'Scuse me while I blog this out!

"AND ROCKY RACCOON CHECKED INTO HIS ROOM…"
And he sure’s hell didn’t find Gideon’s bible this time!  I discovered an uninvited houseguest last weekend while painting around my fireplace when I heard a critter rustling about.  Upon further investigation, a full-grown All-American raccoon had taken up residence in one of my chimney stacks!  A little background:  according to neighborhood legend, a previous resident of my house was a caterer back in the ‘60s/’70s, and he custom-built this chimney that doubled as a barbecue with two full-sized grills that open to the outside of the house and two more smokestacks imbedded in it in addition to the regular fireplace on the inside.  Fortunately, the smokestack for the indoor fireplace has a metal screen and cover over it, but the other two have no covering at all, giving Rocky easy access to a dark place for sleeping his days away.  The som-bitch actually seemed offended that I would have the effrontery to disturb his beauty sleep with all the noise I was making too!  My initial efforts to evict said critter after opening the flues failed—Raytown Animal Control was about as useful as a one-legged Riverdancer and even dousing him with my water hose down the chimney proved ineffective.  Since Elly May Clampett was unavailable to lure Rocky out, I wound up letting nature take its course—knowing that raccoons are nocturnal creatures—and he merely waited until it got dark outside to check out of his little Shangri-La.  I immediately covered the other two open smokestacks with heavy cinder blocks, so if Rocky is able to move those, then I’m getting the hell out of Dodge!  Never a dull moment during home improvement projects around my house.  Full photo coverage coming soon, btw.

Meanwhile, here's what Rocky's been up to since he left here!

DOM DeLUISE, 1933-2009
We lost funnyman Dom DeLuise on Monday at age 75.  I remember for the longest time when I was a kid, I thought his first name was Don, from his numerous appearances on the Johnny Carson show.  While I wouldn’t quite place DeLuise in the legend category, he certainly had his moments, like in Blazing Saddles, the Cannonball Run flicks and he was probably the lone highlight of the flaccid sequel Smokey & The Bandit 2.  He was even part of a song lyric by The Who's Pete Townshend ("He rode his brother's Harley across the TV while I was laughing at Dom DeLuise...") from "After The Fire", which Pete wrote for Roger Daltrey’s excellent 1985 solo album, Under A Raging Moon.  Rest in peace, Dom…

YOUR FIRST PLACE KANSAS CITY ROYALS?
Well, well, whouda thunk we’d be able to utter that phrase on May 6th?  The boys in blue have won five in a row and are six games over .500 for the first time since, like, the Reagan Administration.  Very modest gains, of course, but things do seem to be looking up around these parts, beisbol-wise.  Pitcher Zack Greinke has turned in Koufax-ian numbers so far, and ZG already has three CGs (complete games) this season—I don’t think the Royals had three complete games by a pitcher in the entire last decade!  Greinke also has only one less victory than the entire Washington Nationals team.  In addition to the great starting pitching, the bats are starting to come alive after a sluggish start.  Second baseman Alberto Callaspo has also been a pleasant surprise at the plate so far this year, and veteran acquisitions Mike Jacobs and Coco Crisp haven’t disappointed.  Now if the Royals can just avoid their annual late May/early June double-digit losing streak they seem to inevitably go on, they might just get to play meaningful ball in the Fall.

And oh yeah, newly-renovated Kauffman Stadium has been getting rave reviews so far.  I hope to check out the old/new joint myself during the next homestand.

LET ME UP, I’VE HAD ENOUGH!—PART I
The media (ESPN especially) is busy assaulting us with this new biography on Alex Rodriguez by Selena Roberts where she even accuses him of doing steroids in high school, as well as stealing catcher's signs and various and sundry other skullduggery while growing up.  While I’m sure A-Roid is no saint, I really don’t care anymore what he did or didn’t do, plus this Roberts woman is hardly a credible source.  As K.C. Star fathead columnist Jason Whitlock accurately pointed out (in one of his more lucid columns) this is the same person who pretty much convicted the Duke lacrosse players without a trial for raping the black stripper gal, yet never printed a retraction or even so much as apologized after they were proven innocent.

One thing I’ve never understood in baseball is why stealing signs is considered to be such a sin.  Seems to me if you’re able to crack the other team’s code, then more power to you.  Same goes for counting cards in Blackjack—the house already has the huge advantage to begin with, so if someone is brilliant enough to overcome it, they should be rewarded instead of punished.

LET ME UP, I’VE HAD ENOUGH!—PART II
Here we go again with the Brett Favre un-retirement thing.  It’s so obvious that he’s a limelight whore and can’t bear the thought of walking away from it, just like Michael Jordan.  If Favre wants to keep playing, fine, but he needs to knock off this drama queen act and just take a wait-and-see approach in the off-season instead of announcing his retirement every January, only to renege on it.  Meantime, I can’t fathom why the Minnesota Vikings—a team on the rise—would want a 42-year-old QB with declining skills as their starter, especially after going out of their way to acquire Sage Rosenfels from Houston already.

PURE B(C)S
Once again, one of our elected officials is totally unaware that we have big problems in this country, since he’s so concerned about forcing the NCAA to replace the current BCS bowl system to determine the national championship in college football.  Rep. Joe Barton of Texas (a Republican, naturally) wants to ramrod legislation through that would ban the NCAA from advertising its national football champion unless they adopt a playoff format.  "It’s interesting that people of good will keep trying to tinker with the current system," Barton says, "and to my mind it’s a bit like…Communism."  Oh, puh-leeze!  First off, Mr. Congressman, this is totally out of the NCAA’s control—it’s the individual conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, et al) that are calling the shots, and none of them want to abolish the bowl games, which are far too profitable for the schools.  Nobody wants a playoff system more than yours truly, but I’m so sick of these grandstanding politicians trying merely to win votes with crap like this when we have far bigger fish to fry these days.  And, oh what a coincidence—this Barton goombah just happens to represent the district where the new zillion-dollar Dallas Cowboys stadium resides—a potential home for upcoming NCAA title games and the ancillary financial windfall therein.

KICKIN’ IT OLD SCHOOL!
The NFL is recognizing the upcoming 50th anniversary of the American Football League by staging several games this coming season with the old AFL franchises sporting throwback uniforms from back in the day.  I was hoping they would do this a couple years ago to honor the passing of Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt in late ‘06, but I guess waiting an extra year or two is worth it.  The Chefs will wear the old Dallas Texans uni’s from 1960 (more or less the same as their current ones, only with Texas on the helmets instead of an arrowhead) in three games, including the one against the Dallas Cowboys at Arrowhead Stadium—former Dallas vs. current Dallas.  Some teams have been wearing the throwbacks regularly already, like Buffalo and the New York Jets (as the Titans), and the other old AFL alums will follow suit—can’t wait to see Tom Brady and Randy Moss in "Boston" Patriots threads.  The Tennessee Titans will even revert back to the Houston Oilers for their pair of games in the throwbacks, including one with the Jets—new Titans vs. old Titans!  Too bad Tennessee doesn’t play the Houston Texans this year—old Houston vs. new Houston.  Similarly, too bad the Houston Texans don’t play the Chiefs—new Texans vs. old Texans. Confused yet?  Something to look forward to this Fall…

NOW DON'T BE BASILLIE!
It seems the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes are threatening to file for bankruptcy, and are being courted by potential buyer Jim Basillie, who wants to move the team to southern Ontario.  This is the same guy who struck out a couple years back on trying to buy the Nashville Pre-Daters and moving them to Hamilton, which is right smack between Toronto and Buffalo.  Commissioner Gary Butt-Man is against this move, and so am I—mostly because Kansas City Coyotes has a nice ring to it!  No offense to the good people of Hamilton—a hardy working-class town that would fit in just as easily in Pennsylvania as it does in Ontario—but I just don't see them as a major league hockey town.  Let the puck stop here, please!

RIGHTEOUS BUCKS!
According to the paper, "comedian" Mo’Nique is performing at Ameristar Casino here in July.  Tickets start at $55.  I repeat—START at $55.  By my count, that’s about $27.50 a laugh (plus service charge), if you're lucky.  I bet I could outdo this silly fat cow without even trying.  By way of comparison, Ameristar only wants 35 bucks for Alice Cooper tickets, and old Al's a helluva lot funnier, too!

COULD I BORROW SOME VASELINE?
Because I just took it up the ass today, having to plunk down $650 for a freakin’ fuel pump for my car!  I’ve heard most fuel pumps are in the $200-300 range, but Chevy, in their infinite wisdom, requires replacement of the entire fuel module.  Kinda makes me hope GM does go under sometimes…

The (Love) Life of Brian - Part VI

When I left off last time, I had driven all night from Kansas City to Denver to meet my on-line friend Stacy from Seattle for the first time in-person.  I was totally exhausted, but our first encounter was, to say the least, re-invigorating.  As always, I appreciate your indulgence if you choose to read on...trust me, we get to the good part this time!

