’t mean to send us. Maybe if we never cash it, they’ll never know they sent it out.

Or maybe we’ll just be a $350 annoyance that makes it so they can never properly balance their books. Like when Rickey Henderson hung his million-dollar bonus check on the wall instead of cashing it, making the Oakland A’s budget a million dollars off for more than a year.

Except the A’s were trying to balance their budget. I don’t think the government would notice if $350 went missing. Or $350 million, for that matter.

About three weeks later, we got another notice from the IRS.

Ha ha, I knew it. Tear up that check!

Wife and I each received a different notice. Two separate mailings, even though we filed our taxes jointly and there was only one check, sent in one envelope to our house and… come to think of it, we have our refund direct deposited every year. Why the heck are they sending this refund via check? If I return an item I purchased with my debit card at Target, they can just put the money right back in my account. Why can’t the government? I’m pretty sure that, if I owed extra money, they’d just take it out, right?

What’s that? Fourth amendment, you say? Ha ha, that’s a good one. You must not have been following the news for the last… century or so.

But contrary to what I assumed, these letters told us that the refund was legitimate. Woo hoo!

But wait a second. The last four digits of the social security number listed aren’t the last four digits of my social security. I knew it was too good to be true!

Hang on, it turns out that’s Wife’s social security number. I checked to see if they wrote my number on her letter. After she opened it, of course, because we’re not going to tack mail fraud on top of the tax embezzlement charge we’ll be facing when we cash that check. But nope, they wrote her number on top of both letters. She’s the primary wage earner, and since most of our tax laws are based on outdated social mores, the second wage earner doesn’t really count. This again brings up the question of why they sent separate letters, but whatever. What’s an extra 33 cents to the government? Or 35 cents? How the hell much does a stamp cost now? 55 cents? Holy crap! I guess I stopped buying stamps around the same time I stopped writing checks. Who would’ve guessed?

Okay, so if you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering why we got this money back from the government.

Unfortunately, I still can’t tell you.

“We apologize for the inconvenience, but we made an error on your 2018 Form 1040. To correct our mistake, we adjusted your Schedule D. As a result, you are due a refund of $349.00.”

About as clear as mud, huh? There was an error on the tax form? Not the W-2, so it’s not my employers fault. But there was an error on the actual 1040. Don’t they proofread that before they send it out to 300 million people?

The letter goes on to say, “”If you don’t agree with the changes, call XXX to review your account with a representative. We’ll assume you agree with the information in this notice if we don’t hear from you.”

Umm, I still don’t exactly know what the “changes” are, only that I get $350. How am I supposed to agree or disagree? Is this like those class-action lawsuits that I can opt out of if I want to go for more money individually? Of course, the problem with those class-action lawsuits is that I don’t remember if I stayed at a Motel 6 between June 33rd and Octember 71st of 1972, so I guess I’ll just take the fifteen cents and be done with it.

And that’s the same problem we have here. But at least it seems to be on the government. If we had erred, I doubt we’d see a penny. Isn’t that why they make super Byzantine tax laws that nobody can understand? Because then if we overpay, we’ll never know. And if we underpay, they’ll call us on it and we’ll have to believe them. I’m guessing the only reason this money is coming my way is because it also affected a senator or some other person who matters. Then they just told the computer to send money back to everyone who had put something on line 135.A.ii.c-2 of the EZ form.

The other proof that this affected someone higher up the food chain than me is how quickly it’s being resolved. This fuck-up was related to our 2018 tax returns. 2018! As in the taxes we filed THIS YEAR. Like SIX MONTHS ago.

Shit, that’s faster than the line at the DMV to get a new REAL ID.

But wait a second. If this is from this year, how the hell was there seven dollars in interest? Let me play with some numbers here. I assume they’re only paying interest on the part we overpaid. So by my calculation, seven dollars is about three percent of that total. The government gets three percent interest?

But wait a second. We filed our taxes in March. So does that seven dollars only represent six months of interest? Is the government getting SIX percent somewhere? Where can I find that amount of return? I’ve got twenty thousand in a savings account and I highly doubt I’ve made seven dollars in interest over the past six years, much less six months. Most months I make about eight cents of interest. Yet somehow the government makes a dollar a month off of $350. Must be nice to know some senators. Have they been short-selling a bunch of stocks right before they announce tariffs?

But I shouldn’t get too excited about that interest rate. The letter tells me that, “Your refund may include interest. Keep in mind that any interest you receive on tax refunds is considered taxable income during the year you receive it.”

Oh joy. What’s the tax rate on seven dollars of income? I’ll just put five hundred aside to be safe.

And then there’s the kicker. The letter says, “If you haven’t received a refund for $349.00, you should receive a refund check within 2-3 weeks as long as you don’t owe other taxes or debts we’re required to collect.”

They don’t even know if and when the check’s coming out!

Had this letter come a day or two before or after the check, it would be one thing. But this thing came a whole fucking month later. Like “Oh hey, yeah, you might be wondering why you got some random money from us. No? You spent it already and forgot about it? Well, here’s a vaguely worded explanation. Or, who knows, maybe it’s coming next year.”

I’m reminded of something Andrew Yang said. Not that I’m a Yang-ophile, but I think if I tag him, I will immediately get a thousand more blog views. So Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang.

Anyway, he’s running on a Universal Basic Income. He wants to give everyone $1,000 a month. When explaining it, he talked about all of the random isolated shit that the government had been trying to fix forever. And none of it gets fixed because the government isn’t very good at isolating problems and/or devising solutions. There’s one thing the government is really good at: sending out checks to people.

Yeah, Mr. Yang. Like, four weeks better than explaining why.

And they probably could’ve saved 33-cents by forgoing the explanation. Or 55-cents. Crap. Why can’t I keep that straight?

Oh well.

Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang.

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