Deep Fried

I will never try the fried junk food at the county fair.

Deep fried Twinkies, deep fried Oreos, deep fried Kool-Aid… they all sound gross. But that's not why I won't try them. 

It's because I'm afraid of the off-chance that I actually like them.

And then what? I eat more? I start wanting all of my sweets drowned in oil so that my snacking habits are not just unhealthy but obscenely unhealthy? 

No thank you. It's like meth - best to never even give it a try.

WACKY GAY GUY HAS ROOM 4 RENT

I'm looking for a new place to live, but I think I found a roommate:
(click on picture to enlarge)



He cruises for sex, gets up no earlier than noon, and drinks a lot of beer but never gets inebriated.

It's too bad he has "NO Meth-heads" in his "world", or I think this could have worked out. Gotta have my meth!

Crystalized

Sign you're at a wonderfully trashy bar:

A gruff, middle-aged lesbian who introduces herself to your friend Crystal promises that she'll have no trouble remembering her new acquaintance's name, followed by her pressing her index finger against her nose to close one nostril and pantomiming snorting vigorously.

Yeah, the un-ironic crystal meth reference is pretty disconcerting, but I can't help but love a good mnemonic device.

To Tell the Truth

Isn't it funny how we go to a doctor for an honest assessment of our health, but when asked basic questions about our everyday practices, we can't help but lie? We want to believe we're treating our bodies right, so we say, "Yeah, I drink socially, occasionally, and exercise 4-5 times per week," even though in reality those activities' frequencies are probably switched. It must be interesting for doctors to have to go through this pointless charade day in and day out.

When one of my friends went for an appointment, a doctor-in-training ran the examination. For some reason, my friend felt too guilty to give false responses to the personal health questions because he didn't want to mislead someone who was still learning the ropes. So he wound up going for broke, rattling off a whole bunch of recreational drugs he had used in the past, as well as some other questionable health practices. The doctors present were amazed, unaccustomed to such candidness without there being a clear problem that would necessitate this sharing. Rather than chastising his unhealthy lifestyle, the doctors actually just thanked him for his refreshing honesty.

His story has now inspired some of my other friends to get real with their own doctors. "When they ask about my drinking habits, I'm going to tell them the truth: 30-40 a week," one said. "And at least two or three pizzas," another chimed in. On second thought, I'm not sure whether all doctors are prepared to hear the brutal truth of the way many twenty-somethings treat their bodies.

As for me, I don't even have to worry about this dilemma because I don't have healthcare. Bullshitting a doctor would require me going to a doctor. I'd actually like to thank all of those who fight to keep me uninsured, as it helps me to stay an honest man.

The Poke of a Toothpick

One of my favorite dive bars ever is called the Hi-Brow. It's anything but highbrow, however, so either the owner has a sense of humor or he's oblivious to the atmosphere he's created. The fact that someone tried to sell my friend meth in the restroom leads me to believe it's more of the latter. I love it for the cheap, stiff drinks and the fellow patrons who are hilariously... well... "white trash" is considered a racial slur so I won't use it, but in a community where whites are a minority, this bar's clientele is both Caucasian and trashy.

On one visit, my friends and I sat near an amorous couple. A woman, whose bejazzled tank top didn't quite cover her protruding belly, plopped herself down on the lap of a much older toothpick of a man. I call him a toothpick of a man not just to emphasize how scrawny he was, but because he had a toothpick in his mouth. He even left the toothpick in while sucking face with the woman. That seems like a dangerous activity, but these two clearly lived on the edge, which they demonstrated by trotting out to the parking lot together.

I don't know how much time passed, but it couldn't have been much considering the jukebox hadn't even played two full songs by the time the woman re-entered the bar. She scurried toward her friends and screamed loudly enough for the whole bar to hear, "I just got fucked in the car!" while beaming with pride. One of my friends did a spit take, and I'm sure I would have done the same were I currently sipping my drink.

I don't know what happened to Mr. Toothpick, but the bejazzled and freshly-fucked woman got herself another beer and tried to make some new friends on the dance floor. When she started shimmying in my direction, my first instinct was too flee. It wasn't just that I didn't know where that crotch she was gyrating toward me has been, it was that I knew exactly where it had just been... the backseat of a car. Ultimately I decided to playfully grind against her for a song; it might not have been highbrow, but it was definitely hi-brow. Sometimes you just have to embrace moments like this and remember to shower later.

40-0

While playing tennis, when I reach the score of "forty-love," I can't help but think of Hole's lead singer.

