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.

1.  Yesterday, on my way home from work, I was in a train car with a positively stunning woman.  She was blonde, wearing a skirt and heels and had great legs.  She had very blue eyes.  She looked about 45 or so.  Perhaps closer to 50.  Partly what made her look so stunning was that she was so elegant looking.  We got off at the same stop.  I live near a dance studio and I was unsurprised to see her walk into the front door.  Ahhh, a dancer.  Well, that explains the legs.  Anyway, I remembered the incident because in my head, I thought to myself, “Ah, now she is a woman.”

2.  Yes, everybody, peanut butter goes bad.  Besos had managed to find a jar of peanut butter from the back of some cupboard that had gone untouched since my break-up with Boss.  How do I know this?  Because Boss likes creamy peanut butter and I like chunky.  Besos had found some old jar of creamy peanut butter.

Only spoiled kids get creamy peanut butter.  Down to earth kids get chunky.  We have to make that shit creamy.  In our mouths.

3.  Kennedy came into my office yesterday and I tossed him one of the apples I had brought in with me.  We sat there with our feet on my desk and ate apples.  And talked about apples.  And we both decided that honey crisp apples are great.  Any mushy apples suck it.  And we wondered who was eating mushy apples?  And then I remembered this entry in which I told this story:

“Speaking of Boss, the other day, we were in the grocery store buying apples. Actually, we were buying many different things because we have bulk buying issues. However, at this point, we were in front of the apples. There were quite a few varieties to choose from. She said she likes softer apples. I said I like crisp apples. She said she doesn’t like it when a big piece breaks off when she takes a bite. I said I love it! And we stood there and stared at each other as if we’d never met. No one thinks to ask these important questions until it’s too late and you fall in love and then you’re stuck buying two different kinds of apples for eternity.”

4.  You know, in retrospect, I’d have chosen a different nickname for Besos on my blog.  Perhaps a name that was more than one letter away from the nickname of my Ex.  I’m pretty sure that one day I will screw up and and swap Besos for Boss or Boss for Besos and then I will have at least one woman angry with me.

And I’m pretty sure that woman will be a Latina sporting some Mexitude.

And if you’ve got any goddamn sense at all… you know… you know never to screw with a Mexitude-fueled Latina.

Of course, the problem is that I have so little sense at all.

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.

1.  On Friday, Besos met me at my office.  She wanted to see where I work.  Why?  I don’t know.  I don’t like to see where I work on a daily basis so I can’t explain these things.

2.  On the walk to the train, we contemplated eating downtown before deciding to cook at my place.  I stopped into a bread/cheese/wine store to get a baguette.  Then, about a half block later, we decided to eat at a restaurant we passed.  This meant I had a 2 1/2 foot baguette perched next to my chair as we ate.  And that I was carrying it along with us on the street afterwards.  I realized that it would not be much good to us tomorrow and I really couldn’t be bothered to continue carrying it so I told Besos I was going to give it away.  And less than a half block later, we walked by a woman holding a sign that said, “I’m just hungry.”  So I handed her the baguette.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

I said to Besos, “I gave away the bread.”  She said, “Aw, you gave bread to the hungry lady who is really just hungry for crack.”

3.  I printed and framed about 20 photos this weekend.  Almost all of them 18 x 12.  A few much larger than that.  About 12 are for other people.  A few black and white series of my parents with my sister’s kids. Will surprise them.  I also finally framed the poster below (though mine is 2008/2009).  I managed to sweet talk the poster away (for free!) from a certain member of the opposite sex who was plastering them up throughout Venice when I was in Italy last spring.  WOOT!

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.

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…)

1.  You know how I said that marriage was basically a higher form of adoption?  I just want to make it clear that I think Woody Allen took that a bit far.

2.  So… I was invited to a Halloween party by a young woman.  Said party is an “Eyes Wide Shut” Halloween party.  The servers?  Costumed and masked models.

!!!

Said young woman is not Besos.

So I politely declined.

That doesn’t mean I won’t still dress up like this to terrorize Besos.

3.  My mother called me this afternoon while I was in the office.  She was also downtown.  I said, “Would you like to go to lunch?”  She said, “It’s too late for lunch… but I am doing volunteer work until 6.”

I know a hint when I hear one.

I said, “Oh! That’s perfect.  How about we get dinner together?”

What do you know? She said yes.

4.  Remember when I climbed on top of my kitchen counter to get picture of Little Filthy nabbing banana?

I think may try a series of pictures of him in the bathtub.  Except I’m pretty sure that the angle I want may require me to be in the bathtub at the same time.  Negotiations are ongoing.

5.  I went to a conference this morning.  It was mainly nerds.  In fact, during one of the keynote speakers, I looked around and realized that there were about 10 women I could see in a room of over 1,000 men.  And you know what?  I swear every one of those nerds was wearing cologne.  I wanted to clobber them all.

First, you don’t marinate in it.  Second, you’re at a conference.  Not a speed dating seminar.  Third, there are 10 women here.  Even if you mouth breathers had a fight to the death, those women would be long gone by the time you found your inhaler after Round 3.

Huh.  Turns out I really am a little surly on Wednesdays.