Broken English Girl

A few weeks ago I met a Thai girl at a bar called, oddly enough, Thai's, and she spent the night at my place. She then stayed over until like 3 o'clock the next day, and she told me, in broken English, the story of her life. She's 28-years-old, she's one of 6 children, her mom died when she was 20, and her dad quickly remarried someone twenty years his junior. I will say, for having not spoken a lick of English when she moved here about a year ago, her English is pretty darn good. When I was driving her home she decided that we should stop at the Thai restaurant she works at. I didn't plan on calling her, so I really shouldn't have agreed to do this, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the best Thai food I ever had, and for only like 6 bucks a plate. I was kind of bummed because I knew I couldn't show my face in there again, but I did recommend it to a lot of people.

I didn't ever call her, but last night I found myself at the same after-hours bar in which I met her, and who should appear but Broken English Girl. We went back to my place again, and this time she stayed until five in the afternoon the next day. She wouldn't let me have sex with her this time around, which was probably a good idea, although it felt like a downright shitty idea at the time, but I did, however, get the best full-body massage of my lifetime. I'm talking, hands, feet, standing up to walk across my back, and best of all, some deal where she sat Indian-style, with my head in her lap, doing something flipping incredible to my temples.*

This time I learned that living in the states opened her eyes to some of the things in Thailand that now seem archaic to her. For example, men typically expect their wives to be virgins when the marry them, they are shunned by all if they cheat, yet the husbands cheat lefty-righty without any judgement. So, when she went back, she was not too thrilled when her ex-boyfriend proposed to her. He didn't like hearing no, so he hit her. Things like this make it hard for me to do an all-too-typical Gancer blow-off/phase out. I certainly don't want to be her boyfriend, but I do want to look out for her, for some reason.

I then agreed to help her move some items from her apartment to the place she's moving into. During this process she couldn't work the keys to get into two separate doors of the new place. That is what I'm talking about when I say I feel some sort of responsibility when it comes to her. She really is a sweet girl. After the moving was done she made a point to get my number, and she left her watch at my apartment, so I am going to be hearing from her. That's alright with me, but I just want to be a friend to her. Do friends lie in bed, listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds and massage one anothers naked bodies? God, I hope so in this case.

*No there was no happy ending, before you make a comment like that, but I did educate her on that expression.

Getting Spanky at the Cock

No, that's nothing dirty, you perverts. I work at the John Hancock center, taking pictures of tourists at the base of the cock (ground floor), then I try to sell them the pictures with different Chicago backgrounds at the top of the cock (94th floor). I hadn't worked that location for some time, and I was less than thrilled to see it on my schedule, since it can be, at times, boring, depressing, and sometimes the house music, no lie, is a disc of Michael McDonald ruining Motown standards, one after the other.

However, I had not until this point passed the time away by chatting up the African American ladies who sell the tickets, run the elevators, etc. I wish I had discovered this earlier, because these gals are a hoot! One gets off the phone and says, "Oh, he's getting his balls waxed." I said, "Huh?" She said that a coworker was very secretive about the "appointment" he had to go on for his lunch break, so she filled in the blanks. Later, we were talking about if we wanted kids some day, and the one had decided that she was going to have kids at age "41." I asked her why that number, and she said that at that age she didn't care what childbirth would do to her body, stretch marks, etc., bring it on. I then brought up how I heard breast feeding can deflate a pair of perfectly nice breasts into a pair of deflated balloons. 41 Girl hadn't heard that, so she asked her friend, who was involved in another conversation, not at all listening to our conversation, "Did breast feeding fuck up yo' titties?" I chuckled about that for the remainder of my shift.

Here is another random thing I learned from a feminine, Southern guy I work with who is in between flight attendant gigs: In Ireland they call flight attendants "trolley dollies." Cute, huh?

There is one more thing I learned recently, but this was something I learned Saturday night. We were having a few drinks at a friend's place, and some of the ladies were modeling their New Year's Eve dresses for my buddy and me. I was shocked how candid they are with one another, like, "Your boobs look great in that, but your belly is poking a little. You'll have to wear spanx." What? Spanx? Have you heard of these? Apparently they are like stockings/spandex, only they go around a girl's gut to tuck it in tight. My buddy and I were wondering how it is we've never seen any of our girlfriends put one on, nor had we, to our recollection, taken off one of these in any of our other encounters. My buddy then speculated that this is why they often step out to slip into "something more comfortable." However, after the topic had moved onto something else, he suddenly remembered seeing one. We all had a good laugh as he told us about how he remembers wondering what in the hell it was.

Some of you won't be too surprised that I came up with a solid name for the male version of spanx: Hankz.

Hey, readers, have you heard of spanx? Any good spanx stories?

Misunderstood Christmas Lyrics

I've been taking pictures of people at the mall to the sounds of the same God-damned Christmas songs over-and-over again, and if you know me at all, you know that I can't tune out music. It burrows into my head and pushes out everything that may be useful to me like where I left my car keys, my mother's birthday (only kidding mom, it's in October), or how to walk upright. Because I was left with no choice but to listen to this crap, since I can't tune it out, I figured I'd use my time to come up with some funny, I hope, insights about some of the lyrics. FYI, although they are both brilliant, I'm not going to go with ones that have already been done, like "Walkin' 'round in women's underwear" or "Check the balls on that big collie."

1. During We Wish You a Merry Christmas, it's way funnier, instead of saying figgy pudding, to say friggin' pudding. "Now, bring us some friggin' pudding. Now bring us some friggin' pudding. Now, bring us some
friggin pudding, and bring it right here! You can also insert Bill Cosby's favorite, "friggin pudding pops," to the same, if not heightened, effect.

