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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Ingredients
Preparation
Use pooch/hallway owner to construct clearly insurmountable doggie obstacle of chairs, coats and framed painting. Place pooch behind clearly insurmountable doggie obstacle, sealed away from long hallway.
“1 pooch/hallway owner, powerless to stop the ensuing madness”
Set owner aside for 8-10 hours at workplace, to earn money to pay for pooch, hallway and contractors.
Use contractors to spread paint evenly on hallway. Be certain to get the areas near the floor especially wet and sticky. Immediately use contractors to close kitchen door, sealing pooch (and all of its ‘juices’) away from doggie door.
Set contractors aside for at least 24 hours. Probably a week. Maybe longer; who the hell knows with these things?
Use pooch to easily surmount clearly insurmountable doggie obstacle.
Mix pooch and hallway well, making sure to slide haunches of pooch along freshly painted walls. If desired, also slide wet pooch haunches along heavy coats, dining room chairs and framed painting.
With doggie door inaccessible, dump doggie juices in middle of long, freshly smeared hallway. Repeat as necessary.
Return owner to house; mix with soggy long hallway, smeared walls and blithely wagging brown-and-white striped mildly retarded pooch. Simmer for 10-20 minutes. Send owner out for booze. And possibly electric dog prod.
Season to taste and serve with a side salad or vegetable medley. Bon appetit.
Permalink | 2 CommentsA strange and magical thing has been happening over the past few weeks. I’ve been getting email.
Not the regular sort of email, mind you. I mean, I always get email. But the emails lately haven’t been the usual old ‘buy \/1agr@ 0nl1n3!!!1!eleventy‘ and ‘Hot local singles want to rub peanut butter on YOU!‘ and ‘FINAL NOTICE: Student loans overdue — Vinny the Knuckles now handling your account‘
(Okay, to be fair, most of them are still that kind. Especially the student loans ones — those people are relentless.
Luckily, I was able to score Vinny some Viagra, and set him up with this nice local girl who’s into long walks, jazz fusion, and extra-crunchy Jif. That oughta buy me some time.)
No, the emails I’m talking about have come from people — actual, honest-to-god people — writing to me, specifically. About this site. Seriously.
They’re not from the FBI or anything. I know. It’s weird.
“If I can warp sully ruin shape the mind of just one young student, then I’ll have done something meaningful here.”
Even more specifically, these fine folks have been writing to ask permission (unlike some shifty jackholes) to use one of my posts. And adapt it into a monologue. To be performed in high school.
(Why do I suddenly get the feeling that the next email I get will be from the FBI?)
Actually, it’s not quite so scandalous — but it is pretty cool, and until today, somewhat mysterious. Here’s the story:
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve received three separate requests from high school students to use the contents of my ‘Oh, I Need a Clue, All Right… I’m Just Not Sure It’s This One‘ post as a humorous forensics piece.
For those of you unfamiliar with these sorts of high school competitions and trying to reconcile the apparent paradox of ‘humorous forensics’, I can tell you that it doesn’t involve wearing a Groucho Marx mask while doing an autopsy. Nor fingerpainting knock-knock jokes on the wall with crime scene blood spatter. Nor giving David Caruso an atomic wedgie and dumping him in Biscayne Bay.
(Not that it shouldn’t involve that last one, if there were any justice in the acting world. I’m just saying it doesn’t.)
Instead, high school forensics has to do with public speaking, in its various forms. Giving extemporaneous speeches, debating hot topics, performing dramatic readings, and… if all of that sounds dreadfully dry and distasteful to you, ‘humorous interpretations’. The last one being the only one, of course, that couldn’t possibly assist you in any respectable sort of career down the road.
Which is what makes it. So. Damned. Cool.
As cool as forensics gets, anyway. The whole team is only a half-step above being the ‘tuba kid’ in band, anyway, so why not have some giggles? Story of my life.
And as it so happens, I was myself a forensics fool, back in the day. My muse was a young Bill Cosby, who wrote a bit about a smart-mouthed Noah talking to God about some damned fool boat he was supposed to build. I even made it to the 1987 NCFL National Tournament, as a junior.
(Sadly, the ‘C’ in NCFL stands for ‘Catholic’. And backsassing Biblical belligerence doesn’t go over too well with the yardstick-wielding nun crowd. So while I made it to the tourney, I daresay I barely made it back.)
