The Stooges Gene

I went to Ikea with my sister and brother-in-law yesterday. That is apropos of nothing, except the fact that Ikea is in Round Rock, which is over an hour away. We took my nephew as well, who is a solid two-and-a-half years old and loving every moment of it. So in addition to the time we spent in Ikea, I had several hours of driving time to observe him and his reactions to things.
   I know I'm not treading new ground here, but little boys are very different from little girls.
   My nephew has The Stooges Gene, which is that genetic quirk in boys that lets them find the hilarity in noisy bodily functions. Boogers were a favorite while we were in Ikea, but on the trip back he encountered the adult male's ability to burp on command. Since he's two years old he wanted me and my brother-in-law to burp over and over and over again, which we did, and he squealed with delight each and every time.
   My sister endured silently, then called one of her friends to chat while we echoed the truck cab with belches.
   I have two nieces as well, both of them substantially older than my nephew, and both of them gifted with wickedly funny senses of humor. Neither of them, however, would have found fifteen minutes of burping nearly as funny as my nephew did, not even when they were that little. I can tell you that not once did either of them laugh uncontrollably at a burp, then demand that I burp over and over and over again. I would have if they wanted me to, but it just never came up. It's a guy thing, chicks just don't understand.
   Burps are funny. Intrinsically funny, axiomatically funny. If a dying man interrupted his last words for a burp, guys would laugh, that's just the way it is. Farts are funny too, even if you're the victim of a particularly rank one. People getting slapped in the face is funny, and getting knocked in the head with a big board is funny, and getting poked in the eyes is funny, or jabbed in the stomach or pinched in the nipples by lobster claws or having a sledge hammer dropped on your foot... the list goes on and on and on, anything The Three Stooges did is funny. Always. And getting hit in the nuts is always funny too, as long as it happens to someone else.
   The Stooges Gene. It's only a matter of time before modern science isolates it within the human genome. It's probably in the same region as the Playing With Fireworks gene and the Hey Watch This gene. Once the Stooges gene is isolated we can get you ladies gene therapy so you can share in the glory that is two grown men burping on command for a two-and-a-half year old.

Time Marches On

I have to take my glasses off to read things.
   I'm nearsighted, so have glasses mostly for driving, although I passed the DMV vision test without them so I don't have a restriction. I'm also slightly astigmatic in both eyes which means that at a distance I can see two highway signs instead of just the one that's supposed to be there.
   I've had glasses since I was a junior in college. At the time I thought it was because I was reading so much; with concentrations in English, History, and Classics if I wasn't asleep I probably had my nose in a book. And I worked in the library* so that's even more books to read. All these years later, though, I think my deteriorating vision had a lot to do with the introduction of aspartame into America's diet. Right about the time my eyesight started fading was when I started drinking diet soda. Really. Aspartame metabolizes into methanol in your body - wood grain alcohol - which can turn you blind. I think it got to me.
   All this is immaterial to the fact that I have to take my glasses off in the store to read stuff. They either go into my hand or up on my head like an old person. It's just embarrassing.
   Back when I was a waiter we used to make fun of people who came in with two pairs of glasses, and now I can see the day coming when that person is going to be me. And wise-ass waiters who don't yet feel their own mortality will make fun of me. Bastards.
   I can't wait for the day to come when we can harvest organs from vat-grown clones and replace our failing body parts. It's just a few years off, trust me, the government doesn't want you to know because if you stopped fighting mortality the hospital and insurance industries would fail utterly. The only thing that keeps them going is fear, after all, and if you take fear away, why do you need insurance? Why do you need to brush your teeth if you could just grow a new set? Why cut down on McDonald's french fries - quite possibly the most unhealthy 'food' on the planet - if you can just harvest your clone's liver when yours goes South? See? It's all a vast conspiracy to keep us beaten down and in submission.
   I want access to my clone so I can harvest his eyes, dammit. Of course, if my clone is my age, then his eyes are my age too, and quite possibly nearsighted and astigmatic.... this is getting complicated.


