Parents Just Don’t Understand – On the Ropes Without an Adrian

I guess the long and short of it is that all any parent really wants is to have their children be happy, unless of course you’re my parents of late, in which case you second guess child at every turn and assume that Mr. Halfwit is at the helm of a head without direction. Frequent flyers to this meandering mess will know that the “wife” and I have decided to head our separate ways but what you don’t know is that I not only have to hold it together with the “wife” but I’ve found myself trying to pacify my own fucking parents at a time when I should be the one soother sucking.

My Mom has hated every single girl (save two) that I ever brought to the cannibal cave to meat her (or was forced to introduce to through some awkward event). In my teens, Dad called every single one of them “Jenn” because every second or third one of them through the testosterone turnstile was named as such – or so it seemed (one even adopted the name to deflect embarrassment for an entire weekend). Show up at the house with one too many hickeys or badge of honor back scratches in a fortnight and the folks would probably have a fairly skewed opinion of the lass long before they’d even met the poor princess - much less give her a chance to prove them otherwise.

In stark contrast to this pretty picture was the “wife” who not only won my parents over but now that we’re on the ropes (or in the dressing room by now) they seem to still be in her corner. We’ve most certainly taken an emotional beating but for whatever reason the favor of the crowd seems to be with her and that no matter how many bruises I’m nursing, I’m left to fight this on my own (friends aside of course) with gloves of gravy skin. Where’s Burgess Meredith when you need him? Yo, Adrian! I’m black & blue with a breakup and parental back lashings without even buying a bloody ring - imagine if we had gone the full four rounds (Marriage, Kids, Dog, and Death).

I can appreciate why mother would have concerns over our conclusion but that’s no reason to pour derision over said decision when it’s our lives we’re trying to salvage and not hers. Sure, one less seat at the Thanksgiving table will stand out like a grain of salt in a pepper shaker but isn’t our happiness more important than seasoning? As for my Dad, he’s still on my side but I get the feeling he’d be more comfortable in the middle (say Hi to Malcolm for me). They believe that this is all my fault, and to some extent it is, but if what I’m guilty of is questioning my happiness shouldn’t that be enough to win their favor?

I do believe that is the first time I’ve used the big "F" word in a blog. Those that know me will find this most amusing, for the rest of you keeping score that's 22, 308 - 1.

Will Smith was right. Who knew?

iPod played "Survivor - Eye of the Tiger" while posting

Back to the Future & the Beer Born Ballet Hippo

As promised the Dark Pig and I took leave of you all on Saturday night to partake of some pints at a local joint that was but a kidney stone throw away from his pig pen, what we didn’t expect was that they had somehow turned the pub into a time machine without telling either of us or alerting the media for that matter. I’m all about riding the retro bus (hell, I still spin records, wear Aviator sunglasses and have sideburns that’d make Priscilla Presley drip like a faucet) but what we encountered as we strolled through the pub was unlike anything either of us had ever seen, an honest to oatmeal interactive 80’s experience. In my last post I mentioned “Weird Science” and Anthony Michael Hall, well unbeknownst to me; we had somehow found a portal back to that very time – 1985. Hair piled to the ceiling fans, unlaced high top sneakers, Leopard print Lycra, slouch socks and a waitress in leg warmers… and I said “pardon”? Had we been less intoxicated we may have made plans to turn the place into an 80’s theme park, kind of like Jurassic Park but with stronger fencing to keep the bar bimbos and grease monkeys away from the tourists. Our mouths fell agape at the display before us, but that was just the beginning.

The Pig and I are keen observers by nature so we found a table that appeared to have the best vantage point of the place and proceeded to pulverize our livers - laughing hysterically at the pickled patrons below like party plankton in a Petri dish. Highlights include seeing a tubby gin blossomed cowboy literally ask every dame in the bar for a “dance”, a cougar in Leopard print top stomping her Peggy Bundy style heels on the hardwood stage floor as if trying to perform some trailer park flamenco and a table full of female fondue flavors with nothing but dudes lined up to dip their berries in the bowl. The Leopard print princess got into a screaming match with her date/parole officer/sugar daddy right in front of us and at one point ran from the pub in tears only to return some time later no worse for wear while her date sat as numbly stunned as the rest of us. I’m not even going to mention her other gal pal who had Lita Ford hair-do and just as much luck with the man at her table. Scary shit.

