Half Past Awesome

There you go, again

MEN OUT THERE – Do YOU want to know how to read your spouse? Would you like to earn effusive praise, respect and undying love from the woman you’ve chosen as your partner in this crazy life? Want this tip free of charge, no strings attached? Then lean in close for a minute, I’ll whisper the answer I’ve stumbled upon after years of prodigious effort……

*you can’t win*

There. I’ve said it.

Look, I love my wife, I really do, and what I’d like more than anything is to be able to pave the path of our marriage as smoothly as I’m capable of doing. But, to continue this horrible analogy, the job-site plans keep changing on a moment by moment basis. Quite frankly I, and the rest of my gender, are quite incapable of comprehending the fluid dynamics that constitute the parry/thrust of communication  with our wives.

The tradition most guys bring to the table is to meet the threat of violence with escalation. It’s just the human male version of fight-or-flight. You do some tough guy posturing internationally? We will bomb your people back into the Stone Age. You make a freeway lane merge without proper signaling? Then there’s a good chance we’ll fly a finger, cut you off and behave like enraged silverback gorillas, and we don’t even know why. The same methodology applies to the way we approach trying to communicate with you, the spouse.

We want to get along. We want to keep your fury in check. We’d love to be able to read your minds and predict your moods, really. And you just won’t let us, so we react as we can, with confusion and senseless gesturing leading the way. Not coincidentally, we tend to appreciate the value of a good whiskey as we get older. We need you. According to you, we could not function without your intervention; we’d all be hopeless slobs who can’t ever find their keys, who rarely do laundry or eat anything that isn’t pre-processed and has various pig parts as the primary ingredient.

So, to further the species, to better society and because we tend to get lonely and tired of eating pig parts, we enter into binding contracts of various forms with you, the better gender. Easily talked into the most ridiculous behavior with the potential reward of seeing you naked, we begin to eat vegetables again and take jobs with good dental insurance. Mini-vans become “a good idea”. We develop a fine tune filter that you call “selective hearing” that allows us to go to our happy place while you inform us of all of our shortcomings. We seek out other housebroken males in similar situations and lament wasted youth and our collective shock at the migration of hair from our heads to our shoulders. For fucks’ sake, we wear KHAKI PANTS……WITHOUT IRONY.

We do all of this because…….well, I’m not really sure why, but I know it’s what I want to do. It’s called love and it’s covered in marriage, and I guess I should thank you. I am now in a place where, according to you, I would die if left to my own devices. Just tonight, I went to my boys football practice without him because he and I could not locate his jock nor his pants, and he didn’t want to go in his underwear and I was supposed to be coaching. Yes, you brought him a short time later when you used your magical Uterine Tracking Device to find his clothes, and for that I am grateful, eternally. But that look you gave me, the one where one eyebrow shoots skyward as if to say “shouldn’t there be a Lemon-Law in place for husbands like you?” I just love that one. All husbands do, and some of us take that look as a threat and we respond in kind. I’ve learned that’s not the best time to act on that emotion. So I roll my eyes, which, apparently only serves to anger you further. The best thing to do is to accept the fact that I’m never going to win, I’m never going to predict your emotions with any degree of accuracy and you’re always going to feel cheated in The Great Husband Lottery.

To concede at this point would be the smart thing to do. To learn the lesson I’d brought up earlier, about never winning, that might be wise.

But no one has ever accused me of being smart, much less wise.

If I was I probably wouldn’t have written this, either.

"I Am Dead To You"

I needed perspective. And perspective, it was given.

Last night I ran my iPod through a wash cycle at the firehouse. Much to my amazement and indignation, iPods don’t usually make the trip through the cycles of a washing machine very gracefully. The fury, slow to build at first, began to boil over within minutes. Stupidity, lack of attention to detail, general idiocy and a keen sense of self loathing all began to manifest until I began to seriously consider smashing my head into the station’s bench vise to atone for my sins. It didn’t help when I called home to confess my deeds of neglect and The Wife was not surprised in the least. She threw out terms like “typical” and “we can’t have anything nice” and punctuated her distaste with long exasperated sighs. I briefly considered sleeping in front of the rear axle of Engine 2, so that when they made the inevitable medical call in the middle of the night, purgatory through pain could be complete.

