Hey. Did I ever tell you about the time . . .

. . .that Dr.Kenneth Noisewater (The Gancer) wrote "rock out with your cock out" in a wedding guest book?

A Top Five You Won't Find Anywhere Else

Believe it or not, there was a time when a certain word so funny to us now was not that funny and said regularly on television commercials all through the 1980's and into the 1990's. This word now is synonymous with someone who's kind of a loser, but back then, it was simply a noun or verb, depending on . . . Oh hell, I'll stop beating around the bush, so to speak. I now bring you The Top Five Douche Commercials of All Time (Don't forget to turn off the music player to the right before viewing the ads):

6 - Even After a Shower! (Sorry, we have to go with 6. They're all just too damn funny.)

Sitting in the window sill of their suburban home, Mom says to daughter, while consoling her with an arm around her shoulder, "Hey, I used to change your diapers. Talk." Daughter says, "Sometimes I just don't feel fresh, even after a shower." Mom says, "I think it's time for Massengill." She's a good mom because a somewhat less supportive mom might have said, "You mean a shower isn't enough for that cooch of yours?


4. - Not-So-Fresh:

Daughter and mom are coasting along in a sailboat, when out of nowhere daughter turns to mom and says, "Do you ever feel, you know, not so fresh?" You have to love how mom, despite her daughter's vague description, knows exactly what she's talking about and says, "Of course. That's why I douche." This ad earns extra points for featuring a somewhat famous actor from Third Watch, Soprano's, and Hulk, Cara Buono.


4. Holding Out on Your Mother?!

"Holding out on your mother?" mom says to daughter, pulling a box of Massengill out of her closet, where it was not concealed in the least bit. Daughter seems caught off guard like mom caught her with something illegal, but when she learns that mom is just ticked off that her daughter never told her that Massengill now has Effectal, daughter just laughs, not at all embarrassed, somehow, and says, "I just bought it!" Mom then comments how she's always loved Massengill's slanted design, and the slanted bottle looks supsiciously like dad's slanted . . .


3. - The Test:

Believe it or not, this one is from 1994. It features some women putting on make-up in a bathroom, and one accuses the other of having an antique douche. Then, one informs another of massengill's new bomb-ass cleansing design douche that even kept her fresh through her period, and "that's the test," evidently. Good lord! Are these women complete strangers in a ladies room exchanging this personal information? Hey, don't go calling some random lady's douche an antique unless you're ready to throw down.


2. - Do You Douche?

Mom and daughter are walking along the beach when daughter turns to mom and says, "Do you douche?" You can't beat that. Wait you can: with her response of, "I sure do." It's a classic commercial for the ages. I also like how creepy mom sounds when she says, "You'll see how clean and fresh Massengill makes you feel." It kind of sounds like mom can't wait to get home and douche her daughter.


1. - Guess the Douche Game!

Excited, with her hands behind her back, daughter asks mom which hand is holding the newest idea in douching. The answer, both hands! Extra Mild and Extra Cleansing are both new! How tricky of her! Extra Cleansing has something called puriclean while Extra Mild has no additives. Mom says, "I choose Extra Mild," subtext being: not that stinky of a beaver. Daughter says, "I choose extra cleansing," subtext being: a really, really smelly vagina, which is why she is so excited about this new technology. I also like that in this ad Massengill brags about rocking the douche game for 70 plus years. Way to hold it down, Massengill!


What do you think, Seven Readers? I have a few questions for you:
1. Do you think the order of this list should be changed at all?
2. Do you have a nomination? If so, please provide a link.
3. Do you ever feel, you know, not-so-fresh?

Stay Tuned . . .

So sorry for the lack of posts lately. I pitched a Top Five list to the editers over at Starpulse.com, and they turned it down. So, stay tuned for that list here at The Gancer, where anything goes. Owwwww! I'm a writing rockstar, and you fucking know this!

Mix Bag of Bad Blog Topics

It's time that I clean out the piss-poor blog topics that are in the memo section of my crappy phone. Some are kind of interesting in a Gancey kind of way, some are just plain dumb, but either way, here they are:


1. Remember the Amazing Kreskin? He was a psychic who made appearances on David Letterman. For whatever reason, I was thinking about how sometimes women want men to read their minds, and men just want women to tell them what the hell they want. Well, neither one is right. Men need to be more in tune and women need to just spell it out every now-and-again. So, while riding my bike to work, I was having one of those imaginary conversations in my head with my girlfriend about how I can't be expected to know what she is thinking, and I was saying, "Who do you think I am? The Amazing Kreskin? The Amazing Foreskin? I nearly fell off my bike laughing to myself, but is that even funny to anyone else? Haha. Foreskin.


2. I was watching some people play Flippy Cup, and I say watching because I have vowed not to play drinking games after thirty years old, and I also don't do more than one shot in an evening. I like to do zero shots a night if possible, but sometimes there are those special occasions where a guy just can't be rude. As I'm watching this game, I was trying to liken a given player's ability to flip cups in baseball terms, and I've decided that someone who averages three flips is batting .270, two flips is like a .300 hitter, and someone who hovers right around a one-and-done is like a .333, batting title type of guy. Anyone refute this or want to change these figures slightly in either direction?