There I am, just one point from winning the game, but I distract myself with thoughts of "Malibu," drug rehab, and Cobain's suicide. Before my mind stops wandering and I regain focus, I'll find myself at deuce, now having to compete for the game rather than easing into victory.

HOW MANY LIVES MUST YOU RUIN, FOURTNEY LOVE?!

Turning Twenty-Six

For Jessica and Paul's joint twenty-sixth birthday party, they had piñatas to correspond with the digits of her new age. It was a fun idea, and appropriately antics were had with the props. It's like if Sesame Street were on recreational drugs.



But it's not about those photos. No, the money shot is when, at the end of the night, Jessica fell on her back and landed on the piñatas, crushing them. She laid there, sprawled on her back looking like a socialite who went on a coked out birthday bender. Look at that photo: this woman is a high school teacher, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, and on that note, no coke was actually consumed. Still, does it get any more beautifully trashy than this?

The best part is that this photo has became so epic in my social circle that as people turn 26 it is now being used as the artwork on birthday cards. I mean, really: is there anything that better encapsulates what being 26 means?

Robbing Full House

Recently, I was listening to the "new" (apparently, it's been out since May and I'm that out of touch) Green Day song, "21 Guns," in the car. I liked it even, but when the song progressed to the guitar solo, I did a double take. That sequence of chords wasn't new to me; instead, it made me think of Full House.

It's funny because, just prior, if you had asked me to hum the Full House theme song , I couldn't have done it. Yet suddenly I was ready to accuse Green Day of ripping off a TGIF show, which I recognized was ridiculous. Surely I was just misremembering and had the TV series on the brain since I had just visited the Full House houses a few days earlier in San Francisco.

Look, here I am dancing in front of the house!

And here are my friends. Three blond sisters: JUST LIKE THE SHOW! I guess that makes Lindsay both Mary Kate & Ashley.


At any rate, after my car ride, I found "21 Guns" on YouTube and re-listened to the guitar solo before comparing it to the Full House intro. I was shocked to find my intuition was on the money: the two songs were nearly identical. I needed to alert everyone by blogging this immediately! I did a google search to see whether anyone else had recognized the similarity and found that I was not the first to catch on.

You can hear a good side by side comparison here or watch this video:



Sigh. Being a discoverer is hard work -- someone else is always going and discovering good stuff first. That's why I have such beef with Christopher Columbus. I could have done all that, he just had a several century head-start Plus, I never slaughtered Native Americans. One Native America, granted, but certainly not plural.

At least I'm not as pathetic as Green Day. Did they think no one would notice? For better or worse Full House is a classic; even my former sixth grade student watches the show on a regular basis. What's next, sampling some notes from the Family Matters theme?

Actually, what's next is ELO. While looking for the above clips to share, I also discovered this video that demonstrates how "21 Guns" chorus is remarkably similar to ELO's "Telephone Line."



The Electric Light Orchestra? Really? That's probably more bottom barrel than Full House, truthfully; if you're going to steal it, at least choose from music that has some credibility.

In the meantime, Green Day, you've got some 'splaining to do! Plagiarism is not cool, just ask Helen Keller. As future meth addict Stephanie Tanner would say:


"How Rude!"

Breaking up Isn't Hard to Do

Breaking up isn’t that hard to do, apparently. At least that’s the impression that I’ve developed after being stuck twice in a matter of days on transportation with a couple breaking up. If that sounds like an awkward situation to be in, you don’t know the half of it.

The first incident occurred on an airplane. After I took a window seat, an attractive young yuppy woman asked if the seats next to me were taken. I said no, so she and her equally attractive young yuppy boyfriend sat beside me. They were both engrossed in their fancy phones long after they were told to turn them off until a flight attendant intervened. The boyfriend rudely dismissed her, but she stood her ground and he complied when he was good and ready, but not before making an irritated groan.

Shortly after taking off, the discussion began.

“So are we going to talk about this morning?” she asked.
“Not unless you want to apologize,” he said.
“I’m not apologizing, you’re too sensitive.”
“You don’t respect me!”
“I do respect you!”
“It’s not respectful to call me pathetic.”
“Look, it’s not just me, all my friends call you pathetic, too.”
“I don’t care what your friends think!”
“Fine. I won’t call you pathetic anymore.”
“It’s not just calling me pathetic, I don’t want you to think I’m pathetic.”

And so on. They went back and forth for about half an hour; the conversation was peppered with “Are we breaking up?” Sure sounded like it to me. I wanted to not listen to the argument, but I was trapped beside it. Toward the beginning of their disagreement, they kept looking over at me annoyed that I was eavesdropping, as if it were my fault that they chose this location with me strapped adjacently. Feeling uncomfortable, I finally closed my eyes and pretended to sleep just to avoid eye contact.

