Milton Bradley Killed My Youth

Visiting my aunt and uncle this past weekend, I played more games of Monopoly than recommended for someone still granted the use of their legs, and was given a glimpse of the naive optimism that a young Johnny posessed when playing the game at the age of 11, before the weight of the world killed his spirit. While I'm grateful for the sense of voracious capitalism instilled in me at a young age (I have distinct memories of my 11 year-old self purchasing my broke opponents' actual game tokens from them and forcing them to play with scraps of paper found on the floor, purely for sport), I'm worried that it might have built up my expectations; namely, that I would one day ever own property, win a beauty contest, or find free parking (not to mention the less-frequent-than-I-was-led-to-believe encounters with Scottie dogs and top hats).

Encountering the game again in the twilight of my thirties, I found myself even more money hungry than nineteen years ago, especially when playing against my cousin, who, God bless her stoned little heart, actually WANTED to be Banker (it was a bear market, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that the current fiscal climate and low interest rates were NOT going to make it a lucrative position, as it would harsh her mellow).

After we'd quickly cleared the board of anything and everything that could be purchased, rents were due, and I was struck by how little money is actually involved in the game. It's the same amount as it was back then, but having lived in Manhattan for three years, the idea of paying $18 for one night's worth of rent made me almost giddy with savings; I decided to purchase Mediterranean Avenue and not do a goddamn thing with it just for the God complex (I should mention that I'd found an old bottle Kahlua under the counter at this point). And $200 of salary, for 10 minutes of work? Tax free? Clearly I'd never appreciated the generous tax breaks that Milton Bradley had passed along.

Sailing around the board, managing my properties, crushing my poor cousin, who had not realized that blood does not, in fact, run thicker than imaginary pastel currency. I was heady with power, enjoying the life of luxury (taxed at only 10%!), until I looked down and realized that in a world where an entire avenue can be purchased for $120, a world created during the fucking Depression, I had more money in the pile in front of me than I did in my actual real-life bank account. Whatever nanothread of childlike innocence I had left in me died at that moment.

Eat Chicken Here

We need to start showing animals who's the boss. And by showing them who's the boss, I don't mean strapping them down in front of TVs while Tony and Angela have a light-hearted debate about gender roles in 1980's America. Although I don't think anyone would argue the fact that that would also be a very good idea.

What I mean is that we need to stop treating animals like they have souls. Everyone knows that it has been scientifically proven, again and again, that the soul is an anatomical feature specific to humans. It was given to us by God himself when we agreed to let Him randomly select who goes bald.

Anyway, to get back on topic, humane treatment of animals has gotten out of hand. I've even seen restaurants advertise that the animals that they serve were treated ethically.

Well, I say, fuck that. I'm starting my own chain of restaurants that will openly disregard hygiene, laws, and widely accepted moral standards. It will be fast food chicken, and I've already come up with a basic premise for my ad campaign. Let me know what you think:

Setting: A midwestern farm. A farmer is up at dawn to feed the chickens.
Date: A simpler time

Narrator: You know, here at Johnny's Chicken Shack, we've heard all about those other restaurants, treating their chickens like people. Making sure they're tucked in at night; No holes in their jammies. Well, that's just fine for them. To each his own, as we like to say. But we like to take things a little bit slower here on Johnny's farm. Call us old fashioned, but we treat people right, not animals.

(Farmer shows his young son how to break a chicken's neck as camera fades into a present-day Johnny's Chicken Shack filled with families)

Narrator: When you set foot in a Johnny's Chicken Shack, you know that your meal was prepared with you in mind. We keep the chickens right here on-site, safely stuffed by the hundreds into unheated metal pens. Then, when you place your order, your chicken is carefully hand-selected out of the healthy and living candidates. This process ensures that not only will your meal be fresh, but also that only the strong, delicious chickens reach your plate. Once the lucky winner is chosen, this is where Johnny's Chicken Shack is set apart from the competition.

At other restaurants, you may be forced to passively stand by while your meal is prepared. Well, at JCS, you become a part of the fun. You and your family are ushered into the cooking area and seated comfortably in one of our spacious viewing booths to watch as the chicken is slowly submerged and drowned in a sweet and smokey blend of hickory bbq sauce and home-grown spices. As you watch on, the animal is periodically removed and re-engulfed in the delectable seasoning until its will is overwhelmed with flavor and its consciousness submits to your hunger.

