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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Just when I think I can’t possibly kneel to new nethers of narcissism… I find my headshot CD. Dozens and dozens of pictures of myself, in digital form — and that shit is simply too priceless to keep to myself.
And so, my latest blog feature is born. I call it the ‘Thirty-Three Faces of Me‘, and it’s now available for your perusal.
(That ‘Eve’ chick from the movie, with only three faces?
Humph. Amateur.)
“My standup habit may be on hiatus right now, but the cutting-floor remnants of my headshot session remain to haunt us all.”
My standup habit may be on hiatus right now, but the cutting-floor remnants of my headshot session remain to haunt us all. And what better way to show I can laugh at myself than to… well, to let all of you laugh at me, instead.
That logic made a lot more sense in my head. No, really. You shut up.
At any rate, check out the ‘Thirty-Three Faces of Me‘. And feel free to laugh out loud, if you must. The eyes in the pictures may appear to follow you around the room, but I assure you I can’t actually see you. I’m just photogenic that way, is all.
Permalink | 1 CommentBy the time you read this, I will be gone.
Not gone for good, mind you, so don’t start the celebration just yet. No need to dribble your forty-ouncer on the sidewalk on my account. I’ll only be gone for a few days.
As I mentioned a few days ago, the missus and I are vacationing in Meh-hi-co for a week, starting today. Starting, to be precise, at six in the fricking morning today, when the plane whisks us down the southern ass-crack of dawn to our destination. And if I have to be awake that early, there had damned well better be tequila or comfy pillows on that stupid plane. Preferably both.
So the wife and I will be well cared for at the sort of swanky all-inclusive resort that we’re able to afford every ten years. Like clockwork, every ten. Starting ten years ago, exactly. We really need to get out more.
“We may well be the least swankified couple in the joint. Maybe we can squeegee some extra swank off the rich folks, once we get there.”
(Also — not that swanky. We’re not accustomed to a lot of swank floating around, so we didn’t opt for the extra double-secret swank options. We may well be the least swankified couple in the joint. Maybe we can squeegee some extra swank off the rich folks, once we get there.)
But where does that leave you, stuck here in the workaday world of conference calls and crazy commutes and cockamamie corporate clutter?
Fear not, gentle reader. The lurch is no place to be left, and I certainly wouldn’t be the one to leave you there, had I any choice in the matter. Which, it turns out, I do. With this fancy new MT blogging software, I can postdate entries, and have them appear days — or weeks, or even years — after I actually wrote them. They’re little rib-tickling time bombs, and I can set them to go off any time. Including times when I’ll be miles away physically, and even further mentally, from the nearest wired-up keyboard. That’s pretty cool technology.
And by the way — you’re soaking in it.
That’s right, this is the first of several posts, features, and updates scheduled to *ping* into existence in my absence. What does the next week hold? You’ll just have to tune in — as usual — to find out.
(Unless the software goes down the toilet, in which case you’ll get a week’s worth of crap all at once when I get back. It’s not like this shit comes with a warranty, you know.)
So, if all goes well, you won’t even know that I’m gone. Except that I just told you, of course, and your short-term memory probably isn’t that bad.
(Although, just in case it is — you got that money you owe me? Come on, you remember? That time? When I paid for the thing?)
At any rate, if you’re reading this, then I’m either sleeping on a plane somewhere over the eastern seaboard, or I’ve already landed and found the margaritas at the swim-up bar. And if there isn’t a swim-up bar, then I’ve parked my Speedoed ass in a kiddie pool in front of the bar in the lobby. Meanwhile, enjoy the time-released nonsense coming your way the next few days. I’ll be back in a week. Adios, muchachos!
Permalink | 1 CommentTomorrow, I’m leaving for a week’s vacation. As much as I enjoy the rare occasions when I’m able to sneak away for a few days, I’d almost forgotten how damned difficult it is. Most everything about a vacation is just hard. In fact, I can’t decide which bit is hardest about it. Here are the candidates:
The last day before a vacation is always the hardest.
