I was at the Dr.'s office and the 2 receptionists are having a conversation.
First receptionist: Are you sure it's not pronounced 'Focusia' ?
(as in focus-e-uh)
I assume they are talking about some new ADHD medication.
Second receptionist: I'm telling you, you're saying it wrong. Here lets ask him.
She points at me.
She hands me a piece of paper. It is a takeout menu.
She points to one of the sandwiches listed.
It comes on Focaccia.

PS: in case you are sitting there thinking "yeah, I'm not totally sure how it's pronounced myself" it's Fo-cash-uh...(middle syllable is an ah sound)

Breakfast with Cindy

My friend Cindy and I have a place that we really like for breakfast. It's a 2 hour round trip to get there, the hollandaise is that good. I'm not going to tell you the name of it because you will go there and the wait will be even longer.
Usually it's about an hour wait to get a table...actually we could probably have minimized the wait but we specified the patio.
The first time we went there we said just sit us wherever and we wound up with a lovely table triangulated by the kitchen, a table full of 8 screaming toddlers (maybe a lamaze class reunion?) and a woman with a devastating case of cankles which she tried to draw attention away from through the clever use of cleavage. It wasn't working. I couldn't take my eyes off the things. Seriously the woman should adopt a style of dress that involves boots, lots and lots of boots.
So this time we said we would wait for the patio...we got a nice table, shady, not near any cankles or babies...but it was right by the door. Which is not that big of a deal except that it was an automatic door so it was kind of like having breakfast right next to the front door of a supermarket. But I'm not complaining. I think that pretty soon we will have it narrowed down to one perfect table and we will have to wait an hour and a half for it...
While I was waiting in line to put our name on the list a guy sort of scooted past me said excuse me ....and then stood in front of me.
I paused for a second and then my "Oh Hell No!" response kicked in. I said "Um excuse me?" The guy turned around and I said "Please tell me you did not just..." and then I made a little circular motion with my finger to indicate his little swooping in front of me maneuver.
Yes I did make a quick little mental calculation that he was wearing trendy glasses and a nice sweater I imagine you could get at Banana Republic (and not the outlet either) and was slight of frame and therefore was highly unlikely to be able to kick my ass.
But in my defense just today a big black guy that I work with kept repeatedly saying he was going to punch me, to which I finally replied , "look either punch me in the fucking face, or shut up about it" So I'll shoot my mouth off whenever it's appropriate.
Anyway, the guy says, "Um, actually I'm just getting to the coffee pot."
He points and, whaddya know, there is a coffee pot right next to the nice young lady taking table reservations! I apologize to him and the nice young lady takes my reservation.
I go outside and Cindy is sitting on a bench and the Trendy Guy and his girlfriend are standing Right Next To her. super. The guy gives me a nod and we both smile. As I sit down Cindy gives me a quizzical look and I say loudly enough for the couple to hear, "oh that's the guy I tried to pick a fight with in there"
He says he says " Yeah we were going to totally fight but then we worked it out" I explained what happened and she gave me the look that says, "Michael, you're a dumbass"
So while we were waiting for our table Cindy and I did what we normally do in situations like this.
We start talking shit about people.
For example Cindy says to me "have you ever seen cankles on man?" and honest to God the mans ankles looked like a couple of monster burritos. They were the color of flour tortillas, and they went straight down into his sandals without any tapering whatsoever.
(What is with this place and the fucking cankles anyway?)
Then a guy walks up...and his hair was dyed....have you seen these guys that their hair is going grey so they have died their hair .....and you're not really clear what color it was supposed to be?
Blackish, brownish, reddish...no fucking idea what color you meant but that ain't it dude.
He's wearing....I don't even know how to properly describe the shirt...satiny,thin white and black lines in undulating repeating patterns meant to create a 3-d effect of movement and depth at the same time.
Over this he is wearing a herringbone jacket. The effect gives me an instant migraine. I make a sort of woozy face and say to Cindy, "I think I have vertigo".
She glances over my shoulder and says "What color is his hair?"
Then, we both catch sight of this woman at the same time.
She is 50 to 70 something. Hard to tell because she has clearly had extensive cosmetic surgery. I have seen these women on tv but never one in it's natural habitat. They look like an alien trying to pass as human.
As if some other life form has been watching our tv shows and has a skewed idea of what we like a woman to look like.
I can try to describe the various plastic surgery horrors. The elfin appearance from the face lift, the enormous, inappropriate boobs, the Michael Jackson nose...
Where do I start? You know what, I kind of buried the lead.
Her lips.
They looked like her face had crashed and deployed the airbags. They looked like somebody had sewn a couple of bicycle inner tubes on her face and then applied lipstick. They looked so rubbery and fake that you got the impression that even after she stopped talking they would keep moving all wubbly-jubbly for a few seconds.
Cindy supposed that when she ate, to get the food past her lips, it would appear kind of like a pelican throwing food up a little and then sort of gobbling it down into her throat...I have to say Cindy does a pretty damn good pelican.
We watched as family member after family member said goodbye and with looks of horror had the ginormous fish lips applied to their cheeks.
The absolute best was a guy in his 20's, looked like a grandson maybe. He tried to hug her without actually having Grandma's huge rack touch him. It was like he was trying to apply some sort of force field with his arms around her without touching her. He did that exaggerated ass-out hug thing. You had to feel for the kid. Here he is trying to have a nice family breakfast and he has to at the last minute do evasive manoeuvres to avoid Geriatric Triple-D's.

