my life, and other stories.

2010-08-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

OBSESSED WITH OBSESSED

Celebrity Doppelganger Addition

INTERVENTION - 9:00 PM

Lorna was one supa fly ass jive mutha - dancing for Soul Train and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, and later landed an amazing job at A&M records. But Lorna traded everything - her career, her family, her love uh da boogie – all for her drug addiction to crack cocaine. Which would make her officially the only person in the music industry to become addicted to drugs. Ever. Whatever happens, I am hoping for the following exchange;

Lorna: Cut me some slack, Jack! My mama no raise no dummies. 'S'mofo butter layin' me to da' BONE! Jackin' me up... tight me!

Candy Finnegan: Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da' help! Jive ass dude don't got no brains anyhow!

What We Can Expect During the Intervention;
- Screaming
- Wild Arm Flailing
- At least one Don Cornelius reference
- Inexplicable déjà vu of the time I accidentally watched an episode of Being Bobby Brown

We We Should Not Expect During the Intervention;
- Little else.

Guess which one is an aging starlet that threw her career away to nurture her crack addiction, and which one is not Whitney Houston.

OBSESSED – 10PM

Everyone knows that it is an empirically proven scientific fact that an apple a day will keep the doctor away. Proven. Fact. However, what someone neglected to inform Margaret was that the apple must be ingested along other things – namely…meals. Margaret is so afraid of food contamination, that she will go two, three, or even four days without eating anything but one single apple. Upon eating aforementioned apple, she must brush her teeth, wash her face, clean the tub, and take a shower. For her, these rituals are so exhausting that she rather forgo eating altogether. For me, this sounds like only half the things I do on a daily post-defecation basis.

Expected Exposure Therapy;
Forcing Margaret through the All-You-Can-Eat Buffett at a Sizzlers – where every plate of shrimp comes with a free side of E. coli.

Show me one person who has ever gotten food contamination from eating an apple.

2010-07-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

OBSESSED WITH OBSESSED
Hyper-Hypo Addition

INTERVENTION – 9PM

Miriam. Trying to understand Miriam would be like trying to understand a David Lynch film. Simply Impossible. She is a complex character. On the façade, she’s a caring mother, a beloved daughter, a wedding chapel reverend. But buried deeper inside, she is a tormented woman, tortured by demons of a traumatic past. She finds her only solace in the loving embrace of P.C.P., which her family believes has destroyed her mind and left only a broken shell of this once vivacious beauty. Is Miriam’s story simply of a person’s fall from grace? Can it only be seen as tale of a woman’s decent into madness? No, there is so much more than that. Miriam’s story is a love story. It’s a love story between a woman and her space boots.

What we can expect;

Miriam: (Races into the dark and cold winter night. In her rushed hurry, she grabs nothing but her pink Eskimo jacket. The wind is bitter and stings her rosy cheeks. Frantically, she searches high and low. Aloud, she cries…) Where are my space boots?

(she pauses. she looks down to find her beloved imaginary space boots, right on the veranda, where she left them.)

Space boots. Space boots. Let me put on my space boots.

(after putting on her imaginary space boots, she begins to walk in them, each step falling heavy onto the ground below)

Space boots. Space boots.

Excuse me, but did someone say space boots?

OBSESSED – 10PM

We’ve all been a hypochondriac at some point in our life. You show me someone who hasn’t mistaken a mosquito bite for level-5 Chediak-Higashi Syndrome, and I will show you someone who hasn’t lived. But Patricia has taken the good old fashion pastime of using the Internet to self-diagnose oneself with rare and serious diseases to a dangerous new level. On average, she spends 4 to 5 hours a day researching illness she suspects she has. In the meantime, being deathly afraid of hospitals makes it impossible for her to support her husband as he receives treatment for his actually serious (and unimaginary) illness – multiple sclerosis. So basically, it's just like the original Odd Couple!

"Patricia, do you happen to know why my Interferon beta-1a is not beside the bed where I left it? How many times do I have to tell you - if you’re going to use my IV, then put it back where you found it!"

Watch Previews at www.aetv.com

2010-07-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

MHAAOO means MHAAOO
WHY I HATE GOING TO THE DENTIST.

I hate going to the dentist. Now, I’m fully aware that this is in no way an original sentiment. Writing about how much I hate going to the dentist is just as fresh as say, a Susan Boyle reference, or commenting on how unfunny Carlos Mencia is, or talking about how the National Socialist Party is just the worst! Yes, I understand that everyone hates going to the dentist. But I really hate going. Particularly to my dentist. Because he is a creep.

My earliest memories of going to the dentist were not overly fond ones. My friends loved going to the dentist, and would regale me with tales of state of the art equipment, bubble-gum flavored fluoride, and coloring books with cartoon teeth coexisting happily with smiling toothbrushes. My father had another vision for my brothers and I. A loyal man, he had been going to the same dentist since he was in high school, which, according to my calculations, made him 120 years old. As soon as we reached teeth-cleaning age, my dad began taking us as well – very much against my mother’s wishes. She hated this dentist. Her reasons were many, but the most outstanding was the fact that he was the father of my dad’s high school girlfriend. Her disapproval was not enough to stop my father though. He would drag us far, far away to his office, which was a museum of antiquated dental machinery and outdated techniques. But what his dentist lacked in knowledge of modern dentistry, he more than made up for with his gift for gab. That man could talk – not anything of interest mind you, like say, my dad’s ex girlfriend, or why they broke up, or if she was really in a mental hospital like my mother always told us. Instead I was forced to lay there, his un-gloved hands jammed into my mouth, listening to him talk about San Antonio, or the fluffiest cloud he had seen that week.

When I got to college, my attendance at dentist became more and more sporadic. By the time I was forcibly removed from my parents insurance, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been. I wasn’t overly worried though. I was a senior, and would soon have a job and insurance of my own. My philosophy was – a year or two without going to the dentist never killed anyone – or at least according to a brief google search I did. I was looking forward to finally being able to pick my own dentist – preferably one who washed his hands and had gone to dental school sometime in the last century. Sadly, when I got my first job, my employer’s response to “when does my dental insurance start?” was something along the lines of “when it’s free.”

Four or five years without going to the dentist never killed anyone right?

So after two years, I switched to a job that offered dental care. At this point I was convinced that I had no less than 10 cavities. Maybe more. As soon as I was eligible, I began asking for recommendations from my coworkers as to good dentists in the neighborhood. Jeanette, who sat across from me, recommended one that she had recently visited. “He’s a nice guy,” she said. “Older, but everything in his office is very state of the art.” I was worried about the “older” part – but comforted by the “state of the art” part.

So for the first time in five years, I made an appointment to go to the dentist. I entered the office tentatively. It had been so long, and my anxiety was shooting through the roof. His office was in Chelsea, just a couple blocks from where I worked. The place seemed nice enough. It was decorated in a manner in I have come to expect from any establishment in Chelsea – that is to say – super gaily. A big purple couch sat in the middle of a room painted with bold green horizontal stripes. I checked in with the receptionist and as I filled out my paper work, I used the techniques I had learned from watching A&E’s Obsessed to bring my anxiousness down. “Just imagine Dr. Shana here.” I said to myself. “Dr. Shana eases the pain.”

When I was done with my paper work, the dental assistant escorted me into a room to take my x rays. As I waited, she played a video on all the procedures I was going to have done on a TV monitor that was mounted a few inches from my head. Jeanette had been right – this was place state of the art. The x-rays took just a few minutes, and when she was done, all of them immediately appeared on the screen in front of me. Never before had I seen my x rays so up close and personal. I was staring into the inside of the inside of my mouth. And it was jacked.

The young woman excused herself and said that she was going to get Dr. Stan for me. I could hear him in the other room, drilling away at someone else’s mouth. I sat there, trying to avoid eye contact with the crooked insides of my mouth. “Braces for five years,” I muttered to myself “and that’s the best they could do?” The chair I was in was comfortable. Plush and reclined, I quickly found my eyes getting heavy.

“Christopher?” Someone said, shaking my shoulder.

Startled, I sprung up in the chair, nearly hitting my head on the monitor.

“Jesus!” I yelled, as I clasped my chest “I’m so sorry! I must have drifted off to sleep.” I looked up and saw a tall man standing before me. He was somewhere in his fifties, wearing a white lab coat over a brightly printed Hawaiian shirt. His head was covered with a thin coat of wild grey hair, all swept back. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and a smile plastered across his face.

“Hello Christopher” he said, taking my hand into his, “I’m Dr. Stan. Sorry I startled you.” His grasp was firm, although instead of shaking my hand, he was simply holding it in his, unmoving. “Although I’m glad you feel comfortable enough in my office to fall asleep.”

I looked at him funny. It was an odd thing to say, and he was still holding my hand. I laughed awkwardly, and slightly tried to pull my hand from his. It was useless. It belonged to him now.

As he stood there, he began to run his other hand over my arm softly. “I don’t want you to feel nervous. We’re going to take good care of you okay? You seem like a nice person and I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you. So just relax okay?” He held my hand for a second longer, smiled, and left the room.

I was slightly skeeved out. There was something very subtle about Dr. Stan’s creepiness. He was soft spoken, yet masculine. He didn’t blow me a kiss, or wink at me, or try to tweak my nipple. There was just something about the way he looked at me, the way he held my hand too long. It was as if i had just been hit on by Chuck Norris, and it did not feel pretty.

Because it was my first time in the office, Dr. Stan informed me that he would have to perform a series of tests on me so he could evaluate the state of my dental health. One of these tests involved me opening and closing my mouth repeatedly as he placed both of his hand on either said of my face.

“Hmm….yes…. I see” he said as he caressed my face. He sat down in his chair and put his glasses on. “The joint that connects your jaw bone with your skull is called your temporomandibular joint, or TMJ as we call it.”

I laughed to myself and thought,“Yeah, TMJ! More like Too…Much…Jaw….Ja….yeah I got nothing.”

“Your TMJ,” He continued, “Is very small, which can cause problems. You want to avoid opening your mouth for any long period time." He paused awkwardly, and then continued. "You know, if you’re like, eating a big sub or something.” He then opened his mouth up wide and held his hands up near his face as if he was holding an imaginary sandwich. I had seen this gesture before, but it had not been in reference to eating a hoagie.

After a thorough cleaning, Dr. Stan sent me on my merry way with a clean bill of health. Since then, I have been back to see him many times to get my biannual cleaning and a cavity or two filled. Every time is the same. I go in. Dr. Stan will walk into the room and stare at me for an uncomfortable amount of time. He will then look at my chart, and say “Christopher! That’s right. I’m so sorry, I’m terrible with names. I don’t ever forget a face though. Particularly not one as handsome as yours.”

In December, I had a checkup the same day as our office Christmas Party. As Dr. Stan tinkered in my mouth, and noticed my bow tie that I worn for the event. “I knew when I first met you,” he said with both hands in my mouth, “That you were a very elegant and dapper young man.” He then sighed. “Oh my, oh my.”

“I’m pretty sure he wants to rape me.” I later told my cousin Kelly.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “You think everyone wants to have sex with you!” (which is true. I do.) “I’m sure he’s just being nice. He’s probably just a touchy feely guy who compliments everyone like that.”

A couple weeks later, my coworker Jeanette came back from one of her appointments with Dr. Stan with blood shot eyes. “What the hell happened to you?” I asked.

She shook her hand and bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She said.

“Have you been crying?” I asked.

“YES!” She shouted. “Okay! I was crying. Dr. Stan yelled at me. He yelled at me until I started to cry. And then you know what he said to me? He said that I wasn’t even the first person he had made cry that day!”

The next time I went in, I began to notice another side to Dr. Stan. All of his dental assistants skirted around him anxiously. While he filled a cavity, he paused to address the elderly Indian woman that had been assisting him during the procedure. “Clara,” he said calmly. “Why are there no black glasses in this room? I need a pair of black glasses, and you know that there should always be a pair in every room in this office, right? Because I've told you that I need a black pair of glasses in every room how many times Clara? Maybe 100? Maybe more do you think? Well, I need you to go into the storage closet and find me a pair right now, as I’m sure there are more than enough. NOW CLARA!”

"Why must you turn my office into a house of LIES"

Clara nodded, and ran off to fetch his glasses like a beaten puppy. Dr. Stan sighed. “Sorry you had to witness that,” He said to me. “It’s so hard to get these girls to do anything around here.” He paused for a moment and then pointed to the monitor above my head. “Now look at the large hole I just drilled into your tooth!” I shuttered in fear, and for once, was glad I was on his good side.

The last time I went was a couple weeks ago. We did our normal routine where he stares at me forever and forgets my name. After a quick cleaning and checkup, I was told that my teeth looked excellent and that I was free to leave. As I left, he shouted after me “Goodbye my beautiful boy!”

A couple days afterwards, I noticing my teeth were hurting. It started as a dull pain in one, and then moved throughout my entire mouth. My teeth still hurt. Every single one of them. I refuse to go back to Dr. Stan though. I don’t know what he did to me, but I’m pretty sure he hurt me on purpose as a ploy to get me back into his office. I’m sure of it. The pain I can live with. Being put molested, murdered, and dismembered with tiny dentist equipment, I cannot.

2010-06-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

OBSESSED WITH OBSESSED

It's been almost a year since the season finale of Obsessed, where we watched Richie the Hoarder fail miserably on his attempts to clean up the landfill he called a home. It's been one long, painful year in which I've been anxiously anticipated the return of television's best true-life documentary about people with anxiety disorders. To be honest, there were times I didn't think it would happen. "Is Obsessed ever going to return?" I would ask myself as I flipped the light switch on and off 103 times. "Why would A&E cancel this amazing show?" I would ponder, ripping hunks of my flesh out with tweezers. "Why would they torture us with the cheap generic brand Hoarders bullshit" I would shout, wearing the bloody clothing of a deceased relative while stroking the coffee container housing a miscarried fetus I keep in my freezer. And then, just as my anxiety level, on a scale of 1 to 10, was about to reach a 10, I saw the preview for a whole new season. So tonight marks the glorious return of my favorite show on television. I only hope that it was worth the wait - or else I'm going to have to start ripping my hair out by the roots and eating it.

INTERVENTION - 9PM

Tonight, on the season premiere of Intervention, we'll have the distinct pleasure of peering into the lives of mother-son drinking duo Donna and Josh. Like many unemployed mothers that share a home with their grown children, Donna and Josh enjoy long hikes in the park, watching the sunset, chugging vodka straight from the handle, and screaming at each other about whose life is harder. Expect a white-trash Lucille and Buster Bluth with much less money yet equally hilarious.

"Oh, please. I’ve been drinking since before you were born. So if alcohol’s the reason I’m here, I got news for you, bub. It’s the only reason you’re here, too."

OBSESSED - 10PM

Meet Cindee. She likes to work out. Like, like likes. Like likes a lot lot. She managed to get off the treadmill long enough to get married and pop out a kid, but apparently has done little else with her life. Her family has grown increasingly weary of the constant drone of the stairmaster, and has insisted she seek treatment. Now, we've seen obsessive exercisers before. Remember last season's snoozefest that was Rick, who went to no less then 3 gyms a day. His exposures included....well....not working out. And while Dr.Rivers Cuomo failed miserably (in keeping with his style) - I have a funny feeling that my hero, Dr. Shana Doronn will have better results.

"If you were a stairmaster - I would climb the shit out of you right now"

2010-01-10T21:05:00.000-08:00

MY MOTHER THINKS I'M THE DEVIL

I’ve never been one to toot my own horn, but I think it needs to be said – as far as children go, my parents had it pretty damn good. I was by no means a perfect kid, but...no, you know what? I was perfect. I never got in trouble at school. I always got straight A’s. I never defecated into anyone’s mailbox. I mean, seriously, what more could you ask for?

My mother though – let’s just say she was never convinced. My mom was constantly working under the assumption that I was secretly up to no good. Seeing me go straight to my room after school every day, she asked my twin if I was a “chronic masturbator.” I was studying (he told her “yes” anyway). When I lost 15lbs, she swore up and down that I had an eating disorder. The doctors would later inform her that I had Mono (which I’m sure she assumed I got from tonguing truckers at nearby rest stops).

Now, ten years later, I thought that she and I had moved past this – me being a responsible adult with a good job, my own place, and a fine assortment of neckties. I found out this winter break that I was wrong. She still thinks I’m the devil.

It was several days after Christmas. My friend Ryan had just gotten into town, and my brother and I decided to celebrate by taking him out for a couple drinks. We went to a bar down the street from my parents’ house. Feeling pretty toasty and in no shape to drive, the three of us decided to return and spend the night there.

When we got home, my mother was still awake. This is nothing unusual. Now that she’s retired, she stays up all hours of the night – like a high schooler on permanent summer vacation. I decided, being the ever-gracious host, that I should make a snack for everyone to enjoy. I looked into the freezer and found a large box of microwavable taquitos – which I’ll add, looked delicious.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that I was fairly intoxicated at this point in the evening. I quickly glanced at the directions on the side of the box, which instructed me to place five taquitos on a plate, and microwave on high for 15 minutes. “15 minutes,” I thought to myself. “That sounds about right.”

Ten minutes later I returned to check on their progress. My mother, who was sitting in the next room, perked up. “It smells like you’re burning something in there!” As I entered the kitchen, I saw smoke billowing from the microwave. “Uh…nothing’s burning” I said as calmly as possible. I opened the microwave door to 5 charred taquitos – barely recognizable as anything that was once edible. Baffled, I looked again at the box. 15 minutes for cooking in a convection oven – 2 minutes for the microwave. My bad.

The smell was rancid. I immediately opened all the windows in the kitchen and turned on the fan. My mother popped her head in to see what was going on, only to find me standing next to the open back door, waving a large newspaper furiously. “Nothing to see here!” I shouted.

She was not pleased. To say the least.

I placed the plate of charred remains out on the deck and aired the kitchen out as much as possible before skirting off to bed. I woke up early the next morning to assess the damage. The entire house reeked like something awful. The stench had permeated all three floors of the house. My hopes that the smell would clear up by morning were dashed. Futhermore, the once white innards of the microwave had now been turned to what Behr paint swabs would label something like “adobe straw” or "toasted marshmellow." As I scrubbed the inside furiously, my mom and dad came down from their room.

My dad shook his head. “You’re an idiot” he said laughing. My mother looked at me and left the room without saying anything.

“Is she still mad at me?” I asked my dad.

“Yeah, she’s pretty upset,” dad told me. “She thinks you were high and that you have a drug problem.“

“WHAT!?” I screamed. Had I actually been high, that would have been one thing. But I never smoke weed! My opinion on marijuana has always been – why smoke up when beer is so cheap and readily accessible? Only my mother could interpret a simple culinary misunderstanding as a full-blown drug addiction. I just knew by her red eyes that she had been up the entire night, crying softly to herself as she pictured me shooting heroine in a dark alley – selling weed to rich public school kids to make enough money to support my insatiable hunger for drugs. Why had I ever suggested she start watching Intervention? And why did my brother have to buy her The Wire for her birthday?

“Maybe you should apologize to her and tell her you don’t do drugs,” my dad suggested.

“I did apologize!” I screamed. “I apologized like 20 times last night!”

“Did you apologize?” my dad asked, “or did you say ‘mistakes are why God put erasers on pencils.’”

Yes, I had said that. Sure, I didn’t exactly have the strongest case for not being high. But come on!

To make matters worse, when Matt and Ryan woke up, I informed them of the situation. “What, did she find your bong?” Ryan yelled, as my mother sat in earshot. “She didn’t flush your stash did she?” He thought it was funny. My mother did not. She refused to talk to me the rest of the morning.

I stewed all day. Why did she always have to immediately jump to the worst-case scenario? I have always tried to be the perfect son. I call every week. I sent flowers on her birthday. Not once have I ever stole any appliances from the house. Are these things a druggie would do? Sure, I had fucked up. I’ll admit it. It was pretty retarded to put a bunch of tiny burritos in the microwave for 15 minutes. Clearly, I’m an idiot. But a drug problem? Where does she come up with this stuff?

I took a long shower to calm down. As I turned the water off, my dad – the constant mediator - knocked on the door.

“What?!” I screamed. “I’m naked! Go away!”

“I just want to talk to you.”

I put a towel on and opened the door.

“I talked to your mother and explained to her that you weren’t high. She knows you don’t really have a drug problem. She just worries about you. She’s a worrier. It’s how she shows love. It’s hard, with you being so far away. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Fine.” I said begrudgingly.

“Now, can we put all this behind us and enjoy the rest of our holiday?”

“Fine.” I said – still begrudgingly.

“Can I get a hug?” he said – not waiting for a response to wrap his arms around me.

“Dad?” I said trying to pull away. “Can we do this some other time – preferably when I’m wearing pants.”

“Yeah, this is a little weird.”

So with that – it was over. My mom and I kissed and made up, and my parents bought a new microwave. And we never spoke of it again. I know that this will not be the last time my mom dreams up some crazy scenario in her head. I can’t even imagine what the next one will be, and to be honest, I’m scared to even guess. But I know my dad is right. She does it out of love. And you know what they say about a mother’s love – it’s as permanent as the stench of burned taquitos.

2010-01-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

RICE CONCOCTION

My roommate recently sent me one of those “recipe exchange” emails. If you’ve been lucky enough to avoid them, here is an example of what one might say;

“You have been invited to be a part of a recipe exchange. You only have to send one recipe, so actually it is super fast and fun!

1- person 1
2- person 2

First, send a recipe to the person whose name is listed in first position above, (even if you do not know them).

Second, copy this letter into a new email and move my name to the #1 position and put your name in the #2 position. Only your name and mine should appear in this list when you send it to 20 people you know.

If you cannot do this within 5 days, please let me know so it will be fair to those participating. You should receive 36 recipes.

Seldom does anyone drop out because we can all use new recipes.

Happy Cooking!”

Had it actually seemed “super fast and fun” I would have considered participating, instead of immediately deleting it and making a mental note to throw a pair of dirty underwear at my roommate later (Oh, and don’t think I’ve forgotten Katy. I have not forgotten). But even though I totally blew it off, I found myself thinking about it a lot. It confused me. Particularly the line “Seldom does anyone drop out because we can all use new recipes.” In my head, the record player came to a screeching halt. “People actually cook different meals for themselves….every night??” I wondered. My brain just simply could not – cannot – wrap itself around this. Cannot.

I can honestly say, without exaggeration, that every time I have cooked myself dinner in the last seven months, I have made the exact same thing. The exact. Same. Thing. My roommate and I have dubbed it “rice concoction.” So, for all you out there lining up for new dinner recipes, here is a super fast and fun one that’s super delicious. Please Enjoy!

RICE CONCOCTION
Ingredients
½ cup Instant Rice (I prefer brown)
1 onion slice
1 green pepper slice
1 bowl of frozen vegetables (I’m really into the “Santa Fe Mix” right now)
Lite Soy Sauce (for flavor)

Directions

In a pot, add 1 cup of water. Heat on high until it boils. Add ½ cup of instant rice. Cook until done (Approximately 5 minutes, or right before it starts to snap crackle and pop. If you hear it snapping, crackling, and/or popping – you have failed bitterly.)
In a microwave safe bowl, add a cup of frozen vegetables with a splash of water. Heat on high for three minutes.
Slice a piece of onion and dice. Do the same with the green pepper. One whole onion and green pepper should last you for a week’s worth of Rice Concoction.
Add oil to sauté pan. As the oil heats up, fantasize about being on Top Chef. Tom Colicchio has just walked into the kitchen to see how you’re doing. “Everything’s good Chef!” You say to him. He looks over your shoulder. “Are you going to mix those frozen vegetables in with the fresh vegetables you’re sautéing?” He asks. “Sure am Chef!” You respond. He smiles and nods approvingly. Later, Padma will describe this decisions as “Risky, but innovative.” Guest Judge Michael Chiarello will agree. Toby will not, but no one cares what he says anyway.
Once onions and green peppers are sautéed, mix with the microwaved vegetables into the pan and heat for a few more minutes. Cook until flavor is gone.
In a bowl, mix the rice and vegetables. Cover generously with soy sauce – for taste.
Serve with a nice cold Coke Zero – preferably straight from the 2-liter bottle.

