Coaster Punchman's World

Cooking for cooking's sake

2011-08-14T15:01:00.004-04:00

I do like to cook. For some reason I prefer to do it when Poor George is not around - I'm not sure why. Because when I do cook with Poor George, I have fun and I learn things, even if he chastises me severely and then mocks me openly for every gaffe I make. He claims his Chinese heritage and his father's instruction methods as the reasons he does this to me. According to George, the Chinese have such a reverence for food that to screw around with your ingredients is the height of disrespect to the universe, and in situations where animal products are used, disrespect to the animal who gave its life so that you can stuff your fat face.

I suspect there may be more going on with PG's admonishments than that, but I'll work with that for now.

Yesterday morning I got it in my head that I would like to spend the day cooking and that I would make myself a super fancy meal. I had lofty visions of my friend Brandon, who was raised in a stereotypical New York Italian home where lasagna was served as a first course to any meal. I decided I would make myself a lasagna to start.

Of course, being the imbecile that I am, I searched the Web for an "ultimate" lasagna recipe, and ended up going with one that requires its own tomato sauce from scratch.

"I don't think you're going to want to make your own sauce - that will take too long," said Poor George gently over the phone. At present George is in Illinois helping my parents move, an act that should in itself qualify him for sainthood.

Since I didn't actually start until after 8 pm last night, Poor George turned out to be exactly right. My lasagna was not ready until well after midnight - at which point I had no desire to eat it. (I did take one tiny little square, and while not being the best lasagna I've had in my life, I will say that it is still pretty good.)

The recipe told me to boil two whole pounds of lasagna noodles. I was dubious that I would be able to use that much, but I followed the recipe dutifully and as a result ended up with an entire batch of unused cooked noodles.

So this morning I whipped up nice little tuna noodle hotdish, made with my own bechamel in place of a UBI. For the uninitiated and non-Midwesterners among you, "UBI" stands for "Universal Binding Ingredient" used in hot dishes, more commonly known as Cream of Something Soup. None of that church basement stuff for me today, Gentle Readers. Today is the Real McCoy.

And lacking any potato chips to layer on top, I opted for buttered panko bread crumbs. That, coupled with the generous dollops of Tobasco and cayenne pepper I threw into the mix, seems to give my tuna noodle dish the "innovative taste" lacking in most church cookbook recipes.

Some further investigation into my refrigerator contents prompted me to throw together a potage of potato, leek, broccoli and cauliflower which is now cooling on top of the stove. Alongside a delicious looking swiss chard souffle I just removed. (I used leftover mozzarella instead of gruyere so I'll let you know how that turns out. Smells wonderful.)

Inside the fridge I still have a nice piece of wild red sockeye salmon that I intended to eat with a miso glaze as my main course last night, but seeing as how I didn't make it through the first course the salmon remains uncooked and uneaten.

I have all this wonderful food surrounding me right now, with no appetite to eat it. I hope I feel hungry around 5 tonight because I will be enjoying a real feast. Wish some of you could join me.

The View -- a special kind of retarded

2011-05-14T10:34:00.004-04:00

What in God’s name did we do to deserve this?*

I need to start tracking my Internet browsing history more carefully, because doing so might explain the surreal twists my insomnia-provoked web surfing seems to take. Last night I started around 3:00 am on a quest to find an online recording of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s actual speaking voice, and ended at 7:00 am by watching old YouTube videos of the ladies on “The View” discussing Prop 8. How the first led eventually to the latter is anyone’s guess. If you’d like me to email you my browser cache, maybe you can make sense of it.

I hate to have to say it about all of them, but here it is: the ladies on “The View” are morons. Even the ones I like. Even Barbara, sadly.

I know I’m a lawyer and all, but do none of these ladies even remotely understand the strength of religious freedom in this country? Did they miss that day of school in first grade where kids learn that you get to practice whatever religion you want here without being thrown in jail because of it? I mean, seriously? Barbara, Whoopi, was this really a question?

Holy shit. I know Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a bona fide idiot with the sense of morals and ethics God gave an acorn squash, but I would expect more out of Barbara Walters. Hasselbeck started off by saying that people should have voted “Yes on 8” because a minister in Sweden was supposedly jailed because he refused to marry a gay couple. And we can’t let that happen here! If Prop 8 had failed and gay marriage became the right of Californians, then ministers in California would have to marry gay couples or go to jail.

Neither Whoopi nor Barbara said a word to contradict this, or even to question it.

Seriously ladies? Holy f*cking sh*t. As I said, I am a lawyer, but I don’t think I had to pay Georgetown $70k to understand that we don’t jail church ministers for preaching to their congregations.

The next day (or sometime later) Whoopi was prompted to do a little research when GLAAD called to protest the complete asininity of this “conversation” these women had on the air in front of the even stupider general public. And so Whoopi cleared it up for the group. At which point Hasselbeck and the black chick who replaced Cherry Jones, or whateverthef*ck her name was, both said “well this information came from GLAAD. We’d like to hear what the other side had to say about it.”

The “other side?” What other side? Like Fred Phelps?

Oh. My. God. If you have not yet seen the movie “Idiocracy,” I advise you to watch it as soon as possible, because it’s coming true.

*As noted on the brilliant website NoMoreAffleck.com

Bill Maher is smart

2011-04-10T06:00:00.004-04:00

This news about Victoria Jackson being a Bible-banging tea-partier is really interesting. I always suspected she had wet-brain, but now I have proof. How disappointing that I used to laugh at some of her SNL skits --- unless, perhaps, I was laughing at her rather than with her. Yeah, that’s it.

Bill Maher talked about this on his show the other night. That man is brilliant, and I don’t really care that what he says offends people --- because honestly, we’re the only ones who seem to think it’s important not to offend those who despise us. When are our left-of-center leaders going to grow a pair and start calling a spade a spade instead of trying to broker deals with people who refuse to reason?

Bill quoted Victoria as saying something about the producers of “Glee” having shoved the gay agenda down America’s throat. After having fun with this easy shot of a thinly veiled reference to fellatio, Bill noted that we should be shoving gayness down the throats of Americans because that’s what the Republicans do every single day.

Unlike the Democrats, when Republicans believe in things that the public doesn’t, their response is "f*ck it. We’ll make them believe." Like attacking Iraq to avenge 9/11, like convincing a country that badly wanted health care reform that they really didn’t want it, like turning global warming into a hoax. That’s what conservatives do. Relentlessly push, until the unthinkable becomes the consensus.

I really have nothing to add, because he could not have spoken my mind any better.

Greetings from the land of "I feel like sh*t"

2011-04-07T18:53:00.004-04:00

I have been sick with a nasty cold since Sunday, and it’s one of those evil spring flus that creep up very slowly and get progressively worse until you feel like begging Dr. Kevorkian to make a house call.

I hate being sick. Really, really hate it, and especially this time. It’s so damn inconvenient, and aside from the benefit of being able to avoid most aspects of work and household duties, I derive no pleasure out of this at all. Even laying on the sofa watching “Glee” reruns on my Roku has not made me feel better.

I cannot get comfortable no matter what I do. I can barely speak because my throat hurts so much. Lying down makes me want to stand up. Standing or sitting makes me want to lie down. Even Lunesta isn't helping me get a full night's sleep because I wake myself up coughing my guts out every 20 minutes.

I can see why some people say “you either get better or you die” and I take comfort in that sentiment because holy Jesus, I would not want to live my life feeling this way for any significant amount of time.

The funny thing is I don’t even really believe in illness. I’m slightly Mary Baker Eddy that way – minus the part about the Bible. I believe that people make themselves ill because somewhere deep down they want to be ill to avoid having to take responsibility for anything. I believe that if you don’t want to be ill, you don’t have to be, and that you can take all the proactive steps to avoid illness such as eating correctly and getting enough exercise to keep those white blood cells circulating around your body to ward off pathogens. And getting enough sleep. Et cetera.

I am not always 100% effective at following my anti-illness regime, but I still think I deserve an A for effort. So when a cold like this comes from out of nowhere and kicks my ass, it is especially frustrating. I feel like crying out to the Universe “Hey! What gives? I’m really trying here!”

I have a number of theories on why I get sick more often than I think I deserve. I’ve been reading about body ph and how you need your ph to be slightly basic to avoid illness --- and most of the foods I love (all the good stuff that most Americans love) are ones that cause your body to be more acidic.

I also think I have a sleep disorder due to snoring, like about 75% of the adult male population. I don’t want to get one of those horrendous-looking sleep machines, mainly because I think you have to sleep on your back to use them, and I hate sleeping on my back. But maybe I can train myself.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me vent. I’m quite displeased right now, because I’m in one of those states where I feel like I will never get better. But this too shall pass. Blech. (cough cough)

An open letter to 網站設計

2011-03-23T06:00:00.002-04:00

Dear 網站設計,

You keep visiting my Blogger friends, telling them how much you miss their writings on theater and writing. But you never visit me. Aren't MY writings on theater and writing ALSO "much missed?" It hurts me to be left out like this.

I too sometimes write about "theater," but I have to admit I don't have too many writings about "writing." I know some people have published books on writing, and I often talk about how Blogger is for writers whereas Facebook and Twitter are for hacks. But I don't think that's what you were getting at when you visited my friend Dale recently. Dale's post was about ventriloquists, which surely should not count as theater. Am I right?

And I'm fairly certain Dale didn't address writing in his post. So why did you have to visit him and not me?

Your friends 情趣, 巴黎, and even 充氣娃娃 used to visit me. Frequently. So frequently that I had to call in 角色扮演 to kick their asses. At one point I threatened legal action, and ultimately activated that annoying "comments moderation" feature so that I could force them to stop visiting. That was especially aggravating for me, given that I am perilously lazy and always seek to do as little work as possible.

But now that 情趣, 巴黎, and 充氣娃娃 don't visit any more I have become lonely. Please don't be so cruel to me, 網站設計. Stop breaking my heart. Won't you please visit me too? I promise I'll try to write more about theater. And writing.

Love and coasters,

CP

An Open Letter to My Tinnitus

2011-03-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

Dear My Tinnitus,

Why have you plagued me since I was nine years old? And why are you getting worse lately? You first entered my life after I flew in an airplane for the first time when I was nine and had a bad head cold. My parents weren't flyers and didn't know this would be dangerous for me.

My ears hurt like a holy son-of-a-bitch on that flight, and from the moment we landed my ears have never stopped ringing and popping. I don't know why I never said anything to my parents about it. I guess I was just happy that I could hear at all, and that I was not in pain.

Most of the time I don't think about you, My Tinnitus. But for some reason, lately you seem louder. When I go to bed in the quiet at night I hear nothing but your steady high pitched tone and you annoy me. Nothing I do makes you go away, not even for a second.

What would my universe sound like without you, My Tinnitus? And why can't people agree on how to pronounce your name? I've heard two doctors refer to you as TINN-i-tus, whereas most others call you tinn-I-tus. Which is it?

Maybe it would be a good idea for you to go live somewhere else for a while. We need a break from each other.

Love and coasters,
CP

An Open Letter to the 3Jesus97 Lady

2011-03-17T06:00:00.003-04:00

Dear 3Jesus97 lady,

You proclaim to love Jesus every chance you get. I mean, you live in Oklahoma and I guess that sort of thing might be required down there. But do you have to have approximately 57 crucifixes hanging all over your house? Do you realize your entire house is decorated in an instrument-of-torture motif?

And when I asked you about your parents that one time, 3Jesus97 lady, you replied "they were horrible people and I'm so glad they're dead!" Why would you say something that harsh, 3Jesus97 lady? Although I found it quite funny and got a good laugh out of it, I know you weren't joking. Didn't Jesus teach you that it's bad karma to talk that way about dead people? I'm not sure Jesus would agree with your approach, 3Jesus97 lady.

Finally 3Jesus97 lady, why have you turned into such a crazy bitch at work? Why are you trying to undermine me and the rest of your colleagues? Don't you know that we are about to rise up collectively to bring you to your knees where you belong? Shouldn't you be on your knees anyway since you are supposed to be praising Jesus?

3Jesus97 lady, you know I am a total Jew for Jesus, right? Just like that one guy on "Glee." Jesus is my #1 Heeb. And I say that just because I like to, even though I'm not Jewish. But you need to take it down a notch, 3Jesus97 lady. Because no one is buying it, and especially not Jesus.

So, 3Jesus97 lady, I suggest you get with the program and start living more like our Boy if you want Jesus to help you. Because you're about to get your ass kicked.

Love and coasters,
CP

An Open Letter to Whatever is Lurking under my Right Thumbnail

2011-03-15T06:00:00.007-04:00

Dear whatever is lurking under my right thumbnail,

What are you, my friend? Be you man or be you beast? I have no idea what you are, but you hurt like holy f*ck. Are you a tiny splinter that decided to lodge itself under my thumbnail? I have examined my thumb up and down repeatedly and I see no evidence of you, but you must be there or I wouldn't be wincing every time I use my right thumb to hit a keystroke on the computer.

Please be gone by the time I wake up from my next nap or I may go postal.

Love and coasters,
CP

Messy messy

2011-03-13T06:08:00.004-04:00

If you haven't figured this out by now, Gentle Readers, I'm kind of a jerk about certain things. One of the ways that I am a jerk is that I will judge you if you have a messy house. Or at least if you have a house that is messy when you invite me over.

I know, this is not very The Secret of me, and by judging you all I'm just attracting more judging into my life. But this is fine, because if I have a dirty or messy house, I want to be judged. I want you to come into my house, as my former boss Michael did when I was flat on my back from a disc problem, and say "ugh, I just cannot stand this room. I am cleaning this up."

Of course, who wouldn't like free maid service?

Talk to my friend Mindy June about the perils of having me as an overnight house guest. She's still mad that I gave her specific instructions on how to tidy up her house before I visited her in London, although she admitted to liking having the place in nice order. And for the record, she did a marvelous job - I felt like I was visiting an adult from one of those other generations that seemed to care about such things.

Mindy's own mother, may God rest her soul, was a neatnik like me, and since she was a dear friend of mine I now claim a certain amount of authority over Mindy not just in the area of general life management (a duty bestowed upon me by her dearly departed father) but now also in some of the areas her mother occupied, like household order.

(We will set aside for a moment the fact that I claimed this authority long before her mother justified it f0r me.)

As for other friends, well, I can only tell you that at least one of them has in so many words forbidden me from ever entering her apartment. And Mindy, trying her best to be sympathetic to my plight, just shrugged and said "well, it is you."

So why am I divulging all this now, Gentle Readers? Because Poor George and I made some new friends recently in San Diego. A very nice male couple, charming, good company, wonderful cooks and all around good people. We had met them at a dinner party several months back and invited them to our house for drinks and snacks, and then later to our house for a full dinner party of our own.

Last night they invited us over to their place for the first time so that we could hang out and order in some Thai food.

Neither one of our new friends is working right now, so I would have expected things in their apartment to be in better order. My parents, for all their crazy in other ways, had always taught me that you are to make your house presentable before someone comes to visit. It's a way of showing respect, of showing that you care enough about your guests' comfort and hygiene to take the trouble to pick up your shit and clear surfaces of obvious dirt and grime.

Our new friends' place had dust about an inch thick on all the furniture, and there were piles of crap all around. I did find several clear and available seating surfaces so I was able to sit down, but my personal comfort ended there. I could go on with more details about everything that bugged me about this apartment, but most of you are probably already cringing in horror at the thought of ever having me over, so I'll just leave it at that.

This kind of neglect to clean one's house a bit before having company is a phenomenon that seems to plague people of my generation and younger. As I already described, my parents and Mindy's parents were obviously of the belief that you must prepare for company. And as a youngster I do not ever remember visiting homes of family friends that were not in reasonable order.

What has happened to change the world this way? Maybe things were always like this and my parents just didn't associate with people who didn't hold similar beliefs.

After this display of shallowness I don't suppose that I'll be invited to many of your homes, Gentle Readers. I don't doubt any of you in your own right, but if my informal calculation of the statistics regarding messy versus non-messy is accurate, I'd have to guess that that about 75% of you don't prepare your homes to receive guests, at least not beyond moving piles of crap around so that people can have a place to sit down.

What say you, Gentle Readers?

CP's Pretend Interviews with Bloggers - Lulu and the Therapist

2011-03-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

After abandoning the interviewer’s seat for a number of years, CP recently pretended to sit down with former blogger Lulu again to resume some of their former conversations.

CP: So Lu, welcome back to Blogger, although I must say we miss seeing your posts of life in Bangladesh and other musings.

Lulu: Thanks CP. So can you please make me sound like less of a bitch in your fake interview this time? If you’re going to pretend to be me, it would be nice if you could make me sound vaguely attractive for a change.

CP: What do you mean I don’t make you sound attractive, Lu? Just look at your picture above – you’re smoking hot!

Lulu: Yeah, and if you had any readers left the guys might drool over it the way they used to.

CP: I know. Have any ideas on how I can get some of them back?

Lulu: Maybe stop being an asshole for five minutes?

CP: I would, except Mindy says I’m boring when I try to be nice.

Lulu: Yeah, well I wouldn’t know --- I’ve never had the chance to experience that.

CP: Well actually Lu, you did, at least one time. Remember when I had just graduated from college and I was a total mess? And I started seeing a therapist?

Lulu: Oh God no, I see where this is going.

CP: That’s right Lu. One time I was talking to you from a pay phone at work…

Lulu: Yes, CP, and you were talking to me on a calling card you had stolen from someone, if I recall correctly.

CP: I’ll have you know I did NOT steal that card, Lu. It was given to me by my friend Laurie Whorie who had gotten it from one of her friends whose dad worked at AT&T or someplace.

Lulu: Yes, and the use was completely unauthorized. Which means you were stealing.

CP: Well, it’s not like it was costing them much. And anyway, that was in the days when a) I was very poor and b) I had no scruples. I’ve fixed at least one of those by this time.

Lulu: And we all know which one you fixed.

CP: Lu, are you going to let me get on with this story or not?

Lulu: You’re just pretending to be me here CP, so you can do whatever the hell you want. Go ahead.

CP: Thanks, Lu. So anyway, before we got sidetracked by the part about me stealing from my friend’s friend’s father’s company, I was going to reminisce about the time you tried to shut down my therapeutic process.

Lulu: I wasn’t trying to “shut down” anything, CP. It’s just that you were starting to sound like something out of a Melanie Beattie self-help book. Or that Stuart Smalley guy from Saturday Night Live. Someone had to intervene.

CP: I don’t recall exactly what I said that would have caused this reaction.

Lulu: Jesus Christ CP, do you expect me to recall it? You’re the one with the photographic memory. You’re the one I have to warn everyone not to say anything potentially embarrassing around, because you’ll remember every detail and then bring it up twenty years later at the most inopportune moment.

CP: You mean like that one time when….

Lulu: I’m stopping you right there, CP.

CP: Ok, sorry. Well truth be told, I don’t recall exactly what I was saying either, but it was the kind of stuff my shrink thought I should be saying. This was my first bout with therapy so I didn’t know any better.

Lulu: At least I was trying to help you not embarrass yourself. You might want to take a page out of my book.

CP: If it makes things any clearer Lu, I already felt embarrassed about saying whatever it was I was saying. I was just trying to be a good student. Therapists love me for that.

Lulu: Oh, really? You mean like the one you were seeing in New York who thought you were such an asshole that he stopped returning your calls?

CP: I never told you about that.

Lulu: I know, but this is just you pretending to be me, remember?

CP: Right. Well, we’ll leave that one on the table until we’ve had more time to process it. Maybe after my next round of therapy.

Lulu: I’ll be there to pick up the pieces when the next therapist dumps you, CP.

CP: Thanks Lu, always good to know I can count on you. Well we’ve babbled on enough for today. Catch you at the next fake interview!

New-Friend-Dating and Brain-Crazy-Stalking

2011-03-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

I had a very nice New-Friend-Date (see yesterday's post) the other night. We got along really well, had a lot to talk about, laughed at each others’ jokes and generally found each other to be good company. Ok, well I felt all of the above regarding John, my New Friend. I can’t be certain he returned my fondness, but let’s just suspend our disbelief and assume he did.

You may recall that I’m a cyberstalker by trade, so I can find out all sorts of weird shit about people online. But I’m also a brain-crazy-stalker, meaning that when I meet a new person who interests me on any level, I develop an intense need to get inside their head to discover the crazy.

In case you were not aware, Gentle Readers, it is a fact that everybody is crazy on some level. Everybody. Some people hide their crazy very well, however, and sometimes it takes a mildly retarded Punchman with legal training and a penchant for cross-examinations to get to the crux of a personality and find the crazy. Plus, with me there is the added benefit of an uncanny ability to smell crazy from fifteen miles away, having spent the majority of my childhood around the clinically insane.

Brain-Crazy-Stalking is a delicate operation, and I especially need to keep tabs on myself while engaged therein. If I find myself able to crack open someone’s crazy even a tiny bit, it becomes an enormous struggle for me not to let what should be some casual social questioning bloom into a full-on interrogation.

With all of the above in mind, my gentle probing into John’s unique character and personality flaws revealed the following:

John is a picky eater. He will not eat any kind of onion, mushroom or pepper. He doesn’t want anything spicy, and shuns almost all fish. He refuses to eat any kind of meat containing a bone ---- everything must be boned or filleted. He said he likes Chinese food unless it’s something slimy that he can’t recognize. (Hence, most Chinese food will surely gross him out.) He also refuses to handle any kind of raw meat because it scares him. So when he cooks at home it’s vegetarian.

And all this is despite the fact that John has lived abroad multiple times. I asked him about that and he just said “it was hard, REALLY hard.”

I’m normally very put off by finicky eaters, but John is entertaining enough in other ways that I find myself able to write it off as a charming quirk. If he’ll let me make fun of him about his food phobias, we might be able to go places with this relationship. Plus, the picky eater thing is offset by two other important facts: John drinks alcohol, and John has a cat.

