Jersey

Yesterday I went over to a friend's house for a BBQ and a farewell to newlywed friends of mine who are off to Florida for good on Tuesday. Upon my arrival, I was filled in about the car accident that had just happened. Apparently, a drunk dude smacked into another guy's car at a stop sign, and the cops were there talking to both parties. After the cops left, the guy who got hit came over to get our information in case he needed witnesses. It was a nice, quick visit. THEN, the drunk dude came over with his dog, who had been in the car for the TWO HOURS they were talking to the cops, and sadly, the visit from him and Jersey, his dog, was not at all a short visit.

Drunk dude was pleading his case to us, but we just wanted him to leave. He then asked me if I could move his car out of the middle of the street and into a parking space, which I was glad to do. He f'd up his car pretty good because something was grinding really loud like a sonuva-B. After parking it, I handed him the keys and said, "Car sounds great. Good luck." That should have been his cue to leave. Oh no . . . He then made a phone call, and asked me to hold onto his dog. What? I just parked your beat up car, and now you want me to hold onto your stupid dog!?

So, I'm holding onto this random, drunk guy's dog, and I'm growing rather fond of her. Her name was Jersey, and she looked like a golden retriever but with shorter hair and a white patch of fur on her chest. She was really well behaved, but we determined that she was hungry because she had been away from home for a long time, and she was doing a great deal of whimpering. We gave her some water, but she wanted nothing to do with pickles. She did, however, eat the shit out of the pieces of bread we threw to her, which she caught in her mouth and wolfed down.

When drunk guy finally came back after leaving us with his dog for literally hours, he updated us about his situation, as if we gave a shit, but what killed me is he SAT DOWN. I saw him start to sit, and it was like in slow motion . . . You know when you're trying to end a conversation with someone, and everything you say are parting words? That's what I tried to do, but this cat was in it for the long haul on perhaps the last day I would ever see one of my best friends. Yes, Drunky, it's YOU I want to talk to. Perhaps the best thing about this guy was that he had on a green t-shirt with a drawing of bowling pins getting knocked down that said, "That's How I Role!" How is it that you role exactly? Getting drunk? Crashing into another guy's car? Overstaying your welcome? Making your DOG overstay her welcome? Actually, Jersey could have stayed all night. We were sad to see her go, but not as sad as we were to see our newlywed friends go. Our friend gave myself and my other good friend a long embrace, and when we pulled away, we noticed he was crying. Very sad to see him go, but he will always have a place in my heart because that's how I role.

Beefcakes, Wiggers, and Wankers (In That Order)

I was all ready to do a blog about the pro-wrestler Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, since I recently used his name in the "name game," you know, when you name celebrities and "drink while you think." The name is a great one to use, because names with the same first letter for the first and last name reverse the order. Although, that one is a triple, so maybe the direction straightens back out, but anyway, more importantly, just uttering the name for the first time in ten years had me giggling all night. I did some research for the blog, and while I'm sure it would have been decent, I really just wanted to type the name Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. And now I have, and I'll type it one last time for good measure. Brutus. "The Barber," Gosh-damn Beefcake.

Now for the actual topic: My summer job as a photographer of tourists has brought me in contact with a lot of interesting coworkers, but they all share one quality: They're all a hell of a lot younger than me. It kind of sucks being the old guy, and I was reminded of this the other day when one gal said that I am so "90's." I had never heard that before, but I guess it's the same as when I see a guy with a mullet and jean shorts and I say he's "so 80's." To this younger generation, the 90's were a time when they were little kids, like the 80's were for me, so they didn't really experience the times, in terms of fashion, pop culture, etc. You know what is REALLY mind-boggling to me? These kids weren't even alive when the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986. They don't know shit about "The Fridge," "Mongo," "Butt-head," "The Junkyard Dogs," "The Black and Blues Brothers," or any of that stuff. When they were little kids No Doubt and Sublime were all over the radio. That's nostalgic for them. Weird . . .