My favorite part is when she abruptly halted the argument to say, “I’m done, I’m going to read!” just before taking out and slowly looking through about fifty wordless cards bound together of a model wearing the same dress in slightly different poses. I’m not sure what you’d call that, but it’s probably not “reading.”

Once we landed and it was time to disembark, the boyfriend stood up in the aisle and started playing with his phone again. As soon as planes land, passengers have one objective: getting off the plane as quickly as possible. Boyfriend, meanwhile, blocked the aisle while he typed a message. His girlfriend encouraged him to move along and he screamed at her to shut up and added that “these fuckers can wait.”

I hope they end up staying together; no one else should date them.

A few days later, I was on a train with my friend Joan. Behind us sat an ugly, trashy meth-addicted couple. Their conversation started out decently enough. She had made thirty dollars before and succeeded at only spending ten on booze the night before, mainly because she knew he would “hit” her if she did. He was still upset that she had spent ten, but he said it was okay, because he remembered he had store credit at some store where they could score some cigarettes. She practically swooned – what a provider.

After they made out in an obscene fashion, he pulled a 180 and yelled at her for talking to some guy at the phone at 5 am. That phone call wasn’t anything, she swore. He accused her of cheating and she couldn’t deny it, but did claim that she loves him still. Tears were shed and he told her that it was over. He still loved her, but from now on he was going to have to “love [her] from a distance.”

Fortunately, we arrived at our stop and I didn’t have to suffer any more of this.

Dear couples: get a room! And break up in privacy.

A Night at the Symphony

Andrew invited me to the symphony, and being the cultured guy that I am, I couldn't decline. While I tend to like classical music when I hear it, I don't generally take the time to listen to it. I like singing along to songs, and classical music is largely lyric-less; it's not classical composers' faults that they wrote music before singing was invented.

Off we went to the Hollywood Bowl, wine bottles in hand. The LA Philharmonic performed Mahler's Fifth. Truthfully, I don't know Mahler from Mozart, but he sounds like a composer I can trust. (I have my eye on you, Tchaikovsky.) I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't be able to follow the Fifth seeing as I hadn't heard Mahler's first four symphonies, but that didn't prove to be a problem.

Andrew actually conducted extensive research (by which I mean Wikipedia) on Mahler, who is one of his favorite composers, before the show. He found out that Mahler hemorrhaged and nearly died before writing his Fifth. At the same time, he was also falling for his soon-to-be-wife Alma. Since these were his inspirations for the music, I tried to listen for love and hemorrhaging during the symphony; I think I heard it, but it might have just been the french horn.

Andrew also learned that Alma was a hussy who had an affair with Mahler's architect, Gropius. Never trust your wife with a man named Gropius. Then Mahler died because of heartsickness (or perhaps hemorrhaging or the plague or whatever), and Alma married Gropius and they lived together in the house that he was building for Mahler. How I would like to hear the symphony inspired by all of that drama! I'm thinking fewer chimes, more tubas.

Although Allison had not researched Mahler, she did bring the puns. Not just quick puns, but long drawn out stories that somehow resulted in a punch line sounding like Mahler. (Think "Maul her" or "Mallard.") Also, each story inexplicably referenced the recession. Some of them were so painful, I'd rather have been hemorrhaging, frankly. Since she doesn't know when to leave bad enough alone, she sent me another one today:

Just the other day I read about this super successful business analyst known for saving struggling small businesses. This little mom and pop restaurant was having a hard time due to the recession, so they decided to enlist his services. Unfortunately the two parties had very different visions for the restaurant. The couple wanted to keep their food simple, sticking to the same small but delicious menu they'd had for years. The analyst kept trying to convince them to diversify their menu, offering a variety of foods similar to that found in the food court at the mall. Things really got heated one afternoon after the restaurant owners and analyst had the same fight not once, not twice, not even three or four times. The working relationship ended as the analyst walked out the door shouting, “You need to be more like a mall! Maller! For the FIFTH time MAHLER!”

At least my groans fell in harmony with the instruments.

I liked Mahler's music and am interested in hearing more of his work. That said, the best performance of the night was the twit behind me who butchered the National Anthem at the start of the night. If you are the only person in earshot who is singing, you should have a decent voice or, failing that, know the words. Then she had the nerve to blame her mistakes on the fact that she was following the conductor on the large screen and that there must be a tape delay. It was definitely the conductor that fooled her into singing "And the rockets' red glare" three different times. Right.