So, for now, I’m ready to move my New Friend up to second date status --- assuming I make the cut on his end. I need to wait the requisite amount of time before emailing John again, remembering that he’s operating from the position of power here. (i.e., he already has friends whereas I do not.) We’ll see where that goes. But no matter what happens, Gentle Readers, I will keep you well informed.

Love and coasters,
CP

PS: I just learned from our mutual friend that John is also a bit of a hypochondriac. I will definitely need to investigate that more fully!

Friend dates

2011-03-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Making friends in a new town when you’re married, child free and over forty can be challenging. If you’re married, the single people on the prowl have no reason to talk to you (unless they are dedicated homewreckers, of course.) People with children gravitate toward others with children so that their kids can play together, leaving them with unfettered adult time to drink and do blow. And as for those of us over forty ---- well, we’re just too tired.

So what is an old, married and childless Punchman to do in a new town? (And yes, we’ve been in San Diego two years now---but remember that for old people, two years go by in a heartbeat.)

Making friends as a couple is an option, but it’s definitely a different dynamic than having friends on your own. You interact differently with the world when you are half of a unit than when you function as a solo entity. Plus, since I am mildly retarded I have the additional problem of the George People conundrum. It’s important for me to make friends on my own so that my personality doesn’t continue to evaporate.

I have heard repeatedly that the best way to make friends is to get involved in activities you like. That way, you will likely meet other people with similar interests and yada yada yada. But it’s not always that simple for a mildly retarded Punchman. For one thing, I don’t really like anything or anybody and have no legitimate interests to speak of, so I wouldn’t know where to start with that. Plus, there aren’t any clubs I know of whose mission statements include the torturing and murder of annoying sales reps or the watching of bad made-for-TV-movies for hours on end. I'm a bit of a lone horse, I'm afraid.

One time I decided to place an ad on the “Strictly Platonic” section of Craigslist. I wrote a funny ad, specifying that I’m a sarcastic bitch who likes Amy and David Sedaris and that my primary purpose in life (aside from complaining) is to eat good food and drink lots of alcohol. I received many replies, about 60% of them from guys who apparently had called in sick to school on the day the word "platonic" was taught in vocabulary class--- and although I did enjoy seeing some of their nude pictures, they were not what I was after.

A few other people replied with depressingly generic “I’d like to be friends with you, I like having coffee and taking walks on the beach” kinds of responses. (Buzzer noise --- NEXT!) One guy wrote me such a long sad-sack reply that I had to turn off my computer and down a few Darvocets just to get over the urge to slit my wrists.

Only one person --- one person --- seemed to capture the spirit of my ad and replied in a fun, joking manner. We started exchanging emails and eventually did meet ---he turned out to be a nice person and we have become pretty friendly. Only problem is, he’s a non-drinking vegetarian. And since I’m an alcoholic who, given the opportunity, would gladly swallow a full pound of bacon in a sitting, we are far from a perfect match in terms of spending much free time together.

Which is why the other night I placed a phone call to a guy who had come to one of our parties as a guest of another friend, a guy with Scandinavian roots like me (meaning that he knows how to drink.) We both speak Norwegian and otherwise had had a pretty good time talking to each other. I decided I should try to get to know him, so I asked our mutual friend (more of an acquaintance of George’s, actually) for his phone number.

I left this gentleman a message four nights ago and he has not returned my call. I told him I go to the gym right near his apartment building, and that maybe he’d like to meet me for a glass of wine at the wine bar next to the gym sometime. I gave him my cell phone number, because aside from my office land line, our cells are the only phones we use.

Now I fear he is not calling me back because he thinks I called him to troll around on George. I asked him to meet “me,” not “us.” I said “call my cell phone.” I asked him to drink wine with me.

Yeah, I guess that could sound kind of flirty.

I thought maybe I could call again and specify that I’m not looking to bone him --- but that might be even weirder. Not sure what to do.

Shit, it’s like being single all over again.

CP

Update: The mutual friend ended up calling George to tell him of my message to said 3rd party friend. And suggested that the four of us get together.

Ok, now this was even MORE awkward because, instead of just calling me back, this guy felt the need to call Mutual Friend to ask why the fuck I was leaving him messages asking him to drink wine and call my cell phone number.

Doh.

So I manned up and emailed Mutual Friend and just said "step off bitch, I'm not cheating on my husband, I just want to have a conversation with someone where I can get a word in edgewise and maybe do it partly in Norwegian."

Or a version of that which was maybe slightly nicer.

Mutual Friend forwarded my email to New Friend, and as a result I now have a New Friend date! I feel just like Kelly on "The Office!"

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - The Finale!

2011-03-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

This is the real Maura Mingalls. She was supposedly kind of a bitch, so maybe it all makes sense.

Naturally, I could not resist sending Alissa a friend request. Once again, I clicked Send and then ceased to think about it.

A few hours later I got the happy Facebook email: Alissa Milbert has accepted your Facebook friend request.

That’s right Gentle Readers --- CP became FRIENDS! With Half-Pint!!!

(Just to make sure all my Gentle Readers are in on the story --- Alissa Milbert was the childhood star of Little Mouse on the Scarie, playing Half-Pint, aka Maura Mingalls. We’re now talking BIG-TIME 1970s TV stardom!)

So of course, now I’m all impressed with myself. I mean, not just anyone can be friends with Half-Pint. Her friend list was rather small and only consisted of about 50 or so people. I recognized quite a few of her names too, but decided not to press my luck by friending any of them. Not yet, anyway.

I immediately called my friend Shelley in New York. Shelley had sat next to me at work, and we had often discussed a mutual appreciation for Little Mouse, both of us having enjoyed watching it during childhood---and had on more than one occasion joked about forming a Little Mouse book club. (Yes, we had also both read the entire series of books.)

Shelley was quite impressed with my new friendship. It was only natural that she should want to worship me.

* * * *

Over the next several weeks I enjoyed observing the fascinating world of Alissa Milbert. She was on Facebook just about every day --- at the time she was finishing up work on her autobiography and was excited about its upcoming publication.

One morning Alissa posted the following status, purportedly in reference to her work on the book:

The truth will set you free….

I decided to leave her a comment, and in true Punchman style I tried to make it short and witty. (Unlike my blog posts, I realize.) I wrote:

Yes, but aren’t lies more fun?

I was promptly scolded by Alissa’s other friends, who said things like

Come on, we are supporting Alissa in her work. It’s been hard for her to tell her story --- isn’t that more important than having fun with lies?

And such other b.s. from people who have no sense of humor. I felt slightly chastised, but oh well.

Yeah. "Oh well" until later that afternoon. When I discovered I was no longer Alissa’s friend.

That’s right, Gentle Readers. Unfriended. By Half-Pint. Maura Mingalls fucking dumped me. I’d been dumped by a washed up former child actor.

Panicked, I scoured the rest of my Friend list to make sure Palison was still there ---- and she was. (Thank you, Jellie!) And through Palison’s profile I was able to see that Alissa was still indeed on Facebook --- and still had approximately the same number of friends she had when she first decided to be my friend.

So this was intentional. Half-Pint saw my comment, probably wondered “who is this f*cking a**hole? I thought maybe I knew him but he’s obviously just some pathetic stalker. UNFRIEND!”

* * *

Today, if you search for Alissa on Facebook you will have the ability to friend her “Fan” page, where she leaves us the following message:

Please note this is the official Fan page for Alissa Milbert. She will not add friends on Facebook in any other format unless she knows you personally. To avoid disappointment - please do not try unless she knows you!

So at long last, Gentle Readers, we come to the crux, the theme of this series which has been a long time coming:

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls.

Also, for the record, I read her autobiography. And I have come to the conclusion that she really is an asshole.

Unlike Palison, whose autobiography I also read --- and Palison comes across quite clearly as the nice, down to earth gal that she is. I will always love me some Jellie!

So that's where we leave it, Gentle Readers. I realize that a nine installment series may have been a bit much to sit through, merely to learn that I hate Alissa Milbert because she Facebook dumped me.

But since when have you expected great literature from me?

Love and coasters,
CP

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - NEW INSTALLMENT - part 8

2011-03-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

I love writing on my blog, a fact I have not made evident the past several years, I realize, but I do love it. And frankly, I resent the hell out of Facebook and what it has done to my blogging community!

(Not to mention the fact that I all but came home and deleted my account last night after seeing The Social Network. Jesus, that entire movie had barely one redeeming character. What a bunch of assholes.)

Nevertheless, Facebook is one of the best modern stalking tools yet. At least until I learned about that stupid “Who has searched for you?” app, I spent hours combing through profiles of people I went to high school with, people I used to work with, and people I had previously vowed to put curses on if I ever developed supernatural powers. What joy!

And while I don’t remember what exactly led me to her, one day I found myself looking at the Facebook profile of Palison Parngrim (aka Jellie Joleson!) Palison had an ordinary Facebook profile, with maybe a few hundred friends or so. So of course, I friended her, expecting never to hear from her. I mean, why would Palison, a Hollywood icon, bother to friend a nobody like me?

So….and I think you know what is coming…..imagine my surprise when I got the email saying “Palison Parngrim has accepted your Facebook friend request”!

Wow!

But wait, Gentle Readers, it gets better: I sent Palison a message to tell her I had seen that a comedy troupe called “The Jellie Jolesons” would be playing in Los Angeles on a date in the near future. And Palison wrote me back! “Wow, thanks! I was wondering when they were going to be in town again. I am totally going to that show!!”

I couldn’t believe that Palison might actually remember me, let alone send me private messages --- but I figured she accepted my friend request since she and I already had a mutual Facebook friend in Lex.

(It short order I would discover that Palison is one of the “nice” stars who accepts any and all friend requests. But I still felt special for that moment!)

Now, if you are lucky enough to be friended by someone even remotely famous, your first line of duty is, naturally, to stalk their list of friends to see who else you might be able to buddy up to. So I began reviewing Palison’s rather normal sized list.

And came upon a very familiar name: Alissa Milbert.

--------------to be continued--------------------

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - NEW INSTALLMENT - part 7

2011-03-02T08:02:00.000-05:00

I wasn’t sure why Palison was leading me to her bedroom, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t for anything untoward since we were at her wedding anniversary party and her husband was home. Even if she was wearing a leather bustier.

“You’re going to LOVE this,” Palison said as she swung open the double doors to a large closet-sized display case.

Inside the case was a virtual shrine to Jellie Joleson. A duplicate of her wig with the blond ring curls, some items of clothing, and an ornate wood model reproduction of the Oleson’s Mercantile.

“Look, there’s a figurine of my mother, throwing people out of the store!” she exclaimed. I was giddy beyond all excitement, but I think I kept my composure. I did gush just a little more than I had been planning on.

“Oh my god, Palison, I adore you!” She just giggled and led me back to the front door where Lex was waiting with a puzzled look on his face.

I gushed some more on the ride back to our apartment building and told Lex over and over how it had been one of the most special nights of my life. I think he was happy rather than annoyed, because Lex is sweet that way.

Unfortunately, Palison and I did not become best friends after that. There’s not much you can do when someone is a washed up Hollywood icon and the other is just a normal person with a job. Unless you live next door to them and offer to feed their cat or something. And since I didn’t live next door to Palison, I didn’t have any good way to keep in contact with her.

I left Los Angeles for the East Coast a few months after that, diminishing my chances even further for more friend-dates with Palison.

But, if we flash forward a decade or more, I would find myself living back in Southern California again, and armed with a powerful new weapon to aid me in my stalking of the stars: Facebook!

………….to be continued……………

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - NEW INSTALLMENT - part 6

2011-03-01T08:11:00.001-05:00

Palison named her cat after this character. How could anyone not worship this woman?

As far as parties go, there was nothing particularly special going on at Palison’s --- and Alissa Milbert was notably absent. And of course I couldn’t ask Palison why, in case she thought I might be interested or something. There were just a lot of normal people there, and as I remember everyone was quite pleasant. Which is only appropriate, since Palison has a reputation for being very normal and pleasant herself, her on-screen alter-ego notwithstanding.

Lex and I chatted with Palison and her husband throughout the evening, and she was an extremely charming hostess. She regaled us with stories of her cute cat, Hannibal Lecter, and went into some detail about the various kinds of bra paddings she would use sometimes to enhance her bust.

“Should I wear the big tits or the small tits tonight, Bob?” she said, imitating her own conversations with her husband.

As the evening drew to a close and Lex and I were in her entryway saying goodbye, I looked down at a small table to see an impressive pile of tabloid magazines with her on the cover. Apparently, she was displaying these for her guests’ amusement. I took this as my cue to open a dialogue.

“Wow Palison, look at all this. I wish I could be in the tabloids!”

“You and me both, honey --- I only wish the photographers were as interested in me any more!” she replied.

“Oh please Palison, you are a goddess and you know it.” I was smooth! “And you know, I’m from Minnesota!”

Now I had handled the evening perfectly. I was a gracious guest, I acted all normal, I mingled with her friends, I complimented without being overbearing and all the things any washed up but fabulous Hollywood actor would love. But this mentioning of Minnesota --- this was my coup de grace, my piece de resistance. I was brilliant.

Because, for those of you not in the know or who may not remember, Palison’s famous series Little Mouse on the Scarie was set in Minnesota!

So by this little pronouncement of my being from there (which is not entirely true ---- I had been there for eight years before moving to California ---- but I hadn’t moved there until I was 18) was a subtle indication of a) my fanhood of Palison and her show and b) a clever bonding move. As if to say “you and I practically grew up in the same place, Palison! It’s just that for you, it was a TV set and for me it was real! Minus the bonnets and covered wagons, of course.”

“Wow Tom, so you’re from Minnesota? Well come on, then!”

Palison took me by the arm and led me back to her bedroom.

--------------to be continued-----------------------

Flash Fiction Friday: The Super Adventures of Supercat and Catzilla

2011-02-28T06:00:00.009-05:00

Gentle Readers, just a one-day hiatus from the Alissa Milbert series so that I can present this week's Flash Fiction Friday work, which is a sort of Battle Royale. Enjoy!

The Super Adventures of Supercat and Catzilla

“Supercat, what did you do with my pink collar? Have you been trying on my clothes again? God damn you!” Catzilla was getting fed up with her brother and his little fetishes. It was all she could do to prevent him from sticking his head full on into any female humanoid’s shoe that found its way into the sprawling ranch house the butterscotch siblings inhabited with their humanoid slaves. Clearly he had a thing for high heels, and the stinkier the better. But cat-girl collars were another story entirely.

“Uhhhh….pink….what does pink look like again?” Supercat, although a bruiser who commanded an awesome power only by virtue of his enormous size, was far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. Without his brainy feline sister by his side to protect his image, he would have had his ass kicked a hundred times over by any cat in the vicinity.

“I am NOT going over this again, Super-Fat.” Catzilla only resorted to name calling when she was at her wits’ end, an increasingly common state of mind for her. “Have you even tried using those flash-cat-cards I made out last month? I clearly explained the entire f*cking color palate to you and provided example after example. Have you considered maybe spending one evening studying instead of licking your own ass?”

“Sorry,” groveled Supercat. “I guess maybe I was looking at your collars when I got inside the cat-treat cupboard.” Catzilla’s outburst served to jog his memory just slightly. “I remember having one of your collars on, you know, just for a little fun. But then it fell off when I got stuck on one of the branches to that bush outside the window in the humanoids’ office.”

“Okay…so my collar just ‘fell off.’ When YOU fell out of the window because you’re such a fat ass that the screen ripped open under your weight. Where the f*ck is it?”

“Hmmmm….well I did get a little scared for a few minutes after I fell …. so I guess I might have left it on one of the branches when I dove down to hide.” Supercat knew very well by this time where he had abandoned the collar, but he was too afraid of his sister’s wrath to own up to any further details.

“Oh for kitty-sake, Supercat.” Catzilla made her way across the humanoids’ living room to the front door, where she reached up to turn the door handle with the opposable thumbs she had grown through sheer force of will. “Hold on a minute while I go look for it.”

Catzilla had just slinked down the first two steps on her way into the yard when she stopped dead in her paw tracks. It had never been made clear to her just why her back would arch involuntarily when she came into the presence of pure evil. She growled softly to herself as her own tail lifted behind her, morphing into a virtual orange and white striped baseball bat.

As her ears folded back to lie flat on her head, Catzilla hissed “Ok Merlin, I know you’re around here somewhere. Your smell is undeniable. Come out from wherever you’re hiding and explain what you’re doing in my yard before I hunt you down and rip your silver-tabby ass to shreds.”

“Well, well Catzilla, isn’t that just the kind of uncouth talk I’d expect from a vulgar Ginger breed!” Merlin poked his head out from behind the large boulder that flanked the humanoids’ driveway.

Catzilla recoiled in disgust and spat out a double hiss. “I thought I told you to stay the f*ck away from my humanoids. These are OUR slaves and if you dare make a move to disturb anything here I swear I will kill you with my bare paws. Mark my hiss, Merlin. You have been warned for the last time!”

“Is someone having a low blood sugar moment, Zilla?” Her evil neighbor giggled as Catzilla seethed. Merlin had learned early on during their kittenhood at the shelter that nothing could send Catzilla into a conniption more than making light of the formal name bestowed upon Catzilla by her ginger-haired mother. “Need some milk, or a Zilla Wafer maybe? But oh, wait, I should really be talking about your fat ass brother, Supercat. Has he gone on insulin yet?” Merlin threw his head back, laughing in a manner one could easily describe as sinister.

“State your business before I dog-tie you and feed you to that loggerheaded canine next door, Merlin.” Catzilla’s voice grew low and quiet, which when coupled with her prickly fur could only mean she was beyond joking. “What brings you here? And this had better be good or you’re going to enjoy a savage feline ass-whooping in about thirty seconds.”

Catzilla’s fighting skills were well known throughout the cat-borhood, and more than a few errant canines had fallen victim to her vindictive fangs and talons. Most of these dogs had been convinced by Merlin himself to shit in Catzilla’s front yard so that he could sidle up in the bushes with a pinch of catnip and watch the show that would invariably ensue.

Merlin knew he would be no physical match for Catzilla, and although he recognized Supercat’s dimwittedness, he was still put off by the size of Catzilla’s lumbering brother just enough to want to keep a safe distance. Merlin could only retaliate with cat-guile and a villainous mind.

“Easy there, Zilla, just keep your cat-panties on lest you start emanating again. I guarantee you’re going to have a keen interest in what I’m about to tell you.”

“All right then ass-cat-wipe, make it quick. I haven’t got all day.” In truth, Catzilla did have the entire day to spare, but would undergo a voluntary declawing over spending even five minutes with Merlin, given the choice.

“I understand there may be a pink collar missing from your treat cupboard. Is that so, Zilla?” Catzilla’s amber colored eyes widened, her pupils constricting into tiny black dots.

“And what would you know of my pink collar, Merlin? Of what possible interest could my cat-robe have to you? Did you need some props to assist you in your laughable imitation of that Lady Cat-Ga song and dance you were attempting last week?”

“That’s a low blow, Zilla!” For the first time since his entry into his neighbors’ yard, Merlin sounded less than 100% confident. “You know I do that only to secure badly needed sustenance from my humanoid slaves. I’m sure you and Super-Ass have your own bevy of ridiculous antics with which you extract treats from the faggots you and your brother sleep with!”

Catzilla hissed and extended a skillfully sharpened claw. “Mark my growl, Merlin. If you dare make one more remark like that about my slaves I’m going for the jugular. I don’t care if I’m put away for eight of my nine lives. Watching you lose one of yours at my paw will be worth it!”

“Fine Zilla, I’ll just cut to the chase then. I know all about your and Supercat’s little catnip ring. I want a cut of the action or I’m going to the cat-thorities.” Catzilla froze. “That’s right, Zilla. The gig is up with you two. You slink around this entire cat-borhood, touting your precious little ‘Just Say Me-ow’ campaign, fooling all the mama cats into thinking you’re a couple of superheroes, clawing for trust, justice and the Feline Way. When all the while Supercat’s been engaging in his little back-shelter deals, trading his poorly homegrown bud for cans of stolen tuna!”

Catzilla growled again, this time more audibly. “That’s right Zilla, I know all about it. And don’t try to pretend it’s not true. I’ve seen the grow lights you’ve got running in your humanoids’ basement. Those can be detected using the right equipment, and all it will take to get the furball rolling is one carefully placed call to the Catnip Enforcement Agency. And don’t think for a second I won’t do it!”

“Why, you scheming little pile of rodentious excrement,” sputtered Catzilla slowly, speckles of her saliva landing on the stone pavement in front of her.

“Sorry Zilla, you will never outcat me. You may think you’re smart, and that tub of lard you call your brother may have others believing he’s some sort of Tommy Tough-Cat. But you two will never amount to any kind of match for my genius! Ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa!”

Catzilla looked straight ahead with apparent resolve. “Just name your price, Merlin. Before I pin you down and pluck out your whiskers again, one by one, while you howl in pain. And this time I’ll also remove an eye for good measure!”

“Fine,” replied Merlin, wringing his paws in a manner vaguely suggestive of Catriah Heap. “In exchange for holding my sandpaper tongue, I will require exactly half of your tuna booty. No, make it two-thirds. To be delivered bi-weekly in unmarked cans to a spot I will designate under the bushes outside my humanoids’ kitchen window. Agree now while the offer still stands, Zilla, because you know very well I’ve got you both by the balls. Or, I should say, I would if your galoot of a brother still had any!” Merlin turned away from Catzilla, raising his tail high to expose his intact set of testicles. “Read it and weep, Zilla, read it and weep!” The evil feline neighbor slunk away slowly down the sidewalk.

