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.

Head Out On That Highway...But Not This Weekend

Get your motor running, head out on the highway,
Looking for adventure in whatever comes our way.
Steppenwolf

A steel and metal tsunami of cataclysmic enormity rolls our way this weekend. A wave which will be so unstoppable in its ferocity and mindless in its destructive potential that Republican politicians are already chafing at the bit to privatize it and give it its own Caribbean tax shelter. Expect streets clogged with homeless refugees, territorial and tribal warfare, children wailing for food, adults suicidal in their helplessness. We will bear witness to the final breakdown of an already broken down society. The world missed the Rapture last month. Los Angeles can not avoid The Rupture. This weekend could see a body count up there with Antietam.

I’m dressing in camouflage, duck taping the windows, hiding the car in the bushes. My command position will be fortified: I'll be hunkered down with Doritos and beer; filling old vodka bottles with new vodka; setting up the gun turrets; stockpiling the batteries; and opening the ham radio. The local stores have been raided for sunscreen, tuna, and hydrocortisone. I read through my last will and testament and realized the only thing left worth leaving to anyone should I not survive this weekend are the two loads of washed laundry on my bed and some unscratched Boston area lottery tickets.

I’m praying the electrical grind remains intact -- at least until I see the latest episode of "Celebrity Rehab" and the start of Season 4 premiere of "Breaking Bad." After that don’t really care what happens. I’ve made my peace with my Maker. Let HIM deal with the creditors at Bank of America and Citigroup.


This Friday (July 15th), at 10PM, the 405, one of the most traveled freeway systems in the world, closes shop between the 10 and the 101 for 53 hours. Both directions! No access at all! No single lane operational on either side! If these freeway numbers mean nothing to you, then I pity you fools for living anywhere other than Los Angeles. 100s of thousands of cars, trucks, military vehicles, motorcyclists and the occasional fool walking along the shoulder use this route daily to travel from one stretch of paradise to some other Nirvana in Southern California. Sealing off the 405 is like ripping out your aorta and tossing it to a pack of angry beavers. What happened to LA in the film "2012" was quaint in comparison to what will soon occur here.




Los Angelinos do not like outside forces disrupting the chilling flow of normal freeway traffic. Car crashes, overturned semis, mud slides, earthquakes, brush fires, police chases, and even Presidential motorcades during rush hour are tolerated with blind fury because drivers know that body parts will be swept away, vehicles will be turned upright, rains will cease, moving earth will stop, fires will be extinguished, criminals will be caught and beaten into submission before helicopter cameras, and Presidents will finally wave bye bye.

So what gives here? Haven’t we Angelinos suffered enough? The State is bankrupt. We have no action hero for Governor. Tower Records no longer exists on the Strip. The paparazzi run wild in the streets. Many upscale restaurants on Montana Drive have downscaled into disappearance.
According to Caltrans, the agency that puts out orange cones and leaves them there, this 10 mile stretch is the final length of road between the far northern part of the Valley and some magical point somewhere below Patagonia without a diamond lane, that freeway magic carpet ride allowing two or more passengers in a car to flee away from their original destination quicker than single occupancy vehicles.

Southern California has been widening its freeway system since the days of the Spanish Missions. The wider we make our freeways, the more vehicles appear on them. It’s some sort of mathematical principle first elucidated by a Caltech genius named Sidney Moundstreet: for every open freeway space, a vehicle of equal or greater length must occupy that space. A 13 episode story arc on "Doctor Who" based itself around this equation and something involving space vampires. Californians have been known to purchase extra SUVs merely to keep the math correct.

This weekend's disruption is about a bridge. This is either a bridge too far or not far enough. Half of the north side of the Mulholland Drive Bridge will be demolished this weekend. Because of the state's fiscal crisis, California sold MDR to Arizona to mate with its London Bridge. Another stupid, short-sighted decision as such breeding lead only to angry un-American toll roads. This billion dollar exercise in shoveling dirt from one side of the freeway to the other side and beyound means commuters will now be able to move through the
Sepulveda Pass at a snail’s pace rather than at no pace.

We Southern Californians live in our cars especially now with the recession. No one walks in this area of the country because there is nothing of interest that we can walk to. All life is just far enough away for the use of an automobile. Like a Starbucks.

Most Californians use the two person lane because they are stuck with their spouses, or they’re transporting kids to soccer meets, or they happen to be teenagers heading to some motel to check out bed bug infestation. I love driving alone. It might be selfish and egocentric on my part, but I’m in a serene spiritual zone when cruising solo as I yell expletives at the assholes around me.

I rarely use the 405 during the weekends except to go on geographically undesirable dates. It’s quicker to sit home and astral project oneself to a destination. But is that really the point? It’s an American right not to be inconvenienced by anything. If I wanted to have life made difficult for me, I’d join the European Union. Whether I have use for the 405 on any given weekend or not, I demand the opportunity to sit in bumper to bumper traffic, swearing a blue streak, crawling the Sepulveda Pass and wishing I was anywhere else but. As Michele Bachmann has said, “The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have written it in the Constitution with the words "Going Nowhere Fast and Loving It" if they didn’t believe it.”

Bada Bing Bin Laden

Not only did the Navy Seals force Bin Laden to go hunt up an ophthalmologist in his after-life (good luck finding anyone named Cohen, Schwartz or Rosenberg in his address book), but the treasure trove of information, both personal and tactical, discovered in his bedroom demonstrates how the world’s most hunted 6’4” dialysis patient could stay concealed for so many years in a garrison town full of ex-Army officers. While much of the hard intelligence will remain classified until the Pentagon rehires all of the qualified gay Arabic speakers given the boot over the last decade, Waki-leaks, through the assistance of Rosetta Stone language DVD’s, has begun to disseminate onto the web selected bits and pieces of Bin Laden's day to day activities.

He worked the graveyard shift at one of the many Abbottabad call centers set up over the last decade by US companies to better implement American workers’ understandings of the benefits of globalization. Bin Laden’s moniker among his fellow employees was Hiram from Kentucky, because of his penchant for beginning each day with a Tequila shooter and a Wild Turkey chaser. Records now reveal his specialty was assisting callers using dial-up services and DOS operating drives. Reprimanded several times for both running bookie rings on cricket matches and sexually harassing rattan furniture not fully clothed in wool, Bin Laden still made employee of the month thirty times in the six years he worked there. He signed off each of his calls with “Death to the Infidels. Have a nice day.” With women callers it was simply, “Are you married?”

While the released video is as grainy as an early cut of "Blair Witch," it appears that at the time of his death he was standing at a table clipping out Groupon coupons for a variety of Middle Eastern restaurants such as Pita in Your Pocket and Souvlaki on the Run, while swaying to Judas Priest’s Living After Midnight, which this time around, he barely did. This is all rather shocking as both of these fast food chains have had disastrous reviews as of late in Zagats, many reviewers calling both establishments ptomaine traps fit only for Bin Laden. Sadly his classic Walkman was also blown to bits.