As a break from Mahler, a pair of xylophonists took center stage and started playing some song (I forget the exact title) in "A minor." They played for about a minute before announcing they were "just kidding" and would be playing something else instead. The crowd laughed because of course they wouldn't really play that joke of a song. It sounded fine to me. I guess I'm just the rube sitting in the nosebleed section who doesn't get the classical music humor. Maybe if they cracked wise about a "tromboner," I'd have gotten it.

I was all about the conductor. He just flailed about wildly the whole time. I think he was on meth. Surely, conductors are largely ornamental. There is no way the musicians can interpret those bizarre arm movements; I noticed the cellist trying to steal third base.

During the last movement, Andrew sneezed, and basically ruined the entire performance for everyone. I wouldn't have accepted his invitation if I had known he would just be such a rude dick. Mahler deserved better than that, Andrew.

All right, folks, keep it classy.

Coach Craig

When I worked as a teacher, I had a number of colleagues who were in the profession not to teach, but to coach. Most of them were ex-jocks who never grew out of the mentality that high school sports is the only thing in life that matters. By being a teacher, they had first dibs at leading the after school sports teams, and it also helped pay the bills considering that coaching wages are nominal at best.

I knew the type firsthand, since I had one of those teachers in high school, Coach Craig. No bones about it, Coach Craig was a football coach first and Health teacher second. More accurately, he was a coffee drinker second, a newspaper reader third, and maybe a Health teacher fourth, but that is being generous. Nothing else mattered since he had the prestige of leading the football team. Even with an impressive 2-10 record, the football team, as is the case at most schools, received all of the attention, including my own mandatory attendance as a member of the marching band. Never mind that we actually had good teams that won state championships – most of those were girls’ teams. Title nine can force schools to give them teams, but they can’t force them to give them fans!

Man, was Coach Craig a crappy teacher. When he was not using class time to convince us of his team’s importance or giving us surprise “study halls” so that he could sit at his desk and devise new plays, he was phoning in his lessons. His lesson on eating disorders consisted of showing us pictures of anorexic girls on the internet, some of which were semi-nude, and declaring that most of them weren’t attractive “except for a couple.” To “teach” us about sex and drugs, he showed us the NBC miniseries The ’60s in its entirety; our permission slip was to just promise not to tell our parents or the principal.

Coach Craig was also the only person I’ve ever known in my life to ask for work to be “quantity not quality.” It was apparent that he did not actually read our written assignments, a theory I put to the test with my five-page final paper on sleep deprivation. In this paper, I quoted and credited Dr. Seuss as my source, using nonsensical rhyming lines from the good doctor’s Sleep Book. Additionally, rather than writing a whole essay that would never be read, I simply cut and paste the first paragraph I had written as many times as it took to fill six pages; I went for six pages rather than five because I was striving for quantity over quality, apparently. When I received the paper back, I had only been docked five points because I failed to use a color printer, which supposedly would have made my essay look more professional.

For whatever reason, Coach Craig kept his job, even after he hit a student. The school helped cover up the scandal, which only resulted in additional scandal, all in the name of doing what exactly? Protecting the worst teacher and coach ever? The high school administration sure took a page out of Coach Craig’s unsuccessful playbook on that one. Coach Craig had tenure, so he probably would have had to kill a kid before losing his job. Forget that he taught us nothing of substance , he had already completed many years of teaching and would get to ride it out until retirement. Quantity over quality, after all.

Night at the Holocaust Museum

6,000,0001.

This is the number of people who died in the Holocaust, the most recent occurring today when an octogenarian white supremacist fatally shot a security guard at the Holocaust museum. Before I start making all sorts of off-color jokes, allow me to earnestly state that the guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, is definitely a hero for protecting the visitors and sacrificing his life. At least he'll meet Anne Frank in heaven. She's probably a MILF by now. (Yeah, so obviously the earnestness didn't last more than a sentence, but it's still sincere.)

Taking after Eric by hastily devising a movie pitch in the face of tragedy, the first thing I thought when I heard the news was, ohhh, Night at the Holocaust Museum! I googled my idea to see if anyone else was making the joke, and found that someone had made a fake trailer for it two years ago. Aw, shucks.

It's not even worth watching, truthfully. You get the idea without even having to see it.

My pitch would be better. Night at the Holocaust Museum would be more of a suspense film and have less physical comedy. Mel Gibson would be the antagonist, of course. Denzel Washington would be the FBI agent (he's always best as those) on the outside trying to secure the museum by communicating with his agent, Ben Stiller (A JEW!), stuck on the inside. Better yet, Stiller's fired, and we go back to the series' physical comedy roots and just put Paul Blart Mall Cop in for more whacky hijinks. Surely, if he can accidentally foil armed robbers he can prevent another genocide, too. You can do anything on a Segway, I'm pretty sure. Despite my immense dislike for him, I suppose I'd let Robin Williams still be in this sequel too, seeing as he needs the occasional big budget film to support his meth habit, but his character would definitely have to be one of the casualties.

