I'm a couple Tito Santana and Ginger Bakers deep, but I had to duck out for a second to get a blog posted. I'm trying to stay committed to a post just about every day. I figure it only takes 5 or 10 minutes and then I'm back to enjoying my Friday night. The kids are in bed, so I'm just throwing on some 90's indie rock, sipping this way too strong of a libation, and clickety-clacking out this story I want to tell. It's a quick one.

So I have this friend I haven't seen in years, but he used to tell this story when we were drinking beers around a fire in his backyard about a little league baseball coach he had as a kid. It seems this coach was often irritable and quirky, prone to sweating profusely and rambling incoherently. One thing the team of youngsters got talking about one sunny afternoon was how all of the t-shirts he wore had 3 holes all in the exact same places. Each practice and game he would arrive in a different shirt with those same three holes. What could possibly be the explanation for something like that?

I don't remember exactly how my friend came upon this information, but evidently this coach was multi-tasking one day doing his laundry and cooking crack cocaine and dropped his piping hot rocks directly into a pile of his freshly folded shirts, burning a hole all the way to the bottom. 

So be careful out there folks. And maybe don't combine cooking illicit drugs and doing laundry. And maybe don't do crack and coach little league. That's another bad combination. 

As for the comments, I have no idea what anyone can say to this. How about just tell me what you're up to this weekend. 

"If only I had one of grandpa's swords . . ."

My wife's grandfather told an interesting story over breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving. I go out to northern California to be with her family ever year, and it's always good to see grandpa. He is well into his 80's, fought in World War II, and he is one of the only guys still around who can say they were at Normandy. He is also the proud owner of one of the most impressive antique weapons collections known to man. As a matter of fact, Charlie Watts once came over to his house to buy one of his swords. Grandpa isn't a fan of rock music so he wasn't as excited about that visit as I would have been. All he remembers about Charlie is how dirty his fingernails were.


Anyway, grandpa is offered bacon and said that he better not after he had bacon with the family a year ago and drove home. Apparently the bacon was causing a serious need to get to the bathroom for the last few miles of his ride (he still drives!), and in his rush to get to the toilet upon opening the door, he accidentally kicked the trip wire he had set up and released tear gas all over him and all through out the house. Grandpa is big on keeping his home and the weapons collection tightly secured and evidently engineered the whole trip wire tear gas thing. He said that he couldn't leave the house because he still had that urgent call from nature, and he then had to sit there and finish his business, just enduring the pain with his eyes burning. He truly is from the "Greatest Generation." I would have cried and screamed loud enough for all my neighbors to hear, and they would all step outside to see what the commotion was all about just in time to see me pooping the bushes. And still crying.

What is funny is that Mrs. Noisewater's dad, grandpa's step-son, was quick to point out that this wasn't the first time that grandpa had set off his own tear gas bomb upon himself. Maybe he has an immunity built up so that he can fight off a would be intruder through the haze and eye burning? Who knows.

In any event, here's hoping your next "movement" is in a cozy and comfortable spot free of any chemical weaponry.

Starchild

I played paintball one time and one time only for a bachelor party a number of years ago, and the one thing I learned is this: Firepower matters. Our group used the rental guns which released paintball capsules kind of fast. I guess it could have been considered semi automatic. We had to play against other random people outside of our group who brought their fully automatic weapons. There really is no comparison.

One guy was wearing a hockey jersey that said "Starchild" on the back, and this dude's weapon sprayed everywhere. And I mean everywhere. When this guy lit you up, you looked like someone took one of those paint rollers and covered you head to toe, not missing a single inch. Star Child was a shorter Caucasian man who looked not unlike Wayne from "Wayne's World," which shouldn't come as a surprise considering this was in Suburban Illinois not too far from Wayne's home of Aurora. ]

I have some questions that I never got answered. 

1. How much do you suppose a weapon of that caliber costs?

2. Where is the sport in just holding down a trigger and hosing down the entire room?

3. Was that the top of the line back then, and how far has paintball technology advanced since Star Child's hey day (which was around 2001)? I seriously can't imagine a more dominant weapon on the market.

4. Just why in the hell does he call himself Starchild? Is it a reference to Parliament/Funkadelic, Paul Stanley from Kiss, "2001: A Space Odyssey" or none of the above? Or maybe just his own thing, like it came to him in a paintball dream of some kind . . .