“Honey, we’re going to the beach for a week. If you’re dumping more than three thongs and a toothbrush into the suitcase, you’re overpacking.”
That’s where I’m at right now. And if you live a life anything like mine, one day is simply not enough time to get your affairs in proper order for a weeklong absence. Besides the seven minutes of work I’ve accomplished at the office, the vacation-related questions are relentless: Who’s watching the dog? What time does the plane leave? Where the hell’s my passport? Do I have clean underwear? And is it my clean underwear?
Speaking of underwear, I’m a little puzzled over my wife’s packing strategy. Honey, we’re going to the beach for a week. If you’re dumping more than three thongs and a toothbrush into the suitcase, you’re overpacking. And if our bungalow has a mini-bar, even the thongs are optional. Let’s not overthink our stay in paradise, shall we?
The first day of a vacation is always the hardest.
The first instinct upon arriving at a holiday spot is to take immediate advantage. Vacation time is precious, and those days and nights aren’t going to sun-splash and fun-fill themselves, people.
Meanwhile, you’ve likely just endured six hours of stuffy flights or cramped car travel, and you’re pooped. Your back’s in knots, you haven’t slept or eaten real food for ages, and that swampy ‘airplane ass’ of yours is helping no one. You’re in no shape to get out and ‘carpe diem’, unless you happened to pack a hot shower, a power nap, and a turkey sandwich in your luggage. And you know they’d make you check that bag at the gate, and squish it all together. So you’re done. Try again tomorrow, Tonto.
The second day of a vacation is always the hardest.
Of course, ‘tomorrow’ is no better. Sure, you’re cleaned up and properly fed, but strange beds and jetlags are cruel tag-team mistresses. You might hit the door, ready to soak up life in your temporary tropical paradise — but you’ll still end up face-down in your lobster bisque by lunchtime. We office peons take a while to acclimate to the life the ‘other half’ lives, you see. You can take the desk jockey out of the cubicle, but can you take the cubicle out of the desk jockey, really?
Yes. With enough raw sunshine, local booze, and all-you-can-eat crab legs, the answer is yes. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a data entry dweeb won’t be tangoing with Consuela in the moonlight on day two. Give it time, gringo.
The next-to-last day of a vacation is always the hardest.
This is the day when you realize that you can’t possibly do all of the things you’d planned for your vacation. You’ve finally grown accustomed to the climate, the customs, and the slackadaisical schedule — but look at that ‘To Do’ list! You didn’t water ski, or bungee jump, or even parasail. Where was the scuba trip, and the fancy dinner, and the jaunt to that quaint little antiques shop outside of town? All your plans, dashed by the looming spectre of a redeye flight back home.
Instead, you spent the whole time playing minigolf and hanging out at the tourist bar, chugging beer and warbling Fatal Eclipse of the Heart for karaoke hour. Not the best use of your time in Eden, certainly — but for the love of god, I hope you at least got it out of your system. That’s just painful to watch.
The last day of a vacation is always the hardest.
The last day of vacation isn’t a real day of vacation at all. In fact, it’s downright crual. Here you are, in the middle of paradise, and what’s on your agenda? Wake up. Pack. Cab to the airport. Weep softly near baggage claim. Go home.
It never feels right leaving a beautiful vacation spot for the humdrum drudgery of home. I’ve always thought vacations should end with a pre-arranged midnight kidnapping. You go to bed one night, and professional snatchers slip into your hotel room, tie you up and blindfold you, and airlift you home. They’d even fly in circles, so you could never find your way back to the tropical hideaway. Assuming they kidnap your travel agent, too. We could do that, for a small additional fee. It’s a ‘value-added’ service.
The first day after a vacation is always the hardest.
How depressing — nay, demoralizing — is it to return from a vacation, back to the home and the office and the life you knew before? All those wondrous sights and smells, the exotic foods, the frolicking, the uncomfortably lax pornography laws — all receding from memory as daily routines and morning commutes sink their treacherous talons into you.