Before you think I'm being mean to the woman, I'm not the jerk here, ok?
You want to know who the asshole is? The plastic surgeon who didn't have the temerity to say "Hey, look, you're 5 foot 2 and you weigh 115 lbs. soaking wet...maybe Triple D is not the way to go?" Or the surgeon could have said, "I know you want fuller lips...but normally we inject only 1 to 3 cc's of collagen...7 cc's seems excessive." Or perhaps, "look I can only stretch the skin of your face so much before your ears meet in the back of your head and you look like an elf."
Or maybe the husband who kept paying for it and encouraging her?
Not me.

But fuck all that.
The Dutch apple pancake was phenomenal and the eggs benedict perfection. Cindy was charming and funny and beautiful. The weather was ideal and we sang "There's No-one Like You" by the Scorpions at the top of our lungs on the way home and it was a pretty damn good day.

Skip down one post I got one out of order

I somehow posted one out of order. Skip down one....

At least they're honest about it...

I saw these organic sausages at the store so I thought I would check them out...All things considered I was pretty disappointed.

First off, I'll be honest I couldn't taste the rats.

Either they really skimped out on the rats...In which case I'm kinda pissed, because if I buy rat sausage I want to be able to taste the rat goddamnit!

Or the second possibility is that maybe rats just taste like chicken...which is disappointing in it's own way I guess...

Anyway if you want a decent organic sausage (I served them with a nice spicy mustard and new potatoes with a bit of Irish cheddar melted on top)

Then I would try these but, if you're looking for an authentic rat sausage, keep moving buddy this ain't your brand.

Self fulfilling Prophecies

You know how some of the most horribly awesome schadenfreude filled stories start out like this:

"There I was, minding my own business...."

This is a story about a self fulfilling prophesy

I recently said something in the comments section about huniliating myself, and then corrected it and made a joke out of the typo...Yeah, well last night was so filled with huniliation it's not even funny....

No, it's fucking hilarious.

Ok.
So there I was, minding my own business.
I was sitting outside my apartment reading a book. Never has reading a book caused me so much pain.
Up rolls a woman who used to live upstairs from me and finds me very attractive and to be frank this chick is several miles of bad road.

(I'm not sure about the proper nomenclature here. I know that a woman that is nothin' but trouble is some certain set of miles of "bad road" but I don't know the proper number...but trust me she's at the very least Several Miles.)

SO up rolls Ms. Thang and I try very hard to convince her I have several pressing engagements and cannot possibly leave.
The fact that I am hanging out in front of my apartment with my feet up reading a book doesn't really sell my story and so I finally agree to go see her new apartment and am assured that I will be returned home in an hour or less. She lives very close to me, so it's no big deal right?