Speaking briefly to the guy and his gal beside us about a woman that looked suspiciously like David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) from “This is Spinal Tap” we were astonished to find that they were just as shocked that we’d all somehow ended up in a time warp. “Doesn’t Blondie over there look like David from Spinal Tap?” to which he replied “I dunno, I thought she looked more like Dee Snyder (from Twisted Sister)!” I nearly made a puddle I laughed so hard. So here we were, four folks stuck in some bizarre pocket of twisted time with Dee Snyder’s love child mere meters away.

The sights and sounds of a place transplanted twenty years in the future, very odd indeed but it didn't end there.

---

Part II

The pig and I were minding our own business, watching our persistent but portly cowboy try and smooth talk some odd looking female a few tables off when said femme spots us. She blew off the decrepit cowboy and began to approach us, had our knees been less lubricated with wobbly pops we may have made an escape out the window, but we stood fast, perhaps thinking she’d offer us free beer – she did not. We had gathered a few chairs to prop our feet upon and subsequently create a wooden wall between us and… well, everyone else, but this broad just up and takes my chair, sits her bulbous ass upon it and begins to speak; “Moo” – (it could have been “Hi”). “Howdy” I say and we strike up a conversation about horny cowboys and would she have let him calf rope her if he were thirty years younger or had she skulled a schooner of Looser Lager upon his bow legged approach. Somehow we chat with this person for a few minutes (perhaps still waiting for free beer to appear) when this other lassie saunters over to the table. We realize in tandem that the cowboy should’ve held out for this woman, she had a face like Mr. Ed the talking horse, perhaps his prairie perversions would’ve flown with her but even cowboys have standards I suppose, and no one would want to see him ride this filly off into the sunset (not unless it was off a cliff).

All went well I suppose (no beer arrived and our pints were dry) until Mr. Ed started to talk about how much she puked the night before and what it was she had “lost”, the pig and I exchange glances – we must plan our escape. The other party crasher chimes in with a retching tale of her own – to look at her one would suspect that she’d never said no to a meal in the first place much less allow a morsel to flush away into oblivion. We were dumbfounded. The leg warmer wearing waitress comes over and asks if any further drink orders will break-dance her way… wait… wait… no beer (I try my best puppy dog eyes on her - she must be a cat lover - Damn!). We had enough, the Pig put his hoof down and somehow offends Horseface by referencing her vomiting anecdote (something about a piece of toast) and we giggle. She storms off, but the one remaining barnyard refugee starts to tell us that she’s also a dancer after we comment on the waitress’ attire choice and we pretty much lost it and made a break for the exit.

Aside from Disney's Dancing Hippos in Fantasia, there’s no real need to examine that evening any further except to say that I spend far too much time with farm animals, know far too much about the toilet habits of two complete strangers and had a really great time.

Am I the only person still alive that wanted to bone a Solid Gold dancer?

iPod played "Bowling for Soup - 1985" while posting

The World Is My Oyster & I Want to Shuck It (with or without Anthony Michael Hall)

When faced with a hook up (or break up for that matter) back in High School or prior to, wasn’t it mostly what your friends thought that mattered? I consider myself still an Adult in Training for the most part so a great deal of that mentality still blossoms in my brain - but there’s a wee little group of cranial caterwaulers screaming to high hell about both beings needing to end up a little better as a result of one another and blah, blah, blah. Can’t deny them I suppose, but now that I’m “suddenly single” for the most part, I want to lash out and act a fool (which I don’t mind saying I have plenty of experience doing) and regain some misplaced youth somewhere along the way. So how many of the rules have changed since I was last in the game? Is my cue stick still able to perform on the hole?