Now, I have made some slight variations to the recipe, as over the last 7 months, my palate has become more refined. When my hair began falling out due to a protein deficiency, for example, I added sliced tofu to the mix. (I would really like to stress though, that I am not a vegetarian. I am simply too lazy to cook meat.)

The saddest thing about all of this is, for Christmas my parents bought me a ridiculous amount of top-of-the-line pots, pans, knives, and other cooking utensils, all of which will only be used to make my flavorless gruel. Yes, I probably could try cooking something else. Maybe mix it up a bit. Throw in a taco night, or a spaghetti night every once and a while. Maybe make a salad. But I just don’t see a point. I’m a man of habit. I like rice concoction. I enjoy eating rice concoction. I find myself drooling when I think about it as I walk home from work. I’m not a picky eater by any means. I honestly cannot think of a single food I do not like. I’ll eat anything! But all I really want is rice concoction. And I figure, if it ain’t broke….

Oh – and incase you’re wondering – I also eat the same meals everyday for breakfast and lunch as well. But those are stories for another time. You also may be asking wondering – What did Chris make before I started making Rice Concoction? It was called Noodle Concoction – and that too is another story for another time.

2010-01-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

NEW YEARS EVE

If I were forced to rank all the important holidays, I would put my birthday as my very favorite (obviously), which would be closely followed by Christmas, and then Thanksgiving – which I enjoy due to it’s close proximity to my birthday. The list would work its way through Halloween and Easter, until at the very bottom, past Lee Jackson King Day and even Valentines Day, you would find New Years Eve. I hate New Years Eve. It is the worst. The very very worst.

I, in no way think this is a novel sentiment. Nor do I believe that I am the only one to feel this way. On the contrary, I think most rational people above the age of 12 and outside of New Jersey hate New Years Eve. It’s a terrible holiday, with entirely way too much pressure put on staying up until midnight. I stay up past midnight almost every night, and very rarely does this call for celebrating by downing a bottle of shitty champagne and vomiting into a bathtub.

This year’s seemed doomed from the very start. To simplify an overly complicated and entirely uninteresting story – I will give just the facts: my friends in New York are jerks who hate me and intentionally and maliciously excluded me from their New Years Eve plans. Why? Because they are evil and enjoy making me cry. Well, I am very proud to say that as hard as they tried, I shed not a single tear. Instead I decided to spend my New Years with my friends back home in Virginia.

And things got a little out of hand.

The evening began at my parents’ home, where a group of us drank a few cocktails over a fine spread of hors d'oeuvres. Later in the night, we ventured down to a swanky restaurant conveniently located a few minutes down the block. 12 hours later, I awoke to a nasty hangover, and my friend Chase sleeping next to me. “What the fuck are you doing in my bed?” I asked. He replied by pushing me off the mattress and falling back asleep.

The events from the previous night were nothing but a haze to me. The few of us that remained gathered over a warm breakfast, and my friends began to fill in the blanks.

The first fight I almost got into involved two young looking women who approached me when I went to the bar to buy myself a drink. One grabbed me by my shirt as I walked by and screamed “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” I wiggled my way out of her drunken grip without speaking a word. One of her companions – a young lady sporting a whole lot of cleavage – came up to me to apologize on behalf of her friend. “She’s an annoying bitch isn’t she?”

“Um….yes?” I responded.

“Yeah, I don’t like her very much. I think she’s annoying.” She continued. A young man came up behind her and added “Yeah! I don’t like her either!” They both smiled brightly as they bashed their friend. I remember the two of them, young and fresh-faced, both staring at me with gleaming eyes, waiting for me to confirm my dislike for their drunken friend. I smiled politely and nodded, bought my beer and went on my way. I saw them later in the evening. The cleavage-sporting girl smiled and waved at me. I waved but said nothing.

According to my friend Chase, the young fresh-faced man who had shared with me his dislike for the drunken girl, grabbed him – his eyes no longer gleaming, and his face not as fresh. “Are you with that guy?” He asked, pointing an angry finger in my direction. He was joined by another man, who seemed equally as perturbed. “You better tell him to stay away from our women. I hope he knows he’s hitting on two married ladies!”

“Yeah!” added the friend. “Tell your little faggot friend his gay little bowtie that he needs to back the fuck off of our wives!”

“I’m confused,” Chase responded. “Do you think he’s gay, or do you think he’s hitting on your wives?”

Later in the evening, I received a text message from someone I had been on three dates with. It said “really???” I checked back to see what it was in response to. I had sent a text message 20 minutes before saying “I love you.”

The next morning, when looking for my phone, I noticed that the first person I had wished a happy New Year too was not my mother or father, my brothers, or any of my close friends. It went to a coworker who had quit and moved to CA. I wrote to her simply “I miss you and your boyfriend more than you could ever know.” I have no idea why.

The next fight I almost got into came a little later in the evening. At this point, alcohol had eroded away any rationale or logic left. I was simply a puppet, and drunkenness my puppeteer. As I walked through a crowd, I reached over and grabbed a stranger’s hat off his head. I didn’t take the hat with me. I just took it off his head and put it right back on, and continued walking. I have no idea why. I just did. And as soon as I returned his cap, I saw his large frame jump angrily off his stool. I decided that my best approach would be to continue walking – only faster.

I can’t really tell you what happened next - as I do not have eyes on the back of my head. I can tell you what I heard though. There was a lot of commotion – I believe a woman screamed. A stool was knocked over. A chorus of people yelled “WOAH WOAH WOAH!” I heard my friend Ian jump in between the charging drunk man and myself and yell “Back off dude!” Next, I heard the bartender jump over the bar and tackle the guy to the floor. By this point I was out the door, and still moving.

The man was kicked out. I was allowed to stay, but only after the bartended lectured me – telling me “never to pull that shit again.” I wasn’t sure what I had done, or why, but I nodded my head quietly.

Last call was shortly thereafter. I closed my tab, and then went outside to join my friends. We were all going to head down the street and continue the party at my parents’ house, but they were nowhere to be seen. I was less than a minute behind them, but they all had vanished. Just like magic. Poof - gone. I couldn’t help by feel like Kevin McAllister as I walked home all by myself. Left behind – forgotten – unloved and alone. My brother called me in a panic “Where the fuck are you?” he screamed. “We’re coming to get you!” But I just hung up on him. It was too late. The dye had been cast. The damage had been done. They had forgotten me. Sure, it had only taken me 4.5 minutes to walk home. But at the moment, it was about the principle. I walked in the door, and went straight to bed. I was going to punish them with sleep.

The party continued without me until God-only-knows-when. Our friends – too drunk to drive home – fell asleep across the floors of my parents living room and basement – never mind the fact that there were four empty bedrooms upstairs. Around 7AM, Chase, his mouth full of carpet, decided to get up off the floor and crawl into my bed. He woke me up as he settled himself atop the sheets, and I thought to myself “I wonder if he knows I’m not wearing any underwear.”

So over breakfast we all relived the previous evening’s shenanigans. We laughed until tears welled up in our eyes – embarrassed about what we had done – shocked at what we had forgotten. I definitely wasn’t the only one to make a giant ass of myself – but I’ll let my friends fill you in on their misadventures themselves. I’m still a firm believer that New Years is the worst holiday ever – but this one was a special exception. This New Years – despite everything listed above – was.

Awesome.

2009-02-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

BANANA CAKE

My roommate Katy and her boyfriend have been contributing to a food blog called "Mad Tasty" (www.madtasty.blogspot.com), and asked me if I'd like to write an article about my recent misadventures trying to bake a banana cake. I submitted the first article below - and shockingly, it did not received the response I was looking for. My roommate suggested that jokes about domestic violence and implications that Paula Dean may or may not perform oral pleasure on her sons perhaps might be considered "offensive" by her readers - many of whom, she explained, are older women. In response, I wrote the second of the two posts - this time adapting a different persona that her followers could relate to - one I like to call "Aunt Betty". I leave it in your hands, readers, to tell me which one you like better...

Banana Cake - Draft 1
by Christopher J Miles

The precarious vestiges of my manhood were destroyed this weekend when I reacquainted myself with the art of baking banana cake. I was hesitant at first, as few would disagree that real men don’t bake. However, after hand sewing a teddy bear for my newborn nephew, I have come to terms with the fact that I am indeed, a woman.

My first attempt at banana cake came a few weeks back while watching the Grammys. I don’t know what sparked the craving, but something about picturing Rihanna getting bitched slapped made me think “banana cake.” Instead of using any number of the cookbooks my roommate has conveniently stored on our bookshelf, I decided it would be best to search the internet for a recipe – because who wants the ease of looking in a book when you can instead scribble everything on the back of a used envelope? On the Food Network site, I found a recipe that was endorsed by my favorite fat Southerner (who shall remain nameless), and I thought to myself “would someone who loves butter this much really steer me wrong here?” Truth be told – it sucked. Now, maybe it was due to the fact that I can’t cook worth shit. Maybe it was because I was moderately intoxicated while I tried to bake. Or maybe Paula was just too busy fluffing her two sons to really notice that this recipe was rancid. Whatever the reason – the cake was bad. It was dense and chewy. Basically – it was banana bread with cream cheese frosting. My roommate humored me by eating a couple pieces, but we ended up throwing most of it away.

Feeling somewhat defeated, I thought I would once again try to conquer banana cake. My roommate suggested using a recipe in her cookbook entitled “The Weekend Baker” by Abigail Johnson-Dodge. Now usually I tend to steer away from anything to do with women sporting hyphenated names, but the recipe seemed pretty decent. Katy promised me that this would make something somewhat more cake like, so I gave it a shot.

Now Johnson-Dodge stressed the importance of using – as she states “very very very ripe bananas.” Apparently this is common knowledge, but I sincerely had no clue. The bananas I used for the banana cake 1 were only “very ripe.” Apparently the extra very’s can make all the difference.

I’m a big fan of cream cheese frosting, but I decided to go out on a limb and try her “tangy vanilla frosting.” Instead of using cream cheese, the recipe called for sour cream (sour cream in frosting?!? Now I’ve seen EVERYTHING!). I have to say – very tasty. However, since I made the cake a day in advance, I had to stick the stuff in the fridge. By the time I was ready to frost, it was hard as a rock. I let it sit out for a few, and it became goo. So I put it back in the fridge, and it was back to being a rock again. Back and forth. Rock to Goo. Goo to rock. I thought to myself “if the Three Stooges had been homosexuals, this is the kind of bit they would have done.” I finally gave up and made my roommate frost the cake – and despite the challenges, she did a mighty lovely job.

To gussy it up a bit, I thinly sliced an extra banana I had laying around, and put the pieces around the edge of the top of the cake. It’s fancy. It was a work of art, but I should warn that unless you planning downing this cake fast, this might not be the best idea for a garnish. I’m looking at the leftovers right now, and all I can see are dark brown little blobs covering the top – not too unlike Rihanna’s battered face (see how I bring it back full circle?)

So for all you banana lovers, I would definitely recommend defiling this healthy fruit with lots of sugar and butter. Just stay away from recipes that call for thick batter. Thick batter, much like thick women, are just simply no good.

The Banana Cake

Banana Cake - Draft 2
by Aunt Betty

I have to say, my friends and family just simply LOVE bananas! In fact, you could even say that they go BANANAS for them!! Now, I’ve always been somewhat of a banana purist myself. The thought of defiling a beautiful banana with any unnecessary additions seems like a sin against deliciousness. A banana split? I’ll take mine minus the split, thank you very much. So, as you can imagine, I was somewhat skeptical when one of my dearest girlfriends Martha told me I had to try banana cake. If it had been anyone other than her, I would have thanked them kindly, and then gone home and permanently removed them from my Christmas card list for ever suggesting such a culinary abortion. But this was Martha, and she has always had exquisite taste (she was the one, after all, that turned me onto Mary Higgins Clark) – so I thought I might as well give it a shot.

My first attempt at banana cake was a disaster, and I should have expected as much. It was doomed from the start, as I mistakenly decided to employ the use of Satan’s instrument – the internet. Now Pastor Mike has repeatedly reassured me that the internet is not only for the homosexuals and Presbyterians, so I have made it one of my New Years resolutions to start using it more (along with losing a couple pounds in my mid section and trying to stop giggling at church). I searched online for a recipe that looked appetizing, and found a seemingly good one on the Food Network website. The recipe was one of Paula Deans, and though I firmly believe that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all – I have to say that this recipe was just the worst! I don’t know why I was surprised. That woman’s love of mayonnaise errs on the side of inappropriate. The cake was hard and chewy, and simply not bananany enough. After one bite, I threw the whole cake in the trash can. You should have seen the looks on my children’s faces. They really shouldn’t have been surprised though - I demand perfection from them as I do myself. Why, I would have done the same thing if they brought home a report card that was any less than straight A+’s – right in the trashcan it would go.

I immediately rang Martha, and in the nicest tone possible suggested that she was going straight to hell for wasting my time with such a terrible suggestion. Yearning to redeem herself, she said she would drop off the recipe she used post haste. One for forgiveness, I decided to give both Martha, and banana cake a second chance. The next morning, she dropped off a cookbook called “The Weekend Baker,” by Abigail Johnson Dodge. Although I found the pictures in the book to be garish and a bit flashy for my liking, Johnson Dodge’s anecdotes about her husband and children warmed me up. I found the book marked recipe and for banana cake, and banana cake – take two – was under way!!

The recipe was – well – a PIECE OF CAKE to follow!! And a lot of fun too! One fun suggestion Johnson Dodge recommends is using sour cream in her vanilla frosting instead of cream cheese to give it a tangy zing. And tangy it was! Well played Abigail! One little addition I would like to recommend is to thinly slicing a banana after frosting the cake, and use the slices to decorate the top. I put rings of banana in concentric circles on top, and it was just simply adorable. It’s the little things like this that make my husband love me.

In the end, I was glad I was strong-armed into making a banana cake. It was a huge hit – fluffy and moist and packed full of flavor. Martha sure may be on to something, and I look forward to defiling more healthy snacks by covering them with sugar and butter. Chocolate covered strawberries, here I come!!

2008-09-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

GRANDMA & GRANDPA BURTON

If you were to ask my Grandma Burton which one of her grandchildren she loved the most, I would imagine she would respond in the following manner;

“I love all you little shits the same.” Then, after taking a sip of her gin and tonic, she’d add, “But it’s TJ. Definitely TJ.”

My blind grandfather, in his baritone voice of reason, would pipe in “Your grandmother loves all of you the same.”

My grandmother would then glance over to us and silently, but very articulately mouth the syllables “T-J.”

The fact of the matter is we’ve never had to ask my grandmother who her favorite is. She’s always made it painfully clear that she loves my older brother TJ the most. TJ was the first born of her grandchildren, giving him a strong advantage over the rest of us, and his love of marching band cinched the deal. For reasons unknown, the woman has always been obsessed with marching band. All three of her children participated when they were in high school (which might have some reason to do with it), and when TJ showed interest, she was over the moon. Although increasingly immobile, my grandma – the same one who’s catch phrase is commonly known to be “Oh! My sciatica!” - would giddily drag herself and my grandfather up a rickety set of bleachers to watch my brother play the trombone during half time at his high school’s football games.

TJ turned out to be quite the trombone player, and grandma’s quickly dubbed him “Wonder Boy,” which she would shout any time he entered a room. During her own mother’s funeral, she pushed through all of her grandchildren like Moses parting the sea, grabbed TJ and screamed with utter delight “Hey Everyone! This is one I’ve been telling you about. This is Wonder Boy!” The rest of us were left in the dust completely un-miffed. We all looked at each other and thought the same thing; “Where’s the dead body?”

It was made clear to the rest of us grandchildren that if we were to compete for my grandmother’s affection, we better learn an instrument. We all dabbled here and there, but collectively agreed once we discovered my grandparents weren’t exactly Rockefellers, that the potential inheritance did not equal the shame of performing in the marching band. So instead, we all waited patiently for my brother to give up band, which would surely lead to his fall from grace. But much to our chagrin, TJ continued playing throughout college, and then after graduating became a band teacher – ensuring that none of us could ever de-thrown him.

Asking one of us if we were pissed that my grandma loved TJ the most would be like asking an Eskimo if he was sick of snow. We had grown up with it and accepted it as a way of life. My grandma would move heaven and earth to see any and all TJ related festivity – band concerts, plays, graduations, everything. If they had sold tickets to my brother losing his virginity, my grandma would have been there front row and center clapping her hands slowly and screaming “Wonderboy! Wonderboy!” She never really attended many of my functions, but her absence didn’t exactly bother me. During one of her visits, my parents made me show her one of my paintings from a recent art exhibit. She took one look at it, laughed and shouted “well that’s just about the ugliest little boy I’ve ever seen!” When my mother explained to her that it was suppose to be a girl, she laughed until I sulked out of the room.

Recently my grandparents moved from their large home in Pennsylvania, and relocated to Raleigh to be closer to my Aunt Lynn. The distance, in combination with recent health problems, made it somewhat surprising to me when I heard that the two of them were driving up to see TJ perform as the lead in his local community theater’s performance of Oklahoma. Although, after two seconds of thought, it dawned on me that it made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t they drive 4 and half hours to see TJ in a community theater version of a musical they hated? Why wouldn’t they? What did surprise me though, was the phone call I received from my twin that evening. It was a Friday night, and I was getting ready to meet up with my friends for drinks when I got a call from Matt.

“Hey Brother,” he said in his standard casual greeting. “Just thought I would let you know that grandma and grandpa got into a car accident.”

“WHAT!?” I screamed. “OH MY GOD! Are they…wait…which ones? Miles or Burton?”

“The Burtons.” Matt responded.

“Oh…” I said. There was a brief pause. “Well, uh…yikes…Are they okay?”

“Well Grandma had a heart attack and grandpa broke his neck, but other than that they’re just fine.”

“Oh my God! Do I need to come down?”

“No, mom said that she thinks they’re going to be okay,” Matt reassured me. “I’m sure they’ll call you if they die or something.”

In the background I could hear his car door shut behind him. “Where are you? Are you going to see them?”

“No, I’m going to get drunk.”

“Well, do you think I would be a bad person if I went out and got drunk too?”

“No,” Matt said. “They would want it that way.”

The next morning my mother called to give me more details. My grandparents had only been a few minutes from my parents’ house when they got into the accident. Despite the fact that they have been there hundreds of times before, they decided to use the navigational system they had received for Christmas. It had taken them on a route they had never been on before, but they put their faith in it and followed it blindly. When it told them to take a long, windy gravel road - they did. And when it told them to proceed straight through an intersection – straight they went, straight through a red light. Another car slammed on their breaks to avoid hitting them, but knocked into the back of their car, flipping it over into a ditch on the side of the road. With the car on its side and a broken windshield, my elderly grandparents dangled precariously in their seats, above four inches of broken glass. When the paramedics arrived, they removed the roof to fish them out. When my mother told me this, I told her “At least they finally got that convertible they always wanted” – to which my mother informed me that my father, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my Uncle Ed, and one of the neighbor boys had all made the same joke. “And I didn’t think it was funny any of those times either.”

My grandparents were rushed to a nearby hospital, luckily only minutes away. My grandma, who had been driving, was shaken, but not seriously injured. The doctors did, however, find an enzyme in her heart that suggested she may have had, or was about to have a heart attack. They kept her overnight, and in the morning decided she was fine, and let her go home with my parents.

My grandpa on the other was not in such good shape. When my parents arrived at the hospital, they found him covered in glass and blood, strapped to a gurney, and yelling at the nurse who wanted to cut off his “good shirt.” My grandfather, usually a quiet and stoic man, was demanding painkillers to numb the pain. They refused to give him anything until they had determined the extent of his injuries, so there he laid, strapped to a hard board and unable to move, with bits of broken glass underneath him, all in his good play-seeing shirt. X-rays showed a small crack in his neck that would require surgery to repair. It wasn’t a Christopher Reeves break, but serious none the less. After his surgery, he remained in the hospital for a couple of days, and then was transferred to a recovery facility close to my parent’s house.

My mother insisted that neither I, nor my cousin Kelly needed to come down from New York to visit our grandparents. The rest of our family was there though. Kelly’s mom and dad, my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Ed, had put their annual beach trip on hold and raced up from North Carolina to be with them. Even my reclusive Uncle Chuck and his wife Lisa came down from Pennsylvania with their children to make a cameo appearance. Riddled with guilt, Kelly called me crying late one evening.

“I feel so bad!” She told me. I could hear her sniffling on the other end of the phone. “Our entire family is there, and we’re so far away.” Her tears moved me, so I agreed to go down with her the following weekend. I later found out that they were not tears but a minor sinus infection, and that Kelly was only planning to swing by briefly while she was in the area to see her boyfriend. I felt duped.

So I traveled down to Virginia Friday evening after work. The house was packed. My parents, my Uncle Lynn and Aunt Ed, my grandmother, Kelly and her boyfriend Bryan, and my twin brother were all there. It was too late to visit my grandpa, but I was just in time for my Aunt Lynn’s birthday dinner. I felt bad for my Aunt Lynn. It was her birthday, and she was supposed to be vacationing with her friends at the beach. Instead she was here with us, in suburban Virginia, nursing her battered parents. Not exactly how I would choose to spend my birthday, but she remained cheerful throughout - even at dinner, when in front of her daughter’s new boyfriend we each went around the table and recited our favorite Lynn story – all but one involving her frequent flatulence.

That night I reflected on my relationship with my grandfather. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the man. As infants, his mere presence inexplicably caused my twin brother and I to scream uncontrollably – which forced him to ride in a separate cars and eat alone in the kitchen whenever we were around. As children, we stopped screaming, but he still remained a mystery. He’s a quiet and gentle man, never speaking unless spoken to. He’s lost a lot of weight these last couple of years, but even still, he remains large – tall, broad, and brooding. Having advanced stages of Retinitis pigmentosa, he’s almost completely blind, and therefore doesn’t move unless absolutely necessary. He will get up to play a game of horseshoes though, where I’ve ever seen him lose a game. How? No one really knows, but it has led many of us to question his poor eyesight – or it did, until he took a shit in the bathroom sink.

When I was in middle school, my brown-nosing cousin John wrote a paper for one of his classes about my grandpa, entitled “My Grandpa - the Hero.” We made fun of him for his clear attempt to raise his rank in the will, but when I read it I learned a lot about my grandfather that I didn’t know. As a young man, he served in the US Army, stationed in England during WWII. There, he worked in the hospital, where he witnessed – technically speaking – some pretty gnarly shit. My grandpa was an extremely handsome man, and when we returned home from the war, he met my grandmother – a looker herself, and the two of them married, settled down, and shockingly punched out three strange looking babies.

The next morning, a group of us went to see my grandfather in the recovery facility he had been transferred to. As we pulled into the parking lot, my grandmother pulled out a handicap sticker she had stashed away in her purse. It was one of the few items my Aunt Lisa had retrieved from their crushed vehicle. Lisa, being one of the thinnest of the family, had volunteered to crawl into the wreckage to recover some stuff that was left behind. She came back with an atlas, seven umbrellas, and most importantly, two handicap stickers the state of North Carolina had given my grandmother to aid her while she assisted transporting my grandfather. Grandma forcefully handed it to my father, and insisted that he park directly in front of the facility’s doors. He refused to take it however, as there were quite a few empty spaces just feet away. “Being lazy is not a handicap” he told my grandmother as he handed her back the sticker.

“Oh yes it is!” she shouted after him as she slowly hoisted herself out of the car.

As we got out of the car, my mother informed us that recovery facility they transferred my grandpa too was technically a hospice.

“A Hospice?” I shouted. “Is grandpa dying?”

“No!” my mother sighed. “Hospices are more than where people go to die. They specialize in treating the elderly.”