The ride home on my motorcycle this morning was a good chance to re-hash my wanton neglect. A rageful melancholy was consuming me, right up until a rogue grasshopper clocked me in the jaw (which, in case you’re wondering, feels as though you’re being slapped in the face with a condor). This was a jarring experience, to say the least, and reminded me of a call we made last night.

We’d just returned from a Public Education event on the south side of town. It was the first annual Epically Awesome Barbecue event at local hotspot The Metropolitan Grill with a portion of proceeds going to the police and fire departments as well as the Breast Cancer Foundation of The Ozarks, to name a few. It seemed to be well-attended, a good mingling with people who generally stick to that side of town. We were grateful to be included in the whole affair. But a common statement/question was thrown out there several times: “I bet you guys get to see alllll kinds of weird/strange/terrible stuff. What’s that like?” And, on our side of town? There’s never a shortage of crazy adventure.

Thirty minutes after leaving our friendly and comfortable south side hosts, we were responding to two assault victims in our own north side district. One patient was only three years older than I am, yet the result of a lifetime of bad choices, bad drugs, bad men revealed a woman broken and battered, toothless and disheveled. She and a girlfriend were moving stuff out of her house and an ongoing argument with her man led up to him attacking one of them with a brick and breaking a shovel handle over the back of the other. No one deserves abuse, but those that would harm women and children are especially vile and don’t deserve any grace from my perspective. These people, those that we serve on this side of town, they’re the ones who’ve hit the bottom. It’s not my responsibility how they got there, but it is our job to help them when they need us. Through her toothless ranting and screeching and most-likely inevitable return to that situation was a broken person beside that broken shovel handle. Weeping and wailing with soiled pants and a busted elbow, she was crying for help.

But life is not a cartoon, nor a rom-com movie with Julia Roberts and a happy ending; it’s not even a story of redemption, at least not for her. She’s hurt, she’s pissed that she’s pissed herself, she’s mad at the cops for not catching the guy right away (which they did within the hour) and she’s mad at us for not understanding her mushmouthed screaming. I cannot invest emotionally in each patient because to do that would equal a complete draining of any feeling I had left. We can offer her care and a moment of comfort and safety, a brief respite from the hellacious world of her own making. She was most likely high as a kite when we saw her (who can endure a shovel snapping across your back and still have the energy to carry on like that while sober?) and there’s a better than fair chance she’ll move back in with her abuser when released from the hospital.It’s a tragic and vicious cycle, and all we can do is respond to the worst of the situations and work towards making them a little better. A broken shovel, a broken iPod and a broken woman. Truly there are problems much greater than the extravagance of portable music on demand.

I’m pretty sure she’d be happy just to have a washing machine, much less a piece of electronics that, for some reason, cannot survive a spin cycle.

So, as I collected smashed grasshopper parts off my cheek and turned onto the road home, ready to face the exasperated jury of my wife and sons, the importance of an iPod and its demise came into a little better perspective.

I hope she finds the courage to change her situation.

And I hope The Wife doesn’t kill me out of frustration.

"Oh, it's not just the coffee that's hot, baby!"

Tonight I saw a picture of an old high school classmate and his friend at the foot of some Himalayan waters, beautiful mountains shrouded in cascading fog, the look of adventure fresh on their faces, as though they only stopped long enough to get the picture taken, and then it was off to start a revolution in some remote village.

That is not my life. Not in the least.

Let me tell you how my life is evolving.

This morning I was desperately trying to catch that last 13 minutes of sleep we all crave. You know the kind I mean: it comes right after one of your kids wakes you up to inform you of his latest revelation/breakfast demand and the next round of “snooze” on the alarm clock. It is a sacred time, indeed. It is the grown up version of the time in your 20′s when you clung to the base of the toilet, begging God to release you from this hangover with the vow to never, ever drink again, I promise, I swear, just make it go away, oooooh that toilet feels so nice and cool and next thing you know you wake up at 3pm in a puddle of your own vomit. That feeling.

So The Wife was attempting to shoo away the children in the hopes of robbing some heat from me at o’dark thirty, since she drops her thermostat from 118 degrees the night before to 17 degrees sometime in the midnight hour. She uses her icicle toes to ferret out any sort of heat that might still be available, an exercise I thoroughly don’t appreciate.

