A Night in Jail

Some friends of mine ended up at the police station one Halloween night. If there's ever a night I wouldn't mind being hauled into jail, it would be Halloween. Imagine super heroes in handcuffs while bruised and bloodied Power Rangers patiently fill out paperwork and sit through police questioning. The station would be a mess of drunken idiots in costumes and the jail cell would be even worse. You know that feeling when you go to a Halloween party and you're the only one not wearing a costume? Getting thrown into a cell dressed as a Boy Scout would be similar, except you know, the opposite. The worst scenario would be if you were dressed as one of the cops from Super Troopers and ended up spending the night locked away with real criminals.

Please Advise

Lately a lot of people have been signing work e-mails "please advise" instead of "thanks" or "sincerely" before their name. They don't use it all the time, usually only when passing the bill or seeking a resolution to a problem I created. Here's what I advise: Stop signing your e-mails "please advise." You sound like a towering idiot. Besides, if you were to follow my advice, you would quit your job and move somewhere that I would never see or hear from you again. You don't want someone like me to advise you.

In Case of Emergency: ICE

I read an article a long time ago about ICE numbers. An ICE number is a phone number that you program into your cell phone in case you get into an accident; it stands for In Case of Emergency. According to this article, paramedics check peoples' cell phones for the name "ICE" when they pull a cell phone off an unconscious person. I used my girlfriend's phone number as my ICE contact. My problem was that 'I' came alphabetically before the first letter of my girlfriend's name, so whenever she called me "ICE" would pop up on my caller ID instead of her name. The problem wasn't that I didn't know it was her calling; it was that every time I looked at "ICE" I felt like doom was lurking on the other end. (Turns out I was right.)

Deep Fryer Fun

There was a deep fryer in my old house that we always left turned on. If our vegetarian roommate got sick of breathing evaporated meat juices and oil and tried to turn it off, someone in the house would kick it back on "low" so that it'd be ready to make fries, chips, or donuts at a moment's notice. For a few weeks every meal made in the house had some component that was deep fried. The oil was changed a few times and I never questioned what happened to it until I was trying to move a mysterious milk jug on the porch and spilled old peanut oil into my shoes. The deep fryer met its end when someone tried to deep fry cookie dough, which I think still sounds like a brilliant idea. The cookie dough didn't hold up in the heat and in some freaky aspect of chemistry that I'll never understand it melted to the fryer basket. Getting rid of that deep fryer was like losing a pet that you didn't really like all that much. It was sad to see it go, but you knew you'd be better off.

Cult of Personality

I watched a TV program on cults today and began to wonder what people who were in cults would think if they watched the show. Would they think the people in the program were nuts, would they empathize with their lot as societal pariah--or would they wonder if they'd joined up with the wrong Kook-Aid-toting band? The premise here was that the cult leader said the world would end on some specific date in March of 2007. That had to be an awkward moment when things didn't go quite the way he thought. I imagine it's like the time I said that Cosby Show took place in Chicago and then we looked it up. I think people worry that they're too malleable when it comes to cults. One of my friends back in Minneapolis won't even go near a certain bookstore because he's convinced he would end up signing over his bank account the moment he walked in the door. Then again, that guy did move to the West Coast because some guy at a bar told him there were hot women out there. Maybe he's better off steering clear.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato

Any restaurant you walk into, you should go in knowing that you have a BLT in your back pocket. A BLT's a good sandwich; one that restaurants have to be trying pretty hard to mess up. If you don't know what to order, you can always get a BLT and be pretty happy with your meal. If I want to think about how good my meal was after eating, I compare it to eating a BLT. Would I have rather eaten a BLT? If the answer is 'no,' then I must have had a pretty good meal.

Meet Your Death in My Head

It's good to be able to recognize when you didn't get enough sleep the night before. Sometimes I'll be sitting at the coffee shop working on my laptop when the woman sitting next to me will begin dancing in her chair, really getting into the music she's listening to on big headphones. I'll think, "I'm gonna strangle this psycho hose beast with her own headphone cord in exactly two seconds," and then I'll think, "You know what? I guess I just didn't get enough sleep last night." Several bystanders have met gruesome deaths or severe beatings in my imagination when I've skipped a meal or spent too many hours staring at a computer screen. It makes me wonder what that guy seated next to me on the train is thinking about doing when I keep laughing out loud at the Tarzan book I'm reading.