Seconds later, we entered the foyer - filled to the brim with funeral bouquets. Every inch of table space, countertop, and windowsill was occupied with large flower arrangements, so many in fact, that many had to be stacked across the floor. Some of them still had banners on them, printed with messages like “our hearts are with you,” and “our deepest condolences.”

“Are you sure grandpa isn’t dying?” I asked my mother.

My mother stopped to examine one lily arrangement. “People just drop off the left over flower arrangements here after funerals.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Matt muttered under his breath. “We are in God’s Waiting Room.”

The group of us maneuvered through the field of death flowers like Dorothy walking through the poppy field. As we approached the double doors that led into the hospice, my mother stopped and turned around to address us all.

“Take a deep breath now while you can because it smells like urine in there.” As she said this, she noticed a dryer sheet clinging onto the freshly cleaned pair of pants that she had changed into earlier that afternoon. “Oh!” She said with a pleased look on her face. “Perfect!” She took the dryer sheet into her hand and spread it across her nose, paused and took a deep breath in, and then pushed the doors open.

Through the doors, the bright and cheerful foyer turned into a dark, dingy – yet sterile environment. There was no natural light - just the yellow hue coming from the florescent lights above. Everything was yellow, the walls, the ceiling, the people, even the air seemed to be yellow. The aroma of urine and cleaning fluid punched me in the face as soon as we entered. It was potent, just like my mother had warned. I saw my father come up behind her and try to steal her dryer sheet she had covering the bottom half of her face. “Get your own!” she shouted.

The hall was lined with the elderly people in their wheelchairs. They each sat facing the door, watching us with their sad dull eyes as we walked by. It was unsettling. These people were old. Very old. Unnaturally old. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps humans weren’t made to live this long. Their bodies were tiny and frail, with liver spots and wrinkles covering every inch of their gray flesh. I tried my best not to make eye contact as I walked by. It was easy to tell that each and every one of these people thought that we were the family they had forgotten. They would perk up in their wheelchairs, hoping that dementia had caused them to forget that they had full grown daughter and a grandson with a shaved head.

As we walked down the halls, we heard a low moaning sound coming from the room ahead. As we got closer, the moaning turned into shouting. It was a man, yelling “Jesus Christ! God Help me!” he repeated himself over and over again. “Jesus Christ! God Help me!” As we walked by the room, Matt and I both looked in. An elderly man lay on his side, his back to the door, completely nude. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted again.

Matt looked at me and shook his head. “Lord, please take me when I’m young.”

“That’s crazy! I was just thinking the same thing.” I beamed. I still, to this day, get excited when Matt and I share certain “twin” moments. It genuinely surprises me that as different as we are, he and I still, on occasion, share the same thoughts.

My mom turned around to squash our moment. “Oh please,” she whispered. “Like we all weren’t thinking the same thing!”

Finally, at the end of the hall we found our grandfather’s room. As we walked in, I heard a vaguely familiar sound. Something from my early childhood – loud and funky. Grandpa was lying in his hospital bed, a brace tightly wrapped around his neck and a remote in his hand. He was watching a rerun of Soul Train with the volume on as high as it would go.

I gave him a big hug and a gentle pat on the head. “Grandpa!” I shouted.

“Chris?” he asked. “Is that you? You didn’t have to come down to see me.”

”Grandpa? Are you watching Soul Train?” A busty black girl was on the TV gyrating her bare mid section.

“Soul train?” He said confused. “I thought this was the Redskins game.”

Grandma, who was trailing a good five minutes behind us, came into the room. She walked straight up grandfather and kissed him on the mouth. I didn’t bother averting my eyes, assuming it would be a quick peck. I was wrong though, and I accidentally observed the two of them full-on, open mouth make out. It lasted for what seemed like minutes. It was awful and disturbing. I had never seen two old people French before – especially not these two old people. Neither one of them was much for physical contact. In fact, the most interaction I had seen between the two of them was limited to when my grandma led my grandpa by the hand to the bathroom.

One of my brothers groaned. “Grandma, stop! I’m trying to watch Soul Train.”

My grandma sat down in a chair beside grandpa’s bed. “Well if you thought that was bad, you should have heard your grandfather on the phone with me at the hospital. It was during the first night that we were there. They had put your grandfather in one room and me in another. I called down to him and told him I loved him and I was I was there to hold his hand. And do you remember what you said Bob?” She asked my grandpa, who was now flipping through the channels to see if could find the actual Redskins game.

“Yup.” He said.

“He said...” My grandmother continued. “He said ‘I wish you were holding more than my hand!’”

“EWWWWWWW!” We all screamed with genuine horror.

My mom jumped in to explain. “He had just come out of surgery and was hopped up on morphine. He didn’t know what he was saying.”

“I knew what I was saying!” my grandpa snapped.

We hung out with my grandfather for an hour or so. The doctors had put him on serious painkillers that made him much chattier than usual. He talked about the Olympics, the comfort of elastic waistbands, and the “little foreign girl” that was helping him with his physical therapy. The entire time, my grandmother sat beside him, stroking his hand and looking at him longingly. It was strange watching my grandparents interact in this way – acting like they liked one another. Before this, if asked to describe their feelings towards one another, I would have said “mildly partial.” I had always assumed they had stayed together for so long for the very same reasons that that morbidly obese man stayed on the same couch for decades – because after years of immobility, his skin grew into the couch cushions. That man and the couch became one – not because they loved one another, but because it was too hard for that man to get off the sofa and find somewhere else to sit. But watching them together, kissing, holding hands, I realized that I had completely misjudged them. They clearly still loved each other – had always loved each other, and even after 50 some years together, probably always will love each other. It was touching. Nauseating, but touching.

After an hour or so, my grandmother began to complain about her blood sugar being low, so we all said good bye to my grandfather. I gave him a big hug and told him to feel better, and he told me to make him proud. It sadden me to think that at this stage in my life, that most likely won’t happen, but I swallowed my feelings of failure, and said goodbye.

I had learned a lot about my grandparents in this quick trip home. I’ve always been extremely lucky to be so close to them growing up. They’ve always been there – readily accessible for me, but even still I feel like I hardly know them. I mean, sure I know them, but I’ve never really seen them as real people, with actual feelings and emotions. To me they had always been just grandma and grandpa, handers out of lottery tickets and wearers of funny Christmas socks. But witnessing the two of them together, I got to see that they are genuine. They’re real people. Old people. Very old. But people none-the-less.

I looked at my grandma as we drove away. She and I were both piled up in the back seat of my parents SUV, and she was rummaging through her purse to find a granola bar she always kept with her for when her blood sugar gets low. She and my grandfather are both diabetic, so there’s always an emergency stash of food that follows them. I could see sadness in her eyes as she dug through her bag – realizing that she would have to spend another night alone, away from my grandfather. I had never seen her like this, so raw and tender, so sweet and full of love.

I reached over and grabbed her purse from her. She looked at me with confusion. “Give grandma back her bag.” she told me. “I need that granola bar.”

“Tell me you love me,” I demanded.

She stopped. Looked at me suspiciously and leaned in. “What did you say?

“I said...Tell me that you love me!”

She let out one of her signature HA!’s and went to swipe the bag from out of my lap. I jerked it back to keep it out of her reach.

“Tell me that you love me or I’m eating this granola bar old woman!” I reached in and grabbed the bar from within her bag and began to unwrap it.

“Fine!” she said reluctantly. “I love you!”

I began to hand the bag back to her, but as she reached for it, I pulled it back again.

“More than TJ?” I asked.

“What?!” She shouted.

“Do you love me more than TJ?”

“Fine! Yes! More than TJ!” She yelled as she grabbed the purse from my hands.

“I love you too Grandma.”

“You’re really something else, you know that.” She said as she took a bite of the granola bar. “Something else alright.”

2008-08-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

PAUL

I had only been working at Magnet for a couple weeks when I first spoke with Paul. I had answered the phone with our standard greeting - “Hello Magnet” (it wasn’t really a complete sentence, but it just rolled off the tongue – so much so that I still to this day find myself saying it – saying it when answering my cell phone, saying it when answering the phone at my new job, or saying it while greeting friends on the street.)

To which Paul responded - “Well hello there. And who might you be?”

I was thrown by this less than standard response. I would have felt much more comfortable if had said something like “Get me Nicole, and don’t leave me on hold for 10 minutes this time!” But his interest in who I was was jarring. His voice was deep and sultry. He hadn’t introduced himself, but I could tell that he was someone who probably would be offended if I didn’t know who they were. Asking him to identify himself was out of the question, so I quickly figured out a way to force him to say his name.

“Hi, my name is Chris and this is my first…” I started to say, but he ruined my plan when he interrupted to say;

“Why haven’t you sent me pictures of yourself yet?”

I was stunned. Had I heard him right? I paused, and then sputtered out, “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“Why haven’t you sent me pictures of yourself yet? I want to see pictures of what you look like.” He had the vocal presence of a phone sex operator, and every time he spoke, his voice got deeper and sultrier. And while it was somewhat flattering that some sexied-voice stranger was soliciting me for photos of myself, I was getting offended and annoyed at the phone game we were playing.

In a slightly sharper tone, I asked “Excuse me?”

Paul, I’m sure, could sense my frustration, and began to laugh. “Get me Nicole if you don’t mind.” He said. I put him at hold and looked up. Everyone in the office had heard me get flustered and was starring at me to see what was going on.

“Who is that?” my boss asked.

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “Some guy. I think he wants me to send him naked photos of myself.”

“That would be Paul,” Nicole said smiling as she picked up the phone. The other girl in the office put her hand over the side of her mouth and whispered “sounds like he likes you!”

Paul was one of the most talented and well established makeup artists on our roster. He lived in LA and worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest actresses - Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Garner, Lindsay Lohan, Salma Hayek – countless leading ladies had had his hands on their face. Being as he was mostly handled out of our LA office, it was unusual for us in New York to hear from him. I still to this day have no idea what he called about, but for whatever reason, when he was done speaking with my boss he asked her to put me back on the line.

“He wants to talk to you again,” she laughed. “Don’t worry. He’s great.”

I tentatively picked up the phone and stuttered “Hello…?”

“I hope I didn’t upset you,” Paul said gently, “I thought you were someone else.” Being the only boy to have worked in the office for over two years, I couldn’t imagine who he was mistaking me for, but his voice was so soft and genuine it was hard to imagine him being a creep. “But…” he continued, “if you still want to send me pictures, I wouldn’t complain.”

After that conversation, Paul began calling more frequently. I always assumed he was just a chatty guy who would talk to anyone who answered the phone, but it became clear when he started asking to be transferred to my line that he was calling specifically to talk to me. It seemed a little weird at first, considering that I was just a lowly administrative assistant with little-to-no clout at the company. But I enjoyed the attention, as few others in the company could even remember my name.

The two of us quickly developed a rapport with one another. Paul would ask me how big my penis was, and I would tell him he was a pervert. He would laugh and then ask again, but add ‘but seriously” at the end. It was a thing we had. But Paul was interested in more than just my penis size. He asked me about my family and about where I grew up. We talked about where I went to school and who I was dating. After a few conversations, he knew more about me than most of my friends. It was easy to talk to Paul, and when he wasn’t verbally molesting me, he was very engaging.

After the twentieth time I refused to send him pictures of myself, we compromised by agreeing to be friends on myspace. Paul had recently joined and was addicted, so much so that he decided that he needed two accounts (an official one and an unofficial one). He forced me to be friends with both of them. When he noticed that I hadn’t put either the official or the unofficial Paul in my top friends list, he called me and demanded that he instantly be upgraded. A few months later, when I swapped him out for an old college roommate, he called me within the hour, angry and wondering what he had done to deserve such shabby treatment. When I pointed out that he had never put me in his top ten, he responded “well, I don’t see how that has to do with anything.”

When my birthday came around, I decided not to tell any of my coworkers. I figured it would have only ended in one of two ways – either they would have made a huge fuss, or they wouldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t decide which would be embarrassing, so I tried to avoid the whole situation by keeping it to myself. But, much to my surprise, when I arrived to work, I was greeted by a huge bouquet of flowers and a giant birthday cake. Paul had gotten my birthday from my myspace page, and a few days before had informed everyone in the company so that they could adequately prepare. I had a flood of emails that day, many from people I had never even met, all saying the same thing - “Paul told me that it was your birthday and that I should say hi.”

After a year of conversing on the phone, Paul and I finally got to meet face to face. He was in town working with Mariah Carey, and he insisted that Nicole and I meet him for lunch. It’s always weird meeting someone that you’ve talked to forever but never met in person. I sat quietly during lunch as Nicole and he spoke very professionally about his career, but as soon as Nicole excused herself to go to the bathroom; he leaned in and whispered “Are you wearing any underwear?”

When I got my promotion, Paul was the very first to call to congratulate me. “Well well well,” he said. “I heard someone is a big agent now. You know, I’m the one who told everyone that you needed to be promoted. I told them that you were going to be the best thing that ever happened to this company.”

“That’s so sweat Paul…” I began to say, genuinely touched. He quickly interrupted though.

“So you better start getting me work out there in New York. You owe me big!”

After working at my job for over two years, I decided it was time for a change. When I quit, it all happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to anyone. Just a couple weeks ago I thought about Paul though. I saw his myspace page, and I thought to myself “I should drop him a line and say hi.” I didn’t though. I thought it might be weird after I quit. I was afraid he might be angry with me and give me shit, so I just let it go and went about my day.

Just this week, one of my old coworkers called me to tell me that Paul had past away. No one really knows exactly how it happened – just like how no one really knew how old he was. He definitely was well beyond the 39 years he claimed to have been, but he was still a relatively young guy. Too young to have just gone like that. I was crushed. I sat their at my desk at my new job, fighting back tears while surrounded by people who would read about his death the next morning in the paper, but who would never understand what an awesome guy he was. I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye, tell him how much our friendship meant to me, how much I appreciated all the things he did for me, and finally tell him how big my cock is.

I love you Paul. I’m really going to miss you.

2008-08-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

I LOVE THE HOMELESS

So the other day I was walking home from work. I had just gotten off the train and was walking down Greenpoint Avenue towards my apartment, when to my surprise I saw a hobo walking towards me. Now, anywhere else in New York I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but this was in Queens and we don’t see much of their type in our neck of the woods. It’s simply not prime hobo real-estate – accounting to the fact that most of us are just a small step and one high electric bill away from living on the streets ourselves.

So it was only he and I on the sidewalk, walking towards each other just a few yards apart. We were only a matter of seconds away from crossing each other’s paths, and I knew that he was going to bother me. If I had a sixth sense, it would be sensing when hobos were about to annoy me. It’s almost as if I can smell it coming – nay - I can smell it coming.

I had just had a horrible day at work, and believe-you-me, I was in no mood to deal with the homeless. I immediately started planning my strategy on how to avoid him. I usually have my iPod during my walk home – two headsets in the ear being the perfect “I can’t hear you” defense. Much to my chagrin, however, I had left my iPod at work. I had kicked myself on the subway ride home for it, but now I was kicking myself even harder.

I thought about pulling out my cell phone and pretending like someone had just called me, but it was in my gym bag and I doubted I could fish it out in time. I contemplated crossing the street, but the hobo was quickly descending upon me, and it would me darting in front of on coming traffics. I hate hobos, but I hate being hit a by a car even more.

I reluctantly decided that my best approach would be to just ignore him – just keep walking without making eye contact. It’s the stone cold defense, and I know it’s horrible to treat another human in need as if they were invisible, but it was my only option. I mean I had really had the worst day. To start things off, I had spilled my vegetable shake on my new shirt, and as if that wasn’t enough, the flatbread piada I ordered for lunch had come without the extra Tuscan sauce I had requested. Being inconvenienced by the homeless was last on my list of things I wanted to do.

As the homeless man approached, he (as I had predicted) started accosting me.

“Hey…” he said.

I kept my head down, avoiding making eye contact, and picked up my pace.

“Hey…” He said again, getting progressively louder.

“Hey!” He shouted. Now we were side by side. I walked faster, relieved that it would soon be over. I quickly passed him and was well on my way down the block. In the corner of my eye I could see that he had stopped and was looking back at me.

“Hey.” He said softly under his breath. “I like your haircut.”

2008-08-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

KEYWORD ACTIVITY

I recently started using a program that keeps track of the search engines people use to find my blog, and the key words they type in to find it. Here is the list of the most popular key words people have used within the last 30 days. I think it's pretty telling.

Number - Search Term
5 - judith elissaint
2 - jt fetter
2 - cjmiles naked
1 - oh my, my white blood cells are low!!! what's wrong with me?
1 - cjmiles thumb
1 - at&t relay jobs
1 - sexy jocelny elders
1 - cjmiles photo gallery
1 - miss cjmiles photo

2008-08-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

KARAOKE

During college, my friend Eve and her roommate Kathy were two of my closest friends. After graduation, Kathy and I both moved to New York, while Eve moved to Northern Virginia to pursue a career in counseling. Eve and I don’t get to see each other very often, so when Kathy informed me that Eve was going to be visiting for a few days, I was excited that we were going to have a chance to catch up. Eve arrived on a Friday night, and the three of us met at a sushi restaurant, along with Kathy’s husband John for dinner. It was just like old times, and after one too many beers I started doing what I usually do – talking endlessly about myself, pausing only for air and more beer. A few hours later, we were all back at Kathy and John’s apartment and in the middle of one of my long winded rants, Kathy interrupted. “Just stop!” she said, “you’re so full of shit. There’s no way that’s true.”

I don’t remember what I was talking about, but I do remember being taken aback. I looked over at Eve for some support, but I was looking in wrong place though. “Yeah,” Eve said without mercy, “you do exaggerate a lot.”

I guess Kathy, seeing my reaction to their comments, tried to comfort me by adding “I’m not saying you’re a liar. I’m just saying you tend to embellish…embellish your stories with statements that are untrue. ‘Lies’ if you will.”

For the first time since my 6^th beer, I was speechless. My entire life, my family and I had accused my father of the same thing. Through the years, he would tell his favorite stories over and over again, and each time the facts became more and more outlandish. His friend Donny began the “truth or lie” game. After one of my father’s tales, we would collectively decide what in that story (if anything) was true and what was one of my father’s famous embellishments. In the end, we would reconstruct what we believed to be the most likely events behind my father’s story. When he told us about the time when, as a teenager, he scaled the side of the house and threw firecrackers down the chimney while his sister and her friends watched horror movies in the living room – we reduced it to him yelling “boo” from behind the couch. We decided that his “potato rocket” was more likely made of a cafeteria straw and a couple pieces of wadded up paper than a giant piece of PVC pipe and flaming tennis balls. It horrified me to believe that I had become my father, and I told my two friends as much, to which they responded “you’re probably exaggerating about that too. There’s no way your dad claimed to have shot at his RA with flaming tennis balls.” (He did.)

Eve agreed. “That story you told us about crashing your family’s only car during Christmas…Kathy and I both assumed your family was poor as shit and that you lived in some shanty village. Then I show up to your house and you had like six cars lined up in your driveway.”

I tried to explain how my other family members’ cars were all struck down by separate freak mechanical accidents, but the two of them were on a roll. Plus by this point, the alcohol had rendered me incapable of defending myself.

“And that story you told us about when you took your twin to karaoke, there’s no way that was true.” Kathy added. “You said that woman was 80 years old, but why would an 80 year old be hanging out at a bar late on a Friday night. There’s just no way.”

I was flabbergasted that I was being called to defend every story I had ever told, but at the same time I was flattered that they had actually been listening. I had evidence to support my karaoke story – photos that one of my friends had taken that documented every moment. I thought of showing them to the girls, but decided that they would only accuse me of doctoring the evidence. Instead, I decided to call someone that could collaborate my story, so I called my brother.

As the phone rang, I prayed Matt would answer. He was my only hope for defending my name - my only hope on proving that I hadn’t yet turned into my father. The phone rang what seemed like 100 times (an exaggeration), but just as I was about to hang up, he picked up the phone.

“Matt. Talk to me.” He answered.

“Matt!” I screamed as I turned on the speaker phone so Kathy and Eve could both hear. “Tell the story about the time we did karaoke at my place.”

My brother told the following story:

My girlfriend Jodi and I decided to visit Chris over St. Patrick’s Day weekend. We got up on a Friday night, and Chris informed us that we were going to go to dinner and then we were going to meet up with some of his friends to do karaoke at a bar down the street from his apartment.

We get there, we’re drinking, we’re singing and having a good time. Then Chris and I decide that we’re going to sing one of our classic duets – Don’t Stop Believing. I know…Journey is overdone, but it’s always a good way to get the crowd going. So the two of us are up there and just as we’re really start to rock out, this tiny old woman appears in between us, as if from no where. She was easily 80 if she was a day, tiny and prune like, wearing this big crazy wig.

At first I thought she was just trying to sneak on by, but I could tell by the devilish grin on her face that she was there for a little something more. Chris did what he always does when confronted by a woman…acts really awkward and sneaks away (not an exaggeration). But I thought “why not give this old thing a little big of love,” so I put my arm around her frail little body and started to sing with her. She and I are rocking back and forth, and she’s loving the ride, singing away. And then she gets up on her tippy toes and moves her face towards mine. I assume she wants to get closer to the microphone, so I put it to her mouth…just as she goes to whisper in my ear “Don’t be so obvious!” It’s broadcast over the entire bar, and she ducks her head in embarrassment. At this point, everyone in the bar is watching me cuddled up with this old woman, and my girlfriend is taking pictures so she can show everyone. It was awesome.

The next thing I know, I feel her tiny boney hands slip into my jacket pocket. Why she stuck her hand in my pocket is beyond me, my guess at the time was that she was trying to feel me up. Regardless, while her hand is in my pocket, I feel something cold and damp slip off into my pocket. I was repulsed. I assumed a Band-Aid had fallen off her hand. She then snuck off and went back to her table, where she high-fived another woman sitting with her who was probably just as old as she was.

When the song was over, Chris and I went back to the bar. Everyone was dying to know what she had slipped into my pocket. I reached in and pulled out a small piece of paper. She had scribbled her number down on one of the karaoke song request slips.

About an hour later I was telling the story to a girl outside. She grabbed the paper from me and called the old woman’s number. The woman had long since left and was back at home and probably in bed.

The girl screamed “Why are you hitting on my man?” when the old woman picked up.

“Who the fuck is this,” the old woman yelled back. “You’re a fucking pervert!” And then she hung up the phone. We were all shocked. She was such a nice and frail looking old woman, but man she sure had a mouth on her.

And that was that. I still have the number in my wallet. I’m thinking about having it framed.

And with that, I thanked my brother and wished him a good night. When I hung up the phone, I noticed that both Eve and Kathy were standing there with their mouths wide open. “Shit!” Kathy said. “It was just like you said!”

“See!” I shouted in desperation. “I told you I wasn’t a liar.”

Kathy and Eve looked at each other. “Nope,” Kathy told me. “You’re definitely still a liar.”

“Oh no doubt about it.” Eve added.

2008-05-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

THE CRAZY

All this writing about how I almost died has really worn me out, so I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about a scene I witnessed the other day.

The only thing eventful about my commute this morning was its complete uneventfulness. In my two some years here, I have found that the New York City transit system always has something up its sleeves to ruin my morning. Delayed trains, overcrowded platforms, masses of pushy angry Asian women, there’s always always something. This morning, however, I realized while riding on the downtown 6 train that something was different. I was on time.

It was totally weird.

So there I was, sitting down on a semi-full car, reading my book quietly to myself. There were enough people on the car to fill almost all of the seats, but not enough to pack it in clown car style. Although there were a few seats open, several people chose to stand, most congregating around the door waiting for the next stop.

I was lost in my book, not really paying attention to anything around me, when I heard some sort of commotion going on to my right. I heard a weird noise, and I turned to see its source. I saw a middle-aged African American man sitting on a bench underneath one of the two subway maps located in each car. There was nothing particularly interesting about this man. He was average looking and unexciting in everyway possible. Bearded and bald, he was of average build (siding closer to plump), and plainly dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans, but with expensive looking sneakers.

