Random Esquire

1.  If you’re going to use the line, “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?” it’s really far more effective if:

A) You’re Paul Newman

and

B) You’re not known for your passionate love of hamburgers.

2.  I’m averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night and 500 milligrams of caffeine a day.

That all sorts of wrong.

3.  I ordered this framed poster for my sister’s office.  It was a poster created by the British Government in 1939 that was to be distributed if the Nazis invaded Great Britain.  It was re-discovered in 2000 and widely reprinted.

Not to be mistaken for the slightly less motivational:

4.  NYC next week.  And I think I will be going to Las Vegas in February with some friends, Sitcom included.  She has only been to Las Vegas once and only for one night.  She informed us that despite her short stay, she managed to “do the walk of shame from the Flamingo to the Aladdin though.   Ew. I was so gross.  Clearly, I  would now only walk of shame from the Wynn to the Bellagio.”

Another member of said group of friends threw up out of a moving cab.

I chimed in that I threw up in a trash can along the strip during my last trip.

Don’t judge.

I’d like to say it was because I was drunk and having a fantastic time.  But really?  I had pneumonia and did not know.

5.  Sometimes, on Fridays, I come home and Little Filthy is singing along to songs, using his bone as a microphone.  He doesn’t know I know.

Besos grew up in Mexico.  She was telling me that I was rubbing off on her and that she was going to learn how to cook more things outside her standard repertoire of Mexican dishes.  I enjoy cooking and since we are usually at my place, I tend to cook more often than Besos.

Anyway, in the midst of this conversation, she told me that when she was 18, her father said to her, “A woman should know how to cook, clean, and do laundry before getting married.”  I said, “What?!”  She repeated it.  Having grown up in a family with a very independent mother and sister, I am not so much a fan of these archaic views.  I said, “You should have told him that a man should learn how to keep his goddamn mouth shut before getting married.”  She then told me about their old neighbor’s sister.

“Our neighbor’s sister got married and she didn’t know how to cook, clean and do laundry and he returned her.”

I said, “Wait, wait…what do you mean ‘returned her‘?  Like they got a divorce?”

She said, “No, he just returned her home so she could learn to do those things.”

He returned her!  Like …a broken product that needed to get fixed.

Wild.

Then I wondered if some men really do feel like this is a perk to getting married.  My father doesn’t cook or do laundry.  He does clean – but stuff like vacuuming.  My sister knows how to do those things…but she hired someone to cook, clean and do laundry.  Me?   I’m 36, for God’s sake.  I can do all three.

Maybe I should open a school for young Mexican women.

You know,… maybe I’ll run that idea past Besos first.

1. I like to say “Don’t drop your blob.”  By that, I mean, basically, Don’t have a cow.  I think I say it because it sounds a little gross. And British. The British can get away with sayings things like that.  Like bangers and mash. Or spotted dick.

This reminds me of an old British joke…

One day, when her husband had gone off to work at the Parliament, this Brits-woman has three of her lovers come over to sport her royally in bed.  Her husband came home early and walked right on in the bedroom to see her with the three men.  He gasped and said, “‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo!”  And the wife says, hands on her hips, “Aren’t you going to say hello to me?”

…which is a much funnier joke when told by Michael Caine.

2.  What’s tarnation?

I ask because I was about to leave a blog comment and say, “What in tarnation…?” but then I realized that I don’t know what tarnation is.  So instead, I typed, “What the Sam Hill…?”  but then I realized that I don’t know who Sam Hill was or is.  So I googled them.  But by then, I forgot what I was going to say.

3.  Besos decided to have an English muffin for breakfast on Saturday.  She asked where I kept the peanut butter and I told her.  A short while later, I looked up when I heard Besos making a weird guttural noise.  She was standing at the kitchen counter with half a peanut-buttered English muffin in her hand.  Her mouth was wide open and her eyebrows were furrowed together.  She reached over and picked up the jar of peanut butter and made a loud noise before walking over to the trash can, popping it open and leaning over to let the offending material drop from her mouth.  She grabbed the jar of peanut butter and held it out to me.

It expired in May.

May 2008.

How’d that get in there?

QTMama’s recent entry about mis-hearing things reminded me of an incident from law school.  I had been participating in a mock appellate hearing regarding disability law and had traveled to Milwaukee with my ‘co-counsel’ to argue in front of some judges.  Our mentor throughout this journey was a very intelligent attorney who was in a wheelchair; he provided incredible insight and clarity into disability law.