3. I don't like to go to strip clubs because they kind of depress me. I always get thinking about the girls and what their childhood must have been like to be doing something like that, but I will say that one thing that can keep my mind from drifting to those sad places is how terrific they smell. There is this distinct smell that no other women really smell quite like. I asked a bartender a while back to affirm this for some of the ladies I was with, and our exchange went roughly like this:

Gancer: Barkeep, don't strippers smell great?
Barkeep: Oh, God yeah.
Gancer: How would you describe it.
Barkeep: I'd say it's like a . . . sexual chocolate type of goodness . . .


4. Those last couple may have been a little strange, but this is one could very well be just outright stupid. I was at work the other day singing "Some Like It Hot" by Power Station, only I was singing, "Some like it hot and some shit their pants when the heat is on." I just liked that I was lumping people into two categories: those who can handle said heat, and some who at the first sign of trouble just go ahead and crap themselves. It's funny to me, damn it.

230th Post and Still Not Good With Clever Titles

Some of those drafts that never were never deemed post worthy or ones that I didn't even think were funny upon a second look all count towards that 230 figure. I just want to clear that up because all seven of you were so concerned about that, I'm sure.

Make Romance. Everyone says this in songs, but nobody says it in real life because it's the most terribly dorky thing ever. What would you say if your significant other said to you, "Baby, tonight I don't want anyone around. It's just you and me, and all night long, we're going to make romance." Hahahha! Don't say that to me, weirdo.


Yet songs say it all the time because it rhymes with dance. Don Henley says it in "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" when he says make romance as an almost after thought, as if it should be implied that of course she likes doing it, or she wouldn't be interesting subject matter to sing about.


Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears said it when he compared running with the football to making the romance, which seems strange, but have you see highlights of his runs? Son of a bitch really was making love out there. It's no wonder they called him Sweetness, but while he was a smooth muthafucka, I bet her never asked some girl on the road in a Phillidelphia bar to go back to his hotel to make or create, if you will, some romance.*


The lead singer of The Four Tops once lamented that he and his old lady used to dance to the music and make romance through the music. That sounds intense. Had he said we used to make romance to the music, yeah, big deal. We've all put on a little music and gotten down with someone, but to make romance through, the music, well, that is something.

Help me out here, seven readers. Are there any more romance making lyrics out there to be blogged for posterity, I mean seven people? Leave them in the comments section, you romantic F'ers.

_______________________________________________________________________
* I grew up watching Walter Payton run the football and jump over a defensive line to score touchdowns, sometimes landing directly on his head. He's one of the most complete backs to ever play the game, but he also seemed like such a great guy. He died in 1999, prematurely and unfairly at the hands of a rare liver disease, despite not being a drinker, looking skinny and terrible in a press conference, and it was really hard to see. It was especially hard having always remembered him being so strong, running up those hills, working harder in the off-season than anyone else, getting that edge on the competition through hard work and not performance enhancing drugs. It was very sad to lose him, and yet it seems he's not remembered anywhere near as much as Michael Jordan when it comes to Chicago athletes, which is unfair. My first Old Style beer when I'm camping this weekend is for you, Walter. Thanks for playing in my city. I will show that clip of you running over Kanasas City Chiefs like mere speed bumps to my son some day.

2 Quick Things: Poop Precautions and General Suckiness

THE FIRST THING

There are some expressions that we use to remember certain things to get us through life:
1. Look both ways before crossing the street
2. Beer before liquor, never sicker. Liquor before beer, you're in the clear.*
3. You have to know when to hold 'em, fold 'em, and walk away. And don't count your money at the table, because as Kenny Rogers once said, that kind of greedy shit amongst friends and strangers alike is bound to get you an ass whippin'.

One that should be added to this list, I think, is don't ever start pooing without first checking to see that there is toilet paper readily available. We need a good expression for that reminder. It sounds like something that should be such an obvious precaution, that we shouldn't need a catchy phrase, right? Everyone should have an instinct to avoid finding themselves with a dirty ass and nowhere to turn. One would think it would be clear to most anyone. One would think . . .

AND THE SECOND THING


Friends and I were talking about a real dork. We're talking a virtual tool shed of a man that you can't even stand to talk to. The kind of a guy where he walks into a party, and you say, "Awww, fuck! So-and-so is here. I'm either going to have to leave this place or kill myself with a corkscrew." As we discussed this guy's outright crappiness, someone said, "That guy sucks." I busted out laughing because is there anything worse to say about someone? I'd rather have someone say, "That Gancer is an asshole." Asshole I can deal with. To say someone sucks is to say that they don't necessarily suck at anything in particular, basketball, croquet, or anything else, they just suck in general, in summation. It's so final.

Leave me a comment, Seven Readers, because you don't suck, and due to your foresight and lack of need for catchy phrases, you all have sparkling clean anuses.