2. Does the guy in the 12 Days of Christmas give his main squeeze five golden rings, for example, each day he gives her items five through 12, because that's what it sounds like. If so, she'd get 40 gold rings, and that's a lot of bling. The bad news is she'd also get 40 ladies milking, and that's a lot of lactating. That could be really messy, and does she have to house these wet nurses and whoever they're giving milk to, or are they taking milk from something, like cows? If so, what does she do with all those damn cows? If you ask me, this guy doesn't know shit about buying gifts. At day two she should have said, "Okay, now I have two partridges in pear trees, and the turtle doves don't sweeten the deal. What's more, Danny and Keith keep bugging me to get them out of the trees and they're repeatedly demanding of me to, 'Come on, get happy.' Take all this shit back and just get me the stuff I pointed out when we were at the mall. Weren't you listening? I know I didn't point out no damn birds!" Always just buy the shit they point out guys. Women like surprises, but only if they are predetermined, non-bird or wet nurse related surprises.

3. In Santa Clause is Coming to Town, when they say that "he knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake;" I wonder if he also knows when you've been playing with yourself. If so, I'm surprised I got any gifts.

4. There is a version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas that plays at the mall where it really does sound like the lady is saying:
"Here we are as olden days
Happy golden days, up yours."
That really sounds like a mixed message, like she's wishing me happy golden days (whatever that is, but it sounds nice), but then she says, "Up Yours!!!" Hilarious. Nobody says up yours anymore, which seemed to go out with "eat me." This is a shame, in that both are still effective in terms of their imagery and directness.

5. In every one's favorite Christmas carol, Whoomp There It Is!, by every one's favorite Christmas crooners, Tag Team, when they speak of their man Steve Boland, who in the hell is that? What throws me is that it's not a rap name, like I could see if it were Stevie B., but I suppose there already is a Stevie B., who sang the 1991 shit ballad*, Because I Love You. No rap name, just regular, old Steve. Actually, I looked it up, and evidently he says, "And my man Steve Roll'n," so it's kind of a rap name. I wish I knew that the other day before blurting out "my man Steve Bolan" 300 times in front of all my coworkers and customers, who must think I was rapping about some insurance agent, since that what Steve Boland sounds like to me.


Speaking of Stevie B., how bad is this video? Nothing happens! He just walks around his spacious, but sparse apartment, lamenting in his disheveled tuxedo and Afro-pompadour hairstyle. I just coined that term, and I'll never get to use it again, except those rare occurrences when Stevie B. is brought up. Such a a shame.

6. I noticed the other morning, when the holiday favorite Caribbean Queen came on the radio**, that Billy Ocean may have been ahead of his time when he sang, in 1985:



I was in search of a good time
Just running my game
Love was the furthest
Furthest from my mind

Running his game? Who was saying that in 1985? Then again, he does say "painted on jeans," which does bring him right back to 1985 as fast as his delorean will take him. As far as Billy's "game" is concerned, I don't know what kind of game he's running, because he was prone to saying: "Hey, you! Get into my car!" That's not too suave if you ask me, or is he really a genius? Oh, Billy, you sly dog you . . .

Are there some holiday lyrics that always threw you off over the years?

* This is not to be confused by Woot, There It Is. Why do two similar things like that always seem to come out at the same time? For instance, why did Antz and A Bug's Life both come out within a week of one another? One seems to always suck too. Was Antz or Bug's Life the shitty one? I don't know, because I've never seen either, but I'm pretty sure one or the other was the Woot, There It Is of the animated bug world.
** Okay, fine. I kind of like that song.
*** Okay, fine. It came up on random on my iPod. Okay, fine. I sought it out and played it.

Gancer VS Gancer: Not a Big Pay-Per-View Draw, But Interesting Nonetheless

I was straining, struggling, and damn-near sharting* my way through a set of a mere 50 push-ups, that quite sadly, had to be broken up into two sets of twenty-five, and it occurred to me that in high school I could do 50 straight without a problem. I used to be late to gym class daily, opt for doing push-ups rather than receiving a detention, and I'd bang them out like Mitch Gaylord. Um, perhaps a metaphor with the words bang and Mitch Gaylord was not a well-thought-out simile. Anyway, my next thought was, and who the hell else would think this(?), but I wondered if High School Gancer could kick Modern-Day Gancer's ass?

Let's go to the tale of the tape . . .

In this corner, at 6'1", and weighing in at 175 pounds, a skinny, pimply, two-sport athlete**, wall-flower in a flannel shirt with a professional fighting record of 0-0-0. 0-0-1 if you count the times, and I don't see how you can't, when his older sister held him down and tickled him until he couldn't breathe as a collective loss. He has crippling shyness and social awkwardness, but if there's heavy metal music playing by the likes of Suicidal Tendencies or Pantera, his heightened suburban, white-boy teen-angst may give him a slight edge. He also boasts a maximum bench press of 205 pounds.

In this corner, at 6'2", and weighing in at 195 pounds, a 30-year-old frustrated writer who drinks more days out of the week than he exercises, except in the summer when he bikes a lot, or if he has more than 2 sports leagues going at a time, which is rare.*** Again, a professional record of 0-0-1. However, maybe both should have records of 0-0-2, since she used to, again, while pinning me down with her knees, spit hanging loogies, and then suck them back up at the last minute, sometimes waiting, alas, too long. The edge would go to the kid in a long fight, since 30-year-old Gancer would surely get winded, but confidence and poise has to go towards the veteran. However, as savvy and cunning as he may be, although his maximum bench press has not been put to the test in many moons, it probably falls at around the 135 pound mark. This number is not arbitrarily chosen, since any less would mean not being able to use the big-boy plates, and the veteran's pride would lead him to risk serious injury and/or days of soreness rather than get out the wussy plates.****

Overall, if I were a betting man, I'd lay money down on the Modern-Day Gancer. What do you think? How about yourself? Could you kick your own ass even when you were in better shape?