Further examination of the bedroom reveals that right above his futon were several Twilight Posters covered with large red heart stickers and a stained but laminated 3 by 5 foot picture of Pamela Anderson. To the right side, on a poorly constructed IKEA shelf, was a Flint vs Zartan Diorama collectible along with a complete box set of original G-I Joes from the late 60s. Strangely, he had kept as mementos a number of his name tags from prior attendances at Comic Con where he walked the halls under the alias “Truck Speedtrap.”

A book about cave art, Unique Creations: Death be upon all Infidels, lay nearby. Downloaded from the Internet, this small but highly influential pamphlet is part of the growing projectile vomiting art movement. In Bin Laden’s case, his foods of choice that evening were saffron pilaf, chickpeas, and baba ghanoush. One cannot tell how successful he was as a budding artist as loose runny brain matter obscures much of his impressionist work, turning the words “death” into “earth” and infidels into “infield.”

Who would have thought that the world’s greatest terrorist wore bunny slippers to bed or had in his possession old pirated VHS copies of Green Acres and My Mother the Car, or was a major collector of homo-erotic prison films? Scattered around the room were half inch tapes of Bronson, Short Eyes, God Has a Rap Sheet, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Midnight Express. Unfortunately in the ensuing fire fight, the Seals shot up possibly the last working 8 track and VCR player in Asia.

Next to his grandfather clock on the far wall were a set of opened jewel cases for Sweaty Sheep of Tora Bora and Mammaries of the Himalayas. No reference to either movie appears on IMDB so perhaps these were simply their Bangkok titles. Reports that he had on his bed a mix tape featuring the Bangles, Squeeze, Cat Stevens, Connie Stevens, Craig Stevens, Connie Francis, and Lou Christy cannot be confirmed at this time.

The most surprising find is Bin Laden’s actual Bucket List carved into the bucket he kept by his bed. His well known phobia towards flush toilets can now be confirmed. While much of what was written on various scraps of paper are still being cleansed and analyzed by a team of fecal throwing monkeys, here is what we know so far. Even with a bunch of wives, the man had needs far beyond that of a working kidney. Listed in no specific order of importance because pulling piles of shit out of a wooden bucket becomes a random exercise at best.

THE BIN LADEN BUCKET LIST

• Kill that snot nosed infidel Achmed for making fun of my name at the Madrassa. I am not Been Laiden lately Osama. Laiden isn’t even a word, you dumb poopy head.

• Must apply to be contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Partner with that hot Chador from Tora Bora with the WTF fear in her eyes. Her every move made my pants samba by themselves. Wonder if still alive.

• Be on Cops and ride around with those burly male New Orleans police officers. Yell out to felons while beating them, “Book em Dano.”

• Kidnap Jerry Springer and create show where all my wives, mistresses, and kids scratch each other’s eyes out. Must kidnap audience as well.

• Deep sea fish off the Arabian Coast.

• Get GED.

• Do both Thelma and Louise.

• Guest host on Fox and Friends and hit on all the blond non-believers.

• Learn how to make a brisket.

• Find someone who wants to trade working kidney for high strength marijuana.

• Get invited to red carpet of any movie featuring Channing Tatum or Jason Momoa.

• Find out what poking means on FACEBOOK.

• Wear Red Socks tee shirt at a Yankees Game. Boo Jeter.

• Be an annoying stringer for TMZ.

• Lecture high schoolers in the South and Midwest on abstinence.

• Blog on the Huffington Post, but ask for gelt.

• Party with Charlie Sheen; dress up as warlock.

• Meet my favorite rapper: Vanilla Ice.

• Drive a Winnebago with trailer hitch testicles.

• Fight THE ROCK in the squared circle; wrestle under the alias “Circus Strassburger.”

• Do musical dinner theatre in Iowa especially Bye Bye Birdie or Cats.

• Speak to Steve Jobs about his GPS tracking devices.

• Watch what doctors really do during a colonoscopy.

• Get into a bar fight with Hooter girls.

• Take a boatload of Viagra and then get on Chat Roulette.

• Perform at the Laugh Factory using old Henny Youngman jokes. “Take my sheep, please.”

• Hit on Harvard girls with a line like: “I guarantee you’ve never seen anything this size in camel hair before.

• Enter my prize shiatsu in the Westminster Kennel Show.

• Improve abs using the Paul Ryan (R-Wis) exercise tape.

• Follow John Wesley Powell’s journey down the Grand Canyon but blindfolded.

• Pen my multicultural children’s book, Infidels Are Just Like Everyone Else Except Cursed. Try to find words that rhyme with “death,” “camels,” and “Tora Bora” other than Hora.

• Sit in a vintage GTO at Zuma Beach while watching submarine races with Ayman al-Zawahiri daughter from his fifth wife. Need to create excuse why I would be with her in the backseat without a male chaperon.

• Pitch my version of the Crusades to Bruckheimer. Must remember to find Jewish agent.

• Go leafing in New England.

• Start a book club. First books on list: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

• Walk the Appalachian Trail with wife number two of Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Just in. Another White House version of how Bin Laden was located and killed. In this update, Bin Laden was still so angry at the American Idol booting of Pia Toscano, that he was, at the time of his death, working his thumbs texting messages to Randy Jackson to get the popular vote rescinded. The answer came back, “Dawg, you're in the zone now!”

Prairie Home Con-panion

H.L. Mencken once said: A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

I love Michele Bachman because she's from Minnesota, and I'm not. Every time she opens her mouth, I check her hair coloring. If stupid remarks were a crime, she'd never leave the courtroom. When Michele Bachman stands before a crowd and talks of our glorious history, I can hear Texas School Board members scream out, “Told you Maud, home schooling works even for them Northerners.”

Bachman represents a portion of the Minnesota electorate who relish being represented in Congress by someone living in an alternate universe. So I was wondering what sort of fifth grade social studies test she might have taken years ago to prepare herself for the national poltical stage.


Thanks to Google “You Betcha,” I was able to find one of Michele’s earlier grade school tests.

What state is Duluth, Minnesota in?

The Cold War was an ongoing international conflict between

1) Kenmore and Westinghouse
2) Any husband and wife
3) The Arctic and Antarctica
4) Those who lived in Florida and those who vacationed there for the winter

Alexander Graham Bell invented

1) Graham crackers
2) The Liberty Bell
3) Belle from Beauty and the Beast
4) Nothing worth speaking about

The Revolutionary War was fought to

1) Give the French something to do when not surrendering
2) Free the Indians, slaves, and other white people
3) Destroy secular humanists
4) Make sure all the guns worked properly

Lewis and Clark

1) Were two famous quarterbacks who played early baseball
2) Were with Columbus when he sailed up the Hudson
3) Were joint presidents during the Civil War
4) Were women

The United Nations was founded

1) To make Manhattan feel important
2) By Russian Communists looking for the Northwest Passage to Brooklyn
3) To give Fox News something to rail against
4) Because the League of Nations was too long to spell

The Red Scare

1) Was the threat that Cincinnati would win the World Series
2) Followed the Blue Yellow and Mauve scare
3) Is a dyslexic version of Red Rum
4) Happens when running a yellow light in front of a cop

Slavery was bad for America because

1) We couldn’t ship those jobs overseas
2) Singing slaves made better music than Swedish homesteaders
3) It produced excess federal funding for underground railroads
4) It was!!!