The worst part? All the folks — coworkers, friends, or family members — asking, ‘How was your vacation?‘ Not because they care, of course — they’re just reminding you that ‘that was then, and this is now‘. Your vacation was last week, boyo. Time to get that coffee I asked you for — and where the hell are your TPS reports? Leave ’em on the beach, did we?
Man, am I looking forward to day three of this getaway. That’ll be heaven. No travelling, no packing, no cramming in the ‘good life’ or getting ready for ‘the grind’. Here’s hoping the whole vacation is somehow magically full of day threes. Not that the travel annoyances above apply to me this week, anyway, since I plan on the absolute minimum amount of activity that still includes the words ‘bottomless margarita’. I’ll see you gringos next week.
(But tune in tomorrow, anyway, despite my absence. There might — just might — be a surprise or two in store. And there’s only one way to find out. I can see you’re positively ashiver with anticipation. Oooh.)
Permalink | 1 CommentI really enjoy being a smartass. Of all the things I do that don’t involve grain alcohol, life-size inflatables, or old Sears-Roebuck catalogs, being a smartass is probably my favorite.
“Of all the things I do that don’t involve grain alcohol, life-size inflatables, or old Sears-Roebuck catalogs, being a smartass is probably my favorite.”
I’ve realized, though, that being a full-time smartass is a dangerous job. There are a lot of ways to bite the big one in this world, but smartasses seem to have more ways than most. We’re right up there with ‘bomb squad trainee’, ‘parachute tester’, and ‘Kenny from South Park‘ on the list of suckers likeliest to die in the line of duty.
Here are just a few ways in which your average smartass might croak, while your typical civilian citizen probably won’t:
Gunshot wound on a dare
On TV, you always see smartasses taunting gun-toting thugs, maniacs, and cops. They ask, ‘what’re ya gonna do… shoot me?‘ And no one ever seems to.
Don’t try this at home, sass-mouthed kids. Trust me — in the real world, most people are just begging for an excuse to line their sights up on you. And no jury’s going to convict your killer if your last words are, ‘you don’t have the guts!‘ Don’t push your luck.
Eaten on an expedition
When things go south for Arctic explorers or a mountaineering party, who do you think get cannibalized first? Whoever draws the short straw? The fat guy? The horses?
Hardly. It’s the loudmouth; the one who keeps yapping about how he told everyone to turn left back there, and boy, wasn’t this trip a good idea, and ooh, ‘snow… imagine that.’
Incidentally, this is why I can never go on camping trips. I won’t even walk through the park without a GPS and a team of sherpas. You can never be too careful out there.
Impaled at the blood bank
Even smartasses can be the generous sort, and donate plasma and platelets to the less hematologically fortunate. But we can’t do our good deed without being pissy about it, and what better gripe than a nurse who struggles with getting the needle into your arm?
‘What am I, a patient or a pincushion?‘
‘You gonna drain my blood, or just poke it out one drop at a time?‘
‘I haven’t felt this many pricks since I climbed into the hot tub at the YMCA.‘
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself stabbed through the forearm and pinned to your chair. They’ll put down a bucket — no need to waste good blood — but don’t expect any medical treatment. Or cookies and orange juice. The treats are for the non-smartassed patients. Or so they tell me.
Pulverized by a professional athlete
Men and women at the highest level of sports competition face an enormous amount of pressure and abuse. From opponents, from coaches, from teammates, from themselves — and certainly, from the fans. At some point, one of them is going to lose it, and go completely berserking mental.
And who do you think they’ll go after? The big hulking player next to them? The family of four out for a game? The little old lady in the cheap seats? Or will it be the smartass sitting behind the bench all game, chanting:
‘Steh-roids. Steeeeeeeeh-roooooooids.‘
I’ll give you four guesses who’s getting a baseball bat to the babymakers, and the first three don’t count.