Standing over him was a young white woman, who was more plain that he. She was a curvy lass (also siding closer to plump), clearly dressed for a day in the office. She stood directly in front of the man, leaning over him to study the map propped behind his head. Her eyes were squinting, and she stood there hovering, tracing the path of her trip with her finger tip.

When I looked a little closer, I noticed the one thing that stood out in this otherwise completely average tableau was the crazy look smeared across the man’s face. He looked furious, the kind of furious that only a mental patient can achieve. I realized then that the commotion I had heard was him yelling. Yelling at whom or at what was beyond me though. I missed what he had said, so I was thankful when I saw his mouth open up wide, winding up for round two.

“Bitch! Get your titties out of my face!” he screamed at maximum volume. People around me were looking, so I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I did assume, however, that I had misheard him.

He screamed again. “Bitch, I said I gets your fucking titties out of my goddamn face!”

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what was going on. I assumed he knew the woman, that they were intimately involved, and that they were having some sort of lovers’ quarrel until he opened his mouth again.

“Bitch! I don’t know you! Get your titties out of my fucking face.”

What shocked me most about this whole situation wasn’t what the man was saying, but the woman’s reaction. Or lack-there-of I should say. As this man shouted at her, she continued to stand their, motionless, looking at the map, her titties in his face. No shift in position. No change in her facial expression. She just stood there, her finger continuing to move up and down the map. My first thought was perhaps she doesn’t speak English. But then I figured no matter what language you speak, a crazy-looking black man screaming at you is pretty universal for “get the fuck out of dodge.”

The man continued to yell. Repeatedly he shouted “Get your titties out of my face!” each time with more fury. Each time he yelled something slightly different.

“Bitch! I said get your titties out of my face”
“I said get your fucking titties out of my face, bitch!”
“Get your fat fucking titties out of my mother fucking face!”

He finally jumped up from his seat, and for the first time the woman moved. The two of them were nose to nose. The man was screaming at her “Why don’t you listen to me? I said get your titties out of my face.”

At this point, a large looking white man standing a few feet away stepped in. If I had to guess, I would say he was in his forties. He was a large man, tall and broad, and dressed rather suavely in a suite and tie. Clutching onto his briefcase, he yelled across the train

“Sir? Sir! You need to settle down.”

The black man turned away from the girl and shouted back “Who the fuck asked you, you son of a bitch!”

“Sir! Settle down!” the white man yelled back. “Do I need to call the cops?”

“Call whoever you fucking what!” the black man yelled, “just get this bitch’s fucking titties out of my face!”

At this point, we pulled up to the next stop. A large number of people left, including the white guy, leaving the train almost empty. The black man seemed a bit calmer, and returned to his seat beneath the subway map.

After the doors shut and we began moving again, the woman moved back to the map, and once again leaned forward, letting her titties dangle precariously above the man’s face.

I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for the man to completely loose his mind. I waited, but much to my surprise, he sat their silently. His lips were pursed tightly together, and it looked as if he was truly fighting back the demons inside. The woman seemed utterly clueless, closely examining the map. I thought to myself “she must be really, really, really lost.”

At the next stop, the woman got off. The scene was over, and I sat there amazed at what I had just witnessed. In my head I debated as to which one was crazier. Was it the man for yelling, or the woman for standing there and taking it? Clearly, they both something seriously wrong with the both of them.

And as I sat there, planning on how to best relive the scene for my friends and coworkers, an Asian man sitting next to the crazy guy got up to leave. The look of fury returned to the crazy man’s face, and he screamed “Mother fucker! Don’t hit me!”

The Asian man looked back, confused and concerned, “I…I didn’t hit you…” he stuttered.

“Don’t you fucking hit me mother fucker!” the crazy man shouted again. The Asian scurried out, and there I sat, just me and the crazy dude. I looked down at my book and though “this is why I love New York.”

2008-05-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

So what's worse then doing nothing for your mom on Mothers Day? Apparently sending her this video...

2008-04-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

I ALMOST DIED

PART II

When my friends found out that I was in the emergency room, the first question they asked wasn’t “what happened?” or “are you okay?” but instead “is it like being on that show ER?” I’ve never watched the show, but I assume the answer would be yes - granted you uglied up the cast and swapped out George Clooney with a shit load of homeless people.

After taking my temperature and blood pressure, the raisin faced nurse said nothing to me, just muttered something into the phone that prompted the arrival of a large attendant with a gurney. I looked at the nurse helplessly, is this necessary? written across my face. “Go on now,” she said to me. Reluctantly, I handed Katy my coat and climbed aboard.

With the nurse at the bow and the attendant at the stern, the two steered me through an obstacle course of homeless. Gurnies filled with hobos were parked everywhere, and my two handlers were struggling to maneuver me through the tight turns. It was a maze, and I wondered how on earth they were going to get me through it. I reassured myself, thinking “they’re professionals. They do this hundreds of times a day.” This confidence was shaken, however, when they rammed my bed into one of a sleeping homeless person. His eyes bolted open and we stared at each other screaming – he because he had been abruptly awoken, and I because he wasn’t wearing pants.

The two didn’t stop for apologies. They quickly wheeled me into a small room in the corner of the ER. These rooms – cubicles really – were divided by brightly patterned curtains, offering a hint of privacy from the moaning masses. The nurse situated my gurney next to a large oxygen machine and left briefly to fetch a chair for Katy. It was a tight fit, but she managed to wedge one inside the cramped quarters.

Katy sat beside me and held my hand as the nurse drew my blood. For the next hour or so, the nurse popped in and out, first to drill an IV into my arm, then to stick oxygen tubes up my nose, and finally to give me a hospital gown to change into. It was a complete hospital makeover, transforming me from a relatively healthy looking person into Tammy Faye Baker in a relatively short amount of time.

To pass the time, Katy and I began to play our favorite game There’s no real name for it, but the rules are simple. One of us thinks of someone we knew in middle school, and the other tries to determine who by asking a series of yes or no questions (for example; did they repeatedly throw rocks at me? Were they recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from the local Sam’s Club?) Once accurately guessed, Katy and I then stroke our fragile egos by discussing how much cooler we are than our former tormentors, or if not cooler - at least thinner. This time, our game didn’t last more than five minutes. The fun, smug feeling of superiority just wasn’t the same while laid up in a hospital bed next to a woman screaming “Nurse! The urine! It’s everywhere!”

Fortunately, Katy had thought ahead and brought a magazine for us to read together. Unfortunately, she chose to bring the Valentines issue of Woman’s Day. She read it aloud to me, beginning at the mast head and reading until I begged her to stop.

“Oh look,” she said as she opened up the first page. “The members of the Woman’s Day staff have listed the sweetest ways someone has told them they loved them. Isn’t that neat? Producer Judith Elissaint writes, ‘My sister calls me and puts my 2-year-old niece on the phone to say ‘I love you, Titi.’ It’s the cutest thing in the world!’ Let’s read on, shall we?”

She paused in between Catherine Zeta-Jones’s Secret to a Great Relationship and Tips on Writing a Love Letter and took my hand. “This is kind of nice, just you and me,” she said, “We never get to just hang out anymore. We never just talk.” Then she lifted up her magazine and pointed to the next page. “Now this is fun! A recipe for DIY potpourri!”

A young woman in a white coat pulled back the curtain and poked her head in. “Mr. Miles?” she asked, “You know we’re open 24-7 right? You don’t have to wait until you’re shitting blood and falling down to come see us.” My initial reaction was who the fuck are you lady, but she quickly introduced herself as my ER doctor for the evening. She was definitely an attractive woman, although looking back, it may have been that she was only attractive in comparison to every one else in the ER. She was funny too, and her mildly sassy demeanor put me at ease. I shook her hand and introduced her to Katy, and then asked her the question I had been wondering since I had passed in the bathroom.

“Is this for serious, or is this just in my head? Because I think I might be faking.”

She paused briefly, deciding the best way to answer my question. “Well, let me say this. I don’t really know you Mr. Miles. I’ve never seen you before. I don’t know what you usually look like, but I can tell you right now…without even looking at your chart…that no, this isn’t just in your head. You see…” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder, “Most people have color in their skin. You, on the other hand, have none. At all. I mean…Have you looked at yourself lately? Have you seen how pale you look? This can’t be normal, can it?” She looked at Katy for affirmation.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Katy confessed, “but you have been looking very pasty lately.”

The doctor grabbed my hand. “Look,” she said as she examined my palm, “You don’t even have color in the palms of your hands. I’m not even exaggerating. Look!” She rapidly moved my hand close to my face so that I could bask in my paleness.

“I just thought I needed some sun.” I told her.

“You need a lot more then sun!” she told me as she started examining my chart. “We took your blood a little bit ago and tested your blood count. Now, in a vile of blood taken from a normal, healthy person, blood cells account for about 40 to 45 percent of it. The rest is the liquid they’re suspended in. So if a normal person’s blood count is at about '40', do you know what your current blood count is at?

She paused for dramatic effect. “19. Your blood count is 19.”

The only thing I could say was “Wahhhhhhhhh?!”

“If you would have waited any longer to get this treated,” she told me, “you would have slipped into a coma,”
“Or died?” Katy asked.
“If you had waited to treat your ulcer any longer, then yes, it is possible you could have died.” She told us.

I was completely speechless. Katy leaned over and said “Aren’t you glad I made you go to the emergency room?”

“Now, looking at your symptoms, it’s likely you have an ulcer in your stomach where blood is entering your digestive system. You’ve been bleeding internally, basically digesting your own blood, which would explain the black stool. Can I ask you how long your stool has been black?”

I had to rack my brain for an answer, but it was hard. I couldn't really remember a time when I was dropping black ones. I recalled a scene of me entertaining my family with black shit anecdotes at Christmas breakfast months earlier. My mother had to stop me, saying “Stop it! I’m eating grape jelly.”

“I don’t know,” I told the nurse. “Couple weeks.”

She jotted something down and continued. “Now, when you started seeing blood in your stool, there was probably so much blood in your stomach, your system couldn’t keep up and digest it all. That would take a lot of blood, Mr. Miles. It’s no wonder you passed out. The only think I don’t understand is how a 24 year-old gets a bleeding stomach ulcer.”

She turned Dr. House on me and started drilling me with a 101 ulcer related questions.
“Do you eat a lot of spicy foods?”
“Do you drink a lot of highly acidic beverages, such as orange juice?”
“Do you eat a lot of foreign or imported fruits and vegetables?”

No to all.

“Do you take a lot of Advil?”
I stopped to think. “How much is a lot?” I asked.
We both stared each other for a moment. “…How much do you take?”

The fact of the matter is I’ve been popping Advil like it was sweet candy for years. Ever since middle school, I’ve been taking it regularly to help me sleep, in addition to whenever I have the slightest headache or muscle ache. Hangover? I take three. Drunk? I take four to prevent the hangover. Sometimes I take it for no reason, other than the fact that I have a bottle sitting in front of me and I need something to go with my water. Sometimes I take it because opening the child proof bottle makes me feel like a man. I’m at the point where the recommended dose of two doesn’t even faze me. I’m at the point where the assistants at work have to order it in bulk on a special website because the Duane Reid next door was getting suspicious.

I told the doctor that perhaps I may have taken more than the recommended amount, but she wasn’t convinced it was enough to ware a hole in my stomach. “It would take massive and massive amounts of Advil to cause a bleeding ulcer in a relatively healthy 24 year-old,” she told me. We stared at each other for an awkward moment of time - she because she was lost and thought, and I because looking at her face was a better than staring at the curtain dividers. She broke the silence, saying “I’m going to send the specialist down who’s going to ask you a ton of questions that I wouldn’t even think to ask. There has to be a better explanation.”

“So I think it’s the Advil” was the first thing the specialist said as he walked in. Katy and I looked at each other, wondering what happened to the litany of questions we were promised. Like the last doctor, the specialist was young. Unlike her, he was neither attractive nor sassy. I tried to like him, but I couldn’t. He had “douche-bag” written all over him.

“We’re going to be moving you upstairs soon,” he told me. “We’re going to be performing a very simple procedure that will help us find the ulcer, and at the same time repair it. We’re basically going to be sticking a long tube down your throat. This tube has a camera on it that will allow us to find the damaged area. It also has a zapper that can cauterize it once we find it.”

I asked how long I would be in the hospital for. I had hardly been there 4 hours, but I was already hating it. “Well, you’re very ill,” he told me. “Your blood count is extremely low. We’re going to have to wait until your blood count gets significantly higher before we let you go anywhere.”

“So do you have a time frame for that?”
“Well,” he told me, “let’s just say you should inform your boss you probably won’t be in for awhile.” And with that, I had found my silver lining.

Before the specialist left, he ordered the nurses to add another iv drip to my free arm so that I could begin the first of the four blood transfusions I would receive.

Katy and I sat there, soaking in what just happened. “I almost died” I told her.
“I know!” She said. “Awesome.”
“Totally awesome.”

A half an hour went by, when a nurse came rushing in, pulling back the curtain to the front of my cubicle. “We need to move you Mr. Miles. We have a woman coming in, and she’s going to need this area.” A couple of attendants rushed in and tried to move my gurney. With the amount of tubes running into my body, they found it difficult to get me very far. Like a nasty yoyo, I was tangled on everything, so they ended up angling me into the neighboring triage station. They tried closing the curtain as they pushed a woman on a gurney in, but my tubes connected to other machine prevented them from shutting it very far. The woman they brought in was crying loudly. It was an awful and ungodly noise, and I couldn’t help but watch, trying to figure what was going on with her. Her husband stood there beside her. “It’s going to be okay” he kept telling her, but she only screamed louder. My cute/sassy doctor was there with her, telling her that they were giving her morphine to ease the pain. She looked over at me and told me, “We brought her in here to make you feel better by comparison.”

The cubicle they had pushed me into was shared with another man. I instantly noticed that he only had one leg. He was curled up in a ball, motionless. “I almost died!” I told him. He didn’t move.

A nurse came by and told me that they would be moving me upstairs very shortly. “I don’t know how this is going to work,” I told her, “but I really have to pee.” She left and returned with an unusual looking jug – very similar to the container my mother made kool-aid in when i was a kid. “What the hell am I suppose to do with his?” I asked her.
“You pee in it, Princess.”

I’ve always avoided urinals, so pissing in a small plastic container in the middle of a busy room while lying in bed seemed pretty incomprehensible. There were no curtains in my new room, so Katy positioned her self with her back to me, standing in-between me and the rest of the room. I moved the bottle under the sheets and carefully positioned myself inside it. My bladder felt like it going to explode, so I cleared my head and tried to unleash the beast, but as hard a I pushed, I simply could not pee.

“How you doing over there?” Katy yelled back at me.
“Still working on it,” I told her.

I shut my eyes and envisioned my happy place…my bathroom at home. While picturing myself sitting on my toilet and reading a shampoo bottle, the pee finally came forth, although at an incredibly slow speed. After five minutes Katy said “Jesus! Are you done yet?”

“I’M WORKING ON IT!” I snapped back. Minutes later, when I finally finished, I thought “Now what do I do with this?” I tried giving it to Katy, but she refused. I was too embarrassed to ask the nurses to take it, so I left it there, in between my legs and under my sheets. When the nurses came to take me upstairs, I worried that it would spill, but when faced with handing them a giant jug filled to the brim with warm piss, I decided to take my chances.

Katy followed me as they pushed my gurney into the elevator, and we waved goodbye to all our homeless friends. The nurses took me to the second floor, and wheeled me into a pleasant room at the end of the hall. They hoisted me onto the bed, said goodbye, and wheeled my gurney away, along with the bottle of piss I left with them.

Laying in my new bed, nurses came in and out, bustling around me. Doing this and doing that. I had been up all night, and exhaustion finally hit me. Katy remained next to me the entire time, holding my hand.

“You can go Katy,” I said to her. “You should probably go home and get some sleep.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“I’m sure,” I told her. “I should probably get some sleep myself.”

She got up and gave me a kiss goodbye. “You’re going to be okay” she told me. It was about this time when everything hit me. Here I was, 24 years old and in the hospital. How did I end up here? I was alone, hundreds of miles away from my family. And honestly, I was scared. I had almost died, and I had just realized that this was the first time that someone had told me I was going to be okay. But was I going to be okay? Tears started streaming down my face.

One of the nurses saw me and rushed over. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?”
I was horrified that someone had caught my crying. “No!” I told her. “I’m just…full of emotion!”
“Oh…” she replied. She was clearly taken aback. She then but her arm around me, her large breasts falling into my face, “Don’t worry. I have a son your age, and you have Mother Devi here to take care of you.”

2008-02-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

I Almost Died.
Part I

Did you know that black colored stool is a sign of internal bleeding? So is blood in your excrement.

All news to me.

A week had gone by with certain aforementioned issues, and I simply thought “that’s odd,” and went about my merry way. I’m not the type to “get sick” per say, so I didn’t think much of it. My view on illness has always been that there isn’t much out there that can’t be cured by a couple Advil and a night without drinking. However, my B.M. issues worsened, and were coupled with chronic fatigue, bouts of dizziness, and an unquenchable thirst (for water, not for power). It wasn’t until I started vomiting blood that I began to think that something may or may not be wrong with me. Face down in a toilet filled with a colorful blend of hemoglobin and New England clam chowder, I told myself “I may need to see a doctor about this…”

“…in the morning.”

So I went to bed, hoping a good night's sleep would take care of business. I had trouble sleeping though, cursed with terrible nightmares about work. Tossing and turning, I finally decided to get a warm glass of water and a couple Advil to help me sleep. I climbed out of bed, but as I got to the bathroom my head started spinning fast and furiously. I had an awful metallic taste on my tongue, and I felt my legs give out beneath me. For reasons I can’t explain, Olivia Thirlby’s terrible performance in Juno raced through my head, and as my hands searched the wall for something to grasp onto, I told myself “I don’t care what people say, I thought that movie sucked.” Moments later I came to, sprawled out on the tiled floor. I had passed out and on my way down hit my head on the counter top and knocked over the trash can.

Laying there, I noticed that there was blood on the floor. My face was throbbing from banging it against the counter top, and I touched it I realized that my nose was bleeding. "Jesus!" I thought to myself, "Another bleeding fucking orifice." I was two bloody nipples away from a complete meltdown. I tried to reach for a handful of toilet paper to stop the blood, but my head was still spinning. So I just sat there with my head in my hands, watching blood drip onto the white bathmat my mother gave me for Christmas. It was then that I decided to start considering going to doctors. Nowish.

It was 1AM Tuesday morning. My roommate Katy was asleep, and I debated on whether I should wake her or not. She had to work in the morning, so I figured I would try to figure this one out on my own. I had never been to an emergency room in Queens and I had no idea what to do, so I returned to my room and pulled out all my health insurance paperwork. The task was more difficult than I had anticipated. Figuring I would never need it, I had filed the letters my insurance company had sent me, unread and still in the envelopes they had been mailed in. I found a booklet I thought might help, but with my brain working at less-than-cull-capacity, I decided that this was beyond me and that I needed Katy's assistance.

I lightly knocked on her door, and surprisingly she immediately responded. She didn’t leap from bed and in a single motion and rip my head from its body as I would have done. Just a simple “come in.” I pushed the door open, and was relieved to see her fully clothed and alone (not that she’s unattractive mind you. It’s just that finding her mid-coitus was the very last thing I needed at this point in time). Standing in her door way I told her “uh…I think I may need to go to the emergency room.”

Katy sprung to action. Within 30 minutes she had found the nearest emergency room and called a car to come pick us up. I, in the meantime, had phoned the emergency hotline number I had found on the back of my insurance card. My head had stopped spinning and I began to think again that maybe if I went back to bed I would wake up fine in the morning. Really, I was just looking for someone to tell me it was okay to stay in my bed. After describing my symptoms to the nurse on the other end of the line, she sat their silently for a second.

“Do you think I need to go to the emergency room?” I prodded.
“Uh…are you kidding me?” She responded. “I mean…” she paused as she carefully chose her next word. “Duh.”

The nurse had demanded that I call an ambulance. But I hate to make a scene, so Katy and I took the car she had ordered. As we piled into the back, I asked the driver to take us to Mt. Sinai Hospital in Astoria, using my most convincing I’m-not-going-to-die-in-your-back-seat voice.

Katy and I didn’t wait very long in the waiting room. My ass had hardly hit the seat before a nurse had poked her little raisin head from behind the door and called my name. Katy and I followed her into a little room where she took my temperature, my heart rate, and blood pressure. I described my symptoms to her and waited for her to say “Oh we get this all the time.” She’d laugh at my naivety, and casually retrieve a pill bottle from an easy to reach desk drawer. She’d hand me a couple pills and a glass of water and say “take these and get out of here. Go get some sleep, you two look exhausted!”

Instead, she picked up a phone and over the loud speakers announced some code. Code green or code red or code Nancy Drew, I didn’t hear what she said. But the next thing I knew I was being hoisted onto a stretcher by some giant black guy and wheeled into triage.

2008-01-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS

I decided to send out a Christmas news-letter this year. I’ll admit - it’s an idea that I unabashedly stole from my cousin Kelly. She wrote a letter and sent it to my mother, who thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Not to be outdone, I decided that I too must send a letter to my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and elderly who may mistake it for a graduation announcement and send back some cash.

So I wrote the following letter, folded it nicely into a Mahogany card with three black cherubs on the front, and signed in my best cursive "Merry Fucking Christmas you bunch of Crazy Black Assholes!" My only regret was that I didn't make enough to send to all of you. So I've posted here on my blog, for your enjoyment.

And as a side note, Merry Christmas, even if it is the middle of January.

Dear Everyone,

I recently received a Christmas letter from a long lost friend, who so thoughtfully composed a lengthy letter detailing every major event in her life that I’ve missed in the last year. Upon reading this letter, I realized that I’ve been missing out on a perfectly legitimate excuse to talk about myself (and to spread holiday cheer naturally). So, for your reading pleasure, I have written below a compilation of highlights from my life from this last year. Enjoy!

Living in New York is just as glamorous as I’m sure you think it is. The streets are lined with beautiful A-list celebrities. I can hardly walk to the subway station without bumping into someone famous. Since moving to New York I’ve seen Andy Rooney, Wallace Shawn, and three former Project Runway contestants. Why Just the other day I saw Alan Cummings eating dinner in one of my favorite restaurants. I went up to him and introduced myself, telling him what a fan of his work I am, to which he responded “I’m not Alan Cummings.” Alan! He’s such a joker!

It was a year ago this September that my dear friend Kathryn and I moved into our luxurious apartment in New York's epicenter of culture and class – Queens. With a neighborhood like this, it's a true mystery why anyone would choose to live in Manhattan. Of the many visitors I've had, not one has failed to marvel at our local wonders – the Washeteria, the two Rite Aids positioned side by side, the hobo that wears a Santa hat year round. Talk about Christmas Spirit! How many of you can say you've seen Santa Claus peeing into a storm gutter?

For the few of you who haven’t seen my apartment, you’re surely missing out! Finely decorated, we’ve collected high-end furnishings from both Ikea and CraigsList. You should really visit! And incase you’ve heard of our little mouse-situation, no worries! That problem has been mostly sorted. Mostly.

Now, I just couldn’t write a letter without mentioning work. You know me,”work work work.” I think you’ll be happy to hear that my hard work and dedication haven't gone unnoticed. That’s right, I’m talking about the big P word. Promotion! Gone are the days of answering phones, getting coffee, and running to the grocery store for economy sized packs of heavy-flow tampons. Now, while I’m not necessarily getting paid any more for my extra hours, the name of my position has changed, and we all know what Shakespeare says about names. They’re very important.