*Sorry, Cherry. I swear that's the last time I reference your shart.
**Not at one time, mind you. One sport, basketball, came during my freshman year and the other one, track, came during my senior year, just to break the monotony.
***Then again, I usually go out for drinks after games, so it kind of cancels out.
****Did Ronny steal my jumpsuit?

Door #1 or Door #2?

1. Elsa the Hungarian Pharmacist:

I met her a couple of weekends ago at a 4 a.m. bar in which I was way too old to be at; I was like the chaperon, seriously. Just when I'm thinking it's time to get a slice of pizza and an orange soda* and take my old ass home, a blond walks in, and she "makes eyes at me."** A little while later, the two of us are doing a barroom, make-out deal, another thing I'm way too old for. We have since exchanged text messages and calls, but it took a while for us to connect. When we finally did talk, I found her to be a lot of fun, and she has a great laugh. We plan on meeting up tomorrow (Thursday).

Pluses:
1. Fun.
2. Cute accent.
3. Might be a potential hook-up for copious drugs. Only kidding! Seriously, positive factor number three has been saying Elsa the Hungarian Pharmacist for the last couple of weeks.

Minuses:
1. I know almost nothing about her.
2. The bar was dark and I was drunk, so she might not be as pretty as I thought she was.
3. Ladies I have met under similar circumstances have not been of much substance, except for Classy.

2. Asian Med-Student Neighbor:

She's a beautiful woman, there are no two ways about it, and everyone who meets her thinks so. We have these amazing conversations when we're one-on-one, yet it's somewhat strained when we're in a crowd. There was one night where it looked like something was going to go down between us, but she flaked. Then another night we're out with a bunch of people, the two of us are talking in a room of the bar away from our friends, and we're agreeing about how great our talks have been. Moments later, when I really should have been kissing her, I find myself talking with some Russian guy in a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt, discussing the merits of their seminal, 1990 LP Butchered at Birth.***

A few days ago she calls me, surprising as it may be after choosing a death metal discussion over her, to ask if I have any Bed Bath and Beyond coupons, which I, of course, didn't. But moments later I found myself going linen/bedding shopping with her. Good sign, right? By the end of the trip we had made plans to go Christmas shopping at Macy's together. Great sign, yes? However, knowing me, I will build up the Christmas party at her house this Saturday as the end-all-be-all moment to make a move. After chickening out, or watching her hook back up with the hand doctor or some other doctor, I'll go upstairs to my apartment, listen to Love Hurts by Nazareth, cry into my keyboard, and then be my own hand doctor.

Pluses:
1. Butterflies. I get honest-to-God butterflies.
2. She's intelligent and a good conversationalist.
3. Fun to be with. I could have sniffed candles in that shop with her until they kicked us out.

Minuses:
1. Seems to have a taste for the finer things in life, and I shop at Aldi and wear gym shorts when I run out of boxers. The thread counts of the bedding seemed a chief concern, and I really didn't know that was a big deal, nor did I know how to spell duvet until Monday.
2. Dating the neighbor could be awkward, and the inevitable post-relationship run-ins would be even weirder. Also, between her 3 roomies and my 4, we have SEVEN roommates. Would we ever be alone together? Also, if things get weird between she and I, would I mess up having four, cute med-students to hang out with?
3. Why do she and I only hit it off one-on-one? Something is screwy about that, right?

I'm surely going to take a crack at both and see where my heart leads me, which will sort a lot of these things out, but I'd welcome some preliminary input, seven readers. All I know is I better enjoy this two girl "problem" while it lasts, because given the feast or famine nature of my love-life, the next two months could have me feeling like The Loneliest Leper TV series starring Scott Bakula.

*You can't beat that combination at Chicago's Pizza.
**Who says that? Nobody else at that bar, that's who. Thus proving I was too old to be in there.
***I've actually never heard that record, or any of their other work for more than a growling minute, but I know all their album titles and what the covers look like. Fucked With a Knife is one of their ditties . . .

I Bring You . . .

. . . Some of the funniest, most random things I've heard in the past week or so:

The Biggest Undies Surplus I've Ever Heard of: Last night a female friend of mine, who has always seemed normal enough, told me two of the strangest things I've ever heard.

1. Don't ask me how this came up, but she disclosed to me that she owns 250 pairs of underwear, many of which still have the tags on them, and they take up like three drawers. Who in the hell hoards undies like that? I told her she should make a quilt out of them, like Gayle Zappa did with all of the bloomers that Frank got from his fans. That idea made her right eyebrow go up, which is when I know I've peaked her interest.
2. She still clings to a security "blankie" she has had since she was two-years-old. When her and I were trying to decide whether or not her boyfriend was a good catch, she did say that he would run into a burning building to save her "blankie." That made our minds up on two matters. He's alright, and she's totally fuck-nuts, in a good way.

Bangin': Today I was telling my mom how my opinion of someone, unless he/she is on of my readers, of course, immediately drops when I hear that he/she tunes in every week for a shit-ass episode of Grey's Anatomy. She pointed out what I've always thought, and what most anyone else should be able to deduce, that one would not want to be treated in a hospital where the entire staff is "bangin'" each other. I'm not sure if any of you will think that's funny, but I just got a bang, pun intended, out of my mom saying "bangin'."