Sigh.
We get to the apartment and somebody slaps a beer in my hand and my day goes officially and conclusively off the rails.
Then Ms. Thang gets into a huge door slamming-yelling "mutherfucker!"-throwing shit kind of fight with her boyfriend...and then they get engaged...I think..

but that's not the point.

The point is the baby.

Inside the apartment I could hear a baby crying....
I can't stand the sound of a crying baby.
But not why you think...
It's not that I'm intolerant, it's quite the opposite.
Before Calvin was Turbo, and before Turbo was Hopper he was just a little colicky smidge.
He cried for hours on end. And i held him and sang to him and patted his butt and ....I cried too.
Sometimes he would cry for so many hours in a row that I would be holding and rocking and singing and dancing ...and crying right alongside him.
He seemed to like this one particular Blues Traveler song...if i hear that song ...to this day I can't help but feel a little bunched up, a little sniffly.

SO there is a crying baby. I say something brilliant along the lines of "what's with the crying baby?"
They bring her out, I say let me see her, and somebody throws me the baby like a shovel pass....I hold her for a minute and bounce her a little and sing a little ...and she stops crying.
I think this is where it officially went from being Weird to Fucked Up.

(hang with me it's a long story but the good news, for you, dear reader, is that later on it's going to go from Fucked Up to Totally Fucked Up)

So...I'm going to estimate the next part of this story at about 4-6 hours. I sit in a chair on a balcony with this sweet little 6 month old and I break out my super high tech phone. The memory chip I happen to have in at the moment is loaded pretty heavily (like 2 gigs?) with 80's-90's punk and ska.
So I spend a big ole' chunk of time listening to Husker Du and Suicidal Tendencies and Goldfinger and Common Rider and Bad Religion and Bad Brains.
With every song I tell Sierra a story about the song...where I was the first time I heard it, the meaning of the song, the time I saw them play the song live, why this band or song is significant in the history of punk...
Whatever comes to mind.
I have the most captive of captive audiences. Every once in a while somebody slaps a beer in my hand or slams a door or shoots a BB gun off the balcony. (I'm serious. I was all, "not around the baby!")

Off and on a woman comes to talk to me.
She is a little hot...a little not. She looks like a cross between Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon....so... cute, but...maybe not from every angle?
Ok, this woman bounces in and out of the scene...I want to go home at some point...I almost stole the baby, I swear. It was such a fucked up scene and here is this sweet little innocent thing....
Then I find out, the woman who may or may not be attractive, is actually the babies mother.

What. The. Fuck?
I'm a pretty perceptive guy and I had no fucking clue this was the mother of the baby?

She left, for hours at a time, some random fucking man holding her baby.

Jesus Fucking Christ how did I wind up here....

So I finally have had enough and demand somebody take me home ...and I realize that there isn't a single sober soul available to drive me anyplace....
Tony, the new boyfriend of the cute/not cute babymomma is supposed to show up and give me a ride...this frankly, does not seem like a great idea to me.
I happen to wander by their apartment because I'm just going to walk home, fuck all y'all!'
(realize now that I was more intoxicated than I thought and walking anywhere was probably one of the poorer ideas of the night)
and a guy sort of snaps at me from behind the screen door "hey, are you the guy?"
I'll be honest....at this point in my day I was fixin' for a fight. It would have taken very little to provoke me into violence. I just spent hours holding and caring for a tiny little thing that has much chance of having a good life and I as very very mad to have been exposed to that. I know it exists, but I don't want to fall in love with it and know about it
I told my friend Cindy the whole insane story and I told her I kind of had this idea that I would volunteer to watch the baby a couple days a week and she pointed out that I would just wind up loving the kid and getting my heart broken and in the end I wouldn't be able to do any good anyway..
so...
Tony (as it turns out) says from behind the screen door "you the guy needs a ride?" I say something along the lines of "yeah, I'm the guy that got kidnapped, I'm the fucking guy that watched the baby all night"
And he kicks the screen door open and I square off to fight this guy who frankly was much larger than me...and he hands me a bill.
It's folded lengthwise, I don't look at it, I stuff it in my pocket, and say goodnight. Or fuck off, or peace out or whatever.