This diaper dandy?

This KISS'ing bandit?

Or this adorable rascal with his consciousness? Or maybe a reference NOT from the 1970's like all of mine.

5. Do you think he has an entire star fleet of star children by now? Have I put way too much thought into this? I highly doubt Starchild has had a day recently where he wondered where the guy is that ducked down too fast to avoid a paintball from across the room, hit his rear end on a pipe, badly bruised his own ass, and had to sit the rest of the day out.

-----------------------------------------------------------

If you have answers to any of these questions or just want to say hello, blow me up like a Starchild buckshot in the comments. 

Mr. and Mrs. Noisewater's Love Story

This is the story of the meeting of Mr. and Mrs. Noisewater that I wrote that will go on the site for our wedding.  Hope you enjoy.

Did I ever tell you about the time I met my bride to be?  It all started back when I was living at the apartment on Nelson Street in Chicago that I lived at with a revolving cast of four roommates for seven years.  We were having a birthday gathering for a good friend and a good roommate, and I was telling the guests the story about the time some middle aged woman gave me her powder blue paisley jacket with shoulder pads.  What happened was I was at a bachelor party and arrived back at the hotel before the rest of my friends and was waiting at the bar.  I saw her goofy jacket slung over the chair and this happened:

Dr. Ken: That's a sharp jacket you got there.

Jacket Lady: Buy me a beer and it's all yours.

Dr. Ken: Sure.  What'l it be?

Jacket Lady: MGD.

Dr. Ken: Bartender, one MGD please.

I didn't know it was a female jacket.  I guess I didn't notice the shoulder pads at the time.  I just slapped it on and texted my best man, Mr. HLP, "I am at the bar in a Mr. Furley jacket!

"No sticker for me?"

So here I am at the apartment telling this story when it dawns on me that I should put The Jacket on as a visual aid to give my listeners a better indication of just how awesome it is.  You just have to see it to believe it.  When we make it out to the bar, I'm in one of those moods where I just decide to go out in public donning The Jacket.  So that's what I did.

We ended up at Four Treys, a wonderfully divey karaoke spot in the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago.  After singing a song or two, I'm feeling pretty tremendous when a gorgeous brunette saunters by, slaps a sticker on the shoulder of my jacket and says, "that's an awful jacket" and just walks by without stopping.  I said to my friends that I had to go talk to this one because she gave me a sticker and she has good taste - the jacket is quite ugly.

She was standing over by the Galaga machine, so I thought it natural that I challenge her to a game.  Galaga is a lot like Space Invaders, only the bad guys swoop down on you from all sorts of angles and you can rescue a second ship to get a double shot going.  She said that she has never played but would accept my challenge.  I figured knowing the whole double shooting trick would give me a clear advantage.  Wrong.  She destroyed me.  Mrs. Noisewater was deftly firing buttons to blast ships and moving her plane around while furiously dodging the alien ships and their laser blasts in a way that was demoralizing to me but sexy nonetheless.  I remember her starting to kick butt at the game and offering somewhat of an explanation for her expertise: "Careful.  I'm Asian, you know."  I tried to buy our historic Galaga machine years later for nostalgic reasons but alas, it was gone.  

Beaten but not broken, I asked for her number and we met up the following Thursday.  I remember picking her up with my car when she was stuck in Chicago's bitter cold and feeling like a hero.  Then on the third date she caught me looking up at the Bulls versus Heat game a few too many times and still liked me!    

We got nuts about each other pretty quickly, and then she got notices back from all of the graduate schools she applied to.  Jaemi was looking for a career change into urban planning, which was something more challenging and exciting for her.  She didn't think she would get accepted to any of the schools, but she got accepted to all three.  What is crazy is that even though we hadn't been together that long, we were both ready to tackle a long distance relationship with no hesitation, and off she went to live in Santa Monica California, enrolled in UCLA's Masters in Urban Planning program.

The distance was difficult at times, but it also meant taking fun trips to meet up with one another.  We met in spots in between Chicago and L.A. with trips to Austin, Texas and Denver, Colorado and spent one New Years together in Costa Rica.  I never bought into the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" thing, but it was true in our case.  We were so excited to see each other on my trips to California, or her trips to Chicago where we would sometimes Hotwire a "fancy" hotel.  Also, it made us really appreciate when the two years would be over and we could be together for good.  Forever.  That's what we plan on doing, and that's what we would love you to help us celebrate on August the 1st in one of the cities we travelled to together and fell deeper in love, San Francisco.  Thanks for reading.

