Brian Michael Bendis, �Powers: Supergroup�
Seeing how I�m just now writing about the first book finished in 2007, and it�s now the middle of same said year, obviously I have a lot of stories. Unfortunately, I have no time to write same said stories with the usual zest, hyperbole, and general long-windedness. But I do want to write, and seeing how I got most of my stuff finished for the paper and it�s only just past 11pm, I may as well try and get something down in this here blogesphere, particularly as I�ve noticed that I now have four active members of the diary-ring 12% Beer in my fan (friends? Same thing�) list, which now brings the total to six, if you include the two dropouts.
Which I do.
At this rate, I figure it will take is another six years, and then I�ll be in, just like the democrats taking back the house and the senate and then things can� pretty much stay exactly the same as they were.
Anyhoo.
There�s pretty much three things that can make a person cool: Cars, fashion (or a distinctive yet personable lack thereof) and drinking. Let�s start with the fashion.
A while back, I mentioned coming across a Miller�s Crossing-style hat that I actually liked, and happened to fit. I�m not much of a hat person. After all, most of the hats I saw were about sports teams, of which I know nothing about and care even less. The others were spent on lame attempts of humor and/or bravado, such as, �It�s not a beer belly � it�s a gas tank for a cop killer and/or sex machine.�
Those hats didn�t appeal to me either, because I always felt that there were people who talked about things and those who actually did them. I preferred to stay in the latter category. Though if you want to know what cops I�ve killed, I�m afraid I can�t talk about it.
The sex though�
Actually, the lip print was from a cop. Before I smoked her ass.
All right, maybe not.
So anyway, good hat. So good in fact that when I returned from California and accidentally left it on the shuttle, the lost and found department said there was no hat turned in. This is the same shuttle service, mind you, that held on to my worthless backpack for a week when I forgot that on a trip previously, but this time the conversation went like this:
- ME: �Hey, I was calling lost and found for an item I left on one of your shuttles a few days ago?�
THEM: �Sure, what did you forget?�
ME: �It was an old fedora, brownish��
THEM: �No, no fedora.�
ME: �You sure? No hats at all?�
THEM: �No, no hats.�
The phone went dead suddenly, probably so the phone operator could soothingly stroke the soft fabric of my hat.
A lot of other people were as bummed as I was over the loss of the hat. After all, how would cops get smoked and people get sexed up with just my hair? Superman has his cape, Batman has his homoerotic boy ward, Daredevil has a shitty movie that�s been made fun of by the Mystery Science Theater guys and until that point, I had my hat, which made me cool.
In the meantime, I had my car. For those familiar with my string of bad luck � don�t worry, I still have it. But I wrote in 2006 about how somebody used a screwdriver to pry open the lock on the passenger door to break in on New Years Eve, making a key ineffective. On that break in, they got a fairly expensive CD player and a CD wallet, of which I still haven�t been able to replace most of, mostly because they�re out of print or too expensive to purchase again. Anybody wanna burn me copies of NoMeansNo�s �Worldhood of the World (as Such)� or �0+2=1?� Or the self-titled Hellworms LP? Or disc two of James Brown�s �40th Anniversary Collection?� Disc One of �The Essential Etta James?� �Running With Scissors� by Weird Al Yankovic? �Repeater� by Fugazi? �Disappear� by TSOL? �The Reality of My Surroundings� by Fishbone? John Cougar Concentration Camp�s first album?
OK, how about �Swagger� by Flogging Molly? Somebody has to have that.
Anyway, the door still locked from the inside, and I used the break in (and my lack of funds) as an excuse so as to not have to be chivalrous when I gave somebody a ride. A year later, again on New Years Eve, my car was broken into again. Again, just up the street from my house, though this time parked on the opposite side of the street.
A year of breaking into cars and selling CD players and obscure punk and blues albums for crack had apparently affected the thieves� technique, however, as this time they broke the lock so severely that it wouldn�t lock again. In fact, it wasn�t guaranteed to stay closed when the car was in motion. Before taking it in for repairs, I did an inventory on what they got away with this time.
$20 in quarters which I was keeping for parking meters at my new job at the newspaper. And that�s it. I took the car into the Chevrolet dealership which was probably a mistake, and paid over $300. The funny thing was, they didn�t have the part to actually fix the door to where one could use a key, so they made it so I could lock the door again, and said they would call me when the part came in.