Now, it seemed, there was a new generation of fresh-faced young orators ready to take up the cause. And instead of Cosby’s words, or anyone else’s, they were asking me to provide the material to propel them into the prestigious national spotlight.
(Insofar as it qualifies as a spotlight. Two decades ago, I experienced the ‘prestige’ of traveling to Buffalo, New York to compete. This year’s competition? In Albany.
Somebody needs to teach these Catholics how to shake off the habits and have a little fun. Sheesh.)
Naturally, I was quick to agree to each of the requests. If I can warp sully ruin shape the mind of just one young student, then I’ll have done something meaningful here. The children are our future. Ye gods help us all.
My only question was… why? Not that I found it completely outside the realm of possibility that someone other than myself would be willing to repeat my words in public. Mostly, sure. But not completely.
But they were all asking about the same post, which is now a little more than five years old. And at the time of the requests, I wasn’t actively writing here, and hadn’t for months. Google had likely forgotten all about me. The Blue’s Clues bit was nearly as old as they were. Flattered as I was, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the sudden hubbub was bubbling.
Until today.
Today, I found a video on YouTube starring a young lady, Chelsea, who asked for permission a few months ago to adapt the piece. I’d forgotten all about it, but the existence of the video — and Chelsea’s super (as in gold medal-winning in the state tourney super) performance — easily explained the renewed interest.
And was pretty interesting for me to watch, actually. The words in the piece are mine — but the inflection, the gestures, the flair is all hers. I’ve never done any scriptwriting, so this is really the first time I’ve seen anything I’ve written interpreted onstage. Mis-interpreted, sure — at family reunions, staff meetings, interventions, holding cells… but acted out, in front of an audience? Pretty damned cool.
So I wanted to share the video below, for anyone interested in seeing Blue’s Clues (or my/Chelsea’s twisted take on it) come to life. Belated congratulations to Chelsea on her win, and many thanks for choosing a piece of mine to perform. Frankly, I hope it inspires more requests from forensics folks — finding this version of an old favorite made my day. I wonder if there’s any future in writing custom monologues that high school smartasses would appreciate?
Come to think of it, I wonder if that’s what I’ve been doing here all along. Dear lord.
Permalink | 4 CommentsI should never be allowed in public. Clearly. But I should be doubly locked in and chained to my nightstand on holidays. Particularly Thanksgiving. I’ll explain.
Today being one of vanishingly few that my wife and I both have free, we decided to run some errands together. Grab some lunch, hit the gym, drive the dog deep into the woods and kick her out of the car — the usual old stuff. And everywhere we went, the people we met all had the same thing to say:
‘Happy Thanksgiving!‘
The first severalteen times we heard it, we had the same reply:
‘Happy Thanksgiving!‘
Gradually, though, I started to feel like a trained parrot, just repeating the same phrase back into someone’s face. “Squawk! Happy Thanksgiving! You said, “Happy Thanksgiving!’ Happy Thanksgiving! Polly wants a giblet! Squaaaaawk!”
So, I tried to find something else to say that expressed the same thought. It turns out that Thanksgiving isn’t particularly flexible in this regard. Much to my dismay.
See, I was thinking of Christmas. If someone jumps out of the bushes and screams ‘Merry Christmas!‘ at you, you’ve got options. ‘Happy X-Mas!‘ works. ‘Joyous Noel!‘, too — if you don’t mind sounding like sort of a douche. ‘Happy Holidays‘ is in vogue these days. And there’s always ‘Happy Hanukkah, you insensitive asshole!‘
(If you can pull it off, of course. A yarmulke helps, but isn’t absolutely necessary provided you can muster enough righteous indignation to be credible. I’ve seen Catholics do it, just for kicks. It’s possible.)
The point is, there are lots of ways to say ‘Merry Christmas!‘ (or ‘Happy Hanukkah!‘ or ‘Krazy Kwaanza!‘ or ‘Spooky Wiccan Winter Solstice Time!‘) without saying those exact words. You could greet a whole busload full of shopping mall Santas, and never say the same phrase twice.
But what the hell do you do with ‘Happy Thanksgiving‘? I didn’t know, but I was determined to find out.
I started off easy. The next ‘Happy Thanksgiving!‘ thrown my way was met with a:
‘And a happy Thanksgiving… to you.‘
“She still made me stop. Said I looked like some kind of Grim Turkey Reaper.”