Catzilla lowered her tail and shrunk into a reticent sphinx pose. Just as she was about to close her eyes, Supercat appeared at the front door.

“Um, Catzilla?”

“Not now Fatass, I’m thinking.”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry. Merlin would never have uncovered our situation if he hadn’t come over to the basement window when he saw your pink collar hanging in the bush nearby. I usually have the curtains closed but I had just opened them for five seconds, and there he was, peering in. He must have seen the grow lights.”

“And when exactly were you going to tell me this, you potbellied numbskull?”

“I’m sorry Catzilla, really truly sorry.” Tears welled up until they leaked down the sides of Supercat’s fuzzy orange and white face. “I’m trying to be less stupid, really I am!”

“Oh for cat-crying out loud, Supercat. Just forget about it. Shit happens.” Catzilla, for all her rough talk, could be downright sweet when you caught her at the right moment. In her heart she was a sucker for cheap sentiment, a fact that would horrify her if it ever became known openly.

“But if we have to give up any tuna, it’s coming from your share. And don’t pretend like I don’t know you’ve been hoarding away extra cans in the back of the humanoids’ closet. No wonder you’ve gotten so fat.”

Catzilla rose to her haunches and gazed at her ginormous brother through the screen door. “And as much as I despise that miscreant tabby, Merlin did have a point about the diabetes thing. You’re going on a diet starting right now. Or at least when I decide to get up.” Catzilla yawned and lay back down, stretching her lanky front legs onto the sun-warmed pavement.

“Ok, sis.” Supercat licked his paw before using it to wipe the tears off his whiskers. “All this excitement has made me sleepy – I think I’ll head back to catch forty winks. See you in nineteen hours.” Supercat waddled back toward the humanoids’ bedroom, as Catzilla curled up under the sun. “Just wake me up if Merlin comes back.”

“Ava, you bad little kitty-cat! What are you doing outside again?” Catzilla purred softly as Humanoid Slave Number One scooped her up into his arms. “I swear, you have grown opposable thumbs or something to help you open this door. HONEY! Did you know Ava was outside again? How does she keep getting loose?” The humanoid set her down on the lap of his husband, Number Two. “Grover just went back into the bedroom, right?”

Catzilla just yawned and smiled sweetly in anticipation of the long nap that awaited her in front of the television. It was going to be a good day after all.

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - Recap of Part 5

2011-02-27T08:41:00.000-05:00

Recap of Part 5: CP attends a party at the home of one of his Hollywood idols.

Eventually I wrenched out of Lex a solemn promise that he would introduce me to Palison Yarngrim at his earliest convenience. Over the next few weeks I reminded him of his promise daily, or at least as often as I felt I could without giving him reason to have me killed.

"She TOLD you to call her!" I would lament. "She's going to think you don't like her or that you're snubbing her. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be on Jellie Joleson's bad side. You should invite her to lunch! And tell her your friend Tom is coming! See how easy that would be? Just pick up the phone! Here, shall I help you dial?"

And then one day I hit the jackpot, pay dirt beyond my wildest imagination. Just as I was about to launch into one of my irritating tirades that would invariably send Lex running into this apartment to bolt the door behind him, he said "Hey Tom, guess what? I got an invitation to Palison's house for her 3rd wedding anniversary party and it says I can bring a friend. Would you like to go? And if I bring you with me will you promise never to speak to me again?"

I was about 65% sure he was just kidding about the never speaking to him part so I eagerly agreed, ready to take my chances that I could be trading in a loyal friend for a night with a washed up Hollywood celebrity. It was an easy choice.

************************************

On the night of Palison's party I struggled to maintain my composure despite my being dizzy with excitement. "I wonder if Alissa Milbert will be there?" was one of the many recurring thoughts I experienced at regular intervals during the long, slow days that preceded the party. I knew as well as the next crazed stalker that Alissa and Palison had remained close friends ever since the TV show ended; in my mind it was more than likely that she should be invited.

As Lex and I drove up to Palison's rather ordinary house in the Hollywood hills, I made sure to note the address since it would come in handy for future stalking purposes. When she opened the door to receive us, it felt like we were going to any regular Saturday night party and not to the home of one of my childhood idols, save for the fact that Palison greeted us wearing a leather bustier and a matching skirt. It would be explained to us later that leather is the traditional gift for a 3rd wedding anniversary, and therefore Palison billed the evening as her "Leather Anniversary Party." Just another indication of her goddess-liness.

"LEX!" she cried out as she embraced him warmly. And to me she extended her hand, saying "Hi, I'm Palison!" As she ushered us into her living room I immediately resolved to put on my "normal" personality so that I could try to fit in for the evening --- at least as well as a fan-crazed stalker-in-training could try to fit into a room full of leather-clad Hollywood types.

.................to be continued....................................

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - Recap of Part 4

2011-02-26T08:38:00.001-05:00

Recap of Part 4: CP discovers that his good friend actually KNOWS one of CP's Hollywood idols. CP flips out.

My friend Lex and I would invariably consult with each other before and after our respective dating experiences. Lex played Mary to my Rhoda since he lived downstairs from me and, more notably, was less sarcastic and bitchy.

"How was your evening with D.E.?" he asked me the morning after my less-than-exciting evening out with Carol Burnett's former TV movie co-star.

"Oh, your usual disaster," I replied, wearily.

"Disaster? It couldn't have been all THAT bad, could it?"

"Oh yes, and worse. I'm sure I'll never hear from him again. And why didn't you tell me he was famous?"

"Famous? He's not really famous, is he?"

"Well, he's famous enough to have worked with Carol Burnett!" Lex could be really maddening sometimes. "There I was, sitting with him in El Coyote, about to babble on like some idiot about Carol Burnett, when all the while this guy knows her."

"Yeah, so?" Lex replied with a somewhat puzzled look on his face.

"Lex, he KNOWS Carol Burnett! How could you not tell me this? How could you have let me just go out into the evening like that with this guy who has worked with the greatest comedic actress of the 20th Century? He probably has her phone number, for God's sake! Don't you get it?"

Clearly, he did not. "What does having Carol Burnett's phone number have to do with any of this, Tom? All I did was ask you how your date went. I wasn't expecting a full on interview with 'Access Hollywood.' Just calm down!" Yeah, right, I thought.

He continued. "Did you like him or not? Did you guys talk about anything besides Carol Burnett?"

The truth was, at that moment I could not have cared less what D.E. and I had discussed; the fact that he probably had Carol's phone number was all I could think about and became my central focus. "Maybe I SHOULD try to get to know him better! That way I can look inside his address book, get Carol's phone number and address and then stalk her!"

Lex looked like he was starting to grow concerned.

"Well . . . I don't think I would recommend that particular course of action. And anyway, it seemed like D.E. did like you well enough at my party. Maybe you should call HIM."

"Me? Call HIM? Are you kidding me with this, Lex? I'm not famous enough to call him. In fact, I'm starting to think I'm not famous enough to live here any more. Everyone here is famous except me. I'm a complete nobody. I'm more of a nobody than Pia Zadora even, and THAT says something."

"That's not true, Tom, you're famous to US!" Lex replied, referring to our small group of friends. Sweet as the sentiment was, it was small consolation. I was feeling downright unworthy.

********************

A few weeks later I developed a feeling that my luck was about to change when Lex and I walked up the street to attend the Gay Pride parade in West Hollywood. Because you see, Gentle Readers, right there in the parade, on a mid-sized float, amidst the drag queens, leather daddies and dykes on bikes sat Palison Yarngrim, who had in recent years developed a name for herself as a prominent AIDS activist, but who was best known to the world for her delightful portrayal of tween bitch Jellie Joleson on "Little Mouse on the Scarie" in the 1970s. I was absolutely giddy at the sight of this fabulous, yet for all intents and purposes, washed-up TV actor. What an unexpected pleasure, a veritable gold mine of special CP Hollywood moments!

But my pleasure would soon increase exponentially, almost beyond the boundaries of the known universe. As she rode by, Palison looked our way and shouted out "LEX! How ARE you, sweetheart? Call me!!!"

My jaw dropped straight to the ground.

"You KNOW her??? You KNOW Palison?" I blurted out, incredulously.

"Yeah, I know her. We used to work together at Tuesday's Pild," he replied with a maddening air of nonchalance, referring to a well known children's AIDS charity.

"How long were you planning on hiding this from me? What other information are you holding out on?" I immediately demanded a full accounting of every famous person with whom he was on private-phone-number terms. Not that it got me anywhere. Having grown up in Hollywood, Lex was completely unimpressed by any of these things and barely even understood why I was asking.

Poor Lex, I thought. If only HE had grown up in the Midwest, he might understand my particular state of excitement.

....... to be continued ..........

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - Recap of Part 3

2011-02-25T08:34:00.001-05:00

Recap of Part 3: CP goes on a date with a celebrity, with disastrous consequences.

As fun as it was to meet all these famous people, every now and again I became self conscious because I wasn't famous myself. The last thing a mildly retarded Punchman needs is another reason to feel down about himself.

Though really, I shouldn't have worried much about it, because I found not a small number of people in L.A., people who lived, ate and breathed Hollywood, who were fascinated by me and my life because I just had a regular nine-to-five job. Something completely alien to them. I remember one conversation I had with a woman at a party:

"So, like, what do you DO?"

"I'm a computer consultant for a publishing firm."

"Wow. So what IS that?"

"Well, I visit customers who use our products to make sure everything works, and I get them to install upgrades and that sort of thing."

"Ok dude, I am like totally tripping....do you like, have an OFFICE or something?"

"Yes, I am in an office when I'm not visiting customers."

"Oh my GOD, I can't even IMAGINE...."

The fact that I didn't get screamed at regularly or that I had never been fired for forgetting to put two sugars in somebody's coffee was a completely foreign concept to this woman.

One time at a party I met a guy who worked on the "Larry Sanders Show." We kind of hit it off, and spent much of the evening talking together. I was upfront about the fact that I had never seen his show, so at the end of the night he invited me to come over to watch a few episodes sometime.

"I'd love to, thanks!" I replied.

A few days later this guy called and instead of inviting me over, asked if I wanted to go to the movies.

"Sure! What would you like to see?"

He went through some song & dance about how he needed to go see "The Secret Garden" because someone he knew had worked on it and he'd promised he'd take a look - or something to that effect, because as you know I don't really listen to anything a person says when I'm slightly nervous, as I was here.

In any event, I agreed on "The Secret Garden" and told him to pick me up at 5:30 - and that I would find out where it was playing. After we hung up I looked in the paper and saw it was playing at the "Beverly Center" at 5:45. Perfect.

D.E. (his initials) picked me up at 5:30 and drove us over to the theater, which was on the top floor of a shopping mall- so it took a few minutes to get up to the ticket booth. STRIKE ONE: We arrived at the booth only to find that the movie was not playing there at all.

"Oops...." I said. "It must be at the Beverly CONNECTION...." (the theater across the street.)

He let out one of those polite laughs, the kind you use when you are slightly annoyed but want to show what a good sport you are.

We rode the mall escalators down five floors to exit the building, after which we crossed the street to go over to the other theater. It was about 5:43 when we approached the ticket counter. I took out my wallet to discover I had no cash with me. STRIKE TWO.

I swear, I have no idea how people lived before ATM machines.

"Um, D, I'm afraid you're going to have to pay for my ticket," I said. "I'll have to go to an ATM after the movie to pay you back."

This time he looked downright annoyed - probably not because he had to pay for the movie, but because I was obviously a complete dingbat AND totally unprepared for the date. Oh, well.

After the movie we wanted to get something to eat. "Ever been to El Coyote?" I asked him.

"No, I haven't. But I've heard about that place and always wanted to try it." So off we went! I could feel the evening was about to improve.

Now I already told you in Part 1 or Part 2 of this series that whenever I brought someone to El Coyote for the first time, I would launch into my little story about how I hoped to see Carol Burnett there because my boss had sat next to her there once. Et cetera.

Something told me to hold off on that with this guy, though. He seemed like he might be a little too famous, or a little too connected to famous, to think this story was cute. He would probably find it annoying, or maybe even slightly stalkerish.

Thank God a Punchman knows how to follow his instincts.

As soon as we were seated and sipping on our drinks (he on an iced tea and I on a margarita, under what I detected as a subtle air of disapproval from him) we started talking about where we were from. I told him I hailed from the Upper Midwest, and he was also from somewhere "back East."

To Californians, anything East of the state line is referred to as "back East." They're almost as bad as New Yorkers that way.

"So what brought you out to L.A.?" I asked, as the obvious next question in any conversation of this nature.

His reply?

"I was working on a TV movie with Carol Burnett."

Silence.

Although I was glad I'd had sense enough to hold back on my stupid "I hope we see Carol Burnett!!" story, I was mortified at the possibility that I very well could have shared that with him. I was also mortified that I was not famous enough to be there with him. I felt completely worthless.

Telling my Carol Burnett story would surely have been STRIKE THREE except that it didn't matter: the evening ended shortly after dinner, D.E. having refused my invitation to stop up for a cup of coffee.

And he never called me again.

...... to be continued ....................

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls -Recap of Part 2

2011-02-24T08:31:00.002-05:00

Recap of Part 2: CP discusses what it's like to try to impress the stars. And recounts a cringy meal shared with a star and an out of town friend who insults her.

After my boss's pronouncement about the possibility of seeing Carol Burnett there, El Coyote immediately became my favorite restaurant. (Ok, so the cheap yet tasty margaritas and kick-ass green corn tamales didn't hurt either.)

Any time I went there it was all I could talk about. "I hope we see Carol Burnett tonight! My boss saw her here once!" I would gush to every dining companion who dared join me at this trashy yet lovable L.A. standby. I never did get to see Carol, but one time I was fortunate enough to be seated in the booth opposite from Ricardo Montalban. That's some pretty damn good washed-up star viewing if you ask me.

Over the course of my 5+ years in Los Angeles I became friends with a lot of "industry" people, mainly because the first few close friends I made worked in Hollywood. It was great for me to be around all these people while not working in the "industry" because I got all the benefits of rubbing elbows with the stars while not having to put up with any of the industry bullshit. (Save the fact that some movie or other would shut down all or part of our street about once a month for filming. L.A. people HATE that because it's more common than road construction.)

My friend Lex who lived downstairs from me worked at Paramount, so he would occasionally host parties where someone kind of famous would show up. My M.O. with these people was always to act as unimpressed as possible for fear of being seen as the total star-crazed geek that I was. One time I went on and on to Meri Stilpin from the show "Frazier" about my lower back problems until I thought she might want to kill herself rather than listen for ten more seconds.

(Note that I never use their real names in these posts for fear of being Googled. I am still in possession of a shred of dignity, although that is quickly wearing away.)

Sometimes this kind of nonchalantness could backfire. One time when my friend Beth was visiting me, we went out for breakfast with the gal who played Ellen Degeneres's love interest on her then-controversial TV show. I was kind of friends with Lisa already so I didn't feel I had to hide my admiration for her, and I think she enjoyed my pandering. (Who the hell wouldn't, I ask myself?) Beth, on the other hand, WAS actually unimpressed.

I asked Lisa what she had been up to lately.

"Well, I just wrapped another episode of 'Murder She Wrote,'" she replied.

"Murder She Wrote???" Beth exclaimed with surprise. "Murder She Wrote??? Who the hell still watches THAT?" She was at that time a Ph.D student in English literature and as such disdained anything so vulgarly pop-culture.

"Beth!" I replied. "What is with these manners of yours?! Lisa is talking about her job, here! Show some respect, will you?"

"Well I'm sorry! But god, who even WATCHES that show? It's so stupid that even my MOM likes it! It's like mystery-drama for geriatrics!"

Lisa was shocked to the point of not knowing what to say. She just let out a little grunt of horror. "It was really fun to work on," she quietly mumbled.

"Well, I guess I just don't watch that much TV," was Beth's final comment on the subject.

"Oh my God, that's even worse!" I thought Lisa might possibly cry, although it was probably all just part of being dramatic. Actors are like that.

Our breakfast, delicious as it was, slowly disintegrated from there.

....to be continued......

Alyssa Milbert can suck my balls - RECAP of part 1

2011-02-23T08:17:00.001-05:00

DEAR GENTLE READERS:

I truly apologize for my long absence from blogging, and especially for starting these serials and then dropping the ball. I have decided I'm no longer doing that. If I start a series, I'm not posting ANY of it until I have all the installments written - at which point I will schedule them to self publish over a period of days, one installment per day.

Several of you had expressed a keen interest in this story and had been wondering how it would end up - and how I would eventually be inviting Alissa Milbert to suck my balls. So I am now replaying the earlier episodes, one per day, so that you can get yourself back up to speed on the story.

For each episode I replay I will provide a brief recap to save you reading time.

Love & coasters,
CP

Recap of Part 1: CP recalls his years living in West Hollywood and owns up to being a star-crazy geek.

I have long been a fan of famous people. At least I've been a fan of people who are famous for the right reasons. I don't like people who are famous because they lock people in their basements and eat them. As a simple illustration, Shirley Booth = good. John Wayne Gacy = bad.

Actually, I realize John Wayne Gacy didn't eat his victims. It just sounded better that way.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1992, I was giddy with excitement each time I saw a famous person. One of my favorite things was to go to El Coyote for trashy Mexican food because it was such a great place for star sightings, especially to view stars of the "B" variety. (Washed up TV actors being my absolute favorite genre, if you hadn't figured that out from the Shirley Booth example.)

The first time I went to El Coyote I was with my new boss, who mentioned casually that he sat next to Carol Burnett the last time he'd been there.

"Carol Burnett?? Are you kidding me with this??" I demanded to know.

"Yes, I did," Michael replied. "You see a lot of stars here. Perfect restaurant if you're into that sort of thing."

And was I ever! Seeing stars was fun!

....to be continued.....

Can you help a brother please?

2011-02-22T08:47:00.002-05:00

I think minorities and women should help each other out at work. I am not saying that minorities or women should be promoted unfairly, especially when our work is not up to par. But I see it as the duty of minority people (and women) to help other minorities (and women) to make sure everyone has all the help and mentoring they need in a straight-white-male dominated environment.

Let me be clear that I have nothing at all against straight white males, and I’m not suggesting they move to the back of the bus. There should be plenty of room for all talented individuals, no matter their race, gender or orientation, at the head of the table. But the reality is, especially in older circles, that there are still a lot of straight white guys sticking to their own kind and keeping all the fun to themselves. So there are situations in which minorities and women need to be mindful.

So why am I writing this? I have seen and experienced, numerous times, instances of gay guys not helping each other in the workplace. And that gets my goat.

It irritates me when a gay guy at work doesn’t want to be my friend. Yes, I understand that not everyone in the world is going to like me ---- but in the grand scheme of the general population, anyone who knows me will admit I’m pretty inoffensive. I’m not overbearing or loud (not usually, anyway.) I’m not an asshole. I’m not stupid, I’m not lazy and I’m not incompetent. (Or, at least I know how to hide my stupidity, laziness and incompetence when I’m at work.)

So when I work for a gay guy who seems to distance himself from me, I usually assume it’s because I’m gay and he a) doesn’t want anyone to think he’s doing me any special favors, or b) he’s uncomfortable in his own skin, and my smiling face just reminds him that he should be ashamed to be a big ole’ queer and that he’d better not attract too much attention. So bye-bye to Tom.

This has happened to me several times, either with people I’ve reported to or people who have been in the same organization but slightly senior to me. (For the record, I’ve also had more than one gay friend at work, so this problem is far from universal.)

But Poor George has had this problem in at least one severe situation. He worked for this bitter queen who was a total self-hater and as such, could not stand to see Poor George’s happy face every morning. He never said or did one nice thing to George, and eventually even got George fired.

Yes, PG had a few problems with the job and was slightly – just slightly – in over his head. But it was certainly nothing that could not have been fixed with hard work and some friendly mentoring. And who better to mentor a queer at work than another queer?

But it was not to be. This happened about six months ago and I’ve been meaning to vent about it for a while now. So here it is.

Listen up, my non-white friends, my gay friends, and my female friends. Don’t undercut your brothers and sisters at work. You may not like every one of them, and you certainly don’t have to be best friends with someone you don’t feel some sort of bond with. But I’m here to tell you that it is your duty to try to help move your brothers and sisters along in their careers. Someone probably helped you --- and it’s time to return the favor.

So unless your minority friend is incompetent or just plain bad, get with the program and lend a helping hand.

CP's not so dirty Secret

2011-02-21T07:05:00.000-05:00

At some point I need to let you all know that I’ve been changing my life for the better using The Secret. I’ve decided that now is that time.

Getting on board with The Secret is easily the most culty thing I’ve ever done, and Poor George has warned me that if I ever do anything like suggest he attend Landmark Education (formerly known as EST) courses he will leave me. I upped the ante on him and said that if I ever attend Landmark Education he is not only to leave me, but he must also kill me and make it as painful as possible.

(Oh no, negative energy! Negative energy!)

Anyway, I don’t think The Secret is very culty – it’s just a new way of looking at life and to attract the good things in life by thinking good and doing good. Pretty basic really, but the real proponents of The Secret (Secreteers? Secretons?) advise that the Law of Attraction is much more powerful than we realize.

The gist is that if you spend your time being a whiny bitch and thinking whiny bitch thoughts, all you’re doing is attracting more whiny bitchiness into your life. Which is pretty useful when you’re trying to write for a blog in a way that amuses people in that whiny bitchy sort of way.

But not so useful if you’re trying to have a happy life.

So I’ve decided to start living my life from a “half full” perspective. And I have to say I am a lot happier as a result. The only negative, as far as I can tell, is that Mindy June and others (including me) have described me as “doughy” and “non-descript” when I’m nice. I don’t yet know how to entertain others without my acerbic, sarcastic approach to everything. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Flash Fiction Friday : An Open Letter to Brad Allen of Los Angeles

2011-02-20T06:00:00.006-05:00

This week's Flash Fiction Friday assignment is to write a letter of unrequited love. Or a Dear John letter. Feel free to read my letter below and decide for yourself in which category it falls. Oh, and Brad Allen is not his real name.