She tells Heathen #1: “Go away, Daddy & I need some snuggle time”. This is not nearly as racy as it sounds. I simply want those elusive 13 minutes of sleep and my wife wants to play Arctic Explorer with her toes. I hate her for this.

Heathen #1 responds with: “I know why you want us to leave. SO YOU CAN HAVE SEX.“

Good morning.

He is 7 years old. I curse like a lovesick sailor on shore leave around the firehouse, in the shop, at old ladies in traffic, but never around the boys. I’m a sick and twisted bastard, admittedly, but the boys have never even seen that side. I still use the word “potty” for the love of Jeebus; I don’t need my boys going to school loudly proclaiming they’re “slingin’ a deuce, gonna get rowdy”, which is exactly how one verbally addresses restroom needs while at the fire station.

So sex? I’ve never uttered the word around them, but the boy has my full attention now.

“What? I mean, let me repeat that WHAT? And WHERE did you hear that?”

“I dunno. “Allison” told me that word.”

“What do you think it means? And WHAT?”

“It means when two people take their clothes off and kiss. “Allison” says she’s had sex before.”

I find myself, at this point, looking around wildly for that gallon jug of bleach that I can throw at my boys’ mouth. This just won’t stand. I am not ready for this.

It was all fun and games when I caught him at age 2 wildly humping the protective rubber ducky that covered the bathtub spout: that’s just funny, and half the reason we became parents. I laughed, which only made him air hump faster, which made me laugh all the more, and thereby assured he knows deep down, somehow, that sex can be really funny.

But not like this. Not now. Shit.

“Son, that’s not exactly what sex is, but you know what? That’s an adult topic and we’ll talk about it when your older. And, no, “Allison” did NOT have sex, no matter what she tells you.”

“Ok. But that’s what you want to do.”

Trust me son. What I really wanted was that last (now) 9 minutes of sleep, which is a damn precious commodity. You’ve assured that I won’t be sleeping in the near future, since you’ve decided to engage in the practice of talking about the unholy arts. Because, trust me, once you start talking about it, you’ll never stop. Like body hair and trying to gain approval from your father, that shit stays with you for life. You’ll think about it, you’ll do stupid things in the name of it, you’ll love it, you’ll regret it, you’ll feel dirty and liberated and ashamed and glorious all in one fell swoop. You’ll brag, you’ll cower, you’ll chase it to the end of the earth, and you’ll sacrifice your dignity and self-respect, all in the name of taking your clothes off and kissing. It is at once the reason for our existence and the source of our downfall. You’ve begun to cast aside innocence in exchange for pimples and confusion and that endless instinctive drive that will, some day, if you’re fortunate enough, torment you right up to the point of a lifelong commitment to the one you love.

I’d give just about anything for those 9 minutes of sleep now.

But I’d give a whole lot more if I could postpone his growing up for a little while longer.

It's All Going SOOO Smoothly

Scorecard After A Week Without The Wife

• Money spent on stuff like beef jerky and Crown Royal at Sam’s: like $200
• Loads of laundry (mixed carelessly and with hot water): 13
• Time spent searching for damn library book that will no doubt cost us $6000 and a lung if we don’t return it within the next couple of days: 3 very pissed off hours
• Scrambled eggs left on plate because “I don’t liiiiike cheese in them Daddyyyyyy”: 6
• Showers they’ve taken: 5
• Showers I’ve taken: 2
• Stack of mail on the counter: 39″ tall
• Number of bills probably overdue: probably all of them
• Number of episodes of SpongeBob I’ve watched: 361
• Number of episodes of SpongeBob they’ve watched: 67
• Dreams about Transformers they’ve had in which they’ve been stabbed by a sword and that scares them and they feel the need to inform me about it at 2:38am and they also want to talk about it in detail: 3
• Times I’ve been woken up by the dog’s putrid breath and the fact that he’s spooning me: 12
• Number of instances where I’ve trimmed their fingernails at the school bus stop: 1
• Hours I’ve spent shaking my fist at the computer screen while she posts pictures of her fabulous time in Florida with all of her girlfriends as I’m slowly dying of neglect here in Misery: 16
• Number of times I’ve left the house since she’s been gone: twice
• How many hours spent waiting in line to sign one of the boys up for football. With them pulling on my pant legs, since I was too dumb to bring any distractions for them: 2
• Number of meals created by opening a cardboard box and setting the oven to 425: most of them
• Amount of sympathy I’ve drummed up from anyone, especially other mothers: none at all

It would be most appreciated if you could possibly tear yourself away from your little excursion into a life of heinous debauchery and perhaps return home at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Your war-torn and beat-nine-ways-to-hell husband.

ps- I lost the checkbook.