American Literature is the world’s best because

1) It’s written in English
2) Self help books are written nowhere else
3) It’s remaindered quickly
4) It uses the same letters as the Bible

What four presidents are represented on the face of Mt. Rushmore?

1) Reagan and three others
2) What’s Mt. Rushmore?
3) Presidents from Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky
4) Are the two Roosevelts’ the same person?

Final essay question: What are your thoughts about whether loaded guns should be brought to high schools in the same book bags as beer?

15,000 Wasted Heartbeats

Things I did while watching this year’s presentation of the Oscars:

I checked to see if my pulse was running slower than the pace of the show. I was lucky. Were it I would now be dead.

I began painting my apartment the color of ennui. Then I broke into the apartment next door just to see if darkness was more exciting.

At the 127th hour of the telecast I cut off my right arm just to have something to do.

I tried to guess the color and bird of The Black Swan.

I picked up stuttering.

I cleaned my refrigerator of last year’s Oscar leftovers.

I defriended myself.

I called up strangers to ask if their kids were alright.

I wondered if Gaddafi had truly sent the Academy his very best crack comedy writers.

I texted an old girlfriend to come over and beat me to death with a claw hammer so I could say the evening wasn’t a complete waste.

I looked up the words “inception” and “contraception” to see whether their root was what I was feeling at the moment: constipation.

I read the Tea Party Manifesto backwards and in German.

I counted the number of flabby triceps exposed whenever a sleeveless winner strode onto the stage.

I turned onto C Span 3 to see what books were being discussed in 1996.

I tore out my chest hair and super glued it to my face to resemble Christian Bale.

I volunteered to pass someone else's kidney stone.

Justus D. Barnes

Some dates just should be remembered.

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the passing of Justus D. Barnes. Apparently,not much is known about this gentleman's life. Even the author of his Wikipedia article can barely scratch out a couple of words. He does have a FACEBOOK entry and there is his IMDB listing. Yet Justus would have faded into the background during those pre-Nickelodeon days of movie making were it not for the last scene from the seminal 1903 movie, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY. Barnes' iconic immortality is assured as the outlaw who lifts his Colt revolver and shoots straight into the camera lens at the end of the film.

Horton Hears a Who... A Brett Who!

As a kid I wanted to grow up to be either Vince Lombardi or one of those chimps shot off into outer space. Before Lombardi arrived in Green Bay in 1959, the town was so depressed about its professional football team (in 1958, the team went 2-10) that city plans were in the works to move the entire community to the Navarino State Wildlife area and sell all its beachfront property to Michigan. Lombardi shows up, Green Bay becomes Titletown, and Michigan, well Michigan is never heard from again. The closest I ever came to becoming Vince Lombardi was walking around the campus of Fordham University. As for the chimp, well I still drink my milk out of straws.

This Sunday I will be wearing a cheesehead on my natural cheesehead. I will be half naked, my concave chest painted with shiny green and gold lacquer. My man breasts will be exposed for the entire world to see, and I will care not a whit whether or not I have a clothing malfunction. I will lock the doors, shut the windows, disconnect the landlines, and turn off the cell.

The last time Green Bay went to the Big Dance (January 25, 1998), I developed so many depressive looks as the clock ticked down to its inevitable end that the people around me thought I was auditioning for a Bergmann movie. The officers arresting me for my funereal chest wailing were bemused Broncos fans, of that I am certain. I still remember them holding me down while they tore up my betting slips from the Bellagio.

I was taught a lesson that day. Never ever watch a Super Bowl at a Chuck E. Cheese. The management becomes very suspicious about random hysterical outbursts from an adult not associated with any particular barbarian children around him. The kids started screaming at the thought that their single moms were once more bringing home a chemically dependent male with anger management issues.

I have always loved Super Bowl Sunday. It’s the one day out of the year where I remodel my man cave from French provincial to Paleolithic Rustic and kick back with a cigar in one hand and an electric cattle prod in the other. The prod is not for any S & M usage (at least not on that day). It's mere presence keeps me awake long enough to remember to munch piles of Doritos and to lap down cases of Ensure. Most games become so dull within minutes of kick-off, I'm half asleep by the start of the second quarter. Select programmed prod jolts wake me up to view the commercials and witness any planned half time nudity involving body parts owned by 50% of the world’s population and coveted by most of the other 50%. Otherwise it's a typical Sunday afternoon: an old man dozing off in his recliner, Doritos flecks around the lips.

I no longer am allowed to drink during any sporting events -- even when watching in the comfort of my apartment. A judge’s orders and that pesky electronic bracelet that shoots 50,000 volts up my backside when I even think of a case of Coronas is a clear enough deterrent. How a sequoia found itself riding my grill in Yosemite I’ll never know, but I pleaded no contest after I saw the seated jury. I swear they all resembled out of work conifers.

This year, the Green Bay Packers will play some team, the name of which thankfully escapes me at the moment. As is the case with any Packer broadcast, I will eagle-eye the game alone as most of my remaining friends find my preparations leading up to any Packer kickoff both creepy and unsettling. I’m from Wisconsin: So sue me. Those of us born and bred in America’s Dairyland care only about dairy consumption, affordable cholesterol medication, the availability of Indian casinos, stopping the Commie-Socialist-Pinko lefties in Madison, and The Green Bay Packers.

Somewhere in this black hole I call an apartment are autographed pictures of Bart Starr, Max McGee and Fuzzy Thurston. I haven’t seen the photos in years; but I know they are carefully snuggled in the pages of my grade school dictionary, the one I used to flatten maple, oak, and elm leaves as a science experiment. I don’t remember how I got the autographs, but back then sports legends didn’t ask 25 bucks for their John Hancocks. You marched up to them and they signed. Of course it was deer season at the time and I was carrying a rifle. Only in Wisconsin could a pickup line boasting of your presence at Lambeau Field on December 31st, 1967 get you some action. Out here in Los Angeles, an Ice Bowl is something you purchase at William Sonoma.

I’m not a superstitious individual: I pet black cats; I walk under ladders; I have no problem with elevators that let me off on the thirteenth floor -- unless the structure only has twelve stories. On occasion, I have even dated women with cloven hoofs and the mark of the beast on their foreheads. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But when it comes to Packer games, I’m a different person. I devolve into rituals that would scare away Celtic high priests at Stonehenge.