Rotten Ass: I was out with K.I.D., Niner, and some other folks, and K.I.D. relayed a story to us where a random guy said her ass is "ripe." This is along the same lines as the fellow-patron at Home Depot calling Bottle "thick." In both cases, although I wasn't there, I'm sure it was meant as a complement, but in neither case did the woman in question take it as such. To comfort K.I.D., Niner posed the question of would she rather the guy had said she had a "rotten ass?" I nearly fell out of my chair.

Eternal Life Through "Gancer's Awesome Mix Vol 1" and Other Masterpieces

Yesterday, I hitched a ride with some coworkers to a company-paid, birthday lunch for another coworker, and I noticed a few surprisingly respectable songs in a row on a disc that the driver was spinning. I say surprising, because she has never struck me as an Arctic Monkeys fan - I had her pegged as a casual fan of rock music, who would default to something like Coldplay. As it turns out, the disc was made by a guy who she went out with a few times. Sidebar, this gal seems to go on like three dates a week, and the first time I had a conversation beyond hello with her, I felt like I was on a date. She was grilling me with a guided barrage of questions. People with that bad of a sense of urgency to find someone scare the shit out of me.

Mix Tape Guy* guy was evidently scared too, because he dumped her after three dates. I find it strange, as did she, that before dumping her, he acted all chipper on the phone when he made plans to see her at a coffee shop to dump her. There was no need for the face-to-face dump after three dates, even with the mix tape propelling the relationship**, and by making her meet him out, he disrupted her whole day.

ANYWAY, given the fact that I could tell she thought the guy was a putz, I was surprised to see that the disc was still in rotation in her car. This gave me a reassuring feeling that there may be girls out there bumping my mix tapes, even though some of them*** may be saying something akin to, "Fuck Gancer and the camry he rode in on!" I put a lot of time into my mix tapes, and I truly do think about each and every track in terms of the likely-hood that she will like it, given everything I know about the person. I don't simply reburn a set playlist. I certainly don't burn an entire mix tape of the same song over and over, like my sister's psychotic, college roommate, song being In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. Actually, that might be an easy way out of a relationshit, because any woman would be horrified by such a nutty move. ANYWAY, Because of my strong feelings about these CD's, I'm glad that the carefully chosen songs by bands I love are being spread to people she knows, and maybe even burned onto NEW mix tapes, and then maybe that person makes YET ANOTHER mix tape . . . Staggering, I know.

How about you, Seven Readers? Do you have any relationship-based mix tape stories?

*I'm going to call mix CD's mix tapes throughout this whole post. However innacurate it may be, mix tape is not a term I'm willing to let go.
**That was a joke by the way. I'm don't put quite THAT much stock in the power of the mix tape.
***By that I mean roughly all of them.

El Conquistador

I was talking with a female friend of mine who said that after her extremely emotional break up, which I don't think she's entirely over (but who ever is?), she never had a trampage period. If you don't know what that is, and don't worry if you don't, because I didn't either, this is an episode when a gal sleeps with numerous men, not at the same time necessarily, but essentially, to get over her ex she goes through men like she goes through scrunchies. Wait, scrunchies? Girl don't even use those anymore do they? I once had a girlfriend with whom I shared a car, and she'd leave her scrunchie wrapped around the gear-shift thing. It looked not-so-manly to drive around with a gear-shift adorned with a woman's hair accessory, but I just left it there to avoid getting in a fight somehow, even though I wasn't even sure if moving it anywhere, which means I would lose it, would, in fact, get me in a fight. Could that be a metaphor for our whole relationship, or just a really useless tangent leading us astray from the topic at hand?

Okay, that tangent is over, so stay with me here. The concept of a trampage begs a couple questions:

First the feminist, double-standard question:
Why is it trampy for a woman to get filled out like an application for a few months to get over someone, and a man is just a red-blooded stud getting the poison out? A fair question, and one I don't have the answer to. I could delve into this, but the topic is a little too serious for me, and frankly, I'm not qualified or smart enough to come up with solutions to such a systemic, societal trend. Blogger doesn't pay me to be smart.*

Second, a question that is even less fair to a segment of the population than the last quesion:
Why can't I meet more trampaging women? Okay, the segment I just mentioned is just me, but I'm right when I say it's not fair! I guess I may have come across a few, but never have I been told explicitly I was being used to get over someone. This happened to a friend of mine though, on New Year's Eve a few years back. He and I lived together at the time, and we were having a party at a bar across the street from our house. By the way, it was my favorite New Years ever, and probably among my friend's favorites, as you'll gather in a minute, because there were like one-hundred people there, and so many of them were great people who we invited. Anyway, because this bar was so close to our place, we had pre and post-partying there, and many folks left their coats in my buddy's room, a fact that will be significant in a second. So, My Buddy* is hitting it off with a gal, they duck out, go back to our place before the post-party starts, and he gives her a good rogering in his bedroom, on top of roughly 30, winter coats. At some point she actually told him that she was coming off a bad breakup, and to get over it, she'd be down for getting freaky, even it were on top of a combination of wool, leather, polyester, and maybe even GORE-TEX.**

Lastly, the question on the other side of the Trampaging Coin:
What term do we assign to the male equivalent?
I've given this some thought. Actually, I just blurted it out when the question was posed to me, but I think it's a term with some staying power. Because a man sometimes needs a series of sexual conquests to move on, and because the term implies a latin-lover-type mentality, the term for a man in this period of his life that I'm leaving for posterity, here at the gancer, is Conquistador.

Okay, now it's your turn:
Tell us a Little Miss Trampage or El Conquistador story

*They don't pay me to be funny either. The pricks.

**Every time I typed My Buddy, I couldn't help think of the doll My Buddy advertised on television when I was growing up. It didn't seem tangent worthy, so I've footnoted it, and you can learn more about it here.