Like most emergencies, this one came as a surprise. I was trying to enjoy a cup of cold coffee while sitting out in the sun, unremarkably bitching about the heat to Chris & Kristen. The patio of this particular coffee establishment faces a busy road, one that delivers people to strip malls of every stripe in our fair city. We’re casually casting glances when I see motorcycle parts scattered all over the road and two people in helmets on their backs and chaos begins to rain down.

This is where it gets tricky.

Off duty from the fire department. Accident in front of your eyes. No gear, no medical gloves and lots of blood. No reason to not help. No way to ignore what’s right in front of you. No way to finish the cup of coffee in peace.

People, being basically good and decent, begin to offer help to the motorcycle riders. Someone has the presence of mind to demand that their helmets be left on, in case of spinal injuries. Some people mill about the scene, as though staring at it might help it go away. The little old lady who turned in front of the bike, the one responsible for all of it, is off and looking dazed and worried and this reinforces my stance that drivers licenses for seniors in a town as crowded as ours are a dicey proposition. Twice yesterday, while on my own motorcycle, I had elderly drivers pull out in front of me, causing a lockup of the brakes and a steady stream of freaky loud cursing.

But back to the matter at hand.

The driver of the bike is now starting to thrash about, somewhat violently, and before I reach him, he jerks his helmet right off his head, causing panic-prone bystanders to collectively, and loudly, register their disappointment in his actions. His passenger, wearing short shorts and flip flops, is feeling the effects of her legs sliding across hot asphalt at high speeds but is not causing much of a ruckus. Not like the driver.

No gloves. This sucks. One of the first rules in EMT school is “if it’s wet and it’s not yours, don’t touch”. The bridge of his nose and other points on his face are slathered in blood, and a lot of it. All right. Fine. And down go the hands to his head and cervical-spine precautions have begun. He doesn’t like this and want to fight it a little. This is totally normal, and I tell people around me to hold his limbs down as it is explained that what we need right now is cooperation. He’s mostly concerned with the state of his bike, which is mostly shredded and leaking enough fluids to qualify for Superfund status. Someone in the crowd decides to lie to him and tell him the bike is fine.

Some minutes pass; Engine 9 and Truck 6 arrive, take over patient care, give me a ribbing about working off-duty and help me shed the blood from my hands. Despite being on a different shift on a different side of town, the rules of the job remains the same. While it’s a dance of orchestrated chaos, there are roles we all play and everyone knows them. Mostly I’m concerned about the status of my coffee. I say this not out of a sense of callousness, but rather, a function of my addiction to the bean. The patients need care, and once that is established, we can focus on other, more pressing matters. Coffee is a pressing matter.

I return to the curb to find Chris & Kristen looking at me as though they’d just witnessed me working as a rodeo clown. In many ways, that’s an accurate descriptor. Since our friendship is based on factors outside of the world of the fire department, I guess it was somewhat odd for them to see my work environment. Ten years after climbing onto a ladder truck as a professional firefighter for the first time, you see these events not as cataclysmic life changers, which is how the patients will view them, but rather, as a typical job duty. To quote both retired engineer Mike Abbey and my psychotic Aunt Viper “This is what we do.”

What we do is take for granted that we’re the helpers. We help those who need it. No more, no less. The Wife sees someone who needs their hair whipped into shape and that’s what she does. My brother Buns finds those who need second hand computer parts at deep discount, and he helps them get said parts. The Dirtbag sees an empty lot and the need for a well-built home, and he gets down with his tools and his anger and builds the damn thing. When some 20 year old fool in a tee shirt wrecks his street bike into the hood of an old lady’s car at high speed, I hold his neck in place and avoid blood spatter.

And, in the back of my mind, while taking all of this moment, this role and this career for granted, there’s one thought that plays on an endless loop, keeping time like a locomotive in my consciousness: man, that coffee is going to taste good when I finally get it back in my hands.