On most Sundays I can keep my ceremonial prayers to a minimum, especially as Los Angeles stations criminally fail to broadcast all Packer games (as if I can afford a six thousand dollar a year complete sports package). My antics no longer cause panic among my neighbors or visits from either the police or fire departments. Sometimes alley cats chime in, but that usually only occurs when the Packers play away games.

HOW I PREPARE TO WATCH THE PACKERS THIS SUNDAY

This Saturday night I will drive to an Indian casino. I will find one in California rather than make my normal trek into Arizona. I no longer go to any casino believing I will win anything other than the gratitude of the casino managers and quarterly scorn from the State Franchise board. I will simply continue a tradition first begun many years ago when I had the good fortune to secure a couple of tickets late on a Saturday night playing an illegal game of poker at the University of Wisconsin student union. Poker that night was good to me.

Exactly 5 hours before kickoff, I will bathe in a wash of micro breweries imported from Milwaukee and Black River Falls. I’ve tried beers from Rhinelander and Oconto Falls, but find the suds mix poorly with the day-old bath water and the wash and wear laundry I usually bathe in. I have no idea why I do this, since I cannot drink any of the contents and the water plays havoc with my electronic bracelet. My therapist believes as a child I was frightened by the Hamm's Bear.

Chanting to the gods of victory will come next. I used to recite every French or Algonquin city name in the state, but so many existed I never got around to watching the games. I moved from those prayers to enumerating only the counties with Native Indian names. I stopped when I realized I was also including names found in both Iowa and Minnesota. Now I will only repeat the State motto, FORWARD, and drink down a quart of buttermilk. To truly insure a Packer victory, I will mumble in a sing song fashion the words Chequamegon, Wausaukee, Neenah Menasha and Oconomowoc. I hope I need not go as far as to utter the term, Sheboygan.

Painting myself in the colors of green and gold has now taken on a life of its own especially since I currently use an oil based mixture. Granted, the post-game stripping of the paint from certain sensitive masculine parts feels as if I’m having an internal Brazilian wax, but the pain is worth it… especially after a hard fought Packer victory. In a Packer defeat, well, I will suffer along with the team, though sniffing paint thinner long enough will allow me to forget whether the team won or lost, what country I'm in, and whether I am now of a different gender.

THE CROWNING OF THE CHEESEHEAD

I then will offer up a faux burnt sacrifice. In previous years, this procedure in the middle of my apartment, using charcoal and lighter fluid, has cost me precious time away from my television set whilst I explained myself down at the West Los Angeles Police Station. Also, I’ve discovered that none of the fire departments who get the call are Packer backers; instead the members appear to be surly, mean-spirited followers of the Bears, Vikings, or Giants. Now I will simply mime my way through the ceremony on Sunday, although I probably will still burn dust bunnies, lint, and used Downey fabric softener in my ex-girlfriend's Tupperware containers. She never used them anyway when she was around.

I will not try to drive my new station wagon up three flights of stairs to approximate a Lambeau Field tailgating party. I already have several hernias, rotator cuff problems and a suspicious looking DMV license. What happened to my last car during the Philadelphia game of several weeks ago was an accident; at least that’s how I plan on pleading next week. I never realized that grease leaking from an indoor hibachi could consume cloth seats so quickly.



During any play that moves the ball, I will high five anyone of a number of blow up dolls that all look like Vince Lombardi.

For a Packer field goal, the sound of deflated tom-toms as I pat my stomach will ring out. For a touchdown, I will pat down other areas. I have yet to figure out what to do for a touchback.

During half time, I will run to a roof a half a mile away and view the rest of the game through high-powered binoculars. This will approximate the Lambeau Field experience of my youth. Back then, my seats were so high and far away I was actually watching the game from Manitoba.


I will be using my “We Will Never Forget You Brent" tee shirt as a coaster.

GO PACKERS! GO PACKERS! GO PACKERS!

We all have to go sometime...

I belong to a film society that meets every Saturday and Sunday morning at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. I’ve been a member of it for years. The Royal is part of a dying breed, an old art house standalone that has been a constant in the neighborhood since 1924, when it was called the Tivoli, and that portion of Santa Monica Blvd. was part of the original Route 66.

The size of the Royal's concession stand would be dwarfed by the typical Los Angeles lunch truck. The bathrooms are so small and cramped, it’s best to simply hold it until the end of the movie and pee in the alley behind the building. For decades I've frequented my own private spot in the alley near what is now a stunted Sycamore. Apparently, there is only one stall for the women, since the line after any movie snakes around so far out the door, you would think you were attending the Hollywood Bowl.

I first discovered the Royal several days after I first arrived in Los Angeles in 1971, and I've been a regular patron ever since. The foreign fare, documentaries, and hard-to-find films shown there are superb. I also enjoy sitting for two hours in seats that worsen my spinal stenosis exponentially.

However, the film prints received for the specific society screening, look and sound as if they’ve been dragged through the dust of a Sergio Leone western. My twenty year-old car radio has a better and cleaner amplification system than many of these flicks. That's not the Society's fault. They show what the producers and studios send them and most of the time the copies are not of the finest quality.

At least once every screening, the film either stops dead or the automatic projectors fail to correctly time the end of one reel and the beginning of the next. This is like a seventh inning stretch for this crowd. These precious seconds allows the audience to mumble and groan and sometimes even wake up to check for text messages. These are minor inconveniences because the film society screens hundred of movies a year at the Royal and elsewhere. Measuring the quantity of cinema against its annual fee adds up to pennies per picture.

But the film members themselves drive me away from acknowledging my AARP membership. I’m almost ready for Social Security myself, but damn, if I don't think I’m the youngest guy in the theatre on any given weekend. No sooner do the lights go down but the coughing and wheezing and hacking and sneezing come up. The unintended audio for any movie, regardless of its genre, therefore resonates across the 600 seat auditorium like an old style tuberculin ward. Thomas Mann never visited Davos, Switzerland to write The Magic Mountain. Instead, he spent a couple of weekends with at the Royal simply listening to all the lung congestion disorders in the audience.

I’m no heartless soul. I understand old age. Several years ago I tore my back up so badly I thought I would end up moving around like an amoeba for the rest of my life. I’m now of that advanced age where people use the word “sir” twice when addressing me. My prostate has a mind of its own and takes off on all national holidays and most dates where the numerals 1,2, or 3 appear. My skin now sags so badly people mistake me for a Shar Pei. My gray hairs send each other death notices.

But for crying out loud people, does everyone in the audience need to begin hitting the restroom at the five-minute mark of every movie? There’s more traffic up and down the theatre aisles at the Royal on the weekends than can be found on the 405 during a Friday afternoon rush hour.

God bless them, but each step of theirs is as labored as walking shoeless through the Mojave at noon. If it weren’t for the theatre doors opening every 30 seconds, allowing for morning sunlight to cascade through the never darkened theatre, these poor sods probably wouldn’t be able to see where they were going.