Dear Brad,

This letter will be difficult to write because at your core I believe you are a pretty nice guy and I don’t want to hurt you. But truth be told, I cannot see you anymore because you kind of make me sick.

You’re probably wondering why I’m dumping you now when it was I who asked you out in the first place. I mean, why did I even bother if this is what it comes to in the end? Well Brad, I actually thought you were kind of cute and charming when I first met you. I really had no idea you were kind of a douche with personal manners not unlike that one guy in “Dances With Wolves,” you know, the one with rotted teeth who says “Ya cain’t figger them buffalo, ya cain’t!” before spitting the remnants of a pickled egg all over his chin. Next to you, Brad, that guy looks like Cary Grant.

Let’s review a few of our dating experiences, shall we Brad? I am afraid this will only be the tip of the iceberg, but I need to keep this to under 1,500 words.

Experience #1: You had explained during our first coffee date that the only three things in life you truly cared about were baseball, opera and sex.

“Opera?” I asked. “How did you develop a taste for opera?”

You gave ma a long winded explanation that involved quitting drugs and choosing opera as your new “habit” to latch onto. Or something like that. And we’ll come back to the drugs thing in a minute Brad, trust me.

At first I thought it was really sweet of you to invite me to see “Madame Butterfly” with you, especially since I learned later that your salary was around $17,000 a year. But the warning bells should have started ringing for me when you got into a near shouting match with the woman in front of you who, you thought, was leaning a bit too far forward in her seat for you to see. I thought it was a little weird that you were so vehement with her, considering that we were in the nosebleed section and we could barely see the characters on stage even without a partially obstructed view.

Experience #2: When we woke up in the morning after our first “sleepover” date at my place, you got out of my bed, buck naked, and went to the front door to get the paper. Setting aside for a moment the fact that you felt comfortable enough to walk nude around my apartment in front of all the wide open windows, you returned to my bedroom and proceeded to squat down on your haunches as you read the newspaper headlines.

And let out a really loud fart.

Brad, you hardly even knew me. What makes you think there would be anything remotely charming about that, let alone attractive? Gross. And you didn’t even say “excuse me” or try to act like it was a total accident.

I jumped up out of bed and told you I needed to take a quick shower. The truth was, I just wanted out of that room before I had to smell anything.

And then, Brad, you actually got into the shower with me. Without asking.

You know Brad, if I can give you one piece of advice, let it be this: If you are dating someone you don’t know very well, or if you are an overnight guest in someone’s home for the first time, do not make any potentially offensive invasions into your host’s personal space at any time, let alone first thing in the morning.

So after only one sleepover I was pretty iffy about you, Brad. But I wasn’t fully committed one way or the other, so I just decided to let the chips fall where they may. Yes, it was a bad decision --- a really bad one. Because about two weeks later we had the earthquake.

Experience #3: The Northridge Earthquake of 1994. January 17. 4:00 am. I will not soon forget it, because that earthquake nearly ruined my life, and not just because I lost all my glassware.

I remember waking up in a panic at the sound of breaking glass. I thought someone was breaking into my apartment to kill me, or at least rob me and beat me to a pulp. So it’s rather amusing than when I came to my senses and realized it was an earthquake, I thought to myself “oh, thank God it’s only an earthquake!” I held onto my bedroom door frame and hoped for the best.

When the jolting stopped I stepped over all the broken glass and went downstairs to Lex’s apartment to make sure he was ok. He was, and his place was not nearly as damaged as mine --- so I just sat there in his living room with him, talking for about half an hour or so.

And then I heard footsteps coming from my apartment upstairs. That really freaked me out. So I went up the stairs, and there you were, Brad.

“Oh, thank God that you are ok, CP!” you said. “I know you’re not a native Californian, so when this happened I was really worried about how scared you would be. I just had to come over to make sure you were all right.”

Wow, I thought, that was so sweet! You actually risked your life to come see me---because every Californian knows the rules about post-earthquake safety: it is a very, very bad idea to get into your car and drive right after a quake. You don’t know what kind of damage lies ahead. You might drive into a gaping hole in the earth; a power line or building might fall on you; etc. But you were willing to take that risk for me, Brad, and I appreciate it.

Even if you are the world’s biggest dumbfuck.

Anyway, since you were already there I told you to come down to Lex’s apartment with me. We had tested Lex’s gas stove, and all seemed in order so Lex had decided to fry up some eggs for an early breakfast.

Now Lex was my best friend in L.A., and this was the first time that you got to meet him. You are a gay man, Brad, and I know that you know meeting your boyfriend’s friends is akin to meeting the family for a straight person. I know you know this. And when meeting your significant other’s family for the first time, you should know to be on your best behavior.

Which is why I must ask you this, Brad. Why oh why, Brad, did you feel it was appropriate for you to take your fork, with which you had been eating runny, yolky eggs, and stick it directly into Lex’s jar of gourmet marionberry jam? Why on earth would you do this in front of anyone, let alone in front of someone you were newly dating? Or in front of anyone who is having you in his home for the first time? Were you attempting to prove to Lex that I had absolutely no filter or judgment in people?

I should have dumped your disgusting ass right then and there. You revolted me then, Brad, and you still revolt me today. What's worse is that your apartment was so devastated in the quake that I had no choice but to LET YOU MOVE IN WITH ME. FOR THREE WEEKS.

But oh, it gets even better.

Experience #4: There is so much more I could tell about you, Brad, but as I said I need to keep this to a certain length. So I’ll have to end with this coup de grace.

Remember the night I was over at your apartment and I was talking about having to go up to the courts for work? And I asked you if you had ever been to the courts? And you haltingly said “oh…yes…”? As if there were a story behind that?

So of course I had to ask you what the story was, Brad. You acted like you didn’t want to say anything, and I remained respectful but curious.

And then you decided to tell me. You blurted out the following sentence:

“Okay….I’m a child molester.”

Wow.

A child molester, Brad. That is a statement that packs quite a punch, I must say. I think I remained quiet for a few minutes until I got up the urge to ask you what the fuck you were talking about.

You then told me the story about how you were messed up on drugs and alcohol for a number of years, and that you didn’t know what to do about your homosexual feelings. So you used to hang out at a park and watch these twelve year old boys playing basketball. You struck up a conversation with one of them, one thing led to another, and soon you were in the bushes letting him perform oral sex on you.

This carried on for a number of weeks until you had a sudden, brilliant revelation that maybe, just maybe something was wrong in your life and that you needed counseling.

And I do feel bad about what happened next, Brad, but I must confess to you that this is all a little hard to take. You went to see a shrink and told her everything --- about your drug use, and your sex with the twelve year old.

It is unfortunate that the counselor hadn’t warned you ahead of time that she would be required to call the police on you, Brad. I do feel bad because you were obviously trying to do the right thing by getting help, and I can understand the mortification you must have experienced when the police arrived at your parents’ house to haul you away right in front of a large family gathering.

But still Brad, how much of a dumbfuck can you be? Not to mention the fact you wanted to do what you did in the bushes with a grimy twelve year old kid.

The only thing that kept your ass out of prison is the fact that this kid testified that you did not coerce him, and that he blew you willingly. I’m glad that kid was brave enough to tell the truth. It’s unfortunate, but because of this, you now have to live out the rest of your days as a registered sex offender. I know that must be hard Brad, but I don’t like how you tried to justify it to me and other friends. You said you did it because you were confused about your sexuality.

Gee Brad, I didn’t know we needed to hand our enemies even more reasons to compare gay men to child molesters and sex predators. Just exactly what I want to be associated with as a gay man. Thanks for that.

I’m sorry Brad, but it’s just not going to work out between us. As nice as you may appear to be on first meeting, the fact is that you’re uncouth, lacking in any discernible taste or judgment, and just downright gross.

Sincerely,
CP

CPW Series: Ways in which I'm kind of retarded

2011-02-19T10:00:00.002-05:00

Gentle Readers, Ways in Which I’m Kind of Retarded is a new CPW series wherein I will describe to you, well, ways in which I’m kind of retarded.

Retarded is a word I was never allowed to use as a youngster. Aside from it not being very nice, my mom’s youngest sister was mentally retarded, and that was back in the days when retarded was still used as a clinical term to describe retards.

Now we just call them “mentally challenged” or “special” or "Sarah Palin." Since retarded is no longer used by medical professionals, I am reclaiming it as an OK word to use in describing someone who is stupid or otherwise just kind of a spaz. If you disagree, just haze me in the comments, after which I will laugh at you, call you a retard and move on with my life.

Note to self: Remember that thing I wrote recently about changing my life by being nice? Maybe not so much.

Anyway, today’s version of Ways in Which I’m Kind of Retarded involves Poor George, although honestly, any ex-boyfriends who find their way to this blog may also recognize these symptoms.

Poor George and I have a repertoire of about twenty or thirty different retarded things we say to each other, and even to ourselves, that are simply random pieces of noise we’ve picked up from the universe, or things we have dreamt up in our own sick heads. Things to say that serve absolutely no purpose other than, possibly, to satisfy my Tourette’s like cravings, or just to remind each other that we are both retarded.

Let me set the scene: I used to have a client that I visited weekly. My usual contact was a department head in the area of the company I used to visit. But when this person went out on maternity leave, she left me in the semi-capable hands of this large woman named Alaina Boodaya who can only be described as looking somewhat like a female Lurch from The Addams Family.

Whenever I would arrive at reception, Alaina would lumber out into the lobby to greet me and bring me back to the office. She spoke to me as little as possible and would merely grunt here and there as necessary to communicate with me as needed.

It’s been many years since I’ve seen Alaina Boodaya, but I miss her and her lunkishness. So, at random intervals I will just lean over to Poor George and say “I miss Alaina Boodaya.”

The best part is, he totally understands.

Georges rock. Everyone should get a Poor George.

Awkward College Romance -THE FINALE!

2011-02-18T02:56:00.003-05:00

I fear that the key to your hearts, Gentle Readers, will lie in the fact that I am finally done with this story.

My friendship with Jeff largely returned to its pre-disclosure condition, albeit with a bit more intensity. We were spending so much of our free time together --- and again, only with each other and never with other people --- until my roommates started asking who this new guy was that I’d been hanging out with so much.

Jeff and I did not discuss any of the issues that had come up between us earlier. It was killing me, but as I explained earlier, I had already disclosed my feelings and I considered the ball to be in his court.

As the end of the year approached and finals loomed, we started spending late nights together, hanging out, drinking beer, smoking pot and ignoring our hormones.

Several times things got a little weird --- as in, we were just one drink away from one of us making a move, a move that neither of us dared make. I distinctly remember him sitting in my room one day, sitting in the same chair where he had first confessed his sometimes-feelings-for-guys. I was prattling on about some nonsense or other, when Jeff just stopped.

“Tom, where is this conversation going?”

Where is this conversation going? Well, where do you want it to go, you maddening little tease?

At least that’s what I felt like saying.

Instead, unfortunately, I made some lame joke and changed the subject.

And then, a few weeks later, came the night I most regret. The night I really could have made something happen if I had wanted.

We had gone over to Carleton for the day to study, just to have a change of scenery. Jeff had ridden his bike and I hitched a ride with another student since I had a stack of books to carry and only one working arm. We chose different parts of the library to study in so as not to distract each other, but met up regularly for meals, snacks and any other diversion we could dream up to avoid studying. (Well, maybe not every possible diversion….)

Mid-evening we decided to call it quits for the night and head back to campus. Luckily I ran into a friend with a car who offered to drive me and my books back to our campus. I had the brilliant idea to offer to carry Jeff’s rather heavy book bag for him, so that he wouldn't have to lug it up the hill to St. Olaf.

When I got back to my room with Jeff’s bag in tow, I called him.

“Hey Jeff, I’m back in my room so you can come pick up your books whenever you want.”

“Thanks Tom --- what are you doing?”

“I don’t know Jeff. Hey, I’ve got some beers in my fridge. If you’re in the mood, you can meet me out on the hill behind the Old Main. I love hanging out there. Unless you just want to go to sleep.”

“No Tom, I want to meet you. Very much.”

My heart skipped a beat.

I remember my roommates looking at me strangely as I loaded up my book bag with a six pack from our mini fridge. “Where are you going with beers at this hour, Tom?”

“Oh, Jeff and I are just going to hang outside. See you guys later.” I tried as hard as I could to talk to them as little as possible those days because I didn’t want them suspecting anything.

When I arrived at the Old Main, Jeff was waiting for me and it was all I could do not to wrap my arms around him completely. We went out behind the old building and settled down on the grassy hill, bathed in soft moonlight. As we lounged on the grass drinking beer and enjoying the night air, we both stretched out and laid down side by side, propped up on our elbows, about six inches away from each other. We barely talked at all.

I totally could have reached over and kissed him.

But I could not bring myself to do it. And neither could Jeff, apparently.

After about an hour under the moonlight, we finished our beers and retreated back to our respective rooms.

As the days of the school year drew to a close, Jeff and I started finding every excuse we could to be together. One day in the middle of the afternoon we decided, for some reason, to duck into a little stairway outside the college chapel. Again, just inches from each other with no one else around, even if it was in broad daylight.

“Wow Jeff, so I guess we won’t be seeing each other for a while.” Summer break was upon us. I was going home to my parents’ house in Chicago, while Jeff was headed back to work a job in his home state. Worse yet, I would not be at St. Olaf the following semester because I was planning to study abroad in the USSR.

“I know,” Jeff replied. “I’m going to miss you.” He said it so quietly it sounded like he might cry.

The last time I saw Jeff during those magical days, I was in my dorm room packing up my belongings to go home for the summer. I had seriously pissed off my mom and my aunt who had driven to campus, prepared to load up the car and take me home. I hadn’t even begun to pack because I had been so distracted with my school work and pathetic non-love life. Not to mention a gimped arm which made every task take three times longer than normal.

Jeff came into my room and was immediately made to feel uncomfortable by my relatives because they were so irritated with me. So Jeff and I just said our goodbyes quietly at my door, and that was that.

Jeff and I never had another meaningful conversation again. We corresponded over the summer, but the magic disappeared and Jeff lost whatever feelings he had seemed to develop for me --- probably because I had written something rather mean and sarcastic in one of my letters.

I saw him sporadically on campus when I returned from Russia for my final semester at St. Olaf, but Jeff no longer seemed to have any interest in being my friend, and we barely saw or spoke to each other at all, despite my attempts here and there.

A few months after we graduated, I wrote Jeff a long letter and told him everything I wish I had told him during our magical time together, when we had seemed inches away from expressing our romantic feelings for one another. I told him I was confused about how he felt for me. That I missed his friendship, and that I wished I could understand what had happened.

Jeff never replied.

Several years later, both Jeff and I were living in the Twin Cities and ran into each other occasionally at parties of mutual friends. Our conversations were polite but distant. At times I detected a seeming thaw in Jeff's attitude toward me, but I was done taking any further chances with him. Been there, done that.

(Or wish I had done that, anyway.)

I recently heard from one of my friends in Minnesota that Jeff is now openly gay, partially bald, partnered with a nice man and raising kids in the Cities. I’m happy that everything seems to have turned out well for him. And who knows --- if I lived there, maybe we would even be friends. But for now, Jeff Henderson lives only in the dark recesses of my memories, alone with me in that private place where we guard the vestiges of our first loves.

And of course, he will now live forever on the pages of Coaster Punchman's World.

Thank you all for listening.
CP

Awkward College Romance - NEW INSTALLMENT - Part 11

2011-02-17T02:17:00.002-05:00

“Are you kidding me with this Jeff?” I didn’t mean to sound incredulous, but this was big news.

“No, Tom, I am not kidding. I do have those feelings --- and I don’t know what to do with them.”

“Well I wish I had the answers, Jeff.” And boy, did I wish I had a few very specific answers. But being both Scandinavian and Midwestern, I was unable to come right out and ask if I could kiss him or something. Plus, so much had happened by that point that it would have been wrong.

“Jeff, it’s getting really stuffy in here. Do you want to go out an take a short walk with me?" I desperately wanted to change our environment, in hopes that in a different room everything wouldn’t seem weird and surreal.

“Sure Tom, let’s go. “

We went out into the night with no particular destination in mind. I needed to walk slowly so as not to jiggle my arm, which was nicely outfitted in a full arm plaster cast. I went into automatic chatter mode, which I’ve been well known for in times of crisis. For a man who is normally short on words, if you put enough stress on me I can prattle on about absolutely nothing for hours on end.

At one point we came to an athletic field of some sort and just walked around the perimeter several times in a row.

“So Jeff….what’s up for you next, then? What are you going to do?” (As in, what are you going to do….WITH ME?)

“I don’t know Tom…." He stopped and looked right at me. “What ARE we supposed to do about these feelings?”

I froze. No idea what to say. I had already laid out for him how I felt so I didn’t feel it was my place to go any further with that idea.

So I just continued walking, and Jeff followed.

Eventually we ended up back at my dorm. He walked me back to the room, but I didn’t intend to invite him in --- so I stopped outside the door, turned around and said “thanks for coming over tonight, Jeff. It was really nice to talk to you.”

“You too, Tom. See you tomorrow?”

-------to be continued----------

Awkward College Romance - NEW INSTALLMENT! - part 10

2011-02-16T02:00:00.001-05:00

I returned from the hospital after midnight, in major amounts of pain but armed with narcotic pain relievers. Part of me was glad for the distraction – finally I would have something beside Jeff to think and talk about.

“Hi Jeff, it’s Tom.” I called Jeff the following morning to break our date for later that day. “I broke my arm last night and it’s really throbbing so I’m going to need to cancel and stay in my room.”

“You broke your arm? What happened?” I explained the whole (stupid) story and was grateful for the sound of concern in Jeff's voice. “Wow Tom, that’s really too bad – I was looking forward to hanging out with you.”

“Well, if you don’t have your heart set on going downtown you can come hang out with me here. I don’t have any plans other than to do some reading and maybe smoke a bowl. I couldn’t have a better excuse!”

“Are you sure?”

What --- sure I don’t want a cute guy to come nurse me in my dorm room? Yeah, right.

“Yeah Jeff, come on over if you want. It would be nice to see you.”

“Ok Tom, see you later.”

Jeff came over in the early evening and made himself comfortable in one of our lounge chairs. I grabbed my mini water pipe and prepared to light up. Before the flame hit the weed, Jeff said “I’m not having any of that if that’s ok with you, Tom.”

“Oh, well ok….” I put the pipe down. I wasn’t going to blaze up alone, at least not right then. I wanted my full wits about me if Jeff was going to retain his.

“So Jeff, I’ve been wondering something. I’ve never told a straight guy about my feelings for other guys, because I always figured they would freak out. I’m so glad you haven’t done that with me. What’s up with that?” I asked, just trying to make conversation and bridge the awkwardness of our previous encounter.

“Well….actually Tom, I guess I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

“Um…..ok…..what do you mean?”

Jeff then proceeded to tell me that maybe, just maybe he’s had feelings like that before. And had even acted on them a few times, mainly at the college he attended prior to his transfer to St. Olaf.

I was dumbfounded. Numb. I didn’t even know what to say. I don’t actually recall saying much at all because I was so confused. Here I was, in pain with a busted arm, sitting with a guy I had obsessed over for months, a guy for whom I had risked everything, a guy who had told me he was straight. A guy who had inadvertently broken my heart. And now he’s telling me he likes guys.

What did this mean? When he said he couldn’t return my feelings did it mean he didn’t have feelings for guys, or did it mean he just didn’t have feelings for me? And now had he changed his mind?

It would take a while for me to figure this out.

------- to be continued ------------

Flash Fiction Friday : Guitar

2011-02-15T06:46:00.001-05:00

Note: We're taking a short (ONE DAY!) break from my "Awkward College Romance" story - tune in tomorrow for the next installment of that. Today we're doing something a little different here at CPW.

Following in the brave footsteps of bloggers Cormac Brown and Flannery Alden, I've decided to up the ante with my writing and join the community of Flash Fiction Friday.

Every Friday you are given something to write about, and you must publish by mid-week the following week.

Here is my first attempt. Our friend Dale might categorize this as one of my "give til it hurts" postings. Enjoy.

****************************************

“Hummingbird, hummingbird, sing me your song….” Mama’s voice crackled as she strummed the wooden acoustic guitar we had found in the house the day she and Pops closed on it so many years before. She had such a strange manner of playing; instead of tucking the guitar under her right arm like most people did, she laid it flat on her lap and used one of those cylindrical steel bars across the strings to help her form the chords she needed. She strummed slowly, mechanically with her right hand and squeaked out the lyrics in a girly tone pitched at least two octaves above her normal speaking voice.

“Don’t sing, Mama!” I said as a joke, referring to the story she loved to tell of me as a toddler. Apparently I had not been as receptive to her sad attempts at lullabies as her first three children had been, and regularly reproached her for her nightly attempts --- thankfully, or so it seemed by her propensity to share the story, somewhat amusingly. Something about Mama’s singing always embarrassed me, and I remembered, cringily, my own fourth birthday party when I cried actual tears at my family’s tableside performance of “Happy Birthday.” Maybe it was because of my own inborn musical talent that I disdained any pitchy attempts at making melody. Or maybe it just hurt my ears; I can never really know.

Mama stopped playing and smiled thinly. “Your father always made fun of me too. I’m not sure I ever told you that. At first it hurt my feelings, but when I realized the bastard was seeing his diva girlfriend behind my back, I decided he was never going to control the way I felt about anything, ever again.” Her gray eyes turned to stone.