Because The Dog Wouldn't Take The Picture

Chronicles Of Abandonment

• 7:15am – arrive home from a firehouse shift to an empty house. Remember that Wife has left for Florida recently, thereby leaving me in charge for a short while. Begin to wonder where the children are.
• 7:17am – check calendar. Yup. It’s a school day. They must be in school. Longingly look over at liquor cabinet.
• 7:19am – loud noises! No repercussions! Scream at walls and argue with dishes, while dog takes on a nervous shake.
• 7:20am – now hoarse. That screaming shit is not as fun when you’re closer to 40 than 20. Headache begins to set in and I reach for a bottle of Ibuprofen. THIS? is how we roll.
• 7:30am – realize that all pertinent housework can be put off for at least 5 more days. Small fist pump of victory.
• 7:31am – look in freezer and decide there are enough fish sticks and frozen pizzas to last us at least four days. I now contemplate a life without bathing for a week, without leaving the house and wearing nothing but a robe. This idea has a striking appeal.
• 7:36am – first pot of coffee and second wind kick in. This is going to be so awesome. You have no idea how much I’m going to get done in terms of writing and creating and making all kinds of magic happen.
• 7:38am – motivation totally lost as I marvel at stupid internet sites. Why do I keep chuckling at animals doing stupid things? That’s it, I’m officially old. Resist urge to forward any of this hilarity to ANYone.
• 7:39am – Scheduled self-loathing in full swing.
• 7:48am – head down on desk as I realize that I’m a completely worthless piece of crap, sobbing uncontrollably. Dog begins to look at me with disgust, promptly farts and then leaves the room. This does not help.
• 7:53am – ok, feeling better. Then I read the updates on Facebook of friends who are, apparently, out there in nothing but awesome climates, changing the world and partying like Mick Jagger all at once. Self-hatred returns.
• 7:56am – begin loud karaoke/air guitar session as a means of overcoming sense of worthlessness. Totally works.
• 7:58am- decide against the early morning cocktail, on the off-chance that The Heathens will light their school on fire and I’ll be called to answer for their actions in the principal’s office.
• 8:00am – realize that sometime within the last 45 minutes, the mother-in-law has been here at the house to drop off the Heathens toys, probably heard the scream-fest and is now reporting me to authorities. So much for privacy.
• 8:01 am – begin preparing defense of aforementioned actions as I anticipate call from The Wife, demanding to know “just what in the hell I’m doing in the house scaring my mother like that.”

They Who Would Abandon Their Husbands

Soon the Wife will be leaving me. For a week.

One whole week with her girlfriends in Florida, dressing up like unleashed cougars, lounging around the pool and casually eyeballing young men with no shirts on. One whole week of eating like royalty and consuming fruity martinis. No kids, no cares, no husbands. She and her merry band of women will be cavorting in the sun and surf, with half a dozen husbands left in the dirt wondering how in the hell any of this seems fair.

This has become an annual affair, and far from being an impossible situation, it’s a great week back here at our own Ground Zero. This is when the men rule the roost, when we leave the toilet seats up and declare fish sticks a culinary delicacy, one worthy of replicating six nights in a row. The Heathens and I will do our damnedest to consume as many episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants as possible. How about some raw toast for breakfast?

While she and her friends are loudly and publicly referring to themselves as The Girlie Whirlies and demanding punk-ass 20 year olds with their hats backwards dance with them, I’ll be teaching the boys the virtues of motorcycle ownership. We’ll crank some Dropkick Murphy’s music (she really hates that stuff), we’ll go down to the tattoo parlor as a family and talk to the guy I want to do my first ink, and if they’re really well behaved I might introduce them to my favorite barkeeps down at Patton Alley Pub.

And my wife wonders if it’s a good idea for her to go out of town.

She always worries about it, but that never stops her from her reckless abandon(ment). This trip is sacred to her, for reasons unknown to the male gender as a whole. Men sometimes congregate in groups for out of town trips, but mostly this is for the express purpose of shooting something in the woods and drinking whiskey while telling tales of their prowess with a firearm. I’ve never thought about trying to get a bunch of my guy friends together for a week on the beach, where we could sit around the condo and tell each other how beautiful we all are as we lurch towards middle age. If I proposed this, it would be met with a bunch of “what the hell are you thinking, man? I’ve got kids. The missus would never go for it.” Plus, it might be a hard sell, offering them the chance to pay money to fly to another state with the stated goal of laying around with sand in our shorts, catching some skin cancer and complaining about our love handles.