***My friend, I'm done saying my buddy, later told me that during "the act" she said, "I love parties!"

****In the above text, you will not find a fourth asterisk, which incidentally, took me forever to figure out how to spell (see earlier where I said I'm not that bright), but special thanks goes to fellow blogger Mysterygirl, who, despite never fully trampaging herself, proved to be a valuable person to network with on this topic.

"Thanks, Chad. I'll Take It From Here."

For whatever reason, everyone I talked to was not pumped about Halloween weekend this year. No one knew what costume they were going to wear, what party/bar they were going to, or even what kind of candy they were going to give the kids (cyanide or razor blade based). Unlike these ill-prepared and underwhelmed dead-beats, not only did I have plans for Friday and Saturday, but I had a separate costume for each night. As it turns out, the weekend proved to be everything I hoped it would be and more, and I'd like to share with you some of the details.

Friday
The Costume: On this night I was Brett Michaels from Poison. I had on a black wife beater, dark jeans, black eye liner, a tacky, rock star belt, a blond, rather convincing, wig, a do-rag, and I even researched his tattoos, and had my talented roommate draw them on me.
Venue: My Heterosexual Life Partner (HLP), who was dressed as Jim Morrison from the bloated era, and I went to Subterranean to see a bunch of bands dressing and playing like other bands, but really good bands like The Misfits, Neutral Milk Hotel, Guided By Voices, Flaming Lips, Blondie, and Badfinger.

It's kind of fun to get your rock on when you are dressed as rock stars, but what an unlikely pair of rockers to be hanging out, right? I don't see Brett and Jim having much in common, but on this night they got along famously.

We then went to The Liar's Club where we danced with a big group of girls who looked to be way too hot to be coming from a book club, all of which were married, which we didn't bother looking into until it was last call. Jim was tired, so was Brett, but Brett still wanted to meet up with some friends doing late-night karaoke at The Hidden Cove, a shit-hole so far up north it might as well be in Wisconsin. Brett was blind drunk, but still managed to perform a rousing rendition of Photograph by one of his competeters, Def Leppard, even with the teleprompter out! That is the stuff karaoke legends are made of. Look what you've done to this rock n' roll crown, Brett. Look what you've done . . .

Saturday
Costume: Ghostbuster costumes that HLP and I ordered online. The jumpsuits were a little more yellow than they should have been, and the proton pack and gun were inflatable.
Venue: A party in a remote suburb TWO HOURS west of Chicago.

We were committed to go to this thing, because we feel bad for our friend who moved so far away, but as the day approached, the evite only had like 10 confirmed guests. This was frustrating, because the Saturday before Halloween is the best bar night in the city. Period. Every girl is dressed like a slut, and it's so easy to talk to people, because it's just a matter of saying, "Hey there, Slutty Girlscout. I'll take two boxes of thin mints, if you know what I mean." I actually don't know what that means, and neither did she, but who gives a shit. You get the point.

We made the two hour drive, it took about that long to blow up our proton packs, and I think I got a hernia from the strain of the process. The hernia didn't improve when I slipped on the one-size-fits all, Ghostbusters jumpsuit, that didn't have a 6'2" guy in mind when they made the thing, because it pushed my ball-bag up into my naval. Anyway, the party was small, but the thing about The Host (the same guy from this post) is that any time he's drinking he's partying like it's his last, and he has a maniacle, and yes that's the word for it, laugh that bumps everyone around him up to a party-level of defcom 5. He had a smoke machine and a mix of music that reportedly took him "weeks" to complete with maniacle, once again, the right word, interludes of recordings of his own voice.

However, The Host's wife didn't share her spouse's ability to look past the piss-poor turn-out, and she decided that we needed go to a bar to salvage the evening. Now, my expectations were pretty low for a bar in a city so far from Chicago that it really can't even be considered a suburb, but I will say that this bar was bumping! Not only that, but you could get a round of vodka redbulls for like twelve bucks. To a broke, booze-hound Chicagoan, that's like looting.

There were two gay dudes with us dressed as Roman soldiers, so we had a pair of centurions and a pair of Ghostbusters getting busy on the dance floor, which must have looked hilarious in a bar where only one third of the people were dressed up. I kept having a girl, dressed as Marilyn Monroe whom I hadn't said a word to, come up to me, grind on me for a brief while, and leave. I said to one of the Centurions, much to his amusement, that she was a contingency plan in case all else failed.

So, all else failed, and I found myself having a drunken discussion with Marilyn at the end of the night. She said that I was going home with her, and who am I to argue with her? I think I may have agreed to get rid of some ghosts in her apartment, but I'm not sure, as I was pretty drunk at the time (see the aforementioned vodka-redbull prices). So, we're back at her place, we do our thing, in most every room of her place, and I awake the next day to the sound of sea gulls. I wandered into the living room to investigate this sound, naked, because I was in no hurry to wear my only clothing item available to me, the ball-squishing jumpsuit. On my way to her back door, behind which was the source of the seagull noises, I saw a note that read as follows: "Gancer, went to pick up my son. Be right back."

Dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and discombobulated, I walked to go look at the water and sea gulls and process the recent events. As I was scratching my head and naked ass, I was thinking to myself:

Did she mention a son last night?
What body of water is this?
I suppose it could be the Mississippi as far west as we are.
Hell, it could be the Pacific Ocean. Hahahha. That wasn't bad . . .