“So was I alright?  Did I take you to the height of ecstasy?”—John Entwistle, The Who (“Trick Of The Light”)

Stacy’s Alopecia conference was held at the Adam’s Mark on the other side of downtown from the stadium, and when I found her in the lobby, we embraced and the first thing out of Stacy’s mouth was, “We have to get out of here—there are Christians all over the place!”  This was in reference to our many chats about how much we both disdain organized religion and the phoniness thereof, and evidently there was a happy-young-Christian conference running parallel to the Alopecia event at the hotel.  So, we adjourned to the virtually Christian-less hotel bar and I presented Stacy with the Frank Zappa book I picked up for her (she’s a huge FZ fan).  Stacy warned me in advance that she’s normally pretty quiet in person, but before we knew it, she and I were chatting up a storm.  She remarked that I seemed more upbeat in person than I appeared in the photos I’d sent her and I suddenly felt re-energized, thus I abandoned my plan to beg off and go back to my hotel.  After a couple hours or so, we decided to stroll along Denver’s 16th Street Mall area (which is very cool, btw) in search of a suitable place to have dinner, eventually landing at the Hard Rock Café at a table right in front of a big Jimi Hendrix display, which seemed fitting since Stacy was from Seattle.  Good grub and good conversation made for a very nice time at the Rock, but we weren’t quite sure what to do after that.

The rain from earlier in the day went away and it turned out to be a picturesque evening as we strolled around, eventually heading back in the general direction of Stacy’s hotel as the sun was setting.  It was pushing 10:00 by this time, but neither of us really wanted to part company yet, so we decided to sit and visit for a while on a courtyard bench across the street from the Adam’s Mark in front of something called the World Trade Center.  After a few minutes of idle chit-chat, the little dude in my brain sensed a golden opportunity, and said, “Put your arm around her and see how she reacts.”  Being the true gentleman that I am, I even asked permission first:  “Stacy, would you be offended if I put my arm around you?”  She said, “No, not at all,” so I then extended my left arm, which Stacy melted right into, and it was most awesome feeling!  She knew of my frustrations with the opposite sex and as I held her, she said, “I don’t know why you can’t find someone back home—there’s nothing wrong with you.”  Intellectually, I knew this to be true, but it carried a whole lot more hearing it from Stacy.  Then I touched her face and pulled her toward me and had the unmitigated gall to kiss her, and when I did, it was like the rest of the whole freakin’ world disappeared for about five minutes.  We came up for air and I was like, “Did that really just happen?”  I then said to her, “Would you be my girlfriend for the weekend—no strings attached?” and she was totally agreeable.  “We both deserve this,” I added.  Our kissing intensified after a bit, and people around us started to stare, plus it started raining again (Colorado weather changes at the drop of a hat), so Stacy suggested we relocate to her room on the 11th floor—11 being my favorite number, naturally.

While I had no pre-meditated plans for things to turn romantic between us, I have to admit the thought of something like this happening did cross my mind a time or two in the weeks leading up to our little rendezvous, but I figured that kind of thing only happens in the movies, so I never thought it would come true.  Stacy later admitted to me that she, too, was kinda sorta hoping for something special to happen because she was miserable with the jerk (her word, not mine) she was living with, who was very indifferent towards her at that point.  It had been a while since anyone had treated her special or found her desirous, and I obviously had an itch to scratch, so the timing was perfect for both of us.  Stacy told me later that she was “floating” when I held her hand as we walked back to the hotel.  After resuming the kissing and fondling in Stacy’s room, I couldn’t get over how soft and smooth her skin was, especially her arms, and I made her smile when I complimented her on it.  I finally ran out of gas around 1AM, but we promised each other to pick up where we left off the next night, after our daytime activities.  On the way back to my hotel, Meat Loaf’s “You Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth” (a favorite of mine) came on the car radio in the wee hours. I couldn’t have expressed my feelings any better, because Stacy had certainly rendered me speechless!

Friday morning, I woke up refreshed (gee, I wonder why) and met up with Stacy downtown again, and it felt a little awkward at first.  I was still rather shell-shocked over the night before and wasn’t quite sure how to act.  I was itching to make out with Stacy again, but I didn’t want to push my luck and ruin a good thing.  We decided to go for a drive late in the morning and hit some sights like Boulder and Red Rocks, and that’s when I experienced that quietness from Stacy that she warned me about.  She wasn’t very talkative at all, and I didn’t quite know how to interpret her silence, and I thought “Oh shit, she regrets last night now.”  As we sat in the top row at Red Rocks resting and basking in the sun, she reassured me by kissing me and saying, “I told you I was quiet, didn’t I?”  She went back to the conference late in the day and we re-connected for dinner then went back to her room and engaged in my new favorite indoor sport again—making out.  We found a great old-school R&B radio station that played lots of Barry White and Marvin Gaye songs, as well as Malo’s “Suavecito”—excellent make-out music—which added even more flavor to the proceedings.  At some point along the way, I broached the subject of possibly taking things to the next level and what impact it would have on our friendship if we did.  At first, Stacy seemed against it, and I wasn’t about to push her into something she wasn’t comfortable with, so we tabled the discussion for the time-being.  I said, “That’s fine, as long we’re both on the same page.”  As time passed, the making-out intensified (i.e., we got more adventurous with our hands) and eventually wound up naked from the waist-up, and I sensed a change of heart in Stacy.  “We seem to have turned a few more pages,” I quipped, and she smiled.  I then asked, “Should I pick up some protection in the morning?” and Stacy smiled again and said “Yes.”  Then I added, “You know that Bruce Springsteen song ‘Human Touch’?  That’s what this all means to me,” and she understood where I was coming from.  Once again, I left in the wee wee hours and returned to my hotel feeling elated, yet still not quite sure if we were about to do the right thing or not…

Saturday morning was a first for me—I’d never gone condom shopping anywhere but a machine in a men's room before!  I stopped in at a grocery store near my hotel, still a bit uneasy about whether having sex with Stacy was the right thing to do, A) because of our friendship and how this would affect it, and B) the fact that she was technically still involved with her live-in “mate”, even though she wanted to leave him.  Then I literally heard a voice from above that told me everything was okay.  No, it wasn’t God, but The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, on the store’s P.A. overhead singing (you guessed it) “Human Touch”!  I swear, I’m not making this up, folks.  That let me know right then and there that this was so right and it would be a special night.  I returned downtown and attended part of the conference with Stacy during the morning (holding hands while listening to the various speakers on hand), then returned to my hotel later in the afternoon to chill out and anxiously await the big night.  I killed some of the time with the nice diversion of watching the U.S. chick soccer team winning the World Cup (when Brandy Chastain flashed her bra), and I was surprisingly not nervous like I expected to be.  It almost felt too good to be true, though.

Stacy and I reconvened downtown, made out some more in her room, then I took her to nearby hoity-toity Wolfgang Puck’s for a romantic dinner.  While waiting for our table, she took my hand and said how much it meant to her “to be desired and feel like a woman again,” and I told her it just felt so natural to me.  The night was still young, so after dinner we made an appearance at the Alopecia conference’s big Saturday night hoedown and hootenanny at the hotel ballroom, and had a nice time there until the trebly music on the DJ’s speakers went through my head like a nail and gave me a headache.  We had an offer to go hang with some of Stacy’s Alopecian friends at another nightclub, which I was game for, but Stacy opted out—she wanted me all to herself!  Since 7 and 11 are my two favorite numbers, it was only appropriate that we waited until after Midnight—which made it July 11th—to return to Room 1102 and end 14-and-half years’ worth of personal frustration.

The Alopecia conference’s theme was “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, and right on cue, Diana Ross came on the radio singing that song just after Midnight when Stacy helped me lose my virginity all over again.  I’ll spare you the details at this point, except to say this time was far more intense and satisfying than my first time way back in ‘84, and we weren’t just having sex—we were making love!  Long about 12:20AM, I felt that monkey finally leap off my back as we collapsed in each other’s arms and I said to Stacy, “I can’t resist this—in the words of John Entwistle:  ‘So, was I alright?’”  “Definitely!” she responded.  Leave it to me to quote a Who song in bed after sex!  Oh, by the way, when Stacy was in her teens and early ‘20s (before she lost her hair), she was a fashion model.  I bet there’s a lot of guys out there who can’t say they ever did it with a model, but I can!  It felt damn nice to wake up with her in my arms in the morning too.