The city can get so drab in the winter, so I decided to take a little tropical holiday a few weeks ago. I thought it would be nice to treat myself and go somewhere exotic! My trip to Ft. Lauderdale was very nice. I was only gone for three days, but i leaned a lot in that time, including that 1) Ft. Lauderdale is where Poland goes to die, and 2) sun tan lotion is not, as I previously hypothesized, a placebo. I had a lovely time, and the doctor said my skin should grow back very soon.

Living in the cultural capital of the world, my friends and I have been taking advantage of all the finer forms of entertainment you can find here in New York City. We're all very excited about the long awaited release of National Treasure II; the Book of Secrets. I just hope it's as good as the first! If anyone needs a last minute present idea, I know one thing Christopher J wants…the charm and striking good looks of Nicholas Cage.

While I'm sure I don't need to tell you of what generous and selfless person I am, I wanted to share a little story of my kindness that I thought would warm your hearts this Christmas season. This year, Kathryn and I decided to take a young homeless girl into our home (it was mostly my idea). The transient was my first-cousin Kelly, who recently got a job in New York and needed a place to stay while looking for an apartment. And I'll tell you one thing, she was quite an imposition. There were shoes in my bathroom, bras on my dining room table, and a remote controlled dinosaur atop of my television. But despite the huge burden she inflicted upon us, we still had a lovely time with her…until of course, after two months it was suggested that she leave. Miss you Kell-Bell, wherever you are!

And with that I must leave you. Christmas is just around the corner, and you know me, always leaving shopping to the very last minute! Ha ha, but seriously. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

With Much Love,

Christopher J Miles

PS Alan Cummings says hello.

2007-08-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

Trip to the Lake.
Part II

Kelly and I stood under the flight board in disbelief. 20 minutes before our flight had been schedule to arrive on time. Now it, and every flight south of the Mason-Dixon Line was canceled.

Kelly and I looked at each other, mouths agape. “It’s like I willed it to happen,” Kelly told me, “willed it to happen…with my brain…”

At this point, the line to the terminal desk seemed to wrap around the airport. Without speaking, we picked up our bags and went to the end. There was a hundred angry travelers in front of us, and five minutes later another hundred behind us. While I was slightly disappointed (having decided just a few moments before that I was actually looking forward to going), truth be told, I really didn't give a fuck. And Kelly? She was down right giddy. Within seconds, she already had a date for later that evening.

It was hard to not feel somewhat superior to everyone else standing in line. Not caring really gave the two of us an edge. Kelly and I stood silently, eavesdropping on the young woman whining behind us. Over the phone, she sighed and in a mark of passive aggressive genius she stated “I guess God doesn’t want me to come see the band concert. I guess God hates me.” Kelly mouthed no, but I do bitch.

Time dripped by as we waited in line. To entertain ourselves, we practiced different approaches for what we would say when we got to the front. “Let’s pretend like we’re really upset,” I suggested. “You start crying and I’ll pound the desk and demand to see a supervisor.” Kelly suggested reverse psychology. “I didn’t want to fly on your shitty plane anyway!”

Finally we got to the front. Standing behind the desk was a tiny old woman. She looked like the type that if allowed, would wear a t-shirt to work that said “I can only please one person a day. Today isn’t your day, and tomorrow isn’t looking good either.” She’d smirk every day when she stretched it over her saggy frame (not laugh mind you. No, she never laughed), and when people spoke to her, she would simply point to the shirt. If they persisted she would respond by warning “don’t make me point to the shirt again."

I put our tickets on the counter and said “so, there’s probably no way you can get us to Richmond tonight, is there?”
Without looking at her computer, she stared me dead in the eyes and said “nope.”
“And I’m guessing you probably can’t get us to North Carolina either.” I added.
“Nope.”
“And can I go ahead and assume that you’re probably already booked on all the flights to North Carolina tomorrow?”
“Yup.”
Kelly and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Well I guess that does it for us. aThank you.”
Kelly added with all sincerity, “It’s been a pleasure, truly.”

We grabbed our bags and peaced. Being as I lost my phone, Kelly was forced to call our parents to give them the bad news, and for that ten minutes I was genuinely happy I had left it in the cab. At first, Kelly thought she had gotten off easy. Her dad had picked up and the conversation went a little something like this.

“Dad, our flight was canceled…Yeah…okay…love you too bye.”

Moments later Aunt Lynn called back. Kelly sighed before she picked it up. I heard my Aunt through the phone “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT COMING?” For the next ten minutes I heard Kelly muttering “Mom…but they said...no…mom…ALL THE FLIGHTS ARE CANCELED …mom...no…there is no bus to Raleigh…”

She finally snapped her phone shut. She released a long breath and said “she said that they’re going to miss us and that they’re sorry we can’t come. Oh and your mom thinks you’re a dumbass for losing your phone.” And we left it at that.

Considering the drama that had just taken place, we decided to treat ourselves to a cab ride home. “The last thing I need right now,” Kelly told me, “is some crazy subway drama.” Before she could complete the sentence, a large Hispanic dude jumped in front of us.

“You guys looking for a cab? I got one waiting over there…” he said, pointing to some distant parking lot.

I shook my head no, but before I could verbalize the negative, Kelly jumped all over it. “Why yes, cab driver. We will take you up on your offer. Please, lead us to your parked vehicle”
I screamed a little inside.

We followed the large fellow into the parking lot, farther and farther, until we came to a pimped out Explorer. It had fat rims, and even fatter dude sitting behind the wheel.

“Nononononono” I said, turning around. Kelly looked at the guy and said “Um…sorry…this isn’t really what I expected. I think we’re just going to take a regular cab.”

The large fellow jumped in front of me. “Is it Phat Joey? Dude, he’s my cousin. We’re just two honest guys trying to make enough money to feed our family.”

I looked back at Kelly and then the dude, and then continued heading back to the airport. The guy turned to Kelly. “Man, we do this a hundred times a day. You don’t want to go back there and wait in line for a cab. It will take 40 minutes, and they’ll charge you twice as much.”

Kelly stood there, and I saw her hesitation. I put my bag down, and being the man in the situation, I thought it was high time that I stepped up and started acting like one. “Um...it's up to her I guess,” I told him.

The guy turned to Kelly. Like a giant douche, I had put her on the spot and she looked at me with panic in her eyes. “Come on sweetie,” he pleaded. “If something happens, you have your boyfriend here to defend you.” Somehow, neither one of us found any comfort in this statement.

“I mean…,” she said, her eyes darting back between me and Phat Joey, “fuck it.” She threw her bag into the back seat and climbed in. “But if I die I’m going to be very upset with you two.” The large guy hopped into the passenger seat, and I screamed a lot inside.

Looking around the car, nothing added up. First of all, why were they both here? How could this be a profitable business if they charged less then a cab and then split the money two ways? Second, how could two men, who claimed to be struggling to feed their families, afford a small plasma screen TV playing live satellite under the rear view mirror? How could they afford the seven suits, hanging fresh from the dry cleaners in the back? It would be offensive logic to think that this would result in anything other than a shiv in the neck.

As we drove through the airport parking lot, I plotted ways to get out. I would tell them that I forgot my bag at baggage claim. I would tell them I had to go get it. They would have to let us out, and we could make a break for it. It would be the best decision I ever made. It would save our lives.

So I sat there silently and we pulled out onto the highway. We were on the road to our certainly violent and eminent deaths, but I didn’t want to be rude…

Kelly and I sat in complete and utter silence; the only noise was coming from Keyshia Cole and Missy Elliott playing on their on-road entertainment center. I nervously fidgeted with a piece of paper, all the while picturing how it would go down. Instead of taking us home, they would drive us to some sketchy neighborhood. One of them would then remove his gun from his pocket and instantly shoot me in the head. Luckily, I wouldn’t be around to watch them make Kelly their play thing. When the cops found our bodies floating in the East River, they would comment on how tragic it was, two beautiful lives taken down for what must have been just a few bucks ($7.24 and a sugar packet to be exact).

I started to relax a little when Phat Joey took the exit ramp towards Queens. However, Phat Joey and his amigo started arguing. “You said 44^th Ave. right? Not 44^th St? Because there is no 44^th St in Queens”

My heart immediately started pounding out of my chest. This is how it was going to happen. They were going to play stupid and get lost and take us down a back alley and then cut us into pieces. I could actually see my heart pounding.

“Yes there is!” Kelly spoke up. “I know this because I live on it.”

The two guys looked at each other. “My mistake” one of them said. I thought I was going to pass out, or pee myself, or most likely both. I started praying like a mad man, asking God for forgiveness for eating meat on Friday during Lent and having sex with all those strangers. Maybe if I just gave them my wallet, they would let us live. They could just take my wallet, drop us off in the middle of no where, and call it day.

I reached for my wallet, and then suddenly we came to a stop. Phat Joey had pulled the car over, and I quickly tried to make peace with God. Kelly grabbed me. I screamed a lot…but this time not inside.

“Are you going to get out or what?” She asked me. Phat Joey was staring at me like I was crazy. We were parked in front of my apartment.

I almost kissed the curb when I got out of the car. The young man grabbed my bag and handed it to me. “See, you made it out alive didn’t you”

“Yessir” I shrugged. He got me!

We paid the ridiculously cheap fare and i gave him a big tip for not killing me. The trip-that-didn’t-happen from hell was over, and we had made it home alive,.although cell phone and topical cremeless.

As a post script, I would like to add that shortly after we returned home, I noticed that I had quite a few new IM's waiting for me. I opened the first one from my friend Diane. She wrote:

“So, I spoke to your cab driver a few minutes ago. Apparently you left your phone in his back seat. He said to call him and he would bring it to you.” I had about seven other messages that said the same thing. Apparently he was answering all my calls.

My mother called Kelly’s phone a few minutes later. “Chris! Rahul has your phone!”
“How do you know his name?”
“Oh I know a lot about Rahul. He’s a real delightful man. But anyway, he said he would drop your phone off if was in the neighborhood.”

I called my from from Kelly’s and Rahul answered (naturally). “RAHUL!” I shouted. “You have my phone!”
“Oh yes, you left it in my seat.” He responded. “I bring it back if I go to Queens.”

And sure enough, 4 hours later brought it by. I was so relieved I would have kissed him on the mouth, you know, had he not been so unattractive. He wouldn’t even take the cash I offered him as a reward. He just waved me off and when on his way. Amazing. And that’s why I will name my first born Rahul.

Or my next fish. Either way.

THE END

2007-08-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Trip to the Lake.

Part I

About six weeks before we were suppose to leave, the phone calls began.

My cousin Kelly had just moved to New York and was temporarily staying with me while she looked for an apartment. Sitting together on her cot in my living room, first her phone would ring. She would look down and roll her eyes and place her phone on silent. “It’s her again” she’d warn me, shaking her head. Next, my phone would ring.

“Hi Auntie Lynn…” I would say, watching my cousin wave her arms and mouth I’m not here.

“Hi Chrissyfer” Aunt Lynn would say, “Is my daughter there? I’m trying to get a hold of her but she’s not answering her phone.”

“No Auntie Lynn” I would tell her, flicking off Kelly with my free hand. “I’ll tell her you called when she gets back from the gym though…”

“Well will you ask her…” and that’s when my Aunt Lynn would start rattling off information into my ear a mile a minute. Even if I was listening…even if I had intended on giving my cousin the message, it was doubtful I would be able to retain any of this. Instead I would write “fuck you slut” on a piece of paper for Kelly and doodle a picture of her getting eaten by a dinosaur, and she would love it forever.

With summer upon us, there was only one thing on my Aunt’s mind; the annual family vacation. Every year for the last 7 or 8 years, my parents and Kelly’s parents would burn their two weeks of annual leave at a lake house in North Carolina, noodling and talking about corn (noodling; a verb my parents made up to describe the action of placing a Styrofoam flotation noodle between one's legs, and floating in water for hours). My brothers and cousins and I would usually join them for few days, but for the last two years I had declined my invitation. The constant and incessant nagging by my mother and Aunt Lynn, in combination with the drunken antics of my father and Uncle Ed was all too much for me to handle, and when my father shattered his hip in a freak knee boarding accident three years ago, I found the perfect reason never to return.

This year was different however. My invitation was not so much an invitation, but a demand…crippled father or no crippled father. My mother and her sister decided to hold a celebration for my grandfather’s 85^th birthday at the lake house, and my attendance was “highly suggested.” By my mother’s tone, I could tell that Christmas presents hung in the balance, so I reluctantly agreed. Kelly was like-wised cornered.

To sweeten the deal, our parents told us they would fly us down together. We would only have to stay through the weekend, and with the promise of a free trip I told myself it couldn’t be that bad right?

Oh fuck me was I wrong. As soon as we agreed to take them up on their flight, Aunt Lynn and my mother would call us every night with a litany of questions. And as the date approached, the calls only became more frequent and more frantic.

Urgently, our mothers would ask:

“What airline would you prefer to fly? Jet Blue or American? Well neither one is available, so what’s your feeling on Delta? Would you prefer to sit window or aisle? If Kelly wants to sit window too, how should we work it? Maybe rotate? Maybe she can sit window on the way there and you can sit window on the way back? Oh well I think she wants to sit in the aisle anyway. Now you might be sitting in the emergency row. Is that going to be a problem? Do you want me to change it? How do you plan on getting to the airport? Do you think you and Kelly should ride together? Can you get to Kelly’s work and then go to the airport from there? Do you think you’re leaving yourself enough time to get there?”

The answers were always the same. “Whatever, I don’t care. Leave me alone.” Then about two weeks before the big birthday bash, our mothers convened and decided that instead of flying us to South Carolina, they would fly us to Richmond, where my cousin John would pick us up and drive us the rest of the way. So the litany of questions began again. See above.

The night before we were to fly out, Kelly and I reluctantly packed our bags like two convicts preparing for prison. As I shoved my clothes into my 17 year old duffle bag, I debated as to what the worst part of the trip would be. Would it be the nagging? The unfriendly demand to shuck corn? The “can you get my reading glasses? Can you get my sunglasses? Can you get my reading glasses with the sunglasses attached to them?” The way Aunt Lynn stills refers to our seating arrangement as “the Kids Table” (even though the youngest one of us is 22)? The way my brother and his wife make cat noises when they’re angry with one another? The way my father pronounces filet mignon phonetically every times he says it, repeating himself until someone politely laughs. The way my uncle “gooses” me when he’s had one too many? The way my twin’s head smells when he’s worn his hat all day? My cousin John’s ridiculously long nipple hair?

As per my mother’s recommendation, Kelly and I decided to meet up after work and split a cab to LaGuardia. I met her at her office, and then the two of us spent 20 minutes trying to find a cab. It took forever, but we finally convinced an off duty cabbie to stop and take us. Things from there seem to go without a hitch. There was no traffic…no long lines to check our bags. We printed our boarding passes without any problems.

Our good luck was ruined though when we got in line to go through security. Kelly looked at me. “Oh shit!” She said. “I brought liquids.”

“Why God why would you do such a thing?” I asked her. Clearly she had not read her mother’s three page email breaking down new airport security procedures. Clearly.

“It’s fine” she told me. “As long as you can fit it all into a plastic bag you’re fine.” I had already given her up for dead. I was picturing how I would explain to our parents as we sunbathed on the dock the story of how Kelly was snipered down right there in the security line when she pulled out her bottle of Scope. Kelly turned around to find where she could pick up a plastic bag to stow away her liquids. She had difficultly located one however, and so she grabbed an airport employee she thought would be able to help.

He was a small Indian man. He looked at Kelly like she was a crazy woman when she asked for a plastic bag. “FOR MY LIQUIDS!” she shouted repeatedly. I ducked to dodge the sniper bullets. With a smile on his face, he finally nodded as if he understood. He walked over behind a counter and pulled out a plastic bag…a large plastic garment bag that could have easily fit the three of us in it. Kelly shook her head in frustration. “Look, I need a small regulation plastic bag to put my liquids in. I don’t mind throwing away my makeup, my shampoo, my mouthwash. I just need this one cylinder of medication.” The Indian dude finally understood. “Oh! Liquids!” he shouted triumphantly. “What kind of medication is it?”

Kelly squirmed a little and I could tell she was embarrassed. I recognized the bottle. It was her topical acne medication, the one I had drunkenly confused with my toothpaste and brushed my teeth with a few nights before. “It’s for my face…” she told the guy. He smiled and grabbed the bottle from her “Oh! I see. Follow me!” Kelly then hurried to follow him as he dashed across the airport, waving her acne cream in front of every attendant in the terminal.

I put my bag down so that I could more readily enjoy the spectacle. I stuck my hands in my pockets, and then realized that something was missing. My phone was gone.

I threw my bag on a chair and started rummaging through it like a mad man. I told myself that I had probably mindlessly thrown it in there when I had gotten my itinerary out, but deep down I knew exactly where it was. I had left it on the seat of the cab, and it was probably gone forever. I had come to terms with its loss about the time Kelly returned.

“So apparently they don’t have a single fucking plastic bag in this airport. That Indian dude told me he would take care of it though.” She noticed my look of concern and I told her I had lost my phone.

“It begins…” she responded.

We went through security, and once on the other side, Kelly began looking for her Indian friend. He was gone though. He had taken her acne medication and ran. She came to the same terms of loss that I had come to about my phone, and downtrodden, the two of us made it to our gate.

“Fuck it” Kelly said. “Lets get fucked up.” I laughed and she responded “I’m serious. We have an hour to kill. We’re going to need this. I need this. I need this now. Let’s drink.” So she and I made a detour to Chili’s and started throwing down.

“This trip is going to fucking suck.” Kelly said over her giant novelty margarita. “It already sucks. Let’s just fucking go home. Let’s tell them our flight was cancelled. It could happen right?”

And for the first time, I started to think that maybe this trip wasn’t going to be that bad after all. I mean, I was ready for a break of the city. I was tired of cramming myself onto the subway, getting bumped into on the street, squeezing into overcrowded bars. I could use a break. And I was with Kelly. As we pounded our overpriced airport drinks, we laughed together at the elderly woman in the wheel chair being padded down by the security guard. I mean, yeah, we had already had a few setbacks, but things were looking up. She and I were having a good time and I was actually looking forward to getting down to North Carolina.

And it would be at about this point that we heard our flight was canceled.

To Be Continued...

2007-05-13T00:34:00.000-07:00

Night of the Living Hobos

April 29^th is an unavoidable birthday gang bang for me, spawning both my mother and my best friend Lindsay. This year I was torn on whether I should go back to Virginia or not to attend their parties. I’ve been going home a lot lately and the back and forth is exhausting. I had made up my mind just to send cards in my stead – a Mahogany card for my mother and a discounted “He has Risen” card for Lindsay. But having had a terrible week, at the last minute I decided that a trip home was just what I needed. And since my mom and Linds have both been going through tough times as of late, it seemed like the right decision.

I wasn’t going to tell either of them I was coming. It was going to be a surprise, and then I wouldn’t have to get them a gift. My presence could be gift enough. So Saturday morning, I stuff my clothes into a bag and headed to Grand Central. My roommate suggested taking the Greyhound. The last time I road in a Greyhound is a story in and of itself – a two hour trip taking four as I sat behind a man who described his fondness of “eatin’ a fat pussy” ad nauseum. Needless to say, I was reluctant to try again, but since I didn’t have a lot of options I went for it.

The trip itself was uneventful. No pussy talk. However, when I got off the bus in DC, five hobos ran up to me, asking me if I had change or if I needed a ride (I’m guessing they were going to give me a piggy back ride to my next destination). At the time I was puzzled why they had all chosen me and not any of my other travel companions, but in retrospect I guess I had all “easy prey” written all over me. The combination of the large Yves Saint Laurent bag I was carrying my luggage in, along with my unzipped fly suggested that I was both well off and mildly retarded. (I just want to take a second to clarify that I’ve never actually shopped at Yves Saint Laurent. I had taken the bag from work weeks earlier to help me sneak all of my roommate’s umbrellas I had stolen back home.)

I blew threw the first hobo blockade with ease. Rounding the corner, I was accosted by four more. These ones more aggressive then the first. I pushed my way threw them, but two followed me for another block yelling “MISTA! MISTA!” I hurried my pace, but I knew that walking alone down the long narrow stretch in front of me was going to be tricky. I put my headsets in and my extra grumpy face on, which fended off the next beggar. I couldn’t get over the amount of hobos. It was like something out of Night of the Living Dead. As I started to near the metro station I thought I had finally made it unscathed. However, as I got towards the entrance, one last hobo jumped in front of me. I accidentally made eye contact and it was all over.

With his sad eyes digging into my soul, he asked “do you have any change you can spare? I have a kid at home…” It was all so sad and pathetic I couldn’t take it. I rustled through my pockets to find some change. Nothing. So I reached into my bag and found some quarters at the bottom and gave them to him. He smiled and we both went on our way.

It was approximately 3 minutes later when I realized I was no longer carrying a wallet.

I turned around and headed towards the bus station to see if my bus was still there. I knew deep down that I had most likely dropped it while sleeping on the bus, but in route I convinced myself that I had been pickpocketed. It was that asshole I gave change to I told myself, I was distracted as I rummaged for change. He must have grabbed my wallet when I wasn’t paying attention.

I got to the bus station only to find that the bus had already left. When I asked the woman if anyone had turned in a wallet to lost and found she just laughed. “Honey, I wouldn’t hold your breath” – definitely not the words of encouragement I was looking for.

As I walked out of the bus station, the same five hobos I had initially encountered when I first got off the bus confronted me for a second time. Filled with anger and desperation, I snapped. As I pushed through them I yelled “You fucking hobos already took my fucking wallet! What more do you fucking want from me?!” (In the heat of anger I tend to repeat “fucking” several times in a single sentence, usually causing people to laugh at me more than anything else).

With my adrenaline high, I rounded the corner. And there he was. The hobo I had given change to. He was just standing there, smoking a cigarette. Smugly. Smug cigarette smoker, with MY wallet. Something got into me, and before I realized what I was doing, I was standing next to him. “Excuse me, sir?” I asked him. “Do you have my wallet?”

He looked up from his cigarette and looked at me. “Your wallet?” he asked, “Did you lose your wallet?” He looked concerned and apologetic, which only made me suspect him more.

“Look, maybe it fell out while I was looking through my bag,” I said to him, “maybe you found it on the ground. You can have the money inside it, I just want me driver license and ATM card back.”

“Sorry man, I don’t have it. Good luck though. Sorry to hear about you losing your wallet.”

Fucking hobo fuck! Why did he have to be so fucking nice?

Whether pickpocketed or on the floor of the bus, I conceded that my wallet was forever gone. I sulked on the steps in front of Union Station until my father picked me up. “I know you lost your wallet,” he said “But it means a lot to your mother that you’re coming down. She’s been asking all day if you were going to surprise her or not.”

My mood started to improve when I got home (although when my brother asked me for a second time if I have found my wallet I screamed “I already fucking told you I fucking didn’t!”) At the end of the night, somehow my brothers and I convinced my mom and dad to come with us to karaoke at the bar down the street. And while losing my wallet was a horrible ordeal, watching my mother wave to the crowd as Brian, Matt and I dedicated our favorite Journey song to “our mother, the bitchinest birthday girl ever” – somehow made it all worth it.

And in case you were wondering, three days later I got my debit card resent in the mail. And two days after that II lost it at a bar.

2007-04-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

The Hunt.

My mother has a monopoly on holidays. Over the last few years, she’s been slowly accruing the rights to host large family events at our house. She swindled Christmas away from my grandmother, claiming that our home was the only one big enough to accommodate “five Burton asses.” With Christmas under her control, she quickly gobbled up smaller functions, including birthday parties, baby showers, and Cinco de Mayo. This year, she annexed Thanksgiving with the promise of deep fried turkey. And then, this spring, she seized the final stronghold – Easter.