Love,

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Okay, boys and girls.  I got a few topics in the memo thingy on my phone to talk to you all about.  Should be funny.  Here goes.

1. I used to get my haircuts at a place in Roscoe Village in Chicago that had a punk rock vibe, and I think you had to have at least a half dozen tattoos to work there.  When the gal working on me asked what I was doing I told her that I was helping a friend with dry wall in his condo.  She got excited about this and asked if I could help her out at her place.  Evidently her baby-daddy got pissed at her and punched a hole in the wall.  She seemed a little crazy, and by the sound of it, baby daddy was equally crazy and twice as violent.  Going over to her place sounded like sure fire way for Doctor Ken to a hole punched in his head, so I made an excuse to decline the offer.  I actually damn near leapt out of the chair with my hair half cut.

Dry Wall Punch: Makes You Feel Better.

2. I met up with my buddy's uncle last night.  I call him my uncle too.  He was nine or ten Schlitz deep as he was telling me that his work is trying to eliminate his position and trying to find a way to let him go.  Which might not be hard because apparently he called his boss an idiot.  Actually, it was his boss's boss, which sounds worse to me.  They sent him to the human resources guy who had his hair parted and draping high off of his head, spritzed down with aqua net, and when he talked his hair bounced around merily.  The HR guy said that it seemed as if Not-Uncle had a hard time looking him in the eye, and he inquired if maybe he had a hard time looking other coworkers in the eye, and he had to fight telling him that it was due to Not-Uncle being unable to take his eye off of HR guy's horrible parted hair bouncing around.  Had he knocked back one or two of those Schlitz at work, I'm quite sure he would have told him as much.  Not-Uncle is one of the funniest humans on planet earth.

Spray that part down and just watch it bounce!

3. I was at the doctor today because work has been stressful and making me break out with cole sores lately.  I guess it's herpes but not dick-herpes, thankfully.  But I don't want to give Mrs. Noisewater the gift that keeps on giving down in her nether regions the next time I decide to pay a visit to her . . .  Anyway, figured it's a good idea to get some good medication.  So the doctor is describing how people get it, and she says "You know, you might get it as a kid when an uncle kisses you and . . ."  I laughed my ass off and said, "What in the hell?!"  What crazy disease infested uncle is kissing his nephews on the lips?  I think she might want to rethink the vignettes she uses to illustrate these types of ailments.

"Come here and give your Uncle Rico a kiss."

4. Then when I'm walking home from the doctor, still mulling over the doctor's pervert uncle stories, I see a guy fighting with his girlfriend with his hands on his head and looking like he would rather be anywhere but on that corner right then.  More like she was fighting and he was just staring helplessly off in space.  A block later I saw another couple in the same scenario.  So I started singing "Run To the Hills" by Iron Maiden, as if to say run for the hills, young man!  I think this is a good idea to help out my fellow man.  Try this out some time, readers.

Enjoy your day and thanks for reading.

I wanted to tell a story that a friend told me once and share it with you all because it's really funny, but first I had to check a few things:

A) Have I already told it?

No.  I ran a search of couple of key words, such as couch, and surprisingly I haven't put this one down yet.  

B) Does the friend and story teller have a name that I have assigned him on my blog that I should use?

No.  But this triggered me finding a bunch of other people I have given blog monikers, some of which have had inconsistent spellings, wording, or all together different names over the years.  So then I spent the better part of an hour going around making the names of these dudes (read drinking buddies) consistent.  I then created a word document that I can reference in the future to avoid any more mishaps.  Turns out that I have at least 16 people with blog names, and some of these folks I really need to reconnect with.  

Anyway  

On with the story . . .

This friend of mine told me a story about a time he got lucky one night and took a young lady from the bar back to his Lakeview apartment.  They started fooling around on the couch, and soon their clothes were mostly off.  They were in a position in which he was sitting on the couch facing into the living room, and she was riding him on top facing the wall.  Suddenly, my friend becomes aware that she is magically tickling his bean bag somehow, but why was her hand so soft?  And so wet?  He then looked back to find that his dog was lapping away at his balls.  He laughed, shooed him away, and was kind enough to tell his good buddies this heart warming/ball warming story.  I hope you enjoyed this tale as much as I did, but somehow I doubt that is even possible.

