Bye Bye 2011

My Year End summary to all my friends, creditors, and assorted others who still believe I owe them money.

2011 had more ups and downs for me than a retirement community discovering Viagra for the first time. 2011 was a year filled with some joy, but that’s boring to speak about so let’s get to the mental chaos, the physical pain, and those unusual number of late night phone calls from someone calling herself Manny the Horse.

The phone calls began in early January, threatening to expose some dark secret I had kept hidden since high school. As I did nothing in high school except take up space in the back of every classroom, I was curious about that secret myself. Manny the Horse said she would get back to me on that. When she finally did call again, she apologized, telling me that these late night threatening phone calls were actually for some other Greenbush Boy located in Greenville, South Carolina. She asked whether she could still call me late at night because she loved the hysterical nature of my masculine voice. I told her only if she talked dirty to my fixed cat.

She would later reveal herself to be Esmeralda Schwartz, a psychotic woman claiming to be my long lost daughter. She was last seen yodeling in the Tyrolean Alps. I hope to hear more from her in the New Year because ever since I saw The Sound of Music, I have loved the noise of sheep courting goats.

2011 began auspiciously enough with my final court appearance regarding that nasty paternity suit that had dogged me since my teen years. How one becomes pregnant on a toilet seat, especially if one is alone at the time, was beyond my biological pay grade as I kept arguing in court. The twins who claimed to be my love children born to someone named Sally from Anchorage were finally proven to be the charlatans when both were tasered and forced to hand over some DNA spittle. Lab tests were conclusive when traces of dieffenbachia were found in their mitochondrial strains. My lineage is straight Eastern European fir and switch grass from the Great Plains.

In February, I broke my arm in the defense of a woman’s honor. Apparently she still desired to keep hers. It was all a misunderstanding, as I tried to explain to the arresting officers, who must have mistaken me for a felon on the 10 Most Wanted List and beat me like an Al Qaeda suspect. While recuperating in the emergency room, I met a very lovely doctor who had no interest in me whatsoever. She did, however, volunteer both of my kidneys to an Eastern European body parts cartel working out of the back room of the hospital.

At about the same time, I discovered my love for the outdoors. My normal pattern of spending my days locked away in a cold fourth floor walk up was replaced by the exotic world of nature. This new venture out in the wilderness would eventually help me pay off a number of backlogged gambling debts made during the calendar year 2005 when I began mixing muscatel with Nyquil to cure my inability to draw with my left hand. Planting certain medicinal plants in the back trails of various national parks in Northern California, ,and Idaho resulted in adding the right amount of vitamin D back into my body.

I also learned a valuable civics lesson about our Bill of Rights while roaming the great outdoors. When in doubt about the worth of one’s botanical harvest, it is always best to point the business end of the Second Amendment at your buyers first before the negotiations become too heated. The bullet that tore off half my right ear now forces me to walk rather lopsided, but it does add a certain gangster appeal to my resume. I now have no need for my vast hoop earring collection. No reason any longer for me to watch The Shopping Network. I’ll miss those ads about spandex underwear.

Thanks to a Martha Stewart tip, reusing paper plates are fine as long as they are not washed in a dishwasher. The things one learns as a bachelor.

Thanks to the court ordered electronic bracelet and home arrest, I was finally able to catch up on all the novels I missed from the ninth grade onward. I am shocked to discover that Moby Dick is about a white whale and not the name the author gave to his male organ.

Do you know that tea candles burn at varying lengths?

I finally got around to dusting my apartment this summer. I discovered dust under the dust but nothing I could sell either on eBay or to any of the pawn brokers who now call me by the moniker “Clueless.”

Walked once around the block for my yearly cardio workout.

In September, I decided to try my luck dating again. Removing the electronic bracelet certainly helped with my mobility. The back pages of the LA Weekly have never proven too successful in helping me to find just the right girl for an evening out -- though I’ve spent plenty for a lot of the wrong girls for an evening in. One date refused to eat much even when taken to IHOP. She said she was on some new flesh eating diet, which as I discovered from reading articles on the Internet is the latest Southern Californian craze in addition to waxing one’s teeth, Brazilian style. Another date proved short lived when she began correcting my spelling while I spoke to her.

I attended several funerals during the year which corroborated to those of us still breathing how both depressing and dangerous such events can be. I can’t count the number of attendants coming down with shin splints and angina as they danced on the graves of those just buried. I guess this is a Hollywood tradition I as a Midwesterner will never get used to.

On a lighter note, several more of my friends had ugly divorces this year. I take no pleasure in telling anyone, “I told you so,” but I do find satisfaction in knowing that during the heated divorce proceedings, my gag gifts were not the ones being fought over.

Must end this blog. I believe Esmeralda Schwartz is calling again.