I felt my back stiffen as she brought up the topic of Pops’ affair with “the Diva,” as Mama referred to her. Pops was never great at hiding the evidence of his infidelity, and while his four kids knew about his dalliance with the bitch pianist we all hated long before our mother allowed herself to become aware, Mama eventually put two and two together and subsequently threw the equivalent of five grand mal seizures, in a dramatic style only befitting her severe alcoholism. Mama’s discovery had provided for quite the afternoon, just after my graduation from college, when she fairly entertained every neighbor within a three block radius, hurling obscenities at full voice while careening drunk about the front yard. It was a near perfect performance, diminished only by her inability to roll back her eyes and foam at the mouth.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about that any more, Mama,” I said, referring to my recent pronouncement that I would no longer serve as her marriage counselor. “You need to find a neutral third party to hash all that out.”

“What is there to hash out? He left me for that bitch and you all took his side. Seems pretty simple to me.” She put down the guitar, exchanging the steel cylinder for her nearly depleted glass of Tab and vodka. “I figured out a long time ago that it doesn’t matter what I say or don’t say; the end result will be the same either way. Everyone will always be against me.”

It drove me insane when she got like this, and I regretted making the joke about her bad singing. Though I quickly forgave myself, knowing Mama would have taken any subject I offered and found a way to tie it to whatever was currently upsetting her. It’s funny how she always complained about this trait in her own mother.

Mama always painted Grandma out to be such a bitch, though in fairness I never got that impression during the small amount of time I got to spend with her before she died. I remember the time during college when I drove down to Iowa to visit Grandma in her assisted-living apartment building because I wanted to take her to lunch. As we were eating, I said “Grandma, can I ask you a question about Mama?”

“Of course,” she replied, looking slightly wary.

“Was Mama always so quick to fly off the handle, even as a kid? Did she always go into hysterics the way she does now?” Grandma just sat there and stared at me. She put her fork down, glanced away for a second and then turned back to look me right in the eye. And nodded, slowly. In a manner suggesting I put the rest of my questions back in the vault, pending any future invitation to revisit the subject.

“Mama, I wish you would stop saying that. We’re not against you and we’re not for Pops. You two are adults, and your marriage is your own business. We just want both of you to be happy.” Against my better judgment, I added, not bothering to disguise the irritation in my voice, “And anyway, I thought I told you to leave me out of it. I’ve got my own life to figure out.” I wondered for a second whether I could grow to enjoy the flavor of Tab and vodka. Tastes for certain things have to be genetic.

“Well that’s certainly some fine talk coming from you, Mr. Fancy-I’m-too-good-for-my-own-family.” She jiggled the half melted ice in the bottom of her glass before jerking back her head to slurp the remnants of the drink, spilling drops of watery diet cola on her blouse in the process.

“GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!” she cried, catapulting off the sofa to hurl toward the kitchen. I lowered my now-throbbing forehead to cradle it in my hands, wondering simultaneously whether I would throw up and what excuse I could invent to leave early this time.

Awkward college romance - NEW INSTALLMENT! -- part 9

2011-02-14T18:08:00.005-05:00

Really, this story will conclude soon - I promise!

“Hello?” Jeff said, in a voice indicating I had obviously woken him up.

“Uh, hi Jeff, it’s Tom. I’m just returning your call. Sorry it’s so late…”

“Um, yeah, well that’s ok.”

Note to self: if you’re trying to woo someone, it might be a good idea not to
call them in the middle of the night.

“So I guess we need to talk, huh?” was all I could say.

“Yeah.”

We made plans to meet the following morning, and we did. What follows is an approximate recap of our conversation.

“Well Tom, here’s your note back like you requested. Thanks for writing it.”

“Thanks, Jeff. I hope it didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“Well Tom, the only thing I can say is that I feel sad because I may have lost a friend.”

OUCH. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.

“What do you mean by that, Jeff?”

“I mean that you may not want to be friends with me if I can’t return your feelings.”

Ouch.

“Well Jeff, I guess you’ve answered my question --- but I definitely still want to be friends with you. Nothing has to change between us. I just don’t want you to be freaked out or grossed out by me.”

“You don’t gross me out, Tom.”

“That’s good to hear, Jeff.”

So that’s where we left it. I had been chasing after a straight boy. We proceeded to talk about him and his ex-girlfriend for a few more minutes, and then we parted ways because really, it was all very awkward.

I called Jeff the following Tuesday afternoon to make plans to go out for drinks together on Wednesday night; I was going to need some alcohol to celebrate finishing a mid-term history exam that would take place on Wednesday afternoon.

I poked around my dorm room for a while that Tuesday afternoon, feeling sorry for myself and not knowing what to do --- until finally, the adult part of me forced me to pack up my book bag and head to the library to study for the exam. As I bounded down the stairs I magically came to the realization that I just needed to pony up and be happy that Jeff was still my friend after my revelation.

I was so happy with this sudden shift in thinking that I positively flew out the front doors of the dormitory onto the cold stone steps.

Where I tripped on my coat tail and flew headfirst down the small staircase, breaking my arm in the process.

----------------to be continued----------------------

Awkward College Romance - NEW INSTALLMENT! Part 8

2011-02-13T16:42:00.003-05:00

(We're getting near the end, I promise you!)

Chuck and I walked down to the Rueb and enjoyed several of their famous Long Island Iced Teas before going upstairs to join many of our drunken classmates on the semi-decrepit dance floor.

I wouldn’t be able to tell you how much alcohol I consumed that night, but I’m fairly certain it was enough so that a doctor would have been able to cut me open to perform an emergency appendectomy without my feeling a thing. Thanks to God for my Scandinavian roots.

At one point near the end of our evening I found myself in a car packed with other students on the way up the hill back to the college. And speaking of Scandinavians, among my car mates was a Norwegian guy named Åge upon whom I had nurtured a quite obvious crush earlier in the year. Since I was drunk out of my mind, I thought it would be a good idea to make fun of his name for the entirety of the ride. “ÅGE, BOGEY, SKOGEY!!” I repeated at intervals, not really making any sense but just being really annoying. Poor Åge took it in stride and merely informed the rest of the car that I was just bitter because I was homosexual and Åge was straight. Touché! Luckily I was drunk enough not to be horrified at his altogether accurate assessment.

When we arrived back on campus I stumbled into my dorm and up the stairs to my room --- where, on the message board was a note from one of my roommates: “Tom, Jeff called.”

Tom, Jeff called. Such beautiful words had never before been written in the English language, at least not that I was aware of.

I looked at the clock on my dresser and it was 1:15 am. Naturally I decided to give Jeff a call right then and there.

-------to be continued-------

Awkward College Romance - NEW INSTALLMENT! - part 7

2011-02-12T19:10:00.001-05:00

When I arrived back at my dorm I was out of breath from my frantic sprint, but I knew it was important to get up to my room on the 3rd floor as soon as possible because I wanted to be there if and when Jeff called. Thankfully, my roommates were not around when I got to the room. I didn’t want to subject them to my pending emotional crisis, especially since I would not be able to explain my anxiety.

I paced around the room for about half an hour, periodically picking up the phone receiver to ensure we had a dial tone. I did nothing more productive than walk in quick, small circles and wring my hands. At one point I went to borrow the neighbors’ phone so that I could call my room to make sure the ringer still worked. I was a complete mess.

After a few hours it became clear that Jeff was not going to call me, at least not that night. I don’t even remember what went through my head, but I’m sure I was full of different ideas and theories, each more neurotic than the last. “Maybe he really likes me but he just doesn’t know how to come out and say it. Or maybe he could have liked me but I weirded him out by not giving him enough time. Actually he probably doesn’t like me at all and he just wanted to hang out. Now he’ll probably never speak to me again. Oh, why did I bother?” And so forth.

I have no idea how I did it, but I finally resolved to lie down and go to sleep.

The next morning things were no better. Jeff still hadn’t called, I had no one to talk to and had a buttload of schoolwork to think about. Realizing there was no point in pretending to be able to eat something, I went to the library with my books. Where I sat in a study carrel for all of ten minutes before getting up to pace because I was freaking out.

Then I realized that maybe Jeff could have written me a note of his own and left it in my student PO box. So off I went to the student center to check it.

No note.

I considered the possibility that Jeff could have called my room and left a message with one of my roommates, who had returned the night before as I was trying to fall asleep.

No message on the phone message board.

So I went back to the library and pretended to try to study for another ten minutes. At which point I repeated the entire process.

In short, I spent the entire day shuffling nervously between my three posts: library study carrel, student PO box and dorm room.

Somewhere near the end of the afternoon I realized I was going to drive myself insane –literally- and therefore resolved so call Lulu. Which resulted in one of the most memorable phone conversations of our friendship.

“Hello?”

“Lu? It’s me.”

“Hi CP. How’s it going?”

“Terrible. Awful. I am having the worst day of my life.”

“Ok, what is it this time?”

“Here’s the deal, Lu. I am totally freaking out. I mean F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G out. You remember that time you called me in a panic because your roommate tried to saw open her wrist veins with a butter knife, and you were so scared you were hyperventilating and I told you to stop because it sounded like you were beating off?”

“Yes CP, I vaguely recollect that night. Have you worked on your bedside manner as I suggested?

“Ok Lu, it’s really, really important that you forgive me for that now and not judge me because I am FREAKING OUT! I don’t know what to do. I may have to throw myself down the stairs or something because I am FREAKING OUT!”

“Honey, it’s OK, I already forgave you. Now tell me, what is wrong?”

“I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU WHAT IS WRONG – I AM FREAKING OUT!” At which point Lulu lowered her voice to barely a whisper and said “I need you to take a deep breath and repeat after me: It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be….”

It must have worked after a few minutes, because by the end of the call I had told her the story of writing Jeff the letter, my awkward hand delivery to him, my mad race back to the dorm, and my incessant cross-campus shuttling in search of a response from Jeff which was, as yet, nowhere to be found.

“CP, what you need is to go have fun tonight. Just try and forget Jeff for at least twenty minutes. You must have friends you are neglecting because you spend all your time either with Jeff, obsessing about Jeff or worse yet, talking to me about Jeff. When is the last time you saw Chuck, for example?”

“Chuck? I don’t know, I think I had lunch with him last week.”

“Yeah, well it’s time for you to see Chuck. He’s an alcoholic, right? I want you to call him right now - and I mean the second we hang up – and make plans for him to get you drunk tonight. Can you do that for me?”

“Ok.”

“Ok then. So are you going to be all right?”

“No. I’m still considering hurling my body over the edge of the stairwell. That’s starting to feel like the most reasonable solution.”

“Please don’t do that CP –although if you do, can you leave me something in your will? I’ve been wanting that Ole Store sweatshirt you used to wear. But please, just call Chuck. Right now. And it’s going to be ok. Really, it is. Just keep saying that.”

“Ok.”

I hung up from Lu, immediately dialed Chuck who was, thankfully, in his room. We made plans to go down to the Reub, our local bar, later that evening.

*********** TO BE CONTINUED *******************

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 6

2011-02-11T17:31:00.002-05:00

Recap: CP writes Jeff a letter to confess his feelings and then runs like a little girl.

Dear Jeff,

This is going to be very awkward for me to write. If you don’t mind, please do me a favor and return this note to me when you are done reading it because I do not want it to fall into the wrong hands.

Ok, the truth is I don’t actually remember what I wrote verbatim, except of course for the most salient parts of my letter to Jeff. But I can paraphrase — so just work with me for a few minutes. After all, this was over twenty years ago.

I have enjoyed getting to know you and hanging out with you this semester. The problem is, sometimes I think maybe I like you more than I should. Sorry if it is awkward or uncomfortable for you to hear this, but I thought I should tell you what I’ve been thinking.

Nothing has to change between us at all as far as I’m concerned, but if you feel uncomfortable being around me after I’ve told you this I will totally understand. I guess I just wanted to say something to you because sometimes I think maybe you could feel the same way, but maybe I’m totally off base.

Anyway, I hope to talk to you more about this soon. If you would like to, that is.

Sincerely,

Tom

I let the letter sit in an unsealed envelope in my top dresser drawer for a few days while I worked up the nerve to give it to Jeff. I already knew I would have to hand deliver the letter rather than leave it in his student P.O. box, since in those days the boxes were not private at all – no locks, and multiple students sharing one box. And since there were well more than one Henderson on campus, it would have been easy for the wrong person to intercept and open the letter.

So I waited until the following Friday when, as usual, I could drop by the snack bar toward the end of Jeff’s shift as per my weekly custom.

“Hey Jeff, how’s it going?” I said as I approached the snack counter on that fateful Friday, trying to act as if I were not about to reach down into my stomach with my bare hands and rip out my intestines.

“Hey Tom, not much, what’s up with you? Want to hang out when I get off?”

“Yeah Jeff, that sounds great!” I’ve always been good with the fake enthusiasm in times of crisis. So I stood next to the snack counter while Jeff closed up, and probably talked his ear off about God-knows-what until he had his coat on. When we exited the building into the cold night, Jeff turned to me and asked what the plan was.

“Actually Jeff, now that I think about it, I’m kind of tired and I think I might need to go back to my room and crash. Is that ok?”

“Yeah, sure Tom, whatever you want.”

“Great. Oh, Jeff, here is something I wrote that I want you to read if you don’t mind. Can you read this and not show anyone else?”

“Um.yeah, Tom…is something the matter?”

“No, everything’s cool. So just read it and don’t show it to anyone, ok? Talk to you later!” I couldn’t bear to say another word so I quickly turned and walked away, not looking back for a second. When I turned the corner around the building and became sure I was no longer in Jeff’s line of vision, I started to run as fast as I could toward my dorm.

“I CANNOT BELIEVE I JUST DID THAT” was all I could think. My mind raced ten times as fast as my legs, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

————————to be continued——————————

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 5

2011-02-10T17:22:00.001-05:00

CP spazzing out

Recap: CP confesses his crush to Lulu, who encourages him to put on his big-boy pants about it and grow up.

In those days Lulu was my telephonic confidante about all things romantic, and on several occasions I bent her ear to the point that it just about broke. To be fair to myself, I reciprocated for Lu on more than one occasion, though I’ll have to let her share that as part of her own story. In any event, I called her the morning after my romantic walk in the rain with Jeff for a dose of her usual counseling.

“I’m doomed,” I told her. “He’s not into guys after all.”

“What makes you say that?” Lulu asked, trying to pretend she wasn’t already sick to death of hearing about my obsession with Jeff.

“He wants to get married.”

“Yeah, and….?”

“Married. As in, to a woman. He wants to have kids.”

“So what? A lot of people want to have kids. I’d like to have kids some day. Wouldn’t you?”

“I have no idea. How can I ever have kids if I can’t even get a date?”

“Don’t get all technical on me, CP.” Lulu could actually be reasonable in those days. And that was years before she would do the most reasonable thing anyone has ever heard of, which is to move to Bangladesh. “You asked the guy a simple question: would he like to get married. A lot of people think they want to get married. Plus, you were sitting there smoking pot – what was he supposed to say? You’re putting the cart before the horse, don’t you think?”

Despite the fact that I never even understood what it means to “put the cart before the horse,” I agreed with her. Primarily because my non-stop fretting was probably about to drive her away, and I needed her sympathetic ear.

“Well, I don’t know what to do.”

“How about just being a friend? Is it the worst thing in the world to find a guy you like and be friends with him? Look at you and me!”

“Are you saying I should listen to him babble on incessantly about whatever his latest romantic crush is? No thanks, I’d rather be alone.”

“Yeah well CP, speaking of babbling incessantly about crushes, have you thought about maybe doing some schoolwork? Speaking of which, I need to get busy with some of mine. Talk to you later.”

Although I would generally never admit it in those days, Lulu had a point. I decided to try to calm down and just be a friend to Jeff. That was what I was pretending to do with him anyway – I may as well just stay true to my word, I decided.

Jeff and I got together regularly from that point on – we had meals together after choir practice, we would take study breaks together, and I got into the habit of stopping by the snack bar near the end of his shifts on Friday nights. We never involved other people in our get-togethers – it was always just the two of us. And although I had resolved in my mind that Jeff and I were just friends, something about our friendship felt different. I never invited him to go along to meals or anything with other people, and neither did he. We were always a two-some, and I felt confused.

“I still feel like there is more going on here,” I told Lulu one day. “It’s like we’re friends, but it almost feels like we’re dating. We never do anything with other people when we’re together.”

“Well CP,” Lulu said, almost sounding exasperated, “if you want to know how he feels about you, have you ever considered just asking him? Or maybe telling him how you feel?”

“Are you crazy???” I replied. The concept of telling a “straight” guy about my gay feelings was something I had never allowed myself to consider, not even for a second. It was just too risky, or at least that’s how it felt. “How could I ever do that? Don’t you realize what could happen?”

“Yes, and what could also happen is that I will have to listen to you go on and on about this for the rest of my life — and I would occasionally like to talk about something other than Jeff. I think it’s time to stop torturing everyone and just have it out with him. Ask him what’s going on.”

I agreed that I would think about it, but still thought she was nuts. Nevertheless, I was tired of the constant wondering, and the drama. I sat down at my desk and composed a letter to Jeff.

—– to be continued —–

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 4

2011-02-09T17:14:00.001-05:00

Last night I walked in the rain with you

Recap: CP finally spends some private time with Jeff and gets all dramatic about it.

I was lucky to have three very nice guys as my college roommates that year, even if I would have been terrified to come out to them. Although they are still good friends of mine today, heaven knows what they might have felt compelled to do or say back in 1987 if they had found out they were living in such intimate quarters with a gay guy. The four of us shared one large room containing bunk beds, other assorted furniture and a marked lack of privacy. I think (or hope) that today, at least in major metropolitan areas and/or non-Kristian colleges, a gay roommate would no longer be such an issue. But back then my friends would have had cause to have me removed from their midst. Retelling this story reminds me that I want to ask them what they think they would have done had they found out.

The gay-straight conundrum notwithstanding, my roommates and I were lucky to have such a large room because we were able to use at least half of the space as a living area with a carpet, large armchairs, a stereo, television and extra bookcases. It was a charming and cozy spot, perfect for hanging out in and pontificating as 20 year olds are wont to do.

When we entered my deserted lair, Jeff sat down and made himself comfortable while I fetched my stoner bag from wherever it was that I used to hide it. I filled my mini water pipe and lit up, offering the first toke to Jeff. He accepted, much to my pleasure.

“I don’t do this often,” he sputtered, obviously trying to hold his breath and not cough.

“Me neither, “ I lied. I smoked far too much pot that year, my junior year of college. I had experienced an emotional summer before, having been fired from an elite on-campus job, a trauma that rocked my good-boy image of myself to the very core. I responded to the situation by enrolling in two visual art classes, giving myself a strangely lopsided haircut and dressing primarily in oversized sweaters, rolled up pants and moccasins. It all made pot smoking seem that much more sensible, and at times I even secretly reveled in my new artsy-mischief-maker self image.

Once I got our heads swimming with the pot, Jeff and I began conversing. I don’t remember the topic of most of our conversation, because that night I had only one item on my true agenda: to figure out whether Jeff were gay, or at least curious, and if so whether he were in a mindset to admit it. Because unless any of the former were true, I knew that I would probably be screwed. And not in the good way.

“So Jeff,” I said through the fog of my high, “what do you see yourself doing in the future? Are you going to try to make a lot of money? Or save the world? Get married? Have a family?” Of course I could not have cared less about the answer to the first two questions; they were just there to help me hide my true mission, which was to calculate my chances with Jeff.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do as a career,” he replied. “I’ve thought about dentistry maybe.”

“Oh, dentistry would be cool!” I replied with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster in this tense moment. “So are you planning on getting married?” He was killing me, forcing me to ask a second time. What was he trying to do, blow my cover?

“Yeah, I guess I’ll probably get married. Maybe have kids.”

My heart sank that very instant.

It’s interesting how far we’ve come in the twenty-plus years since the night of this conversation I had with Jeff. Not only am I now legally married to a man (in a few states at least); many gay people get “married” to each other and have children, either by adoption or, in the case of those lucky womb-bearing lesbians , the old-fashioned way.

But for a closeted guy living in gay-hostile territory in 1987, the only way to reach out and break the isolation was through code. “No, I don’t plan on getting married” was code for “yeah, maybe I’ll make out with you and we’ll see where it goes from there.” By stating that he would probably get married, Jeff was clearly not offering to make out with me, despite my quarter-ounce bag of fresh weed and deserted dorm room. Double-triple rats. I hoped I wouldn’t cry.

We talked for a while longer until one of us claimed sleepiness as a reason to end the evening. I didn’t bother inviting him to crash in my room rather than schlepping to his dorm on the other side of campus, a 10 to 15 minute walk. I needed Jeff out of there so that I could have some time alone to process this devastating conversation.

But when I looked outside, I saw that it was raining. Jeff had on a polo shirt, jeans and a light jacket. Nothing warmer and no umbrella. So I did the gentlemanly thing, even though I was stoned: I offered him my grandfather’s black & white checkered hunting coat and an umbrella so that he could get himself back to his own room without getting soaked and/or freezing.

“But it might rain this weekend some more, Tom. Do you have an extra umbrella or is this your only one?” What a thoughtful guy. I could have murdered him for giving me the wrong answer to my earlier question.

“Well, it is my only umbrella,” I admitted. “But you know what? I’m actually in the mood to go for a little walk, so why don’t I walk you back to your dorm and then I can return with the umbrella. That way we’ll both stay dry.”

I guess I may have possibly been a catch too, huh?

Out we went into the rain together, Jeff in my grandpa’s wool jacket and I holding an umbrella over the two of us. I nearly swooned at how romantic it felt. I almost didn’t care that Jeff and I were never going to make out because just walking with him like that was such a beautiful experience.