So the other night I found myself partying with these 20-year-old art students, full of Keystone, which was what I drank at their age, and while admittedly drunk, I typed the following memo into my phone for future blogging purposes: "Wall-to-wall wiggers. Black people have always had a strong hand in popular culture, which has been a good thing. However, it has turned white, suburban America into a nation of wiggers." Okay, I know, that's not at all a PC term, in that it implies it's alright for me to use the n-word, which it's not. I just don't know another word for it, and it sounds good with wall-to-wall, just like Beefcake jives so well with Brutus "The Barber."

It wasn't just their wiggerness, but their not-yet-cultivated, embarrassing personalities that bothered me. As Richard, my Irish coworker, who is the same age as them, said: "They're a bunch of wankers." I saw one wanker wearing the same exact sunglasses (at an indoor party), Rolling Stones shirt (fucker probably only owned the greatest hits,) and do-rag at two straight parties. Yeah. I went twice, which I'm not proud of. Anyway, his name was "Smitty." NOBODY should be called "Smitty" until they are the old guy at the office. I got news for Smitty, he will be the old guy in office some day, but long before that he will be the wanker of the office. This guy was so darn serious about throwing ping-pong balls into plastic cups, you'd think it was the Olympics or something. No Smitty, not the Olympics, just the Wankerlympics.

I have to say though, I've been really crabby and unhappy with my life lately. Part of my hatred for these kids really stems from jealousy, and I'm not talking about being jealous of their ping-pong ball throwing. What bugs me about these kids is that they're so young and studying to do something creative with their lives, which is what I always knew I wanted to do, yet I settled to study more "practical" things. Well, now I'm "practically" broke and my only creative outlets are this rag that I write and my shitty guitar playing. One wanker I was talking to is studying to be a writer, and my first instinct was to doubt that this schmuck has to offer the world, since he too was a white kid with a do-rag and camouflage pants AND shirt. Who knows? Maybe he'll be the next Hemingway, maybe he'll fall flat on his wanker-face, but at least he's going for it. Meanwhile, this wanker is lamenting and drowning in his own hatorade. I just learned that term. Jeez, I AM "so 90's."

Varts

I need to discuss a very sensitive topic today. It is a phenomenon that has baffled scientists for years, but made many of these scientists giggle uncontrollably. I'm talking, of course, about queefing. Here's a definition I got off of wikipedia:

Queef (flatus vaginalis in Latin) is an emission or expulsion of air from the vagina, often during or after sexual intercourse or (less often) other sexual acts, stretching or exercise. The sound is somewhat comparable to flatulence from the anus but does not involve waste gases and thus often has no specific odor associated.

WAIT, stretching and other exercise? Ladies, does that really happen??! How embarrassing! So, a really tough yoga stretch can induce a whopper queef? That would really mess up everyone's concentration. Speaking of which, it can really mess up one's concentration when one is doing the old "in-out-in-out." It's a terrible time to laugh, because it seems like it always happens when I'm doing something right, perhaps due to the amount of pressure, I'm not sure, but it's always all I can do to hold it together without laughing. I mean, when I got a real good stroke down I don't want to kill the mood by laughing, but come on, farts out of a vagina is a damn, funny concept.

I must admit, I have a little queef envy. I mean, yeah, I can pee standing up effectively with my sex organ, but I can't fart out of it. How sad. Hey, readers, please address at least one of these items:

1. Whether it's physiologically possible or not, what should we call a fart out of a penis?
2. British and Australian readers, I just read on Wikipedia that you all call queefs "fanny farts." Fact? Also, I've heard them referred to as "varts." That's what I'll be calling them henceforth, as the title would indicate.
3. This is more of a warning than a topic, but don't ever blow into a woman's vagina to induce a queef, as awesome as that idea may sound. Evidently it can be life threatening for a woman and her baby if she's pregnant.
4. Tell me a funny vart story.
5. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be shooting air up my dick-hole with a turkey baster. Sure it's risky, but this is science, damn it.