Prior to July 11, 1999, it had been 5,311 days (or approx. 127,464 hours) since the night I first lost my virginity with Lisa #1 on Christmas Eve of ‘84.  Ironically, I only had to wait 14 hours for the next time!  Stacy had to check out of her hotel before Noon on Sunday, and she was due to fly back home late in the afternoon, but luckily I still had my hotel room for one more night, so we relocated to “my place” for my first-ever matinee.  It felt wonderful, but as the time to leave neared, I began feeling very sad.  It suddenly hit me what a wonderful thing Stacy and I had shared over those four days, and I didn’t want it to end.  It was even hard for me to talk on the way to the airport because I was so emotional.  I was afraid nothing like this would ever to me again (it hasn’t), and I didn’t want to let go of her—but, I did say “no strings attached”, didn’t I?  While waiting for Stacy’s flight, she said to me, “Maybe we could meet again halfway between K.C. and Seattle.  Where would that be, somewhere in Wyoming?” I thought she was only joking, so I didn’t read much into it.  Saying goodbye was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and I actually broke down when I got back to my car because of the overwhelming emotions I felt.  When I got back to my hotel, I discovered Stacy had left one of her blouses behind in my bed.  I kinda think she did it on purpose, and the smell of her perfume was all over it, so in a way it was as if she was still there with me, so I slept with her blouse by my side that night.  While reflecting on what I’d just experienced, it occurred to me that I had more fun with Stacy in three-and-a-half days than I ever had with both Lisas combined!  I will take that wonderful weekend to the grave with me—I bet John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Highs were never this much fun…

Next morning, with Dave Edmunds’ version of Bob Seger’s “Get Out Of Denver” blaring on the tape deck, I got out of Denver and headed eastward for home, filled with memories of a mind-blowing weekend that made the normally-interminable trek across Kansas halfway tolerable.  Upon my return home, I found the nicest e-mail note waiting for me from Stacy in which she said she missed my hugs and felt empty without me, and—best of all—“would you turn me inside-out again?”, as she liked to say.  I figured our little fling in Denver was just a one-time thing and we would just remain friends again from there on out, plus I thought she was only kidding about being together again when she mentioned Wyoming.  Instead, Stacy made the brilliant suggestion of rendezvous-ing in Las Vegas, and it made perfect sense—flights to Sin City were relatively inexpensive and we could have a ball for several days.  This also did wonders for my ego.  Stacy had been with other guys before and had lots more experience in relationships than I did, yet she was willing to go out of her way to be with me again, so I must’ve done something right in Colorado—talk about a confidence builder!  When I returned to work and told everyone about my trip, one of the guys remarked, “This man’s a playa now!” Indeed.

Unfortunately, we each needed a little time to save up some money and secure time off work, so Stacy and I had to endure an agonizing two months of waiting (cue Tom Petty’s “The Waiting”) before we could be together again, but during the interim, our online chats made us realize that this was more than just a fling—we were actually in love!  It was unorthodox, to be sure, but it was real and I’d never felt like this toward someone before (or since).  I even actually contemplated relocating to the Great Northwest at times to live with her, but that would've been a long shot, at best.  It sucked that we couldn’t be together sooner, but we filled the time by sending things to each other via snail-mail, making plans and eagerly anticipating September 23rd.  Las Vegas was totally worth the wait and did not disappoint, either, as we spent six wonderfully romantic days and nights together, and I made up for years of lost time in the intercourse department—sex twice a day (sometimes thrice), what a concept!  I think my favorite memory of that week was the night Stacy wore a sexy low-cut top, long slinky skirt and black stockings with a pretty red wig (knowing how much I like redheads) when we went out on the town, and when we stood toe-to-toe on the outdoor deck at the top of the Stratosphere tower and kissed, it was like we were the only two people on earth.  Parting again at the airport was such sweet sorrow, but we both went home very fulfilled.

After enduring another two-month wait, Stacy flew to Kansas City to play house with me for ten days in December, which overlapped her birthday, so we celebrated it by firelight with Barry White playing in the background (Barry rules!).  We had a great time again, but the vibe wasn’t quite the same as Denver and Vegas this time, mostly because Stacy was stressing out about moving into her own place and getting away from the jackass she’d been living with.  She wanted to leave him desperately, but was concerned about hurting his little girl from a previous marriage who had gotten rather attached to Stacy.  Also, it reached the point where we wound up spending a little too much time together and actually got a little burned-out on each other, plus there are only so many options for nightlife and things to do in K.C. in December, as opposed to Denver in summertime or Vegas anytime.  It was also felt weird to me to have a houseguest.  Don’t get me wrong—I loved having Stacy here with me—but I’m just not used to having someone else around the house 24/7, and it was an adjustment to have to share.  Makes me wonder if I can handle it if and when I ever get involved with another woman down the road.  Little did I know that when I kissed Stacy goodbye at KCI airport on that gloomy Sunday afternoon that it would be the last time I’d kiss her (or any other woman) on the lips (romantically) to this day…

After Stacy came to visit me in my humble abode, the plan was for me to return the favor and rock her world in Seattle once she got settled into her own place, perhaps as early as March of 2000, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  As January wore on, our nightly online chats became rather disjointed and stilted, and Stacy became more and more distant with me.  By early February, I finally confronted her and said it felt like she was blowing me off, and she admitted that the distance between us was getting to her, plus there was stuff at her end that was nagging her.  She said it wasn’t anything I did and that she really didn’t want to be involved with anyone at that point, so she wanted to break things off.  As you might expect, I was majorly disappointed, and I’ve always felt like we left things unfinished between us, since I never got to play house with Stacy in Seattle.  I never expected us to last forever, but I was a bit dumbfounded at how quickly my status went from "I love you, Brian" to "Dear Occupant" with Stacy in just a matter of weeks.

But, we vowed to remain friends anyway, and our friendship was really tested not long after that.  A few weeks later, Stacy informed me that she had met some guy that she was smitten with, and I reacted very angrily and didn’t speak to her for quite a while because I felt betrayed.  The way I viewed it was here’s Stacy telling me she didn’t want to be in ANY relationship when we broke up, yet less than two months later, she’s already involved with someone else again, so this hurt me a lot.  It turned out that the guy had another girlfriend and was just playing Stacy and she got burned, so I felt slightly vindicated.  She later apologized for hurting me and we moved on, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.  Maybe it’s true after all what they say that good friends shouldn’t become lovers, but I have no regrets for what we shared together during those six months, however unconventional it might’ve been.  I probably would’ve become a basket case by now if Stacy hadn’t come along to take me places I’ve never been before (in the carnal sense).  There’s been no one for me since then, and even though it’s been ten years, she instilled enough confidence in me to know I can please a woman sexually if and when I ever do find another one.  Still, I highly discourage long-distance relationships—they’re too difficult to maintain (esp. across 1,800 miles and two time zones) and it sucks when you can only be with your sweetheart at certain intervals.

And thankfully, true friendship won out, as Stacy and I remain friends to this day, even though we’ve had our ups and downs over the last ten years, including her marriage in 2002 and divorce in 2007.  I did eventually get to visit Stacy in Seattle in ‘02 after she got married, but it was rather awkward and poor timing on my part, as I wound up spending more time with her husband and dog than with her because she had to work a lot.  Stacy’s the one person that I can confide in and talk to about practically anything, and that means the world to me.  Sadly, we seem to have grown apart a bit in the last couple years and our worlds seem like such different places today.  I know things aren’t likely to ever revert to the halcyon days of ’99 between us, but I do wish she’d talk to me a little more than she has been lately.  I care about her a lot, and I wish she wouldn’t shut me out of her life, but our correspondence has basically dwindled down to “Hi, how are you?  I am fine.  Talk to you later…”  She’s very special to me, and I don’t want to lose her friendship.  She’s one in a million…

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent of my love-life to this point.  I haven't even been on a date since December, 1999.  I will explore the reasons for all that in the final installment of this series later this week.

The (Love) Life of Brian - Part V

The saga continues.  Again, this is pretty lengthy, and reading this is totally optional.  Please excuse my self-indulgence...

Following my break-up with Lisa #2, another dry spell ensued for me in the dating/relationship milieu, but I wasn’t totally bereft of activity with women-folk in the mid/late ‘90s.  Two new co-worker ladies came along in the intervening years after Lisa and although I didn’t have a hope in hell of dating either one of them, I became friends with both and I quickly discovered the benefit of having more female friends because I’d been told that women just love to fix up their single friends with single guys.  That never quite happened with these two particular women, but “networking” with them, so to speak, did open up some new social avenues for me and it was fun to just enjoy each other’s company without being under pressure to try to impress them.

About the time I was dating Lisa, I met a girl with the unusual first name of Sharum.  No, she’s not Middle Eastern, but a very pretty all-American piano-playing girl who worked in the Trust Dept. at the bank I was employed at back then.  She was already engaged to be married when I met her, and she was a church-goer too, so I had zero chance of romance with her, but we hit it off and did lunch together from time to time.  I’ve been friends with lots of engaged/married women who were afraid of doing lunch with another guy for fear of jealousy from their mates, but that was never a problem with Sharum, and she knew I wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything uncouth with her.  We didn’t even really have all that much in common, but we still connected on a friendship level, and she is a real sweet person.  She got married in the fall of ’94 and from what I hear, the marriage is still intact today—15 years is a minor miracle these days!