Five months later, they hadn�t called.
In the meantime, I talked my roommate who happened to have two cars, both of which he parked in our driveway (which is why I had to park in the street, usually around the corner). I said that it was fairly obvious to me that my car was being targeted, since they had broken into the same side, using the same method. I demanded one of the coveted spots in the driveway. To my surprise, he acquiesced.
All was right with the world. No more marching up the enormous hill in the rain to collect my vehicle. No more worrying about finding a parking spot when the house up the street decided to throw yet another reggae party on a Wednesday night. Most important, no more kids using the safety of an unlit street with only one side that had houses, making it easy to crouch behind a car and work on the lock with a screwdriver without fear of being spotted.
Not that the new parking situation was perfect. Like the time I went to Costco and bought cigarettes, threw them in a bag with all my notes from the newspaper, then bought Taco Bell on the way home. The little tiny plastic knob on the drivers-side window lever had been pulling off the handle lately, so I always had to be careful when I rolled up the window. On this night, however, I opened the door, collected my things, and then proceeded to roll up the window. The knob hit the ground and slowly started to roll away.
Now, there are only a few of you that have been to my house, so this takes some describing. Sorry. I live on a hill, but specifically, on the one area that serves as a brief reprieve from the hill. So the knob hit the ground and started rolling downhill rather slowly. I followed leisurely, bundle of Taco Bell, cigarettes and various notes from work bundled in my arm.
The knob started to pick up speed. I tried to keep up. I failed. The knob rolled even faster. Another two feet, and it would hit the steepest part of the hill, whereupon it would surely hit the same kind of velocity that a penny gets after falling past the top 40 stories of the Empire State Building. I started sprinting after it. I had about a half-second left to catch up, and I knew I wasn�t going to make it. That�s when I had a stroke of genius.
And you believe that, don�t you?
I leapt forward with all my strength, bringing my foot down hard. Down hard on a tiny, solid, round piece of plastic.
Bananas? Bananas have nothing on that little knob from your window roller.
I�m no physicist, but I would think I was supposed to slip to the side, or perhaps backward. Instead I flew over the knob, head first. The only thing comparable, I think, would be my very first punk show, where I leapt onstage during Agression. (Spelled wrong because they were PUNK, man!) As Brian described it, I went straight out and then got my legs pushed upward, while everything cleared away from my upper torso making me almost perpendicular to the ground as I descended toward it. This time however, the crowd was replaced by solid concrete and it didn�t get out of the way of my rapidly approaching head.
You know those movies when somebody gets knocked the fuck out and they hit the ground so hard that the entire audience goes, �Ooh!� in a sharp sympathetic whisper drawn inward? That would have happened if there were people to see what just happened to me. I�m pretty sure I did it myself, just because it seemed so appropriate.
I didn�t get up right away. I don�t know how long I was there, lying face first in the middle of the street. When I did open my eyes the dim streetlight made it impossible to tell what was blood and what were simply crushed taco bell hot sauce packets. Turns out it was both. My senses slowly came back, and I started to collect my things. A taco here, a highlighter there, a pack of Winston�s there, there and there. I gathered the last of my stuff, reaching for the last pack of cigarettes with one hand, fingers outstretched to latch onto the last hot sauce packet. That�s when I saw the car headed right toward me.
I saved the cigarettes. I also managed to save that tiny plastic knob. Funny thing is, I landed on it with such force that it�s now cracked and isn�t useful to rolling up my window at all. As it turns out, those things cost about 30 cents to replace. There�s a moral here somewhere, but damned if I know what it is. Perhaps it�s �If you want something, set it free. If it rolls down the hill and ultimately goes in the sewer, buy another one for 30 cents.� In any case, I went to the new bar�s first staff meeting the next morning with a knot on my forehead the size of my closed thumb with various cuts and scrapes on my hands, elbows and legs and smelling faintly of taco bell hot sauce.
But the liquor and drinking aspect will have to wait for a moment. Aside from �The Knob Incident� I was still pleased with my new parking situation, and bought a new fedora to celebrate. My car was still parked in the open, outside, but it was about 20 feet away from the bedroom window. Taking a lesson from the hill, I began to be less vigilant in gathering my wares when exiting my vehicle. One night, just about three weeks ago, I had gathered so much stuff in my arms that I decided to leave my backpack inside, knowing there wasn�t anything important in there.