Traditionally, Easter has been held on my Grandma and Grandpa Miles’ farm in Round Hill, but with my grandma fresh out of surgery (something involving gallbladders, throat tubes, and urination…I tried not to ask too many questions) we decided to hold festivities at my parents’ house. I could sense that my grandma was uneasy about giving up her Easter glory, so my brothers and I brainstormed ways to ease the transition for her. Immediately, we thought of one of her most cherished traditions – the annual Easter Egg Hunt. Every year since I could remember, Grandma littered her yard with Easter eggs, mismatched, Scotch taped shut, and filled with mixtures of jelly beans and pennies. It wasn’t uncommon to come back with two or three eggs filled with nothing but a faded Hershey kiss wrapper and several dead insects. These were the eggs we had missed the year before. My grandmother continued to orchestrate it even after her arthritis started getting bad, although her hiding spots became slightly less inventive. Instead of concealing eggs inside bird feeders or dangling them from wind chimes, grandma took to hiding them in, for example, a small pile in the passenger seat of her car. But even still, we ate those hard jelly beans and liked it, because that’s what Easter was about. Dammit.

So this year my brothers and I proposed that we continue the annual Egg Hunt at our house, and my mother acquiesced. Early Easter afternoon, she brought down several groceries bags and dropped them in front of the three of us. We peered inside and saw mounds of candy and brightly colored plastic eggs – the good kind too. None of the cheap shit. “Have at it, boys,” mom said.

“Woah woah woah,” I told her, “This sounds like woman’s work.”

She eyed me up and smirked. Point; mother.

“But I’m drinking beer,” Matt said. “You can see the predicament I’m in.”

She left us with the eggs without saying anymore, and we all knew that we had lost. I looked around the room for people I could recruit to take my place. I saw my younger cousin Tatum (with whom I know little about) walking towards the table, so I shouted out to her, “Hey Tatum, do you still believe in the Easter Bunny?”

“I’m 12.” She said. Or maybe she said she was 9. I don’t know, I’m a bad cousin, but the inflection in her voice told me she did not.

“Well then help us with these eggs.” I told her. She pulled up a chair and happily started filling the plastic eggs with Skittles and mini chocolate bars. T.J. convinced his wife Heidi to join, and pretty soon we had a gaggle of women surrounding us, all stuffing eggs. I knew that this was woman’s work.

I sat there listening to the family chitter-chatter as I blindly filled up eggs, but I soon was lost in thought. Every year, same old Egg Hunt. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the fun? You find an egg, you win. That’s so expected. It’s so boring. You know what, life isn’t about having eggs laid out for you, always filled with candy. Did Forest say that life was like an Easter egg…every time you open it BAM there’s candy? No! Life is like a box of chocolates dammit! You never know what you’re going to get. Everyone knows that. And frankly, I think children should have to work for their eggs. I mean, did Jesus die on a cross so that we can have candy basically thrown at us? Um, NO! This was MY house and this was MY hunt, and this year, things were going to be a little different.

With an empty egg in hand, I walked over to a vegetable platter my mother had put out and shoved two or three pieces of celery into it. I fought back the laughter, picturing the look of disappointment on the small child’s face as he or she opens the egg, expecting candy but instead looking at raw vegetables.

It was about this time when I noticed Matt digging through the fridge. He turned around with a guilty look on his face. He looked at me and I looked at him. I then looked down at his hands. He was shoving diced carrots into his egg. We pointed at each other and started laughing. Twinsies.

As the women filled eggs with candy at the kitchen table, Matt and I started going through the pantry. I filled an egg with raisins as Matt filled one with Special K. I filled one with French fried onions, and Matt filled one with potatoes flakes.

We stopped when we heard someone approaching behind us. It was T.J., and he was shaking his head. “You guys are sick,” he said. We all looked at each other awkwardly for a second, and then T.J. reached behind us and put a handful of beef bullion cubes into an egg.

The three of us moved through the kitchen, finding other things to put into the “loser eggs”. T.J. filled one with paper clips. Matt filled one with shrimp. I took a post-it note and wrote “Jesus loves you” on it put it into an egg. I took another post-it and wrote “Jesus does not love you, play again.” Matt laughed. “You go too far…” he said as he grabbed the egg and mixed it with the rest.

It was then time to hide the eggs. Tatum and Heidi shared a bag, and placed them in easy to find spots across the lawn. My brothers and I agreed that we would hide our eggs in slightly more challenging locations.

T.J. wedged one under the wheel of our SUV. Matt placed one inside the raccoon trap my father has set up in the back yard. I placed one on top of the barbecue grill, which my dad was using to grill a leg of lamb (however, my mother moved it when the plastic started melting).

Matt put some atop a lily pad in the center of our pond, T.J. wedged two in between a garden gargoyle’s legs to give the allusion of testicles, and neighbors watched in horror as I placed two eggs in the middle of the street. T.J. yelled from across the lawn “Chris! What are you thinking!?” I thought to myself that perhaps he was right. Maybe this was going too far

“Don’t put two eggs in the middle of the street,” he continued. “Save some for the thorn bush!”

Having scattered all the eggs, we walked triumphantly back inside. My mother asked us how it turned out. Matt told her “This year’s theme is ‘the most dangerous game’”

I dipped my fingers in the lamb drippings and smeared it under each eye, and in a low voice I grunted “The hunt…..is on.”

My brothers and I waited with anticipation for the hunt to begin. It was going to be sick and awesome and we couldn’t wait. But we did. We waited and waited and waited. Finally I asked my grandmother “when are we going to do the Easter Egg hunt?” Matt, remembering his shrimp egg, added “time is of the essence.”

“Easter egg hunt?” she responded. She looked surprised. “Your youngest cousin here is Tatum, and she’s twelve (or nine). Didn’t you notice that there weren’t any kids here young enough to want to hunt for eggs?”

My brothers and I stared at each other, jaws wide open. Strangely, we had not.

“What…about…Sadie’s…kids?” Matt stuttered.

“They’re not they’re not coming.” Grandma told us.

“Then why did you help us fill up the Easter eggs?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stop us?”

“I thought it was funny.” Point; grandma. She looked at us, all standing there in shock, and started to laugh as she walked away.

And I’m pretty sure I heard her mutter “Easter is mine bitches.”

2007-02-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

The Intern.

There are so many wonderful things I’ve taken from Seinfeld – hundreds and thousands of life lessons that I’ve internalized and incorporated in my day to day life. When I first started work, for example, I was getting slammed with stuff do. It seemed like every time I turned around, there were three new projects waiting for me at my desk. Reaching a breaking point late one evening, I tapped into the wisdom of George Costanza. I whipped off the chipper grin I had been forcing over my usual grumpy disposition, and started acting extremely irritated. When I knew others were looking at me, I would shake my head furiously and pull at my hair. My stride became rapid and arm movement frantic, even when just getting up to get a glass of water. When people asked me how I was doing, instead of responding I would just sigh and shake my head. And frankly, it worked like magic.

Soon my desk was empty. When coworkers would ask me to do something, they would always preface it with “I’m so sorry to do this to you, but…” Even the simplest tasks became “Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry, I know you’re super swamped, but, whenever you get a free second, could you move your chair off my purse?”

After a show stopping performance one afternoon, my boss asked me to come into her office. She pulled up a chair next to mine, put her hand on my shoulder and said “Are you doing okay? You seemed stressed out.”

I thought to myself, oh shit, maybe I’ve taken this too far. I responded “No, I’m really fine…”
My boss interrupted. “It’s okay Chris, you don’t have to pretend. I understand that we’ve given you too much work,”
“No, I mean, really...It’s…”
“I think we should get you some help in here. How about bringing on an intern?”
“No but….” and then it hit me. An intern? An intern would be AWESOME. It would be like having my own personal assistant, albeit an unpaid one. “…An intern would be a huge help, because I’m just so swamped.”

So, I began my search for an intern. I posted want ads on college websites and craigslist. My hopes were high, but the responses trickled in slowly. I waited, but after ten responses, it looked like no more were coming in. So with only ten resumes in my hand (one including the phrase “I read you…Now you READ ME!!!!!”), I started calling people in for interviews. And they were a motley crew for sure. In my head I had pictured a group of dewy eyed college students, with their little sweaters tied around their waist and their book bags hanging off one shoulder. What I got was a bunch of out-of-work fashionistas, who either misunderstood what I was looking for, or who frankly scared the shit out of me. Out of the ten resumes I received, only seven made appointments to come in for an interview. Of those seven, only five showed up, and of those five, three of them were older than me. Much older than me.

One of the interviewees was about thirty five. He was dressed in all black, and when he sat down, he handed me a revised resume which included “professional vampire” under experience. When I asked him about it, he responded “it’s really more lucrative than you would think.”

And that’s when I gave up.

It was obvious I wasn’t going to find an intern from this rubble of disaster. There were a few that were decent, but after they came in my co-workers said things like “Make sure you’re absolutely in love with the person before you hire them….” We would stare at each other for an awkward length of time, and then they would continue with “you know what I’m saying?”

I did know what they were saying…no girls in lavender jump suits.

So I let the intern thing fade away, hoping my boss would forget about it so that we could all move on with our lives. It worked for awhile too, until one day, while eating lunch, she stopped in mid sentence and said “WAIT, what happened with you getting an intern?”

“Oh…that” I shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t really like any of the people I interviewed.”
“So you’re just going to give up? That’s it? One vampire and you’re calling it quits?”

Suddenly, what was supposed to be helpful became just another task. I sat down at my computer and decided that I was going to knock this intern shit out. I revised my want ad, inserting explosive adjectives and strings of explanation points. “AWESOME intern wanted at BREATH-TAKING artist management agency!!!!!”

The second time, the applications came pouring in. I had so many I didn’t know what to do with myself. I immediately started calling people in for interviews, and let me tell you, this group was leaps and bounds better than the first. I had found my dewy college students once and for all. Out of the first round of ten people I brought in, I found the one I wanted. She was perfect. Cute, funny, intelligent, not crazy...she seemed to have it all.

I called her so i could tell her she was hired, but she didn’t answer. I left a message, but didn’t get a response. I sent an email, just in case her phone had been acting funny. Two weeks later, and still nothing. My boss started asking me “so where’s this intern of yours…” I was getting nervous that I would have to start all over again, when finally she contacted me. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been in Australia.”

This initial ordeal should have been some sort of warning, but I decided that travel was an acceptable excuse for not returning my phone calls.

The night before she was to start, I tossed in bed all night, dreaming of things I was going to have my intern do. Maybe I would take up drinking coffee, just to make her go and get it. Maybe she could organize the post-its on my desk in a more pleasing fashion. Maybe I could make her walk to Brooklyn to get me cheesecake from Junior’s. The possibilities were endless.

The day she started was a little awkward, but fine. I overlooked the fact that she was 20 minutes late, and hopefully she overlooked the fact that my zipper was down. It was a busy morning, so instead of giving her a lengthy introduction, I just kind of threw her into it. And she did pretty well, considering.

The second day, I found a voice message waiting for me at my desk. It was the intern. “I’m so sorry, but I actually have a really bad cold and can’t leave my bed this morning. Very sorry. See you tomorrow.” I decided to tell no one, knowing fully well what they would say. “Your intern is sick on the second day of work? I don’t know Chris…doesn’t sound like you picked a winner.”

The third day she arrived, again 20 minutes late (and again my zipper was down). She settled down quickly and got to work. Around noon, she stood up and gathered up her stuff. “Do you mind if I run out for lunch?”
“Of course not,” I responded. “Go get some food.”

An hour later, my boss asked me “what happened to your intern?”
I responded “Oh, she went out for lunch.”
“How long ago” she asked.
“Uh…about…twenty minutes ago”
“You’re lying to me, aren’t you” my boss asked.
“No...” I said. “…maybe”

After an hour and half passed, my boss returned to my desk. “Still gone?” she asked. “She’s not coming back.”
“Maybe there was a long line. Maybe she’s having really terrible service.”

Around 4pm, I was ready to admit that my intern was not coming back. It was about this time when my coworkers and I started blaming each other for her departure.

My boss blamed me. “She probably hated it here because you didn’t feed her lunch on the first day!”
“Well, maybe if Ruby hadn’t played Cat Stevens all damn morning…” I responded.
“Don’t blame me!” Ruby joined. “I’m sure Nicole talking to her about American Idol for 20 minutes didn’t help.”
“I like American Idol…” Nicole trailed off.

I decided that it was time to let the intern go. I announced to the office that no matter who caused her to leave, she was done. Completely afraid of confrontation, I selected email as the best method. The problem was I forgot to email her before I left work on Friday. The whole weekend past, and it was Sunday night before I realized my error. I quickly signed onto my work account from home and sent her an email, hoping that she would get it before Monday morning.

Monday morning came, and the first thing my boss said was “so you fired your intern?”
“Yeah, I sent her an email” I said.

And then, for the first time since she started, my intern arrived right on time. She walked in, all smiles and sat down right in front of me. Nicole and Ruby both turned towards me with looks of wild amusement, and feeling my face turn bright red, I stared down at my desk. I felt panic run through me like a train. I hate confrontation more than anything. I reviewed my options in my head. I could just ignore the fact that I had, apparently unannounced to her, fired her. We could just act like everything was normal. Sure, it might be awkward when she gets the email and realizes that she was fired weeks before. But what about my boss? It was doubtful that she would be down with the whole charade. I had face up to the fact that there was only one option. I had to fire her then and there.

I pulled her aside into my boss’s office and sat her down. “So…what happened last Friday?” I asked her.
“Oh…” the intern looked around awkwardly. “Was I not supposed to leave? I thought you knew that I was leaving for the day. I’m sorry, was that bad?”
“Um…well, when you left, I assumed that you weren’t really serious about this whole internship. So, I kind of already fired you. In an email. Which you apparently haven’t gotten yet.”
“Oh…” my intern responded. “Wow, so this is awkward, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. I could hear my coworkers fighting laughter in the background.

So my intern and I had a long heart to heart. She apologized profusely, and I offered her a second chance if she promised me she was serious about it. When I was finished, my boss pulled me aside and told me she was proud of me. “You handled that really well,” she told me. “I was impressed.” And frankly, I was proud of myself too. I felt like my intern had really bonded. Sure, the first week had been rough. She hadn’t been the best intern, but I hadn’t exactly been the best boss either. No, we were both to blame, and a lack of communication was chief component. But there we were, just two weeks ago, in my boss’s office, hashing it out. At the end of our frank discussion, we both left feeling a little better about ourselves. We were a team, she and I, and together we could conquer anything.

And then last week, she called in sick. Twice.

The End

2007-01-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

Waffle Must Die, Part III…

The Battle for the Bathroom

In the last installment, our brave warrior friends valiantly challenged the evil and mighty rodent gang that dwelled within their abode. The cohesive mouse-unit, in which they dubbed “Waffle”, evaded their many traps, leaving our friends weary and heavy-hearted. But just when they were ready to accept defeat, they faced Waffle one more time in the epic Conflict for the Countertops. They emerged victorious, mightily slaughtering three of the Waffle unit. But just when they thought the war was over…

It had been months since we had seen any of our mousey friends. Rumor in the building was that the landlord had finally caved and called an exterminator. Katy and I believed it, ignoring all logical signs that pointed to the contraire. Then, in one night, our delusion was yet again shattered. As I was getting ready for bed, I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As soon as I opened the door, my eyes immediately fixed on a tiny black furball that ran across the floor. Needless to say, I screamed like a woman.

Katy shouted sassy from her room…something like “did you find another grey hair?” or “that’s Icyhot! The KY is in the 2nd drawer” –I don’t exactly remember what. I don’t really remember what I said either, but it was something along the lines of “MICE! THE MICE ARE BACK!” – not very clever, I know.

Katy and I were both beyond ourselves. The thought of more mouse traps littered across our apartment made me sick. I had had my fill of sweeping broken little mouse bodies into trash cans, and throwing mouse-halves out the window no longer amused me. My solution was to simply forget about it and continue on living in my delusional world.

The next afternoon, my friend Bryan and I were sitting in the living room while Katy showered down the hall. I thought I heard some funny noise come from the bathroom, much like two screams…followed by a third a few moments later. I asked Bryan, “Did you hear that? Was that Katy screaming?”

Bryan replied, “I’m pretty sure it was a car back firing.”

Seconds later I heard the pitter-patter of little wet feet coming rapidly towards me. Katy came running from the bathroom, sopping wet and partially wrapped in a towel that was much too small for her. With water pouring off her, she stopped next to the couch where we sat. I looked up at her and jumped back…on account of her resemblance to the little girl from the Ring, which was uncanny.

“You will never fucking believe what just happened.”

Now, I should say that Katy, unlike many women, usually can shower in ten minutes or less – except on Saturdays. On Saturday, Katy kicks back and takes her time, letting the time pass by as she dreams of Pete Wentz or any number of the Hansons. On this particular morning, she had just concluded one such Hanson shower. Feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, she threw back the shower curtain and grabbed her towel off the basket she had laid it upon. However, as she wrapped it around herself, she noticed a small dark object fall off it. Her first thought was “who the fuck shat on my towel?” but she quickly realized that no one shat on her towel. It was the mouse.

The thought of having a mouse burrowing into your towel must be upsetting enough. She quickly tossed her towel across the room, letting out two quick screams. Standing there, wet, frightened, and naked, she took a second to recollect herself. It was at this point when she realized that the mouse was standing there in the bathtub with her. Cue third scream.

Having not been there myself, I can only imagine it being like that shower scene from Psycho. I imagine that next, Katy made an ungraceful yet swift jump out of the tub. She most likely grabbed the first towel-like object she could find (in this case, an oversized hand towel), and ran straight to the couch where I was sitting.

She blurted out this story to us, and Bryan and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“Does that mean…” Bryan asked, “That the mouse is still in the tub?”

“Well yeah. He can’t get out.”

I, being a true hero, was the first to say “I call not killing him.”

Katy quickly put her finger to her nose. She and I looked at each other, and then our eyes turned to our guest. Bryan looked at me, and then at Katy, and then at the ground.

“Who are you people?” he asked.

I told Katy, "Thank God we have a real man in the house today."

With Bryan elected as our executioner, we then turned our attention to the weapon.

“Bleach?”
…next
“Frying pan?”
next
“Lighter fluid and matches?”
NEXT! Jesus!!

Then Bryan had a genius idea…the plunger. “I’ll put the plunger over him…push it down a couple times…sucking out all the air…causing him to suffocate.”

We all thought it was genius.

“…and if that doesn’t work I’ll just beat him with it.”

So Bryan marched bravely into the bathroom. With our plunger in hand, he set out to administer the sweet dose of murder. The mouse was right where Katy left him, chillen out in the bottom of our tub. Bryan looked away as he placed the plunger over him. He plunged and plunged and plunged, and when his arm was tired he stopped.

The mouse’s tail poked out from underneath our plunger, wiggled, and went back under again.

Leaving the mouse trapped underneath the plunger, the three of us reconvened in the kitchen.

“So the plunger didn’t work” Bryan told us. We thought long and hard, and finally the best solution came to us.

“Well he’s in the tub,” Bryan said. “Why don’t we just drown him?”

It was brilliantly simple. Our executioner returned to tub. He stopped it up and let the water run. When the tub was filled with about 3 inches of water, Bryan pushed the mouse under with the plunger. After a few moments, the mousey bastard joined those who went before him in Mousey Hell.

The idea of drowning a poor little mouse made me sad, until Bryan returned from discarding the body (yes…we made him throw it away too). I expressed to him how sad I thought it was, and he responded, “Do you know that when I filled the tub, that dirty fucker turned your water yellow. Yellow, Chris. Yellow.”

And suddenly it was okay. If something that small can turn 6 gallons of water yellow, frankly it deserves to die.

Since then, Katy and I have returned to our normal lives. We know that the war may very well not be over, but at least we won the battle. The battle for the bathroom.

2007-01-10T19:06:00.000-08:00

A Miles Family Christmas

It seems like every family has their own quirky Christmas traditions. Some make gingerbread houses, go caroling, or hide pickle-shaped ornaments in their tree. I had a friend once who every year would put on a funny little beanie atop his head, light a bunch of candles, and spin a wooden top. Seemed like a pretty stupid way to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ if you ask me, but to each his own.

In the Miles household, we are definitely no different. We have our own time honored traditions that date back as far as I can remember. In our house, there is always the annual Christmas tree hunt, long drives around decorated streets, and watching The Omen I on Christmas Eve. These are all swell, but they could never live up to our most cherished ritual – the one of ruining Christmas.

Ruining Christmas began in my early childhood. In those days it could have been anything. Calling each other names at the dinner table…breaking a well-loved ornament…suggesting that it would be more symbolic if they served jelly doughnuts instead of bread wafers at holy communion…any one of these could set my holiday-weary mother off. In a quick rage, she would turn around, look you dead in the eye, and scream “That’s IT! YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS!”

It happened so often that it became legendary. I could knock over a glass of lemonade in mid July, and my brother would whisper “you ruined Christmas.” I could be on the phone with my friend in March, and upon hearing yelling in the background, they might ask me “who just ruined Christmas?”

While the term is used pretty liberally, to actually ruin Christmas you have to abide by some strict guidelines. First I should note that my mother alone can decide who ruined Christmas. I should also note that my brothers and I could all potentially ruin Christmas any number of times during the holiday season. However, he who ruined it closest to Christmas morning was crowned victor.

As I mentioned above, ruining Christmas started off small, but as my brothers and I got older, we started finding bigger and better ways to destroy seasonal joy. None of us ever thought we could top last year’s winner. Working at Nordstrom over my winter break, my mom gave me a large wad of cash and asked me to pick some stuff after work. My brother Matt was to join me so that he and I could finish up the last bit of our holiday shopping. When he arrived, I noticed that something was a little off with his behavior. The rosy cheeks, the slurred speech, the high-fiving strangers - he was drunk. While he molested the mannequin in Hosiery, I quickly purchased the items my mother requested and called it an early night. As punishment for embarrassing me, I made Matt carry the bag to the car. As I got into my car, Matt yelled “Look at me!” All I could see was his exposed ass cheeks and piss spraying against my car. I screamed at him and he slowly pulled up his pants and got into the car.

When we returned home, my mother immediately asked me for the presents I had picked up for her. She had been anxious giving me the money, but I had assured it would be fine. I asked Matt if he had brought them in. He hadn’t. I looked in the car, and found nothing. To make a long story short – while relieving himself, Matt had put the bag on top of the car, but forgotten to take it off. $500 worth of Christmas presents riding on top of my moving vehicle, like of one of those assholes on Jackass. I returned to the parking lot to find a few packages still mildly intact, but most of it was gone. Needless to say, Matt ruined Christmas.

This year was my turn. My first night back, I decided to meet up with some friends at a nearby restaurant. It was dark and raining, and my mother asked me not to go. “It’s dangerous out, and you’re, well, you’re a terrible driver” she said. “Shut the fuck up!” I replied. “I’ll be fine”.

It was about ten minutes later when I plowed into unmarked van packed with Hispanic men.

In my defense, it wasn’t completely my fault. While, yes, the Mexicans were stopped in the proper lane at a red light…my breaks went out. Completely out. As I rounded the corner going full speed on wet asphalt, I pressed the breaks down again, and again, and again with no result. I did the only thing I could think to do…scream like a woman and prepare for impact. It felt like I was moving in slow motion as I ripped into the side of their car, but I swear to you that the only thought that went through my head….

I just ruined Christmas.

Thankfully no one was seriously hurt. I had smacked my face pretty hard and hurt my shoulder, but unfortunately it left no physical scars or bruises I could use to win some sympathy. To make matters worse, my dad had picked me up in that car that morning. Driving home he told me “My old Saturn just died. We’re on a real tight budget right now, so I don’t have enough money to fix it up. I’ve been using this car to get back and forth to work everyday, so let’s pray it holds up through the winter” To make matters even WORSE, Matt’s car died two days later. My entire family was reduced to owning one car.

My parents assured me that I did not ruin Christmas, and that they were just thankful I was okay – but looking at their faces as we all piled into the 4 seater, I knew they were lying. I secluded myself into my room, afraid that leaving my bed would cause me to crash something else. Occasionally, whenever I heard a loud bang or people yelling I would poke my head out and say “ruin Christmas?!?”