Following a rather stressful day of arguing, my team sat around in a local bar in Milwaukee discussing how we would thank our mentor.  We had all had a few to drink.  Someone suggested something from Milwaukee’s art museum or an engraved gavel.  The conversation went something like this:

A female teammate said, “Let’s get him a pap smear.”

This caught my attention.

I said, “What?”

She said, “You know…a pap smear.”  The rest of the team nodded, thinking this was a good idea.

I said, “Are you kidding?  That’s a lousy gift!”

She looked offended.  “It’s not a serious gift…just something small along with his real gift…to remember our trip.”

I said, “What the heck is wrong with you people? First of all, that’s a lousy fucking gift.  Second, he’s a man!  How the hell is he doing to get a pap smear?!”

They all burst out laughing.  My female teammate said, “I said a Pabst Beer!”

oh.

I get it now.

Let’s say you’re visiting someone and staying at their place.  When you get into the shower, do you use their bar of soap?

I thought about this today while I was in the shower.  (If you stay with Bev, FYI, she will have all new products on the bathroom counter for you to use like you’re showering next door to Target.)  But some people aren’t as conscientious as that and sort of leave you to your own devices.

I don’t love the idea of using a bar of soap that my friend may have just used to wash his tackle but if I *must*, I can get over it because, really, once the soap is rinsed, it’s just sort of a new bar of soap again, right?  (This is what I tell myself.)  Of course, if I do use it, then I  wonder if, the next time said friend get in the shower, does he or she wonder if I used it?

It’s really a vicious cycle.  If you have guests, you should have liquid soap or place a new bar of soap on the clean towels you leave out.  Anyway, back to the bar of soap.

While I may be able to get past using a pre-used bar of soap, I really can’t do it if there is a hair on the soap.  A hair is sort of like a brand on cattle – it marks the soap as definitively belonging to someone else.  You just can’t get past it.  And, like a hair in food, it’s an all-bets-are-off sort of thing.

Besides, have you ever tried to remove a hair from a bar of soap?  You can run it under water but that sometimes takes a while while the hair slides around a bit and just hides on the other side of the bar.  Or it slides off of the soap and then down your arm and you have to watch it wiggle its way down your body in a stream of water.   Or if you try to pick it out, you either end up with soap under your nails or you just drive the hair deeper into the soap.

One night, after a date, I was invited back to a young woman’s place for a nightcap.  (Do people still say nightcap? That’s purely a movie thing, isn’t it?  What the hell is a nightcap, anyway?  ‘Nightcap’ makes me think of those hats you see in illustrations of The Night Before Christmas with some dude with a long cone-shaped droopy hat on his head.  Which is sort of like pajamas for the head – and that means asking if someone would like to come in for a nightcap is like asking if they’d like head pajamas. I digress.)

Anyway, back to the story.  I was at her place and I went to use the restroom.  This is when things began to fall apart.

See, first of all, she didn’t have soap next to the sink to wash your hands.  OR a hand towel.  That right there makes you wonder.  The shower curtain was open so I glanced in for soap.  And there, sitting in the soap tray was a big ass bar of soap.

With a black hair on it.

Did I mention said young lady was blonde?  A natural blonde?

This means said hair?

Not her hair.

It was a short night.

My neighbor brought Little Filthy a treat.  Happy Friday, Little Filthy!

Holy Crap.  My dog is Bill Murray from Caddyshack.

Picture is the same as in the Bill Murray post so I’ve now placed this behind a cut. heh.

(more…)

I can tell you right now what I’ll be doing the next time I see my niece and nephew.

And I can tell you right now what my sister will be yelling at me about.

Check out this goofball.

1.  Have you ever acted like an idiot cause you were sort of upset about something?  And realized it about half-way through the event?  At some point where you could sort of decide if you were just gonna go with it or if you were going to immediately reel it in and fess up to acting stupid?

And then you realize that it’s sort of incredible that you’re contemplating consciously acting like an idiot as a viable alternative to not acting like an idiot?

Ridiculous, thy name is Random.

2.  I took Besos to brunch and then to see Whip It.  It wasn’t exactly a chick flick, per se, but if asked, I’m going to claim that I’ve met my sensitivity quotient for the week.

3.  I’m pretty convinced that marriage is just a higher form of adoption.  The woman ends up with a ‘starter kid’ – a husband, before bustin’ out with the real thing.  Like easing your way into a swimming pool.

Instead of asking, “Will you marry me?” maybe men should ask, “Will you adopt me and take me home?”

But what the hell do I know?