Of course, the thieves, now obviously seriously deep in their drug habits, were desperate. Apparently they decided to search out where my car had gone to, since it was no longer parked up the lonely, unlit hill. When they found it, they went to work on the lock again � the same lock that had never been properly fixed.
Apparently, the year and a half of pharmaceutical abuse had really taken their toll, because after thoroughly jimmying my passenger lock to the point where it would no longer manually unlock, they gave up. And by �gave up,� I mean they decided to try the driver�s side lock.
When that didn�t work, they busted out the passenger window.
Their haul this time? They got a $15 backpack that contained a $15 CD player from Wal-Mart, a player so shitty that if I sneezed in the car the CD would skip and wouldn�t find its place for another two minutes after. And of course, they got my newly purchased hat.
I took the car in to be fixed, this time skipping the dealership. I got a better price quote, but they still haven�t called back to say the parts are in. In the meantime, I have to park with either the window exposed, or a tattered pink towel to cover it during rainstorms. Oddly enough, it�s effective in making people leave my car alone.
�Maybe you just look too good in the hat,� Luva said to me on the phone when I told her what happened. �The universe is trying to restore order for those who don�t look as good as you when you wear it.�
�The universe,� I said, �can eat my ass.� I bought two hats this time, preparing for the inevitable stealing, which hasn�t happened yet, but it�s only been three weeks.
In the meantime, there�s the drinking aspect. Life at the new bar and me as a bartender and said new bar deserves an entry all its own, and I�m already five pages into this one. But I�ll say this � Patrick, the manager of the new place is my bartending Yoda, and not just because he�s old, short, and has hair growing out of random places. Under his tutelage, I�ve already doubled my average earnings in tips, and not just from swoony death rock types that frequented the old bar.
The guy has a steel trap for names, makes everybody feel welcome, and more important, he has an encyclopedic memory for the most vile, offensive jokes imaginable. When I�m around him and his friends, they will actually throw me $20 to $50 bucks if I can tell a good (meaning offensive) joke that they haven�t heard. The first time this happened, it took at least an hour before I finally got them. If you got one, I�ll split the prize with you. As a general rule of thumb of the mentality level, here are some of the newer ones:
- What�s funnier than a dead baby? A dead baby next to a live one with down syndrome.
- What�s the first line in any Mexican cookbook? �Steal a chicken��
- What did one tampon say to the other as they passed each other on the street? Nothing, they were both stuck up cunts.
- Why do women wear makeup and perfume? Because they�re ugly and they smell bad. (This works well when you have a bar filled with sad, lonely men.)
- Two ten-year-old kids are arguing about whose father is cooler. �My daddy is tougher, my daddy is taller, my daddy is stronger,� etc. Finally, one says, �My daddy�s cock is this big,� holding out her hands. The other kid looks down, defeated. �Well,� she says finally, �my daddy�s cock isn�t that big� but it still hurts.�
Hey, I just tell them, I don�t agree with them.
Anyway, in Patrick�s infinite, Yoda-like wisdom, he scheduled me on Friday night with Kimberly, the only other female night bartender and a tiny, astoundingly hot girl. I assume he did this because Friday is generally the busiest night and he wanted the two hottest people working, making sure everybody who walks in has some eye candy while they wait for drinks. You will not be able to convince me that this is not the case.
And so last Friday we were working. It was medium-busy, and I had somebody who wanted me to close out their significantly large tab. I went to the back bar, using the calculator to add up their drinks (I�m an English major, I can�t do this stuff in my head). In the meantime, one girl named Angela who I had been serving was being obnoxious, yelling for service, even though she hadn�t finished her drink and Hawaii law says that we can�t serve you until your original drink is finished. Kimberly did her best to ignore her and came up beside me as I double-checked my addition.
�Hey,� she said as she punched in numbers into the register, �would you do me a favor and shove your cock up Angela�s ass? Actually, I�ll let you stick it in my ass, just so long as you put it in her mouth afterward.� Then she zipped away to help somebody else.
I, of course, had to start over on my addition.
Let�s hear the jokes, people. I have to buy a new window.