Movie aside, a year ago I moaned about how unnecessarily intense the security at the Museum of Tolerance (the Holocaust Museum for the west coast) is, which given today's events suddenly seems legitimate. Holocaust deniers are real, as preposterous as it sounds. As a teenager, I devised a plan to be totally normal and rational in all aspects of my life (as if I could pull that off!), but then randomly claim the Holocaust was a hoax. At someone's suggestion, I researched the issue and realized how many people actually believed this and quickly eliminated this idea for being thoroughly unfunny. That said, nine years later this Onion article is still one of my favorites, and I often mentally quote the headline, "Did Six Million Really Visit the Holocaust Museum?"

Oh, and if any of this post offended you, I promise none of it is as offensive as my student's essay about the Holocaust.

Alumni Reunion

As usual, this year’s Pitzer College alumni reunion was a fun mess.

I was hesitant to come this year after making an ass of myself at the reunion the previous year. Full disclosure (something I probably do too often here): I blacked out for only the second time in my life (the first being this infamous trip to Vegas) and ended up becoming a public spectacle while throwing up in the bushes by the dorms. With an endless open bar, I had been pretty steadily drinking since 4 pm, and it showed when I approached some “grey foxes” (women who graduated from college in the 60s) on the dance floor and they cleared out in fear that I would knock them over. The ladies weren’t that far off considering I then proceeded to accidentally bump my friend Phoebe onto the ground. The next morning, I woke up next to Kat who had also gotten ill the previous night. On the sheets between us was an earring, a nicotine patch, and some vomit. The first two belonged to Kat, but we never determined who was responsible for the puke on the bed. In a sense, it didn’t really matter.

So yeah, considering I never really had a night that bad when I actually was in college and could chalk it up to youthful indiscretion, I really didn’t want to become “that guy” at the reunions. It helped that I had other plans and didn’t show up until about 11 pm this time, sparing me an additional seven hours of obliteration. So while I maintained reasonable behavior, I can’t say the same of many other people in attendance, which was certainly fun to watch.

It seems that when people return to their alma mater, they feel compelled to live up to their glory days. So even if they’re well into their thirties and forties, they get drunk and stoned like they were half their age. On multiple occasions, I was invited to go back to someone’s temporary dorm room to do some drugs, including one guy who had a bag with some sort of gas to inhale that he couldn’t even identify, so I was just like, “Ummm…” I hope I’m not anywhere close to being that guy at my 15-year reunion.

One of the funnier aspects of the evening was that my friend Devin brought two coworkers along to the party to for the free booze. They were friendly and pretended to have graduated from the school. The thing is, at a school of less than 1,000 students, you do tend to remember most people, at least by sight, from your graduating class, so they had to invent stories as to why they weren’t memorable. One of Devin’s friends told people he had gone to Wisconsin then transferred to Pitzer for his last semester of school, so he didn’t really meet many people. It was a laughable story, because I don’t think it’s even possible to transfer for just your last semester of college, plus you probably wouldn’t bother coming to the reunion if you didn’t actually know anyone, but people apparently bought it. Blame it on the alcohol. The story wasn’t as successful later when the second non-alum coworker, now thoroughly inebriated, had forgotten what his fabricated history was and proceeded to say “Uh, same as him,” after the first guy told his story. “So wait, you both transferred from Wisconsin in your last semester?” “Uh… yeah…” Their cover was blown, but by that point in the night, it didn’t really matter.

I was excited when someone I had a crush on my freshman year recognized me and struck up a conversation. Everything about our dialogue made me realize how I would never have a crush on her now, but it did feel like I fulfilled a six-year-old goal when she brought me back to her after-party with her “cool” friends.

Meanwhile, I ran into Christine. Though the bar had closed at this point, Christine had received a bottle of beer, but was struggling to remove the cap. She tried to flip it off between two boards of wood, yet only managed to break the bottle and leave a jagged neck, from which she tried to drink. Recognizing the danger, I found her a used red cup to pour the beer into; though the cup was dirty, it seemed better than drinking straight from the broken bottle. As she poured the beer, I watched pieces of glasses flow into the cup, so, out of concern, I insisted that she slurp slowly from the top so she wouldn’t ingest the glass. Then, demonstrating my commitment to safety, I walked away, leaving her unsupervised.