At least these old timers can walk without assistance. The ones roaming up and down the aisles with the use of their walkers and steel tipped canes have an uncanny ability to pick the exact moment when a story point is revealed, a pivotal character is shot, or some cheap egregious sex scene is just about to play out. Their rattling and clanging are enough to scare off Marley’s ghost.

Today was especially aggravating because screening was the Swedish thriller, “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” For all I know, the movie could have been called, “The Crowd that Needed to Go Potty.” My Swedish is a tad worse than my Norwegian or Finnish which is none existent. I’m the only one in the world who hasn’t read the Steig Larsson novels so I was expecting at least to gain some understanding of the story from the subtitles.

Subtitle reading is an art form. White subtitles against white backgrounds takes on a whole new level of perspicacity. Craning around hacking, slow-moving Sisyphean seniors as they empty their seats and travel the long road to salvation would normally make me want to scream bloody murder. But I know better. Such exertion now agitates my bladder, and I only wear two layers of adult diapers to weekend movies at the Royal. If I tried to pee in the alleyway any longer, I'd be there until the next weekend.

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL...YOU DOG!

While looking for a candy bar recently, I unearthed an unfinished e-mail draft for a kids' programming pitch. Why I thought I could find a sugar rush on my hard drive I can’t rightly remember; but several weeks earlier I had discovered week-old warm pizza behind my stove, so perhaps that was the motivation. I’m very lucky in that regard: I’ve located edible snacks in the strangest places in my apartment.

The “whos and whys” and “how comes?” of this particular idea are really not important any longer. I’ve typed up millions of thought bubbles over the last 150 years I’ve been in the business. After a while, each concept bleeds into the next. With so much flowing blood, I should have the Red Cross on speed dial.

Thanks to the good Lord of Turnover, the executives meant to read this e-mail have long since departed the business of children’s programming. One trundled off to get a degree in animal grooming and is still plying his handiwork in Duluth, Minnesota. The other became a professional gay rights advocate who occasionally pops up around the country during various marches and demonstrations holding up signs that read “Look at me!”

Glancing over the e-mail after so many years made me wonder whether I was pitching a program idea or laying more pipe as evidence of my schizophrenia towards the business. Had the concept been taken seriously, it would, no doubt, have increased my Fitzcarraldo factor 10-fold among my peers while simultaneously being quarantined as a malware virus immediately upon its release into civilized company.

TV Land is an interesting world. We spend a third of our lives trying to get into this business, a third of our lives trying to get out of this business, and the final third writing tell-all books about the perverseness of this business. Hey! It beats doing anything legal for a living.

Pitching show ideas is a humbling and humiliating experience. Much like going home for Thanksgiving and being singled out by your loved ones as total career failure, minus the great food. I’ve done more pitching than Roger Clemens and struck out more often than Reggie Jackson. Were I a Christian in the Coliseum, I would have made it no farther than the outdoor concession stands before being torn apart by both the lions and the crowds. Television is such a cutthroat business that most seasoned professionals retain their own MASH units. All of us would be in bankruptcy court were we to purchase our sutures and needles retail.



Most of us on the writing side pitch what we believe are fantastic and visionary concepts to those on the production or network side, who prefer looking at us the way the Donner Party looked at each other.

I work in children’s programming, so most of my ideas do not involve humans as much as things that bark, meow, crawl, fly, squawk, slither, or growl, or do strange things to themselves like parthenogenesis. I’ve pitched out every phylum mentioned in Genesis, the Origin of Species, and the kettle bell-weighted, Eldra P, Solomon Biology Text Book.

The point of an initial pitch session is to survive the first round of glares, stares, and boorish activity. The speech must be passionate, provocative, yet non-threatening. Like the Blake character from "Glengarry Glen Ross," sans the salty language and the threat of personal doom. I am, after all, in kids' programming and my animated show is about the adventures of two wacky badger buddies and their wolverine friends, not fraudulent real estate deals.



Usually standing in front of you is some glassy-eyed, bottled water-swigging Amory Blaine type: An Ivy League Humanities major whose entitlement spoon is shoved so far up the rectum as to give the kid a perpetual tongue depressor. This is one angry individual, the low person on the totem pole, taking all the pitches no one else wants or can be bothered with. This executive would much rather be writing his or her own screenplay or giving notes on a multi-million dollar production. Instead, the graduate sits or stands or paces waiting for the meeting to end wondering, “WTF have I done in a previous life to warrant listening to some pot bellied has-been who probably never was pitch me a show about badgers and wolverines?”

We creative types realize that’s what the executive is thinking, but one soldiers on, always talking and forever smiling. Stand stalwart and unbowed like Gunga Din before he was shot. Your heart might want to exit your chest and rush to PINKS, but you’ve initiated the long march by walking through the door. Man up and take the verbal bullets to all of your vital organs. Hell, they’ll grow back after a case of Black Label.

Speak past the loud yawning and ball scratching (males only) the perpetual fingering of the Blackberry; the playing of YouTube video; the doodling; the room exits for coffee, bathroom, or nooky; the sound of a breast pump playing somewhere in the background. It is all about moving up the development mountain to the next level and beyond, avoiding the rock slides of “Nos," “Not interested,” “We have the same idea in development,” and the ever popular, “Get Out of Here before I Call Security.” The audience might be a crowd of one, but one paid quite handsomely to watch a fellow human defecate in one’s Dockers.

The pitch is over when the phone suddenly rings and the executive slaps himself awake explaining he has to take this very important call from the coast. The phone call is always from the coast. It could be the coast of Nova Scotia, but it is always “from the coast.” Usually an assistant generates the call, no doubt using egg timers to calculate the exact length in seconds a pitch artist should remain in the boss’s office. The security guard at the front gate tells you that, "They'll get back to you."

No one ever knows what will sell, so those of us who are required by a chronic desire for self-immolation to load up our scatter guns full of ideas, concepts, proposals, and napkin writings and shoot them out from the hip, the lip, and any place else that feels good. I’ve fired off so many shotgun rounds, I could have been part of the Earp Vendetta Ride. That’s why I never quit my night job as Floyd, the best wheel man in West Los Angeles.

THE UNSENT E-MAIL

Dear S- and G-:

Yes, it’s me again. This time instead of coming in and spilling drinks and vomiting over your faux IKEA furniture, I thought I would save us the time and clean up by e-mailing my idea instead. The fact that you don’t pay for valet parking was also a consideration.

I was recently told by agent W- that your network was once again in search of programming to break the stranglehold that N--- and D--- have on both the Saturday morning time period, as well as the early evening prime time hours. I believe I have just the idea for you. It can be done either in animation or live action. The concept is that versatile and unique.

It goes without mentioning (so why then am I reminding you) that several of my last projects directed towards you guys, had they been pursued with a little more imagination and ingenuity, might have secured for your network ratings above the three shut-ins and a blind mule Nielsen says currently watch your programming.