This is, apparently, the perfect way to spend a week in her eyes. She needs it, or so she claims. I claim to need to live back on the Pacific coast, but that is met with little more than a rolling of her eyes. This, my friends, is the beautiful chemistry of the well oiled machine that is a healthy marriage.

So off she goes. Fine. And good riddance. Who needs her anyways?

After a week, we will.

I'm So Over Waldo

Chaos is absent right now. My kids are healthy and full of piss and vinegar. The Wife has a birthday of indeterminate origin tomorrow. Good and decent people came to our house tonight to celebrate the simple joys of a home cooked meal. It’s as hot as Satan’s trigger finger right now, pretty typical for July in the Ozarks.

I’m still horribly out of shape, and starting to get a little nervous about competing in a foot race in Portland, Oregon in September, as well I should be. My stepfather arrives from the beaches of  the Central Coast of California on Tuesday and I’ve no doubt he’ll find the state of my shop to be horrific and may well shake his head in disgust at his slack-ass son. The neighbor procured a new tractor, and I swear that he’s driving back and forth in front of our house as a means of showing off.

The fire service is what is was last week, last year and last career. It’s a mess of people in dire need of something, anything, and a call to 911 helps put their mind at ease. And we’ll be there to hold their hand and administer oxygen or put our their garage fire or pry them out of some sort of horrific car wreck. All very predictable, really.

We need a new roof on our house, but really, that’s nothing new. More urgently, I need to get on the road, see a new town, preferably somewhere where you don’t have to chew the air. The motorcycle repair job is about done, perhaps when El Jefe gets back from California we can hit the trails out of town.

I hope to get some work capitalizing on my inability to pay attention for more than a few minutes. My status as an international sex symbol seems to be secure, especially in light of Mel Gibson’s latest fall from grace. I’m thankful that we haven’t had a medical patient refer to me lately as a “fat Vince Gill”. We miss hanging out with my Brother Bones out in Santa Barbara, especially when conversations focus on Area 51 conspiracies. I hear the Lyrical Jackass got engaged, much to no one’s surprise.

Above all, I’m thankful for the relative quiet of the last month. Because I’m sure that my ever-present sidekick, inconsistent chaos, will make an appearance before long, and I’ll have to go into spin doctor mode, trying to explain my latest deviation from the accepted norms. And then I’ll be grateful for the return of my normalcy.

Hope all is well with you, amigos.

The Original Huff-Daddy

Last night we got a call at the firehouse from our dispatch center. They wanted to let us know that a high-speed pursuit had recently ended, right in front of our station. Normally, I shake my fist at rubber-neckers, but when you have a situation in your front yard, that merits some observation.

The smell of brakes permeated the superheated, sticky, nasty, humid air and in the middle of it all were three cop cars surrounding a slightly dented Toyota Prius in our parking lot. Everyone was sweating and there was a howling mad woman cuffed on the ground, shrieking as though she was going through an exorcism. She angrily screamed at anyone while stringing together a list of colorful adjectives that would make a sailor awkward. I loved it.

The cops were standing there, debating their cop-like debates they have amongst themselves when I walked up to them and asked them how their evening was going. This was a tense moment that could’ve gone either way, since we firemen enjoy a precarious relationship with our brothers in blue, probably stemming from their raging jealousy of us. We like to tell jokes like “what do cops and firefighters have in common? They both want to be firefighters.” They respond with loving terms of endearment like “F- you, you f-ing lazy firemen”. Then we all have a good laugh, and they go back to being resented my most of the community while little old ladies and children continue to love us.

But I digress.

The police officers in question could see I was the designated smart-ass of the group, so they came up good-naturedly and gave me the low-down. It helped that I offered them a soda first, as a gesture of our benevolence as firefighters. One of them approached us and said “don’t underestimate those damn Priuses. We’ve been chasing her all around the Northside for a while now. Those little things can move!” I’ve edited that statement, but you get the gist. Apparently, the driver was hopped up from huffing paint and went on a little Tour de North Springfield at high speeds. I’m just glad no one got hurt as a result of her impersonation of an urban TrashCar racer, but it got me to thinking.