Sleep Peeing or Pee Walking?

Last night a friend was telling me that she had an old friend stay over for a weekend, and after a night of hard drinking, this friend did some "sleep peeing" in a couple spots in the apartment.  My friend said she had no idea it happened until a day or two later when she smelled pee and first discovered that her friend had opened up the oven door and peed all over it.  

Sniffing for more pee, her nose led her to her entertainment center where her friend had peed all over the place, ruining the DVD player.  

Now, those two places are nothing like toilets.  The oven door lowers down, whereas a toilet seat lifts up.  And then the entertainment center, did she eject the little slide and pee right into the DVD slot because that is nothing at all like a toilet.  

This leads me to believe that this was an intentional pee pee attack!

"Dang!  Almost made it to the oven."

What do you all think?  Anyone have any "pee walking" stories?  Also, which do you think is a better term, sleep peeing or pee walking, and why?

Hey, everyone.  I woke up from a nap today and decided I needed to write this.  Hope you enjoy it.  Oh, and to answer the questions from the last post:

1. Yup.  Golf carts are everywhere.  Locals own them, but mostly it is the tourists driving minimal distances.  I would say there were more golf carts than actual cars out there.

2. The pigs were causing too many problems and were all killed off years ago.

3. The buffalo are still there, but you have to get way inland to see them.  They were brought there to film a movie a long time ago, but the movie's budget ran out, so they just left them there, where they have grown in numbers ever since.

4. Yeah, we said that a few times.  We also learned that Marilyn Monroe lived on Catalina for a while before World War Two, Natalie Wood drowned near there, and at one time most of the island was owned by William Wrigley Jr., also the owner of the gum company and the Chicago Cubs.  As a result, the Cubs used to play their spring training games there.

Okay, anyway.  Here's that story that I just wrote that I was telling you about.  Hope you like it:

My mood was that of a sour funk as I walked through the snow past the grades school I went to as a kid, when I slipped on something and had to catch myself with my bare hand, which landed directly into an inch or two of cold snow and concrete.  But there was something in my hand too, it was plastic, horseshoe shaped, and as I looked around, there must have been ten or twelve of them.  It took a second or two for it to dawn on me that they were plastic mouthguards for football and then another few seconds before I put it together that they were there because that class of 5th and 6th graders on the football team had thrown them on the roof at the end of their season, just as I had 20-something years ago.  Dropping that mouthguard into the hot water and popping that hot plastic into your mouth, you felt like a knight preparing his sword for battle, and whipping it up on the roof at the end of a hard fought seasons was an important ceremonial right of passage.  

Our coach back then was a little off his rocker.  He had a crazed look in his eye when he would yell at you where you would not be the least bit surprised if he suddenly wrapped his hands around a scrawny 11-year-old neck.  His rants were often tangental, and looking back, I'm not even sure if he remembered what it was he was mad about by the end of one his motivational browbeatings.  He would get so flustered and outraged at our lack of discipline and athletic ability, that he would get speechless; just angry stairs, looking around at each and every one of us for what seemed like thirty minutes at a stretch, but was probably closer to one or two.  

My hand and the rest of me wasn't even cold anymore, and after all that reminiscing about mouth guards, my coach, and wearing football pads for the first time with my girdle pad slipping off my ass as I tried to keep up during wind sprints, that just like that ranting and pausing coach so long ago, I wasn't even sure what I was mad about to begin with.  

The Incredible Exploding Boobies

Last night I met Haircut and Oates for some buckets of beers and perhaps a few too many chilled shots of Rumplemintz at a hole in the wall bar nearby in Chicago.  The place is kind of famous for its giant boobed alcoholic bartender who gets a little too drunk while she is working, screwing up orders and saying insane stuff.  She wasn't working last night, but she did come in to hang out on her night off, something I have seen more than once before, and she was very excited to see Oates, who she views as a little brother, often giving him unsolicited romantic advice.

