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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
On Saturday night, the missus and I went to dinner. The establishment we patronized that night is called Sibling Rivalry.
(So you know the wife picked it out, because it has its own web site.
The places I choose only get on the web when the police blotter makes it into the online copy of the local newspaper. Someday her class and good taste will rub off on me.
But not today.)
The restaurant was a good time, actually. It’s run by two brothers (hence the name), and the menu is set up in an Iron Chefesque sort of way. In the center column of the menu was listed an ingredient; to either side, each chef listed a dish containing the ingredient. Thus, you could choose an appetizer and entree from one chef, or the other, or mix and match between. To keep it fair, of course. An equitable kitchen is a happy kitchen, after all.
Luckily, the place wasn’t entirely Iron Cheffian. There were no squid innards, or kangaroo testicles, or Buick LeSabre carbeurators among the list of ingredients. So the menu was fairly safe — apart from the fear that the chefs would sabotage each others’ creations in the kitchen, of course. The last thing you want is to order roast chicken and end up with kangaroo testes. Because that would completely ruin the choice of wine.
I was genuinely worried, though. They really play up the ‘brother vs. brother’ angle, and lord knows there are enough people spitting in my soup for good reasons already, without getting extra loogies because TweedleDee is hogging the best ladles tonight. But the waitress assured us that both of the chefs were far too busy and important to actually be in the kitchen, ever. Sort of how Todd English hasn’t stepped foot in his Boston restaurant since the Clinton administration. It’s all minions and recipe books these days, it would seem.
Anyway, dinner was generally pleasant, interrupted only sporadically by a group of older — and hopefully drunker — ladies at the next table. For a while, I heard laughter and soft singing coming from their direction, but managed to tune them out. Then the woman facing our table exclaimed, in a loud, nasal, Long Islander accent:
‘I’m tellin’ ya, that’s Nelly FurTAHDo! Seriously, it’s Nelly FurTAHDo. Trust me, I’m nevah wrong about these things. Nelly FurTAHHHHHHDo!‘
I prayed that was the end of it. But a few minutes later, I saw her singing to the rest of the table, with that self-assured ‘See? See?!?‘ look that we all get when we’re hopelessly drunk. And wrong. And from Long Island. Soon enough, she cackled again:
‘No, you’re WROong! That’s Edie BrickEHLL. What does Edie BrickEHLL have to do with Nelly FurTAHDo? Nothing. That’s what.‘
Frankly, it was a bit annoying after a while. It nearly put me off my turkey wattle and corrugated aluminum siding risotto. But I soldiered on, and eventually things quieted down.
Then, we walked next door to see a play. Kiss of the Spider Woman, specifically, which is about gay men in a South American prison. So maybe the wife doesn’t have the ‘class and good taste’ trump card, after all. Because if you replace the ‘men’ in my description with ‘women’, that’s exactly like the movie I watched on Skinemax the night before. And in both shows, I saw a man’s bare ass. Which is one bare man’s ass per show too many, in my book, but hey — that’s ‘the arts’. You have to take the bad with the good sometimes. To put it another way, into every blissful life of ‘tasteful’ nude lady photos, a little naked dude ass must fall.
Hey, I don’t makes the rules, people. Talk to the NEA. I’m out.
Permalink | 2 CommentsToday, I’m going to a Patriots game. Let me set the meteorological timeline for this event, for those of you not residing in the greater New England area right now:
Friday morning: Sunny. Fifty-ish degrees. Almost shorts weather.
Friday night: Darker. Plus windier, and a bit chillier. Around forty, maybe.
Saturday: Cold, but sunny. Thirty-five or so.
Sunday: Thirty. Snowing. Wet. Cold. Welcome to winter, chucklenuts.
And so, I bundle. Not so much to weather the elements during the game, mind you. Sure, that’s three hours of football, but for that, I’ll be sitting wedged in the middle of forty thousand of my closest friends, with hot nacho breath steaming down at me from the rows above and toasty ass breath (also nacho-flavored, I fear) bubbling up to me from rows below. It won’t be pleasant, for certain — but it should be warm.
Meanwhile, there’s the three-and-a-half hours before the game, when we’ll be standing by a sputtering grill in a Foxboro parking lot, trying desperately to roast our weenies — but not our ‘weenies’ — and drink enough beer to forget that we can no longer feel our torsos. Now that’s FOOTBALL, people.