I began to walk. I have no answer for why I didn't just call a cab.
It wasn't all that far from my house. Right? I'll fucking walk home. Fuck all y'all
I am making good time and cutting through yards....
then I come to a bit of a thick piece, some bushes, some trees..
I break out of the trees and there is a ditch. A culvert, a cement river.... a drainage ditch...

45 degrees of cement on one side 45 degrees on the other.

I'm pretty sure my house is a less than a mile on the other side of this ditch...
So. I run down one side jump the little mucky river and run halfway up the other side........
and then I slide on my forearms and knees and feet down 15 or something feet of cement.
I'm not kidding, I tried a dozen different ways to get up and out of this fucking ditch. There was no purchase. I could not for the life of me climb out of this thing!
I tried every trick in the book.
I got a running start...nothing. I came at it from an angle...nothing. I tried to get all weird and crab-walk backwards up this fucking thing...not happening.

And?! it was twisty! so here I am walking along in a fucking cement ditch towards my house.....admittedly, I don't have the best sense of direction...but I know I'm going the right way. But at any given time I could only see a hundred yards or less and then it would bend again so I had no way of knowing if there was an actual way out or just more freakin impassible walls
And then i realize that up ahead it goes from being 2 feet of cement on either side of the mucky water to ...well..... just mucky water...Fuck That! I am not walking in the mucky water.
so I reverse direction...
I am looking for a way out, a fucking choice in life...because really, I am starting to think I may have to call 911 to get me out of this fucking ditch.

Really.

I was picturing first trying to figure out how in the hell I could even point them in my general direction....then I'm picturing firemen with ropes or maybe a helicopter and a little basket...
There is no way in hell I am going to be that guy. I will not be on the news.

So, I keep walking and around each bend I hope to see some way out of this mess and around every bend I have my hopes crushed.
On one side of the ditch I can see the back of a shopping center that I happen to know is pretty damn close to my house on the other side are peoples back yards.

Then I see it like a ray of hope up ahead. 2 branches hanging down from this overgrown tree in somebodies backyard.
I get a running start, I leap up grab onto the lowest hanging branch ....and it comes off in my hand!
I take that branch and use it to pull the other branch down to where I can reach it and then I begin to haul myself up hand over hand...I swear I felt like Bruce Willis in one of those die hard movies.

I stumble through the bushes and come to a backyard. I climb straight over the fence and walk through somebodies backyard.
Trespassing?
Whatever, I just survived The Ditch.

I pass through a gate, walk down a driveway and lay down at the foot of the driveway. I call the cab .
The cab ride costs me $5.00 that's how close I was to home. I'm pretty sure it costs $3.00 just to get in the fucking cab. I pull out the bill Tony gave me. $20.00. Well hot damn, Tony is a stand up guy at least. So I tip the cabbie %100 and go home.

The next day I tell My friend Cindy the story. When I get done she says, "and what did we learn from this experience?"
"Stay away from fucking ditches?"
she laughs, "ok that too, but what could we have done to prevent all of this? What did we learn?"
I pause for a second....

"OH! Don't get in the car!"
"That's right sweetie, don't get in the car."

I was flipping channels and I came across the US Open....
One of the Williams sisters was playing and my first thought was,
"When the fuck did Ru Paul learn to play tennis so well?"

This happens to me every time...

Grandpa Munster

John McCain is speaking tonight at the GOP convention.
I don't know that I have much to say about him that hasn't already been said.

But I will say this. I have been saying this for months I think I have a couple of good ideas for campaign slogans/advertising ideas.

A poster of John McCain holding his fist up in furious anger...the tagline...
YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!
In fact I think that should be the slogan for the entire campaign.
You kids get off my lawn!

I was also thinking maybe a commercial in which we see John McCain come out the front door of the White House to pick up the newspaper and then a soccer ball comes rolling up and McCain stops it with his foot. He picks it up and we see that it has the Iranian flag on it. The Presidents' face knots up in furious outrage. He holds the ball aloft with hands shaking slightly in anger and says:
"That's it Iran! Your ball has come in my yard for the last time! I keep this!"