Just then the door opened, and I thought, "Oh, shit! I can't have this poor kid come home to see a naked man looking out the back door!" So, I covered my junk, and ran to the bedroom to get my jumpsuit. She and Chad, her son, who looked to be around 1, were nice enough to drive me home, and here is the whole reason I was excited about writing this blog. I know, it's been a long one, and I've come a long way for this one detail, but I think it's worth it. When we pulled up to my buddy's house, as I'm saying my goodbyes to a woman who looked far better as Marilyn Monroe and through eyes operating by means of a brain addled by way too many cheap energy drink-based cocktails, I reached to the back seat of the car to fetch my gear, which is when I saw young Chad chewing on my inflatable, proton pack. There is something that is simoultaneously funny and pathetic about that moment, and it will probably be an image that will always stay with me. I said, "Thanks, Chad. I'll take it from here."

This Week's Post . . .

Is at The Liar's Club.

Notary Babe

I have to get something notarized. So I'm searching online for notaries in Chicago, and there's a page called the "Notary Rotary" with a big list of people, all of whom will meet you anywhere, anytime, and many of whom have pictures. I'm scrolling through their pictures, thinking, I might as well have a hot ass chick meet me anywhere, preferably at 2:00 in the morning, at my house, while in my undies. I thought my odds were pretty slim at finding the allusive hot-to-trot, notary-babe, but low and behold the blond bombshell pictured immediately to the left of this sentence. This scenario begs a few questions:

1. How could I NOT go with the hot one?!?
2. Doesn't everyone?
3. Do any of these other losers get calls, or since she started did all their business dry up?
4. Is the notary game just a front for an escort ring?
5. God I hope so.
6. Was #5 a question or more of a beg?

So, this notary bird is meeting me Thursday night at the bar at which I play volleyball. I can't wait to tell my whole team about it, so we can all anxiously await her arrival. Maybe she'll sub for us! Maybe she notarizes naked! Maybe she signs with her . . .

I'll be sure to keep you, my loyal readers, posted of the upcoming events.

My Big Brother

At my new job I was assigned a big brother, and it was up to me to set up a time to "talk shop" with him. He and I decided that we should get a drink after work this past Wednesday. A few drinks turned into quite a few for a Wednesday, and I really didn't need to hear him say to the bartender, in his thick, Chicago accent, "We'll take a coupla' those bombs (of the Jaeger variety) that ya got der."

What's kind of funny is that he is a lot like the crazy-ass big brother I never had, in that he's a couple years older than me, he has the blond hair and blue eyes, and he takes some of my craziness up a notch. Okay, a big notch. However, I will say that My Big Brother imparted a lot of knowledge upon me, only a handful of which was work related, and I'd like to share with you, my seven readers, a few pearls of wisdom that he bestowed upon me that very day.


1. Don't ever get married to a girl with whom you regularly have threesomes. Quite regularly, Big Brother and the little mrs. would go to bars, he'd approach girls, and the three of them would go home for a swinging-good time. He confirmed my suspicions about threesomes not always being all they're cracked up to be, mostly due to her having twosomes with gals when he wasn't around. Well, to his credit, swinging or not, hitting the one-year-mark to the day, he stayed married four months longer than I.


2. If you get married to a girl with whom your regularly have threesomes, or any other type of girl for that matter, don't put off the wedding for three years until Halloween falls on a Friday, since you're both big fans of Halloween, and make a it a huge, blowout, masquerade party that you pay for with your own money. Big Brother has done really well for himself at work. He bought his dream car, a Jaguar, and he just recently, finally, payed off his masquerade ball wedding. I'd like to also say I learned that I shouldn't ever, ever "masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no," but Corey Heart taught me that long, long ago.

3. This is more something in which he simply agreed with when I mentioned it, but because his convictions were so firm when he concurred, I'm going to include it anyway: Always date the prettiest of the sisters. I told him about the Peruvian girl I once dated, who to her credit, was a foxy-ass lady, she was in no way the Carnie Wilson in a Wilson Phillips equation, but she had two smokin' hot, little, twin sisters. Big Brother responded immediately that one must always date the prettiest of the sisters, or it will vex you for eternity.

When in a foreign land, and it's getting close to last call, one must hone in on the first girls one comes across who speaks English. Big Brother was on an annual company outing to Puerto Rico, which Doctor Kenneth is very much looking forward to, incidentally, and he applied this tactic with great success, in that he and a coworker got the girls back to his room. Their only downfall was being told numerous times by staff members to quite down, and they were thrown out of the hotel, having to pack their bags in the wee hours of the morning. I have a feeling Puerto Rico is not going to know what hit it when Big Brother and Little Brother come strolling into town . . .

Discussion: Since I'm confident this little-rag-that-couldn't bosts having the wittiest, funniest, most savvy readers in all the land, tell me a funny, little life lesson you've picked up along your way.

Chuck E. Cheese: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid and a Nonce Can Be a Nonce

First off, the Cubs broke my heart, and in a related matter, my days on the wagon came to an end. I tried to stay on the straight and narrow, I really did, but Alphonso Soriano literally shoved me off the wagon. As a result, I arrived late to the suburban Chuck E. Cheese (a kiddie arcade, in case you're not familiar, and thank your lucky stars if you're not), where my mom, dad, sister, and her three kids were fully engrossed into Chuck E. Cheese heaven or hell, depending upon which end of twelve-years-old each given family member was.

My first observation was that the guy at the door just unhooked the velvet ropes for me as I walked in without so much as batting an eye. I guess checking I.D. wouldn't make much sense, but shouldn't I have had a kid with me? I could of been some big ol' child molester waltzing in there, ready for an Osh-Kosh-B'Gosh-Damn good time. If Gary Glitter, or any other nonce, which is the British slang for sex offender, is reading my blog right now, then I just inadvertently gave him a money-ass tip for prime noncing. Okay, the implications of this paragraph are in really poor taste, but too funny to delete, so let's just move on.