When I got back to my room I didn’t break down or anything as I had feared I might. Instead, I stayed true to my art-fag form and got out my typewriter (remember those?) and composed a heartbreakingly dramatic poem called “Last Night I Walked in the Rain With You.” I wonder if I still have it somewhere.

Now, you might think that my story with Jeff comes to an end here. But you would be wrong if that were your thought, because there is more yet to come.

……to be continued………

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 3

2011-02-08T17:08:00.002-05:00

This is where I lured my date

Recap: CP being stalking Jeff at his workplace and lures him back to his dorm room to enjoy a little Mary Jane...

I don't remember much about my first dinner with Jeff Henderson, except the fact that I was too nervous to pay attention to anything he said. I also ate like a bird in those days, and even more so when I was wound up (which I was about something or other, most of the time.)

Jeff and I would enjoy many more dinners together, and one time he commented on the paltriness of my food tray, which consisted of a bare dinner plate with one thin slice of ham accompanied by a side dish of about three lettuce leaves and a glass of milk.

“Is that all you’re having, Tom?” he asked. I didn’t even understand the question. How could ANYONE eat at a time like this? Of course it was usually a “time like this” for no one but me.

Returning to the topic of our first dinner date, although I barely listened to most of what Jeff said because I couldn’t focus, I did manage to keep my ears perked up for clues to such relevant items as “does he like girls?” and “where does he spend his evening hours?”

While his like or dislike for females remained frustratingly obscure to me, I did manage to remember that he worked in a small student-run snack bar on campus every Friday night.
And so of course, the Friday after I learned this precious gem of a tidbit, I suddenly became hungry for a snack at about 8:30 – or a half hour before the snack bar was to close.

“Hey, Tom! How’s it going?” Jeff called out from behind the counter when I entered the all but deserted snack bar.

“Hey Jeff, not too much, how about you? Working much longer?”

“Nah, I’m just about to close this place down. Want something to eat?”

Of course I wasn’t able to eat a thing, but I did stand next to the counter, making small talk about God-knows-what for the next 20 minutes. I’m actually quite proud of my ability to become social upon demand. Normally, given the choice, I keep my nose in a book or glued to the TV set or in the face of someone who’s known me for 20 years. I’ve never felt comfortable talking to new people.

But when you’re paying me a salary, or scaring me to death because I like you and really want you to like me, I can become quite the empty conversationalist. Comes in handy in my sales-related work. And it used to come in handy when I was still dating. Or trying to date.

I rambled on at Jeff about miscellaneous topics until he had his coat on and was shutting off the lights. I simply walked with him to the exit and out into the night, as if we had planned it all along.

“What are you up to now, Jeff?” I asked.

“I don’t know, really, what about you?” he replied, proving to me that God did in fact exist.

“Well, my roommates are away and I was thinking of lighting up a joint and chilling out…want to come?”

I was just a little bit of a pothead in those days, which is odd, considering what a bundle of nerves I usually was. It makes me afraid to think of what the world could have been like for me without the wacky tobacky to even out the rough edges.

And although I don’t remember doing so specifically, I must have vetted Jeff beforehand for his position on marijuana, or else I never would have asked a question like that.

“Sure, that sounds good!”

Off I went with Jeff to my dorm room, happy yet beside myself in the knowledge that my roommates were out of town for the weekend.

…. to be continued …….

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 2

2011-02-07T10:25:00.003-05:00

This is not the old caf at St. Olaf. But it conjures up the cold, Lutheran ambiance of which I speak. I mean, write.

Recap of this episode: CP, who is normally unable to converse with strangers, mans up, talks to Jeff and invites him to dinner.

Just figuring out Jeff’s name seemed like such an important feat that I hadn’t even thought of what I might do with the information once I acquired it. I was always a fairly shy person and had never, at least in my own memory, manipulated a situation so that I would have a chance to talk to someone in particular. I was used to letting things happen and unfold as they may, which would probably explain the many disastrous events of my life up to that point.

I decided it was time to take control.

A few days later as I was walking toward choir rehearsal I saw him about twenty yards ahead of me. I knew I needed to get his attention and slow him down right then before he reached the choir room, depriving me of a chance to walk with him and chat him up for a few minutes.

“Jeff!” I called out. He stopped and turned around.

“Oh, hey Tom! What’s going on?” I quickened my pace to catch up to him.

“Not a lot.” (Yeah, right Tom.) “So how are classes?”

I was so nervous that I had absolutely no idea what he said in response. I had always been like that; it was so unusual for me just to start talking to someone I barely knew that my self-consciousness overrode anything else about the situation, including the ability to listen to the other person. Most of us shy folk can compensate by developing an ability to recognize the cadences of typical small-talk, and are able to imitate having an actual conversation with all the perquisite give-and-take.

It’s remarkable how many people in life have told me I’m a “good listener.” If they only knew.

I could not have repeated even five minutes later what either of us said to the other. There was just one very important part of the conversation that had to, and did take place: setting the stage so that I could run into him again and casually suggest having a meal together.

Over the next several weeks I took note of the various directions from which he approached the music building before choir practice, which was three afternoons a week, and made sure to be in the general vicinity each day so that I would be in place to chat him up. It worked.

One day, as we were approaching our rehearsal I said “So are you doing anything for dinner after choir? Want to go to the caf afterward?”

He he, the caf. It still makes me laugh today when I think about the caf, as we called the dining room at St. Olaf. Having a companion at meal times was crucial in the caf because it was this large room with two separate entrances, filled with long rectangular tables spaced out in perfect symmetry. It was a cold, glaringly lit stark room with a decorative motif that would be best described as “church basement pot-luck industrial.”

No one ever wanted to sit alone in the caf, especially not at dinner time, because there were no safe corners in which a lone diner could tuck him or herself away to hide. If you went to the caf alone, there you were for the entire student body to see, pathetic and friendless under the glare of the unwaveringly Lutheran interrogation lamps—I mean, white lights.

In other words, asking someone to eat with you was a foolproof way of getting face time with the object of your interest. No one in modern history has ever turned down an invitation to have a dining companion in the St. Olaf caf, at least not until the college upgraded its facilities long after I graduated.

“Yeah Tom, that sounds great! I’ll meet you at the door after choir?”

SCORE!! An actual dinner date!!! I thought. And I even had the rest of choir rehearsal to think up things to say to him!

…..to be continued…….

Awkward College Romance - Recap of Part 1

2011-02-01T07:18:00.001-05:00

I have no idea who these people are. I needed a picture, so I Googled "cute college boys." Theirs is the first fully-clothed photo that appeared.

Before I finish up this series, I'm going to repost the prior installments --- with pithy recaps added for the convenience of those of you who read it the first time.

Summary: Our winsome protagonist, CP, agonizes over being a 21 year old gay college kid in homophobic 1987. He meets a cute guy on campus who, for some odd reason, just starts talking to CP. CP returns the favor by stalking him.

The whole story, part 1:

Quite a while back on this very blog I wrote about my more significant childhood crushes and in doing so promised to tell you a certain story from my college days. No one can ever accuse CP of not keeping a promise, even if it takes me three or more years to deliver.

Well Gentle Readers, today is your lucky day because I’m going to tell you a story that has kept many a friend on the verge of his or her seat when I’ve told it in person. A story of early 20-something romantical suspense, one that is sure to melt your heart. Or melt something.

In college I was just barely out of the closet – I had only told three or four people about my feelings for other guys, and most of these friends didn’t live anywhere near me. My friend Lulu was one of the lucky ones who knew, partly because I considered her “safe”: she lived far away and didn’t know any of my other friends, so there was almost no chance of her being able to rat me out inadvertently.

The year was 1987, and I was especially touchy about anyone at my college knowing about me because, above all, I feared scandal in my dormitory: I had three male roommates, not to mention a whole floor of guys I had to share a shower with.

Although I’m sure it still happens today in some parts of the country, back in those days it was par for the course that if a straight person found out their roommate was gay, they would raise a stink, go to the housing director and demand that the gay person be removed. This chain of events would result not only in the serious upheaval of one’s routine, but also public shaming and involuntary outing. And trust me, being outed involuntarily as a gay person in 1987 was not what you wanted.

It distresses me to this day that so many of us had to live in that kind of fear during our most formative years, years that are supposed to be filled with the magic of youthful self discovery, first kisses, heavy petting (and, if you were a girl, seat-wetting).

Oh, well.

So to summarize our story thus far, we’ve set the scene with a 21 year old gay boy living with a bunch of straight guys, afraid to be discovered yet starved for affection and also in possession of the normal 21 year old boy hormones. In other words, quite the dilemma.

My 21 year old boy hormones led me to take an acute interest in a certain guy who sang in the same choir I did. I didn’t remember where I had met him, but I must have met him somewhere because several different times he walked by me and said “Hi Tom!”

“Hi Tom!” Wow! What on earth could this MEAN????

I had no idea who he was or even what his name was. But I kept a close eye on him for weeks, until one day I noticed him wearing a monogrammed crew neck sweater. (Parenthetically, should I actually have been wondering if this guy in my choir with a monogrammed sweater was gay?)

So that day, after memorizing the initials on his sweater, I went up to the music rack where each choir member was given a shelf to store his or her music, and scanned all the names on the rack until I found one that matched his initials. This uncannily brilliant detective work on my part led me to the irrefutable conclusion that name of the object of my interest was Jeff Henderson.

(For the record, Jeff Henderson is not this person’s real name. But I hope you can sense in this story the first stirrings of a first-rate cyberstalker in the making!)

to be continued……..

Okay!! Okay!!

2011-01-29T06:18:00.003-05:00

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm writing about. It's just me and my family on a sleigh ride on Christmas Eve in Vermont. Ain't it pretty?

Okay everyone, I know I promised I was going to write more on the blog this year --- and already I've let nearly a month go by. I'm just going to have to sit down and do this, to see what happens. Who knows ---- maybe the Great American Novel will just come flowing out of my fingertips like 'tude flowing out of Tonya Harding. (I always think of old Tonya when I hear mention of the word "fingertips" ---- some dumb thing she said in an interview once. You know me, CP, mind like a steel trap.)

I have two series I need to wrap up --- one about Alyssa Milbert sucking my balls --- and one about a romance I had in college. I think I may start by paraphrasing what I've written about so far so that it won't be so painful for you to catch up with me.

It also helps that it's 3:12 am PST and I have insomnia. And I'm getting on a plane in three hours. Huzzah!

CP

An Early Welcome to 2011!

2010-12-30T23:05:00.005-05:00

If you text in front of me one more time I will have you killed.

It's fun having a New Year's Eve birthday because I get a whole fresh start x2. Here are my 2011 resolutions:

1. Pay more attention to Coaster Punchman's World.

2. Quit Facebook.

3. Make more people-friends.

4. Never let my lower back go out again. Which means regular strengthening exercises once I'm up off my back from the episode I'm currently experiencing.

Number One I'm doing because I miss all of you and I miss writing.

Number Two I'm doing partially to get away from people I don't want to see, but mainly out of protest against laptops and handhelds having taken over society. Poor George and I are instituting a new rule that there is no handheld or laptop use allowed in the common rooms of our house (business use is excluded, however.) So if you are ever in our home and you want to use your laptop or crackberry/iphone/whatever-phone for texting, you will need to excuse yourself to the bathroom or guest bedroom or office. It might be a little awkward enforcing it at first, but we will have a store of polite ways in our back pocket. "Oh, I see you need to text - let me take you into my office where you'll have more privacy." Heh heh.

Number Three I'm doing because I work at home and haven't had a chance to meet a lot of real, live people in San Diego. And it's good for Poor George and me to have to have some separate friends. Not everything has to be done in a group.

Number Four should speak for itself. I have not had a serious episode since the summer of 2007, and now I've been flat on my back for over a week. Enough is enough with this - I'm going to make myself a sign that says something to the effect of "do the work today or be crippled tomorrow. Your choice."

Love and coasters --- and welcome back to CPW!

CP

Nudge me...just like that....

2010-04-06T16:47:00.003-04:00

This is Tiny Tim. He is lame, but not as lame as I am.

This morning I got an email from my dear friend Flannery over at Prone to Whimsy, alerting me to the fact that she dedicated a short story to me on her blog.

Unlike some of our blogging friends who have intentionally checked out of our little webiverse, I refuse to let CPW die even though I rarely write here any more. I continue to grasp at the thin hope that I will one day take up my virtual quill and relive my golden days of blogging. Until then, the world will just have to wait for my inspiration to return.

Meanwhile, please be a bunch of dears and email me if you write something you think I would enjoy. By now you all know the kinds of things that will get you my undivided attention: tales to satisfy my sick Mormon fascination; pictures of cats; anything that would make the average person cringe in embarrassment; and of course, anything about me.

I'm so lame that I don't even do that thing where you can get notified if someone links to your blog. All that stuff seems to take so damn long to figure out, and I'm old now.

Love and coasters,

Spanish Inquisition

2010-03-01T10:26:00.003-05:00

Gentle Readers,

Couple things:

1. My post is up at the new blog I write for, Our Big Gayborhood. This month's post is on being nosy (hence the "Spanish Inquisition" reference.)

2. There is a major water line break in my REAL gayborhood. Looks like a river in front of my house. I had to move the car so as to avoid it falling into a sink hole. This is not going to be pretty.

Love and coasters,

This guy is my new hero

2010-01-28T17:06:00.004-05:00

So this guy from Wisconsin moved to Utah, opened up a beer brewery, billed himself as Another Utah Pioneer! and started marketing this brew:

This is not even a joke. Have you ever anything as wonderful? I have not.

Love and coasters,

Another Awkward Tale - part 5

2009-12-31T17:57:00.002-05:00

Gentle Readers,

Happy New Year and happy reading! Part 5 of my Awkward College Romance story is posted here.

It's also my birthday today. Please worship me.

Love and coasters,

Little Coaster Punchman: A Stalker in the Making

2009-12-02T23:17:00.006-05:00

This is my childhood ex-neighbor Jenny. She is a stone cold fox and definitely NOT a bitch!

Longtime readers of CPW remember the story of my childhood ex-neighbor Jenny, the little girl who only wanted me for my box. Back when I used to have fans and regular readers, many of said fans and regular readers rallied to support me as I relived this recklessly painful childhood trauma. But as sweet and appreciated as your support was, I now have to confess that Jenny is actually not a total bitch. Or if she is a bitch, she is only 1/3 the bitch that I am.

Hmmm, maybe I'm digging myself a hole here because being 1/3 the bitch that I am is still pretty bad. Let me rethink that and get back to you.

Anyway, later on I related to you the strange tale of how I once stalked Jenny by embroidering her a pillow and sending it to her in the mail along with a secret admirer letter. Somewhere in the comments section that followed the tale I mentioned that Jenny and I had actually reunited on Facebook. Which means that I could contact her any time I wanted.

The result of this confession is that avid commenters GetKristiLove and Chris ganged up and goaded me into confessing the whole story to Jenny while taping it live for the cringy-embarrassment of whatever readers I have left after having neglected my blog for so long.

Mainly because I love to be ganged up on (sick fetish) I took the bait and did contact Jenny. Live. On video. And confessed to her that I was the stalker who hand embroidered her the ugly pillow.

Here is the result. Admittedly, it may not be as enticing as any of the classic Mama Gin videos, but I hope some of you will enjoy it anyway.

CP

ps: There are several cat cameos in this video. There's an especially good one near the end, where Grover pounces into my lap, demanding attention as I try to wrap up the phone call.

OH. MY. GOD.

2009-12-02T10:05:00.004-05:00

Meredith Baxter, my muse, as the murderous Betty Broderick

I'm almost late for work but I just had to take the 5 extra minutes to post this.

Longtime fans of Coaster Punchman's World know about my addiction to the CMTVM (Cheesy Made for TV Movie) and it's oh so important sub-genre, the CMTVMMB (Cheesy Made for TV Movie with Meredith Baxter.)

Well Gentle Readers, my favorite uber-mommie-turned-crazy-beyotch has revealed that she is a big ole' lezzie. And I mean that as a compliment.

Some days at CPW are good days, and this is one!

Love and Coasters,

CP

Another story of my awkward youth - part 4

2009-11-30T14:48:00.004-05:00

Gentle Readers,

Thanks for bearing with me as I continue to drag out this story, that is if anyone still cares. Part 4 is posted here on the World of Progress online magazine where my saga has been renamed Coaster Punchman and the College Boys. Please leave comments there if you don't mind, although I don't mind if you leave them here too. I'm such a whore for affection, it's pathetic.

Since even Albert Einstein wouldn't remember what this story is all about, I'll provide links to the first three installments:

Read Part One here

Read Part Two here

Read Part Three here

With love and coasters, I remain yours truly,
CP

Jin’s Sweet Box Contest, Or One more way CP is a freak and a total fool

2009-11-01T17:18:00.005-05:00

I can barely even begin to explain this. You'll just have to read below.

Our pastry-chef friend Jin recently posted a contest on her blog. She wants her readers to leave a comment stating the most embarrassing story about themselves they can think of. Whichever story makes her laugh the longest and loudest will entitle the reader to one of her special Sweet Boxes.

Now I’m not all that competitional or anything, but seeing as how embarrassing stories (about myself and others) are one of my specialities, I could not resist the urge to throw my name in the hat.

I started to type my comment to Jin (wherein, as you will note below, I state for the record that I could in no way compete with her reader Jay Ferris who boasts a horrifying story of jock itch and professional nudity) but alas, the “comment” was too long for Blogger to publish – leaving me with no choice but to post my entry on my own blog.

So, without any further ado, I respectfully submit the following entry in Jin’s Sweet Box Contest:

I would really like to play this game, but I simply don't believe I could beat Jay. That story is just so nasty.

But actually, I have thought of a story from my childhood that is just so stupid, it's more embarrassing just to think about what was going in my 12 year old pea-brain rather than the embarrassment of being discovered. (I actually never was officially discovered.)

Here's the set up: You may or may not recall a post I did some time ago about my childhood ex-neighbor Jenny. She and I had been best buddies earlier in life but had started to grow apart as we hit the tween years. One time when I was 11 or 12 I decided to mess with her and send her a "secret admirer" letter, not because I secretly admired her, but just because I was a mischievous imp and wanted to screw with her head.

But this was to be no ordinary secret-admirer letter, mind you - that would have been too normal for my pea-brain. Instead I decided she needed something homemade, something artsy and craftsy to show my fake-love for her. So I decided to make her a pillow.

Yes, that would be a pillow, the kind of thing on which you lay your head down at night to help you go to sleep. I have no idea where this random thought came from, but I took to the project with much aplomb.

I dug through some drawers and found some old pieces of upholstery that my mom had used to recover the seats of our dining room chairs a number of years before. I chose for one side of the secret-love-pillow a patterned fabric with a kind of plaid-paisley thing happening. For the other side of the pillow I chose plain green.

Why just plain green for the other side, you may ask? Because I needed a plain side so that I could do some special embroidery work on it. Just to make it extra special.

I took a needle and a spool of ordinary white thread from Kmart and carefully stitched in a large letter "J" on Jenny's pillow. (You know, so it would be an initial of her first name and all to make it really nice.)

I sewed up the sides of the fabric pieces and stuffed it with some old rags or something. The finished product was the saddest little thing I'd ever seen - like a school art project for which even a special-ed kindergartner would have received a D-minus. It was pathetic, but I was still really proud of it.

Then I proceeded to write her a letter (not even disguising my own handwriting) which read something to the effect of "I like you very much and so I made you this pillow. Signed, your secret admirer." And then I mailed it.

A few weeks later my cat had kittens, and when I saw Jenny across the yard one day I asked her if she (and her new best friend Joanne) wanted to come see them. Sure, they said, and they came in to see the new kitties.

As Jenny held one of the sleeping kittens in her hand she said, sotto voce to Joanne, "this kitten is so cute sleeping like this - I should go get her a small pillow." Joanne started snickering, and I asked what was so funny.

Jenny looked at me and rather flatly stated "a secret admirer sent me a pillow."

"A pillow?" I asked, in the sort of "what the fuck" tone that would properly befit that kind of statement.

"Yes, he made me a pillow. You should see it - it has got to be the ugliest thing ever." I couldn't tell if she suspected me, but I played along. She went and got me the pillow and the letter and we all had a good laugh. I could tell she was genuinely confused, as was I, frankly. To this day I still have no idea what possessed me to do such a strange thing.

But as an adult I have come to appreciate it as a kind of private performance art. I would consider doing the same to other people I know today except that technology is so much more sophisticated now - it would be much easier to sniff me out. And as an adult I could probably get arrested - or at least slapped with a restraining order - for doing something so awkward and creepy.

I've never told anyone this story, not even Poor George. Consider this my humble submission to the Sweet Box context.

CP

Suze Orman

2009-10-27T21:40:00.002-04:00

Hey y'all, I'm not dead. I've just been busy worshipping at the altar of Suze Orman.

I'll be back with my next installment of "Alyssa Milbert" very soon!

Love and coasters,

Alissa Milbert Can Suck My Balls - Part 5

2009-07-24T12:00:00.010-04:00

This is part 5 of a CPW series.

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

Read Part 3 here

Read Part 4 here

************************************

to be continued....................................

My monthly piece is up

2009-07-02T01:41:00.003-04:00

Gentle Readers,

My latest piece for A World of Progress Team-Zine is up here. Check it out if you are so inclined. If you are not so inclined, that's fine, but remember you're killing me.

Love,

Sad

2009-06-25T21:08:00.005-04:00

I feel like we've lost a really weird family member. He's been part of our lives forever and now, just like that, he's gone. He was one sick fuck, and he will be missed.

RIP, Mikey.

Check this out

2009-06-02T10:55:00.004-04:00

Gentle Readers,

I was invited by Lori, author of Hahn at Home, to write for the GLBTQ page of her online zine called A World of Progress TeamZine. I'll be publishing there once a month if all goes as planned.