Those are just a couple of ideas. As more come to me I may share.
Enjoy the speech...if you can stay awake.

Yeah...but I didn't think you would catch me...

With my sister bringing up Space Food Sticks and me writing about The Big Texas it gave me a little moment of clarity regarding the difference between how my generation was raised and the way in which we're raising the next generation.

When I was a kid we would drive my parents nuts asking for Food Sticks and Cokes. They would get annoyed with us always bugging them to eat that crap.

BUT, not because it was crap. They would say no because they didn't want to have to go buy more of the crap...
not because it was bad for us, they didn't think twice about that.

When my son bugs me about having hot cheetos and root beer I demure because I don't want him eating junk like that.
(ok, I do give in more now that he is a teenager and has the metabolism of a triathelete.)

It's a whole different attitude towards kids.

They loved us just fine but if somebody would have suggested that we have to wear a helmet to go on a bike ride, it wouldn't have even made sense to my dad. He would have just said, "why does he need a helmet? The boy knows how to ride the goddamn bike!"

We were free range children. In the morning they would open the doors and say "get out "

Heaven forbid you come in before lunch time. I can remember trying to come in the house for a drink of water one time and being told if "I just want water we have a goddamn garden hose."

Don't think for a second I am complaining. If my parents had kept as close of an eye on me as I did on Turbo? They would have probably killed me at some point. I would ask if I could go swimming and my mom would say . "No you can't go swimming, it's raining out."

And then I would go put on my swim suit and jump in the pool anyway. She would think I was in my room playing and then there I would be at the sliding glass door shivering and blue lipped. She would run a hot bath....

Did I get in trouble?

Probably ......but not enough to never do it again.

You can be damned sure Turbo would not repeat that stunt.

It's a combination of me not being an easily controlled child....and parents who weren't really overwhelmed with a desire to control me.

Can I give you a perfect example of my uncontaineable nature?
(Christina and I have a running joke that my motto is "I'M MICHAEL I DO WHAT I WANT!")
When I was...I'm guessing here but I would say 4 or 5? My dad had a Corvette. I want to say it was a '59. I loved that car.
He loved it too of course.
So.
He washed it, waxed it, the whole nine yards. Then he went in the house.
A few minutes later he realizes he can hear the water running. He thinks, "shit, I left the hose on"
He comes outside to find me, no shirt on, whipping the hose above my head like a fucking madman, water going everywhere...including inside his 1959 convertible Corvette.
He goes over and turns off the hose.
I look down the barrel of the hose like "what the hell, where did my water go?"
He walks over, "what the hell do you think you are doing?!"
Me, "playing in the water"
Dad, "well you're getting that shit in my car, knock it off! If I catch you doing that again I'm gonna beat your butt."
He always said that but never did it.
(except the time I gave Jason a bloody nose. But that's another Oprah.)
So.
He goes back in the house.
He gets halfway to his chair and hears the water come on.
He comes outside to find me, no shirt on, whipping the hose above my head like a fucking madman, water going everywhere...including inside his 1959 convertible Corvette.
He goes over and turns off the hose.
I look down the barrel of the hose like "what the hell, where did my water go?"
He walks over, "what the hell do you think you are doing?!"
Me, "playing in the water"
Dad, "Didn't I tell you if I catch you playing in the water again I'm gonna beat your butt?!"
Me, "yeah...but I didn't think you'd catch me."

And yet I lived.

the waffle story.

Sorry but you kind of gave me permission.

I'm an older brother. I think I have talked about this before. I wasn't always the sweetest to my little sister. She bugged me, I was annoyed by her very presence a lot of our childhood.
But.
I loved her.
I have always loved my sister fiercely. We survived a lot as kids and I adore her now.
But it was rocky at the start.
When they told me that there was another kid coming along I was resentful.
I had a good gig and I didn't see the need for another kid.
In a famous family story my mom came to talk to me (while I was watching TV ) about the impending baby and she asked what I thought would be a good baby name and I said, "I don't care! Name it Mazola!"
Yeah...our last name is Miller?
Mazola Miller?
I have to be honest......in hindsight?
That name would have been Awesome!
She could be a rapper right now instead of a stay at home mom.