* or libary, if you wanted to get my boss upset

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned that when I eventually do encounter my evil twin - and believe me, it's bound to happen some day - he's not going to be nearly evil enough.
   They say everybody in the world has an exact double, and if watching hours of classic Star Trek and the occasional soap opera has taught me anything it's that evil twins abound. My mother insists that I was alone in the womb, but I have a feeling she's been holding out on me. Would you let your favorite child know he was one half of a cliche'd trope? Yeah, I wouldn't either.
   So let's say I'm on a rainy Paris street, or chasing bad guys through a seedy, neon-lit Tokyo alleyway, or on a quest for lost documents in the secret hallways that riddle Washington, DC - you know, situations with the highest odds of encountering your evil twin - and there he is. Me, only with a goatee. Unless I have one at the time, then me without a goatee. And he's cackling evilly, as evil twins do, and going on and on about how he's going to destroy me or take over the world, or both, and then a crack shows in his evil facade. Like his zipper is down. Or his evil goatee starts to peel off his chin because he didn't use enough glue. Maybe he has a lisp that's just comical instead of sinister, something like that. Sure would make it hard to take him seriously.
   I'd listen politely, and if he had a gun I'd certainly do whatever he demanded (within reason), but my heart just wouldn't be in it. And if he had a lisp I'd probably have a hard time not laughing at him. 'It's not you,' I'd have to insist while he tried to explain* his terrible, doomed-to-failure plan talking like a three-year-old.
   I mean, really, if you're stuck with an evil twin wouldn't you want him to be good at it?
   I want my evil twin to be one step away from complete world domination. One step because then I'd be the one to deny him success and we'd end up being the mortal enemies that evil twins should be. With my luck he'd be one step away from sweeping up at a movie theater - an evil movie theater, of course - and if I did anything to keep him from it I'd just be kicking the poor guy when he's down.
   So I'd be kind of nice to him, the way you're nice to relatives you don't really know, and he'd totally misinterpret that as genuine interest. And then he'd try to invite me to lunch, and I'd have to think of a creative excuse as to why that wouldn't work. Like maybe I stopped eating, just gave it up for some reason. Then he'd want my e-mail address or my cell number, and I'd think about giving him the wrong number but I'd get flustered and give him the real one and then I'd have to dodge his calls for weeks while he called 'to chat' or 'see what my bro is up to.' And if I answered the phone he'd just go on and on about how nobody wanted to be his henchman or listen to him explain his evil schemes, and I was the only one who really cared when in actuality I really wouldn't care. Not at all.
   I just don't want to be disappointed.

*Evil twins are obligated to explain their plans to the good twin, it's in the Constitution, I'm pretty sure. Somewhere towards the back.

Hairy Fingers

There was a guy in the office today with the hairiest hands I've ever seen. A dark carpet sticking out past his cuffs that, seriously, looked like it could have been braided. Like an orangutan or something. He wore a gold watch with metal links and all I could think was that he must have rubbed a bare spot on his wrist, otherwise all those hairs would have gotten stuck something fierce. Painful.
   I took a look at my own hands, which while not baby's-butt smooth certainly don't have the kind of goat-hair mess that this guy had. Then I took a look at my fingers, and the hair on the first phalanx (that's the fingerbone bit after the knuckle). It's kind of like the hair on my big toes, it's there, but I have no idea why.
   I understand the biochemistry of the matter, androgens makes hair grow and since I'm a man (and how!) I grow hair in places women and children don't. Like the bit on my trapezoids or my shoulders. Or on my butt. But my fingers? As my Hispanic friends might say: 'porque?'
   I wracked my brain and I can't come up with any reason why hairy fingers would be a good evolutionary adaptation. Especially when the hair on my index finger is far fainter than the hair on my pinky. What use could that kind of gradation possibly be? None, that's what. I think hairy fingers are an evolutionary throwback, the appendix of your skin, as it were. I need to write this up for a medical journal.
   The only drawback I can see to publication is that the anti-evolution crowd could seize on this and try to say it disproves evolution. Since there's obviously no evolutionary benefit to hairy fingers they'd want to toss the baby out with the bathwater. So I guess maybe I'd better keep this quiet.
   Forget I mentioned it.