For some reason we got on the topic of her giant fake boobs, and she told us that she has had two accidents resulting in having to have them replaced.  The first happened when she was on a first date with a guy and she felt one of them suddenly leak, putting a damper on the date.  Literally.

The second one is the one that made me fall out laughing and just made me glad to be alive to hear wacky stuff like this.  She was leaning into a fence trying to get the perfect picture of a giraffe when she was suddenly jolted by the electric fence, exploding her tits!  After one of those mishaps, she said the owner of the bar payed for another round of boobs for her.  Two good perks to working at that bar! 

Can I help you?  Did you get a good enough look this time? (This isn't actually her, just a random Google image)

Have you ever heard of anything like this, or do you have a bartender or barfly tale you would like to share?

What you don't want to do when you're picking up some wine at the store is go for the jumbo bottle where there are like three bottles worth in one.  It seems to make a lot of sense: easier to carry than three bottles, a better price than three bottles.  The down side is you end up knocking down loads of it, and it barely looks like you made a dent.  So, with so much to spare, you gladly pour yourself another until you're where I'm at - too buzzed up to want to leave the house, which is actually good from a saving money standpoint.

I figured since I'm pleasantly buzzed with nowhere to go or a willingness to go there, this would be a good time to tell you all a story.

I was working out to the Insanity DVD, mummy-kicking and sweating buckets, when a morbidly obese Latino kid who looked to be around 11-years-old struck up a conversation with me.  "Is that how you got skinny?" he asked.  I told him not specifically, but that I do like people telling me what to do or I get lazy.  Undeterred by the fact that I was looking straight at the screen (never directly at him) and doing flipping burpies, or whatever, he then asked if I could tell him what exercises to do.  He tried to do what I was doing, but I got the feeling that he was self-conscious about the way his body looked when jumping up and down, which I get.  He looks like a young man who never works out, so there was no need to force him out of his comfort zone when getting any kind of work out of him is probably a success.

So when I would get breaks in the action on the DVD, I would hurry up and give him things to do, like riding the eliptical for a mile or so, and doing a set of curls, bench press, and push-downs.  I gave him realistic reps to shoot for, enough to challenge him, but not so much where he was going to either puke or get so incredibly sore he would never come back.  After a few cycles of those activities, he seemed quite pleased with himself, and he was pushing himself surprisingly hard.

He wanted to switch discs on my workout to play the dancing game on the xbox, but I told him that as long as he stayed active for the remaining 37 minutes of the TV workout, I would set it up and dance away with him.  And he actually did steadily work out for the duration.  At one point he smiled and pointed out how much he was sweating.  Then our sweaty asses did "Promiscuous" on the dance game together.  It was funny because in the top corner it shows your own body above the dancer to show where you are in relation to the sensor, and his body was absolutely huge.  However, that didn't matter because this young man was putting me to shame, racking up perfect scores on the majority of his moves while I was thrilled with a "good" of my own.



He was ready to work out again tomorrow, but I told him I have to fly out to L.A. right after work and Monday was no good, but I could meet him at the same time and place on Tuesday.

This whole episode could be my repents for my negative feelings I have had for overweight people over the years (like the previous post, for instance).  Here is a kid who may have the odds stacked against him: maybe a poor home life, nothing but junk food ever in the house, childhood depression, being the victim of constant teasing.  And here he is looking to push himself to "get skinny," taking the initiative to ask for help.

Well, I hope I can help this fella, and not to make myself feel less guilty or like a decent person, but because he seems like a really sweet kid who seems to already feel a little better about himself. 

Another Boozing Summary

Last night I had to go downtown for my good friend Oats' birthday party. The thing about downtown versus the North Side is that the people are prettier overall, dressed up nicer and probably more successful, but once everyone is drunk, they're just like drunks anywhere else - Albuquerque, Hamburg, Tatooine, it doesn't matter. Folks were still falling into me, spilling stuff, bumping into lamps, and I'm always cool with that because I've likely been "that guy" twice as many times as them.

Without a doubt, the drunkest human in there was someone I met named Kate. She came up to me and ripped my pearl snap shirt open, then she and a friend howled like "Girls Gone Wild," and then she walked away. Later, we had a more civilized encounter, and she was telling me how she was pretty sure her friend liked me. I said, "But Kate, weren't you the one trying to strip me naked a minute ago?" She also had a strange habit of taking pictures of people she doesn't know, which is probably fun at the time but confusing the next day when she scans through her handy work.