An hour later, a bunch of us walked home. While crossing the street at 2 am, a car pulled up to the stoplight, from which someone shouted something that I couldn’t understand. Drunk, Angel flipped him off, which prompted the car passenger to get out of the car with a bat that he swung in our general direction. Christine shouted something insulting, which I personally wouldn’t have directed toward someone with a weapon. The car then started speeding by us. After participating in the aggression, Angel and Christine ran and hid while the rest of kind of watched in fear. Apparently, the two were afraid there would be a drive-by, but I kind of figured if you had a gun, you’d pull that out of your car to intimidate people before a baseball bat.

Alcohol, deception, flirtation, and danger – it was quite a reunion. Anecdotally, I heard of even more scandalous actions that went on after I went to bed, but alas, those aren’t my stories to share.

Comical Comics

In addition to the litter and hookers, one of my favorite parts of urban life is the spray painted murals. I'm not interested in the graffiti, but the cheesy cartoon-laden masterpieces. It's not uncommon for independent businesses to appropriate copyrighted characters to use for advertising purposes. Hence, you'll see the occasional crude Garfield painted outside a local pizza parlor or a shaky rendition of Bart Simpson on the wall of a barber shop.

Generally, the paintings are about as good as they are legal, (which is to say not in the least), but that makes them all the more fun. Perhaps they're intentionally done poorly so that there's plausible deniability in case Disney takes them to court.

Check out this PARTY SUPPLY shop that Eric posed/passed out (there's a fine line) in front of:


Mickey Mouse has never looked fatter. Evidently, he gnawed off his own arm, then ate Goofy while he was at it. Elmo looks to be vacant, but also appears to be tickling the conveniently pants-less Pooh up the pooh-chute, which is why he is gladly flashing two thumbs up. Sponge Bob is on heroin and is a cannibal (sponges can eat other sponges, right?), while Eeyore is clearly a child molester.


Dora is the best, though. Lil' red eyes couldn't possibly be more stoned and for whatever reason she's foaming at the mouth. Who wouldn't want a piece of that, Eeyore?

Also, who wouldn't want to buy products from this party supply store? Thanks for supporting the arts, piñata vender.

Kevin After Dentist

This video has been posted on every website on the entire information poop super highway, but it's so terrific that it deserves its rapid viral status.


We should give kids drugs more often if they're going to be this adorable. Thanks for nothing, DARE.

Seriously, I'll have what he's having, because that seems like fun, so long as you know what you're getting into. I sympathize with David as he asks, "Is this going to be forever?" because it's such a genuine response from someone who has no understanding that he is high.

No one explained to me that I was high when orthodontists gave me laughing gas a child. In fact, not until I watched this video did it occur to me that I "experimented with drugs" as a child. It makes sense, I reckon, since it would contradict with the anti-drug messages taught in school and home, particularly in the eyes of a child.

I loved my experience with laughing gas so much that I remember asking if I could do it again. I was a giggly mess. I can still recall the hygienist asking me a series of basic questions after administering the drug to verify that the laughing gas was working. I think I passed in record time. The best exchange went like this:

Hygienist: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Laughing-Gassed Kevin: Just one.
Hygienist: Is it a girl or a boy?
Laughing-Gassed Kevin: Who, me or my sister?

At that point I realized how ridiculous I was that it probably took a full minute to recover my laughing fit. Oh what I would give to have some intensive dental work done again...

Laughing gas wasn't the only substance I used in my youth. On multiple occasions, I also recreationally used smelling salts. My friend had found them in an old first aid kit, and we were curious. It provided quite a rush: suddenly we would be alert yet loopy. The lingering sensation was fun, but it never occurred to me that technically I was abusing a substance. If you had asked me at that age if I had ever done drugs, I would have adamantly denied it, and believed it even. I entirely bought into the anti-drug messages, yet for a few month period I semi-regularly sniffed smelling salts. How could smelling salts be considered a drug when they put it in a medical kit? That much ammonia must have killed a lot of brain cells, not that I any notion of that, however naively.

A successful drug education program must branch out from the traditional marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol focus to include the real adolescent gateway drugs like laughing gas and smelling salts. This is why I am a meth addict today.

Driving Druggy: A Cautionary Tale

My family has some family friends with some of the wildest stories. Their latest anecdote is too outrageous not to share.