And let me tell you — when it happens, that athlete’s going to hurt somebody, and bad. Because, you know, they’re all hopped up on the juice these days.
Heart attack on April 1st
You’d think April Fools’ Day would be a smartass’ paradise. You can say or do anything, and people have to chalk it up to the calendar, for one day only.
But what if something really goes wrong that day? With the whole world expecting shenanigans from you, who’s going to flinch if you take a gasping header onto the floor? Nobody, that’s who. Here’s your ‘first aid’ treatment: ‘Get up, fool. You look like a jackass.‘
You just have to hope you can survive until the 2nd, when someone might actually take you seriously. Smartass.
Permalink | 2 CommentsI took my dog to the vet on Saturday. She’s got this raised, raw patch of skin on her leg that she keeps licking and aggravating.
(That’s my dog with the issue, not the veterinarian. If the vet’s got a raw patch of skin on her leg, I certainly don’t know anything about it.
On the other hand, if she’s been licking it, too, I’d be interested to learn more. I might even pay to see that. For clinical comparison purposes only, of course.)
My dog’s pretty amazing when it comes to vet visits. She’s always a sweetheart with people, even strangers, but doctors are often different. Especially animal doctors. There’s simply no way to translate ‘bend over and cough‘ into dogspeak, so they can’t possibly see it coming. So to speak.
“There’s simply no way to translate ‘bend over and cough‘ into dogspeak, so they can’t possibly see it coming. “
To her credit, though, my dog takes it all in stride. The prods, the pokes, the needles when necessary — she even stands still and quiet when they flip her around and take her temperature. Sure, she looks up at me with those sad, accusing ‘who are these people, and why the hell aren’t you stopping them?‘ eyes. But she doesn’t make any obvious fuss.
Which to me is simply astonishing. Personally, if some bozo tried to stick a tube full of mercury up my caboose without explaining why using life-size diagrams and forms filled out in triplicate, I’d bite the bastard without a second thought. Which may explain why they insist on muzzling me when I go in for a physical, but that’s not important right now.
The good news is, my pup checked out okay, though the doc prescribed antibiotics to ensure the wound has a chance to heal properly. I’m not convinced there wasn’t some mistake made, because these pills look suspiciously like pills for people. In fact, they’re caplets — exactly the same size as Contacs or other cold medicines.
And for all my doggie’s patience with the vet, she is not happy about ingesting something against her will. This is the same dog that went through a ‘poop-eating phase’ a few years back. Who’d have known she’d go all fricking gourmand on us?
So far, things have gone reasonably well. It’s been a while since I had to cram medicine down the dog’s throat, so the first dose was a nightmare. The pill was in her mouth four times, and spat on the floor four times. Somewhere near the end of the process, the caplet broke, leaving medicinal powder all over her snout, my hands, and the kitchen floor. I knew I could probably rub a strip of bacon over everything to get most of the stuff into her, but at that point, she’d suffered enough. As had I. I called it a ‘draw’, but remembered my old ‘dispensing to a dog’ technique in the process.
The next day went much more smoothly. I gave her a chance — knowing she wouldn’t take it — to swallow the pill buried in a Snausage. She didn’t realize the alternative, of course, so she refused. I managed to get her mouth open, splop the pill as far back in her mouth as I could, and massaged her throat until she swallowed it whole. It’s the same thing I imagine some orderly doing to me when I’m cantankerous and senile. Like, say, in a few months.
Since then, the mutt has actually chosen the Snausage route. Not entirely willingly, mind you. I threw her three treats, one adulterated with the offending caplet. The two pure Snausages were snatched out of the air and swallowed in one motion. She grabbed the third, too, but realized something was horribly wrong mid-gulp, and spat half of it onto the floor.
Luckily for me, it was the Snausage half, so she ended up swallowing the pill. No muss, no fuss — and she gets to eat slobbery half-eaten Snausage off the floor to cleanse her palate afterward. That’s what I call a win-win. I think even my finicky pooch would agree.
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