My childhood dog, Mean Streak, would have turned 287 in dog years this past Sunday, had he not taken leave of this world to commence peeing on the fire hydrant in the sky back in the spring of 1986. Mean Streak was an excellent watchdog but a bit on the high strung side. My family and I did not excel at dog training, as much as our dog excelled at getting us to play by his rules. Revered dog whisperer Cesar Milan probably would have shouted himself hoarse at us.
An example of Mean Streak steamrolling us was that he expected warm toast with butter for breakfast. One morning, I entered the kitchen where I discovered Mean Streak was exceptionally snarly as was my father. I avoided the dog but confronted my dad.
Me: What did you do to piss off the dog?
Dad: I made him breakfast. Why won’t he eat it?
Me: Did you toast it?
Dad: Of course, I toasted it!
Me: Did you butter it?
Dad: Butter it! Which one of you jackasses started him on that – you or your brother?
Me: Try your mother.
Granny, who lived with us, would make the same breakfast every morning for herself and Mean Streak, except she had coffee with her buttered toast. She would have gladly given him a cup of java, too, but she had the capacity to see that he was excitable enough without adding caffeine to his diet. Whenever Granny went away, Mean Streak would be a bit out of sorts. He was confident that she would get his breakfast right unlike her son.
A particularly bad habit my grandmother taught the dog was how to bribe. Mean Streak would not allow anyone to touch his supper dish when he had finished eating. The only way we could get it back was to show him a biscuit. If you were foolish enough to try and take his dish away without a treat, he’d sink his teeth into your arm. He made it very clear he was in total control of that dish. Therefore, you’d prominently extend the cookie towards him so he could clearly see it since he was so nearsighted. After he was certain it was indeed his dessert in your hand, and not the exploding cigar he deserved, he’d punch a paw into the dish prompting it to stand on its side. Then he’d carry it to you in his mouth, and drop it at your feet in exchange for his end of the deal. Once he punched his dish so vigorously, it went flying under my dad’s Buick.
Mean Streak went ballistic.
He crouched low but could not shimmy his way under the car. He was barking frantically, which did not faze me since he was always barking at something, including the wind. He even barked in his sleep. As Mean Streak was freaking out, I was in the living room calmly reading the newspaper, tuning out the racket. My grandmother arrived on the scene. When she realized what had happened, she ordered me to intercede on the dog’s behalf.
Granny: Get the dog’s dish.
Me: No way. He’s on his own. Sucks to be him.
Granny: He’s upset!
Me: When he bites my arm off, won’t that upset you to have a granddaughter the neighbors call ‘Stumpy’?
Granny (demanding): Go under the car now!
Me (channeling John McEnroe): You can’t be serious!
She was. I went under the car. All the while Mean Streak is crouched low, anxiously watching my every move with a crazed look in his eye and white foam dripping off his jowls. When I get a hand on his dish, I whack it out. He grabs it without saying thanks, and obediently hands it to my grandmother who rewards him with his biscuit adding:
Granny: Good boy!
Alongside barking and growling, Mean Streak’s other favorite activity was to lie under the kitchen table and chew on his nails, as opposed to his countless chew toys and tennis balls. One day he gnawed with a little too much gusto. Hence, as seen in the picture below, his bandaged right paw.
Mean Streak flaunting the wounds of war with himself.
The Science section of The New York Times has published a story about how cats lap water.
Another mystery solved.
The Times online has also embedded a four minute forty-five second video illustrating “the biomechanics of feline water uptake.” Translation: see for yourself in slow motion how Cutta Cutta, an M.I.T. engineer’s pet cat, drinks. While this engineer was having breakfast, he was observing Cutta Cutta lap. Instead of investing his vast intellect in the direction of global warming, our dependence on fossil fuels, or the rapidity of college student alcohol intake, he focused his attention on his cat delicately darting its tongue into its water bowl at lightening speed. This seemingly ordinary act of feline nature fired this engineer’s imagination, as well as that of an M.I.T. colleague, and two other engineers, one from Princeton, and the other from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
I have deduced that these four brilliant men of science had an immense amount of time on their hands, and were also under pressure to look busy. I have experienced a similar situation in my own place of employ, where I oversee the labeling of floor tile. When there is a lull in my workload, I exploit this opportunity to clean my desk, an act I have performed precisely once in six years much to the astonishment of my boss and colleagues who initially assumed that I was preparing to give notice. Returning to the topic of the study of cat lapping I suspect this research would have gone in an entirely different direction had that engineer been focused on Cutta Cutta making use of the litter box.