This past summer, after the family went out for a pizza dinner, the son, Red, needed to pick something up from Wal-Mart. Red parked in the lot as far as he could from the store, explaining to the others that he was going to "walk off" his dinner. While the family waited for their son to return, they spotted someone stumbling around the parking lot with a shopping cart. Not only was his gait awkward, they found it odd for someone to be wandering in their direction, hundreds of yards away from the other cars in the lot. When he got close enough, they recognized this individual as the drug-addicted brother of their daughter's new boyfriend, who will henceforth be referred to as Druggy.

Once Red got back, they asked him to go check on Druggy to see if he was okay. Semi-coherently, Druggy explained that he had been shopping with his girlfriend until they got in a fight and she left the store. Druggy proceeded to search all around the parking lot looking at each car in order to verify whether his girlfriend had in fact abandoned him altogether. Friendly folks looking to help this strung out guy in trouble, the family offered to drive Druggy home. Druggy had nothing but two large air conditioners in his cart, which they helped him load into their car.

Druggy couldn't provide an exact address, instead vaguely describing a location. In the process, Druggy passed out in the backseat. Red drove to the sketchy spot, whereupon he woke Druggy up. Was this Druggy's home? He wouldn't, perhaps couldn't, confirm. The family helped unload the air conditioners, but Druggy wouldn't allow them to bring them inside, asking them instead to just leave them on the porch. The family objected, insisting that he couldn't leave such expensive items outside in an unsafe area for people to steal. Rather than relent, Druggy said that he'd be right back before entering the house and closing the door behind him. After waiting five to ten minutes for Druggy to return, the now thoroughly confused family opted to just drive home, leaving the air conditioners out on the porch as initially requested.

Deciding this was just the bizarre behavior of a drug addict, they dismissed the incident altogether, until a couple of weeks later when Druggy was arrested for stealing two air conditioners from Wal-Mart. They were mortified to realize they were unwitting accomplices in the crime. As luck would have it, however, the reason they avoided being implicated in the crime as well was because they had parked so far away from Wal-Mart that they were out the vicinity of the security camera.

Set Down the Sippy Cup

As a wee lad, my big brotherly duties involved tying a wagon to the back of my bike and wheeling baby Alison around the yard. Over time, Alison grew large enough to handle the responsibility of riding a tricycle all by herself. On one of the first occasions Alison took to her trike, I responded by crying and screaming. Not because I lost the coveted role of chauffeur, but because Alison rolled around on her tricycle while holding a sippy cup. As I worriedly protested to my mother, Alison was in fact drinking and driving. After containing her laughter, my mother explained that drinking and driving didn't apply to milk.

In retrospect, most intriguing to me is the fact that five-year-old Kevin was so firmly indoctrinated by don't-drink-and-drive campaigns without having a real understanding of what it actually meant. That just goes to show how powerful PSAs can be. No wonder I'm addicted to meth.

Consumed by Cookies

Much to my annoyance, it is Girl Scout cookie season again. Yeah, I love their cookies, but addicts love meth, and that doesn't make scoring it a joyous occasion. Girl Scout cookies are a seasonal epidemic like the flu: everyone succumbs to it. With the flu, however, people actively attempt to ward it off but with Girl Scout cookies, people pay for the privilege of losing their willpower.

On the same day I received a free hug, the Girl Scouts were parading the streets hocking their cookies. I could resist these cookies even less than I could resist a free hug. Two boxes is sufficient, I told myself. But you want three, a conflicting voice urged. I sided with the three boxes argument before another voice chimed in for four.

Two days later, I stopped at the bank and the Girl Scouts were there, too. I had just taken out money, so how could I not buy a box? In spite of my intentions, when I actually asked for a box, I somehow managed to say "two," meaning that altogether I had five boxes of Girl Scout cookies. All of them were Tagalongs. I happen to like many varieties, but since I find myself dreaming about Tagalongs in the off-season, I find it difficult to justify buying any of the other kinds.

Two days after that, our nice neighbor Chloe dropped by to sell some cookies. I did not need any more cookies, but how could I say no to Chloe? Fortunately, she didn't have Tagalongs, so I bought a box of Thin Mints out of obligation. My total was now six boxes. They're multiplying!

Even if I were able to successfully resist the urge to buy them, I still couldn't escape. At work, a coworker offers me a cookie. At the bar, Rico offers us multiple cookies. At Margarita Monday, Laura brings cookies. At my friends' house, they leave cookies out for guests. It's overwhelming just being anywhere this time of year. And yet when I go home, it's even worse... At this point, our household has nearly twenty boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Convince me that that's not a problem. While I trust myself to at least ration my collection for months to come, my housemates are eating their shares in a more timely manner. There's at least two open boxes left out on the countertop at any given time. And they call to me. Even when I don't answer, my roommates are friendly enough to hand me one without me even asking.