That wasn’t great. For one, it was still mostly the same damned words, and took a lot longer to say. Also, my wife didn’t like the ominous pointing that went along with it. She said it creeps people out. I was just trying to be precise. I’m not wishing happy Thanksgiving to that guy, or those girls, or that group of creeped out people over there. I’m wishing it to you. And only you.
She still made me stop. Said I looked like some kind of Grim Turkey Reaper.
Fine. I tried to be more creative. Next time it came up, I said to the big musclebound guy behind the counter at the gym:
‘Joyous fattened turkey time!‘
That didn’t go over well, either. He asked, ‘What’d you just call me?‘ and I had to scoot out of there before he lobbed a dumbbell at my head. I had to wait in the car while my wife worked out.
Luckily, that gave me time to prepare. As we made the rest of our rounds this afternoon, I flung rapid-fire replies back to every ‘Happy Thanksgiving!‘ I encountered:
‘Merry Pilgrim eating day!‘
(Spent ten minutes explaining that I meant celebrating the Pilgrims eating with the Native Americans. And that I wasn’t condoning actually eating Pilgrims, in any way.
Which is a hell of a conversation to be having with the butcher in the grocery store, let me tell you.)
‘Gobble down a tom tonight!‘
(Said to our lunch waitress, whose husband’s name, regrettably, happens to be Tom.
I tipped her all the money I had left, but I’m pretty sure she still spit in my soup. Or worse.)
‘Hapgiving Thanksy, too!‘
(I was running out of ideas at this point. Or developing a speech impediment. Probably both.)
Clearly, I wasn’t getting anywhere with these efforts. Except kicked out of Kroger’s, and possibly arrested.
So I give up being nice. I’m spending the rest of the day holed up in the house, and if I never hear another ‘Happy Thanksgiving‘, it’ll be too soon. But if I do, I’ve got my reply waiting on deck:
‘Stuff a drumstick up it, jackass!‘
Here’s hoping the rest of you have an easier holiday time than I did. Eat some turkey. Cranberry sauce it up. And above all, have a happy… well, you know.
Permalink | 2 CommentsWinter is easily my least favorite time of year.
(Yes, I’m aware it’s not technically winter yet. I don’t care. You season police and lunar calendar creeps can wax a crescent and shove it up your gibbous.
I’m in Boston. It’s twenty degrees outside, it’s pitch black by three-thirty in the afternoon, and every other house on my block has Christmas lights and rooftop Santas and plastic freaking lawn elves triggered to sing ‘O Holy Night’ in chipmunk voices when you ring their stupid doorbell.
It’s winter. To me. The calendar can go suck a solstice.)
Now. why am I so down on winter? Is it the cold weather?
Nah. I don’t mind the cold. I wouldn’t be traumatized if I never had to shovel snow again in my lifetime, but generally the prevailing climatological conditions don’t factor overmuch into my mood.
Is it Christmas? Am I just a bitter old Scrooge?
Well… yes. In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I am. Not the ‘steal candy canes from orphans and depants Santa at the mall’ kind of Scrooge, mind you. More a ‘lock myself in a closet after Halloween and hope to god the carols die down by New Years’ Scrooge.
Christmas for me is like a small hyper child with a runny nose. I don’t hate it. I don’t have anything bad to say about it. I’d just prefer it didn’t climb in my lap and scream and sing and rub its gooey little paws all over me.
(‘Oh, Christmas. Always into something. Why couldn’t you be more like your brother, President’s Day?’)
But no, Christmastime (which now officially begins during the 4th of July fireworks extravaganza, from what I understand) doesn’t get me down. Tired, maybe. Exasperated. Willing to do hard time for manslaughter, if I could just get ten minutes alone with the jackass that recorded those dogs barking ‘Jingle Bells’. But down, not so much.
No, the reason I hate winter is a simple matter of fundamental electromagnetics. As in the ‘static’ kind of electro. And me as the magnetics.
I can’t explain the physics behind it.
(No, seriously. Ask my freshman physics teacher; I wouldn’t know a Faraday cage from a hamster ball.
Which turned out to be most unfortunate for our little lab buddy Mr. Squeakers. Rest his furry, crispy little soul.)
All I know is that I’m an unwilling — but ungodly effective — lightning rod for the discharge of static electricity. Always have been. Only in winter, when the air is dry and cold and jam-packed full of loose angry electrons waiting to leap at me when I’m not expecting it. But winters here in New England are, like, eight months long. And already this year, I’m feeling the sizzle.