My co-worker friend and inspiration Susan—whom I spoke of in Part II—died in a house fire with her two children in January of ’95, which pretty much set the tone for that year, which was a dreadful one for me personally.  My dad suffered some serious neurological problems and had to be hospitalized and my mom suffered a mini-stroke later in the year (thankfully, they both fully recovered eventually), my personal life was in the doldrums, and then after spending most of the year in a frustrating search for a place to live on my own for the first time, in October I found myself dealing the with Landlord from Hell at the house I briefly rented (a torrid tale I will share in a future blog post).  If it hadn’t been for the Chiefs going 13-3 that season and the Kiss reunion on MTV’s “Unplugged”, the fall of ’95 would’ve been a complete washout.  That, and a ray of sunshine came to me all the way from Iowa in the form of a cute brunette divorcee named Rose, who started working at the bank in late ’95.  We hit it off almost instantly at the company Christmas party and I don’t mind telling you, I was smitten.  Rose was bright, intelligent, well-dressed, pretty enough to take to Chinatown (using Fred Sanford’s beauty yardstick) and an all-around fun person to boot.  Even cooler, Rose was a big football fan and liked hockey too, and I later learned that she’s even into racing cars and such.

Rose and I quickly became friends and she was one of my first-ever houseguests at my new abode during my Super Bowl (Cowboys-Steelers) get-together in January of ’96 and even brought me a nice housewarming gift.  Pretty soon, we did lunch dates and attended hockey games and such on a regular basis.  While I was hopeful early on of being more than just friends with Rose, she made it clear that she was looking for marriage again and especially motherhood, and I told her, “I won’t lie to you—that disappoints me, but I still want to be friends,” and I’m proud to say we’ve remained so to this day.  Rose found what she was looking for too, and is happily married again to a really good guy and they have a young son now and are currently living half a world away in Saipan, where her husband works for the U.S. government.  Between Sharum and Rose, it’s so ironic that some of the better outings I ever had were lunch dates with these women that I had absolutely no chance of dating, not to mention that they both were quite possibly the prettiest women I’ve ever had dates of any kind with.

Beyond that, I don’t recall going out with any other women during that period, apart from a couple of ill-fated set-ups along the way.  My good friend (and boss man at the time) Phil and I had gotten to know a gal named Ruth Ann who worked in our mail room, and she liked to get out and party on the weekends (even though she had like four kids, I think) and had a friend she thought I might be interested in.  I was skeptical, but I played along and we all went out drinking at a hole-in-the-wall bar one Saturday night.  Good thing I didn’t get my hopes up, because her friend was nothing to write home about—not my type at all, and borderline white trash, for lack of a better term.  It wasn’t even a case of “Lookin’ better every beer” with this gal, who as almost as wide as she was tall.  Phil’s girlfriend at the time also had a single friend she tried to set me up with, but this woman would’ve given “Whole Lotta Rosie” a run for her money, size-wise.  I’m 5’8” and stocky, yet I actually felt like Mini-Me or Herve Villachaize standing next to her.  I’m fairly flexible when it comes to weight on women (I’m no lightweight myself, after all), but if she’s built like a linebacker or Shaquille O’Neal, chances are good I’m not interested.  This gal seemed nice, but didn’t have much personality, let alone much self-esteem, so I politely passed on her too.

I also remember attending various and sundry “singles” events during this time and not enjoying them very much.  I even attended a few at a church that welcomed all faiths (or non-faiths in my case), but as I’ve mentioned before, I totally suck at socializing with strangers.  I just don’t have the gift of gab in social situations and like I say, I’m a cut-to-the-chase kind of person, thus I hate small-talk.  The other problem with singles events is everyone tries too hard to impress the other person and they don’t act naturally.  I even found some events downright demeaning, like the one I attended at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand nightclub that was comprised of nothing but Johnson County (KS) yuppies and high-maintenance women that I wouldn’t stand a chance with—I felt like an ’87 T-Bird in a BMW/Porsche world, so I walked out after only ten minutes.  Anyway, by that time, I actually found myself rather burned-out on the whole “Gotta find a woman” quest, so I put it on the back-burner and concentrated on fixing up my newly-acquired house for a while.  Besides, I was often told that when you’re not looking is usually the time you find someone, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give that a try.

By the summer of ’96, I finally caught up with the rest of the world and joined the Internet generation.  Oddly enough, the very night I signed on to AOL was when the Olympic bombing took place in Atlanta, so I started off with a bang, so to speak, but I digress.  It occurred to me that I could make use of my AOL profile as a drawing card for potential mates, and before long I got an e-mail from a girl named Tracy.  She said she was more or less looking for the same kind of relationship that I was and that she lived near 74th & Lewis. Well, there’s a 74th & Lewis just a few blocks from my house, so I was initially intrigued, until I realized she meant 74th & Lewis in Tulsa!  D’oh!!  We had precious little in common—Tracy is conservative Southern Baptist and I’m radical moderate Midwestern Agnostic—but we wound up being e-mail pen pals, so to speak, for several years.  We even met in person a few times, as I later attended a ballgame with Tracy and her boyfriend in Tulsa, and vice-versa when they came up here after they got married and did a Royals game.  It was nice to have a female friend and sounding board, but after a while, our correspondence became very stale and boring (mundane stuff like, “Oh, that’s too bad your washer broke down”, “sorry to hear you had a flat tire”, etc.) and I lost interest in it.  I also felt stifled because I had to water myself down for fear of offending Tracy and her conservative church-goer sensibilities, thus I couldn’t be my true self with her.  I more or less blew her off and quit writing to her a few years ago and I’ve felt bad about that, but she just didn’t challenge me like the next woman I was about to encounter did.  If you’re reading this, Tracy, it was nothing personal and I’m sorry.  But, if you’ve read my blog at all these last couple years, you’ve no doubt discovered that I’m a little earthier than I seemed to be…

Sometime in early, 1998, I received another e-mail from a fellow AOL-er named Stacy in Seattle who said she liked my hobbies and interests that I had listed on my profile and would I like to chat sometime?  After being on-line for a couple years, I’d encountered quite a few phonies and posers, so I was actually skeptical at first if she was legit or just playing me, even though she was two time zones away and wasn’t really looking for a relationship (she was already living with a guy anyway).  Hell, Stacy is a guy’s name too, so for all I knew, this could’ve been a dude messing with me!  I kept a journal back then, and often referred to her as “this Stacy person” or “that Stacy girl” until I got to know her better and was convinced she was the real deal.  Soon we were chatting live with each other on AOL on a regular basis, and unlike Tracy, I had far more in common with Stacy.  Since I was working second-shift at my new hospital gig at the time, I was already a night owl, so we’d often chat into the wee hours of the morning after I got home from work.  It was so nice to finally connect with someone on a very cerebral level, and we got to know each other very well over the next year or so.  She was very unhappy with her live-in boyfriend at the time, so I was often a sympathetic ear for her when she needed to vent.  Other times, we just shot the shit and enjoyed visiting with each other.

One of Stacy’s unique features is she has little-to-no hair.  She has the medical condition called Alopecia Areata, which causes hair loss in both men and women.  Obviously, Alopecia can be devastating for some people, especially women, but Stacy was able to cope and has a great attitude about it, usually choosing to wear bandanas in public or wigs for more formal occasions.  She was a real cutie in her photos, too, and as things turned out, the National Alopecia Areata Foundation was holding their annual conference in Denver in July of ’99, which Stacy was planning to attend.  I hadn’t been on a decent vacation in quite a while myself, so I came up with the bright idea of driving to Elway Country and meeting Stacy in-person for the first time.  I figured I could tool around do some sightseeing on my own while she attended the conference and we could meet up at various times throughout the weekend and have dinner or just hang out, and I could play tour guide for her since I’d been there before.  She loved the idea, and was even able to swing me a free ticket to a Colorado Rockies game at Coors Field (which I was planning to attend anyway) via the Alopecia Foundation, which was recognized during in a pre-game ceremony.

In an effort to save a little hotel money and since I just love to drive at night on road trips, I decided to leave K.C. at 10PM on Wednesday, drive all night and get into town early in the morning just as the sun was rising on the Rocky Mountains, which is a really cool sight.  Two problems with that plan:  A) I was unable to get a good nap in during the day on Wednesday, as planned, and B) it was cloudy and rainy when I pulled into town Thursday morning anyway!  I was okay driving until I got about 2/3 of the way across Kansas and the caffeine wore off, so I pulled off at a rest area and napped in the car for an hour-and-a-half or so.  That helped a little, but by the time I got to the Mile High City around 8AM, I was very tired.  No biggie—I figured I’d check in to my room and nap for a few hours, then head out for the ballgame, which started at 1:00.  Problem was, I couldn’t check in to my hotel until well after 10:00, so I had to kill two more hours.  Once I did get checked in, I got all of an hour’s nap in before it was time to leave for the game, which was looking rather iffy because of rain in the Denver area.

Luckily, some Mountain Dew-induced adrenaline kicked in, and I was able to enjoy the Rockies/Dodgers game as well as the dandy new ballpark in downtown Denver, which is one of the best in baseball—too bad it’s named after such a decrepit beer!  Even though the Alopecians were honorees at the game, the team chose to stick them in the cheap seats in the right field bleachers, but it was kinda fun sitting amongst them and visiting.  I found many of the bald chicks there to be far prettier than some of the women with hair in the crowd, too. I started wearing down near the end of the game though, and by the time I got to my car, I was running on fumes.  Unfortunately, I was due to meet Stacy at her hotel downtown at 6:00, and I wasn’t sure if I would last five minutes with her.  It was too late to postpone, but I figured I’d just meet with her and visit for a bit, then go back to my hotel to crash, and re-connect with her sometime on Friday when I was fresh.  Little did I know what this evening held in store…

To be continued…

Life ain't easy for a blog named Sue...

