More Coffee, Please!

Some people jump out of bed in the morning, take a shower, grab something to eat and go about their business. If they have anything to drink, it might be a glass of OJ or milk or, perhaps, a cup of tea. Coffee? No thanks, they’ll tell you. They don’t drink coffee.

I affectionately refer to these people as freaks.

My mornings, in stark contrast, start with 40 ounces of fresh, cold water and two heaping scoops of ground coffee brewed in a German-made Krups coffeemaker. The beans may come from Colombia, Kenya, Hawaii, Costa Rica or Honduras, but their final destination is the cup I hold anxiously in my hand, waiting for the drip brewing cycle to finish.

Stupid brewing cycle. Come on already. Vision blurring, feeling drowsy, must . . . get . . . coffee.

My day doesn’t (couldn’t) officially begin until that first cup of coffee passes my lips, chasing the cobwebs and splicing together the bits and pieces of my mental junkyard. Coffee helps me quickly hone in on important facets of the day ahead, like whether it’s a Tuesday or a Saturday, where I’m expected to be at what time, and if I should be wearing long pants or shorts.  

The Dentist Will See You Now

You know the dream. You’re strapped into the dentist chair. A small gathering of people are on hand to watch your final moments, their eyes brimming with contempt. You scan the room for the sympathetic face of a friend or loved one, but find only icy stares and the sterile implements of the agony to come.  “I want my mommy,” you murmur. But mommy didn’t get you into this mess, and mommy wants to remember you as you were in better days. So save your tears, big boy.

A last phone call pleading for clemency goes unanswered. As the clock strikes twelve a signal is given by someone in a ghastly teal jumpsuit. Before you can speak, you’re injected with something that makes you feel numb and anxious at the same time. Room spinning, feeling woozy you think, flattering yourself with a puffed-up comparison to Superman fighting off the effects of a close encounter with kryptonite.

Leaving Tijuana

I’m not exactly sure how we wound up in Tijuana a second time. Maybe I was drowsy after a big lunch and grunted agreeably when someone said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to go to a heartbreakingly depressing slum that sells cheesy souvenirs to tourists?” Or, maybe I wasn’t even in the room when the nonsensical decision was made.  Maybe it was just assumed –- me being the fun-loving guy that I am -- that I would gleefully jump at the chance to wallow in squalor and sleaze again south of the border.

The adventure began, innocently enough, with a trip to San Diego to attend a 50^th wedding anniversary bash for my wife’s Uncle Joe and Aunt Aggie. It doesn’t take long to notice that life is good in San Diego. It’s a sun-splashed coastal city with pristine beaches, charming adobe buildings with red tile roofs, historic Spanish missions, and highway signs that clearly tell you how close you’re getting to the border of Mexico.

Tonight On PBS

To anyone who says “there’s nothing worth watching on TV anymore,” I politely but firmly put my hand on their shoulder, look them compassionately in the eye and ask, “Are you getting enough fiber in your diet?”

The question throws them at first (just as I intended), but the cryptic nature of my query also gets them thinking. They wonder who I am. They wonder why I’ve violated their personal space by putting my hand on their shoulder. Perhaps most pressing of all, they wonder whether or not I’m armed.

Sensing their discomfort, I tell them “Yes, I am armed . . . armed with good news about the current state of viewer supported public television.” Now, before you get the wrong idea, I’m not one of those TV snobs who claim to only watch the news and public broadcasting. The truth is, before I downgraded my TV service to basic cable a couple of years ago, my curiosity about “what else is on” was usually limited to random searches for basketball games, Seinfeld reruns, and intellectually stimulating biographical profiles like the E True Hollywood Story entitled “Yasmin Bleeth: The Curse of the Baywatch Bombshells.”

A Slot Master's Journey To The Isle

Monte Carlo. Autumn of ’89. The Casino Royale. She was on a roll at the craps table. I was on my last roll of quarters. Our eyes met across the crowded casino floor. She said, “Come, kiss the lips of lady luck.” I did. Five minutes later I won $50,000 on a slot machine called “Gooses Wild.” I turned and she was gone. I’ve been looking for her ever since.

Atlantic City, Summer of ’96. The Golden Nugget. Down to my last $50, I join my parents on a three-hour bus trip to the new promised land of gambling conquests – the Jersey shore. The mooing sound from a slot machine called “Sacred Cows” captures my attention. I wait patiently for 2 hours and 25 minutes while a plump, chain-smoking grandmother with a sweatshirt that reads “Caution: Stops Frequently” finishes “milking the cow” for all its worth. It takes me only ten minutes to dump my $50 bankroll down the hatch. The mooing sound seems to mock me as I stagger away.

I cap off my day of thrills by watching a bum fight a seagull for a french fry out on the boardwalk with my dad. In a creepy coincidence, he’s also been rendered penniless by a machine called “Buffalo Bills.” “Do you hear a mooing sound?” my dad asks as we wait for my mom to emerge from the casino with tales of daring moves and jumbo jackpots.

Let There Be Lights

When my wife asked me last week to hang Christmas lights on the house, I became dizzy with anticipation. Not Christmas spirit dizzy. More like impending disaster dizzy.

The problem wasn’t a lack of experience with hanging holiday lights, mind you. Through the years, I’ve successfully hung lights on a wide variety of items living and dead, including: Christmas trees, shrubs and hedges, a fake ficus tree, shelving and furniture, and an un-hung screen door that served as a surrogate tree the year my wife and I started dating.

What was so intimidating about this particular holiday project was that I’d never hung lights on the outside of a house before. Along with the risks and challenges of a guy with a fragile sense of balance standing high atop a low-budget ladder, there’s the issue of how to attach the lights to the house in a fashion that will keep them hanging after you let go. Which, when you think about it, is really the most important part of light hanging.

Clean Freaks

Domestically speaking, I’m a tidy guy. I make the bed.
I hang up clothes. I take out the garbage. I put newspapers in the newspaper rack and books on the bookshelf. I even use an aesthetically pleasing pyramid approach to stacking up mail, with magazines and catalogs on the bottom, postcards and other direct mail pieces in the middle and bills and letters on top. Hey, there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way.

Based on my proclivity for putting things in their place, you might assume that my house would be a pristine environment where visitors take their shoes off at the door and receive a list of do’s and don’ts to follow while inside.  Not exactly. If you want to dig up some dirt on me, here’s my dark secret in a silver dust bin: my tidy streak comes to a screeching halt when it’s time to actually clean anything.