If you really want to feel like a loser, show up hungover to your local Chuck E. Cheese. Do you ever get so hungover that your body is all out of wack, and dumb thoughts pop in your head as a result? I was looking at the rubbery pizza thinking, "That might be the shittiest looking pizza I've ever seen. I would eat the shit out of that right now." I had a fleeting thought pass of taking a cold, leftover, no-doubt, snot-coverd slice, but I maintained . . .

When I was a kid Chuck E. Cheese was called Showbiz Pizza, and it was ruled on high by hillbilly bear, I think he was a bear anyway, Billy Bob, and his rocking, animated, fuzzy, robotic band. The band's female member was a mouse, who didn't play anything, but instead opted to provide the cheerleading. Maybe Toni Basil inspired her, I don't know, but in any event, I remember a young Gancer's curiosity getting the best of him, as he stuck his head up her skirt to get a peak. To his surprise there were stars under that there skirt! That's right, seven readers, I poked my heard up there just in time to get walloped in the head with a pom-pom, which wouldn't be a big deal, but the bitch had metal hands! There are metaphors for my life all over this little tale, right?

So, as I'm handing my nephew one token at a time, it occurs to me that when he's all out of tokens, I get to go home. This is when I steered him over to the big jack-pot, ticket-getting machine. It's this one where you have to stop the light right on the jackpot. Does anyone else think these places are the first, little steps a kid takes towards becoming a video game junkie, and even worse, a degenerate gambler? Call me a dick, but I kept telling him how close he was, getting his hopes up, handing him more and more tokens, until we were all out. Hey, don't look at me like that! He still got a bunch of tickets each time he missed the target, he had fun, and he got to purchase some useless crap with those hard-earned tickets.

The Useless Crap Counter is the worst part of Chuck E. Cheese, because you're so close to going home at that point, yet so very, very far. Each kid deliberates over whether to get a ring-pop or a whoopee cushion for the better part of an hour, while the pimply, rightfully-disgruntled kid behind the counter subtracts numbers from the total after each carefully selected item is placed onto the counter, and he considers either taking a job at McDonald's instead or mowing down his Algebra class with the AK-47 he'll buy online that night.

As I helped my nephew bag up his useless crap it occurred to me that I still had to get my mom a birthday card, which is why the whole fam-damnly was meeting up that day, so I suggested that my favorite nephew, don't tell the others, accompany me next door to get a card and then ride home with me. He told me about a card he almost bought that said, "Mom, there's nothing stronger than your love, except for maybe dad's farts." I really wish he hadn't told me about that card, because there was no way I was going to find a funnier one than that. I share his fourth grade sense of humor. We then did a Price Is Right scratch-off together, only to lose, further encouraging his inevitable gambling habit, and we were on our way. During the car ride, he told me how dirty my car was, that he was getting straight A's, that his dad might get him an iPod if he stops losing stuff (?) and I just smiled. I know I can't compete with Chuck E. Cheese, but I know he was happy to get one-on-one attention from his favorite uncle, and I was feeling good about our man-to-man chat too. This is what his asshole dad doesn't get. The prick takes him to Great America or something every time he sees him, which is not what a kid from a freshly divorced family needs. He needs solo time with his old man, and his old man needs to leave his new, home-wrecking girlfriend at home. God, I'd like to hit that fuck-stick in the head with a pom-pom with a hard, metal hand underneath.

Okay, that was a long post and I'm sorry I ended on an angry note like that. Let's just do the usual discussion and be done with it.

Hey, Seven Readers, where was your favorite place in the world when you were a kid? A place you could go and not have a care in the world? Where's that place now?

Beer is for Closers

I'm giving up drinking until I make a commission by placing one of these asshole VP's with a job in advertising at my job. The people at my work say all the time that "pain is the greatest motivator known to mankind," and let me tell you, being in Chicago the night the Cubs clinch a playoff spot and NOT being able to drink is damn painful, and, with any luck, one heck of a motivator. My willpower once I start drinking is horrible, in that as long as people are willing and able, I'll keep sucking them back. However, my willpower has always been strong once I'm fully committed to something. Here are some fine examples which illustrate this very point.

1. Earlier this year, my doctor told me that that my "good cholesterol" was good, but my "bad cholesterol" was a touch bad. Nothing to worry about, but just a little high. I freaked. "What do I do, doc!" I replied in a frantic state. "Well," he said calmly, and a little annoyed with my frantic state "just cut back on fried foods a little." I haven't had a fried food since. Not a french fry, not a tater-tot, and nary an Arby's curly fry dipped in Horsey sauce.

2. Going back a little further. My mom told me that I had a bit of a thumb sucking problem as a kid, which came as no surprise for me to hear, as I'm a bit of an oral fixator. It was a habit she could not break me of until my dentist told me that if I continued suckling on my fattest of digits my teeth would stick out like "Bugs Bunny." My thumb-sucking days were over that very afternoon.

3. Going back even further, I was 16 in that last story, when my mom was trying to potty train me, I was not hearing it. When she'd ask if I was going to go in the potty that day, I'd say, "Not today." I've always been a bit of a procrastinator, and a brilliant one, in that I wasn't being defiant, just putting it off a little, just trying to buy myself a few more glorious days of shitting in my pants. One day when the whole family was getting ready to go to the public pool, my favorite place in the world to shit my pants, and my mom, in a stroke of genius, said, "You can't go, little Gancer, unless you go in the potty first." And I've been going in the potty ever since, unless the situation calls for other more creative endeavors, like writing my name in the snow or pooping off a high dive at that very, same public pool. Ironic? No, but a good poop story.