From that point, it is only a few short minutes before your conquest is complete, and you envelop the chicken's essence as a part of one of our six affordable combo plates. And for those of you out there who need a little bit extra, don't forget to Macho Size your meal with an extra large Mr. Pibb and onion rings; Because at Johnny's Chicken Shack, you have it the way nature intended.

Johnny's Chicken Shack: "They Don't Understand They're Being Killed, They Just Know It Hurts."

Happy Berfday To Me!

I had a birthday yesterday and it amazes me how I'm still alive to talk (type) about it. I should technically be dead. More posts to follow in the coming days, I need some time to recouperate and figure out how I'm gonna get that fence post out of my ass.

Resolutions

I don’t know why I didn’t do this, but I didn’t make any resolutions for 2006. Maybe I was just feeling lazy around resolution time or felt that I had accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish in life, but what sucks is that I can’t now tell you how spectacularly I failed at keeping those 2006 resolutions.

2006 was, on the whole, a pretty solid year. There were some sucky parts. Like how 2006 was an abominable year for me and women. Good lord. There were, of course, some exceptions, some lovely ladies and lovely times, but pretty much it was a disaster wire-to-wire. I don’t think my sex life is sophisticated enough to use the word travesty to describe it - even in the nightmare that was 2006 - so let’s instead go with the more appropriate shit show. Terrible, just fucking terrible.

(And I’m still not even close to getting that threesome, which is a resolution for every year. I’ve been hoping for this for about fifteen years now, so maybe I should replace my yearly "Have a threesome" resolution with something more attainable like, "Stop masturbating into my laundry.")

(Actually, that’s not attainable at all. I’ll think of something else.)

For 2007, I will, however, make some resolutions. But we’re going to keep them simple and reasonable.

2007 Resolution #1: Spend the year training in order to become the World’s Strongest Man in 2008
I’ve been traveling so much over the past few weeks that my concept of time is warped (this weekend will be my first real one at home in NJ since before Thanksgiving), but once recently while in Queens, sitting on the couch next to my friend, who was smoking two cigarettes at once, we were watching the World’s Strongest Man competition. Specifically, we were watching an event in which the competitors were on some tropical beach and had 90 seconds to throw ten 60 lb. kegs behind their back and over their heads over a 15 foot banner, which looked like a steel volleyball net.

The first thing to note about this event was that it was totally awesome. The second to note is that for whatever reason I really, really want to do it. I realize that it’s not exactly practical - the odds of me walking along the beach and coming upon some barrels that need to be thrown in the air are even worse than me being shirtless on a beach (what am I doing on the beach in the first place? did I get lost? shipwrecked?) - but there is something comforting to know that if something like that did happen, I could toss those kegs in no time. I feel like this would help me sleep better at night.

But sitting on that couch, the smoke from my friend’s cigarettes clouding the view of the TV and the muscle guys, I felt reinvigorated (and not at all in a gay way - I don’t think). Since just after the New Year, I’ve gotten up at 7am each morning to do my sit-ups, then run a mile, then hit the weights. And yes, of course, I’m lying. Doing this has been my intention, but my first day at the gym I pulled so many muscles in my back and arms that I couldn’t wipe my ass properly for three days. I was pooping at work when I first realized the damage I had done and was this close to jumping out of the stall and sticking my ass in a urinal, hoping that a flush would clean me up proper. Unfortunately, someone then walked into the bathroom and so I couldn’t go through with my plan. I spent the next few days staying away from people at work and going through a lot of cologne.

Yet I remain determined. I’ve gone twice this week and am getting the hang of it. I realize it’s only a matter of time before I due some serious damage to myself while doing this, but my hope is that by the time I hurt myself so badly that I can never have sex missionary-style again I will have at least put on enough muscle to qualify for the 2008 World’s Strongest Man competition. Wish me luck.

Resolution #2: Learn the dance in "Saturday Night Fever"/Meet Elisha Cuthbert/Become Engaged to Elisha Cuthbert
I went to a high school with a guy who looked like a cross between the kid in "Mask" and some throw up with hot dogs in it.

(God, that’s horrible. He was a really nice guy and not even that bad looking and now he’s going to punch me in the face when I see him next. Great.)