__________________________________________

*That one actually has been disproved by most experts (read drunks) because what really matters is how much booze you pour down your esophagus, not the order in which they go in. Either way, if too much goes in there, it's going to come back out. The only thing does make the expression hold true is that if you have 7 or 8 beers in you, you may be pouring in hard liquor without knowing how much you're really boozing. Then again, if you have 3 or 4 cocktails in you, you may throw back beers like they're water. No, I was right the first time: it's a dumb concept.

A Book Review and Some Random Crappola

1. My good friend Jeff Phillips, otherwise known as The Igloo Oven, just published a book called Whiskey Pike. Having known him for around three years now, seeing him steal the show with his knack for comedic timing in the play I co wrote and directed, The Loitering Hole, and knowing what a light-hearted fellow he is in his day-to-day life, I was not expecting such a dark tale. Yes, it's dark, but not just dark for dark's sake; it has something worthwhile to say about strained relationships in a family as they deal with greed, corruption, and alcoholism. I also like the cute illustrations Jeff did on his own that keep such a sad story grounded in the theme: "A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind." So, pick up a copy at the website or at Amazon.com, sit back with a single-malt whiskey, and settle in for all 65-pages of booze soaked enjoyment.

2. Recently I got thinking about a bar that one of my best friends managed that was like my home away from home for around a year. I knew the whole staff, they knew me, and I always felt pressured to be funny when I came in there, coming up with bomb-ass one-liners like Norm on Cheers. There was a gal there who will probably always be my favorite bartender. She'd pour me a drink with like a four to one booze to mixer ratio that I could just sip on for an hour or two, and she'd say, "I put some stank on it." One day my roommate at the time and I were having a few there and helping that very bartender come up with names for a Christmas shot she had concocted. I'll be honest here because there's no other way to say it: It looked like a shot glass full of cum, but it tasted just like Christmas! Because it looked so much like spunk, all of the names we were coming up with were totally inappropriate, but so damn funny that they need to be shared.

I remember throwing out Santa's Baby Batter, and my roommate, always shocking me with the funny stuff he'd stir up in his head, being such a quiet fella, came up with Blitzen Juice. Blitzen Juice! I still laugh when I say it. Telling that story last night, I decided to text him those two words. I woke up this morning to a return text from him: Santa's Sleigh Load. Ha! Forgot that one.

3. I was watching COPS today, and as you know, I've been known to offer little tips here and there to help all of you Gancey Up Yourself, and I think this is one of my better ones: Watch COPS as a means of boosting your self-esteem. I watch losers getting arrested, and I think to myself, "Sure, I have a heaping pile of student loans, my writing career isn't taking off like I hoped, and my actual job doesn't pay a whole lot, but I have all my teeth, I've never smacked my 'old lady' around, gotten handcuffed shirtless on my front lawn with a knee in my back, cursing out cops who would moments later find a few grams of cocaine in my jean shorts. I got it pretty good next to those guys, and so do you, seven readers. Whenever you get down on yourself, just remember, even if your job sucks, be thankful you have a steady one, and you could be somewhere getting dragged out of your trailer and beaten with nightsticks while snarling police dogs bite your ankles.

Updates

1. I've been writing weekly reviews for The Bachelorette over at Starpulse.com. Click over there and leave a comment if you have a second. The show has exposed me to all kinds of unthinkable douchiness, and I'd like to share with you what I've learned . . .

2. Sitting at my girlfriend's place with her brother, both of whom were born in the 1980's, we saw a clip of Mr. T. chainsawing down about 100 oak trees on his estate, angering his neighbors. The following conversation ensued:

Gancey Girlfriend and Gancy Girlfriend's Brother: Who's Mr. T.?
Gancer: Who's Mr. T.? He was on the A Team.
GF and Bro: What's that?
Gancer: It was a show about a bunch of mercenary dudes driving around in a van being called on upon by clients when they had nowhere else to turn, doing God's work with machine guns. The show was so awesome, we used to play it at recess. I played the part of Hannibal, their savvy, silver-haired, cigar-chomping leader.
GF and Bro: (blank stares).
Gancer: Okay, he had a Mohawk. Well, everyone has that hairstyle now, but back then it was really significant, you know? I mean, on his Saturday morning cartoon, even his dog had a Mohawk.
GF and Bro: Okay. Got it.
Gancer: He had like fifty pounds of jewelry around his neck, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm serious!
GF and Bro: So, are you going to order that sushi?


3. Yesterday, as I sorted out my colors and lights for my laundry, I started gangsta' rapping "Colors" by Ice T from the movie of the same name. Every time I'd come across a dark shirt, I'd throw it to a pile, and say, "Colors! Colors!" My roomy must have though I was the biggest laundry hardass ever. Laundry hardass?

4. Okay, I know I've given you some cutesy nephew stories before, but here's one more, so deal with it. I'm going to say his name is Maynard. He was around 5 when he had this conversation with my sister, his mom, so you'll have to excuse his problems with suffixes.