DON’T JUST STAND THERE—PANIC!!!
Leave it to our wonderful mass media—TV news in particular—and public officials to create mass hysteria and paranoia about this swine flu thing coming out of Mexico.  Call me cynical all you want, but I see this as nothing but media-generated panic over nothing.  I work with physicians, and one of them told me yesterday that it’s not that big of a deal and these kinds of outbreaks (of any virus) aren’t uncommon every day.  But by gosh, the media will have you believe that this latest swine flu crisis will bring down the U.S. economy, and tell you to lock your house and keep the kids inside.  By dingies, this might even drive down the price of oil.  Really?  I hope to hell it does!  And I fail to see how walking around in public with a mask on is going to make a lick of difference, no more so than duct-taping your windows shut wouldn't have protected you from dirty bombs like the Bushies were advising us to do about four years back.  Mark my words, this’ll all be forgotten in a week or two.

REST (RUST?) IN PEACE, PONTIAC
As expected, General Motors is doing away with its Pontiac brand name as part of its restructuring plan.  As a co-worker of mine pointed out, why not drop GMC instead?  After all, GMC trucks are basically Chevy trucks with a different badge on them anyway, so why do we need both?  I’ve always thought that was a bit redundant...

THE SPECTRE OF SPECTER
In his typical grandstanding style, Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter announced he’s switching parties.  The Democrats should be less-than-thrilled.  They’d be better off with Phil Spector…

FEELING DRAFTY?
The annual exercise in overkill known as the NFL Draft took place over the weekend.  I know this sounds odd coming from a mondo football fan such as myself, but ESPN’s overblown coverage of the draft is laughable, particularly the "experts" they trot out every year like Mel Kiper, Jr. and Todd McShay, whose mock drafts are a mockery and have all the accuracy of the 10-day forecast on the Weather Channel.  Kiper contradicts himself constantly, like when a player was picked sooner than expected in the first round (I forget which one) and ol’ Mel proclaimed something like, "I really like this pick—he has great potential," yet he had that same player graded at only a C+ in his pre-draft analysis.  If you liked him so much, Mel, then why only an average grade?  The rest of the ESPN talking heads made my head spin with all their jibber-jabber and prognostications that I finally turned off the TV and waited for the results in the morning paper instead.  I could only take so much of ex-Chefs head coach Herm Edwards’ insightful comments like, "He’s a player!" and "He can play!"  No shit?  Even more laughable were the local bars staging these Draft Day "watch parties" all around town.  As the Almighty Carlin once said, "It’s like watching flies fuck!"

As for the Chefs, I was mildly underwhelmed by Scott Pioli’s shakedown cruise as GM and head drafter, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because after years of Carl Peterson’s ineptitude at judging football talent,  I think we have someone who knows what he’s doing.  I’d like to think that, anyway…

D’OH!
"I say watch for a San Jose Sharks-New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup finals in late May."—B. Holland, April 14, 2009

Well, so much for that prognostication, as both San Jose and New Jersey are out of the Stanley Cup playoffs already.  The Sharks’ first-round flameout is becoming an annual rite of passage, and it makes no sense that the #1 team for the entire season can’t get past a #8 seed (the Mighty Quacks of Anaheim) that just barely made the playoffs on the final day of the regular season.  As for my Devils, their departure from the postseason is a bit more mysterious, not to mention heartbreaking.  They had Carolina by the balls with two minutes left to go last night and let them get away with two goals in the span of 48 seconds.  Guess I’ll root for the Chicago Blackhawks now, since they haven’t won the Cup since the Kennedy Administration…

THE FLATULENT ONE STRIKES AGAIN!
K.C. Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock once again proved what a moron he is by recommending that the fledgling Kansas City Royals acquire Barry Bonds to bolster their anemic offense:   "He’s been railroaded by the commissioner, a publicity-seeking federal prosecutor and the hypocritically self-righteous segment of the baseball media…While virtually every other steroid cheater continues to play the game without incident or much backlash, America’s home-run king is being treated like a heavyweight champion with the audacity to conscientiously object to the Vietnam war."

First off, how crass it is to compare ol’ Bare with Muhammad Ali, and second off, at the risk of sounding like the race-baiter Whitlock is, I bet ol’ Jason wouldn’t be campaigning so vociferously for Bonds if he was white.  Third off, I’d much rather lose with the current Royals squad than win with a bitter 45-year-old clubhouse cancer like Bonds.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?  WHY SHOULD I CARE?
Much hoop-de-doo was made last week about Perez Hilton ripping on Miss California’s opinions about gay marriage.  Did I miss a memo—why is this so important?  Are the political opinions of some blonde airhead in a bathing suit trying to impress the judges suddenly worthy of serious scrutiny?  And now for the really tough question—who the hell is Perez Hilton anyway?  It sure don’t take much to be famous these days…

CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #112
"Do You Know What I Mean?"—LEE MICHAELS (1971)  "She just left me yesterday…"  Or try it my way:  "She just slapped me yesterday…"  No doubt, this was Ernest P. Worrell’s favorite song.  Ain’t that right, Vern?

MOVIE REVIEW: THE READER
I finally got to see Kate Winslet in The Reader this week on DVD.  This one’s kinda hard to describe without giving away the plot twists, so I’ll refrain from doing so, but suffice it to say it was not a bad film.  Not one that I would want to watch over and over again, mind you, but one which definitely held my interest throughout.  Kate gave a great performance, although I wasn’t too keen on her unconvincing German accent, which reminded me of Meryl Streep’s equally-unconvincing Italian accent in Bridges Of Madison County, which in turn was as unconvincing as Mr. Tudball’s toupee on "Carol Burnett Show".  And I was enjoying the sex scenes immensely until Winslet raised her left arm and revealed what amounted to a mini-Z.Z. Top beard in her armpit!  While I’m well aware that German women generally don’t shave their underarms, and I do give the producers points for realism here, I’m still compelled to say this anyway:  Ewww!  This turned me off every bit as much as the tattoos and nipple piercings on Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler last week.  All in all, I give the film about a 6.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER AT THE BOX OFFICE?
I’ll be real interested to see how the new Star Trek flick fares when it hits the theaters next week.  I’m kind of an odd breed of Trekkie, as I never have much cared that much for the original TV series, but I do like the theatrical releases (Wrath Of Khan, Search For Spock, et al).  My older sister was a big fan of the original show, but I was more of a "Lost In Space" kid at the time, and "Star Trek" always seemed rather bland to me.  I’m warming up to the old show now as I track through it on DVD, but it still comes off to me as rather dry at times, but then again, they could only do so much with ‘60s TV special effects and sets.  William Shatner’s over-emoting never helped any, either.  Personally, I think there should’ve been more regular female characters on ST besides just Lt. Uhura, and I don’t understand why they gave up on the Yeoman Rand character, for instance—she was a hottie.

One thing I’ve never gotten about any of the space-based Sci-Fi franchises ("Star Trek", "Lost In Space", Star Wars, etc.):  how come humans are impervious to the laws of gravity while on board their spaceships?  Why don’t they ever float around weightless like the Space Shuttle crew does when they aren’t strapped in?  And ain’t it amazing how almost every single alien life form they encounter speaks English?  And how every planet they land on has an atmosphere suitable for humans to breath in, too?  Yes, I know, suspend your disbelief and shut the hell up already!

As for the new ST flick, I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD—I refuse to pay 10 bucks to listen to rude people, ill-mannered children and cell phones going off at the overcrowded clusterfuck movie theaters.  I much prefer my comfy sofa for watching big-time flicks…

Overstaying their welcome

I was watching a bad "M*A*S*H" rerun the other day and it put me in mind of how reviled some of the episodes from the last three seasons of the show were.  Here's a little compilation (in no particular order) of some TV favorites that hung around too long...

"M*A*S*H" (1972-83)
Fans are divided into different camps (M*A*S*H units?) about when this classic show should’ve called it quits.  Some say it should’ve happened when Henry Blake was killed and Trapper John went home, while others think they should’ve pulled the plug after Frank Burns left.  Me, personally, I think the show was toast after Radar O’Reilly went back to Ottumwa and Alan Alda took over as the show's creative czar.  The plots got really stupid after that, with storylines like the 4077th staff pouring a concrete floor for the O.R. (never mind that one already existed in previous episodes) or Klinger running a camp newspaper (hell, he could barely even handle being company clerk, where would he find the time to play editor?) or when they went to the Col. Flagg well once too often, not to mention way too much Hawkeye-this and Hawkeye-that.  You knew they were running out of ideas when the whiny chubby Hawaiian nurse and Cpl. Rizzo started getting more lines every week and some storylines got recycled too, like when one of Col. Potter’s cronies does something inept in the heat of battle, resulting in unnecessary casualties.  And if the name Thad Mumford is in the closing credits, chances are it was a bad episode filled with cutesy dialogue like "You’re the toast of the coast, Jost" and "The newspaper isn’t the issue…", etc.

