naming a baby

Blasting Turgonegro’s “Retox” album has become my favorite pastime. It’s especially fun when driving onto the campuses of the assorted Christian schools in town.

The smell of dog shit fills the air inside my 2010 Hyundai Accent. Apparently, stepping dog shit has become another favorite pastime. The waffle of my Sambas appears clean, but, they are brown in color and one could easily miss shit when just looking quickly.

If you’ve ever had bad teeth, you will always have bad teeth.

Was talking with someone at work the other night. A conversation that lasted two-plus hours after deadline. Finding your passion? Ha. A study said you’re happiest as a grownup if you followed you first true love. I wanted to be an archeologist. I didn’t follow through. In fact, I never really pursued anything until I decided to move across country and see what newspapers were all about. What a knuckleheaded decision that turned out to be.

I’m seriously debating quitting my job and being a stay at home dad. If I didn’t have so many stupid bills from stupid, yet fun, times, I would already have made up my mind. Never knew it was so hard to find a part-time position when you’ve been working the same job your whole life. Well, except for the few years in between.

The dryer is spinning around and around. Drying clothes seems silly. Washing them too. What’s wrong with smelling? If we all did, we wouldn’t feel so bad about it anymore.

Wearing shoes without socks is a good idea, until you take off the shoes.

Netflix has made me a lazy filmwatcher.

Eating snails does not appeal to me.

Redheads still make me wonder.

“Have you ever been to Spokane?” she asked.

“Why no, I’ve not been to Spokane,” he replied.

“Too bad,” she said.

“Yep,” he replied.

They both returned to their drinks, never to speak again.

Marvin is a horrible name for a kid.

Not having anything to write about  is painful. But so is writing about what you want to write.

I’m going to go on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, gangbangsrus.com etcetera and rant about something some celebrity did/said or fucked. It’s cool, and gosh, it’ll get lots of views.

Why are we all so mad at each other, but pretending to be oh, so happy? Is it the food? Probably not, but maybe. Who knows.

I stare at the window

And wonder where you are

You don’t.

I wonder if Mickey Rourke’s plastic surgeon looks like a bladder?

“I’m not surpised, I knew about it,” all the sports media folks are saying.

“Shame on you NBA,” for not doing anything about it.

Fuck all of you. Why didn’t you expose it in the 1990s when you “knew”?

George Clooney is engaged. So?

He’s also a bad drunk.

Do you have any more gum?

More gum?

More gum?

Do you have any more gum?

When you take a shit, do you look at it?

If you do, are you satisfied with what you see?

Or are you scared to look.

Hoping it’s not bloody. Full of worms.

Don’t worry if it is. We all end up with worms in our shit.

In our head.

“Do you like drinking in this place,” I asked.

She turned her head and looked at my shirt.

“Do you like wearing that shirt?” she snarled.

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t have to worry if I leave it at your place later.”

She smiled.

Why shit like that works, I’ll never know.

--- Something scribbled in a notepad years ago.

She wasn’t going to take it anymore.

He never made a decision. He just let things “happen.”

So, one night, she answered the phone when he called and told him: “It’s over.”

He never understood.

Until now.

Well, not really.

Benzene in my veins.

Fracking on my brain!

Punk rock is easy.

I wonder what it’s like to chew things without feeling pain?

It’s been so long, I don’t remember.

That is the thattiest that that I’ve thatted.

Microsoft Word does not believe thatted is a word. Fuck you Bill Gates.

The name Syl is kind of cool.

Darn it, man, he said.

“Darn it?” his buddy said before chuckling down a beer.

He punched him seconds later.

Who is he? He is who?

Donkey Kong high score in high school while getting high. That’s the opening to a script.

If you smell pot, are you cooking?

Laser beam eyes. They don’t lie, they kill.

Sleep.

Population 800

We got into the car after checking out of the hotel. It was cool today, so driving with the windows down was not going to be a problem.

“You hungry?” I asked the girl I still didn’t know a name.