And so, I’ve layered. Every part of my body is, right now, swaddled in two layers of apparel. Some parts, three. And one particularly important part, wrapped in SaranWrap, duct-taped secure, packed in foam peanuts and stuffed in a sock.
(What? So I take special care of my left pinky; without it, how the hell would I type ‘a’ or ‘q’ or ‘z’?
Don’t look at me that way. What did you think I was talking about?)
At any rate, it should be a good game. And by good game, I mean ‘rout by the home team’. That’s how it works, if you actually attend the game in person. On TV, I like the nailbiters. Back and forth, scrap and claw, and make that one big play in the waning moments to seal the victory. That’s three hours of exciting football, and that’s what I pay the TiVo bill for.
At the stadium, it’s different. When you’re barely able to see the field through the snow and frozen eyelashes, and you’re leaving your seat every twelve minutes to buy a beer and every nine minutes to deposit one, you mostly hope that the good guys will go up by six or eight touchdowns in the first quarter, so you don’t miss anything important.
(Especially when you’re bundled up bigger than the little whiny kid in A Christmas Story, and you have to find the little boys’ room. It’d take a SWAT team, a blowtorch and a battering ram to get into these pants right now. I may be collecting Social Security before I see my penis again.)
So look for me at the game, if it’s airing in your area. If you see an idiot out there with his face painted red and no shirt on, with a big ‘P’ on his chest… well, that’s not me. I’m too old for that shit. I’ll be one of those motionless lumps of flannel and goose down you see hunkering into his chair, rubbing his armpits together to stay warm so his genitals stay on the outside, where they belong. Or I’ll be passed out in the mens’ room, succumbed to exhaustion while fighting through my fourth layer of long johns, trying to clear a path for the Guinness train to get back out of the tunnel.
Damn. Do I ever love football!
Permalink | 3 CommentsOkay, look. people — I’m not proud of myself here.
Well, okay, I’m a little proud, but that’s not the point. This time.
The point is, I’ve never written something and posted it elsewhere — except at the erstwhile ezine Zoiks — and then posted it here, too. But I’m about to.
The good news, of course, is that you very likely didn’t see this when I plopped it online a few days ago. And now that it’s December, this shit is downright topical.
(Plus, my wife told me the other day that she thought we shouldn’t exchange presents this Christmas. That counts as ‘inspiration’, if nothing else. You can decide whether I’m being prophetic, or an asshole husband, or somewere in between.
Meantime, it gets me out of posting anything else tonight. So, enjoy.)
At any rate, here’s the item in question: a Christmas poem dragged screaming into the modern age. I hope you like it. And cheers to you, mistletoers.
Bankruptcy and Tinsel: A Christmas Tale in Three Acts
Act I: Wifey Awakens
Twas the night after New Years’,
when all through the flat
came the din and the ruckus
of a husband-wife spat.
It started when hubby
had finally dared
to open the bill
for the Visa they shared.
Wifey was nestled
all snug in her bed,
with new diamond earrings
affixed to her head.
She was freshly rubbed down
with expensive lotions and creams,
while her new Prada handbag
danced in her dreams.
When from the den
hubby made such a clatter,
she donned her new silken robe
to see what was the matter.
She arrived to find hubby’s
mood turning south;
tearing out his grey hairs
and throwing up in his mouth.
She rolled her eyes skyward
and asked, “What can it be?”
I’d just dozed off to the glow
of my new HDTV!”
Act II: Shopping Mall Roll Call
Hubby stared up at her,
with his anger and pains
pulled by a jumbo martini
and eight throbbing veins.
He ran to her side,
so lively and quick;
he lit into her,
and he laid it on thick.
More rapid than eagles
the store names they came,
And he frothed up and cursed them,
and called them by name:
“First Best Buy! Then Nordstroms!
Then Target and Sears!?!
Then Macy’s, Ann Taylor,
The Gap and DeBeers!?!
To the ends of the outlet!
To the back of the mall!
It’s cash away! Cash away!
Cash away, all!”
He showed her the bill,
with the bottom line swelling.
“Who are you, anyway —
Tori fucking Spelling?”
His eyes, how they blazed —
his breath shallow and heaving!
His ears were like smokestacks,
His brow furrowed and grieving!
Act III: Ho Ho Christmasy Ho
Hubby pleaded futilely:
“But… there was nothing to fear!