We may consume the cookies, but more accurately the cookies consume us. I am not exaggerating when I say that during Girl Scout cookie season half my conversations are about the cookies, and half my meals are replaced with these cookies. I came to this realization while sitting on the couch with Katy and Michael Michael. For a couple of hours we had eaten a few varieties of cookies instead of dinner and though our conversation diverged many times, it kept coming back to the central topic of cookies. Once Girl Scout cookie season concludes, I vow to make my life a little more active/exciting/healthy again.

P.S. Boycott Samoas. On the back of the box (see the box on the left in the picture above) it features an inappropriate homoerotic photo of a firefighter spraying a group of smiling girl scouts with a hose. It's both a waste of water and over-sexualized. If anyone can get me a better picture of the box (because, come on, we know you have some) I will reward you with a cookie treat. A bonus cookie treat to anyone who also sends along a description of what the photo does to your loins.

The Go! Team

On Saturday night, I went to the Go! Team concert with some friends and had a brilliant time.

Before the show, we encountered lead singer Ninja outside entering the tour bus. I wasn't positive it was her, though, so I did nothing. "If that was her," I said. "I'm going to... do nothing" I ultimately decided. Truthfully, I have nothing especially meaningful to say to her. I just want to ogle, adore, and idolize her.

Once the show began, I danced the entire time. It's nearly impossible to stop yourself from shaking to the music. The crowd apparently agreed: everyone was bouncing along, except for one intoxicated person in front of me who seemed to have trouble standing up.

Describing the sound of the band is kind of hard, since it's nothing like your typical music. According to the band's founder, Ian Parton, the band's sound is a "mix up of all [his] favorite kinds of stuff like noisy Sonic Youth guitar, double dutch chants, Charlie Brown piano, and car chase horns." I also like Wikipedia's description, calling them a "mixture of action theme songs, cheerleader chants, guitars, and early hip hop with a hint of '70s funk.

Check out the Go! Team's latest (totally fun) music video, "Doing It Right" for a taste:

As you can see, there is definitely a "punk cheerleaders on meth" kind of appeal, which I dig. In the past, desperate to compare it to something, I've likened it to something that could be found on Jock Jams in that it is guaranteed to get large groups of people pumped up and on their feet. Unlike Jock Jams, however, it has some musical credibility with its amazing samples, beats, and harmonies. Maybe if all cheerleaders where as genuinely charismatic and fun as Ninja and not so insipidly dull, I wouldn't make fun of cheerleaders so often.

Speaking of Ninja -- SWOON! She is definitely one of the most captivating performers I have ever seen. It's difficult not to be enchanted by her carefree movements on stage. Below, I've posted a live performance of "Titanic Vandalism." Be sure to watch for how she kicks off the song, then, even if you're not digging the sound (admittedly, the Go! Team isn't going to be for everyone), skip to the 2 minute mark and watch her hit new heights of movement mastery during the song's interlude.

My one gripe - if you can call it that - about the band is that I rarely have any idea what the hell they're saying. In that sense, it really is like being a large stadium setting where voices are amplified for the sake of hearing better, but only come out more muffled and muddied than before. That doesn't stop any of us from singing along. I just string together nonsensical syllables that go with the music and beam with joy regardlessly. With that in mind, my favorite Go! Team lyrics is the coherent yet terrificly simple "2, 4, 6, 8, 10" at the end of the song "Bottlerocket." Indeed, it is another cheerleader chant of counting off by twos, but it's inexplicably fun to sing along, too. You can hear the crowd doing the same toward the end of the song:

That clip is also awesome because Ninja takes a break from her own rocking dance moves to mimic the steps of people shaking along in the audience. I love her, love her, love her.

Go! Team!

I Will Always Love You

During my graduate program for education, my peers and I would discuss our own educational backgrounds as a point of reference. My classmate with the most colorful background, Herman*, would often discuss eir background as a drug addict who dealt and used in eir school with no consequences. According to Herman, the worst teacher ey ever had was an English teacher who never cracked a book, instead putting on The Bodyguard every single class and proceeding to take a nap on eir desk, while the students openly snorted coke and took meth in the classroom. Initially Herman took part in these activities, but when ey finally decided ey needed to clean eir act up, Herman actually had to drop out of school in order to avoid contact with illegal substances.

Now more than a decade later, Herman is now a teacher emself in a school equally as notorious for drug use and teachers who don't give a crap. Herman does give a crap, and tries a heck of a lot harder than showing The Bodyguard in order to educate the students. Oh, and Herman's sober now, too, though ey still does feel high each time ey hears Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You."