... And That Little Boy Smile

I have a black velvet painting of Elvis. I've had it for years, it was a present from a friend who knew of my fondness for midways, carnies, Vegas, and all things vaguely seedy and disreputable. He got it in Mexico, Neuvo Laredo I think, as part of a weekend-long excursion he only remembers bits of. The best part is the frame, which he got for an extra dollar. It's just mitred wood, there's nothing to actually hang the picture, which means it's been sitting on my floor for years. I vacuum it every so often - really - to keep the white-jumpsuited, Mexican-looking Elvis happy.
   My philosophy in life has been 'if it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for me.' Not that I've ever had the funds to do most of what Elvis did, or the toadying hangers-on to make doing those things worthwhile. But I'm working on it. So I figure a good first step would be for me to get my own black velvet portrait done. Once I have my smiling face beaming down from a wall somewhere I know I'll have arrived, and the rest will just fall into place. I can get a 'TCB' three-finger ring, a big ol' convertible Caddy, and I can start shooting televisions. And a cape. I need a cape.
   It's a natural progression - black velvet painting of myself, then all the stuff, then the cape, then financial independence. The way is so clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before. All I have to do is find someone to paint a black-velvet portrait of me and I'll be just like Elvis.
   I'll take a pass on dying on the toilet, though, if it's all the same to everyone else.

When Last We Left Our Hero

   Captain Grant Manley had just finished single-handedly fighting back the assault of the Neptunians, and now he stood in the airlock of the USS Victorious with their purple ichor dripping from his skin-tight pressure suit. His Q-ray blaster smoked, still hot to the touch, and the plutonium fuel gauge on his jet pack read almost empty.
   "That's the last time those six-armed fiends try to interrupt our peaceful fact-finding mission," Manley growled through his pearly white teeth. He handed his space helmet to Teddy Courage, his trusty cabin boy. "I tell you Teddy, if we weren't trying to win their hearts and minds I'd have half a mind to vaporize their entire village."
   "Yeah, lucky for those bug-eyed freaks you're such a pacifist," Teddy said as he reverentially unzipped Manley's pressure suit, peeling it off his Captain's broad, muscular shoulders. "They look like a pile of something the dog threw up."
   "Now, Teddy," Manley chastised, "there's no call for that kind of talk. They're sentient beings just like you and me. The only real difference between us is their primitive culture and their poor hygiene. Oh, and their laughable religion."
   "I guess you're right," Teddy replied thoughtfully. "Sorry about that."
   Manley hugged Teddy tight to his rippling chest. "All is forgiven, lad. But between us, when we finally bring civilization and culture to these poor, backward aliens I'll be glad to leave this terrible place."
   "I don't know," Teddy replied, still wrapped in Manley's embrace, "I kind of like it here now."
   "It is beautiful in its own austere, desolate way, like a cloistered monastery or an oil rig or a French Foreign Legion outpost," Manley replied.
   "Or a prison," Teddy replied. "A maximum security prison."
   "That too, lad," Manley chuckled. "But I long for purple mountains' majesty and amber waves of grain."
   "So do I," a lilting, musical voice said.
   Estelle Sparks entered the airlock, all long legs and cascading raven hair. Her lithe, buxom form was barely contained in the USS Victory's standard singlesuit uniform, and the Q-ray blasters she carried on each ample hip said she was just as much at home on the battlefield as in the kitchen.
   Captain Manley released Teddy and grabbed Estelle fiercely, staring into her violet eyes. "We've been apart only a few hours, just long enough for me to dispense justice, and yet I feel as though it's been days."
   "Oh, Grant," Estelle sighed, "I want nothing more than to melt into your arms. But we've just received an alert from the Earth Council. It's terrible, the Neptunians are preparing to use an Ultimate Disintegrator."
   "Say it isn't so!" Manley gasped.
   "How would they get the materials to build an Ultimate Disintegrator?" Teddy asked. "Isn't their whole planet nothing but rocks and methane sand? And hasn't the Earth Council enforced a trade embargo on all Neptunian exports for years now?"
   Manley turned to his trusty cabin boy, his square jaw set beneath his steel-gray eyes. "The Earth Council hasn't led us astray yet, lad. If they say it's so then it must be. And my destiny is now clear."
   "Grant, you don't mean..." Estelle gasped, her bosom heaving.
   "I'm afraid so, First Officer Sparks," Manley said. "Fire up the nuclear generator and ready the Atom Cannon, we're going to have to teach these Neptunians a lesson."

If You Can't Pronounce It, Should You Eat It?