Although I am personally a dog person by default, being deathly allergic to cats, I do have a soft spot for Maru, the superstar box jumping cat from Japan. While watching the video below, I noticed that I sneezed.
After detailing precisely how a cat laps, the rate of lapping, and the amount of liquid consumed, the Times notes, “To the scientific mind, the next obvious question is whether bigger cats should lap at different speeds.” To my unscientific mind, the more obvious follow-up question is, “Who the hell cares?” Why four engineers from some of the brainiest think tanks out there would be prompted to study a cat tonguing a dish of milk baffles me, unless this is just to prove that they’re worthy of collecting a paycheck. How does knowing how a cat laps, whether it’s my boss’s two calicos, or Leo the MGM lion, or Cutta Cutta, make this world a better place? Considering that some of our greatest minds are investing their time studying the mechanics of how cats drink assures me that the world is definitely going to the dogs.
Weekends are prime time for me to indulge my literary pursuits and this past weekend was no exception. Saturday morning around ten o’clock, I was home, six minutes into working diligently on my current pet project, the book for a musical about itchy, dry skin, when I was suddenly compelled to take a nap. As I was resting my head on my keyboard, I heard the familiar thuds, thumps, and drags of an upstairs tenant moving out of my brownstone, Casa de la Shangri-La.
Since there was no sleeping through that racket, I stayed on the computer and read a fascinating email from Duane Reade featuring the Goddess of Adventure — a smiling woman half my age and forty-fold my fitness level surfing. Borrowing a page out of the classic tampon ad proclaiming that tampon users can swim, play tennis and ride horseback, the 21st century version of that message declares that this woman is able to ride ocean waves because she shaves with the Venus Embrace.
With the right toothpaste, I can also pilot a plane!
Reflecting that I shave with the Erida Reject, could this shine a light on why I nearly landed on all fours while stepping off the curb in an effort to cross West End Avenue en route to purchasing a bagel?
Yet, I am getting ahead of myself. First I had to exit my building to walk up the street to West End Avenue to engage in this act of ill coordination. Once the sounds of moving had subsided, I realized that I was hungry for a cinnamon raisin bagel. Knowing that the coast was clear and I would not be in the way of the departing tenant(s), I decided to venture outdoors, a generally uneventful endeavor.
Just as I opened the door of my building leading to the outside world, what do I see but a crappy chair on casters blocking the walkway.
You don't look happy to see me.
Had whoever left it parked it closer to the front door, my more whimsically-inclined mentally impaired neighbors could have sat in it and pushed their way over to different trash cans to make their deposits. I briefly considered moving it up to the sidewalk but just as briefly considered pulling a hamstring. Therefore, I walked around it, walked up the street on my bagel errand, and almost fell off the curb when my faulty peripheral vision mistook a pigeon for a rat.
Not this rat.
When I returned home, bagel-in-tow, the crappy chair still stood proudly in the walkway rivaling the toilet with the open lid that had been placed in front of my building on a snowy night last February. I did not dare look at whatever might be in the bowl.
An image of my block not found on Google maps.
A more pleasant site, that cinnamon raisin bagel.
On any given day in the many trash heaps throughout Gotham City, the eyesore pile is bound to visit my building. Or not. The second time I went out, someone had moved the crappy chair up to the sidewalk outside the gate where the recycle cans are located. The third time I went out, it had relocated west in front of a tree near a building two doors down. The fourth time I went out, it was gone.
I suspect it has found a second home proving the new adage that one tenant’s trash is another’s source of bed bugs.
Recently while speaking via Skype to my across-the-pond colleague, Elaine, she asked me:
Elaine: Anything new with you?
Me: I sneezed 51 times last week. Thus far, that’s 270 sneezes since my birthday, but those 51 sneezes account for more than 19 percent of my sneezing total this year.
Elaine’s expression was a cross between stupefied and irritated.
Elaine: Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than count your bloody sneezes? Maybe I should start counting my farts?
She shifted her weight and for all I know emitted such a powerful silent-but-deadly at that moment she could have felled the entire New York Giants defensive line.