"HAPPY DAYS" (1974-84)
The show that gave rise to the phrase "Jumping the Shark" is the poster child for successful TV series that just don’t know when to quit.  The first five seasons of HD were classic, but as soon as Scott Baio and his insufferable Chachi character came on board, things went to hell in a handbag.  "Happy Days" was supposed to be set in the ‘50s, yet along comes this douche with ‘70s hair and a bandana around his thigh (what the hell was that, a macho garter?) going "Wah-Wah-Wah" all the time, and then the crap-weasel burned Arnold’s down to boot!  The addition of Ted McGinley and the ever-annoying Jenny Piccalo character to the cast—not to mention all the singing and dancing that took place in every other episode—rendered the last five seasons of "Happy Days" virtually unwatchable.  The least they could’ve done was tell Tom Bosley to remove his digital watch before he got on camera!

"LAVERNE & SHIRLEY" (1976-83)
L&S was a really funny show for its first 4-5 seasons, but when the entire cast moved en mass from Milwaukee to California around 1980, the laughs didn’t accompany them.  It got even lamer when Cindy Williams got pregnant and left the show in a contract dispute, so it was just Laverne taking on Lenny & Squiggy, et al.  And in the last season, there were a couple episodes that even Laverne didn’t appear in.  They should never have left Wisconsin.

"SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH" (1996-2003)
Melissa Joan Hart was already 20 years old when this show debuted in 1996, so it seemed rather disingenuous that she played a teenager to begin with.  By the last couple seasons, it seemed rather silly to continue calling the show’s title character a teenager when she was well into college.  Adding the untalented Soleil Moon Frye to the cast at the end was an act of utter desperation too.

"FRASIER" (1993-2004)
Surprisingly, "Frasier" was able to consistently maintain its fine quality for most of its run, but even the best of shows run out of steam eventually.  I find it harder to watch the last season or two of "Frasier" in reruns than the early years of the show, especially the episode arc involving Daphne’s insufferable mother and brother visiting from England and when Daphne got pregnant during the last season.  By that time, the show had long since lost its spark.

"FRIENDS" (1994-2004)
Like "Happy Days", the first four seasons of "Friends" were pure gold, but it all went downhill after Ross uttered "I, take thee Rachel" in the last episode of Season 4.  The stories gradually became stupid and contrived (like the Phoebe-hates-Pottery Barn ep or when Monica’s overpriced fancy boots hurt her feet, or when Rachel took up smoking cigarettes to impress her co-workers, etc.).  Even worse, Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox became so anorexic and gaunt that they started resembling matchsticks with long, stringy hair toward the end.  They were so much cuter and likeable in the early seasons.

"SANFORD & SON" (1972-77)
True, five years is about the average run for a successful sitcom, but even in this case, the show ran about a year too long.  In its final season, S&S suffered from poor writing, over-reliance on hackneyed put-downs (aimed mostly at Aunt Esther) and indifference from Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson.  Foxx basically didn’t give a shit anymore and phoned it in, and Wilson often wore dark glasses (to mask his cocaine problem) and passively delivered his lines standing with one hand in his vest pocket.  Asinine storylines like where Fred Sanford thought he might be Jewish were the death knell for my favorite TV sitcom ever on earth in this hemisphere (as Fred would say).

"CHICO AND THE MAN" (1974-78)
This show should've ceased production the nanosecond Freddie Prinze blew his brains out, but producer James Komack insisted on continuing.  He replaced Prinze with cheeky kid Gabriel Melgar, who was disrespectfully dubbed "Chico" too, and although it obviously wasn't Melgar's fault, the result was downright pathetic.  Having that great thespian Charo making frequent guest appearances didn't help things either.

"THE COSBY SHOW" (1984-92)
This show had its moments early on, but got way too preachy and idealistic for its own good as time wore on.  The additions of gnome-like child actress Raven-Symone and Cousin Pam to the Huxtable household only made things worse, not to mention the expanded role of Elvin, who practically made Richard Simmons seem almost manly by comparison.  He was quite possibly the wussiest married man on network TV.

"GILLIGAN’S ISLAND" (1964-67)
Should’ve been cancelled after the first episode.  Nah, I take that back—BEFORE the first episode!  Yes, this is a TV icon, but could there be a more implausible idea for a TV series this side of "The Flying Nun"?  How it lasted three seasons is beyond me.  And don’t get me started on those excremental TV reunion movies they made in the ‘70s and ‘80s like "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island"…

"THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW" (1960-68)
Should’ve shut it down as soon as Barney Fife left Mayberry in '65.  Don Knotts was what made that show tick.

"ACCORDING TO JIM" (2001-09)
This mediocre show has lasted how long?  I do realize that Jim Belushi is often unfairly compared to his late brother, but honestly, he’s really not that funny.  Nice guy, to be sure, but hardly a laugh riot.

"BEVERLY HILLS, 90210" (1990-2000)
Ten years is a nice round number for a series, but this one should’ve hung it up by the time all the principle characters (Brandon, Kelly, Dylan, Donna, Steve, Valerie, David, et al) had doinked each other at least once.  Jason Priestley’s departure didn’t help things any, either.  Good rule of thumb:  if you’re watching an episode in which Tori Spelling has red hair, there's half a chance it might suck.

"ALL IN THE FAMILY" (1971-79)
When Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers left the show after the eighth season, it was probably a hint that Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton should've stifled themselves too, but they soldiered on anyway, adding Danielle Brisebois as Archie and Edith’s niece Stephanie for season nine.  There were a handful of funny episodes that year, but the show was running on fumes by then.  How they managed to milk three more years out of A. Bunker on "Archie Bunker’s Place" is unfathomable.

"SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE" (1975-Present)
I rarely watch SNL anymore, but evidently there is still some relevancy here and there, as last fall’s resurgence in popularity during the Presidential campaign showed.  Still, I can’t help but think this show has long outlived its usefulness, and should’ve died after the Dana Carvey/Mike Myers era.

Feel free to put your .02-worth in and add to this list. I'm sure there are other shows I left out here...

Who let the blog(s) out?!?

TEN YEARS ALREADY?
The tenth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy kinda snuck up on me this week—it just doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.  I visited the Denver area just a couple months after it happened, and drove by the school and it was surreal seeing the yellow police tape blocking access to parts of the campus.  It also struck me how similar Littleton, CO was to suburban Kansas City, especially on the Kansas side in Overland Park where I work, which just goes to show that unthinkable tragedies can occur anywhere, no matter how insulated the area might be from "the Hood".

I read an interesting write-up in last week’s Newsleak, er uh, Newsweek about new book called (cleverly-enough) Columbine by author Dave Cullen, which is apparently a very-detailed play-by-play account of that horrible day.  I thought about picking up a copy of it in hopes of understanding what went on in Kleibold and Harris’s twisted little brains, but my man Leonard Pitts, Jr. made a great point in his column this week, saying "…but as for me, I will give them not an hour of my one and only life trying to comprehend their incomprehensible deed."  To wit, spending hours and hours reading this book only gives those little bastards what they so craved in the first place—attention and fame—so I think I’ll pass on it after all.  It’s a similar dynamic to trying to figure out what possessed that Chapman wanker to kill John Lennon—no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get the answer you’re looking for.  And even if you do, it won’t bring Lennon back anyway, so why waste the time?

Pitts also pointed out all the finger-pointing that went on in the aftermath of Columbine—it was video games or years of being bullied and ostracized or lax gun control or violent movies or bad parenting that drove the two turds to do it.  While I won’t cop out and blame bad parenting or poor gun control totally for this senseless tragedy, you can’t tell me that someone (i.e., their parents, gun shop owners, etc.) wasn’t sleeping at the wheel while Kleibold and Harris were able to amass a weapons arsenal that most third-world countries would be envious of.  Even the most astute NRA members (that’s a contradiction in terms, I know) can’t justify teenage kids packing the kind of heat those two did.