When I opened the car door this morning — *zzzap*! When I turned the key in the lock at the office — *shhhizock*! As I hung my coat on the (regrettably metal) hook by my desk — *pppppzot*!
“If I attracted stray women the way I attract loose electrons, my life would be an Axe commercial.”
I’d swear I never touched that hook, by the way. I was a good three inches from it, and the electricity just arced over at my fingers. Like a pack of rabid tigers. I’m telling you, it was vicious. If I attracted stray women the way I attract loose electrons, my life would be an Axe commercial.
(Only less smarmy. And with more redheads.)
The worst shock of the day came in one of the worst places possible — the bathroom. I was just putting the final shake on a trip to the urinal, reached for the handle to flush and — *bbbbbbbzzzzzzowie*!!! I’m pretty sure the bolt passed into my finger, whizzed through my body, and slammed into the wall behind me. Some of the paper towels in the holder back there looked a little singed, is all I’m saying. It’s not CSI:Miami proof, but it’s solid forensic corroboration. Singed paper towels would totally hold up in court.
Meanwhile, the jolt was alarming. I would probably have peed my pants, if I hadn’t just gotten finished peeing. And if my peeing apparatus had been tucked away back in my pants already. And if my bladder hadn’t just been cooked to medium rare by a rogue bout of ball lightning.
Instead, I jumped back from the shock, convulsing and flapping my arms. With my pants still unzipped, and the apparatus downstairs waving about willy-nilly. Thank goodness no one walked into the bathroom just then. Maybe someone out there could explain their way out of looking like ‘Cosmo Kramer, sex offender’ in a public restroom, but I’m certain that I couldn’t.
And I have the court-appointed community service records to prove it.
Of course, all of these shocking developments pale in comparison to the teeth-rattling thunderbolts unleashed on me by my wife. If I’m the glue getting stuck with these nasty little shocks, my missus is the rubber bouncing thousand-bolt lightning strikes at me. She’s like Zeus with those things. Or a much cuter Emperor from The Empire Strikes Back. Some days, I’d swear she keeps a Van de Graaff generator in her pants.
(There’s a joke to be made here about electrified panties and pubic hairs standing on end.
But I like being married, so I’ll leave this one to you. Knock yourself out.)
Spending a winter with my wife is taking my life in my own hands. Any other shocks I get — from doorknobs, ungrounded urinal handles and the like — are solely on the fingers. Unless I start licking my car door or getting ‘intimate’ with the tailpipe, only my hands are at risk out in the wintry world.
My wife isn’t nearly so specific, or as merciful. She’ll sizzle me with a touch on the elbow, or the cheek, or worst of all, singe my lips when she leans in for a kiss. I think I’m getting a nice smooch; next thing I know, my mouth is soldered shut and no hairs grow back on my chin for a month. Not cool. At least if she ever delivers a fatal shock, she can always resuscitate me. A quick shuffle across the rug and a megawatt poke in the chest would get me going before any fancy defibrillator paddles. Might catch my shirt on fire, too, but I’ll climb that electrified fence when I get to it.
So winter for me is basically a pain in the neck. And the fingers, and sometimes more sensitive parts. Spring can’t possibly get here fast enough. Until then, I’m sewing resistors into my underpants.
Or transistors. Capacitors? Damn. I really wish I’d paid attention in that physics class.
Permalink | 1 CommentI have a dilemma. I need socks. Athletic socks, to be precise.
For most people, this wouldn’t be an issue. Your average able-bodied sock-requiring person would simply, well, buy socks. For me, it’s a dilemma. A conundrum. My socks are putting me in a pickle.
(And remember, kids — your socks can put you in a pickle, but you can’t put your pickle in a sock.
Or sock your friends’ pickles. Or pick your friends’ noses with your pickle. Or something infinitely less disturbing to think about. I was never so good with the details.)
“I wouldn’t say I’m embroiled in a full-on toe hole epidemic yet, but I’m definitely on orange alert over here.”
Anyway, here’s the situation: I’m rapidly running out of socks. Every day, another sock succumbs to some fatal affliction. Toe holes are a problem, certainly. I wouldn’t say I’m embroiled in a full-on toe hole epidemic yet, but I’m definitely on orange alert over here. Meanwhile, overstretched elastic has claimed its share of victims. When you’re wearing supposedly calf-length socks and find them sagging around your ankles like a couple of used condoms, it’s time for the trash bin.