I suppose Elaine raised a valid question about why I have been counting my sneezes for six months now. When I commenced counting my sneezes on May 4, the day I turned the 14th discrete biprime and the 5th in the {3.q} semiprime family having the prime factors (3.17), I vowed I would do so for the entirety of a year. I intend to continue this mission unless an unforeseen situation, such as finding myself felled by a piece of space junk, or possibly one of Elaine’s high octane farts, leaves me so impaired I lose the capacity to maintain this count for another six months.
Since I am still able to breathe freely, from May 4 through November 3, I have sneezed a total of 278 times. Over the course of those 184 days, I have emitted an average of 1.5108695 sneezes per day. What constitutes half a sneeze I am at a loss to define, but there have been several times where I’ve felt a sneeze coming, but it chooses to remain stuck in my sinuses, which is a most disagreeable feeling on par with an ear drum that will not pop or hearing any song sung by Celine Dion.
Oh! You and your stupeed sneezes!
Below are some highlights of my 278 sneezes.
The nose that has launched 278 sneezes.
The week starting Monday, October 25, through Sunday, October 31, was my high water (or, more accurately, my high mucous) mark. I did not have a cold but I sneezed incessantly that week, the aforementioned 51 times, accounting for 18.346% of the total. The first week in May that I began this count I sneezed 24 times. In August, there was an astonishing* period of nine sneezeless days between 8:52 pm on Sunday, August 15, while writing an email to my sister, Dovima, until 1:32 pm on Tuesday, August 24, following a gynecological exam. Following is not the same as during the exam proper, nor have I sneezed during other recreation of a horizontal nature, but I did sneeze in bed (alone) at 1:03 am on Monday May 17.
I have had numerous occasions where I’ve sneezed at my place of employ, the Tile Dust Bowl of America.
I’ve sneezed on planes, on the subway (the 1 local is a favorite sneezing place and fellow passengers often say, “Bless you” to me), and in my sister’s car while driving in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I’ve sneezed while urinating on Friday, July 16 at 8:05 pm.
I’ve sneezed ten minutes into the August 8 episode of Mad Men (third episode of Season 4 called The Good News).
I’ve sneezed while watching plays – Gabriel (Atlantic Theater Company), The Little Foxes (New York Theater Workshop), Angels in America Part 1 (Signature Theater Company), Orlando (Classic Stage Company), and while waiting for Gatz (the Public Theater) to start.
I sneezed thunderously in a lobby that could have doubled as an echo chamber while waiting with Milton before the doors opened at the 3LD Art and Technology Center. We had tickets to Lawrence Wright’s one-man show about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, The Human Scale. My sneeze earned us the stink eye from the elderly couple ahead of us even though it was not a sprayer. Milton vividly discussing how his company’s resident thug knows where he stores the pizza cutter, which Milton is sure the thug will use to slice their boss, also rated us additional disapproving glances from the female half of that equation. I noticed during the performance that she slept soundly through most of it.
I’ve sneezed while watching films – Toy Story 3, Nowhere Boy, but my entire experience at this year’s New York Film Festival was sneeze-free.
I’ve sneezed while having my blood pressure checked at my gastroenterologist’s office. My blood pressure was 109 over 72.
I’ve sneezed while writing this post, but that sneeze will count in my tally of sneezes for the next six months.
On a cool and rainy evening, still suffering post-election stress, Milton and I ventured out to see an off-Broadway play with a two hour and forty-five minute run-time including intermission. Following the advice of the old adage claiming a picture is worth a thousand words, posted below is our illustrated review.
Steaming pile of play.
Even though we agreed with the fundamental message of the play, which views this nation with a very jaundiced eye, it was peppered with sit-com style jokes that conflicted with the allegedly important drama that left us feeling detached since few of the characters were remotely believable. How many straight guys in New York would tolerate their live-in girlfriend carrying on an open affair with a lesbian in Boston for two years before getting teary and asking her to make a choice? I know the Straight Guys in My Orbit would likely ask these questions:
Straight Guys in My Orbit: Is the girlfriend hot? Any chance of a three-way?
She was attractive, but zero chance of a three-way.