So, as you can see from these stories dating back to when I was potty trained, at age seven, once I set my mind to something I'm damned determined. I kind of wish I wasn't though, because going to bars when you're sober, with millions of drunken Cub fans, is damn irritating. Here are some things I discovered:

1. Bars are smoky. It's like I'm immune to it when I'm schnockered, but when I'm sober I'm so annoyed and disgusted. Believe me when I say I don't like being the guy annoyed with smoke. Even though I only smoke a pack a year, nine times out of ten I prefer smokers to non-smokers, but that's another post for another day.

2. People are obnoxious when they drink. The only worth-while drunken display I saw was a girl, who couldn't dance for shit, trip over her big boots, and fall on her face. A good laugh was had by all. She was crying, but I'm sure she wasn't hurt. The makeup undoubtedly broke the fall. See, that wouldn't be as funny to me if I were drunk, and I probably would have thought she was a damn, fine dancer, but sober Gancer was too observant for his own good and way too crabby.

3. It's hard to pick up girls when you're sober. I don't want to be the stone sober guy picking up on drunk girls, because that's kind of sleazy, so I just kind of stand around thinking of a good time to sneak out.

4. I notice how much my friends and I drink when I'm sober. I feel like their mom when I'm like, "jeez, another round already?" I know full well that if I were drinking too I'd be right along with them, and some nights, maybe worse, and that's the scary part.

5. The crazy thing is that for the first hour or so of barroom sobriety, it's all I can do not to jump over the bar and slam the first three bottles of anything I can grab at random, but then I reach a point where I want no part of what the demon rum makes people become. That rhymed! However, I had better have some success at work soon, because I know these Cubbies are going cause me a great deal of stress, and then when they blow it again, making it officially 100 years since they've won a World Series, I'll need to get properly Schlitzed, and you're all coming out with me, seven readers, to watch my glorious, drunken, tumble off the wagon.

Your turn: Isn't it some sucky-ass shit to be the lone sober person when you go out with your booze-hound friends? Discuss . . .

Raw Jello

I was riding home from work, with my iPod on random, and out of all 7,000 songs that could have popped up on this afternoon, No One is To Blame by Howard Jones Came on. I instantly wanted to eat raw, powdery, sweet, sugary, jello right out of the box.

Let me explain, since anyone who says something that recockulous had better well explain his or herself:

When I was in the 9 to 10 years of age division on my swim team, we'd eat raw sugar during meets, because someone, somewhere along the line must have told us that it gave you energy, which somehow made you swim faster. I was skeptical, since I was a skeptical kid (the Easter Bunny was bullshit to me by the time I was four), but I suspended my disbelief for any excuse to eat a box full of colored sugar. Hell, it would stick to your hands and make your fingers all red, then you'd wipe your face and hands with your towel. Fucking decadent.

Anyway, for whatever reason, my brain has a decades-long, lasting, Pavlovian response to Howard Jones, which makes me want to pour gelatin in powdered form down my throat, which may make me choke and cough a little, but sweet, sweet, sugar-burning, choking coughs. I can't say that I listened to HoJo at swim meets, ate raw jello while listening to his Brit-synth pop stylings, or at any time combined all three elements, but I'll be damned if I didn't want to, the second the song came on, want to pull my piece of shit Camry into the Wallgreens, walk up in that piece, find a box of jello, lick my dirty, little finger, and lick me up some strawberry, jello powder.

How's about you, seven readers? Anyone out there have a knee-jerk response to a song they'd like to share for the other six readers?

The Birf' of a Salesman

Not many of you know this, but I was in the education field for the last few years. Even less of you know this, but I resigned and started recruiting for advertising firms. One day it dawned on me that if I taught all my life, I would die penniless. Plus, I would never be compensated for how hard I worked. In sales type jobs, you do get paid for how hard you work, and while I've been working my tail off, I haven't made squat yet.

People always tell me I'd be good in sales, because I'm funny, personable, likable, and trust-worthy. These are all true, and they do translate well into sales. However, I have some draw-backs that aren't as obvious to everyone, but they are becoming very clear as I get further entrenched into the corporate world. I'm unorganized, scatter-brained, forgetful, and I have bad anxiety.

I'm getting better every day, but there were a few days where I didn't think I could hack it. Have you ever had a job where you felt like an idiot all day at work, and every second outside of work all you can think about is having to go back there?

For example:

Let's say you're a Bearded Lady, and you keep flaking out and shaving every morning.

Or let's say you're a Belly-Dancer, and you keep blowing on your partner's belly.

Or let's say you're a Cannibal, and you keep filling up on roasted chicken with butter sauce.

Or let's say you're a Skin-Head, you strongly dislike The Jews, but you just can't bring yourself to hate them.

On any given day, I feel like any one of those guys above. However, I'm starting to see myself being damn good at some stuff, especially cold calling, which I have to do a lot of until I have more regular clients. The thing about ad people though, is they're a cool bunch. I mean, they're really boss! Sometimes I'll bullshit with them for quite some time, and it seems like a lot of them drink a lot too, which is jolly-good for The Gancer. My plan is to hit a Chicago advertising happy-hour with a shit-ton of business cards, schmooze, and booze.

Just today I met a girl on the phone, and even though I've never seen her, I feel pretty confident saying that she was really, damn hot. I mean, for fuck's sake, she's an account planner in Los Angeles named Nik. Not Nicole, not Nikki, just Nik. We chatted for a while and she emailed me back with a bunch of her friends' names who I could, in-turn, talk out of working wherever they are. She just took a new job, but she's keeping me in mind, and she said, "I think I'm going to like you." That's what I'm talking about. Are any of my blog buddies from L.A., because I smell a business trip in my near future?

Well, here are your questions. Answer one or both of them:

1. Tell me a about a job at which you were useless as tits on a bull.
2. Anyone know anyone in advertising anywhere in the country who may want to make a job change? Email me at www.thegancer@yahoo.com

-The Gancer