W.W.J.D.?
Interesting stuff in this week’s Newsweek too, about an English major from Brown Univ. named Kevin Roose, who infiltrated Liberty Univ. (aka "Jerry Falwell U.") in Lynchburg, VA, posing as a Super-Christian student to see what campus life is like in Moron Majority country.  Evidently, the kids there aren’t quite as anal-retentive as I would imagine, and some of them even do dare to doubt their faith after all and they "aren’t a bunch of Beaver Cleavers", according to Roose.  My older sister lived in Lynchburg for a time back in the late ‘70s, and even though she’s a fairly faithful Presbyterian church-goer, she said she found the place to total squares-ville.  To successfully pull off his ruse, Roose had to re-train his secular self to follow the LU code of conduct, which stipulates things like "no drinking, no cursing, no hugs lasting longer than three seconds."  Okay, I understand the no drinking and cursing stuff, but I find it hard to believe that Jesus himself would’ve put time limits on hugs, if He really existed.  Yet another example of why I have no use for the (very wrong) Religious Right…

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES
Private Gump’s drill sergeant was right—Forrest was indeed "a Goddamn genius" compared to those who partake in this whole Twitter phenomenon.  Apart from maybe Pauly Shore's film career, is there anything on earth more pointless than this self-indulgent folderol?  Why would anyone care what latte you drank at breakfast or what activity you’re currently engaged in at any given moment?  There’s already a communication device in existence if you just have to tell someone what you’re doing—it’s called the telephone!  Then again, you can’t spell Twitter without ‘twit’, can ya?  I realize we’re in a recession and lots of people are out of work, but America has WAY too much time on its collective hands.  And that's all I have to say about that…

MOVIE REVIEW: THE WRESTLER

I watched Mickey Rourke’s comeback vehicle The Wrestler last night, and the critics were right for once—this wasn’t a bad movie at all.  Darn good, actually.  It’s the story of a small-time has-been pro wrestler who still thinks it’s the ‘80s and has trouble coming to terms with middle age and the facts of life therein.  It also has a couple good subplots involving his estranged lesbian daughter and his pursuit of a local stripper/lap dancer, played by Marisa Tomei in her Supporting Actress Oscar nominated role.  While I loved to see my girl Marisa buck nekkid in this flick, I really coulda done without the nipple piercings and tattoos all over her beautiful body.  PLEASE tell me those were fake—I hate that shit!!  This is one of the rare areas where I’m as conservative as Reagan—"body art" and piercings on women are a major turn-off for me, especially on an attractive woman like Ms. Tomei.  It’s akin to spray-painting a swastika on the Gateway Arch or something.

Rourke, meantime, was quite impressive and believable as Ram the wrestler, and he reminded me of a bulked-up muscle-bound modern-day Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas, who ironically also thinks he’s still living in a bygone era.  My favorite part of the movie was when Ram lamented the downfall of ‘80s Heavy Metal, saying "Then that Cobain pussy had to come around and ruin it all.”  Amen to that!  To which Marisa Tomei concurred, "The ‘90s fuckin’ sucked!"  Truer words have never been spoken.  Apart from the music of John Hiatt and a few others, the ‘90s were a total wasteland for Rock music in my view.  This currently decade hasn’t been any better, either.

Anyway, the film is a bit graphic and gory in places, so I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart, especially those who don’t like the sight of blood, and I give it about a 7.

"LADY LOOKS LIKE A DUDE"?

Looks aren’t everything, I know, and this "Britain’s Got Talent" contestant Susan Boyle may well be a talented singer, but I can’t get past how she looks look like a cross between Julia Child and Benny Hill in drag!  You can gussie her up all you want, and she’ll still make k.d. Lang look downright girlish in comparison.  Then again, she is prettier than Amy Winehouse!  For her next appearance on the show, I dare Boyle to sing Roy Orbison’s "(Oh) Pretty Woman"…

Related question: In legal circles, could crossdressing be considered a form of "male fraud"? [Place rim shot here]

THE HIGH PRICE OF MEDIOCRITY, CONTINUED

I do hope the Kansas City Royals will soon be Kyle Farnsworth-less, because this douche is Farns-worthless in my book.  The Fredo Corleone of relief pitchers has already blown three games this season that the Royals could’ve/should’ve won, including his latest gem Sunday when he gave up the game-winning HR on the second pitch he threw against the Texas Rangers.  $4 million a year buys this?!?  This so reminds me of the days of the great steroid jockey Jason Grimsley and his nightly blow-jobs with the Royals not so long ago.

EARTH DAY, SCHMEARTH DAY
I was almost tempted to burn some leaves in my back yard to celebrate the great Earth Day today.  I’ll be brutally honest here—I don’t give a rip about future generations and the planet we leave them with because I ain’t gonna be here anyway.  Did prior generations give a rip about what they left us?  I think not.  I’m pretty cynical about stuff like this, because I know deep-down it’s nothing but media-generated hype with no substance whatsoever.  Do all these dreamy-eyed tree-hugging hippie simpletons truly believe all this "going green" stuff is going to make a lick of difference in the long run?  By the time earth implodes upon itself, humans will be living on other planets anyway…

ONLY ON MY IPOD...
...would you hear these four songs in succession:

"One Piece At A Time"--JOHNNY CASH

"The Last In Line"--DIO

"Calypso"--JOHN DENVER

"Rebel"--BLACK OAK ARKANSAS

I believe the word for this mix is 'eclectic'.  Or 'deranged', I'm not sure which...

IN PRAISE OF THE MIGHTY 8-TRACK!

We got into a discussion at work recently about the long-gone musical format known as the 8-track tape and it brought back some memories (good and bad) of this ‘70s phenomenon for yours truly, so I thought I’d share a few…

• Ever notice how your favorite song on the album always seemed to be the one they had to split in two because of the space limitations on each "program"?  For you youngins, think of "programs" as sides on a cassette tape, only there were four instead of two (usually lasting 10-15 minutes and containing three or four songs each), thus some songs were interrupted by the inevitable "clunk" when it switched programs in the middle of them.
• Unlike cassette tapes, you couldn’t fast-forward or rewind 8-tracks—thus you either had to sit through the shitty songs to get to the good ones, or push the button to move on to the next program, but it always seemed like the good songs were in the latter half of the program, so you still had to wait.
• Often times, the track sequence of an album would be altered to accommodate the space limitations of the programs, so if you had a vinyl or cassette copy of a particular album, the songs played in a different order.  I remember listening to Elton John’s masterpiece Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on 8-track first, and got quite used to "Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting" being the last song instead of the "official" closing track "Harmony".
• When shopping for 8-tracks at the record store, one often had to inspect them in an incubator-like clear plastic display case through these circular holes big enough for your hands, but too small for the tapes to fit through.  When you decided which tapes you wanted, the sales clerk would unlock the case and open it for you to retrieve, or some cases had a conveyor belt you dropped the tape on, which transported it to a little box with a lock on it for retrieval.  Either that, or 8-tracks were sold on racks in those over-sized cardboard cartons or were mounted in plastic security devices to keep folks from shoplifting them.
• The biggest draw of the 8-track tape (and later the cassette) was they afforded a portability that vinyl records couldn’t match—i.e., you could play them most anywhere, especially in your car. The big drawback was the typical poor sound quality and how quickly they wore out.
• Another disadvantage of 8-tracks was you lost most, if not all, the album cover artwork (esp. the back covers) and booklets, inner sleeves, lyric sheets, etc., that came with vinyl records.  Sadly, compact discs have diminished the once-proud medium of album cover art as well.

Still and all, the thought of inserting one of those big clunky tape cartridges into a car stereo like in that pic takes me back to a better vanished time.  For even more fun 8-track memories, I highly recommend this here tribute site.

The (Love) Life of Brian--Part IV

After nine years of frustration, I finally got somewhere with a woman...

Toward late summer/fall 1993—against my better judgment—I decided to give the Great Expectations dating service a try.  Even though I had long resisted such institutions, I took a chance this time because I figured any woman out there who was willing to pay that kind of money would be pretty serious about finding a partner too, and I was able to get a fairly good deal on a six-month membership.  After a month or two of being turned-down by numerous women I’d chosen from their photo/video library and feeling very frustrated, I was tabbed by a girl I’d passed on previously named Lisa who wanted to meet me.  I would’ve preferred someone with a different first name to be my second girlfriend, but I couldn’t be a choosy beggar, so I gave her a shot. 

Lisa #2 originally hailed from West Plymouth, MA, and I found her Nor’easter accent rather cute and charming when we first spoke on the phone.  Lisa was about 5’6”, a bit Rubenesque (which I don’t mind at all) with cute curly brown hair, and I really liked the way she dressed—in dresses and skirts most of the time.  The girl seemed stable enough, since she owned her own house and had a good job in the telecommunications field, plus she had a lively personality and we had a lot more in common than I did with Lisa #1—this one even liked hockey!  I also liked how she referred to herself as a “bad Catholic”, thus religion was never an issue with us. We hit it off really well in our first encounter—a very pleasant downtown dinner date after work—so we decided to meet again, and I took her to a comedy club and once again, things went swimmingly. BTW, I found that comedy clubs are excellent ice-breaker type dates—there’s no pressure, and you can learn a lot about the other person by observing what makes them laugh.

For our third encounter, Lisa suggested I join her and some of her girl friends from work on a Friday night at a dance club up near where she lived.  I wasn’t anticipating anything spectacular, really—I just figured on having a few drinks and visiting with her friends, maybe dancing a bit, and just playing things by ear.  We did indeed have a fun time, and as the night wore on, our non-verbal communication kinda took over and her friends took notice of it, because they started leaving one-by-one and before we knew it, it was just me and Lisa sitting at the table next to the dance floor.  Finally, the little dude inside my brain said, “Go for it, Dummy—kiss her!”  My instincts served me well, because Lisa offered no resistance and in fact, kissed me back even harder! I think she said something like, “I was hoping you would do that,” and the little dude in my brain went, “SCOOOORE!”  We kissed some more and then Lisa gave me my first-ever genuine French kiss, which was more like a tonsillectomy!  Since the dance club was getting a little crowded and loud, Lisa invited me back to her place just a few blocks away where we could continue our little rendezvous in private, and we wound up entangled on her sofa for hours.  I have no earthly idea what time I got home that night, and I don’t mind telling you, folks, after a nine-year dry spell, it felt damn good to have a girlfriend again!