But the point is he was a visionary and a lady killer. Why? Because at every high school mixer (a "mixer" is a dance held by my all-boys high school attended by lots of girls from the all-girls schools), he could dance like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

And the ladies were all over it. Actually, to say they were "all over it" does not do justice to how much this guy’s dance worked - they were drawn to him, almost involuntarily. At every single dance he’d make out with an attractive girl, all because of the dance. Hell, even the guys were kinda mesmerized. And I do mean that in a gay way.

Because I don’t have an original bone in my body and because I (sadly) believe that sexual dynamics have not changed much since high school, I’m going to learn this dance. I’m a pretty good dancer for my size/paleness, but you don’t even have to have the dance down perfectly - just the fact that you’re doing it is impressive enough. And if you watch it, the first minute and a half or so seems pretty easy - it’s the whole getting down on the floor part that might give me some trouble. But I’m confident, because I’m doing this for the right reasons: to court Elisha Cuthbert.

There are many things about me that deserve pitying - the downright unfair amount of body hair I’ve been cursed with, how I’m 100% positive that woman are incapable of having orgasms (it’s a total myth), the whole "penis like a light switch" thing I have going on - but none more so than the fact that I genuinely believe that I have a 50/50 chance of marrying Elisha Cuthbert. Yes, I know this is how Dateline NBC documentaries start (ending of course with me giving a jailhouse interview with tears in my eyes, delirious, screaming, "I loved her! We loved with a love that was more than love! That’s from a poem! Look it up!"), but if you think about it, my life has been nothing but a series of tremendously fortuitous developments over the past few years. Let’s face it: I have no discernable or valuable talent except comparing my penis to tiny everyday objects (I was going to go with "hershey kiss" above but "light switch" felt better) and writing really long sentences, and something I used to procrastinate at work magically turned into a multi-million dollar empire (lie), garnering me thousands of "fans" (bigger lie) and a variety of exotic and capable lovers (sadly, biggest lie of all).

The point is that all of this is building toward something. Of course, the smart money is that it’s building toward something terrible (death in a hotel fire seems to be getting the best odds), but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s building toward something Greatest of All, like, for example, marrying a very attractive Hollywood starlet who probably smells like cinnamon and sunflowers. Or maybe it’s somewhere in the middle (Elisha Cuthbert and I date for awhile and it’s totally awesome but then I lose my arms in a hotel fire and she breaks up with me). Who knows.

But while I consider myself highly fatalistic, I do believe that people have some control over their destinies. This is why I’m learning the dance. Let me explain.

Every year, I get invited to one "Hollywood" party thrown by some friends at an agency in NYC at a big club around the time of the upfronts (in May). Young celebrities go there for the free booze and the networking. And while I’ve never seen Elisha Cuthbert there (I’ve seen hot young stars of similar caliber), I’m going to rely on Fate to bring her to the forthcoming one this May. Because, well, why not?

The plan then is simple: memorize the dance, go to the party, do the dance and impress everyone in the room - including one Elisha Cuthbert. Afterward, everyone will be coming up to me, congratulating on my moves, asking me where I learned to dance like that, saying "Who are you, again?" I’ll then walk up to the bar and order a stiff drink like an Appletini, and over my shoulder I’ll hear a woman’s voice say, "It takes a real man to drink a green drink." I’ll turn around and Elisha will be there, standing before me. Unflappable, I’ll say something smooth like, "It takes a real man to do a lot of things." And then she’ll say, "That doesn’t really make a lot of sense." And then I’ll say, "I know - I was just testing you." From that point forward, we will be inseparable.

At some point in 2007, we will be engaged. I will propose to Elisha at a zoo, because on one of our first dates I will be bitten by a monkey, losing a third of my calf muscle. This will happen not a zoo but on the streets of San Bernardino. But that scene would be impossible to recreate for the proposal, so we’ll have to settle for caged monkeys.

The actual wedding won’t take place until 2008. We will be married outside in a garden of sunflowers. My friend Dan will give the best man toast and later burn my groomsman Michael in the face with a cigarette in a fight over some scallops. Our wedding song will be "If I Were a Carpenter" by the Four Tops, which symbolizes how I have little to offer Elisha accept my heart and my hands, my creepy, creepy hands, which I will use to build us a home, or at least a room in a pre-built home, where she and I can drink hot chocolate and watch movies, or, if she finds the room too stuffy, where I can raise my monkeys and keep some trinkets. It’ll probably be a rather poorly built room, so maybe it’s exactly fit for monkeys, but we’ll see. Really, this is all for 2008, not 2007.