My dad would respond “No. No one ruined Christmas. That was just the TV.”

Ruining Christmas aside, the rest of my break was pretty solid. I do love the holidays, even when I destroy them. I just hope next year TJ does something really fucked up…because that my friends...

That’s what Christmas is all about.

2007-01-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Awesome Mannequin.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy mannequins in my day, but this one takes the cake.

I swear, it was at a mall in Jersey City...in a store right next to a Gap Kids.

2006-11-18T08:24:00.001-08:00

Waffle must Die, Part II.

So Katy and I put our heads together and tried to devise the best game plan for killing Waffle. We debated over which traps to use. Katy wanted something humane. I wanted something gruesome and painful looking.

We compromised on a trap that was gruesome, yet tastefully concealed within a small black container…so you don’t have to witness the gore (snoozesville if you ask me).

We were both pleased with ourselves when Katy brought the traps home. She set them and put them in the kitchen as I watched. We stood back and admired our work. “See you in hell, Waffle” I said, and then a minute later added “…from Heaven.”

I rushed out of bed the next morning, but found nothing. Nothing for a week. And then one morning, Katy called me from the hallway. “You will never believe this.”

She stood hovering over one of the traps. I joined her, and was amazed by what I saw. The lid to the concealed trap had been removed and placed about 6 or 7 inches away. The rest had been dissembled, and the food in the center was gone.

“I’m scared” I told Katy.
“Me too.” she said, as we huddled next to each other.

So that night, when I returned from I work I went straight to the mouse trap section of our local grocery store (which, I might add, had quite a large selection…not a good sign). Fuck this fancy pant trap shit, I thought to myself. I bought a stack of the old fashion kind. The label had a dancing cartoon mouse with X’s for eyes. Now, this was my kind of trap.

I took the traps home, and Katy and I sat down at the kitchen table to load them. For over 40 minutes, she and I struggled to set them. They were constructed with only three pieces. How could it be this confusing? Every time we thought we had conquered the trap, the bar would come crashing into our hands. Clutching her bruised and swollen fingers, Katy looked at me with tears in her eyes and said “We are two college educated kids. Why can’t we figure this out?”

Finally Katy figured one out, and together we set the rest and placed them around the apartment. Two in the hall closet and two in the kitchen. Yet again, we stood back and admired our work and mused on Waffle’s certain demise.

Yet another week went by with no capture. Katy had seen Waffle running across the kitchen counter, so we reluctantly put a trap up there. Another week or two went by, and still nothing. I said to Katy, “I wonder if he moved out?”

“Oh yeah?” she said, leading me into the kitchen. “Then what’s THIS!?” She pointed to a small piece of mouse shit on the counter top. What I couldn’t get was why would she let mouse shit sit on top of the counter without cleaning it up. “Are you saving this to prove to me we have a mouse?” I asked.

“…uh…maybe…”

We decided that maybe the peanut butter was maybe not the best bait. After weeks of sitting out, it had grown hard and crusty. I crumbled up an entire cookie and sprinkled its crumbs over the trap on the counter. How could a mouse resist a cookie?

The next morning, I ran to the trap to see if my scheme had worked. The trap was empty. And by empty, I mean of everything. An entire cookie’s worth of crumbs…gone. Even the crusty peanut butter was gone. That trap was licked clean. How could that even be possible? How could Waffle get his head right in the most sensitive part of the trap and not set it off?

“I think we need a young priest and an old priest to get rid of this thing,” I told Katy.

“Did you ever read that book about the country mice and the city mice?” Katy asked me. “Here’s the thing. We’re dealing with city mice, and frankly Chris, you and me…we’re the simple country mice.”

I had had it. I was ready to admit defeat and throw in the towel. We would have to call in professionals, or just accept Waffle as our third roommate.

Deafeated, I went to bed. The comfort I had felt before Kathy had come visit had long been replaced with a sense of disgust and unease. I was sharing my apartment with disgusting, diseased animals, and there was nothing I could do about it. I awoke, and with my head hung down, I walked towards the bathroom. In route, I saw a grey lump out of the corner of my eye lying atop the counter.

A mixture of joy and repulsion filled my stomach. There was Waffle, on top of the counter, crushed under the trap's heavy arm. We had caught him. After he had licked the trap clean, he had greedily come back for more. And now he was dead. Dead and most likely burning in Hell where he belonged.

I got close to him, and starting down at his long tail, I screamed like a woman. Katy came running out of the bathroom. “Did we catch Waffle?” Together we celebrated.

“I can’t believe we finally caught Waffle,” I said as I opened up the closet to get out the broom to sweep Waffle’s remains off the counter. As I opened the door, I screamed again. Katy poked her head into the closet “Looks like we caught Pancake as well…”

We had placed a third trap in the far back end of the closet. At this time, it was concealed, so Katy grabbed the broom and pulled it into view. As she pulled it, we saw another long tail dragging behind it.

“And Crepe too!” Katy said, looking away.
“We’re running out of breakfast foods.” I said, clutching into her back.

We were confused as to how to feel. On one hand, we had killed three mice in one night. On the other, we had been working under the misguided conception that we had been dealing with one mouse. I think deep down, we both understood that there were more, and our slaughter had forced to face reality.

We took turns sweeping their carcasses into the trash can. As Katy swept hers, the little mouse body kept getting caught on the lip of can. Repeatable, she banged the deceased mouse hard against the plastic container. “stop! STOP!” I shouted, “He’s already dead! HE’S ALREADY DEAD!”

We held each other’s hands like two little girls as we carried the trash bag to the street corner, leaving the scene of the mousey massacre. We walked to the curb with a sense of accomplishment, like the victors of an epic battle. Oh, the wars not over, I'm sure. But I just hope mice think twice about sticking their nose in my apartment.

The END (?)

2006-11-17T20:28:00.000-08:00

Waffle must Die, Part I.

I can say without hyperbole, that finding an apartment in New York is the hardest thing anyone has ever had to do, ever. Finding my current apartment was an absolute unholy nightmare. To be honest, I still haven’t recovered from the experience – not enough to write about it in my blog at least. That, my friends, is a story for another day.

No, this is a much different tale. To set the scene, let me first give you a little background information. After a horrifically traumatic search, my friend Katy and I finally found an apartment we could agree on. It’s big, in a nice neighborhood, and cheap. We thought we were in Heaven…or at least Purgatory…or at least not in Hell anymore.

So together, the two of us moved into our new apartment in early September. It remained sparse, however…mostly because I had volunteered to furnish it, and well frankly, I suck. It was hard to feel comfortable in a place that’s only seating consisted of a broken recliner, and as a result, I shied away from inviting friends to come visit me.

My friend Kathy came in town however, and was excited to come see my new place. How could I say no to Kathy? When Kathy asks you if she can come over, you say yes dammit. So I invited her and her fiancé John to dinner, and in a raging panic, I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom. Worried that word my get out of how I live in squalor, I enlisted the help of Katy. As I turned a broken stool into a decorative end table, Katy recovered two kitchen chairs with an old curtain. We then split up and scrubbed down every square inch till the stench of bleach brought tears to our eyes. By the end, the place looked better than it ever had. Katy and I admired our work, and for the first time, I felt like I was home.

Kathy and John’s visit only affirmed my sense of comfort. Despite the lack of seating, they both complimented the apartment. I was both relieved and excited. Maybe my apartment wasn’t a shit hole after all.

Wrong.

I walked my friends to the bus stop, and then ran back to tell Katy all the great things they had said about our apartment. “WE FOOLED THEM INTO THINKING WE LIVE LIKE ADULTS!” I started to shout. But as I opened the door, I came upon a bazaar scene that stopped me dead in my tracks. Katy, in her pajamas, stood atop one of her newly refinished curtain chairs, hoisting a cardboard box above her head. I stood in the doorway, the door still open behind me, and she turned and stared at me. Her eyes were big, and for a long moment, we just stared at each other.

I waited for an explanation, and when one didn’t come, I finally asked “Um, what the fuck are you doing Katy?”

There was another pause...with us just staring at each other. And then finally, Katy gathered herself and said in a low whisper:

“Mouse.”

“Fucking A!” I shouted. I hate mice. I hate mice more than I hate the Olsen Twins. They disgust me, with their beady eyes and long tails. I hate them. I fucking hate them.

“I saw him run into the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I think he went under the stove.” Katy told me as she climbed down off the chair.

“What are you doing with the box?” I asked.

“Well, I was going to throw on top of him and trap him in it,” she told me. I didn’t need to tell her she was a giant idiot (although I may have anyway, I don’t quite remember). She pretty much figured it out before she could complete her explanation, and without a breath she tacked on “I WAS PANICKED! WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE GRABBED, MACGYVER?!”

Silence fell between the two of us. We looked at the ground, and then at eachother.

“Can we name him?” I asked.

“NO YOU CAN’T NAME THE DAMN MOUSE! WE HAVE TO KILL HIM! ARE YOU INSANE?”

Silence, again. After a moment, Katy looked at the stove, and then back at me.

“How about Waffle?”

to be continued…

2006-10-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

So What do you Do?

I hate meeting new people. Most of you know this about me. When put into social settings, you can usually find me in the corner next to the beer, with my arms folded over my chest, and what many strangers have noted as a “grumpy looking face.” I seriously have yet to go to a bar without someone coming over to me and asking “what’s it going to take to get you to smile?” or the slightly less flattering “what the hell is your problem?”

Why the awkwardness? I’m not very good at making small talk. In college, when meeting new people, it was always “so…what’s your major?” I liked talking about my major as much as people liked listening to me talk about it. I looked forward to graduation, but found that this question was only replaced with “so…what do you do?”

“What do you do?” What kind of bullshit question is that anyway? I do a lot of shit. I laugh at hobos. I eat breath mints I find on the floor. I snack on bacon bits as if they were potatoes chips. I watch Golden Girls reruns every night at 11. As for what I do for a living…well, that’s a little more complicated, and I don’t see why I should have to explain every time I meet somebody new.

When people ask you “so what do you do?” they’re looking for a one to two word summation, tops. They don’t really care about what you do, it’s just a formality. It’s the same as asking someone how they’re doing. You don’t want their life story. You want “fine” or maybe even an “alright?” That’s it. Anything more is unwelcomed. Same goes when you ask someone what they do. You want a quick answer, like “fireman,” or “ventriloquist,” or “child pornographer.”

When I first started working at my new job, I didn’t know how to sum up what I did into a concise answer. Time and time again, I would watch as people eyes glazed over in the middle of my explanation. “Well, it’s complicated” I would warn. “Change the subject now” was what I was really trying to say. I would begin my rant as if reading from a script…”I work at an agency that represents hair and makeup artists, set designers, and wardrobe stylists….” I hated myself for saying it, but frankly, they asked for it. I had to give a long, drawn out speech. I didn’t know what else to say! What was I suppose to tell them? “I don’t want to talk about it.” They had backed me into a corner, and force me to be that guy that no one likes – the guy who talks about his job as if others might care. It disgusted me, talking about my job, and I could tell it disgusted others just listening to it. Most of the time, people would either start talking to someone else as soon as I had finished, or they would completely misunderstand what I said. “So, you’re a makeup artist?”

I told my aunt Shelia about my problem, and she told me she always felt the same way. “I tell people I’m a professional juggler,” she told me. “When I first met your uncle, I knew he was the man for me when he asked ‘Have you ever tired using live chickens in your act?’”

So following my aunt Shelia’s lead, I reinvented myself with every conversation. Sometimes I was a subway driver. Sometimes I was a pet store owner. But mostly, the best I could come up with was “Uh….juggler….” I had to stop though. The guilt was becoming too much, not only for stealing my aunts line, but for butchering as badly as I did. My delivery, must often retarded by alcohol, came out mangled and deformed…something like “Juggler…chickens…alive….use….me?”

So, after struggling with lying, I decided honesty was the best policy. People asked me what I did, I was straight up about it. “I answer the phones, clean out the fridge, and make copies of really tiny receipts taped to big pieces of paper.” The reaction I got was amazing. “ME TOO!” they would shout. A small congregation of no-bodies would form around me. “Don’t you hate it when papers get clogged into the copier?” They would ask. “What’s the deal with powdered toner?”

Some time, well after I had come to terms with my inability to sum up my occupation into an acceptable three word answer, I was asked to post a job listing for an intern. I asked the girl next to me “What do you think a good title for the ad should be?” She responded “How ‘bout ‘Artist Management Agency seeks intern’”

And there it was. Artist Management Agency. Perhaps I could converse like a normal person after all. Although it's doubtful. I’ve found that conversations about anything other than ink cartridges and recycled paper bore me.

2006-07-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Website.

Earlier this summer, I bought a website to use as an online portfolio while I was applying for jobs online. I never told my friends about it because I didn't want them going on it and messing up the counter, which I was using to track how many employers were actually looking at my resume. But now that I have a job, I figure I'll let you all go nuts. Enjoy!

www.christopherjmiles.com

(it was that or bigdirtyslutsinyourface.com. I stand by my decision)

2006-07-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

Big News!

I have some big news people. The last two months have really been draining. Living at home, going to the pool everyday, and never paying for anything can really be exhausting. But THANKYFULLY this will all being coming to a screeching halt in the not-so-distant future. That’s right people. I would like to officially announce that I finally got a job.

Many of you thought it would never happen. I forgive you assholes, because frankly, I didn’t either. Up until last week, I had tried nothing to get a job, and I was running out of ideas. But then…it happened.

For the last week, I’ve been in New York, interviewing like a mad man. My friend/hero Shawn had me running around town, interviewing with just about anyone who would see me. By Thursday, I was beat. My feet were bruised in bloody from running around in the shoes that Shawn gave me to wear (yes, not only did Shawn and his officemates set up all my interviews, but they also gave me clothes to wear to them. Who are these people?) My back hurt, and I had sweated through my last pair of underwear. Without any promising leads, I was downtrodden.

But Shawn called and woke me up at 8:30. “What are you still doing in bed you lazy slut?!” he shouted. “I have two interviews for you today, and I have a feeling about these ones. I predict you’ll have a job by the end of the day.”

So I went to the two interviews, and by the end of the day, I had not one, but two job offers.

So there it is. The job I picked is at this amazing production company that represents stylists and designers who work in fashion, and also on commercials. I start on Monday, so I’m moving up to NYC this Friday. I’m a little nervous about everything, mostly because I don’t have an apartment lined up yet. I’ll just be bouncing around, between staying with friends and house sitting until I get a place of my own. But it’s really exciting, having my first real job and moving to New York by myself. I think it’s official. Little Chrissy is all grown up.

Tear.

2006-07-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

Must See New York

I wouldn’t say that I’m a complicated man. For the most part, I can keep myself pretty well entertained. Movies, plays, concerts, foxy boxing, are all fine, but unnecessary. I much rather sit at home and twiddle my thumb (which, coincidently, is my code name for masturbating). However, being human, I do have certain weaknesses - things that I not only entertain me to no end, but that I actively seek out during my daily routine. These weaknesses include: hobos, reruns of My Two Dads, and of course, the elderly. Luckily for me, watching the aforementioned are usually free, but if there was a charge I would gladly pay it.

I’m currently staying in New York City, which shall henceforth be known as the Must-See-TV capital of hobo and the elderly watching. Usually it’s the simple things, like an 80 year old man holding up the cross-town bus as he pays his fare in pennies and nickels. Most people mutter something under their breath and return to reading their newspaper. Not me though. I move closer and root for him to drop his change purse or lose count so he’ll have to start over again. The other day at Duane Reid, I stood behind a woman who must have been in her mid 60’s. She had bleach blond hair, bright red lipstick all over her face, and a pink tank top that said “trash” across the chest. While I watched her argue with the cashier over the price of butterfly shaped hair clips, I thought to myself “turn this into a play, and I’d buy front row seats.”

And hobos I find equally amusing. I will gladly pay a dollar to any homeless person willing to entertain me with a song and dance – the more off-tune or the less appendages, the better.

But this afternoon I observed what could only be described as the “Who Shot J.R episode” of hobo and elderly watching. Returning home from an exhausting day of job hunting, I came back to my friend’s apartment to find the maid doing her dirty business. To get out of her hair, I grabbed a book and went down to the park at the end of the street. In route, a bird with terrific aim had what I would term “explosive diarrhea” all over my head. So, after returning to the maid-filled apartment once again, rinsing my hair and getting a hat, I was back on my way.

Now, having had a bird shit on my head, I wasn’t in the best of moods. All I wanted to do was lay down and watch some public access television, but I couldn’t. So there I sat, begrudgingly reading the Scarlet Letter on a bench.

I was getting into my book when I heard a commotion. Sitting across from me were three odd companions all together on a bench. One was an elderly woman. Had I not seen some sort of nurse-companion dump her there, I would have assumed she had lived in that very spot for years. People that old don’t move. She was tiny and withered, and covered in liver spots. In stark contrast to her 100 year old face, her hair was amusingly dyed bright red, with lipstick and clothing equally as bright. I’m sure whoever her stylist is gets some sort of sick pleasure dressing her – like kids in a biology class playing with a skeleton model.

Next to her was a fat, bearded hobo. He looked like a laid-off Santa Claus, covered in dirt from head to toe. His white beard had turned yellow, and his white t-shirt had turned brown. He puffed away at a pipe, only furthering the Santa Claus look.

Next to him was a well dressed, elderly black man, I’m guessing to be in his mid 60s. By the time I observed the strange trio, elderly black man had jumped out of his seat and grabbed his cane in one swift move. On his face, he wore a look mixed with horror and anger. He looked back at the hobo and yelled, “did you just shit yourself?!”

The hobo looked at him, and with an unchanging expression, and started rattling off gibberish I couldn’t understand. I thought perhaps I couldn’t understand him because I was too far away, so I moved closer. However, on closer inspection, it was, in fact, pure gibberish.

“You STINK!” screamed the old guy.
“Dan shoot todd ricky yo,” said the hobo.

Unphased by the nonsensical ramblings, the old guy continued to argue with the hobo, who remained fixed in his seat next to the old woman. “You STINK!” was his mantra. His emphasis on “stink” not only implied that the man smelled bad, but that he should be damned to Hell for it. He repeated it over and over again, as if yelling at him would make the stink go away. The old man didn’t move away from the smell, however, as I would assume the most rational plan of action after encountering a stinky hobo would be. He just stood there, in the very same spot only a foot away, and screamed “You STINK!” over and over again.

A few minutes passed, and the old man was now walking around the bench in circles, repeating loudly “You STINK! You STINK!” The hobo was continuing to spout off his own line of argument, “Ho blahrahblah dan jah mink stood pooh rah.” At this point, the hobo started laughing to himself. The old guy disappeared. And the elderly woman, who up until this point had yet to so much as blink, shot up as rapidly as she could, and started wobbling towards a seat near me. I wasn’t sure if she was actually walking, or simply vibrating along, but I could tell – this was as fast as this thing go could.

“YOU FUCKING SHAT YOURSELF AGAIN YOU CRAZY MOTHER FUCKER!” screamed the disembodied voice of the old guy who was hiding somewhere. The hobo just laughed.

The old woman had settled in a seat next to me. The excited look that had sprung across her face had disappeared, and had returned to the blank expression from before. I leaned over and said in a loud voice, “So is it true what they? Does that guy stink?” She didn’t so much as blink.

A few minutes later, and the hobo was up and moving. The old guy had sprung forth as if from no where, and was once again yelling his two word mantra “You STINK!” The fact that the hobo only spoke in word fragments only incensed the old guy more. As I got up to leave, I could still hear him shouting “You STINK! You STINK!”

And for the first time, I thought to myself, “I love New York.”

2006-07-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

Strangers with Candy

the Movie.

I was in NYC for the 4th of July this year, and BryGuy and I decided to celebrate God’s creation of the United States of America by watching a recovering 46 year old alcoholic go back to high school. It was a hard decision, between fireworks and the Strangers with Candy movie, but Strangers with Candy won out (although if I had know that Liza Minelli was going to perform pseudo-live, I would have reconsidered…) Now, I’m not one for movie reviews, but I thought I would give the Strangers with Candy movie a piece of my mind.

Most people that know me know that I’m a huge SwC fan. Huge I tell you. I’ve seen every episode, and even forced my 50 some year old parents to watch them with me. So I was anxious to see it, however I have to be honest with you here. I was really disappointed.

Bryguy loved it, and everyone else in the theatre seemed to like it too (although they may have been having sex with each other. The theatre was in Chelsea after all). I, however, left wanting.

Now, it definitely had its moments, for example;
Megawatti – Are you thinking about joining the science fair?
Jerri – No, I’m thinking about pussy.

However, I would say overall that the plot was incredibly weak and jokes were simply re-hashed junk from the show. I mean, I like re-hashed junk from the show, but I wanted new junk. Fresh junk. Better junk. Amy Sedaris, God knows I love you, but couldn’t you try just a little harder? Couldn’t you do a little better than this, than this monstrosity? I mean science fair? Really? Are you serious? Are you seriously going down the science fair route? Because I think you could do better.

What I’m saying here is that while it was ALRIGHT, it wasn’t what I had come to expect from my little Amy Sedaris who I love so dearly. So, while I would recommend seeing it – perhaps if it comes to video, I wouldn’t STRONGLY recommend seeing it. But God Damn, I do love Amy Sedaris.

Better luck next time kid.

2006-07-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Always a Brides Maid…

There comes a point in every boy’s life where he must watch his older brother get married. Well…every boy who has an older brother. Well…every boy who has an older brother that gets married. Anyway, Saturday was my turn, and what a magical evening it was. I got to watch my older/taller/more gainfully employed brother marry a wonderful young woman, all within full reach of an open bar.

The festivities weren’t without a few minor setbacks. There were the parents who were unacquainted with the benefits of “getting directions,” or “bringing a map.” Then there was the limo driver who was unfamiliar with the complex workings of “air-conditioning” as well as “the pant zipper.” My cunting date didn’t consider it rude to “stand me up.” And who could forget the caterers who, in their entire three weeks in this great country, had yet to be introduced to “a keg.”

But in the hole…the night was an astounding success (and how could it not be with an open bar?). The one groomsmanly job bestowed upon me was that I was put in charge of taking the “do you have any thing to say to the bride and groom” video. Selecting me for this task would be something my older brother would soon regret. As the night got progressively…drunker, the more cleavage appeared in my video. By the end of the video, it didn’t matter who was I taping…CLEAVAGE. 400 lbs? Didn’t matter. 60 years old? Didn’t matter. My grandmother? Didn’t matter. If they had breasts, my camera was pointed down their shirt.

So good times were had by all. Congrats T.J. and Heidi. Love you guys.

2006-06-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

My Fifteen Seconds.

So late last night, while in the midst of expelling the last bit of Don Pablo’s from my fragile digestive system, my dear friend Katy called me to catch up. Like a password into a secret club, we asked the obligatory question:

“You still jobless?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah.”

Had the answer been “No” the conversation would have quickly ended. The thing about being jobless is you don’t want to waste time speaking to people with a pay check, unless perhaps they’re going to throw a couple dollars your way. But being unemployed, Katy and I were free to talk to one another, and immediately started playing the “Whose has the Bleakest Job Prospects” game. Katy quickly won with her:

“Last week I worked as the camera woman for Loudoun County Access Television. Twice.”

Well done Katy. Well done.

Her story reminded me of an event that transpired only a few short weeks ago, and I promptly interrupted her to talk more about myself.

I was up in New York for a job interview. After blowing my chance to work with a big time Broadway castor (who would later describe me as “quiet and hard to read”), I decided to call my friend Kathy and see if she wanted to hang. We met up, and by foot, traveled to the Met where we spent the afternoon. After walking around the Met for a couple hours, we walked back to the apartment, and collapsed.