Come on boys, give me a break. You thought that crap iteration of RUNWAY MODELS SUPERHEROES where the girls were so top heavy they crushed their opponents by tipping onto them, or that weird bisexual ant detective series, KETTLEDRUM AND HORNED TOAD, were weird enough for the viewers to pull you out of the mess you found yourselves in? I heard from viewers that both shows were so deadening, they were using nail guns on each other to see whether any of them were still breathing. Those winners certainly got the advertisers to bang down your doors…but only to ask for their money back.

You should have taken me up on my ideas DANCING NINJA FIREFLIES and that intergalactic musical series where all the ETs were shaped like twisted paper clips. You remember the name: THE TWISTED PAPER CLIPS SHOW?

Both proposals are sailing along the development road, thank you very much, rather smoothly at your competitors, and should soon be into production. Pity I gave both ideas up in the heat of passion to two scum-sucking ex-girlfriends now conjoined (finally they want to be in the same room together) as that writing team whose names will never be mentioned by me again, either very slowly or very quickly.

So let’s cut to the chase. Our main character, BUTCH, is a time-traveling dog that’s also a nondenominational angel. Yes, you read me right. Call it something like TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL…YOU DOG! I was thinking of making him a mastiff because I’ve always loved dogs larger than a split level. Anyway, who ain’t going to listen to spiritual advice coming from a dog that size? Like QUANTUM LEAP, except for canines, BUTCH jumps through time, his regular doghouse being located to the right of the Pearly Gates. Location. Location. Location. BUTCH is in good with THE MAN.

Butch is sent down whenever a human calls out for help during an emotional or spiritual crisis. With a premise like that, we’re talking more episodes than Scooby Doo. You know stuff like ‘Should I abandon my kids for the women next door?” or “Should I rob this bank to pay for cosmetic surgery?” or “Should I go into teaching or make real money on Wall Street?” I know these topics don’t sound much like kids programming storylines, but that’s what development is for, right? Anyway, we always open with him roaming around heaven, non-tethered and unfettered. Since he’s in heaven, he doesn’t poop so there is never a need for anyone cleaning up after him.

We’ll have him receive his marching orders straight from THE MAN through his dog collar (great licensing opportunity). Then, faster than a jump cut he’s floating down to Earth reading his new client’s crib sheet. He won’t burst onto the scene in ablaze of celestial light because that would be far too corny and probably scare everyone into fatal coronaries. So let’s have him singing a catchy pop tune (yet another revenue stream) as he enters into Act I. At the end of his mission, he sing something else, perhaps a love song.

BUTCH has no idea where he’s going until he gets there. That’s the fun of it. Confuse a giant mastiff. The only information BUTCH has is some stiff is in trouble and the trouble is big. We’ll have him four legging into such hot zones as The Alamo, The Little Big Horn, Pompeii, and the deck of the Titanic. I don’t know quite yet what a dog, even a big dog, can do in situations like these, but that’s what development is for, right?

BUTCH marks the human he’ll help by reflexively lifting his leg as an introduction. I’m not sure yet whether pee will come out. Checking the Theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg certainly does not supply the answer, but that’s what development is for, right? Anyway, upon the raising of the leg, our human in need will immediately here the thoughts of BUTCH causing much hijinks to abound…

And then the draft e-mail stops. I don’t remember why I ceased working on it. Perhaps I sobered up or Monica came over demanding more money for the kid, or there was another ATF raid on my building. Or maybe I just got tired of the concept, believing that in such a secular world, a telepathic angel dog with a communicator collar straight to THE MAN just would not get confirmed. Also if you're not cool on a mastiff, we can always work in a schnauzer or a Lhasa Apso. After all, a dog is a dog.


And then it ends.

I do remember that the next concepts I began working on were Shoe Flies Don’t Bother Me, where flies inhabit various types of shoes and go on adventures, and Buffalo Mozzarella Girls that Come Out at Night in which slabs of vampiric cheese shaped as a girl band battle evil stuff by the light of the moon. Both remain somewhere in development.

40 Years Ago and Still No Lessons Learned

Okay pigs, now listen and listen good. There's a bomb in the Army Math Research Center—the university—set to go off in five minutes. Clear the building. Warn the hospital. This is no bullshit,man.

I was staring up at the ceiling, lackadaisically listening to my parents loud whisperings about what an ongoing bloody wastrel I had become, when the bomb went off. The explosion was so intense it rattled all the windows in the house, knocked books off my shelves, and moved my bed several inches. I read later that it knocked around milking machines some 30 miles away. There would be no contented Guernseys that morning in Southern Wisconsin.

My parents made believe the deafening blast was just me stumbling home drunk after a night with one of my slutty, no account, floozy girlfriends though I had been at home for the last six hours. Actually, if any slutty, no account, floozy babes had existed in my dull as dirt life, I would have been living with them rather than within a Dickensian workhouse that forced me to do chores as if I were a high schooler. I would soon discover I was less than a mile away from what would eventually be labeled The Sterling Hall Bombing.

(As an aside, both parents knew immediately it was a bomb. My mother had survived the London Blitz and my father had fought all over Europe during WWII.)

My curiosity got the better of me. I grabbed my pants, stole a Twinkie from my sister's dresser, and told my folks I was lighting out for the territories. They wished me luck, telling me to write if my expensive college education had taught me how. Following the sound of sirens and dozens of running onlookers, I was at the site of the explosion within 30 minutes. It did not occur to me to take my camera. I lost the Twinkie around Mills and Johnson.

Forty years ago today at 3:42 AM Madison time, four angry young men exploded a stolen Ford Econoline, packed to the gills with 2000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. The blast blew away parts of the Physics Building known on the campus of the University of Wisconsin as Sterling Hall. The initial blast killed Robert Fassnacht, a brilliant post doctoral researcher and anti-war sympathizer working alone in the building's basement and injured several other late nighters within the building.

Blown out windows, shattered concrete, gaping street holes, black billowing smoke, tossed around cars, downed electrical lines, the putrid smell of gasoline in the air. So that's what a bombing looked and smelled like. A person or persons unknown had finally decided to bring the war home and make good the years' long war chant to shut down Army Math.

It would be discovered within a few hours that the intended target of the bombers' revolutionary zeal, the highly polarizing Army Math Research Center, housed within several floors of Sterling Hall, had suffered minor damage in relation to the rest of Sterling Hall and surrounding buildings. The bombers understood the rudimentary chemistry of bomb making, but apparently like most males, never got around to ask directions about exactly where Army Math was located within the Physics Building.

I was soon mulling around with a festive crowd of dope smokers when some long-haired, scrawny looking white boy wearing an outfit better suited for a Grateful Dead concert walked over to us and said in a forced friendly tone that tornadoes certainly act funny in this area of the Midwest.

WTF!!! This fool thought a tornado had caused this damage? Right away the air smelled of something other than fuel oil. Could this be a stoner gone rogue? A homeless lunatic? Someone who watched too much television? I told him that twisters don’t normally need to read bomb-making manuals to slap around the landscape nor do they zero in on specific buildings for retaliation.