I know that lesbians operate by a different set of rules, but some of us equate bisexual with bad news and bisexual living with a guy as total nightmare. This smitten lesbian character was extremely sexy, sane and smart … an unrealistic trinity, but I did enjoy the fantasy. Milton added, “I liked her boots.” The third scene between the two women was flooded with an ocean of cringe-inducing hysterical crying that was so over the top ridiculous, if we did not have dead center seats, we would have trampled each other jetting for the exit.
The guy sitting next to me did not return after intermission, prompting Milton to remark, “I envy him.” Milton was particularly annoyed with the use of news event video montage in-between scenes. He thought the sole purpose of this device was to distract us from the stagehands that were moving furniture. When this travesty concluded, Milton noted that it seemed to have several endings. I thought that the playwright could not decide which one to choose so she worked in a few. I would have killed all the characters to ensure no possible chance of a sequel.
As we left in a crowd of fellow disgruntled theatergoers I heard a woman remark:
Remarking Woman: That scene was particularly terrible.
Me: Did you hear what that woman just said, “That scene was particularly terrible”?
Milton: What scene was she referring to?
Me: I don’t know. Pick a scene.
Milton: For the $40 we blew on tickets, I wish we’d spent the night drinking and talking about the election. This weekend, I swear I’m going to do nothing but write every cliché I’ve ever heard in my life and call it a play. It can’t be any worse than this.
That threat made me cackle like a loon, until I reached my subway stop, for that was a sobering experience. I discovered my stop was closed. Deeming the precipitation not umbrella-worthy, I trudged six blocks in a cool mist that completely fogged my glasses. Visually impaired, I entered the next subway station with my hair inflated into a giant cloud of frizz. It was easily a foot wide on either side giving me the appearance of a latter day Larry Fine on hair steroids.
The first highlight came courtesy of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hilariously asking Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann if she was hypnotized, as she evaded his repeatedly asked question if she would press for either Congress or the media to investigate Democrats for “un-American attitudes” now that the GOP has control of the House.
The other highlight was a car commercial for the Nissan Leaf featuring a polar bear.
I don’t want a Nissan Leaf. I want to hug a polar bear since I’m feeling pretty endangered at this moment, too.
For the past two weeks, the usually ignored generational divide in the office has reared its head in a most peculiar way. For my colleagues with the combined age of 76 – Ling, Under Ling, and my sidekick, Greg, their computers have been constantly malfunctioning. For Elsbeth, The Quiet Man and me, combined age of 155, our computers are working fine, if Elsbeth’s inability to download email attachments is ignored since she forwards her emails with attachments to me to open. I am unsure if my superior’s difficulty is hardware or PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair) related.
Approximately two weeks ago, Ling was no longer allowed access to the server via her Mac, the problem traveled to Under Ling’s Mac and it pretty much went downhill from there for both of them for a while. Our Graphics department was essentially crippled. They were both frustrated. Elsbeth was all over Stu, her husband and our company’s founding father, to jump all over Aaron, our IT guy, to do something about this immediately. Stu body-slammed Aaron, Aaron did respond, but he’s not a Mac guy. Often, when Ling was on her break, Aaron would sit at her desk and appear to be doing something, but afterward, as the problem continued, we deduced that what he did best was shed his beard all over her keyboard.
Ling was so repulsed, she considered going home sick.
Just as Ling and Under Ling’s problems seemed to subside for reasons that are clear as mud, Greg’s problems with his vintage PC began to escalate. He alternates between two CPU’s under his desk, one worse than the other, but he had jury-rigged a system for himself that I don’t try to understand, but it seemed to work, and he seemed content. Greg is not a complainer and knows to only get me involved as a last resort. Since neither of his malfunctioning ancient CPU’s were allowing him access to the server, he mentioned it to me, and I suggested he call Aaron. Thinking about short and curly beard droppings littering his desk, Greg performed emergency life support on one of his CPU’s and it regained a pulse. Unfortunately, his first term Clinton era monitor blew out. Greg announced:
Greg: I know where to find another monitor!
Me: Okay, find it.
Greg went on an archaeological dig in our warehouse and returned with another decrepit piece of hardware. He hooked it up and proclaimed that it worked fine. Super. Problem solved.
Later that day, I was returning from a meeting I had with a member of the Accounting department. As I walked past Greg’s desk, his new old monitor caught my eye.
It appeared to be splashed with dried blood.