Can You Take My Picture?

One weekend in Las Vegas, we asked a passerby to shoot a photo of our group. We put our arms around each other and the guy snapped a shot. A couple weeks after getting home, we developed the photos and the one we asked that guy to take of our group came back with all of our heads cut off. Hilarious joke. After that I started cutting off people's heads in photos when they approached me to take a shot. I wanted to spread the joy, but digital cameras ruined all that. I took one digital photo for a couple and the man yelled something at me after he looked at the shot. Some people just don't have a sense of humor.

The Top Half of the Big Mac Bun

I really love Burger King and McDonalds but try not to go very often. I know their food is terrible for me, the environment, and a lot of people offer well reasoned explanations why fast food is killing us all, but to me each trip is a small miracle. I can walk in and order a hamburger, only pay about $0.90, wait two minutes, and then be eating it right away. And not only is it super fast and tasty, but they also make a boatload of money selling those cheap burgers. Though the one fast food sandwich I've never been able to get behind is the Big Mac. The thousand island salad dressing they use as special sauce is gross, and I'm not a fan of the extra bottom half of a bun inserted into the middle of the sandwich. It also occurred to me the other day that all the extra top halves of the bun must be going somewhere, and I find the idea that dumpsters full of top halves of buns exist somewhere very disturbing.

The 22-Year-Old Racist Virgin Making Bad Choices

Last time I was in Utah, I met a woman who somehow inserted into our conversation that she's a virgin. I thought it was an odd thing to bring up, but then again people like to talk about all kinds of stuff, how's she to know what kind of conversation would interest me? She hung out with us the second day I was in town, too. She was sitting next to me on my friend's couch, and we were watching the movie Blue Velvet on TV. It was very late at night, and she casually mentioned that she'd eaten a couple mushrooms before going on to say something about how much she hates Asian people. Then she looked around the room, expecting a groundswell of support. It didn't arrive, and in the next minute, immediately after the scene near the end of Blue Velvet where Frank walks into an apartment and shoots a corpse that's propped up against the wall, the 22-year-old stood up and walked out of my friend's house leaving the front door open. We just kept sitting there and left it open. It somehow fit in with the whole scene.

Mr. Goodfriend

A friend of mine met a young lady heading east from Utah on her way to becoming a guide for the Midwestern outpost of a backcountry service. He told her that he used to be employed by the same guide service, and that during her training she would be hearing a lot about him. He told her some stories, including the time he snuck off to dig a cat hole while a bunch of his kids waited in a canoe above a dam, and also of some of his fraternization with female staff. The girl he'd met attended the guide training and realized that the examples of things that you shouldn't do as a staff member all included our mutual friend. His legacy lives on.

Learning to Drive Stick

I learned to drive stick in my former boss's pickup truck. He'd dispatched us from the bike shop to go to a city park where the local police and fire department were talking to a group of about a hundred kids about bike safety, and our job was to look over the bikes, pump up tires, and generally make sure they were safe to ride. After checking all the bikes and packing up the truck, my co-worker suggested I learn how to drive stick on the way home. We'd parked right between the fire truck and the police car, and on my first try I let the clutch out too quickly and the vehicle lurched forward, jerked back and forth then died. All the firefighters on the truck turned to watch, and the police turned around. Kids milled around on their little bikes everywhere, and my friend said I either had to give the truck more gas or more clutch to stop it from stalling. I killed it one more time, then on my third try he was yelling, "Gas! Gas! Gas!" and I stomped on the gas to stop it from stalling. Smoke was pouring out of the rear tires and we got up to about 40mph in first gear before I had to slam on the brakes to make a 90 degree turn. I didn't run over any kids or get arrested, but I also had to pullover and let my friend drive the rest of the way home.

Whiskey Tasting Values

I went to a bourbon tasting last month. A liquor distributor came into a restaurant and setup six kinds of whiskey for us to try. They made the mistake of giving us all empty tasting glasses and passing the bottle around so we could pour our own .5 oz tastings. Everyone at my table topped off their glasses and the bottles were empty before making it halfway around the room. Some whiskey socialist came in to redistribute the whiskey I'd worked so hard for, but we were all still left with quite a bit of the stuff. The tasting lasted slightly over an hour. During the first 50 minutes the distributor spoke about what makes a bourbon a bourbon and he shared some stories from his years in the whiskey business. We listened respectfully. The last ten minutes was tasting time. We started with the lightest whiskey and worked our way to the strongest. Fifteen minutes later it was as if someone had turned a fire hose on the room. People were standing on their chairs yelling, the guy in charge was trying to talk, and the humidity in the small room approached a rain forest. Everyone had something to say, and instead of waiting for the other person to finish, you just tried to talk louder than them.