Here is my first piece, a hysterical (as in angry) rant on Prop 8. How unusual for me!

Enjoy.

I'm still married, but...

2009-05-27T02:20:00.001-04:00

I'm too damn mad to write coherently about this. So I'm sending you, my Gentle Readers, over to Melinda June's place for a little common sense on the upholding of Prop 8, with a bit of humor thrown in for good measure. More from me later.

Update: Mama Gin 1923-2009

2009-05-06T23:46:00.001-04:00

Poor George asked me to thank you all for your kind comments about Mama Gin. He also wanted me to post this picture of her as a lovely young woman.

George was not happy initially with Mama Gin's celebrity status on the web, but I think I've convinced him that these posts have allowed her to develop a fan base that she would not have had otherwise. It's wonderful that you all know and appreciate her as the quirky woman she was.

Although the picture below is not as flattering as the one above, it is how I - and most of you- will always remember her. Standing in our apartment doorway, issuing edicts and other pronouncements.

Mama Gin

3/25/1923 - 5/4/2009

May she rest in peace.

Why is everyone judging me?

2009-05-03T23:13:00.006-04:00

Listen Gentle Readers,

You all need to stop judging me for my beliefs. I am entitled to them - this is a free country.

I have never said ANYTHING against black people. My beliefs have nothing to do with black people. I just think whites should have their own drinking fountains, that's all. That's just the way I was raised.

I hope we can all agree to respect each other. I have nothing against any of you.

CP

I need to clarify

2009-05-02T10:47:00.004-04:00

Gentle Readers,

If you've been following the news at all lately, you might be aware of the vicious attacks on me because of statements I made during my on-stage interview in the Mr. Gay California pageant last week.

I have nothing against the Jewish people. I just think that Europe should have remained Aryan and Christian and that we took a wrong turn in 1945 by getting involved in all that. This has nothing at all to do with the Jews.

It saddens to me to see that my beliefs cannot be respected.

CP

CP's Blair Bitch Project: Stillwater, OK

2009-04-14T11:08:00.003-04:00

Join CP as he explores his father's abandoned childhood home in Oklahoma.

Poor George and I stopped through my dad's hometown on the cross-country trip we took to move PG and all our stuff from New York to California.

I wasn't absolutely positive at the time of filming that I had the right house, but I later confirmed with my dad that we were on target. He is very excited to see the video, which is why we shot it in the first place. Unfortunately I would never let him see this blog, so I'll have to get it to him another way.

Enjoy.

CP

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - part 4

2009-04-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

This is part 4 of a CPW series

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

Read Part 3 here

"How was your evening with D.E.?" he asked me the morning after my less-than-exciting evening out with Carol Burnett's former TV movie co-star.

"Oh, your usual disaster," I replied, wearily.

"Disaster? It couldn't have been all THAT bad, could it?"

"Oh yes, and worse. I'm sure I'll never hear from him again. And why didn't you tell me he was famous?"

"Famous? He's not really famous, is he?"

"Yeah, so?" Lex replied with a somewhat puzzled look on his face.

He continued. "Did you like him or not? Did you guys talk about anything besides Carol Burnett?"

Lex looked like he was starting to grow concerned.

"Well . . . I don't think I would recommend that particular course of action. And anyway, it seemed like D.E. did like you well enough at my party. Maybe you should call HIM."

"That's not true, Tom, you're famous to US!" Lex replied, referring to our small group of friends. Sweet as the sentiment was, it was small consolation. I was feeling downright unworthy.

********************

My jaw dropped straight to the ground.

"You KNOW her??? You KNOW Palison?" I blurted out, incredulously.

"Yeah, I know her. We used to work together at Tuesday's Pild," he replied with a maddening air of nonchalance, referring to a well known children's AIDS charity.

Poor Lex, I thought. If only HE had grown up in the Midwest, he might understand my particular state of excitement.

....... to be continued ..........

I'm just a-lovin' the new blog layout

2009-04-07T20:03:00.008-04:00

These boys are Mormon missionaries, apparently running a mission on the moon. They also have nothing to do with the subject of this post.

Thank God Bubs asked us to help promote Nora in the Fangoria Spooksmodel Contest. If it hadn't been for Bubs' asking us to help out, I never would have tried to give Nora a perma-link on my sidebar, never would have failed miserably at it, and subsequently never would have decided I needed to revamp my blog to join the 21st century (post aught-four.)

My old template would simply not support Nora in all her nursely ghoulishness, and I so wanted to help that I actually began the arduous task of reformatting. Which turned out not to be arduous at all. And is the reason y'all are (maybe not?) enjoying my whole new look.

I lost the bulk of my regular Gentle Readers over the past months, probably ever since Proposition 8 passed when I began to spend months being all angry and serious about it, and losing my mojo for writing in the process.

But that's all water under the bridge now, Gentle Readers, and we start anew.

What has changed the most is that the new template enabled me to do that coolio link thing where I can see immediately which of my stalkees has posted. This saves me the arduous task of clicking into all 50+ of my stalkees' blogs every day to see what is going on. That is the primary reason why I hadn't been reading & commenting on your blogs - it just got too damn hard to keep up with everyone.

So now, I am lovin' the ability to keep up with y'all more easily, Gentle Readers. And I hope you love me stopping over more often now.

Oh please, like we're not all attention whores.

Love & coasters,
CP

Some Guy's "Lose Your Shit Video" series: CP loses his shit over Margaret Cho

2009-04-06T19:27:00.008-04:00

I know that my Gentle Readers have senses of humor or else they would not be able to deal with this blog, which would otherwise be seen as nothing but offensive drivel.

Laughter is indeed the best medicine, if I can say that without sounding trite, which I can't really, because it is trite --- but c'mon, work with me here for a minute. Chris over at Some Guy's Blog has developed an interest in those special moments in life where something not quite definable just makes you lose your shit. And he has taken to recording himself enjoying such moments, for example, as in this post.

I've taken it upon myself to find one such moment of my own and foist it upon you, my Gentle Readers. And I'm hereby inviting you to do the same. Find your special moment, record it for future generations to enjoy and post it on your blog as part of the brand new "Some Guy's Lose Your Shit Video" series.

Here's where I lost my own shit:

A few weeks ago, while I was driving to see some clients, I was listening to Margaret Cho on the car stereo. For those who are unfamiliar with Margaret's work, words can't quite describe how vile she can be. She's completely insane. Also, she and I have something in common in our taste for comedy: we both get our kicks making fun of elderly Asian women (she her mother, I my mother-in-law, the infamous Mama Gin.)

Margaret is also big on potty humor, which sometimes I find funny and sometimes not so much. But this bit she does about having to crap her pants while she's in the car just struck me as so hilarious I could not stop laughing. I laughed so hard I was practically hyperventilating and thought I might have to pull over.

I thought this was a fitting first video in this new series on Losing Your Shit, since what made me laugh in the first place was Margaret talking about shitting her pants.

Enjoy.

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - part 3

2009-04-04T10:02:00.010-04:00

This is part 3 of a CPW series

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

As fun as it was to meet all these famous people, every now and again I became self conscious because I wasn't famous myself. The last thing a mildly retarded Punchman needs is another reason to feel down about himself.

Though really, I shouldn't have worried much about it, because I found not a small number of people in L.A., people who lived, ate and breathed Hollywood, who were fascinated by me and my life because I just had a regular nine-to-five job. Something completely alien to them. I remember one conversation I had with a woman at a party:

"So, like, what do you DO?"

"I'm a computer consultant for a publishing firm."

"Wow. So what IS that?"

"Well, I visit customers who use our products to make sure everything works, and I get them to install upgrades and that sort of thing."

"Ok dude, I am like totally tripping....do you like, have an OFFICE or something?"

"Yes, I am in an office when I'm not visiting customers."

"Oh my GOD, I can't even IMAGINE...."

The fact that I didn't get screamed at regularly or that I had never been fired for forgetting to put two sugars in somebody's coffee was a completely foreign concept to this woman.

One time at a party I met a guy who worked on the "Larry Sanders Show." We kind of hit it off, and spent much of the evening talking together. I was upfront about the fact that I had never seen his show, so at the end of the night he invited me to come over to watch a few episodes sometime.

"I'd love to, thanks!" I replied.

A few days later this guy called and instead of inviting me over, asked if I wanted to go to the movies.

"Sure! What would you like to see?"

He went through some song & dance about how he needed to go see "The Secret Garden" because someone he knew had worked on it and he's promised he'd take a look - or something to that effect, because as you know I don't really listen to anything a person says when I'm slightly nervous, as I was here.

In any event, I agreed on "The Secret Garden" and told him to pick me up at 5:30 - and that I would find out where it was playing. After we hung up I looked in the paper and saw it was playing at the "Beverly Center" at 5:45. Perfect.

D.E. (his initials) picked me up at 5:30 and drove us over to the theater, which was on the top floor of a shopping mall- so it took a few minutes to get up to the ticket booth. STRIKE ONE: We arrived at the booth only to find that the movie was not playing there at all.

"Oops...." I said. "It must be at the Beverly CONNECTION...." (the theater across the street.)

He let out one of those polite laughs, the kind you use when you are slightly annoyed but want to show what a good sport you are.

We rode the mall escalators down five floors to exit the building, after which we crossed the street to go over to the other theater. It was about 5:43 when we approached the ticket counter. I took out my wallet to discover I had no cash with me. STRIKE TWO.

I swear, I have no idea how people lived before ATM machines.

To Californians, anything East of the state line is referred to as "back East." They're almost as bad as New Yorkers that way.

Another awkward tale from my youth - part 3

2009-04-02T21:40:00.007-04:00

This is where I lured my date

Jeff and I would enjoy many more dinners together, and one time he commented on the paltriness of my food tray, which consisted of a bare dinner plate with one thin slice of ham accompanied by a side dish of about three lettuce leaves and a glass of milk.

"Is that all you're having, Tom?" he asked. I didn't even understand the question. How could ANYONE eat at a time like this? Of course it was usually a "time like this" for no one but me.

Returning to the topic of our first dinner date, although I barely listened to most of what Jeff said because I couldn't focus, I did manage to keep my ears perked up for clues to such relevant items as "does he like girls?" and "where does he spend his evening hours?" While his like or dislike for females remained frustratingly obscure to me, I did manage to remember that he worked in a small student-run snack bar on campus every Friday night.

And so of course, the Friday after I learned this precious gem of a tidbit, I suddenly became hungry for a snack at about 8:30 - or a half hour before the snack bar was to close.

"Hey, Tom! How's it going?" Jeff called out from behind the counter when I entered the all but deserted snack bar.

"Hey Jeff, not too much, how about you? Working much longer?"

"Nah, I'm just about to close this place down. Want something to eat?"

Of course I wasn't able to eat a thing, but I did stand next to the counter, making small talk about God-knows-what for the next 20 minutes. I'm actually quite proud of my ability to become social upon demand. Normally, given the choice, I keep my nose in a book or glued to the TV set or in the face of someone who's known me for 20 years. I've never felt comfortable talking to new people.

But when you're paying me a salary, or scaring me to death because I like you and really want you to like me, I can become quite the empty conversationalist. Comes in handy in my sales-related work. And it used to come in handy when I was still dating. Or trying to date.

I rambled on at Jeff about miscellaneous topics until he had his coat on and was shutting off the lights. I simply walked with him to the exit and out into the night, as if we had planned it all along.

"What are you up to now, Jeff?" I asked.

"I don't know, really, what about you?" he replied, proving to me that God did in fact exist.

"Well, my roommates are away and I was thinking of lighting up a joint and chilling out...want to come?"

I was just a little bit of a pothead in those days, which is odd, considering what a bundle of nerves I usually was. It makes me afraid to think of what the world could have been like for me without the wacky tobacky to even out the rough edges.

And although I don't remember doing so specifically, I must have vetted Jeff beforehand for his position on marijuana, or else I never would have asked a question like that.

"Sure, that sounds good!"

Off I went with Jeff to my dorm room, happy yet beside myself in the knowledge that my roommates were out of town for the weekend.

....to be continued.......

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - part 2

2009-03-31T11:44:00.009-04:00

(Note that I never use their real names in these posts for fear of being Googled. I am still in possession of a shred of dignity, although that is quickly wearing away.)

I asked Lisa what she had been up to lately.

"Well, I just wrapped another episode of 'Murder She Wrote,' she replied.

"Beth!" I replied. "What is with these manners of yours?! Lisa is talking about her job, here! Show some respect, will you?"

"Well I'm sorry! But god, who even WATCHES that show? It's so stupid that even my MOM likes it! It's like mystery-drama for geriatrics!"

Lisa was shocked to the point of not knowing what to say. She just let out a little grunt of horror. "It was really fun to work on," she quietly mumbled.

"Well, I guess I just don't watch that much TV," was Beth's final comment on the subject.

"Oh my God, that's even worse!" I thought Lisa might possibly cry, although it was probably all just part of being dramatic. Actors are like that.

Our breakfast, delicious as it was, slowly disintegrated from there.

....to be continued......

Alissa Milbert can suck my balls - part 1

2009-03-29T23:34:00.005-04:00

Actually, I realize John Wayne Gacy didn't eat his victims. It just sounded better that way.

The first time I went to El Coyote I was with my new boss, who mentioned casually that he sat next to Carol Burnett the last time he'd been there.

"Carol Burnett?? Are you kidding me with this??" I demanded to know.

"Yes, I did," Michael replied. "You see a lot of stars here. Perfect restaurant if you're into that sort of thing."

And was I ever! Seeing stars was fun!

....to be continued.....

Go vote for Bubs' kid Nora

2009-03-28T13:18:00.005-04:00

Hi all,

PG and I are just back from a cross country trip to move him from Brooklyn to San Diego. Our life as a couple of New York urban sophisticates has officially come to an end. From here on in we'll be floating around SoCal with the rest of the airheads. Suits me.

I have many tales to tell from our trip, but for now I want you all to follow Lulu's instructions to vote for Nora O'Sullivan, eldest daughter of beloved blogger Bubs. (Lulu already recapped everything nicely and provides the link you need to vote.)

Love and Coasters,

My Crazy Eights

2009-03-17T22:18:00.000-04:00

Bubsicle (my new nick-name for him) named me as one of his Crazy-Eights. No one really calls it the “Crazy Eights” – I’m just being a dork as usual.

It’s just a tag game where Bubs professed his undying love for my blog (and seven other blogs) and I’m supposed to return the favor. Glad to – I have so many great blogs on my list that I can’t even keep up with them all.

I’m supposed to post THESE WORDS:

“These bloggers are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find
and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that
when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated.
Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight
bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into
the body of their award.”

and the picture at the heading of this post – that is your award, bloggies. My eight are supposed to do likewise with their Crazy-Eights.

With that, here are a few of my besties, my crazy-about-ya-eights, in completely random order:

Grizzbabe’s Den – this gal has a good soul

The Pop Eye - everyone nominates her but I know she feels neglected by me so I’m hoping this will make up for it

A Twist of Lemon – I am simply charmed by his use of only partial words

Gifts from a Broad – cracks me the f*ck up

Social Zymurgy: The Culture of Beer – Doc is my hero

Tenacious S – another real life bestie

Prone to Whimsy – Flan and I are real life besties now

Two Minutes in the Box – she goes on great vacations and didn’t really mean to ignore me in Chicago that one time.

Another awkward tale from my youth part 2

2009-03-14T11:22:00.000-04:00

This is not the old caf at St. Olaf. But it conjures up the cold, Lutheran ambiance of which I speak. I mean, write.

In an attempt not to drag this on for a year as I did with the story of how PG and I met, I'm getting a move on with this tale. See here for Part 1.

********************

Just figuring out Jeff's name seemed like such an important feat that I hadn't even thought of what I might do with the information once I acquired it. I was always a fairly shy person and had never, at least in my own memory, manipulated a situation so that I would have a chance to talk to someone in particular. I was used to letting things happen and unfold as they may, which would probably explain the many disastrous events of my life up to that point.

I decided it was time to take control.

A few days later as I was walking toward choir rehearsal I saw him about 20 yards ahead of me. I knew I needed to get his attention and slow him down right then before he reached the choir room, depriving me of a chance to walk with him and chat him up for a few minutes.

"Jeff!" I called out. He stopped and turned around.

"Oh, hey Tom! What's going on?" I quickened my pace to catch up to him.

"Not a lot." (Yeah, right Tom.) "So how are classes?"

I was so nervous that I had absolutely no idea what he said in response. I had always been like that; it was so unusual for me just to start talking to someone I barely knew that my self-consciousness overrode anything else about the situation, including the ability to listen to the other person. Most of us shy folk can compensate by developing an ability to recognize the cadences of typical small-talk, and are able to imitate having an actual conversation with all the perquisite give-and-take.

It's remarkable how many people in life have told me I'm a "good listener." If they only knew.

I could not have repeated even five minutes later what either of us said to the other. There was just one very important part of the conversation that had to, and did take place: setting the stage so that I could run into him again and casually suggest having a meal together.

Over the next several weeks I took note of the various directions from which he approached the music building before choir practice, which was three afternoons a week, and made sure to be in the general vicinity each day so that I would be in place to chat him up. It worked.

One day, as we were approaching our rehearsal I said "So are you doing anything for dinner after choir? Want to go to the caf afterward?"

He he, the caf. It still makes me laugh today when I think about the caf, as we called the dining room at St. Olaf. Having a companion at meal times was crucial in the caf because it was this large room with two separate entrances, filled with long rectangular tables spaced out in perfect symmetry. It was a cold, glaringly lit stark room with a decorative motif that would be best described as "church basement pot-luck industrial."

No one ever wanted to sit alone in the caf, especially not at dinner time, because there were no safe corners in which a lone diner could tuck him or herself away to hide. If you went to the caf alone, there you were for the entire student body to see, pathetic and friendless under the glare of the unwaveringly Lutheran interrogation lamps---I mean, white lights.

In other words, asking someone to eat with you was a foolproof way of getting face time with the object of your interest. No one in modern history has ever turned down an invitation to have a dining companion in the St. Olaf caf, at least not until the college upgraded its facilities long after I graduated.

"Yeah Tom, that sounds great! I'll meet you at the door after choir?"

SCORE!! An actual dinner date!!! I thought. And I even had the rest of choir rehearsal to think up things to say to him!

.....to be continued.......

I'm like totally freaking out

2009-03-12T21:20:00.006-04:00

I'm totally freaking out because I'm getting ready to go meet Poor George in Chicago so that I can drive with him back here to San Diego. My excitement and anticipation of my road-trip vacation was interrupted this morning when I got pulled into a conference call with the VP of my division and Human Resources so that they could tell us my boss is being laid off.

My boss just lost his job. This is not good.

Then when the VP doing the call said "are there any questions?" I asked about the proverbial elephant-in-the-room: "Are you anticipating any reduction in his current staff?"

"No, we are not," the VP replied. Then came the sounds of muffled voices and a lot of paper shuffling and other related noises. Followed by the voice of the HR rep who was in the room with him:

"Well, no one can ever promise there won't be staffing changes. None of us has a guaranteed job in this environment."

Ugh.

But anyway, I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here right now at the request of Melinda June, who told her readers to ask me to blog about a book we both just read. You can click over to her post to see what book she's referring to; I don't want to be Googled and then found by the people I'm about to malign.

The book is a fascinating read, so I won't give away too much of it in case you want to "enjoy" it yourself. I'll just tell you it's about a particularly insidious form of child abuse, and that two of the offenders (the parents of the author) are going to rot in hell. At least if I have anything to say about it.

Of course, simply thinking these people are evil was not enough for a mildly retarded and often crusty Punchman. I decided to put my cyberstalking skills to good use by hunting down the address and phone number of said parents.

And then I called them.

I got their answering machine, upon which I left the following message:

"If this is Dr. and Mrs. Beers, I just wanted to let you know you should be asking God's forgiveness every single day for what you have done to your children." And then I hung up.

Mindy thinks this is one of the funniest things she has ever heard, although she also says she is glad I did it.

Next, I went to the author's website, got her email address and wrote her, asking about her current relationship with her parents. Not surprisingly, the author wrote back and said she doesn't speak to them any more.

(Well, maybe it's surprising that she wrote me back, but not surprising that she has cut her parents off. Well, actually, they probably cut her off. She didn't say.)

If you decide to read this book (whose title rhymes with the words "Beezus Hand") let me know what you think.

Another story of my awkward youth part 1

2009-03-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

I have no idea who these guys are. I just did a Google Image Search for "Cute College Boys" and theirs was the first fully clothed picture I found.

Quite a while back I wrote about my more significant childhood crushes and in doing so promised to tell you a certain story from my college days. No one can ever accuse CP of not keeping a promise, even if it takes me three or more years to deliver.

Well Gentle Readers, today is your lucky day because I'm going to tell you a story that has kept many a friend on the verge of his or her seat when I've told it in person. A story of early 20-something romantical suspense, one that is sure to melt your heart. Or melt something.

In college I was just barely out of the closet - I had only told three or four people about my feelings for other guys, and most of these friends didn't live anywhere near me. Lulu was one of the lucky ones who knew, partly because I considered her "safe": she lived far away and didn't know any of my other friends, so there was almost no chance of her being able to rat me out inadvertently.

(As an aside I will note that while I was close to Mindy June, she and I weren't super close at this particular time because she had just abandoned me by transferring colleges, and besides, I feared she would judge me for having dated one of our mutual female friends just a few months prior to all this. She told me in later years that I was cracked to think she wouldn't have sided with me, although it's always easy to say that in retrospect.)

The year was 1987, and I was especially touchy about anyone at my college knowing about me because, above all, I feared scandal in my dormitory: I had three male roommates, not to mention a whole floor of guys I had to share a shower with.