You said we shouldn’t exchange
Christmas presents this year!”
And then with a twinkle
like a right jolly old elf,
wifey proceeded to explain
her swag-buying self.
“You misunderstood me,
you silly Magoo!
I just meant I’m not buying
any presents for you.”
He spoke not a word
though he did almost smirk,
as his cheeks convulsed
in a spasmodic jerk.
And pressing his finger
tight to his forehead,
he pretended to shoot
and croaked, “Better off dead.”
Wifey sprang to her feet
and checked her new ladies Rolex,
wondering why they ever called
women the ‘weaker sex’.
“Oh, you!” she exclaimed,
“Don’t be so uptight.
Happy Christmas to me;
Now I say, sir, GOOD NIGHT!”
Well, I hope that was entertaining. And truly fictional, too. My wife is way less likely to spend frivolous money — holiday-grubbed or otherwise — than I am. Still, it’s a fun thought. And who wouldn’t want to star in their own holiday verse, eh?
Merry Grinchy thrifty holidays, people. ‘Tis the motherfuckin’ season. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
Permalink | 9 CommentsSo, I’ve got fingernails.
I don’t mean that in the ‘Woo, lookit that, a body part I’ve got!‘ kind of way, of course. Not like when I was three, and careened around the house naked, screaming, ‘Penis! Penis! Penis! Penis! Peeeee-niiiiiiiiiis!!!‘
(Or for that matter, last Saturday morning, when I tore off my shirt and jiggled suggestively at my wife, singing, ‘Nipple in the morning! Nipple in the evening! Nipples all of the time!‘
What can I say? The muse strikes at odd moments, sometimes.)
Anyway, the fingernail thing. What I mean is, I’ve currently got long fingernails. Long for me, at least, which is sort of a minor miracle. You see, I’m a long-time nail biter. Mostly fingernails — and almost exclusively my own, save that one rather memorable time with the neighbor’s daughter on the playground.
(Eh, it was a school initiation thing. I explained it all later, and it was cool. Oh, how we laughed, once the restraining order was lifted. Good times, man. Good times.)
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying:
‘Nooooooo.
You, Charlie, with an OCD-driven nervous habit like nail biting? Why, I just can’t see that.
A heroin addiction, maybe. Ritual self-scarring? Sure, you seem the type. Cross-dressing devil worship? It wouldn’t surprise me. But nail biting? Gracious me, no.‘
Sadly, though, it’s true. I’ve even confessed to my dirty little habit before, a little less than two years ago. In the past two decades or so, I’ve had white tips on my fingernails for maybe four weeks. And half of that was the week before and after my wedding, including the honeymoon.
(Because hey, I’m compulsive and all, but people — if you have the time or inclination to bite your nails on your honeymoon, then you are not doing it right. Get nakeder, drunker, or preferably both, and start over from the beginning. Chop chop.)
But for some mysterious reason, the nibbling stopped three weeks ago. Whatever inner demon was causing me to chew shriveled up and died, apparently. Possibly, it was all the alcohol and hot sauce I’ve been pouring on top of it all these years, via the stomach. That’ll teach those inner demons to hang out in the organs I have control over. Get into the prostate, where only the creepy butt doctor can reach you, dammit!
But I digress.
The point is, I don’t know what to do with these damned things now. I’ve gone without fingernails for so long, I’ve got to relearn how to use them, now that they’re back. Last week, I spent an hour exploring the simple joys of peeling a price tag from a CD jewel case. Some people take that sort of thing for granted. Long-nailed people, like manicurists and hookers and dirty, unkempt hobos, for instance. Well, not me, dammit. I even offered to go back through the store and peel all the tags off for them. I was denied. And rebuked. Also, I got a wedgie. Sam Goody’s has a thing or two to learn about ‘customer satisfaction’, goddammit.
Of course, being armed with fingernails is not all cupcakes and stripper sweat. No, indeed. More than once, I’ve accidentally poked the dog with a nail-where-no-nail-used-to-be. I’m afraid I may inadvertently put an eye out with one of these things. Also, drumming my fingers on the desk is a lot louder than it used to be. I’m going to need to find another way to privately express my boredom at the office — especially in meetings with the boss.
And let’s not even talk about my testicles. Honestly, I’ve been scratching my boys down under for a lot of years now, and I have never had these ‘issues’ before. There are some plaves you should never have to put a Band-Aid, people. Not even the Elmo kind. Hell, especially not the Elmo kind. Ow.