It turns out Kate, like your humble narrator, is in a long-distance relationship, with her fella living in Boston. She said she's pretty sure that we could be friends, but I don't think that will work out because we didn't exchange information. Plus I need another drinking buddy like I need to squat naked on an upright football.

The Stoner Steve Brownie Story

I know this guy Stoner Steve, and I rarely see him because he's a friend of a friend and he lives on the south side. He is a UPS delivery guy who loves the mommies on his route, he's the type of guy who brings his own beer cozy to the bar, and he's usually drunk and stoned when I see him, which isn't surprising being that his name is Stoner Steve.

Almost every time I see him, I make him tell The Brownie Story, but for some reason this time I did not. Maybe it's because I was too busy laughing at him being awesome, like when he bought a case of beer, lifted it over his head, and dropped it so that when we pulled up in the cab, we saw him on all fours gathering up fallen beers (only breaking one! But we had to tap them all like crazy). He's a happy drunk, never an angry or irritable one, and I like those types.


The Brownie Story goes about like this:

Back when Stoner Steve was in high school, he had some friends over when his mom was out of town, and they made some pot brownies. When they were on the back porch waiting for them to cool, his mom's boyfriend came over, saw there were brownies and ate a shit load of them. Nice guy, right? What's funny is that Stoner Steve said there's no way they would taste good because there were stems and seeds everywhere. Nonetheless, the mom's boyfriend had no idea he had eaten pot brownies, and he thought he was having a heart attack. The doctors told him that he had marijuana in his system, and I imagine Stoner Steve was in some big trouble.



I think when I ask him to tell that story, he says that the boyfriend was a bit of an asshole, or maybe he was just nice but stupid. Either way, terrific story . . .

I Had One of the Best Nights of My LIfe . . .

. . . around 5 summers ago, and I just got thinking about it recently. It all began when a friend, who was also a roommate and star of numerous blog posts, and I went to the My Morning Jacket show at the Taste of Randolph Street right here in Chicago. This was before the band got more popular, so believe it or not, the show really wasn't that crowded. What was a little annoying was the yuppies there, and there were lots of them - no surprise given the neighborhood - had their backs to the band and were carrying on conversations. Looking around, I was one of the only guys dancing and getting into the music.

Well, regardless of the lackluster crowd, it was an amazing concert with the sun setting, making a beautiful backdrop behind the stage, and the Jacket was going all the way off - back when they all had long hair and did a lot of head banging. Roomy kept our beers full by sidestepping right to the front of the line, shooting one eyebrow up in the air like James Belushi, and smiling in the general direction of the people he was cutting off, and at 6'4" and nearly 300 pounds, nobody seemed to put up much of a fight.

Afterwords, he and I went to a house party that was in full swing by the time we got there, with the outdoor courtyard teaming with fun people in various stages of happy drunkenness. I remember commandeering the iPod and leading numerous sing-a-longs, mostly hair metal ballads, for some reason - Tesla's "Love Song" and Mr. Big's "The Next To Be With You" to name a few. Ladies all seem to love the latter for whatever reason, despite the fact that my interpretation has always been that the song is about some slut that half the band has nailed, and now the singer wants to have a go at her, but that's beside the point.

Later that night, one of the hosts of the party, a good looking female I had a thing for, was talking with me at length about I'm not sure what - but it was one of those conversations that seemed really important at the time. The pheromones were firing, eye contact was intense, and we started talking closer-and-closer, and I began to get a pretty good idea we would be kissing soon. It was one of those moments, and it was great.

The party started winding down, almost everyone had gone home, but she and I didn't even notice. I remember she was a big fan of Paul Simon, and we were spinning multiple songs by him, singing along to fun summery Simon classics like "Kodachrome" and "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard," just feeling good. For whatever reason, we went for a long drunken walk through the city in the middle of the night - not the safest of activities, but we made it home, each in one piece, and it was then that we got to know each other a little more. With most of our clothes off.

It turns out we had strong feelings for one another, but for various reasons, we just never seemed to work out as a couple. There was a while where we would meet up after a random text and make out, and this went on about once or twice a year for a few years, but then we just lost touch.