“Not really. Let’s just get out of here.”

“You hiding from someone?” I asked, kind of worried.

“Just the past, guy. Just the past.”

“Fair enough,” I said, starting the car. She purred like a kitten. So glad I paid for the restoration of this car, my dream car – a 1991 Toyota Celica. With a moon roof, of course.

Before pulling out of the parking lot, I touched her hand to get her attention. She looked over at me with wearisome eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I just have a question.”

“Shoot, guy.”

“What’s your name? I need to know at least that if we’re going to be hanging out. Getting kind of tired of this guy, girl thing.”

“Well, I don’t know yours either,” she responded.

I tried to think back into the night. Did I really never tell her my name? Was she just fucking with me? Am I really putting this much thought into it?

“Randy,” I finally decided to tell her.

“And you do know my name,” she said. “Or at least it was said once in front of you. I thought you were a reporter? Aren’t you supposed to be good at that kind of thing? Picking up on facts and names and such?”

“Let me think on it,” I replied, adding “or you could just tell me.”

“Think hard, Mr. Randy. Think hard.”

With that, I turned on the radio. Foghat was on the radio. We both started bobbing our heads. It seemed to be a nice distraction for both of us. Me – from thoughts of a girl gone wrong. Her – no idea.

“Which way should we go?” I asked at the edge of the parking lot.

“West! She yelled. It’s always best.”

“I knew I liked you for some reason.”

“It wasn’t the tits?” she smirked.

I looked her up and down in a false gross way. “Tits help,” I finally said. I didn’t know if she got the joke or not. But we kept bobbing along to “Slow Ride” so I guess all was well in the world.

Funny thing, we didn’t talk again for three hours.

“I’ve got to pee,” I finally broke the silence.

“Me too.”

Soon, we were at a rest area. It looked like all the others.

“Hey, we’re back to where we began,” she said.

“Huh?” I responded in my dumb way.

“You and I met at a rest stop,” she said, putting quotes around “met”.

“Oh yeah. Let’s celebrate with a photo.”

I pulled out my trusty point and shoot that my sister gave me years ago. Not many people still used them. Most had fancy phones with awesome cameras on them. Me, personally? I’d rather have an old disposable camera with film in it. But, it was such a hassle to get it developed nowadays that I don’t even bother any more. Just another example of fossilization.

We used the bathrooms and got back on the road.

“I’m hungry now,” she said.

“Let’s find some hole in the wall joint. There’s got to be something around here.”

“Works for me Mr. Randy.”

“Why you saying it like that? Mr. Randy?”

“Because it annoys you.”

“Just like not knowing your name.”

“Back to that one, huh? Well, OK. Here it is … Tara.”

“Really? Tara? That’s probably my all-time favorite name for a woman.” I almost said girl, but caught myself.

“Why? Don’t tell me ‘Gone With the Wind.”

“Nah, much simpler and much more telling about me,” I said. “I had a huge crush on this girl in college. First girl I ever tried to ask out on a date. We actually had one. Watched “9 ½ Weeks” on a borrowed VCR. That was a couple weeks after I met her at a party in my dorm suite and we battled over following “a dream” vs. following the “corporate dollar.” At that point, she was a bit of a hippie chick. I was a long-haired guy who for some reason wanted to major in accounting. I almost kissed her that first night, and that first date – which ended up being the last date – I never had the guts even though Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger were making a porn in front of us.

“What ever happened to her?”

“She ended up fucking my roommate, who was the absolute biggest piece of trash on the earth. Just a manwhore.”

“Bitter much?”

“And now she’s a corporate shill. Funny how things work out.”

“Yep, bitter.”

“What can I say? If it weren’t for the freaking internet, I’d not know about the funny ending.”

“Instead, you’d just make something up. Like we all used to.”

“Yeah, the memory and the mystery – to me – were always better than finding out the truth. Because it’s usually so dull, so drab and so sad.”

“Amen to that,” she said.

We passed over the Kentucky state line at that precise moment.