And then, of course, there are the socks that just disappear. It’s a magic trick performed in households around the world on a weekly basis. An ordinary, everyday pair of socks is placed into the washing machine. Notice the solid construction — no trap doors in the back, and no detergent up my sleeve. Now we wash, we dry, and presto klepto — one of the socks has vanished into thin air! It’s magic, thank you! And now my lovely assistant will regale you with her mesmerizing dryer sheet dance. Magic!
At any rate, I’m running dangerously low on foot sleeves these days. Half the surviving socks don’t have a match, a few are getting pretty ragged, and there’s a suspicious patch of ‘toe wear’ showing on most of the rest. The situation’s getting desperate; if I lose many more, I may have to resort to wearing my wife’s panty hose.
(And I do not have the anatomical profile needed to get into those. There are only so many bits of me that I can ‘tuck’, after all.)
So it’s clearly sock-buying time, and that poses a dilemma. The way I see it, I have three options:
1. Go out and buy socks
Oh sure, it sounds easy.
But where would I go to buy socks? I’ll tell you where — the shopping mall. And I hate — absolutely stinking loathe — shopping at the mall. Especially this close to Christmastime, with the crowding and the shoving and the reindeer poop in the parking lots. And especially for something as boring and mundane as socks.
Honestly. The Victoria’s Secret at the local mall could hold a bra-‘n’-panties sale where you pull the merchandise off of live catalog models, and I’d still probably decide it’s more trouble than it’s worth. How the hell are tube socks supposed to lure me there, in the very height of the yuletide frenzy?
The answer? They can’t. Which brings us to:
2. Buy socks online
This, I could do. I buy all sorts of things online — music, books, Russian mail order brides (as gifts! As gifts!), even internet domain names. Like ‘wherethehellwasi.com‘. Or ‘victoriasstrippingsale.net‘.
(I said I probably wouldn’t go, if it existed. I never said the event shouldn’t be captured live on a series of high-resolution webcams.
It’s called ‘being prepared’, people. Catch up on your own time.)
So I’m sure I could find a reputable mens’ legwear vendor on the interweb. I could pick out a style, gauge my size and would have no problem placing an order for all the socks my tootsies could ever need.
Except for this problem, that is: Do I really want to be the sort of person who buys athletic socks online?
That seems an awful lot like one of those lines you can’t uncross later. Like the first ominous step on a slippery slope leading to an unemployed existence selling homemade T-shirts on eBay from my parents’ basement.
(“Dude, whatever happened to Charlie? He always seemed somewhat stable, and not completely incompetent.”
“He started buying his tube socks off the internet.”
“Oh dear god. He’s one of ‘them‘ now.“)
I just don’t see coming back from that. Ergo, I can’t go there. I just can’t. Which leaves me with:
3. Strip down and go sockless.
Normally, I’d be all over this option. It requires zero effort, I don’t have to buy anything, and I am completely without a shred of fashion sense, so I could do it with no remorse or embarrassment whatsoever. If being barefoot in my shoes turns out to be the most egregious clothing faux pas I commit from here on out, my wife will be positively giddy with relief. She’s just waiting for me to wear my underpants on the outside of my jeans, or to argue for swimming gear as formal wear.
(I know I’d be happier after a long wedding knowing I could hop right into the hotel pool. I’m just saying, is all.
Either tell our Catholic friends to hurry up those ceremonies, or let me have the swim trunks and water wings in the church. I’m willing to meet you halfway here.)
Clearly, fashion is not an issue for me. But there’s still something keeping me from ‘letting my piggies go’.
I’m in New England. In November. It’s freaking cold. If I stepped one sockless foot outside my house in this frigid nightmare, I wouldn’t feel my toes again until Easter. I’m fine with upsetting Mr. Blackwell and his ilk with my hairy bare hobbit feet, but six months of frostbite is a little further than I’m willing to go right now.
So really, I’m left with no options at all. Except the one I’ve been trying to avoid all along.
When my last stash of wearable socks gives out in a week or two, looks like it’s the missus’ panty hose for me. If ‘toe holes’ are the worst problem I encounter, I’ll be a happy — and sock-footed, and warm-toed — dude.
But there’s going to be a hell of a lot of tucking. And from an awful lot of angles, I’m afraid. I hope we have some duct tape handy. Lord knows I’m not running to the mall for that.
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