Although I'm sure it still happens today in some parts of the country, back in those days it was par for the course that if a straight person found out their roommate was gay, they would raise a stink, go to the housing director and demand that the gay person be removed. This chain of events would result not only in the serious upheaval of one's routine, but also public shaming and involuntary outing. And trust me, being outed involuntarily as a gay person in 1987 was not what you wanted.

It distresses me to this day that so many of us had to live in that kind of fear during our most formative years, years that are supposed to be filled with the magic of youthful self discovery, first kisses, heavy petting (and, if you were a girl, seat-wetting).

Oh, well.

So to summarize our story thus far, we've set the scene with a 21 year old gay boy living with a bunch of straight guys, afraid to be discovered yet starved for affection and also in possession of the normal 21 year old boy hormones. In other words, quite the dilemma.

My 21 year old boy hormones led me to take an acute interest in a certain guy who sang in the same choir I did. I didn't remember where I had met him, but I must have met him somewhere because several different times he walked by me and said "Hi Tom!"

"Hi Tom!" Wow! What on earth could this MEAN????

I had no idea who he was or even what his name was. But I kept a close eye on him for weeks, until one day I noticed him wearing a monogrammed crew neck sweater. (Parenthetically, should I actually have been wondering if this guy in my choir with a monogrammed sweater was gay?)

So that day, after memorizing the initials on his sweater, I went up to the music rack where each choir member was given a shelf to store his or her music, and scanned all the names on the rack until I found one that matched his initials. This uncannily brilliant detective work on my part led me to the irrefutable conclusion that name of the object of my interest was Jeff Henderson.

(For the record, Jeff Henderson is not this person's real name. But I hope you can sense in this story the first stirrings of a first-rate cyberstalker in the making!)

to be continued........

Four years without Jacob

2009-02-25T21:10:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it's been four years (yesterday) since Jacob's death in Iraq. In some ways it feels like just yesterday, and in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. But no matter how long it seems, we will never stop missing him.

My sister found this picture of Jake and me the other day - I don't think I'd ever seen it.

I'm due for a new phobia

2009-02-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

Gentle Readers,

I was going through some old posts because I had to remove one in a random fit of paranoia. I didn't delete it, but just saved it as a draft so that one day I can repost it. (As if anyone would go back and find it.)

Anyhoo, in reviewing some other old drafts I had sitting there I found this one and figured it was time to post it. Sometimes I start to write something but get tired and plan to finish it later -- but never do. That's what alcoholism and drug addiction have done for me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

In any event, as mentioned in the post itself, this little story was inspired by the now-defunct blogger "Pink Fluffy Slippers." I hope she didn't actually get cancer. But her link is defunct so don't even try it.

Love and Coasters,

***********************

Our friend Pink Fluffy Slippers recently posted her Five Random Things, wherein she confessed that she's afraid that she'll get cancer and have no one to drive her to chemo. (I guess the whole hair-falling out and dying thing is merely a secondary fear.)

This reminded me that I'm about due for a new phobia.

I spent most of my childhood and early adulthood being afraid that I would develop schizophrenia, because I have a brother who has it. Not only did the genetic factor frighten me; being told that "you're acting just like your brother" was always my mom's favorite method of trying to control her other children.

While this issue with my mother still plays a role on my parental grudge list, my fear of schizophrenia subsided more and more the older I got, and was almost gone by my mid-thirties. (Schizophrenia usually strikes in the teens or early twenties.) This fear was then replaced by the fear of Tourette's.

I haven't read up extensively on Tourette's, but I'm pretty sure I don't want it. I have a hard time resisting my strong urges to talk to myself, and sometimes wonder whether I may actually already have a mild case of Tourette's that might get worse as I age. The last thing I need right now is an affliction that will cause me to shout obscenities at strangers.

But if you ask me, I think the best thing that has happened to Tourette's patients is the advent of cell phone Blue Tooth technology, which involves those wireless ear phones that you're seeing more and more cellular customers using. At least once a day I see some guy walking down the street, talking to himself. I used to assume a guy like this was just another crazy until I could actually see that he was talking on a wireless cell.

But now my default belief in such situations is exactly the opposite. When I see someone who looks like he's talking to himself, I automatically assume he's using a wireless headset on his cell phone. In other words, a high percentage of the crazies (i.e. the ones who aren't totally dishevelled looking) now have a free pass because everyone just assumes they're saying "cunt!" to someone over the phone.

Which makes Tourette's seem a lot less scary, now that I know it will be so easy to hide.

Guess I need a new phobia. Got any ideas for me?

R.I.P. Socks

2009-02-20T22:19:00.001-05:00

I'm heartbroken. Socks has died.

Facebook is Dead to Me, and other tales of woe

2009-02-15T20:06:00.006-05:00

Well Gentle Readers, it's official: as far as fun on Facebook is concerned for me, les jeux sont faits. Most of you have already seen my tales of high school woe as awoken anew in my prior article about Facebook.

(Note how I get all fancy by using the word article to describe the drivel that I publish on this blog. Oops, now I said publish. Hee hee.)

Well as of about 23 hours ago, Facebook became officially dead to me, at least in the sense of my being able to share anything pretty personal on it. Because due to my prior stupidity of letting ONE WORK FRIEND join my group, my former BOSS is now my Facebook friend.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Not that it matters, really. So far on Facebook there is really nothing to hide. A few of you who are on Facebook do call me "CP" there, but that in itself is not enough to out me as the world's crabbiest blogger who maintains the warmest and most welcoming webspace on the Internets.

My beef with my prior boss joining my little Facebook universe is that it completely kills off any possibility of being my true bitchy self on that forum. And what's the point of that?

Not that I wasn't bitchy to his face when he was my boss; far from it, in fact. I regularly bullied him into meetings and conference calls with all the enthusiasm and aplomb of a guy completely unafraid of ever losing his job. On more than one occasion I even berated him publicly for interrupting me and/or not letting me talk enough during our team meetings. I think he may have been a little afraid of me. No one really knows what to do about such a loose canon.

But, because I'm not as retarded as I sometimes pretend to be, I was always careful to preserve my crustiness to in person contacts and NEVER to memorialize my virtual hemmorhages in writing. My pretend life online is where I get it all down on (virtual) paper, for the sick pleasure of my Gentle Readers.

Anyway, I can't exactly drop out of Facebook now, but I'll have to be doubly, no, triply extra careful of anything I decide to put up there now.

Crustily yours,

PS: "CP" is fine, Facebook friends, but if anyone accidentally calls me by my full blog name, "Coaster Punchman," while on Facebook, I may have to go up the river and take names. And you should all know what that means!

13 random items on Friday the 13th

2009-02-13T20:51:00.008-05:00

Random fact: This is a map of Balboa park, which is a few blocks from our house. PG and I got married in the Redwood Circle.

1. I love reading everyone on my blog roll, but I haven't been doing so for a while. When I start to think about logging on and catching up with all of you, I get overwhelmed and then I don't do it. I am starting to understand why some of our blogging friends have closed up shop. But I simply refuse to let CPW die.

2. I am having dinner with Tanya Espanya tonight. She is here with Rowbear and spawn, and after threatening to cook for me has now decided to take me out for Mexican.

3. My friend Sarah and her husband and two spawn are coming to my house tomorrow. I'm supposed to feed them drinks and then take them somewhere local for dinner. I've considered cooking but I get frustrated when I think of things to make and then realize 3 of the implements I would need are still with Poor George in New York.

4. Poor George plans to be here next month, with the rest of our stuff. Except that he's decided (with my approval) to give my piano to some good friends of ours. Because we want to buy a grand piano, so why pay to move my console across the country? I have mixed feelings about this because I don't want to live without a piano for too long, yet I don't know when we'll be able to afford a grand. Poor me.

5. 30 Rock is the funniest show ever. Except for The Office. But 30 Rock may even be funnier. I can't decide, and you can't make me.

6. Our bedroom is lavender and purple. Is that really gay or just a little gay?

7. I love my job. I don't make enough money, but it's the perfect job for me. The only downside is that since I'm no longer a Strategic Sales Executive I don't have as much to bitch about, which makes for much less entertaining reading for you. Suffer.

8. My life is so quiet compared to living in the big city. It's strange. I like it, but it's strange.

9. I go country western dancing every Thursday now. I've been toying with the idea of having a country western wedding reception, since PG and I originally planned on having a "big" party to invite our friends and family to with more than a week's notice. It would be really fun. We could have an instructor for a few hours to teach the novices how to do the steps. Help me sell PG on this.

10. [deleted by the censors]

11. My friend Shelly and I got really drunk at a work conference a few weeks ago, and decided (while drunk) that it would be a good idea to go into a video booth and make a tape of ourselves drunkenly pitching one of our products. We both had remorse the next morning, but even more so a day later when they decided to play it in front of 2,000 of our colleagues. Apparently we "won" second place for the "best pitch." We each got a $250 gift card as a prize, but I asked my boss if I could be fired instead. I looked like a TOTAL dork.

12. On the same night that I made the drunken pitch video, I told my work friend Lori over and over how much I loved her. I think I've become too isolated in this job because I don't go to an office, and the only people I talk to during the day are my clients. I'm getting weirder by the second.

13. It's Friday the 13th, so I think I'll end on 13. Anyone have any good tips on how to stop procrastinating? Or how to treat a harelip?

Reliving High School Trauma (Or, How Facebook is Ruining My Life)

2009-01-25T22:26:00.006-05:00

I think most of my Gentle Readers are familiar with Facebook. If not, just Google it and send in any questions you have in my comments. I'll probably ignore them because I'm lazy and self-centered, but maybe another Gentle Reader will help you out.

Facebook started out as a fun little thing where I was able to touch base with people from college and other past lives - people I hadn't invited into the Blog World, either on purpose or because I didn't know where they were.

Occasionally I am friended by someone whose name sounds vaguely familiar but that I wouldn't know from Adam if you mentioned it to me in passing. And then when they friend me and I see our mutual friends, it all clicks into place. In one example I've enjoyed a lovely online reunion with someone I knew only marginally at St. Olaf but whom I always liked a lot. It turns out that he had grown up in my Brooklyn neighborhood before moving to Minnesota for college.

(Insert audible "oohs" and "ahs" of the excitement from among my Gentle Readers.)

I still maintain that Facebook is a silly, fun little thing to pass the time and mess around with, whereas blogging is for the big guns, people who can and do take the time to write thoughtful essays rather than just doing a bunch of dumb quizzes and telling people what they are doing every given moment. I had a show-down at my wedding with an old friend who mocked my "blogging" as if it were some stupid teenage chatroom hobby.

"I don't see how you have time for that," she said.

"Time for what? You don't think writing is a commendable hobby worthy of an intellectual person's time?"

The fact that I am not an intellectual person was irrelevant, of course. In any event, I think she came around a bit after I tied her down and bitch slapped her for being so ignorant. Blogging is for writers. The rest of it (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, and God knows what else) is for hacks.

But all of that was just a silly prologue to what I really want to talk about tonight, Gentle Readers. For it is now a fact that I opened my Facebook door to one person I adored from high school, a person I have not otherwise kept in touch with. A person who adored me back, and who, in addition to befriending weirdos like me, was a cheerleader and ran with a very popular crowd.

A crowd that, well, let's just say they didn't all think much of me.

One of the problems with Facebook is that once you friend somebody, you are subjected to seeing little blurbs flash across your screen about who else they are friending, who is commenting on their wall, who is tagging them in old pictures, and on & on.

This became a problem because Popular Mary is regularly friended by all sorts of people from the crowd that didn't think much of me. And even though it's been 25 years since I left that place, it still stings when I see some person who wouldn't give me the time of day popping up all over my screen when they comment on Mary's page.

I was marginally friends with a few of these really popular people, so I decided to friend them. Jared, Janie, Lorrie, Shawn and a few others. They all replied and made me their friend - but no personal response at all. No reply to my little messages when I sent them my friend requests. "Hi Janie, wow, it's been a long time! How are you?" Nothing but a generic "Janie has accepted your friend request."

Like I'm supposed to be so fucking honored. Grrr.

The last straw came this weekend when Jared, Janie, Lorrie, Shawn and others were all sending each other that stupid "25 Random Things About Me" thing. They were all writing their 25 things, mentioning each other, tagging each other and I'm still sitting here like some loser wallflower.

Grrr.

It's not to say that I have to be friends with everyone. I also had a lot of my own friends in high school, not to mention college and later years, and I wouldn't trade any of them for the world. Furthermore, I'm very comfortable in my misfit station in life.

But there still remain a few high school memories that are a little painful to relive. Maybe I'll write in more detail about some of them as part of my letting go process - "give til it hurts posting" as Dale calls it.

But for now, suffice it to say that this whole Facebook experience is making me feel like sh*t and I've decided to go up the river and take names. No one who makes me feel like shit gets to remain my friend on Facebook.

And while I still adore Popular Mary and will keep her as a FB friend, I have now officially unfriended Jared, Janie, Lorrie and Shawn. And because of a special test that Mindy June and I ran to examine the consequences of unfriending someone on Facebook, we know that the website is subtle, i.e. FB does not alert the unfriendee that they have been dumped.

So, the only way Jared, Janie, Lorrie and Shawn will know I've unfriended them is if they notice that their number of friends has decreased and they go on a fishing expedition to figure out why. Which I know they would never do, on accounta they are all popular and shit.

I don't know how all this Facebook crap will play out at the end of the day. But I do know one thing, Gentle Readers. And that is that you can all look forward to more painfully awkward posts on this and related topics.

CP

This time the meme's on me

2009-01-24T19:29:00.000-05:00

I just made up this meme to pass the time while I'm tired. If you read my blog, you are tagged but you should comment to make sure I pop over to read up.

1. How old were you the first time you had sex? Were you alone?

2. When is the last time you threw up? Bulimic episodes don't count. But tell us what happened, how long you felt sick before you gave it up to the porcelain god, and what color it was.

3. Describe the meanest thing you've ever done. If you could still get arrested for it today, you are excused. But then you have to tell us the second meanest thing you've ever done.

4. Have you ever told a complete stranger something pretty personal about yourself and then later had about two hemmorhages apiece because you were embarrassed? Describe. And be sure to tell us the pretty personal thing or you don't get credit for answering this question.

5. Have you ever picked up a trick at a bar and then when you got him or her into clear light you thought "oh God, no!" and then told him or her that you had to leave to drive your parents to the airport, knowing full well he or she wouldn't believe you?

6. Tell us about your experiences with re-gifting. Were you on the giving or receiving end?

7. Poor George says he actually remembers being in Mama Gin's womb as a fetus. Should we believe him or not? What is the earlist memory you have?

My answers are below.

Love and coasters,

1. 16 was my first time with a person. It just sort of happened, and I regretted it. Still do. Things were very awkward after that and we never spoke again.

2. This is a gross. What a disgusting question. Why on earth would you write something like this, CP? Anyway, the last time I threw up was a few years ago when I ate some cheap Chinese take-out. I didn't feel sick for very long - all at once I was in the bathroom blowing major chunks. It was nasty. So nasty that I --- well, never mind.

3. Too many mean things to count. One mean thing I still feel bad about was when I made fun of my younger cousin in front of all her friends at her own birthday party. She had been crying a few days before that because one of her friends had called her a "dumb dumb" and I thought it was really funny so I kept imitating her crying and saying "Kathy called me a dumb dumb!" I was only 10, but still, what a complete little shit.

4. One time in law school I told a complete stranger this barely relevant story about how one time I was late to kindergarten and we had a substitute teacher that day and I got all upset because I thought I was in the wrong classroom. I told this story in front of about 10 other people, and no one made any reply at all. Then I felt shame.

5. No, but there have been too many times when I wish I had done that.

6. Just recently at an office party where we had a grab bag, I loudly proclaimed the one I received to be a re-gift based on the age of the box it came in. Someone groaned, and now everyone thinks I'm an asshole.

7. I think Poor George is making it up, but if it is true we should offer him up for medical experiments. My earliest memory is sitting on the couch eating toast. I kept saying "I'm two and I'm having toast."

Wow, that was all really stupid.

This inauguration can suck a bag of dicks

2009-01-19T11:57:00.003-05:00

Obama taking away the ladder

Yes, it's an historic moment. The first (half) black president. More importantly, we're finally rid of Bush, although Karl Rove and the rest of the pit bulls will most certainly be back in four to eight years to put Jeb in office. So our period of relief is certain to be short lived.

And although we are supposed to be celebrating this great "change" we are about to experience by Obama taking the oath of office, there are also those who can rest quietly knowing that some things never change.

Case in point: Prominent "liberals" running for office always court the gay vote while they are running, and throw the fags and dykes under the bus the moment they get into office. The ultimate "fuck you!" school-yard bully trick.

At least Clinton had the decency to wait until he was IN office before kissing our support good-bye with "don't ask don't tell." Obama began pulling the ladder while planning his inauguration by choosing Rick Warren, a vocal supporter of Proposition H8, to perform the invocation.

Obama is an asshole. How many ministers of faith do we have in the USA? Is it just possible that there might have been another minister, anywhere, who has done the kind of good work that Warren has done in the world WITHOUT having made the inexcusable foray into politics?

Short answer: yes, it is possible he could have found someone who was not inordinately offensive to an important part of his constituency. It is entirely possible.

But did he want to do that? No. He WANTED to offend us - and guess why? Because in choosing to offend us, he is garnering support from the religious crazies who didn't put him into office. Just so he can call himself a "uniter." He did it on purpose.

Because in the end, gays don't really matter, and don't have anyone else to turn to anyway. We are completely expendable politically. After all, it is still the common belief that any major candidate for the presidency has to support "traditional" marriage even to have a chance of winning the office.

It would be nice if that outmoded idea would change.

In case anyone is planning on commenting about Obama's subsequent choice of Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop, to say a prayer at a pre-inaugural event, I would simply say "too little too late." If he cared that much about not offending us, he should have invited him to stand up next to Warren and deliver a second prayer at the actual inauguration, the one that everyone (but me) will be watching.

Yes, I'm bitter. I was uninvited to the country's party at the 11th hour - why shouldn't I be?

Obama, you can suck my balls. God damned ladder-puller.

San Diego update: California now has two more cats!

2009-01-01T20:13:00.006-05:00

Grover is San Diego's newest resident. He's not happy about it.

Happy New Year, Gentle Readers!

Poor George and I had a lovely Christmas together in Vermont with my family, where we convened from several different states to enjoy the quintessential White Christmas, sleigh ride and all. (I'm serious, we actually took a sleigh ride.)

Poor George and I have just arrived in San Diego with our cats in tow. Getting them here via airplane was just loads of fun, and they are both traumatized, although Ava has emerged from under the bed and has already figured out how to climb up the chimney.

Grover was so freaked out that Poor George and I had to extract him from under the bed and hold him tightly between us under the covers while we napped, all just to get him to stop shivering in fear. I think he's starting to feel better, but all the same I'm leaving him in the guest bedroom until he has enough of his moral strength back to allow for further house exploration.

Meanwhile Ava, is meowing her discontent and confusion non-stop as she sniffs every square inch of every room.

Our furniture consists of the following:

- one couch

- one twin bed (with just barely enough room for two full grown men and two larger than life cats)

- one dining room table/desk and six wooden chairs

- one coffee table

- six foldup camping chairs that my dad bought so that a few people could sit down during our marriage ceremony in the park last October.

Needless to say, it's not quite a "home" yet - - - but I have faith that it will get there. Poor George will relocate here permanently sometime over the next 3 months or so. Maybe he'll bring some more of our furniture with him.

Love,

CPW Sleeper Series: Unconditional Love

2008-12-13T12:47:00.008-05:00

No one messes with a dwarf in a red raincoat

CPW Sleepers is a new series in which I will pontificate on the relative worthiness of sleeper movies and insist that all my Gentle Readers watch them immediately.

The first in our series is the 2002 sleeper Unconditional Love. Poor George and I have enjoyed this as one of our favorite movies for a number of years now.

It features Kathy Bates, Rupert Everett, a dwarf AND Barry Manilow. What is there not to love about that? It is not even remotely possible to make a bad movie using that combination.

I watched it this morning and got unexplainedly weepy, which of course led me to call Mindy June and leave her a voice mail containing one of my favorite Barry Manilow songs.

Watch it today.

Love and coasters,

CP

CP has a new policy on Memes

2008-12-06T10:21:00.003-05:00

This picture has nothing to do with this post. This is my new dining set that I bought for a song at a consignment shop. It's vaguely Mission style so it fits the style of my house. There is a beautiful wood inlay design on the top that you can't see in this picture. It's also currently located in my office (above) because I don't yet have a functioning dining room. Do you like my paint job? (Please ignore the inner parts of the window frames, as I was unable to get to them to paint them, and I was lucky enough just to get these three windows open let alone take on the project to remove the frames for painting.)

Gentle Readers,

Many of us do Memes, which can be fun. Sometimes we tag each other to do the Memes. (And for the record, I've gone all German with the word Memes and have decided it should be Capitalized on accounta it's a noun, but only because it's a noun that screams to have something all German done to it.)

Most of you know I'm horrible at responding to tags. I have a hard time making the rounds to all my beloved stalkees, and sometimes I don't even know I've been tagged until weeks later and then I feel like an ass. (Mainly because I am an ass, but it just make it worse.)

And now I can't even get Technorati to work any more to tell me when someone mentions me in a blog post, so if anyone has suggestions on how I can be more timely alerted to such things I will be your second best friend. (On accounta you probably already have a first best friend.)

Since posting takes effort and I'm generally unwilling to make any on accounta I'm a lazy son-of-a-bitch, I now declare the following policy: If you tag me in a Meme, or if you just do a Meme and I happen to stop by your place, I too will do the Meme, but in your comments section rather than making my own post.

See here for my first installment.

Love and coasters,

CP