Back in my formative years of the female frame, long before I knew that a woman had more to offer than confidence cuddles, pseudo-sexual esteem and bed head; it was all about making my friends jealous at any cost. The Dark Pig will tell you that I took beauty over brains more often than not, but the truth is that we all took what we could as it became available (but if she was a stunner by some dumb luck, the boys would stew like beef in a broth of hot hormones - no matter how uninformed she was). Now days, if I were to parade some bimbo out in public in front of my friends they’d not only lash her with their wit but they’d surely chastise me for having subjected them to her inane babble. Not that pretty girls can’t be smart, in fact that’s a statistic that’s thankfully changed for the better from what I gather, but you still have to admit that bubble babes are still out there just waiting to make a nice guy look like an idiot in front of his friends.

The gal pals of some of my buddies are already trying to set me up with their single friends if you can believe it. I’m fresh out of the fryer; the last thing you should do is stick me in your mouth right away. Thankfully my friends are deflecting most attempts but I’m sure one will slip under their radar at some point which will undoubtedly make me look the greasy fool. I’m certainly flattered by the attention but let me drip dry a little before covering me in condiments.

Maybe this is the time to make a woman like the boys did in “Weird Science”, but with less pubic hair than Kelly LeBrock (unless she’ll allow me to clean my sink with her pelvis) and more brains (she did marry Steven Segal, after all). The Pig and I will collect over a bottle of rum and try to make a woman. We’ll wear bras on our honey heads, listen to some “Oingo Boingo” and party like its 1985.

... and yeah I know I'll "never make supervisor with that attitude".

iPod played "Oingo Boingo - Weird Science" while posting

Kicked in the Taco & a Side of Sour Cream Dreams

I apologize profusely for the lack of regular urban updates this past week (it’s nice to know you care) but I think that John Lennon put it best when he sang that “life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans” or if you prefer Frank Black; “I got kicked in the taco”. Recurring readers will know that I am shuffling off to the bustling burbs within the coming weeks, but what even my most supportive of pals don’t know until now is that I will be making this move without the wife.

You must first understand that we were never married to begin with (so cast your dispersions elsewhere) and that “wife” was a nickname that I bestowed upon her back when intention dictated that we would one day wind up chapel side one sunny afternoon. I have spent 1/6 of my entire life with this one woman and this is staggeringly hard to handle as it is without having to hand over a deadly divorce or go tooth and nail with my best friend for who gets the tea pot. With all sincerity, this has been a long time coming but it doesn’t make it any easier on the soul. It’s not that we didn’t go to task as a team, but we realized that we may be dying as individuals as a result and therein lays the root of our separation. As a unit we pursued happiness at the expense of our own wants, dreams and ultimately our life together. I’m just thankful that we are both adult enough to identify where our white picket fence turned to barbwire before it cut us both deeper than it already has.

We’re still friends (the best of, as cliché as that sounds) - we still share the same roof and as we pack up our lives for each others ultimate move – me to the outskirts and hers to the other side of the country – we collect the icons of our life together like archeologists cataloguing the remnants from some lost civilization unearthed many moons later. Relics from another time - artifacts detailing our existence, whereabouts and headspace – they collect darkness in the bottom of a box instead of on display in some marital misfortune museum. We share a laugh as we uncover yellowing movie tickets, restaurant receipts and photographs – our legacy.

Next steps are as new to us as first ones from an infant but just as rehearsed as those from a ballerina, I guess the real question is where do we go from here? The nails in the coffin are closer to the corpse than ever, the death knell has sung its song to the wild winds and we’ll continue our lives apart but ever closer for having been here together – no matter where we drift from this point on.