A bunch of people began chanting "Power to the People." The Grateful Dead guy asked me why I thought it was a bomb and not a tornado. Before I could ask him to produce his badge, a guy the size of three Black Panthers strolled up to him and, pointing one of the meatiest fingers I'd ever seen on a man, demanded to know what government agency he worked for. The guy jumped backwards so fast as to make it an Olympic sport and disappeared amongst other bystanders.

I always wondered whether that character was actually a government stooge working the crowd for any loose lips information or just someone visiting from Ohio State. An sudden influx of black suits walking around the crowds convinced me it was time to get my ass out of there. I walked down Regent Street to get a couple of fresh donuts.

No one needed degrees in advanced rocket science to know this was all about Army Math on campus. Army Math, its very presence protested daily by some of the most radical anti-war demonstrators in the country, was a Pentagon-funded think tank that had set up shop on a six floor addition to Sterling Hall 14 years earlier, Whatever the several dozen mathematicians were calculating on those floors, many at Wisconsin believed their work was detrimental to all living things, especially those suffering through napalm attacks and B52 carpet bombings in Southeast Asia. Apparently, someone had taken their disagreement with the think tank to a whole new level.

Over the next several weeks, as the police presence at Sterling gave way to pissed off Silent Majority construction workers clearing the rubble while cursing out the commie-bastard-out-of state-students, I snapped dozens of pictures with my boxy Kodak camera. Years later a basement flood destroyed all but the three posted here.

For those interested in the history of The Sterling Hall Bombing, just Google the words STERLING HALL BOMBING and thousands of sites come up. The act remains silly, stupid, and mindless, an action conceived by individuals who might have read history books, maybe even believed they were real revolutionaries of a sort, but who had no comprehension of the ripple effects such an event would have on the innocent lives of others. Yes, one of them did call the police to warn them of the impending blast, but still...



The narrator's flat as Kansas intonation makes the viewer wish for a quick and painless death.

A number of articles lay claim to a theory that this act of wanton violence and the May, 1970 Kent State massacre facilitated the derailment of the anti-war movement. Looking back it is easy to say that Sterling Hall did absolutely nothing to halt the war machine. The American side of the war would last for another two years as tens of thousands more perished in that jungle meat grinder.

I maintain an act meant to equalize the induction of males into the Armed Services instead created the first schism between those who remained committed to ending the war and those who could now concentrate on something more important in their lives… like a future making money.

The event was the nationally televised Military Draft Lottery which took place in Washington D.C on the evening of December 1, 1969, nine and a half months before the Sterling Hall bombing. This little bingo dance, the first since 1942, would classify and coordinate in one night the eligibility of all males born between January 1st 1944 and December 31st 1950.

I hadn’t planned to watch the proceedings. What would be the point? Either I would end up marching off to war, shooting off one of my toes to get 4F status, or buy a bus ticket north to Canada. Since all of my friends were gathering at the Memorial Union to witness their future, so I too found myself crammed up against one of the walls of the Paul Bunyan Room awaiting my fate.




After a bunch of interminable speeches some old Republican congressman began the process of pulling the first of 366 plastic balls (how appropriate they were colored blue) out of a large transparent fishbowl. He was soon replaced by others, far younger and more smiley faced. The first 195 numbers drawn and the birth dates written on slips of paper inside the balls would be the first called for military induction, at least that's what the newspapers were reporting.

Every number drawn brought forth the reality of life and now the potential of death. Males screamed in anger, curse words like balled fists flew against walls and tables while girls burst forth with tears fit for a national day of mourning. The crowd thinned out as more and more numbers were called.

Yet, as the process continued into the 200s and beyond, I noticed a palpable set of relief come over the faces of many of the males who remained. One student standing next to me let out an audible “Thank you Jesus” when the number 295 was called. The higher the numbers, the more relaxed the crowd became. Tears still flowed, but they were ones of joy and thankfulness.

I remained until the last blue ball was picked from the fish bowl. I had become so hypnotized watching others go through various stages of grief and relief that I failed to hear my own number called. I asked a woman across the room who had kept a meticulous record of the evening what my number was.

It was an event to remember. Those of us males between the ages of 18-26 suddenly knew what America had in store us. It was that simple, that random, that insane. Some of us had a future ahead for ourselves while others would now need to worry whether any future existed at all.

There would still be demonstrations and draft card burnings, the rage over Kent State and, of course, draft dodgers fleeing in droves to Canada, but for a sizable community of males, the fix was now in. Certain aspects of life could now go forward.

As for me, well my lottery number was so stratospheric I spent the night avoiding telling anyone what it was. I was safe but somehow really embarrassed by my good luck. No dodging or fleeing or shooting off toes. I could plan post undergraduate life, perhaps even graduate studies at UCLA in film.

But the evening left me shaken. The whole process reminded me of those old WWII movies where the Germans lined up a bunch of males and an officer walked down the line just randomly picking out the unlucky ones to shoot.

On the way out of the Union, a pretty little co-ed tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had a lighter. An anti-war rally was beginning and her boyfriend along with a bunch of others were about to burn their draft cards in protest. I pulled out my lighter, actually lit a cigarette, and gave the lighter to her. I told her to light up the sky with it.

She asked about my number. I told her I was on the cusp, you know, betwixt and between, so I was still in a personal no man's land regarding my future. She wished me good luck. I thanked her then turned around and went in search of some thick luxurious Wisconsin ice cream for the walk home. It was cold outside, but the perverse randomness of a blue lottery ball radiated all the necessary heat I would need for the moment.

The Boy Who Bicycled Away

Once upon a time, as the young Greenbush Boy bicycled around his world, he received some advice from a crusty old soul who had seen much in his 80 years as the neighborhood rag picker.

Now the rag picker was well known in the neighborhood. Any old clothes no longer worthy of another wash or a patch up were boxed up and given to him. No one knew what he did with any of the threads or even where he lived, but his pick up truck was a shiny 54 Cadillac Fleetwood and his wife always rode shotgun on his pick ups.

"Boy," he said, "The most confounding word in the English language is the word commitment. Beware of its implications. Run from its obligations. Hide from its all-seeing eyes. Most importantly, never ever look back from the one who bellows forth its medicinal remedies because, should you ever glance back, you, like Lot's wife, will be doomed." His wife then punched him in the nose and told him he had chores back home to do.

The young Greenbush Boy became so unnerved by what the rag picker said that day, he remained on his bicycle for the next fifty years. Worse yet, he never asked any of the rag picker's three grand daughters out on a date even when he discovered years later that all three had ended up as strippers outside of Sun Prairie.

THE END

The Last Time I Laughed This Much I was Subpoenaed

Many videos make me laugh, but there are few examples of comic brilliance that have me on the floor coughing up hairballs from both ends. Whatever marketing genius designed the new Old Spice commercials with former wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa as the pitchman deserves a special place in the Jerry Della Femina Advertiser Hall of Fame.