Maynard: I pukeded on Christmas, and I pukeded on Easter. What's the holiday called with the red, white, and blue?
Gancey Sis: 4th of July.
Maynard: Yeah, I didn't pukeded on that one.

Readers, any thoughts on any of these random-ass updates? Who's my reader who's gone the longest without having "pukeded?"

Dilf With Baby on Board

My girlfriend has a park across from her apartment, which is great for looking out to see what people are wearing to see what to wear, but it's also great for people watching in general. She told me that she had been seeing a rash of DILFs (Dads I'd Like to . . . Fornicate). We then got in a discussion about dads and baby slings. I want to know what my Seven Readers think.

Is a man more or less hot if he's wearing one of those?

Would you ever wear one?

Can a man be hot if he's wearing a baby sling AND jean shorts? How about a baby sling and Zubaz?

5 Things in the 1980's That Didn't Form Voltron

I did one of those lists on Facebook called, "When I Was a Kid, I Loved . . ."

Here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

1. Stinkor from He-Man. He looked like a skunk, and his power was just that he really, really smelled. It must have sucked for him to have a superpower of which he was a little self-conscious, or did he just not give a damn, like, "That's right, bitches! Stinkor is back, so put your clothespins over your nose, and get ready to lose your appetite!" Whether he embraced it or he wanted to crawl into a cave and wallow in his own stink, either way, only the 1980's would have a muscle-bound guy who reeked to the point of superpowerdom.

2. Big League Chew. It was gum that came in a pouch, billed to wadded into your mouth during little league games to prepare kids for chewing tobacco and eventual mouth cancer, and you have to love how they still make the stuff. Joe Camel gets all that flack for being a cartoon geared towards kids and having a phallic nose, while all the while kids are throwing in a chew before heading to the on deck circle, and I like that for some reason.

3. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka. He was a Fiji born professional wrestler who ushered in high flying acrobatics off the top ropes into the world of body builders who fake like they're hurting one another. He was my favorite guy, and it always seemed like he lost, which is why I liked him. And the Chicago Cubs.

4. Pitfall. It was a game on the Atari 2600 video game counsel in which you were Pitfall Harry, a guy jumping on the heads of alligators, swinging on vines, and hopping over scorpions in an endless screen-by-screen pursuit of hidden treasures in the jungle. Today's games are too advanced. Now they have these story lines where you're a guy stealing cars and shooting hookers in the face. I like the world of Pitfall, where I could assign my own metaphors, like maybe he's just going to that next screen, hoping for more treasure, but no matter how much gold he gets, the game will only end when he dies in a limited number of horrific ways, or when his time runs out. If you don't see the deeper meaning in that, just go back to your hooker shooting games, and try not to think too much. Pitfall Harry and I think you're not deep enough, and you wouldn't last a day in those scorpion infested jungle caverns.

5. Feathered Hair. I just dig it, that's all. Do I think it should come back? No, that would be stupid, but it's hot. Can a chick work up some feathered hair for one night only, and then fix it before she had to go to work the next day looking like Farah Fawcett? If my girlfriend could do that for me, I'd be happier than Ponch. At the very least, I'd promise never to feather my own hair.

Have You Ever Thought About . . .

1. I know it's old news, but remember Miss South Carolina in the Miss Teen USA pageant with her incoherent, desperate effort to explain the horrors of the lack of maps in foreign countries? Well, the other day I was thinking about, don't ask me why, how she kept saying "such as," and I was speculating that someone probably coached her to say that every time she had the urge to say the word like because she probably said the L-Word a few zillion times during her run-through responses. Watching it again, there is, in fact, one instance where she starts to say like, catches herself, and then goes to her stand-in, the fail proof such as. Check it out.


2. On our walk to the Cubs game the other night, my buddies and I were talking about the final, really fat days of Chris Farley, and I said, "Remember that last shitty one he did with Matthew Perry, Wagons East? My good friend corrected me, saying that title was John Candy's morbidly obese movie, and I was thinking of Almost Heroes. Isn't it weird that two overweight, very funny, likable actors both had fat guy in the frontier movies that were universally lambasted by critics for their swan songs just before their untimely deaths?


3. Gancey Girlfriend was cleaning her apartment with a do-rag on her head, and I said, kissing her temple, "Hello there, Aunt Jemima." By the end of the night, she was calling herself the pancake icon, too, but then she questioned it, saying that she did not believe the good aunt wore the apparel in question. This morning, reaching into the cabinet, I was shocked to see that my syrup had revealed that Gancey Girlfriend was right: Jemima was staring right back at me sans do-rag. I did the research, and apparently she hung up her rag in 1989. I personally think the old way was better because I'm old school, and if for no better reason than to keep her fallen hairs out of the damn syrup.

What senseless junk have you been thinking about, Seven Readers?

Jimbo

Here are some reasons, in no particular order, why I think my new roommate is going to work out just fine.

He hails from Alabama, and he kind of talks like Wooderson, Matthew McConaughey's character in Dazed and Confused, which leads me to ask him to say lines like, "I get older, and they stay the same age. Yes they do."