We're sorry to those who've invested so much in us and hope that you don't feel that it was all in vain. Don't look at us as a failure, we sure don't, just trust that we'll make it all up to you one day as individuals and accept our gratitude.

iPod played “Spoon - Everything Hits at Once” while posting

A Creamy Phallus & The Porcelain Pinch

I am but a creamy phallus for a multi-billion dollar corporate moo-cow – squeeze me and I produce. I am entombed in an office tower on the perimeter of the downtown core, like being on the edge of freedom or on the border of oblivion – if this place was but a bear trap in which I was duly caught, I would’ve surely eaten through my furry flesh to have escaped it by now. I am usually perched high atop the grimy streets on the top floor of said tower with panoramic views of the cityscape (or cityscrape) and the ripe river valley – Chinatown bristles below. I have been temporarily reassigned to an office space with a breathtaking view of the adjacent building and its dreary inhabitants – be still my beating heart. I share the elevator with metrosexual males and syrupy secretaries; I stand in the corner and try to ignore their idle chit chat - try to avoid suffocation by way of piquant perfume, mellifluous bullshit and the ever present attitude (an SUV does not make me respect you, please do not wave your logo emblazoned keys in front of my face unless you expect me to insert them into your rectum and drive you off a cliff – thank you). They know that I am not one of them (like a dog sniffing out an intruder amongst the pack – my arse end doesn’t smell quite right – perhaps it’s the lack of backside kisses), I’ve been told that I have too much creativity in my face (I assume that means that I look creative and not like an experiment gone wrong), I think it’s the sarcastic smirk on my face that truly sells the seashells by the seashore. I wonder if they know that I think they’re all a bunch of filthy double breasted beasts and that the homeless have better bowl side manner.

Let me explain.

When nature calls like a foghorn through the storm of your guts, you can’t pull a “Shitbreak” and haul home for a poop, I understand that. But some of these people treat the washroom like their personal dumping ground (if you’ll excuse the pun). Up on the top floor there was a phantom piggy who had a habit of leaving the toilet seat covers on the seat when he was finished with his deposit. The next visitor would then be faced with the unpleasant reminder that another man's bottom cupped the porcelain maw (the only thing worse, is to sit on the seat and find that it retains the unearthly warmth of the last user – creepy – but I imagine women endure this all the time since they have nothing but bowls). Removing the cover was a delicate art, not unlike handling plutonium... and I thought that was bad.

The people down on this floor are so notoriously filthy that I’d consider a colostomy mud pack to be a blessing. They wipe snot on the walls of the stalls, leave wads of wet toilet paper all over the floor, they don’t flush - leaving you to gaze into their bowel stew whether you want to or not. There’s water all over the counter tops, soap residue stains on the tile, gobs of soaked paper towel strewn about the sink, petrified phlegm on the wall in front of the urinal and that Martian stink that you just know shouldn’t escape from a healthy human being (much less an office employee).

Are the suits involved in some sort of nauseating class struggle with the cleaning staff? Are these guys lashing out at their wives for some reason and taking it out on defenseless urinal cakes? A multi-billion dollar corporate citizen run by polluted people who enjoy wallowing in their own filth? I am concerned and confused – maybe I should take the stairs from now on, sharing an elevator with these people just became all the more difficult.

iPod played "Headstones - Cubically Contained" while posting

Coffee Cult Creations - For the Love of Over the Counter Culture

As I waited for her 4shot-venti-non-fat-caramel-machiatto, I had time to reflect on coffee culture and what it invariably means to me as I inhaled the filtered-through-dirty-sock aroma of burnt java beans. Walking away from a $tarbuck$ with an armload of overpriced yuppie puppy juice is becoming somewhat of a specialty. You see, when office orders start to circulate across the floor like a caffeinated cockroach - I’m among the first to volunteer for the trip to lubricate my escape from the workplace - get some fresh air in my lazy lungs; feel free for a fleeting moment or two before heading back into the blue tube of recycled air and idle chit-chat. There are coffee services in the building, a Canadian institution operates downstairs in fact, but there’s something about a large white cup of steaming half-caf-beaver-slapped-whatever-chino to bring joy to a puffy eyed co-worker on a cool Friday afternoon.

When we were taut teenagers, coffee houses were the only places where minors could hang out and smoke lung buttering cigarettes on those solid white nights of winter. We would stay up most of the night in some dingy place, sipping at the poorly rendered black beverage - talk smack about the chicklettes we felt up behind the gym, inflate our dreams with youthful imagination and pollute our lungs with the smoldering suicide sticks. We felt like taxi drivers or something equally “romantic” to the mind of a young man - we were perfectly at home in the ancient lyric of a classic Tom Waits song.