I was reading the label of my soda the other day, and I realized that even though I'd been seeing 'sodium benzoate' for years, I really had no idea what it was. The other ingredients I pretty much know, water, high fructose corn syrup (the Devil's own sweetener), caramel color, caffeine, all those I know and, to a certain extent, understand. But not sodium benzoate.
   So I cracked open Wikipedia - the lazy man's library - and started looking.
   Sodium benzoate is a preservative, says as much on the label of the soda bottle, but it's also used in certain fireworks. It keeps bateria and fungus from growing, which I'm pretty much all for, at least in regards to my Dr. Pepper. But it's also suspected as a contributor to hyperactivity.
   Hmmm... interesting. My curiosity piqued, I decided to look up a few other things I'd seen on food labels but never bothered to learn more about.

In my breakfast cereal
   BHT - butylated hydroxytoluene
   This sounds nasty right from the get-go, but wait'll you read the Wikipedia entry: 'an antioxidant additive in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, jet fuels, rubber, petroleum products, electrical transformer oil, and embalming fluid.' So with my Special K I'm getting my daily allowance of jet fuel additive. Mmmmm... jet fuel...

In my hot dog buns
   calcium propionate
   Another perservative, this time for baked goods, it helps prevent mold growth, again a concept I'm all for. But it's also slightly toxic, and can be used as a pesticide. Yikes.

In my reduced-fat shredded cheddar cheese
   calcium sulfate
   Another mold inhibitor and desicant. It is also the main ingredient in plaster of paris and gypsum, which is the wall board in your house.

In my hot dogs (if you got buns, you need hot dogs)
   sodium nitrite
   A preservative, it also puts the mmmm... in bacon. But it's also used in textile manufacturing, in photography, and as an electrolyte in manufacturing. On the plus side, it's also been used as an antidote for cyanide poisoning.

I don't want to go all earthy-crunchy on you, and I'm certainly not about to give up hot dogs, but I think I'm going to pay a little more attention to what's on the labels of my food. Just sayin'...

What's Wrong With Being Weird?

I've noticed a trend lately - and maybe it's just because I'm home during the day during my time 'between assignments' - but it seems that everybody needs a diagnosis nowadays.
   You get kids with ADD or ADHD or anxiety disorder or OCD, you have celebrities with sex addiction, people with detachment disorders, maladjusted loners have Asperger's syndrome, fat people have eating disorders... I mean, seriously, it's getting so that people who don't have some sort of medical condition explaining their behavior are in the minority.
   What the hell? Back in the day, when I was a kid, we had the fat kid (yes, me), the angry kid, the sneaky kid, the hyper kid, the sissy kid, the smart kid, and the artsy kid. None of us had or needed a diagnosis, we were all cool with who we were and what others expected of us. And if the angry kid suddenly decided he loved animals and stopped being angry, well, we just accepted it. If the fat kid stopped eating so much and lost weight, well, he wasn't fat kid any more. No biggie.
   Our behavior was something we did, not something we were. Which meant that we were responsible for how we acted, we didn't have an excuse to point to: 'Oh, I have a detachment disorder, that's why I hit people with rulers.' No way, no how could we get away with that. And the weird kid was just the weird kid, he didn't have autism or a personality disorder or a metabolic defect. He didn't need an explanation and we didn't want one.
   I think this business about giving everybody a diagnosis is the worst sort of communism, because it assumes not only is there a middle ground for what is acceptable behavior, but that everyone should strive to meet that middle ground. Which is bullshit of the worst kind. I wasn't there, I don't know for sure, but I can guarantee you Albert Einstein was the weird kid in his school. So was Picasso, and Leonardo, and for sure Hemingway who was also probably the sissy kid. If any of these men - or any of the iconoclast high achievers during all of human history - had parents who looked for a diagnosis and then for drugs to 'fix' their weird kids, where would our society be?
   Enough already. Let kids be kids, stop pumping them full of drugs, and hold them responsible for their behavior. They'll rise to your expectations.
   Just keep them off my lawn...

From My Bookshelf

I grew up a minority. Really. Caucasians have been a minority in San Antonio for decades, since I was a kid. The city's mostly Hispanic - although try to find Hispanica on a map - but as far as I was concerned people were just people. Some spoke Spanish, some spoke Chinese, or Khmer, or German, whatever. It never occurred to me that my people - white folks - might have a culture outside of what I saw in the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family. Live and learn.

