Heat it and Beat It

When I said the Pig Iron Fest was a great place to watch drunken blacksmiths cackling about scrap rebar and flatter fullers, Tom's Aunt Michelle and Uncle Bob were all in. So we carpooled up there to the outskirts of known civilization for an afternoon with the smithies and the groupies. Like Tom. He has no opinion on bending forks.

We stayed for the auction where even a person of limited means could have picked up a hydroponic pot growing apparatus or somebody's old laptop case... as long as they didn't mind bidding against Bruce, the drunken auctioneer. Waving around his number with some vigor, Bruce periodically waded into the fray. "Two dollars from Fat Pete there in the back, who'll give me four? I'll give me four, who'll give me six? Fat Pete. I'll go to eight..."

You can tell you're in bumfuck when the truck in front of you on the highway home is plastered with large decals shaped like automatic weapons and messages like "I heart my Glock."

I said, "Dude likes the Insane Clown Posse," because there were also some stickers to this effect.

Bob pipes up fom the backseat, "Oh, he's a Juggalo."

I spun in my seat. Mystified.

Bob said, "The Insane Clown Posse has a dedicated following, often referred to as Juggalos and Juggalettes."

Hm. So now I know.

Don't Mess with the Bubby

My Bubby has a nurse that visits and tells her things she already knows and insults her cooking. But really, what does the nurse know from kugel? She may very well be a goyishe kop because of course Bubby uses the oil. The recipes call for the oil. And everybody loves a Bialistock. Bubby loves a Bialistock. Nowadays the bialistock are not like the ones from Julie Brothers on 174th Street in the Bronx, but feh, they'll do.

This nurse, she is fat. She hauls around a tuches and a half. Who is she to tell Bubby to exercise? She needs to take her own advice, this nurse. But Bubby read an article about the fat people. They do not eat lunch with others, the fat people. They go out into their cars to eat lunch alone, because of the Cheetos in the backseat. The fat people hoard nosh in their cars so they can go crazy with the Cheetos at lunchtime.

So yesterday, the nurse comes over at one o'clock, right when Bubby was fixing herself a sandwich. She always fixes herself a sandwich at one o'clock. Bubby asks the nurse if the nurse wants a sandwich too because Bubby can certainly fix her a sandwich if she wants one.

But the nurse says she did not want a sandwich and Bubby nods her head slyly. "I didn't think you would want a sandwich," she says. "The fat people always sneak out to their cars and have a bag of Cheetos for lunch."

The nurse, she never heard this before. She only keeps carrots in the car.

Tom: Disrobing

“Why is there a ‘#1’ written in black sharpie marker on the back of my running underpants?"

"Oh."

"These are your Dad’s underpants aren’t they? He’s the only person I know who numbers his underpants. We both bought the same kind and they must’ve gotten mixed up in the wash at the beach."

Barney's NY Warehouse Sale :: Whatever the Opposite of Love Is

The entrance to Barney’s Warehouse Sale nestles next to D’Agastino’s, the overpriced yet still vaguely ghetto grocery store across 17th street. I went in because Tom said there were a lot of shoes. Unfortunately they were not my kind of shoes-- mostly slinky strappy numbers providing inadequate toe protection for my calamity-ridden lifestyle. I like to think of my footwear as a weapon. It should hurt if I kick you.

I was rolling toward the exit when a warehouse-themed cardboard box came out of nowhere. For a tense moment, I thought I was going to plunge headfirst into a tangled snakepit of price-slashed but still $400 belts. I skirted the box like a retarded ballerina balanced only on one toe.

Already shaken by the almost-catastrophe, I finished my pirouette nose-to-nose with an impeccably coiffed Chelsea boy trying on a silken peach-colored space suit. My eyebrows ratcheted into my hairline in a very non-NYC-acceptable manner.

This did not go unnoticed. “So is that a yes?” he said.

I smiled like an idiot and didn’t reply because from the gleam in his eye and the tone of his voice, that boy was poised to take me down. The only way out would have been to come back with the right answer. Sturdy footwear be damned, I did not, and still do not, know what the right answer was.

Movies IV: While Watching Chocolat

Momster: “Your dad doesn’t like this movie. He thinks it’s a chick flick. What’s the male equivalent of a chick flick?”
Tom: “Hmmm. I don’t know.”
Momster: “Maybe a dick flick.
Tom: “I don't know, but I'd think that’s another genre entirely.”

Movies III: Favorite Fights!

Family Favorites! Duels

• Scaramouche
• Princess Bride (“Aha, I find I am left handed”)
• Roxanne with the tennis racket
• That movie where Burt Lancaster is an acrobat and has this partner who is a dwarf

My Personal Favorite Naked Fight Scene

• Eastern Promises wherein Viggo Mortenson rumbles all steamy, tattooed and buck naked in a Turksish Bath. Holy replay.
  

Movies II: Dad’s Top Three Favorite War Movies

1. Dirty Dozen
2. Guns of Navarone
3. Stalag 17
4. Great Escape
5. Bridge over River Kwai
   Also applauds MAD magazine version featuring Sesua HayaKawa as the bucket, and Alec Guiness as the General
6. The Desert Rats -
   Plot Synopsis: Rommel chases a small group of Americans (just a regiment) and surrounds them at a mission. The Americans hold out and the Germans run out of water. Really the Americans are out of water too, but to demoralize the thirsty Germans, the Americans go on top of the mission pretending to take baths and fake sudsing themselves up.
   
   Finally the Germans get fed up and lob a bomb into the mission. Ironically, the bomb blasts out a well inside the mission walls and the water started gushing up.
   
   So then the Americans capture a Sherman tank and defeat the Germans. They march out 500 german prisoners with their arms crossed over their heads.
   
   
7. I never saw Kelly’s Heros so it can’t be one of my top three. I do know they go to steal some gold and it has something to do with Donald Sutherland.
8. The original m*a*s*h