It wasn't the best concert I ever saw, the best party I have ever attended, and she wasn't quite the love of my life, I guess, but all the different things that went on that night just made me feel incredible at a time when I rarely felt very good. The next day, jumping in a cab on my way home, I remember still feeling terrific.

Anyone else have an awesome night they would like to share? I hope you have had a night where you felt as good as I did on that Chicago summer night. We all should have a few nights like that before we die, right?

Recently my 4-year-old nephew walked in on my sister (his mom) while she was going to the bathroom. Then the following exchange occurred:

A: You pee out your butt?
Mom: No.
A: Your weiner?
Mom: No, mommies don’t have wieners.
A: (Pause) Whachyou got then?
Mom: (Longer pause) A vagina.
A: ‘Gina? I don’t know no ‘gina.

Hey, I'm sorry if I'm adding yet another cutesy kid story to the heap of others in the blogosphere, but I'll be damned if that conversation and the little wheels turning in his little head didn't bring a smile to my face, and I hope your's.


*"A" is the sleeping kid on the right wearing the incredibles jammies.

The Most WORSTEST Times I've Heard Words Used WRONGLY

I don’t claim to be a grammar whore. I know I mess up lots of stuff, but there are some English language boo-boo’s that make my skin crawl. I started to go in order of most annoying, but I think to avoid being anticlimactic, I’m going to go in order of how funny the screw ups were.

5. This one girl and I did an internship together a ways back, and by the time it was over we both hated one another. Remember that Seinfeld where Jerry’s mom can’t fathom how anyone could not like Jerry? That’s how I felt. I’m not saying that everyone loves me, but I get along with most everyone, and I’ve certainly never had someone detest me to this degree. I think it had something to do with the fact that we were complete opposites, we shared a 10 by 10 office Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and we had every one of our grad. school classes together Tuesday and Thursday. The word that this gal said that made me want to turn on a hand mixer and swirl around my innards was UNappropriate. Yes, UN.

4. This same girl was talking about the new dog she was getting. Shit, I have to look up the spelling on this . . . I’m so damn lazy. Okay, Weimaraneris the name of the breed. She would say “wisenheimer.” Isn’t that something Moe called Curly on any given episode of the stooges just before he stuck a finger in each of his eyes? Believe me, doing the finger in the eyes bit sounded like a good idea after the 7th or 8th time she screwed up this word. Maybe getting on the ground and running around in a circle, i.e. the Curly Shuffle, would have helped me blow off some steam. I mean, the fact that I already couldn’t stand her, and she was so darn excited about this dog, and she KEPT saying the wrong word, and such a silly word . . .

3. I work with a girl that is just my type physically. She is a petite, little, Italian woman with dark, curly hair. I don’t want to sound like a pig here, but I’d be leaving out a very important piece of information if I did not mention her rear end. She’s super thin and then her rump just jets out to the point where, if she were standing up, one could set his can of beer on her hiney, you know, if you needed to free up a hand for something. Her drawbacks, as far as the possibility of ever dating her are concerned, are that I work with her, and she has a kid (sorry if that sounds insensitive, but I'm not ready for that). However, I think I’d sooner look past those two MAJOR strikes against her before I’d get past the fact that about every other time I talk to her she says “supposaBly” with a “b.”

2. While working at a music store, the best job I’ve ever had incidentally, a customer struck up a conversation with me about the band Queen. He said something to the effect of, “That guy could sing.I mean, he was awesome. I don’t care if he was as gay as a three dollar bill.” It’s QUEER as a 3 dollar bill, you nimrod! Hasn’t he ever stopped and thought how the expression made no sense the way he was saying it? What’s funny is now I say it his way in a thick Chicago accent, and it gets enough laughs for me to continue to do so.

1. Many moons ago my friend’s dad had one of his buddies over, and over the course of a brief conversation, the guy made two of the funniest blunders I’ve ever heard. The first came when he said he was in a subdivision and turned his car around in “one of those coups d'états (he meant cul de sac). Then he was talking about something he had seen on the nature channel in which a tribe in Africa practiced annual sex. My friend’s dad asked, “You mean sex once a year?” To which he replied, “No, man. Sex in the butt. In the butt!” I think you know which word he meant to say.

I have to open this one up to the floor, since so many of you are such talented writers. What’s the crappiest use of the English language you’ve ever heard?