Greg was sitting, typing his tile labels. I gasped:
Me: What the hell is that all over your monitor?
Greg (defensive): I didn’t put it there!
Animal, vegetable or dried gore?
Me: I’m not accusing you of putting it there, but look at it. It’s disgusting! Should you be wearing a HazMat suit to read your e-mail?
Everyday is Halloween Greg-wear.
Me: Seriously, I want to know what is that?
A voice from the back of the room reads my mind:
The Quiet Man: Arterial spray.
This observation brings to mind the classic “I Shot Marvin in the Face” scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. If you’re squeamish, don’t watch.
I know this billboard is supposed to make me want to don my red vinyl leggings, strap on a coordinating pair of ankle spikes and proceed to get intimate with the nearest Stanley Cup-sized bottle of Skyy vodka. That is the message here, right? Yet, every time I look at this ad when walking down West Broadway en route to the Chambers Street subway station, all I can think about is suffering a glass shard in a very intimate soft body part. The thought of finding myself bleeding profusely in the emergency room due to a self-inflicted extreme act of embarrassment does not make me lust a supertanker of vodka.
My clear spirit of choice is gin but I do have a taste for sake, too. Since I’m more dull center than cutting edge, I prefer both while sitting upright and holding a glass. In the case of the sake, a wooden box, or a handle-less miniature cup works nicely, too.
A little background about Skyy vodka, for those of you that read Lame Adventures primarily for its vast educational component … it was created by Brooklyn-born inventor and entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar, who launched it in 1992. Now 80-years-old, Maurice resides in San Francisco, where Skyy is produced. He could be lifting a glass of Skyy vodka today in response to the Giants trampling the Rangers for the second straight game in the World Series. Among his vast and varied accomplishments, Maurice is the mastermind behind the D-Fuzz-It sweater comb and New York’s first multiplex, the Quad Cinema. He owns much of Tulsa, Oklahoma and in 1997, he opened his wallet and donated $5 million to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, so the film school is now called the Skyy Vodka Institute of Film and Television. Possibly I’ve gotten the name in that last factoid wrong.
One night after work this past summer when I was feeling overheated, cranky and tired, I needed to run an errand. I needed to purchase shampoo. Even though I have downsized my life radically since suffering a 20% pay cut in January 2009, which remains fully in effect almost two years later, I will know I have completely bottomed out when I can no longer afford my favorite brands of toothpaste (Tom’s) and shampoo (Kiehl’s). Initially, when my pay was slashed, I did try cheaper brands. In both cases, my body violently rebelled. The cheap toothpaste tasted terrible and coated my teeth with a film that nearly made me vomit. The inferior shampoo gave me the impression that I was developing scales on my scalp.
Immediately, I returned to using Tom’s and Kiehl’s.
On this humid summer evening, I enter my neighborhood Kiehl’s store to purchase a bottle of Protein Concentrate shampoo, a wonderful herbal product I have been using loyally for many years.
Best shampoo ever.
When I last tried to purchase it a few months earlier, it was out of stock. Since I was almost out of shampoo, I sniffed every tester and settled for the one with the most innocuous scent, Tea Tree Oil. On this summer evening, it is still out of stock, and so I seethe. If I am going to purchase a luxury product shampoo, I want to at least get the one I like most. I again snag the Tea Tree Oil variety and head to the register, where I encounter a cheerful cashier who makes some friendly banter that sets me off like an atomic bomb.
Me: Where’s the Protein Concentrate shampoo?
Cheerful Cashier: We’re out of it. I’m so sorry. This Tea Tree Oil is very good.
Me (exaggerating like The Customer from Hell): I hate it!
Cheerful Cashier (stepping on a landmine): Why don’t you try the Amino Acid?
Me (channeling my inner Ted Kaczynski): Because I don’t like smelling like a Pina Colada!
To appease me, the clerk calmly reveals that she’s the manager and I can have the bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo gratis. Instantly, I deflate and wonder, “Am I behaving like a mental patient over shampoo? Is this outburst going to screw up my karma? Will the penance for this meltdown result in Nadal and Federer not meeting in my dream men’s tennis final at the US Open?”
A few months later, after Nadal defeats Djokovic in the men’s US Open tennis final, I am running low on my free bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo. I check the Kiehl’s web site to see if the Protein Concentrate shampoo is available on line. It is, but it’s out of stock. Just as I am accepting this as a sign that the product is being phased out, I learn that my shampoo is displayed prominently on the Twitter site wallpaper of the company’s president. This gives me renewed hope.