“I’ve never been to Kentucky,” she said. “Maybe this is the start of something beautiful?”

“At the least, it’ll be an adventure,” I replied. “Let’s see what this town has to offer.”

In the distance, a sign read “Welcome to Ryland Heights, Kentucky. Population 799.”

Little did I know that soon I’d be No. 800.

Warren Oates > Warren Buffet

My man crush developed late on him.

I’d known of his existence from at least the first time I saw the movie “Stripes.” So, that would make it sometime in the early 1980s.

He was dead by then, most likely.

However, these last few weeks, Mr. Warren Oates has become my new favorite. The go-to guy when I’m having a bad night. Or day. Or life.

His characters seem to always be on the other side of luck. Yeah, sometime he got the pretty girl. But it seemed she always did something to screw it up. See “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” or “China 9, Liberty 37”.

When he was the tough guy, it went wrong.

When we was in the race, he wrecked.

I’m in awe of him right now. Will it pass? Maybe. I used to think Robert DeNiro could do no wrong. And Jack Nicholson. But they certainly went down wrong paths.

So far, Oatesy hasn’t.

Maybe I’ll dig into something one day and it won’t be quite right. I am trying to get a hold of “92 in the Shade” right now. Only on VHS they say. So I bid a buck for one on ebay. Maybe I’ll win. And it’ll be life changing.

Of course, that may be my problem, always searching for some sign, some life-changing fact or journey from a movie. Or a book. Or a song. Instead of looking inside.

Maybe my father is right. There isn’t much in there to begin with. All the brains and no desire to do anything with them, he always implies but never out-right says.

Last conversation I had with the old drunk, he told me I needed to “figure out what the fuck you’re doing with your life.”

I laughed, like I usually do. First it was kind of funny. Second, it’s a defense mechanism.

He’s right. I know. But then he uses his life as some kind of shining example of what “success” is. He started rambling on about civic organizations, things he’d done with his life, being proud, raising three college-educated kids, and so on.

Yes, he’s done a lot of things. But do you need to sit there and list them in a drunken stupor to prove it? Or to prove to your son that he’s a failure when measured up to that?

“Dad, me and you, we have different definitions of success,” I said. “Maybe it’s that simple.”

He stared at me blankly when I said it. I didn’t regret it for a moment. Those times when the truth slip out of my mouth when I’m talking to him get rarer and rarer. They used to come freely. And they always ended in fights. Yelling. Temper tantrums. From both of us. This one wasn’t going to end that way. He knew it. I knew it. It was just going to end.

“If you are happy doing what you do, then so be it,” he slurred. “I just don’t get ….” he trailed off into babble.

That night, after driving home I sat in bed. I started to say things out loud. Cursing my ex-girlfriend for “still taking up space in my thoughts” and the like. It dawned on me how much me and my dad are alike at that moment. Bitter shells of what we once thought we were.

It don’t do much good sulking about it anymore. A lot of folks make choices that hurt people. Hurt them real bad. I’ve done it at least twice in my life. Probably a lot more. Fuck you if you think your hurt is worse than anyone else’s. Everyone has pain. Some are lucky and it doesn’t hit for a long, long time. Some get hit early and never seem to dodge it again. But eventually, it gets everyone. How you respond goes a long way in determining what happens next. Boy, that thought came out stupid. But that’s why I (used to) sit here and just type and type and type. Something good comes out every so often.

Back to Mr. Oates. Not the guy with Hall, but the one with a big toe named bill murray.

He could replace Harry Dean one day as the top dog. Steve Buscemi threatened, but never quite reached the pinnacle. Mickey Rourke went nuts, which didn’t disqualify him, but his surgery did. Hell, I understand what happened, my man, women can drive you to the verge and over the verge of stupidity. You went berserk, I got drunk and apathetic. You probably won that round. Except for the hitting part. If it’s true?

Anyways, I’d rather be Warren Oates than Warren Buffet any day. Pride is greater than money. Except when you need a good suit.