I wouldn't call him a heavy drinker, but he has a Jim Beam or two every few nights. The other day he was making chili, and he reaches for the bottle of Beam and says, "Eh, what the hell. I'll pour a little 'Jimmy' in there." I asked him what does that do for the dish, and he had no idea. When he had finished his masterpiece, he says, "You know, you can actually taste the Jimbo in there." I would have thought that a bad thing, but he followed it up with, "It's real good."

It's getting nicer out in Chicago, and he had not seen the lake yet. He told me that he walked down to the lake, stopped to do a few sets of pull-ups on a tree branch, and as he's telling me this, he was showing me the scrapes on his hands. That's a man's man right there.

All five roomies participated in a night of margaritas, and he said, "I think I have the heartburn." The heartburn. Perhaps that's one you would have to hear him say to get how it's funny . . .

He's seriously considering brewing up some peach moonshine in the apartment.

I wanted to go to Aldi because I'm broke and needed lots of groceries, and knowing he had just got back from grocery shopping, I said, "You should go along just to make fun of weirdos." I was kidding, but he came along. And we did poke fun at a great deal of weirdos.

He pays rent, he's clean, and he's a gentleman. You would think this one would be the biggest reason, but I think the best thing is that he affectionately refers to his bottle of Beam as Jimbo.

A Deep Purple Bully

I heard "Hush" by Deep Purple on the radio this morning, and out of nowhere I thought about a bully in my seventh-grade class who wore Led Zeppelin, Slayer, and Metallica shirts to school, all of which were bands the students knew. But on that one day, or sometimes two, out of the week, he would spend a good portion of the day trying to explain just who the hell Deep Purple were. Sure, now I know that they were famous for having lots of keyboards in their hard rock sound, they had Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, and were famous for playing a song that you only need to know a few chords to play: "Smoke on the Water," but at the time I didn't know anything about the band or the boy wearing it, excpet that he scared the shit out of me.


One day he wore a Slayer shirt on a school spirit day where we had to wear our colors, red and white, and he inadvertently had those colors on his shirt. He was bragging to everyone that he was showing his school spirit with a gruesome Slayer shirt, and the teacher said, "Jake," we'll call him Jake, "why don't you get up and parade around the room in your Slayer shirt to show everyone, and he DID it! He marched around the room displaying his shirt, cavorting around the room, flipping his long, dirty blond hair around, and all I could think was, "I'm scared of this kid, and I'm scared of Slayer."

Frightened as I may have been of his apparel, I actually came to his defense when administration banned heavy metal shirts but continued to allow girls to wear their New Kids on the Block shirts. This teacher thought I made a great point, and I think it was then that she told me I had one of the brightest minds in the school if I'd only apply myself. I got that a lot, but never quite like that. But, I didn't set out to tell you what an underachiever I was and still am; I'm here to tell you about the biggest bully I've ever known.


I work in education, and on the whole, I really do believe that kids are meaner and nastier these days. While that may be true, this guy would have given anyone at my current place of employment a run for their money. He may even have taken on the top three or four the baddest baddies at once. He got in a fight just about every week, and he logged hours and hours of solitary confinement time in the in-school suspension room. He was like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape , only younger, wearing more heavy metal shirts, and instead of bouncing a rubber ball, he got his jollies beating up other seventh-graders.

Maybe it's because we both donned blond mullets at the time, but for whatever reason, he liked me. I remember one time I walked into the bathroom to find Jake just hiding out for a while, probably having just finished a Marlboro red, and he said, "Let's slam dance!" I didn't know what the hell that meant because I had never been to a heavy metal concert, or any concert for that matter. I think at the time I was into Vanilla Ice. Before I knew what was going on, he was colliding into me repeatedly, vigorously, with his shoulder, but with a big shit-eating grin on his face. All I could do was slam back into him with a bony shoulder of my own. Despite being short in stature, he was really strong, and I found myself inching closer and closer to the tiled wall . . . At which point he stopped and we went back to class. I was so scared and happy it was over that I forgot to go pee.


Jake reeked of smoke every day. I had a locker next to his, and he stunk of that awful combination of leather and cigarette smoke. He'd be opening his locker singing, "Your mother was a witch. She was burned alive. Satan's little bitch . . ." Now I know that is from "Am I Evil", one of the bonus tracks off a now out of print version of Metallica's first album, Kill 'Em All, originally performed by Diamond Head, but at the time, I just stared straight ahead into my locker, hoping that he wouldn't look at me, hoping that he wasn't talking my mother, his, or anyone's.

One time I was in health class with him (I seemed to have every class with him), and we were getting our drug education. Jake was giving the class an education of his own when he asked questions like, "What do you call those pills that are small and yellow cause my sister gave me some and I was all messed up . . ." I don't think he was talking about Nuprin. He probably could have given us a sex education lecture as well. I remember rumors of him having sex with the the class slut (I was horrified that we had a few in junior high having not even started masturbating yet) behind a dumpster while his friends waited at the end of the alley for him to finish. Really? This guy seemed to have enough life experiences after middle school to just chill out and join the Peace Corps at the ripe-old age of forteen.