Sincererly,

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Cotton-Pickin' Weddings!!!!!!

There was a period of my life where it seemed as if I was going to a wedding every other weekend, and then I had a long, GREAT stretch of time where I went to zero weddings (except Bubba's). Unfortunately, during the month of July I have to attend three, one of which I went to last night with the quasi-girlfriend. Here are the highlights.

- The DJ/Music SUCKED! During dinner he played jazz, which would have been perfect, had it been Miles or Ella, but it was flipping elevator-music/waiting room jazz. I felt like I was waiting to get a tooth drilled, rather than waiting for a shitty steak. At one point in the night, a point in which I was rather drunk, he played Eyes Wide Open by Creed. Yes, terrible, awful, bible-thumping Creed. I just had to sing it in an exaggerated, over-enunciating way, a-la Scott Stap, which was good for some laughs. The only time the DJ redeemed himself is when he played The Gancer's requests: Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice and Poison by Belle Biv Devoe.

- I got horribly depressed. Okay, I guess that's not a highlight, but it was noteworthy to be sure. I was married once, and while the marriage sucked and ended in ruin, the wedding was beautiful and a great time. Also, I couldn't help but think that it was my only wedding, and if I do it again a big "to do" will just seem stupid. Could I really ask a bunch of those people to come back to a big wedding any time soon, when my last marriage only lasted 8 months? "Hey, come on back to Chicago and get me another gift! I'm sure I'll make it a year this time around!" The whole experience, and all the other marriages around me that seem to end in one or both party being completely shitty to the other, has led to my extremely cynical outlook on marriage, which makes it hard as hell to be happy and/or optimistic at weddings. Don't get me wrong, I don't bring people around me down, and I want to be happy for the brides and grooms I see and suspend my disbelief, but I just can't get myself there.

- The crowd kind of sucked. It seemed as if there were lots of boring, early-twenties people, kids, old people, etc, but very few people of any kind who liked to get piss drunk, which is a guest's civic duty at a wedding. It's impolite not to. What have these people's mothers taught them? The dance floor was only full during the early, dorky, make the old folks happy, Twist and swing portion of the evening. During the late-night, someone better have a tie wrapped around his head part of the night, the only time I saw anyone get crazy was when they played Cotton Eye Joe, and some people were doing some kind of stupid-ass, Hee Haw, foot-slapping dance. It was painfully embarrassing.

- One thing that really blew was when the bar opened back up after that always brutal stretch of closed-bar time during dinner, when you've run out of the shit wine they drop on your table hours ago. Just as the bar tenders got back to their station, the slide show began. The really, long slide show, which was three parts (Bride, Groom, and Bride and Groom Together). The happy couple were sitting in chairs, holding hands, RIGHT by the bar, so anyone who stopped watching the show to get a cocktail, would look like an inconsiderate, stinking drunk, which I am, but I didn't want to tip everyone off to that fact, especially in front of the quasi-girlfriend's coworkers. Instead, I waited to see if anyone else was bold enough, but sadly, no one was.

Anyone been to any weddings lately? What was the suckiest thing about it?

Yet Another Craptastic Update Post

- Today, on my bike ride home from my guitar lesson, with my guiltar strapped to my back, I got a head nod and a smile from a random guy with a guitar. Even though random guitar guy can no doubt play circles around me, I felt like a member of a secret society.

- I'm reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is a mind-blowing book, but it's like the fifth time I've read it. There's lots of books out there I need to read, but my lazy ass just keeps rereading the handful of books that I own.

Cherry crapped himself the other day.

- Last night I went out boozing with some kids from Ireland who I met at my summer job at Navy Pier. These kids come out every summer, they always have like 10 people living in a two bedroom apartment, and they're great fun. There are a lot of things I learned from those fellas, but what I will for sure take away from the debacle is this: Henceforth, The Gancer will only refer to guys as "lads" and girls will be "birds."