Mark the words of Greenbushboy. Mel Gibson's rants will be parodied with the same creative frenzy as the recent spate of Hitler-spawned hissy fits: Der Fuhrer screaming as Spain wins the world cup; expressing his disgust that Steve Jobs sucker-punched him again by persuading him to purchase the latest IPhone 4, bugs and all, or his head-exploding tantrum when he mistakenly dials an Indian call center for some computer help. This humor can't be contained, not even in the Thunderdome.

Sharktopus

Saturday evenings are usually spent with my favorite girlfriend, Credit Card Olga from the Ukraine, some loaded weapons, a bottle of Grey Goose, and the Sci Fi Channel. I love their movies. Ridiculous scripts, atrocious special effects, acting from the school of "hey you with the nippley big hooters, want to be in a movie."

Titles like Bone Eater (not worth the sexual pun even for me), Flu Bird Horror, Dinocroc vs Supergator, House of Bones, Hellhounds, Mongolian Death Worm, and SS Doomtrooper are the grandchildren of such endearing cinematic gems as Little Shop of Horror, the Poe adaptations, The Raven and House of Usher, and Creature from the Haunted Sea. While other Madison Central High students in the early 60s were learning them educating skills for a normal adultifying life, I was a kid sneaking into the Capital and Orpheum Theaters on State Street waiting in the dark for the next Roger Corman brain blight.

50 years later Corman is still The Man. His latest assaults against the ongoing waste of big budget Hollywood movie making are for the Sci-Fi Channel. His current epic of eye wincing wonderment, SHARKTOPUS, proves what I've always said about him--and probably one of the reasons why I got tossed out of UCLA Film School. Roger Corman is the greatest film maker of all time. Even the influential French film magazine, Cahieres du cinema said he was the greatest maker of du film ever. As I don't read French, I believe somewhere in their many Jerry Lewis tribute issues that remark was made. Some lovers of film crave Chateaubriand a la Bouquetiere with Marchand de Vin Sauce. I'll take chicken gristle cocovan with a side order of Eric Roberts.

But What About Vincent?

Don’t Matter Brother

I had planned to never again blog about LOST. What's the point? Life is short. The death of a show is longer. Once a program is over and done with, then, like a relationship gone as sour as milk left overnight next to a litter box, it is time to concentrate on other passions, other obsessions, other inconsequential ways of wasting time.

I loved the show for six years. Much of it, like my lifestyle, made absolutely no sense. Yet, the writing was so gloriously convoluted ,wickedly obscure and powerful that it forced me away from questionable online adult sites and onto the pages of Wikipedia -- and beyond. I spent so much time investigating the show's Easter Eggs that I developed a yolk. Jeremy Bentham, Michael Faraday, John Locke, and Rousseau, among others became new and cherished friends. Thank you LOST writers for helping me finally complete my GED.

The ending to LOST elicited two responses from me: WTF did I just waste six years over? and Holy Mary, Mother of God! I can’t wait to crash land on a island and go through years of pure unadulterated hell before finally coming to grips with some highfalutin concept and landing the babe of one's dream to canoodle with for all eternity. The heavenly light at the end of the show was so intense, I sat in front of my set wearing sun block.

I would have preferred for my last LOST meal less of a salad of greens Psalm 23 amply tossed with a tangy In the Sweet By and By and more red meat. I understand why it was necessary to make sure that all the broken love affairs somehow reconnected somewhere at some time. That's why love songs are written in a major key. Make us believe that in the afterlife there still will be some form of physical recognition with those we knew on Earth. What's really heartening is that where these couples are preparing to spend eternity, neither Viagra nor Estrogen cream will be necessary. That, in itself, is worth leading a righteous existence. Also taking time to answer even a modicum of the questions posed throughout the series would have been far too practical for a show built on sand.

LOST left more dangling mysteries out there than can be seen at an all male nudist camp. When were you guys planning to tell us about the Island? Now or when the novelizations come out? It was as if the writers came in pitching "Swiss Family Robinson" but left behind an ending fit for Pat Robertson.

Several immediate questions came to mind after pulling myself up from the floor and when the frothing had stopped. They are in no specific order of psychosis.

Any more information on the big-toed statue? Was it part of the Lighthouse at Alexandria that somehow drifted away.

What was that Temple all about? Who built it? What about The Pool of Life? And why was that a sanctuary against the Smoke Monster?

Did the polar bear in the series pilot have a one show contract? Was his presence truly ever explained?

Who made the Island so mystical? Why would pulsating electromagnetic fields do that? Is this alien technology? Why did the Island need protecting? Why isn't it on anyone's flight maps? Is it clocked? Why hasn't it been subdivided yet?

Why didn't MIB simply turn the damn Wheel of Time and leave? Did he know of its existence? Who created the Wheel of Time? Was it ever used before, and, if so, by whom?

Why didn't MIB steal some C4 from the Others or the Dharma drillers and just blow the plug? Why couldn’t he just steal a raft and leave?

Who took over after Hurley and Linus? Did Hugo have to crash a plane as well to get the next group of “candidates?”

How could Desmond punch in the sequence every 108 minutes for years without any weird form of sleep deprivation. Was he saving the world by doing this repetitive action? Let's face it people, the one time he fails, only one lousy airplane crashes. A plane, incidentally, destined for the Island.

How did Jacob leave the Island? How did he get around the world without credit cards? Who supplied him with his clothes? What was the MIB doing while Jacob was hobnobbing off the Island?

Why didn’t Jack or Desmond turn into a smoke monster? Must one be dead or the murderer of one's mother for that to happen?

This is nuts. I quit. Except for one last item.

BUT I'LL MISS VINCENT MOST OF ALL

What eventually happened to Vincent, the funky LAB that ran in and out of episodes looking for guidance love, and, depending on whether he was fixed or not, his own Kate, Shannon, or Juliet? Vincent was a harbinger. When that canine sauntered into a scene, odds were some real weird shit was about to hit the proverbial beach.

When Jack finally breathed his last, it was in the same bamboo field and position that we first met him six years before. Vincent was there looking sad-eyed both times. Am I missing a Van Gogh reference here? If only Jack had been eating a potato at the end, amidst sunflowers looking up at a starry night. But alas, he wasn't.

After Jack dies, what does Vincent do? Bury him? Snack on Jack? Rush off to Hurley and Linus? So many people died violently on the Island that logic would dictate Vincent probably bit down on some morsels other than Dharma kibble. The wild boars and any loose polar bears couldn’t have feasted on all the femurs themselves.

Noticeably absent from the Church of We Let Most People Come In were Michael, Walt and Vincent. Is this an oversight? I thought all dogs went to heaven? Were none of them worthy of this form of salvation reunion or was the real Smoke Monster still very much alive and well in the form of battling agents and lawyers?

These questions will never be answered until the LOST conventions begin and the writers are held at gunpoint. I heard it through the grapevine that the first LOST movie is in pre-production. Its entitled LOST: THE MISSING YEARS OF BOO RADLEY.