He went to a different high school than me, which is good because he probably would have had every class with me again, but during my junior year I remember someone in my study hall, where everyone bullshitted and no one studied much of anything, telling me that he ran into him. He said something innocent to Jake like, "Hey, we went to Junior High together!" Jake started punching him in the face, perhaps for old time's sake?

What the hell was wrong with this boy? As an adult and an educator, all I can think about is what was being done at the time to help get this young man get on the right path and keep him from hurting anyone on a daily basis. Also, I wonder what his parents were like? Actually, as I typed that, I remember his mother, and she had a feathered mullet, looked as if she were more of a buddy than a mom to him, and she probably got her son stoned and made him the only Deep Purple fan in the district. I thought of most of this in the span of five minutes during my car ride, constructing a long-winded blog about shit that happened twenty years ago, just having heard a self-indulgent keyboard solo. I need a blog bully to shove my head in a toilet the next time I get on a tangent like this.

How about you, Seven Readers? Tell us about a bully when you were a kid. What did he/she do? Why do you think they did it? Most importantly, what rock bands were they into and do you think of them when a song pops on during your morning commute, or is that just me?

Spring Break '09 Has Had Far Less Keg Stands than '99

What I have done with my Spring Break:

1. I went to the dentist where I got a complementary massage (awesome!) and some complementary laughing gas (awesomer!). I don't know if you guys have ever been under the gas, but it feels exactly like being stoned. They put something over my nose that pumped me full of the stuff while I listened to classic rock on headphones. The only song I can remember now was Black Water by The Doobie Brothers, a song made that much more annoying when you're getting fillings, it's coming through headphones so you can hear "by the hand-hand" in alternating ears, and you can't change the station!

I made a joke about how they should do the shoulder massage after going through all the drilling and filling and figuring out I was out 700 bucks, and they actually had the guy come back for my second rub down. I tried to tell him I was kidding, but I really didn't try that hard to stop him. After all, I've earned this Spring Break.

2. Shit! I forgot to get my emissions test. That was on my To Do List.

3. I took my bicycle to the shop to give her a tune up before the summer. I'm picking it up in a few minutes, and I plan on buying an odometer to attempt to bike more miles than I drive this summer. Have I said that in a prior blog without actually doing it? Probably. I'm not real big on follow-through.

4. My Heterosexual Life Partner got engaged. You can read about him in numerous posts. This puts the heat on Old Gancey pretty hard, but that's okay. I was headed down that road, anyway.

5. My interview with Jason Lytle from Grandaddy just went live here:
http://www.staythirstymedia.com/200904-032/html/200904-jason-lytle-int.html

6. The final run of the play I cowrote and directed is running its final four shows the weekend of the 24th. You can read about that here:
http://www.woodsugars.com/TheLoiteringHole/

7. I've just been named the guy for updating people on The Bachelor via a weekly write-up at Starpulse.com. You will be able to read about that here when the new cast of desperate pretty people clamor for a new rich guy:
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php?s=Matthew+Swanson&sentence=AND&submit=Search

8. I'm leaving for Iowa tonight to spend Easter with Gancey Girlfriend's family. I bought her mom and dad a stone hedgehog for their garden. That sounds stupid, but hedgehogs, I'll have you know, are great for a garden because they eat their weight daily in snails, slugs, and all kinds of bugs that F' up your plants. If you feed them some cat food, they'll likely stick around to make your garden a healthy place, and even after they're gone, the bugs and slugs they go after generally don't come back for a year! Stone ones like the one I bought, well, they just sit around and look cute, but it's a metaphor for a healthy garden. Did I really just buy them a stone metaphor? Oh well, too late.

Does Anybody REALLY Know What Time It Is?

I heard "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" by Chicago on the radio in my bathroom this morning, and I got to thinking, as I too often do about meaningless shit, mostly about rock music, that if I were the other guy in the exchange with the songwriter on the street that day, I would have likely punched him in the bean bag.


Let's pretend I, Gancer, were to have really needed to know the time, and Guy from Rock Band Chicago said those lyrics to me verbatim. Essentially, in the narration, he says that he was walking down the street one day, and a man asked him what time was on his watch . . .

Gancer: Hey, bud. You know what time it is?
Guy from Rock Band Chicago: Does anybody really know what time it is?
Gancer: Uh, well. I suppose you do. I mean, I see your watch and all.
GRBC: Does anybody really care?
Gancer: Well, I certainly do. I have to catch the brown line downtown. So, would you mind terribly just looking down at your wrist for that time?
GRBC: If so, I can't imagine why.
Gancer: Okay, chief. I don't need this existential conversation. What. F'ing. Time. Is. It!
GRBC: We've all got time enough to cry
Gancer: I suddenly have time enough to beat someone, and how fortunate for both of us that you have time enough to cry!

How about you, Seven Readers? Do you ever picture conversations in songs as the most stupid thing you've ever heard? If you get stumped, just default to Piano Man by Billy Joel.