I think it all went south when these monstrous coffee conglomerates took over the world one city block at a time. It’s astonishing to me that the public hunger for caffeine is so great that it can facilitate the need to have so many shops within such close proximity - like Lego blocks, swollen corpses or rabid rodents piled high atop one another. You know it’s bad when the biggest competitor one store has is an identical outlet just a ¼ block down and one single floor up.

I laugh a little at myself as I cart my armload of caffeinated creations past the line up of suits and wonder how the hell I became one of them. If I had another hand I would’ve slapped myself. I blame YOU Chandler Bing!

iPod played "Nashville Pussy - Fried Chicken & Coffee" while posting

Suburban Cannibal?

Suburbia

- suburb: a residential district located on the outskirts of a city
- suburbanites considered as a cultural class or subculture
- place where prom queens & virginity still exist

Long before I became the Urban Cannibal I was a Suburban Animal trying desperately to escape the pre-portioned backyards, cookie cutter castles of kittens or kids and the cancer of casual community. My friends and I fought hard to punch on through the ‘burbs bag of blissful ignorance, we knew that just beyond the greenbelts and veined valleys sat the bloated beast that is “The City”. Ominous in size but ripe with possibility, promise and Poon-Tang (dear diary, I used the word Poon-Tang in a blog today – that was swell!), The City rose like a phoenix from the meadows of mediocrity that engulfed us – upon it’s fiery wings we’d soar above it all. Not that our little suburban nest was unsightly, far from it, it was beautiful; sprawling fields, immense evergreens and Stepford daughters by the dozen! For such a peaceful paradise one would be hard pressed to find anyone willing to leave “The Shire”, but like it was for Bilbo Baggins, adventure was brewing off in the distance like a cannibal’s cauldron and it smelled delectable.

Shortly after high school most of “The Boys” (The Dark Pig being one of said “boys”) sought to leave the suburban wasteland and make our fine fortunes out in the wild, wild world beyond the paradise skies - one remained behind but he spawned quite early in the game. Me? After having escaped over a decade ago, it saddens me to report that I am headed back from wench I came…

In the back of our minds we all knew that one day the tables would show signs of turning and that we’d somehow end up once more suckling at the boulevard bosom of the ‘burbs, but I’m the Urban Cannibal, how the hell am I supposed to make this work? My cannibalism doesn’t go over well in smaller communities – missing persons tend to be missed. Kittens are cherished, children are cuddled and housewives are shackled to appliances – I will be forced to re-adapt to my natural habitat, leave the slick city streets to its rightful heir – the KIDS. I will hear them out partying in the streets from my suburban hutch. I’ll stand out on the lawn and occasionally howl at the moon just to prove to myself that I still can.

We move in less than a month and I am petrified of what I will become.

iPod played “Ben Folds - Rockin' The Suburbs” while posting

Good Girl / Bad Girl Mystery – How many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Pop?

The age old mental meatloaf known as the good girl/bad girl conflict within a man’s mind is as old as man itself (or meatloaf, whatever came first). In the time of Adam and Eve, if Adam found out that the snake in the garden had a secret tattoo of an S&M scenario somewhere on it’s underbelly, he would’ve certainly made a move on it – Eve was such a goody two shoes (even though she had no shoes), how could he not wonder what evil lies beneath the serpent scales (“Gimme some sugar, baby” – name that one Serena). Let’s examine the snake’s modern day incarnation - Angelina Jolie, a filthy creature that has somehow managed to cleave a Hollywood power couple into media bloating shards of serpent shit. I am of course speaking of the whole Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston split that seems to have brought out the fangs of scandal and sunk them into the skull of even the most casual media whore. Jolie was never a favorite, she appears as if she’d be just as comfortable strung out on heroin in a ditch as she would flayed on a brothel bed with a college football team gathered ‘round and yet on occasion she cleans herself up and can appear fairly presentable (Courtney Love syndrome). It was rumored long before that the Pitt Bulls of Bradley were hungry for some Jolie jerky but the public at large dismissed the claims with the belief that Anniston was a “Good Girl” and ol’ Brad would never leave our “Friend” for the grimy, brother tonguing actress. Wrongo-Bongo!