Cuddling up on Lisa’s sofa became a regular habit during the fall of ’93.  Lisa told me that her previous boyfriend was an “ice cube” in terms of affection, so I was like a windfall to her because I was so touchy-feely.  Actually, my big 7’ sofa was infinitely more comfortable than hers, but I was still living with my parents at the time, so we spent the majority of our kiss-and-fondle time at her place.  Unlike with Lisa #1, I was in no hurry whatsoever to do the dirty deed this time, because I found it to be a total hoot just doing the simple stuff with Lisa #2, like holding her in my arms throughout an entire movie in a theater (Sleepless In Seattle, I think it was), which was a first for me.  There was even a time about three weeks into our relationship when Lisa got real quiet on me one night while we were making out on the sofa when my adventurous right hand found its way up her skirt.  She said she was apprehensive about my expectations and that she was a virgin and wasn’t quite ready to go all the way yet.  I also thought it was too soon for that, so I reassured her by saying, “Relax—I’m enjoying the hell out of what we’re doing right here,” and that perked her right back up.  Ironically, we wound up in her bed that night after all—her futon-esque sofa was giving both our spines a hard time, so we relocated to her bedroom and got naked from the waist-up and continued making out while her two cats kept pouncing on us.  First time I’d ever been in bed with three pussies before! Ohhhhh, that was soooo bad…

Meantime, we enjoyed each other’s company and had fun together.  Lisa seemed to really enjoy introducing me to her friends, and it was nice to get some badly-needed socializing experience.  Sometimes we’d stay in and she would fix a nice dinner for the two of us (her lasagna rocked, as I recall) and on other occasions I finally had an opportunity to show someone a good time at eating establishments that were a slight cut above Denny’s, like when we celebrated Lisa’s birthday at the Golden Ox, the Cadillac of K.C. steakhouses.  We even went a little high-brow one night and did the Broadway version of The Who's Tommy at the Music Hall downtown (thank you, Chairman Townshend!).  It was also nice to have a few things in common and be able to have long talks about stuff and actually relate to each other, unlike with Lisa #1, where it always seemed like a one-way conversation.  I was mildly frustrated that we weren’t able to spend Christmas together because she had already made plans to visit her family back East long before we’d met, but we made up for it over New Year’s by “playing house” (as she liked to call it) at her place that weekend.  Oddly enough, Lisa #2 was the first woman I ever slept with, but I can honestly pull a Bill Clinton here and proclaim, “I never had sexual relations with that woman.”  We “played house” a few other times on weekends after New Year’s where I’d spend the night and we’d sleep together, and we did everything but have actual intercourse.  We were real close to having sex one night at my place when she was especially amorous with me, but she was still apprehensive and I didn’t push it.  I figured when the time was right, we’d know it anyway, so I wasn’t too upset.  Besides, I was perfectly content having a half-naked woman in bed with me, and the kiss-and-fondle thing was working real good for us.

Things began to unravel in our relationship by late February of ’94, though. I think the beginning of the end was the night Lisa talked me into attending this folk dance event that she was really into with some friends of hers.  It was a sort of hybrid of folky square dancing and the Country line-dancing thing that was all the rage at the time, and was rather intricate and hard to follow.  I had my reservations about it going in, because I’m not much of a hoofer to begin with, and when I realized what I’d let myself in for, I chose to merely watch from the sidelines.  I’d have sooner done the “Poop-Scoopin’ Boogie” (or whatever that stupid hick song is called) than be remembered as the idiot out there on the dance floor who mangled up the whole dance for everyone else, but Lisa was highly-pissed that I chose not to participate.  Even if we were having sex at the time, I sure’s hell wasn’t gettin’ any that night, and that was the first time we went home mad at each other.  The other nail in the coffin was the time Lisa and I spent the evening with one of my best friends and his family at their house.  As I’ve stated before, I’m not very good with children, and his two little girls were being fussy as all get-out that night, and Lisa could sense my irritation.  She knew early on in our relationship that I had no desire to have kids, and she was okay with my feelings about it, although she did eventually want to have marriage and a family herself.  My guess is she was holding out hope that I might change my attitude about it (or that she could sway me that way), but when she saw firsthand how poorly I interacted with kids, she realized that I wasn’t kidding [Pun partially intended] and knew that I probably wasn’t a “keeper”.  I felt badly, but I am what I am.

Then in early March, we attended a Friday night birthday bash for a co-worker of mine at a big nightclub, but Lisa wanted to drive separately, for some reason.  She was late arriving, and once she got there, she was a total wet blanket the whole time.  We got out on the dance floor and it was like she was in another time zone, and I knew something wasn’t right when she didn’t want to slow-dance at all.  Coincidentally, long about this time I was beginning to re-evaluate how attracted I was to Lisa, so I stewed about it over the rest of that weekend and after seeking my good friend Phil’s advice about what to do, I confronted her after we ate dinner out a couple nights later and she acted distant again.  I kinda caught her off-guard, but Lisa told me she was “having a reality check” about her feelings for me, and that she wasn’t sure where we were headed, so we decided to break things off.  It was weird to me because there we were three weeks earlier sending each other flowers on Valentine’s Day (and lawd, she was lovey-dovey!), then it was all suddenly over just like that.  I was disappointed, sure, but kinda relieved in a way since we had more less mutually lost interest in one another at the same time and we certainly were looking for different things in life.  I never imagined we were destined for anything long-term, so it’s probably just as well we ended things before we got too attached to each other.  I was also mildly miffed that we never had sex, and it would’ve been an honor to be her first, if indeed she really was a virgin, but oh well…

But wait—there’s more!  Even though we broke off the romantic relationship, there was still the little matter of the big vacation I was planning for the Northeast later in March—my “The Puck Stops Everywhere Tour” hockey trip, as I called it—and Lisa was going to be a part of it.  After visiting Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toronto and Cooperstown by car during my little 5,000-mile excursion, the plan was for Lisa to fly to Boston and I would meet her there and we’d stay with her folks for a couple days while she showed me around the city, etc.  Lisa said she still wanted to do the trip as planned, and oddly enough, when we met for dinner the week before I left town to finalize our plans back East, she was suddenly warm and friendly again, as opposed to the cool and distant wet blanket she’d been earlier in the month.  She was really affectionate and touchy-feely that night, not to mention excited about showing me around her home turf, and I kinda got the impression she was regretting breaking up with me in the first place.  I didn’t let on either way that I was interested in getting back together, though—I had no interest in playing head games with her.

Anyway, I called her long-distance from Toronto to make sure we were still on for Boston, and she seemed fine on the phone, but when I met up with her at Logan Airport, she was cool and distant with me again—didn’t even hug me.  She wasn’t ice-cold, mind you, but just very business-like (“turn right here“, “go up this street“, etc.) in New England and we didn’t talk at all about us the entire time we were together, not even during a potential Kodak moment on the beach in Kennebunkport, Maine at sundown.  She was a bit more chatty when she’d talk about her past or about famous places in Boston, etc., and especially when we were around her family, but it was still rather awkward for me most of the time.  I was also very taken aback by the drill-sergeant manner in which she ordered her 11-year-old little brother around at home.  He didn’t seem like a bad kid at all, and I’d never witnessed this control-freak side of Lisa before.  It made me wonder if this was part of the reason she broke up with me—there’s no need to order me around, since I’m already house-broken, thus with me she knew she couldn’t fulfill that need to be in charge.  Just as well, because constant nagging will get you nowhere with me!  Anyway, the New England excursion was all a rather surreal postscript to a fun relationship.

When we originally broke up, Lisa told me “Oh, but I still want to be friends and go out and do things together now and then…” and I truly think we could have remained the best of friends for the long haul, but her words didn’t ring true.  We kept in touch for a while afterward, trading Christmas cards for a couple years or so, but she’s basically blown me off since about 1996, for reasons I’ve never fully understood.  That’s when I learned when an ex-girlfriend tells you she still wants to remain friends, it’s a load of bullshit and she‘s merely being nice.  Even so, I don’t mean to paint Lisa #2 in a bad light here because she’s a good person.  I’m forever grateful for the time I spent with her—it was fun while it lasted and I gained some valuable experience in the process.  While writing this piece, just for shits and hoots, I Googled her name and sure enough, I found her Facebook page.  Seems Lisa is now married and has a son, so I guess she found what she was looking for and I’m happy for her.  She still lives here in town too, so maybe our paths will cross again someday (platonically, of course).

Meanwhile, I still had a month or two left on my Great Expectations membership after Lisa and I dissolved our relationship, but I never went back there again—being with her gave me some confidence that I could meet someone new on my own without artificial intervention, hopefully soon.  Didn’t quite work out that way, as yet another lengthy dry spell ensued…