I visit my neighborhood Kiehl’s store again, but alas, my shampoo is nowhere to be found on the shelf, but again, the manager is behind the counter. She is reading a document and declares that she has good news for me. My shampoo is not on the discontinued products list.
Me (barking): Then, why isn’t it on the shelf?
Manager (insisting): It doesn’t appear to be discontinued yet.
Me (snarky): It shouldn’t be. You know, it’s prominently displayed on Mr. Big’s Twitter page.
Manager: WHAT?!
See for yourself. Best shampoo ever circled in red.
She gives me her card, takes down my number, and says she will investigate the matter further. I urge her to do so quickly, “I’m running low on shampoo.” I look at her card. Symbolically, her name is Pains. If I were completely paranoid I would assume she has two business cards, one where she calls herself something like Dolores, and another for migraine-inducing customers like me.
I do not hear from her, so I send her an email asking about the status of my shampoo. She does not respond. A week later, I am walking up Columbus Avenue with my friend, Lola, en route to dinner. As we are walking past Kiehl’s I notice Pains inside the store. We enter Kiehl’s. Pains recognizes me.
Pains (cheerful): Hi!
Me (cutting to the chase): You don’t have the capacity to answer customer email? What’s the story with my shampoo? Pains, I need shampoo!
Pains (defensive): We’re still out of it!
I groan thunderously and grab a bottle of the Tea Tree Oil variety and return to the register with a deranged look in my eye. I slam the shampoo bottle on the counter with force … or maybe it was more like an anemic tap.
Pains (sympathetic): Why not try the Amino Acid?
Then, Pains recalls how much the Amino Acid sets me off. On cue, I am so angry; I suffer a full body spasm. Pains looks at me in alarm.
Lola (reassuringly): Ignore her. She just got fitted for a new strait jacket.
Pains starts coughing uncontrollably.
Me: What’s wrong with you?
Pains: I have allergies. They’re out of control.
Me: You should try eating local honey. Honey acts as an immune booster.
Pains (finally losing it): I live in Queens!
Me: This is New York. We have everything out here.
Pains, coughing endlessly, tosses yet another free bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo my way — and urges us to leave, but resists adding, “Please, don’t come back!”
Lola: You have an effect on people.
Me: Do you think my riding her back is going to cost me in karma? Do you think something terrible will happen like the Yankees won’t reach the World Series?
Lola: You better find her a bottle of Queens honey fast.
Although the beekeeping ban was lifted in New York City this year, finding a beekeeper in Queens is not as simple as determining how to attain world peace. For the two weeks it takes me to find this source, the Yankees plow through the Minnesota Twins during the first round of the divisional playoffs, but they struggle against the Texas Rangers. With the Yankees down three games to two in the ALCS, and make or break game 6 occurring that night, I score a bottle of Queens-based honey harvested by the Queens County Farm Museum.
In Floral Park there’s an anomaly, the Colonial Farmhouse Restoration Society, a non-profit corporation owned by the NYC Parks Department. This farm also happens to house their own hives. When I call them I ask in a tone reeking of cramps, “Do I have to go to Floral Park for a single jar of your honey?” I imagine if I do, with my limited sense of direction, I could end up in Delaware. They bring a jar of it to their stand in the Union Square greenmarket.
Real deal fall harvest Queens honey.
With honey in hand, I rocket to my neighborhood Kiehl’s. Pains must anticipate my visit for she is nowhere in sight. I consider leaving it with a member of the staff, but instead I ask the greeter at the door:
Me: Where’s Pains?
Greeter: Who?
Me: Your manager.
Greeter: Do you mean Dolores?
Ah ha! I knew she had two business cards!
Me: Whoever’s the manager; that person.
Half expecting a 50-year-old man named Egbert Firefly to emerge from the back office, I see Pains. She sees me and makes explicit eyeball sign language at the Greeter:
Pains (speaking in fluent eyeball): Don’t go far and call security. Also, whoever removed that copy of People from the bathroom, put it back.
I extend the jar of Queens honey.
Me (demure): This isn’t a regift. It’s Queens-based honey I got just for you.