I suppose I’ll clip the things soon. Assuming I can remember how, of course. I’ve only had my toenails — and the dog’s claws — to practice on for the past few years, so it may get ugly. I might cut one too far, or jagged, or lop off a pinky or something. And then I’ll have to file the things, and worry about the cuticle skin, and all of that nonsense. Jesus, if I’d known fingernails would be so much damned trouble, I’d have never stopped biting them. Can I have my filthy habit back, please?
Permalink | 3 CommentsWell, I’m back.
It was quite the Thanksgiving trip and ensuing weekend. There was fun. There was a parade. There was food — good lord, there was food. I ate enough food to choke a hippo, with leftovers available to stuff it from the other end, too. And there was booze, too. Sweet delicious holiday booze.
But in the end, after all that was over, there was just one thing left: a dead computer. I arrived back home to find my PC crippled and limp. Sometime during my out-of-town festivities, it looked around at the empty office and said:
‘C drive? We don’t need no steenking C drive!‘
Problem is, my hotwired metal friend was wrong. It does need a C drive, if it wants to live. And why wouldn’t it want to live? Why, it’s non-stop excitement — the emails, the blogging, the Googling… and all the pixellated porn a CPU could want. Why, oh computer? Why hast thou forsaken me?
Anyway, I was able to rig up a new C drive. The old one was clearly dead; I found it clicking and beeping sadly to itself in a corner of the computer case. Luckily for me, the good shit — or what passes as ‘good’ on my machine, anyway — was on the extra drives. All my ripped CDs — one hundred percent personally owned, of course; nothing to see here, RIAA goon squads! — and video clips were on secondary drives, which seem to spin up just fine.
Unfortunately, those tasty drives aren’t recognized in the new configuration, and I have no idea why. So instead of one teeny fragile drive and two huge muscular data beasts — or, more recently, one teeny broken drive and two huge beasts — I’ve got only one teeny fragile replacement drive. No beasts. No music. No video. And can I play Madden on this ass-backwards ancient thing? Honky, please. I’m pretty sure there’s a tiny little dinosaur inside that drive case, spinning the thing up when I turn it on. When the dino chow runs out, I’m fucked again. I am not looking forward to that.
Meanwhile, I’m fiddling. I figure I’ll either get things back to just about where they were — in time for the replacement drive to smoke and kick out — or I’ll accidentally erase every tiny shred of data that was ever on any of the drives I’ve owned. Which wouldn’t be a horrible crime, even if one believed my standup clips and Best of Big Country CD tracks were somehow worth anything — and I’m pretty sure they’re not. I have no delusions of coolness here, let me assure you.
But even so, I’ve still got the original videotapes, and all the CDs.
(See, I told you I owned all this shit; now bugger off, music industry vulture bastards! It’s ‘personal use’, goddamn you! ‘Personal use!!!)
The issue, of course, is time. Life is short and hectic enough, without futzing with a snarky ‘puter for a week or more, begging and pleading for the damned thing to simply see the same RAID drives that it picked up oh-so-clearly before Thanksgiving. Not to mention re-ripping dozens of CDs — and retaping standup clips and re-installing a handful of video games — just because a crappy, Mickey Mouse piece of electronic detritus finally met its maker. I knew I shouldn’t have bought hard drives with ‘Fisher-Price’ on the label.
(Nah, it wasn’t really Fisher-Price. It was an IBM Deskstar.
So, worse, then. Bitches!)
At any rate, we’ll see how this plays out over the next few days. Without taking a couple of ‘personal days’ at work — or feigning some sort of ‘turkey flu’ or ‘bubonic asthma’ or flesh-eating something-or-other — I’m running short on free time to nurse this bitch back to any semblence of health. And with Christmas looming, is there a bundle of spare cash lying around with which to ‘punt’ and buy a new one? Emphatically, no. Don’t make me ‘honky, please’ you again.
So for now, it’s off to bed. I’m gonna need some rest, if I’m going to tackle this faceless metallic monster. I feel as though it’d be easier, if I only had my Men at Work compilation to listen to while I worked. It seems irony is a cruel mistress. A cruel, Aussie-blocking, vegemite-hating, eighties-music-no-listening haughty bitch of a mistress, indeed. Bah.
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