So why would Bradley Blue Balls blow off the nice girl and pursue an obvious cutter and potential STD super conductor? She’s the bad girl! She’s the type of chick you know is a freak in her Underoos and very obviously a filthy feline (no matter how many foreign kittens she adopts) - she could show the Pitt things that Anniston wouldn’t even think happens in prison porn. So, why the evil attraction? Surely there was something kinetic between the two of them that would make Pitt abandon the Anniston for a side of Angelina, wouldn’t there have to be a reaction for the notoriously shy Pitt to bring more attention to himself? The thing is, even “regular” folks have the bite of the Valkyrie to contend with, though not on the cover of every bloody newsstand, gossip column or pre-teen backyard bonfire. No, we have to deal with it in private.

The wife is one of the sweetest little flower petals on the planted earth, so why am I oddly fascinated with the hellion who fills my mailbox with suggestive e-flirts and is always trying to get me drunk? She’s the very rust on the nail that makes the crucifixion all the more painful.

Regular readers will know exactly what I’m talking about, those of you who are new to this buffet will have to simply stand in line and wait for the rest of us to finish.

iPod played "The Slackers - Married Girl" while posting

New Orleans Sinking & I Don't Wanna Swim (in nothing but Tequila)

I swore I’d never use this ramble roach to air out my lungs but this morning I came in to yet another midnight rambling e-mail from the notorious SAGA:

“After reviewing information from CNN on the Hurricane (Katrina) I needed a pick-me-up! I am not sure how a person mentally survives coming home to a "non-home”. As a single person that is one thing but, as a family man I really do not know. The conclusion that I have come to? I need to know what I would do in the event of an emergency....and along that train of thought I have realized that I do NOT have enough Tequila in the house if something truly mangling happens.
When the BAD happens, Tequila...Tequila really good!”

My cousin Vicki and her three infant cannibals live(d) in New Orleans, she got out after waiting in 12 hours of traffic or something like that – I visualize something out of Stephen King’s “The Stand” – an entire metropolis trying to flee by any available artery. Vic made it to Houston Texas, only possessions being two days of clothes, the kids, the car and one hysterical cousin (no word on how much Tequila she has on board). I’m not making light of what has happened, in fact I’m thinking that all the old plantation architecture, haunted graveyards and tangible history of places like the French Quarter and Bourbon Street may have potentially been wiped out forever – it’s eternally heartbreaking (human toll aside) to perceive the modern day Atlantis. The large hairy bastard known as KITE is actually a spectacular photographer (that's one of his pics right there - he’s a cheery ol' bloke who likes to be called by his demon name – Je_ _ery – HAHA! Aye kill ewe!), his favorite subject – graveyard statues (and probably kittens frolicking in freshly cut grass – softy). Just a few months back we spoke of how astonishing a trip to New Orleans would be from a spectral photography perspective. I would’ve gone for the free flashing breasts and beads - the ghostly grasp and voodoo vernacular would be a bountiful bonus. Now all that is in question, it saddens me when history becomes just that.

Officials are saying 80% of the city is underwater and that New Orleans may never be rebuilt, with how some of those people are acting down there, one wonders if it should be. Rampant looting, martial law and armed gangs taking over the downtown core - it makes you sad to be a human being. When the bodies of your friends are floating down the street you can’t deny that Mother Nature is a sexy bitch with a temper but it’s distressing to think of how many are taking advantage of what’s going on. Surely they should all find a high spot to sit, crack open a case of Tequila and meditate on how very much rots beneath that water.

Do you think that the Tragically Hip will stop performing "New Orleans is Sinking"?

Photo used with permission, courtesy of The NoFunClub
iPod played "Tragically Hip - New Orleans is Sinking" while posting