Both of our legs were so sore from all the aforementioned walking that we could hardly stand, which was probably God’s way of punishing me for mocking the one-legged woman that cut in front of me in the Met ticket line. Together, Kathy and I sprawled out on the carpet in front of the TV, with the hopes that we would soon regain feeling in our lower extremities. To pass the time, we flipped through the television, when we came across the most awesome show I had ever seen.

I had committed the New York Cable Access station to memory, as late at night it provides the highest quality D-rated pornography the City has to offer. While these shows aren’t exactly “arousing,” they make for good drinking games. “Drink anytime Robin Byrd licks her own nipple.” “Drink any time the phrase dirty horny slut Asian nurses is used.”

I had known of the pleasure of cable access at night, but was unfamiliar of the incredible programming they provide during the day. Kathy flipped to the channel at my command, and there we watched what I believe was called the “Bob and Carol Hour,” but I could be mistaken. Bob and Carol were in what I would guess to be their mid to late thirties. Neither was what one would consider “decent looking” by any stretch of the imagination. They weren’t exactly hideous, but instead what I would classify as “mildly ugly.” Carol, with her bleached permed hair, and Bob with his pleated shorts, sat in metal folding chairs in front of grey sheet and beside some piece of large computer equipment. There, they covered all the day’s pressing issues, like Brangelina’s baby, and why bad waiters suck.

Bob and Carol delivered their witty banter straight into the camera, with their heads locked into position like one of those talking animatronic bears you see in amusement parks. The discussion went a little something like this:

Carol- So in news today, I see that Brangelina had its baby. I bet they name it something stupid.
Bob- What’s the deal with celebrities naming their children stupid names?
Both- HAHAHAHAHA.
Carol- You’re funny.
Bob- I know. Now, moving onto our next topic.

I sat up, and with bright eyes I said to Kathy, “This is awesome!”

Kathy said “I have to go to the bathroom.” She apparently lacks the enthusiasm I have for really bad television.

Around this time they start flashing a number at the bottom of the screen. Bob and Carol, having just shared their observations on how taxicab drivers don’t speak English very well, were now taking their first caller.

“Call-in show?!” I asked myself. I knew what had to be done.

I quickly grabbed the phone and dialed the number flashing at the bottom of the screen. I called while Bob talked about how Regis always wears solid colored ties. It rang and rang and rang, until Bob finally looked down and said “well, our phone is ringing off the hook! Better take one of these calls.”

I heard the line beep in. What was I going to say? Something witty and clever no doubt. Something hysterical that I could tell everyone at cocktail parties. Something that I could send into “Life in these United States.” It was going to be something so incredibly funny and perfect that it would be what the entire city of New York would talk about the next day.

About this time Kathy walked out of the bathroom. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Hello?” Bob asked.

Here was my moment to shine.

“um…is Kathy there?” was the something I came up with.

Bob and Carol looked at each other in disbelief. Then they looked back at the camera, with a grin that says “I’m wearing my funny hat.” If I was going to be tremendously clever and witty by pretending to have called the number, well then they were going to be just as clever and witty in their retort.

“Kathy’s not here” was what they came up with. They laughed.

“Oh,” I said, “Kathy gave me this number and told me to call her.”

Bob and Carol grin mischievously. They were really up to something and hilarity would ensue!

“Kathy is here, she just can’t come to the phone right now. Can we take a message?” They tired to silence their laughter but found it difficult. This sure was ground breaking television.

By this point I had grown weary of the conversation. It had gone as far as I knew how to take it. It was time for my grand finale’.

“Fuck you guys! You don’t know Kathy! This is the wrong number.” And I hung up.

Bob and Carol were spitting out their next hilarious line as I hung up, but failed to get it out in time. They looked at each other, still laughing at their tomfoolery. “That reminds me. Don’t you hate telemarketers?” Bob said.

And that was that. My fifteen seconds of fame.

2006-06-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

cut it out!!!

In a desperate attempt to find work and get out of my house, I’ve been sending my resume’ out like a mad man. Mostly because if I have to sit through one more Paula Dean marathon I think I will die. Like, the next time I hear her say “From my kitchen to Your’ns,” my head will literally explode. Literally.

This is how I’ve been going about it. Craiglist now has job listings on there. Have they always had job listings? Who knows, but the point is they have them now, and I’ve been whoring myself out on them like it ain’t not thang. So, every night I search through these job listings in the field of my choice, and respond to about 10 or 15 of them. I send along my little resume’ along with a link to my online portfolio, and hope for the best.

Well, as of last Friday I was all ready to give this method a rest. I had sent my resume’ out to countless postings and heard nothing. Not a damn word. I put a tracker on my online portfolio, and the only person to have visited it was in Duluth. I don’t even know where Duluth is.

So I’m already to give up, but then I found this listing on there. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was like someone knew I was looking for work and they tailored it just for me. The listing described a small Northern Virginia advertising agency in need of a jr. graphic designer. “Our clients include fortune 500, and other big names. We’re a small office that has a lot of fun, and we’re looking for someone to join the team.”

“We’re looking for a Jr. Graphic Designer for our In-House design” – check. I’m a Graphic Designer, and I’m…a …Jr.

"Who has experience in advertising” – check. Worked at a top NYC ad agency.

“Must have a portfolio!” – check.

“and who is FUN!!!” – Fun? I’m fun – fun in lowercase, but I think I could pass for “FUN!!!”

My faith in craigslist restored, I slaved over the ideal cover letter. I needed something that said “FUN!!!” without being too “FUN!!!” My first draft had jokes such as “I have a PhD in PHUN!” and “I have my own transportation – a ’93 Buick Station Wagon known to me as DJ Jazzy Jeff.” I showed a friend to see if I had reached the desired level of “FUN!!!” I was looking for. His response…”This will be our little secret.”

I spent days brainstorming ideas for it. Back to square one, I took out the jokes, loosened up the language, and added an “Oh, and by the way, I’m fun. Very fun,” at the end.

Now, having crafted the perfect cover letter, I hurried to send it off. I pulled up the listing and copied the email off of it. I pasted it in my email, when I noticed something about this perfect add…something I hadn’t noticed before. The email was to soinso@SUPERCOUPS.BIZ. “Supercoups?” I asked myself. I wonder…

So I put “supercoups” into a google search. What comes up?

Supercoups – “Are you intrigued by the idea of owning your own business? Does an opportunity that fully utilizes your sales expertise, can be run from your home, and has low start-up costs sound right for you? SuperCoups offers the flexibility, independence and income potential you seek combined with the strategies, support and tools you need.”

What are the tools you would need? COUPONS. Yes…SuperCOups is a franchised coupon business. I would be designing COUPONS.

How is that an advertising firm? Why would I need a fucking portfolio for that? Does the Raisin Bran ad really need that level of artistic eye? By “In-house design” do they really mean…in their house?? What is wrong with these people? I spent days on my cover letter. DAYS! And for what? So that I could get an interview at a coupon factory? A COUPON FACTORY?

Ugh…that is it Craigslist. You have gone too far.

2006-06-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Funny Asians

I thought this was funny. The other day I went to this Korean dry cleaners and dropped some shit off. The guy at the counter asked me for my name, and I figured since he seemed to be struggling with English, I would spell it out for him. This is what he wrote...

2006-06-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

Poofy Haired Freak

Dear Blog Readers,

My job search currently has me too depressed to write about my life. Instead, I will amuse you with this picture from my childhood. Please enjoy.

Christopher

Me- Circa 1995. 5th grade Field Day.

I would like to note that while the shirt was made for Field Day Festivities, it DID manage to work its way into my regular wardrobe. I would also like to note that that is how my hair looked on a day to day basis.

2006-05-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

Job Interviews

the second installment of my Major Life Events series

Soon after my final final, I packed my bag and took the ching chong bus straight up to NYC. For those of you just tuning in, I lived in New York last summer and interned at an advertising agency called Lloyd and Company (www.lloydandco.com), and it was pretty damn awesome. Lloyd and Co focuses on fashion advertisements, along with other fashion endeavors, and my boss Carole put me in charge of all the model casting she didn’t want to deal with. It was a rough job, but someone had to do it. Models would stream in all day, every day, with their portfolio’s in hand. It was as if all my years of making fun of ugly people had finally paid off. Yearning for more, I called a few of my friends up there to take them up on their offer to find me a job – whether they liked it or not.

When I arrived, I first met up with my friend Shawn – who happens to be my father’s sister’s husband’s brother (or uncle-in-law as some might say). Being so closely related, Shawn had helped me get the internship at Lloyd. He’s pretty much one of the most awesomest people alive – brutally honest – but awesome. Shawn’s the kind of guy who can tell you that your portfolio looks like “crap,” call you a “flaming retard,” and tell everyone you’re from Arkansas, but do so in an endearing, kindly way. Like I said – awesome.

So I met with Shawn, and he arranged for me to go on two interviews with different casting agencies. Casting agencies are companies that contracted out to hire models for companies who are too busy to look at beautiful people all day. So Shawn sent me on my way, with two appointments to meet with who I shall call BP and AW.

Tuesday night I was a nervous wreck. The last job interview I had was 3 years ago at Nordstrom, where they asked me things like “Tell of us a time where you experienced flow” (to which I responded “No, I’m a boy). I spent about 3 hours picking out what I was going to wear, and then around midnight I figured I should probably get directions to their offices and print up a resume’.

Wednesday, I thought I would start the morning off right with a nice long shower. I got out and wiped down the steamy mirror so that I could practice smiling, when I saw it. It was right there, staring me in the face, mocking me. No practicing smiles this morning. No. It put an end to that. For all the days for this to happen…why it had to happen two hours before my first major interview is beyond me. Why, why on my first day in the so called “real-world” did I have to get my first…

Grey hair.

I didn’t know what to do with it. I’m not familiar with these things. Do you pluck them? Do you leave them in? Do you burn them with a match and throw them in the toilet? Run from them in a zig-zag line? I decided to leave it in. Maybe it was a good luck them.

Probably not, judging by my first interview. It was with BP. I could tell in the first minute I walked in that this was probably not going to go well for me. The office consisted of one tiny square room with a table in the center and a computer off to the side. Three women and a dog sat crammed inside it, like clowns in a clown car. My doubts of them hiring my came from the simple logical question – if I were to work here, where would I fit?

As I walked in, BP asked me to remove my shoes. “Oh, if you wouldn’t mind, please take off your shoes” – she said, nonchalantly. I did so with that unquestioning interview gusto, but inside my head was spinning with questions. Is this a joke? Is this a test? Am I on crack? Why would they ask me to remove my shoes, but then let some dog stroll around, tracking in his filth at his own leisure? Isn’t he carrying the same sort of shit you take off your shoes to avoid tracking in?

But whatever, I took my shoes off and sat down. At least I was wearing clean socks – clean socks that match.

So BP looked over my resume. She started off easy with questions like “So…you went to school in VA?” Like every other employer I’ve ever met with, she had no idea what UVA was. Then she drilled me about this and that – a million and one things that I didn’t know about.

I even used the term "Hand Job" to refer to my experience casting a hand model. She laughed in my face.

It seemed like an hour. In actually it was 4 minutes total. It took me longer to take my shoes off and put them back on then it did to have the actual interview. At the end she concluded by saying “well, I’m not really looking for another assistant now, but maybe in September….” That’s where I stood up promptly, shook her hand and thanked her, and pieced the fuck out. I don’t believe in that awkward lingering.

My second interview went much better. It was with AW, another big caster. When walking over to his office I planned on opening with a line like “at least you don’t ask me to take off my shoes like that BP.” I got there, and he answered the door to his apartment like office. He was an attractive man – very friendly and warm. I was thinking to myself “wow, things are turning up” when he turned to me and said “I hope you don’t mind…but would you remove your shoes?”

But AW and I hit it off, at least in my mind we did. He showed me some of his work and looked over my resume’ We talked about Lloyd, and about Carole (my old boss) and Shawn and about how cool they are. And then off I went.

AW told me he would email me. And he did. I had bought a thank you card and was in the process of sending it when I got an email from him. “Christopher, It was a pleasure meeting you. Peace, Andrew”

Can anyone tell me what that means? I’ll just assume it means that I’m hired and that I should come in on Monday.

So, for you wondering what I’m doing with my life, there it is. I have one other possibility of working with BT – who’s this big time Broadway casting director who needs an assistant for this movie he’s working on next. The VP of Lloyd knows him and made a call for me. I’m just waiting to hear back from him. So there it is. There you have it. No need to ask me what I’m doing with my life, cause that’s all I got.

2006-05-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

I’m sure you’ve all noticed my blogery absence. My apologies. I know how you all live from post to post - your cursor steadily floating above the refresh button with the hopes that I have posted sometime within the last 20 seconds. However, the last few weeks have been packed with life-altering events…so much so, I haven’t been able to find time to sit down and write about them.

Now, when I made this blog, I set out to create a space where I could relive all the inane and inconsequential misadventures that make up my day to day life. I wanted to avoid dry posts about where my life is going etc, why? Because I had my doubts that anyone really cares. But judging by the number of times I’ve had to answer “so what now,” I’ve considered the possibility that I may be wrong.

So to give you insight as to what I’ve been planning to do with my life, I’m going to recap the major events of the last couple weeks. I’m going to do so in a series of installments. Tonight’s is the story of my very last examination ever. Please, enjoy.

Final Final

On April the 12th, at approximately 9 am, I took my very last final of my college career. I would have been excited, however the Powers that Be decided to place my hardest final on the very last day of the examination period. (Here’s a fun Chris Miles fact for you. I have had a final on the last day of the examination period every semester since my very first 4 years ago. What are the fucking chances?) Earning my politics degree hinged on me getting a C in this class that I was currently holding a B- in. To make matters worse, the final was identifying 10 quotes pulled from the 9 books we were supposed to have read throughout the semester – of which I had read none. I hadn’t even opened one. THAT’S ME!

So for the 24 hours before the exam, I read as much as was humanely possible – or at least as much as was Chrisely possible. In a panic fury, I tried to cram as much modern political theory into my weary head. I poured over Spark Notes, skimmed over the texts, and tried my best to read my notes from class – with little luck. I use to think it was sooooooooo funny that instead of taking notes in that class, I would do Su DoKu. Hilarious right? Well fucking joke was on me. My notes were as useless as male nipples. And that’s why my notes ended up in the toilet. Literally. I flushed them in a fit of rage.

So, at 8:20, I made my way to the shuttle, 100% certain I was going to fail. Instead of studying, at that point I thought it wiser to practice what I was going to tell my parents. Perhaps blame the test, or the teacher, or my t.a., or Satan, or Democrats, or Sinead O’Connor (fucking bald headed bitch). This is how bad it was – when I was crossing the street, I genuinely contemplated throwing myself in front of an oncoming vehicle. I can’t take the test if I’m under a Pathfinder.

As I approached Minor Hall, I stepped on a squirrel. I’m not even kidding. I stepped on a live squirrel. What kind of omen is that? He ran in front of me, and stopped just long enough to end up beneath my foot. I guess he was on his way to an exam too. I stepped on the edge of his tail, and he jumped up and ran away. I didn’t hear if he screamed or not. I was screaming too loudly to hear any noise. Screaming like a woman.

Now, I’m guessing squirrel crushing is a good omen, because when I was handed the exam, I actually recognized the first quote. It was amazing. And as I read on, I knew more and more. The things I had scrambled to shove into my brain as I was running out the door actually stuck. I was all over that exam. I actually said “yessssssssssss” in that hushed way that’s quiet and under your breath, but just loud enough for everyone to hear you and rightly mock you.

End of the story – I did well on the final and ended up with a B in the class. Truly a miracle. It sucked that my last final had to be the hardest final I’ve had to date. It sucked that it has to have the most riding on it, but I did the damn thing, and I did it pretty damn well if I do say so myself. So fuck you Kant. Fuck you Marx. Fuck you Hegal, Hume, and Mill. If I never have to read your shit again it would be too soon.

2006-05-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Why I’m a giant asshole.

We’ve all had those moments in life that you just wish never happened. I’m not just talking about embarrassing shit – not the stuff you’ll be able to laugh off in a week with friends. No unzipped flies. No slips on the stairs of Cabell. No, I’m talking about the stuff that will wake you in bed from a peaceful sleep and cause you to shiver. I’m talking about the time in middle school you threw up on the most popular girl in school and made her cry. I’m talking about the time you mistakenly thought it would be funny to freak-dance your grandmother at kitchen table. That’s the shit I’m talking about. (And coincidently, I’ve done both. And it was not funny)

Well today I had one of those moments. Honestly, it pains me to relive it long enough to write this blog entry, but I thought it would be best to just get it out of the open.

So let me first set the scene for you. Today I had a final in this bullshit class I’m taking – Soc of Death and Dying. Now, surprisingly for a joke of a class, this final was pretty damn intense, and I knew that coming into it. I wasn’t going to worry about it though. I could give two shits about this class, so the game plan was to intentionally fail in flames of failing glory – just because I could. However, that UVA nerd from within kicked in last night, and I decided to pull an all-nighter to cram in a semesters’ worth of reading.

Sad to say, I’m not the young and spry kid I once was. This was the most difficult all-nighter that I’ve endured to date. It was a painful, painful struggle, but I made it – just barely though. I was a mental wreck by 8:30 when I left to take the exam. My hands were shaking from all the caffeine I had downed. My legs were trembling from the lack of sleep. I tried to speak to my roommate on the way out, but words didn’t come out - just a mixture of consonants and spittle.

I remembered on the bus ride over that I needed a bluebook, so on my way I ran into the bookstore to grab one. I got one and hauled ass to my exam – as hauled as this ass will go anyway. However, the detour ate up too much time, and I was late.

So I get to the class about five minutes late. In a sleep-crazed delirium, I rushed into the classroom. Now, this is where things get blurry. Don’t ask me to justify my actions, because I can’t. I honestly can’t. It was as if I left my body and some other socially retarded entity took control.

So here’s what went down.

The room is packed. The professor is standing at the front of the room doing the usual drill. “Write your TA’s name under section” he’s saying. People are scribbling away. I walk around, when I see on someone’s desk what looks to be an exam.

“Maybe they’ve already handed out the exam” I think to myself.

So I walk to the front of the room – the very front, and stop about ten feet away from the Professor. And there I stand. He’s still talking about names and dates etc., when he notices me standing there, staring at him.

While in mid-sentence, I interrupt him. “Have you passed out the exam?” I ask. He stops. Everything stops. People stop scribbling. No whispering. No rustling. It’s silent. They’re all looking at me. The TA’s are looking at me. The professor is looking at me – his mouth agape.

Moments pass in silence.

“What?!” he says. It wasn’t exactly a “what the fuck did you just say to me” kind of what, but it wasn’t a “pardon me sir, but I was unable to hear what you just said” what either.

“Did you…” – up until this point I was still in my daze, but this is about the moment when I realized what I was doing. It was too late though. It was too late to turn away. “…pass…out the…exam?”

People are laughing at me. The professor is still staring at me with disbelief. “…No” He finally responds.

I quickly turned away, horrified at what I had just done. I heard the professor make a sarcastic-filled nose snort (you know just what I’m talking about! I HATE THOSE), and more people laughed. I kept my head up though, trying not to wear my embarrassment on my face. Although, thinking about it now, that probably only made the situation worse. People probably thought to themselves “look at that tool! He’s an idiot and he doesn’t even know it.”

The worst part was there weren’t any seats, so I had to walk around with everyone still looking at me. I finally found a seat in the back next to some douchey looking frat boys. I quickly buried myself deep into the seat, and took off my sweater with the hopes that people wouldn’t recognize me without it.

They finally DID pass out the exam, and the TA handed me like 20, probably to add insult to injury. I took my exam, but all I could think about the entire time was about what an asshole I had made of myself. I looked to see if people were staring at me and saying to their friends “Look! There’s the asshole who asked if they had passed out exams already! What an asshole!” I tried to devise a plan that would allow me to turn in my exam without going back to the front of the room. "Perhaps I could make it into a paper airplane and see if could land it into the box" I thought to myself – doubtful considering I throw like a girl.

When I finished, having failed to devise a decent plan, I shuttled quickly to the front of the room and dropped off my bluebook. I left the room, never having to face those people again, thankfully. And yet, they’ll always be with me. They’re leering faces and snarky laughs will probably haunt me till the day I die.

Or at least the end of the week.

2006-05-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

Eval Time!

The end of the semester is upon us, and you know what that means – EVAL TIME! Professor Evaluations are seriously one of my favorite things in the entire world – up there with masturbating and Angela Lansbury. I take them VERY seriously. From the first day of class on, I begin taking notes in the back of my notebooks – extremely extensive notes. Every late arrival, every inane comment, every poorly worded test question, every unfunny joke, mispronounced word, ugly sweater, cough without covering mouth, funny odor, EVERYTHING goes in the notes.

Over the entire year, I’ll spend 50% of class time formulating the precise zinger I’m going to end my eval on (the other 50% is a combination of doing Su Doku and thinking if I were to create an Amusement park what it would look like). At the end of the year, when I’m handed that eval, I think to myself “thumbs up, or thumbs down?” I’ll look over my notes, and barring any major offensives, I usually will let them off easy. But if they’ve pissed me off…well…you better WATCH IT.

When a teacher has wronged me, I write my evals with one goal – make them cry. No shooting to wound here. In two to three lines, I want tears strolling down their face.

I’ve saved some of my best works, and I thought I would share them here with you. Some of them are a little harsh, so please be warned. If you’re the sensitive type…or one of my professors, you might want to look away. To the rest of you, please, enjoy.

A.B.-
I find the irony of a media studies professor that can’t work a VCR almost as amusing as her sweaters.

J.D.-
Did you know that there are 358.5 tiles on the ceiling in your classroom? I did!

T.D.-
I was genuinely surprised that a TA that struggles with the basics of English as much as he does - was able to pick up on how truly crappy my papers were. Well done.

L.B.-
You’re a little man.

C.H.-
The problem with this eval is that it has only given me one page to write on.

C.B.-
You think just because you have a PhD and a fun British accent that your shit don’t stink?

C.D.-
I calculated the ratio of questions asked to questions answered during his discussion group. For every 10 questions asked, Craig answered four. The other six were generally a combination of “I’ll turn that one over to the class” or “I don’t think you need to know that,” or my personal favorite, “scholars are unclear on that. Next question?”

S.M.-
Stephen Macko, you rock my world. I would bear your children if that were even physically possible.

H.E.-
I say this is all of my evals, but this time I think I actually mean it. She was the worst TA I’ve ever had.

J.P.-
Please buy another shirt.

J.LaP. -

I don't think I've witnessed a teacher yell at a student in the middle of class since elementary school. Thank you for that.

So okay, some of them were a little harsh. In my weaker moments, I almost pitied them, but then I remembered that they were trying to teach. I mean, I may be callous, but I am definitely a just man. A fair man. Yes, some of these may had been made mean spiritedly, but you’ll just have to trust me that they got what they were owed. So spare them your pity.

[at the advice of one of my overly cautious friends, i took the professors names down and replaced them with their initials. I figured it would probably be best to at least wait AFTER I got my grades to start publicly mocking them]

NOTE- If you've got something to say...then SAY IT. I've opened up comments to everyone, so dive on in.

2006-04-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Comics.

a friend of mine sent these to me and i thought i would share them with you. enjoy.

check out more at http://www.thepbf.com/

2006-04-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hammer Update.

As many of you know, I recently acquired a beta fish, who I’ve named Hammer. Given my long sordid history of fish killing (really more like fish genocide, considering I literally wiped out Charlottesville’s entire population of puffer fish); I thought I would give you a Hammer Update.

This Week’s Hammer Update:

Hammer is doing fine and well. No recent suicide attempts. His bubble nest is quite large at the moment, although his water levels are a little low and brackish. The feces at the bottom of his tank was recently cleaned, however this has been some slight accumulation since. Judging by the way he looks at me when I masturbate, I’m guessing he’s one of those gay beta fish, but that’s cool.

At this moment he is taking a shit.

Stay tuned for more Hammer Updates.