High and Dry But Not Dry Where You May Think

Yeah, i'm not a loner, i'm not a fool
Don't need a reason, reason to be cool
I got my whiskey, i got my wine
I got my woman, and this time the lights are going out
(saturday night) high
(saturday night) high 'n' dry
(saturday night) i'm high
(saturday night) high 'n' dry

I was singing this song to myself as I drove over to my lady's place; the lyrics based on the items I picked up.

1. Thai food for two.

2. A romantic movie: "An Affair to Remember" starring a very pimp-like Cary Grant and an entirely unbelievable guy who seemed to be fine with his girl holding onto a crush on the aforementioned big pimpin' Mr. Grant. Seriously, he was like, "Okay, babe. Why don't you go for it? He is a looker." Then again, as stupid as it was to think someone would act that way, at least he wasn't a predictable prick like he would have been in today's movies. Consider the evil shoot-people-in-the-butt and lay-cheap-shots-on-you-during-pick-up-football boyfriend in Wedding Crashers. Or, take the take the window-seat-taking and cheat-on-you-lefty-right boyfriend in Wedding Singer. Come to think of it, both those guys were cheaters, and both were in movies with wedding in the title. I like both films, but the point is that today's movies seem to want to hit the audience over the head with who a character should end up with at the end of the thing. I like Danny Aiello's guy in Moonstruck because he's not a bad guy, just a harmless momma's boy and kind of a dork. I guess I'm looking for that kind of realism, but nobody pays me to write bad guy or even neutral boyfriends in movies, nor do they pay me to compare my life to Def Leppard lyrics. You all get that for free.

3. Twizzlers and some shitty cookie dough candy

4. A couple bottles of cheap, instant headache wine I'll never buy again that I got at Aldi. There will be a blog about Aldi very soon.

5. A bottle of Astroglide Lubricant

Now, you're probably thinking that was going to be a romantic evening, an affair to remember if you will, until number five threw a major curve ball into the mix. But, we weren't using the lube for it's namesake - this particular one doubles as a massage oil. We wanted to go with the stuff that warms up to make up for my lack of massage ability, despite being Swedish. Then again, if I got some good music and I'm in love, like I am with her, I'm not all that bad.

And you may be asking the reason I made you read those awful Def Leppard lyrics if you're still reading after all those tangents? I was singing:

"I got my lube. I got my wine. I got my woman . . ."

I ask you, Seven Readers, what else do you need?

You THINK You Pissed Yourself?

I don't know about your town, but the Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend is just about the drunkest day of the year in Chicago. Many spend their entire morning and afternoon completely pickling themselves with alcohol, but I spent most of Saturday afternoon lying around doing absolutely nothing with my girlfriend. It was a wonderful, totally mindless afternoon, right down to watching Norbit. Don't judge me.

Anyway, when we finally emerged from her apartment, there was still some daylight left, and it was around 6:00 PM. We saw a guy who looked to be in his mid twenties, disoriented, wearing a predictably green shirt and having way too much trouble walking and texting as he made his way down the middle of the street. Something about this guy being alone, quiet, and it being still light out, made me wonder what was wrong with him without even thinking that it was simply drunkenness. Gancey Girlfriend had no trouble diagnosing him: "That guy is three sheets to the wind,*" she said, as we walked towards my apartment to begin some boozing of our own. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not saying what I often do when I see a guy like that - He's everything I want to be.

That guy was lit up like a Christmas tree, but he wasn't the drunkest guy I saw that weekend. The absolute drunkest was someone I only saw in a picture.

I knew things would be ugly for a friend of mine from said picture when he told me that he was so intent on getting schlitzed that he got a hold of a bag of Dihydrogen Hexachloroiridate, more commonly known as an IV, and a needle to shoot himself up to rehydrate the next day. Things were even uglier than I could have possibly imagined. Today, on the Sunday of St. Patrick's Day weekend, the most hungover day in Chicago, without saying anything else at all to me, he announced, in a gruff, painful sounding voice that he often has after a night with lots of loud mouth soup, talking loud and drawing a crowd, "I pissed myself." He then clarified, "Well, at least I think I did."

That's a strange statement, right? Either you pissed yourself or you didn't. Well, he then explained that he and a friend were looking over the pictures from the night prior over breakfast, when he came across a full body shot of himself, the one he would show me, with a wet spot starting at his crotch and going all the way down his right leg, almost to his ankle. It's possible someone spilled on him, but not likely that it would have that precise of a location and pattern. I'm pretty sure, as is he and anyone in that bar clinging to any of their sobriety, that he, in fact, pissed his pants.

What's most impressive about this is that he also showed me two numbers that he got post peeing his pants. Those gals were either too drunk to notice (good thing), they gave him bogus numbers (probably the case), or they are into guys who piss their pants (not likely but interesting).

I told him that perhaps a guy taking a whiz right then and there could be seen as a form of flattery. Consider him saying:

"I just felt our conversation was so engrossing that I couldn't dream of interrupting such a beautiful exchange with something as mundane as a trip to the bathroom."