(Oh, and if you’re reading this and you work in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, you can probably print this out now and put a "Prosecution Exhibit 1" sticker on it. Conversely, if this doesn’t qualify as "mental illness," then I really don’t know what does. I really don’t know what does.)

But really, that’s it. If my 2007 is half as good as 2006, I’ll be very happy (except in the woman department - need to step that up). In the meantime, I’m going to hit the weights and pick up the "Saturday Night Fever" DVD. I’ll update you on my progress. And if you’re in a bar in NJ and see some chubby guy dancing like it’s 1979 on the dancefloor, come up and say hi.

(Not during the dance, but after. Please don’t break my concentration. Otherwise, I might hurt myself.)

I Do. I Do

I'm trying out for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" tonight, because I love that show so much it hurts. Not just the format, or the fact that cheating is encouraged (ask the audience? Phone a friend? Why can't we just write the answers on the bottom of your sneakers, Growing Pains style?), but because the title is so rhetorical. Shows like Deal or No Deal, deciding the title is the hardest part of the whole show.. But this one, it's like, well..."I do."

Stoned Again

The latest batch of pot I’ve been smoking reduces me to a 14 year old. When I smoke it, it feels like the first time (it feels like the very first time): I get light-headed, my mouth gets dry, and I get the munchies - all symptoms I have not felt in years.

Last night, I was feelin’ kinda blue for no particular reason at all, and sat down at my computer to dick around and listen to my monumentally suicide-inducing playlist (and I know that "monumentally suicide-inducing" doesn’t make much sense, but if you heard this playlist, you would understand completely). I had already been drinking some fine red (red) wine and decided, since it was Thursday night and all, to smoke a bowl or two.

What happened next, I can’t explain, but I was up until almost 3 in the morning smoking pot, drinking wine, listening to the playlist, and (saddest of all) playing computer solitaire. I was so fucking incredibly high and sad that when I looked at the clock and saw it was 1:48am, I did a double take (albeit a very slow double take). Then I played solitaire for another hour before going to bed.

(I had a 9am meeting this morning and was so stressed out about it that I woke up at 6:30 and came into work early. Since I was in early, I decided to treat myself to a sausage, egg and cheese bagel and a large hot chocolate. The effect these had on me was similar to when a bear gets hit with a tranquilizer dart. I slurred my way through the meeting, dark circles under my eyes, sipping diet coke, fighting to make my mouth say what my brain wanted it to say and move my body the way my brain wanted it to move. Now, I’m contemplating banging my head against a wall in the bathroom and going into my boss’s office to tell him that I fainted in the bathroom and need to go home, because I really need a nap. Johnny Trashbag: Champion Employee.)

The point is that I enjoy drinking so much that I forget the simple joys of pot. Just a couple of bingers can transform you from a successful 30 year old man, enjoying his fine Chilean wine in his own two-bedroom condo, into a groveling mess of emotions, practically weeping at his computer, hunched over playing solitaire, and trying to figure out the easiest route to marriage. Or threesome.

(Stoners: I know a "binger" is technically a bong hit but I enjoy the word so much that I use it to describe all types of pot-hitting. So please don’t email me and call me out on it.)

Hot Dog Champion

On Friday, following a semi-cultural afternoon at a play, my friends Jason, Cindy and I decided to get a drink at some bar in the city. After a rather daunting trek to get the hell out of the theatre district, we settled on a bottle of their finest (nay, cheapest) wine and some calamari. Finishing up, I make my usual run to the bathroom, and as I'm coming back, I spot a celebrity near and dear to my heart.

Me: Oh my God. I think that's Kobayashi, the World Hot Dog Eating Champion.
Cindy: Where?
Me: Over there, eating like 17 pounds of lobster.

Cindy, is just as excited by this prospect as I am, and Jason, having an Asian fetish, musters up some excitement. After a few seemingly logical inferences ("He's wearing a bib!""It's a new year!""He's with other Asians!") Cindy takes a run to the bathroom and agrees that it looks like him, and demands that I ask him to confirm. I mention that if I'm wrong, this would mean that I basically saw an Asian dude eating, then assumed he was the World Hot Dog Eating Champion, and if someone saw me eating and out of the blue asked me if I was the World Eating Champion of something, it might dampen my appetite for the rest of the meal. But this doesn't matter, as we're two crazed racists on a mission.