Pains looks suspicious, but when she realizes there is not a lit fuse, she graciously accepts my peace offering.
Pains: This is thoughtful.
Me: I’m doing it more for the Yankees.
Pains: What?
Me: How are your allergies?
Pains: Still pretty bad.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe eating this honey will help.
Not that I believe that for a nano-second. This woman’s seasonal allergies are so severe, she needs to visit Lourdes.
Pains: I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. It’s about the Protein Concentrate shampoo.
Pains draws a cut line across her throat.
Cue the music from Psycho.
I could not control myself. I blow a gasket, and deliver a ten-minute soliloquy about every disappointment in my life starting with discovering that Santa Claus is a sham through the ascent of the Tea Party.
That evening the Rangers make mincemeat out of the Yankees who lost Game 6, 6-1. <sigh>
Although I do not possess an ounce of elite, or even sub-par athleticism in my DNA, if ruminating were a sport, I would be on that varsity squad. For several months, I have been thinking about getting back in shape. For several years, I used to work out six mornings a week riding my exercise bike and lifting free weights for a combined total of 45 minutes. Therefore, I was quite lean and fairly fit. I cut back on that masochism when I started my current job as Minister of Tile, but I continued my workouts for at least four or five times a week. When the economy tanked, and my pay was slashed forcing me to live low on the hog, I started writing more, staying up late and exercising less.
Now I feel like a slug.
All summer I promised myself I would start riding and lifting again, but this past summer was so brutally hot, I was certain that extreme exertion could result in a heart attack, or at the very least some excruciating stiffness. Now that the weather has cooled considerably, my new excuse for avoiding exercising is that my terrycloth headband is loose. Naturally, my first thought was how did I manage to lose weight in my head? Then, a fear shot through me; do I have osteoporosis of the skull? I examined my headband and diagnosed that it was simply stretched and I needed a new one.
Recently, a Modell’s sporting goods store opened on Amsterdam Avenue. As I was walking up the street towards Amsterdam, my D-cup nose inhaled the decadent aroma of something freshly baked with chocolate. This sensual smell was emanating from the Levain Bakery over on 74th and Amsterdam and I knew that another batch of their giant 6-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookies had just emerged from their ovens. A hot and gooey Levain cookie fresh out of the oven is one of life’s greatest indulgences.
With my spastically sniffing nose trying to pull my entire body into the Levain, I reminded myself that the sole reason I have yet to look like a full replica of the Liberty Bell is because I avoid that bakery, and must continue to steer clear of it until I resume working out.
Therefore, I made a beeline for Modell’s. I enter the store where I am greeted by a six-year-old, Tilda, the friendliest rescue Schnauzer on the Upper West Side. She stands on her hind legs, wraps her paws around my thigh (no, she’s not a humper), looks up at me and says, “Pet me! Are you blind to how cute I am?”
Happy to oblige Tilda.
With gusto, I pet Tilda around and over the ears and under the beard beneath her jowls. She basks in the attention and I love giving it to her. Julie, her caregiver, tells me that she named her people magnet after Tilda Swinton, an actress she loves. I tell Julie that I’m also a big Tilda Swinton fan and I add that I have just seen the stage adaptation of Orlando. Julie is a big fan of that film. Meanwhile, Tilda the Schnauzer, asks, “Are you going to pet me more or what?” Since she is also a hypoallergenic breed, that does not activate my allergies in the least, I comply.
Julie tells me that she adopted Tilda from Biscuits and Bath five years ago when she was around one-years-old. Her favorite hobbies are eating and lying on a pillow in front of the fan. I think, “Wow, she’s just like me!” As other customers enter the store, Tilda give a little howl that almost sounds like, “Hellooooooo!”
Once Julie and Tilda depart, I find the selection of terrycloth headbands, but the joy rapidly drains from this visit. All of the headbands they have are decorated with logos for either Nike or Adidas. Since I am endorsement-averse I ask a clerk if they have any plain headbands but he says no. The clerk working the register suggests, “Turn it inside out.” Inside out, there will be an unsightly seam showing while the pressure from the logo will leave my forehead embossed with either a Nike or Adidas logo. I ride the subway. I don’t want anyone staring at my forehead. I leave still headband-less and flabby, but content that I at least had a spontaneous fix of adorable dog petting.
Lame Adventures 