So when we were kids I defended my sister With Extreme Prejudice.
(ask me about Royce)
But I also gave her miles of shit.
In my defense she was a bit trying for a person like me.
She has since come into her own, but as a kid she took the whole innocence thing too far sometimes as far as I was concerned. She was sweet and innocent and literal and it drove me batshit-crazy.
**editors note**
we talked about this and she freely admits she clung to glorious innocence for a very long time. I don't think I was ever as innocent as she was for a long long time. I Can't ever remember really believing in Santa Claus for example.
One time she was attempting to make orange juice from frozen concentrate and she was smacking the shit out of the bottom of the can. She was going at it like this concentrated O.J. owed her child support or something. My step dad couldn't take it any more and he said "use a spoon!" so I handed her a big ole wooden spoon and ...she started smacking the shit out of the can with the spoon.
We were required to eat an iceburg lettuce salad with every dinner.
Hyuk!
I cannot eat another one of those motherfuckers for the rest of my life. I don't care what it is, I'll take the soup, thanks. Put all the fried chicken and bacon you want on it I will punch you in the face rather than eat iceburg lettuce.
So every night we are have this iceburg nightmare and my sister takes the bottle of ranch dressing and smack smack smack GLORP ...she has a shitpile of ranch all the Fuck over her salad.
It's a ranch salad soup.
and Chrissy says.
"there."
and this of course drives me batshit angry.
So.
We have this relationship in which she bugs the hell out of me but I beat the everloving shit out of anybody that looks at her crosseyed. I thought at the time that it worked for us but in retrospect I was a bit of a dick to my sister.
(umm.... it made her a stronger person?)

SO I told you that to tell you this.
My stepdad would make waffles. Fresh homemade waffles. A pile of them.
Then whatever was left my sister and I would eat.
It was summer and I got up early to get a drink of water and I saw a plate of waffles, 8 or 10 of them. I thought to myself, "Ima have some waffles later!"
I got up an hour or 2 later...and there was one muthafuckin' waffle!
Chrissy and Deanna ate my damn waffles!
We didn't have this expression at the time but ...WTF?
So I'm standing there in the kitchen.
We had a long galley style kitchen and we are on either side of it.... showdown style. Like Sergio Leone was blocking out this shit.
I see that there is one waffle.
I look at the lonely waffle.
I look at my sister.
"Where the fuck are the waffles?"
She gives a little shrug like "whatchoo gonna do?"
I make a "imma stomp you" kind of gesture and she makes a
"Pshh you ain't doin' shit" kind of gesture.
I do a little surge towards her like I will come over there and beat her ass...and she shrugs like 'whateveah'......

Here's the thing...I don't think for a second my little sis thought I could rack my angry brain for a weapon to demolish her with and come up with a ........fucking flying waffle as a reasonable alternative.
Projectile waffle?

Who does that
Really, honestly?
But I did.

So i picked up that lonely waffle and threw it with great vengeance and furious anger.
How could she have anticipated that when looking for an airborn weapon I would choose a delicious undressed waffle?
(for the record, nobody has ever been able to accuse me of throwing a syruped waffle)
So.
I grabbed that waffle and I threw it.
(oh did you know that at the time I was on the water polo team and therefore very well versed in the art of throwing things? Yeah!)
Ok.
So i deploy the waffle and it travels at enormous velocity down the length of the kitchen and then....
Impacts Christina's face with a glorious ....

how do I describe the sound?
flop
kerblap
fwop
plap
shaplow
plap
sha-plap.....

I don't know. I feel all Suesian...
But it was the most incredible sound mine ears have ever beheard.
She shrieked, hopped and ran out of the room.
I told her friend Deanna (who she may have been showing off for? ) that she may want to head home.

The best part ?
(aside from the glorious, inexplicable sound?)
was that when my mom got home we both shouted at her about the event and she handed down a ruling to the effect of "both of you leave me the fuck alone!!"

Look I know that this makes me seem like a real dick to my little sister, but you have to understand, at this point in our lives......
I was her protector, mentor and caregiver...and she ate my motherfucking waffles!
Shit had to be handled.
This act of aggression could not stand.