Well, Seven Readers, you know there are no limits to the stupidity we can explore on this rag over the last four years, so why don't you tell us an incontinence story?

_____________________________________________________________________
* I was always curious about this phrase so I looked it up. I found this on phrases.org.uk.something-something, and I'm using it with no permission at all.

"Don't be taken aback to hear that sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor."

Slangin' Latte

I saw an advertisement for free lattes on Mondays at McDonalds, and I thought I'd try one out today. It was real small, stopping made me three minutes late for work, but it was damn good.

I got to thinking that this is not unlike when a drug dealer gives a new customer some free "shit" to get him hooked. Think about it. I'm a caffeine addict - pretty much like a junkie. I'm not going to go to Starbucks to get my "shit" if I can get it just as good and cheaper from Mack (McDonalds), right? When I go to Mack, I'm not going to buy his shwag stuff (regular old coffee); I'm going to want that bomb stuff (muthafuckin' latte) that he gave me last Monday for free. The one I've been telling all my homies (coworkers) about. As my tolerance grows, I may even have to buy a twenty sack (a medium, maybe even a large latte).

Mack's got me by the short and curlies, Seven Readers. Pretty soon the promotion will run its course, and I'll be paying for it, maybe even whoring for it.

Rockstar Struck

I just interviewed Jason Lytle from the rock band Grandaddy over email, and I was nervous. Again, over email, and I was nervous.

I have always been in awe of rock stars, and even before I knew I liked rock music, I still wanted to know everything about the rock. When I was seven, in my spare time, which was most of my time, I wanted to spend it with G.I. Joe, but an unavoidable seed was planted by guys with guitars, not little plastic guns. I wasn't even sure I liked the Rolling Stones yet, but I intently listened to my dad tell about the time they hired the Hell's Angels biker gang for security and someone got stabbed. Cool! I didn't necessarily know that I wanted MTV or cable (I was the last on my block to get both), but whenever I was at a friend's place, that's all I wanted to watch. I'd watch Sting knock over that tall maze of candles in the "Wrapped Around Your Finger," video and I was transfixed.

In high school and especially college, I started to become a student of rock. Everything I heard about it went into my brain where it would stay forever, pushing out the ever shrinking space for more pertinent information. I studied liner notes to learn every member of Anthrax, just in case it would ever win me any money on a game show. So far it's only made me kick ass at the name game when I'm drinking, but I'm confident knowing the correct spelling of Joey Belladona will pay off some day, some way.


I have little daydreams where I meet rock stars. You would think, since they are fantasies, after all, that in these day dreams I'd end up doing mounds of cocaine, chasing groupies, and running away from the cops with these rockers until dawn. Actually, I just walk up to, let's say Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd, and I say, "Your music has been so very important to me, and I thank you." That's it. Even in my fantasies, I can't allow myself to be anything but humble, brief, polite, and unobtrusive in the presence of my rock heroes.


This is the way I was in my interview with Jason. I was humble and in awe, despite the fact that it was flipping email. I eagerly contacted all my friends with discerning taste in music to let them know that it was going to happen and that I was getting an early leak of the album from his publicist. I was stoked!

I'm not getting paid for any of this, but it's still very exciting for me. In my rock journalist fantasies I typically allow myself to get paid, and usually I have a high rise condominium with a minimalist modern vibe and lots of black leather, but for now I'm happy doing it just for the excitement of the whole thing from my shitty apartment with four too many roommates.

Joanie's Unrequited Love

I'm always really tired during my morning drive to work, and sometimes my mind will drift off to a place where a more alert Ken would have stopped the train of thought twelve blocks prior. This morning I got thinking about a television show centered around the coolest Italian kid on the block, Arthur Fonzerelli, played by the Jewish Henry Winkler: "Happy Days."

I should have stopped there, but then I got thinking about the 17 episode failed spin-off from 1982, "Joanie Loves Chachi." For some reason, I just wanted to see how bad it really was, kind of like Ishtar. You can't do that with a show that got cancelled before it built up enough episodes to go into cyndication. Maybe they're on youtube or something, but then I'd have to watch it in ten minute intervals. That would just cheapen Erin Moran's vision in my opinion.

But I didn't stop there. No. On this morning I was thinking how the title kind of left Joanie out to dry. Why does she just love him? Doesn't he love her? Were the creaters thinking of calling it something like Joanie and Chachi Are in Love, but that was just too many syllables? Let's see . . .

"Joa-nie and Cha-chi Are in Love" (8 syllables)
"Joa-nie Loves Cha-chi" (Ahhhhhhhhhh, 5 syllables)

Still, I think it makes Joanie look like she's with some jerk who doesn't love her.

Why not:

Joanie Loves Chachi, But Chachi Can't Even Stand to Be in the Same Room With Her Nowadays.
or

Joanie Loves Chachi, But Chachi Loves Her Sister
or

Joanie Loves Chachi, But Chachi's Into Machine F$ck*ng

What do you think, seven readers?

I think I need some books on tape or something for that morning car ride.