As with every other important aspect of my life, the matter of who would ask is settled with a best 2-out-of-3 Rock Paper Scissors. I lost (damn you, rock), and we planned an escape route, a dingy back staircase that led to places unknown, where we both agreed to live out our days in hiding. I put on my sweetest face, we approach, and I mumble something about an odd question and the World Hot Dog Eating Champion, to which one of the men looks at me and says, very slowly and deliberately, like he's an 80s Movie Foriegn Exchange Student, "Hot....Dog?"

And then we ran up the mystery staircase (ends at a coffee shop, not a twisted alter dimension, thankfully) and giggled like the embarassed little racists we were.* And then we drowned our guilt in whiskey, which we probably would have been doing anyway.

*Cindy, incidentally, is Chinese, but I seem less loathsome if I refer to all racist activities using "we".

Do You Really Need To Walk 5 Miles?

I'm not giving money to your March of Dimes walk. You don't need to do something pointless to get me to give you money, and it's not like you wouldn't be walking somewhere that day, anyway. Besides, if I'm going to give any group money, it's going to be one that researches something that I might one day get.

Poker Chump

In addition to being drunks, my family are also gamblers. This is a relatively new phenomenon; I remember after Thanksgiving (and Christmas) of last year playing poker around my aunt’s house until the wee hours of the morning and taking everyone’s money. I was on fire - at one point I stepped outside to get some air, and three hot chicks showed up out of nowhere and blew me. Seriously. Ok, well, not seriously.

Last year, my family seemed new to the whole poker thing, but that didn’t stop me from brutalizing them and bragging about it (”Well, I have 2 Kings here, but then - wait a minute - what’s this? Oh, that looks like a third King. And something else is here in this pile of cards that I have before me - can anyone make this out? It looks to me like 2 Aces. Can someone please check this? My eyesight is poor. Is that 3 Kings and 2 Aces? So I win? Oh good. I am going to donate this to the Church, first thing in the morning. Also, you guys suck. I’m ashamed to be related to you. I haven’t seen a beating this bad since my last girlfriend threw out my Oreos because they were stale.”).

But this year, my family really upped the ante. I went over to an aunt's house for a family dinner, and as the evening was drawing to a close, my uncle pulled out a full set of poker chips, and we began to play (first Texas Hold ‘Em, then 7-Card Stud).

And boy, was I off. Like, really, really off. I said before we even started that I was due for a loss, since I had been playing some most excellent poker. Of course, realizing this did not stop me from talking a good game, calling my cousins (both male and female, ages 16-22) “chumps”, “losers”, and, as I got drunker, “cockasses”.

The bad karma came back to haunt me, because I was cold. Ice cold. It was as though some of the cards I was getting were in another language, and not even part of a standard deck. By 2am, I think I had once gotten dealt a 14, three of my cards seemed to be in Russian, and one just said “You suck at this, fatass.” It was awful.

Also, we were playing dealer calls wilds, so that means the person dealing while dealing could say, “Ok, in this hand, 7’s are wild”, so that any 7 could be any suit, any number or face. And in about twenty hands, I think I got maybe three wild cards. And each time this happened, a competitor would have five of a kind or a royal flush. Not good.

But I’m happy to report that I battled back at the end, and after seven hours (!) I left with my $20 buy-in back and an extra $20, which I ended up smoking the next night. Good times, and I’m looking forward to playing again, when I hope to be a little more lucky, and a little more high.

Happy New Year

Yeah...that. I know I’ve been away. But it’s not my fault. First, there was Christmas. Then I was sick. Then there was New Year’s. Somewhere in there Gerald Ford, James Brown, and Saddam Hussein died. So it’s been a rough stretch for a lot of people.

(Also, did I mention I was sick? And when I haven’t been sick, I’ve been drinking? And when I haven’t been sick or drinking, I’ve been working - a lot? Have a little mercy on me.)

Just wanted to check in to say that I’m alive and haven’t forgotten about y’all. Posts will be coming soon. Stay tuned and Happy New Year.

Love (Yes, in THAT way),
John