Here was this half-baked crazy lady, hauling ass and slinging rubber around Northtown, eluding the long arm of the law while piloting a Toyota Prius, a car that’s better known for making the statement that you’re a sensitive environmentalist rather than a crazy outlaw paint snorter. There’s the old saying that goes something like “it’s the crappy carpenter who blames his tools.” I’ve been known to make a pitch for buying more shop tools by telling The Wife that I can go no further with my labors of love until I buy some better tools, and more of them. Rarely does this marketing technique work in my favor, and I end up blaming the poor quality of my creations on lacking the this and the that, which would make the end results that much better.

Our little speed demon didn’t need a Big Block Oldsmobile 400 cubic inch engine, capable of delivering 360 horsepower and 440 foot-lbs of torque to hold her own against our local police cruisers. She did it in a car with the same engine used to power sewing machines and boat trolling motors. She used what she had to get her job done. And, while it came to an abrupt end in front of our firehouse with relatively little fanfare, it impressed me nonetheless.

Obviously, I need to spend some more time on working with the tools I have, rather than trying to bankrupt my family by purchasing more of  what I don’t really need. As I survey the chaos that is my shop, I’m really pretty good with that which I have. I have more than enough paint in the supply cabinet, and I’m relieved for a moment that I don’t live on Springfield’s Northside. Because when that lady makes bail? She’s gonna be looking for more fuel for her next high speed rally. The Prius can only take her so far.

"Hey, baby. Wanna party?"

I was scanning the sleazier tabloid sites on the net this morning, trolling for the latest celebrity downfalls. This is more than just a notorious waste of time I could be spending raising my children; it’s adding to my repertoire of talking smack about those who society elevates to the highest levels based on their ability to look good on camera, or act scandalously or party for a living.  I love to shake my fist at my fellow man when they go on-screen and weep for people to “just be nice to Lindsay Lohan, because she’s soooooooo talented, and she doesn’t deserve this.” Au contraire, my idiotic friend – if you sign up to party for a living (and occasionally “act”), then you gotta realize there’s gonna be consequences to careening down the road while wasted. Consequences seem to be something that both 4 year olds and many celebrities don’t seem to grasp. I’m equally amused by people who consider stars’ takes on aging and having children as groundbreaking gospel. It’s as though either they’re the first to go through with it, or we should be amazed that THEY AGE AND HAVE CHILDREN, JUST LIKE YOU AND ME.

And as I sat here, chuckling at the latest groundbreaking statements of genius made by Hollywood, I came to a realization: I need to have an “inside source” to justify all my bad behavior/romantic entanglements/rehab shenanigans. As I wiped the Cheeto stains off my fingers onto my coffee stained undershirt and glanced in the mirror to take in all the grandeur, it hit me that said inside source could also help in spinning my image.

Think about it.

Name your favorite movie star/athlete/musician/politician/professional bass fisherman.

And then think of the last time they engaged in behavior that was either marginal at best or made some other decision that had far reaching negative consequences (I’m thinking Tom Selleck turning down the role of “Indiana Jones”- kinda bad). There is always a source that is willing to pipe up and say “No, really. Jessica Simpson really did look really happy with (insert pro athlete/sleazebag musician here). This has the look of a couple that’s gonna last”.

And somewhere, someone is believing it.

Therein lies the beauty. People want to believe the hype. EVERYONE wants to believe their elevated idols are incapable of acting like immature morons who are famous for being famous, or as is the current moniker, “aspirational celebrities”.

I’m looking for someone to convince The Wife that when I neglect household chores or the lawn grows to Amazonian proportions that I’m “really, really excited for the next step. And he’s getting really into yoga, which is so spiritual of him (me).” By having my own “inside source”, I’ll be able to afford all kinds of atrocious behavior, and getting paid to show up at parties will be the next logical career move.

So, I’m hiring. If interested, we’ll set up a primary meeting in which you’ll be asked to demonstrate feats of moral flexibility and your credentials as a certified Spin Doctor. I conduct most of my interviews in a bar, and you’ll be expected to pick up the tab. Expect fierce competition, because from what I hear, Lindsay may be looking for work in the near future.