Stuff White People Like by Christan Lander
   This is the definitive guide to white culture. Not to be confused with White Supremacist 'culture,' white culture is focused on self-satisfaction, appearances, and trying to make a difference without really changing anything you're doing in your own life.
   These are short essays about, well, stuff white people like. Such as Music Piracy, Hating Corporations, and Avoiding Confrontation. These are all cringe-inducing insights into the way privileged white folks like myself behave, and how they're perceived by non-white folks. They're the best kind of essays, funny and true, and liable to make some posers change the way they act.
   Mr. Lander is himself a white person, and better yet he's Canadian, which makes him extra, extra white. And thus more than qualified to write this book.

Quote: 'One of the more popular white-person activities of the past fifteen years has been attempting to educate others on the evils of multinational corporations. White people love nothing more than explaining to you how Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Microsoft, or Halliburton is destroying the Earth's cultures and resources.'

And That's How Swine Flu Spreads

I'm back in Texas for the holidays, time for fajitas and barbeque and maybe a gun show or two. Usually airports are good places for people watching, but I was scheduled pretty tightly, no time to chit chat or dilly dally or any other slightly effeminate verbs like those two. But along the way something interesting did happen.
   I drank a Pepsi from England.
   No, I didn't buy it in a novelty British food store, a passing chimney sweep did not hand it to me, I didn't pick it off the corpse of an international spy. On the flight from Burbank to Dallas, the flight attendant served it to me right out of the drink cart. This was a Pepsi can bottled in England, with a contest paid in pounds sterling advertised along the top rim. Straight from the Empire.
   Remember, I got on the plane in Burbank, and so did the Pepsi can. And Burbank is eight time zones removed from England. So the can had to travel all that way, probably in the drink cart of an airplane taking off from Heathrow, making several stops along the way at JFK or O'Hare or Hartsfield, until finally it found its way to that one drink cart in Burbank, where it started making the trip back East. How many hands did it go through? How many flight attendants or airport catering dudes handled it? How many miles did it actually travel before I drank yet another soda I didn't need to be drinking?
   I think the risk posed by swine flu has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion, far too alarmist, but when I get a drink bottled in England on my trip from Burbank to Dallas, I can see the point of raising the issue. People travel across the globe on a whim these days - apparently so do Pepsi cans - which means their germs travel too.
   Speaking of germs, I have a bit of a cold myself, so I think it would be interesting to see who on that plane catches my cold. I'm hoping I infected the douchebag in front of me who leaned his seat all the way back, I know I tried my darndest to give it to him. Maybe, just maybe, my cold will travel all the way back to England, infecting the staff working in the bottling plant that made the Pepsi I drank. That would be cool, huh? Talk about closing the loop.

From Me To You

I used to spend a lot of time at my grandfather's house. Not as a celebrated guest, as manual labor. I spent my formative years mowing, weeding, chopping, edging, sweeping, raking, tilling, picking, and once nearly cutting off my toe with a chain saw. Good times, good times. As I sweated and cursed under my breath, from time to time my grandfather would dispense bits of grandfatherly advice. Some of his advice was of the 'don't take any wooden nickels' variety, but other bits I discovered, years later, were actually useful. For instance, his admonition to 'pay a little extra, get good shoes,' has proved true time and time again.
   So I thought it was time that I dispense my advice. These pearls of wisdom come from hard-won experience, and all of them will prove useful to you someday, though it may not seem so at first.

Oreos and orange juice. Don't do it. You might think 'hey, I like Oreos, and I like orange juice too, let's have them at the same time.' That would be a mistake. Trust me on this one.
    If that homeless guy looks like he might want to hug you, he probably will.
Corporations don't think it's funny when you point out inconsistencies in their policies, even if you think it's hilarious.
    If you're driving down a very narrow lane and both sides are lined with twenty-foot fences with razor wire across the top, you're in the wrong place.
Robot monkeys will never replace you in the work force. No matter how much you want it to happen.
    When the officer tells you to keep your hands where he can see them, he really means it.
An extra slice of pie is never a bad idea.
    You're almost never the smartest person in the room. But chances are good you are the most ethical.
Little kids are far, far more observant than you think they are. They're also sneakier and faster. But they're just as sticky as they look.
    The dialectic always wins out, your success shall become your failure. Plan for it.
If it looks too good to be true it's a multi-level marketing scheme.
    Half-assed but done really is better than well-planned but never started. Well-planned and well-executed is always best.
Drunk rednecks and boats always leads to tragedy. Same with drunk rednecks and guns. Or drunk rednecks and deep-frying a turkey.
    Transvestite prostitutes do not appreciate being called 'buddy.'

There you go, from me to you. I hope my wisdom gets you out of more trouble than it causes.

Going Back On My Promise

Sometimes you say things you regret, or you do things you regret and you regret talking about them later. And sometimes you make a sweeping pronouncement so bold and all-encompassing that you never want to go against it. But then you do and you have to come clean. This is come-clean day for me. Ready? Okay... deep breath... here goes...
   I'm running.
   Yup, for the past two weeks I've been on the treadmill at the gym, slowly increasing my speed and my distance. My goal is a non-stop mile - which, honestly, I could do right now but for my laziness issues - and after achieving that I will find some other running-related goal.
   This will be disappointing to many of you, I know, especially my long-time friends. You may recall such pronouncements as 'I only run when someone is chasing me. With a gun.' Or classics like 'If you see me running, swerve and put me out of my misery.'
   If I learned nothing else from the Bush administration, I learned that it's a very bad idea to stick slavishly to a clearly-discredited policy, and my running ban was one of those. I've been steadily losing weight for years now, slimming down and toning up, but I will never be really fit until I get more cardiovascular endurance. And, regrettably, running is about the only way to do that. So I'm running. God help us all.
   I think this may be one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Anybody want to check the Book of Revelations?

The Other Shoe

You ever get the feeling that the Universe is just biding its time before it puts the screws to you? I don't usually, but for the past few days...
   See, nothing odd has happened to me since last Monday.
   Others might count that as a blessing, but weird crap happens to me all the time. ALL THE TIME. Every day. People try to sell me stuff, crazy people think I'm related to them, birds follow me, machines stop working when I go by or ones that have stopped start working again, I overhear terrible conversations, and on and on and on. It's just something I've gotten used to, something I expect, almost something that defines me.
   And now it's stopped.
   You remember when Popeye would finally have his fill of Bluto, he'd eat his spinach, and then he'd wind up his forearm to make sure he got a really solid hit? I got a feeling that I'm Bluto, and the Universe is Popeye winding up for the twisker sock. If I suddenly dissolve in shower of light, or get kidnapped by Mole People, or suddenly become King of Prussia, don't say I didn't warn you.

Loud-Talking Stan

I was at a coffee shop the other day, Wednesday, meeting a few of my friends who are also 'between assignments' and have time during the day to go to places like coffee shops in Pasadena. The place is cozy - what indie coffee joint isn't - and they don't mind if a few deadbeats buy coffee, iced tea, or a root beer and sit down to shoot the breeze for a few hours in the middle of the day.
   The place was practically empty, and we were sitting in a corner all alone, when he walked in... Loud-Talking Stan.
   I didn't know anything was wrong, but my friend facing the door instantly tensed up.
   "What's wrong?" I asked, turning around to see a heavy, scraggly-bearded guy eyeing the pastries in the display case as he hefted his laptop in one hand. Not really unusual for a coffee shop, but my friend, who was a regular here, shook his head.
   "Maybe he'll sit outside..." my friend mumbled.
   But Loud-Talking Stan did not sit outside. He also did not sit in any of the other chairs scattered across the room. No, he sat directly behind us.
   Loud-Talking Stan liked to IM his friends. He also liked to say what he was typing out loud. Really loud. He mashed his fingers onto the keyboard as if he were trying to drive the keys into the table beneath, sometimes talking about himself in the third person. That's how I know his name was Stan. My friend whispered it to me as well.
   Loud-Talking Stan was having a lively, if one-sided, discussion with his friends on the opposite side of the free wi-fi connection about the comic books coming out that day. I know Wednesday is new comic day, has been for decades now, but for Stan the day seemed filled with promise, as if the sun were just coming up at 3 PM. I'm sure he thought he was mumbling, or even whispering, but his talk of Batman, Wolverine, and the Avengers drowned out our conversation. The noise was bothering my friends, so we moved outside.
   This kind of thing happens to me all the time, but I forget that it doesn't happen to other people. I seem to attract the homeless, crazy, inconsiderate, or desperate, they all want to be around me for some reason. And when I say 'around me' I don't mean 'in my vicinity,' no, I mean right next to me, as if we were riding a crowded subway together. So I take all the blame for Loud-Talking Stan and his comic book eagerness interrupting our do-nothing afternoon.
   When I went to get my own stash of comics later that evening, I have to admit, I paused by the newest issue of Wolverine. I thought about Stan's loud, earnest recommendation and then I moved on.

Tales From My Past - Crazy Lake Michigan

Before I relate this story, I swear it is completely, 100% true. I'll swear to God, Buddha, SpongeBob, whoever you want. I have a witness who was there for the whole thing.
   A few years back my friend Sean and I were in Milwuakee, WI on a road trip. We'd flown into Chicago and accidentally happened upon Uno, the real one, where you order your pizza when you put your name on the waiting list. Say what you will about a New York pie, authentic Chicago pizza is awesome. After stuffing ourselves on three-inch-thick slices, we drove to Milwaukee, and on the way had to stop at the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha. It's a cool place, but it smells like fondue. And the building is constructed with cinderblock, not cheese, so it's kind of false advertising. If they say 'cheese castle' I expect the whole thing to be made of cheddar.
   Anyway, we finished our business in Milwuakee and we had over half a day to kill before we had to be back at O'Hare in Chicago, so we went to Lake Michigan and rented bicycles. There's a bike path that winds around there, and even in August the wind off the lake was freezing cold. We got tired so we stopped at one of the park benches positioned every fifty yards or so.
   We saw an old couple walking together - it's not just a bike path - and they stopped at the bench next to us and spoke to the people there. Those people looked kind of confused and amused, but I thought nothing of it. The couple then ambled over to me and Sean.
   The man stood back, saying nothing, but the lady came over to us. She wore a pink and green pastel shirt, beige shorts, and she held her hands held up to her shoulders, palms down. She smiled. We smiled back. And then she said these exact words as she patted her hands on her shoulders.
   "Goody goody, goody goody, goody goody goo."
    Then she and her husband (I'm assuming) walked off. No explanation, they just went to the people sitting on the next bench over, and from the expression on those people's faces, the lady did exactly the same thing to them.
   .....
   Yeah. Freaky. And I swear it actually happened, Sean was right there for it, and to this day we are both completely at a loss to explain what the hell that was. Was she just bonkers and the guy was humoring her? Was she doing it on a dare? At her age? Was she marking us for death by ninjas at some time later in life? Who knows?
   That whole trip was full of odd things. Like the homeless guy Sean wouldn't let me have a conversation with, or the Miller Beer mad scientist's lair, or the Brewers game, or the dangerous convenience store in the bad part of town. All stories for another time.

Body Double

They say everybody in the world has a double, someone who looks just like them. My friend Bob, for example, met his when he spent time in Germany while in high school. He came back with a picture of a guy who looked just like him, white-man afro and all, the only difference was the doppelganger Bob spoke German. It was an amazing resemblance, right down to the smile and the way German Bob cocked his head to the side. Seeing the photograph was kind of freaky, yet kind of fun too, especially since it happened to Bob and not me.
   Then I saw my double and it wasn't so funny any longer.
   I was about seventeen, and seeing a movie with my friends. We were waiting for the movie to start, joking around and probably making nuisances of ourselves - we were seventeen after all - when I saw this guy about six rows down, easing his way past the people already sitting, facing my way. It was like one of those movie moments, where the camera zooms in and the background goes out of focus and the music gets all dramatic. He looked exactly like me. He saw me at the same time I saw him, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing: 'Holy crap, there's a dude that looks just like me. What do I do?' I tried to find the guy after the movie, I even sent my friends out to look for him, but he slipped the net, got away. I never saw him again.
   Sometimes I wonder what my double has been doing all these years, but then I realize I don't really want to know. If he turned out to be a criminal or an abject failure I'd just be embarrassed for both of us, and if he was more successful than I am I might be tempted to do away with him and take over his identity.