Good Morning Antarctica

A guy I met once used to work at the McMurdo Station on the coast of Antarctica. It's an American research station filled with scientists and their support staff, and he worked in some auxiliary general maintenance capacity. He was also a DJ on their radio station. The McMurdo Station has one radio tower that broadcasts a signal the 1200-or-so inhabitants can pick up on clock radios and handhelds. Watching the dial spin after hitting 'scan' down there would get pretty depressing, so you have to hope the DJs do a good job. Apparently the station has crates of old records that are stamped 'Vietnam' on the side. He said that when the U.S. was leaving Vietnam in the early 70s and tearing down their infrastructure, all of the records that belonged to the DJ who inspired the Robin Williams movie 'Good Morning Vietnam' were lying around. Instead of tossing them into the sea, some enterprising DJ had them boxed up and shipped to the McMurdo Station. I like the idea that one of the most interesting record collections in the world has made its home in Antarctica.

Don't Ask a Man Carrying a Shovel at Night for Directions

It makes me uncomfortable to see a guy walking alone carrying a shovel around the city. Snow shovels are okay if it was winter, I'm talking about earth-moving shovels. A guy carrying a shovel around at night has secrets, things you don't want to know. Carrying a shovel can only mean you just dug something up or you're on your way to bury something. And it's worse when you see the guy with the shovel walking around late at night, because then you know whatever needs digging can't wait until morning. If I was a cop, I would probably get in trouble for profiling guys carrying shovels around because my only police tactic would be to follow these people until they lead me to the scene of their crime.

Neck Tattoos and Careful Decisions

If you had to get a facial tattoo, what would it be? If there's a good answer to that question then I haven't heard it. It's never a good idea to accuse someone of regretting their tattoo. And the truth is that you can never really mention that people sometimes regret their tattoos in mixed company, because you have no idea if the people standing around you have a bunch of band names or people's names permanently written on some tucked-away part of their body. If I ever see something and absolutely decide that I want it tattooed on my body, I'll take a picture of it and then carry it around in my wallet for three years. If after those three years I still want the tattoo, I'll draw it on my neck with a Sharpie and try it out for a couple weeks before taking the plunge.

Can Chris Run at an All Out Sprint for 1 Minute?

It was watching the summer Olympics that inspired my friend Chris to say that he could run one minute at an all-out sprint. I can't remember how the conversation started, but I do know the Greece Olympics was on TV, and I took the position that a minute would seem like a really, really long time while trying to run at an all-out sprint. And we're not talking just a fast run, we're talking about a run like the Millennium Falcon trying to outrun the Death Star exploding from its core after they blasted the power coupling (or was it the reactor?) in Return of the Jedi.

So we went to a rarely used half-mile stretch of asphalt behind our house, and I kept watch on my Chevy Cavalier's speedometer to ensure that Chris wasn't slowing down while another roommate called out time with his head sticking out the backseat window. The guy running the timer and I made a side bet: I put a 6-pack on the line that Chris would be able to sprint for at least 20 seconds.

To Chris's credit, he was hauling ass. I was really impressed with the speed of this guy--granted my Chevy Cavalier's speedometer wasn't very reliable, but Chris clocked between 25 and 14 miles per hour. Sadly, Chris couldn't run for the full minute, and I also lost my 20 second side bet. But Chris still contends that if he'd known I'd made a 20 second side bet, he could have sprinted full-on for at least that long.

Jumping Rope vs. Wrestling

In eighth grade I was given the same choice as every other gym class participant: Four weeks of wrestling or four weeks of jumping rope. The class divided along gender and--now that I look back--sexual preference lines. I joined the rest of the men and a few swarthy women on the wrestling mats for the next month, but it's obvious now that I made the wrong choice. Jumping rope with 20 girls and the only gay guy in the class would have been much preferable to getting mat burns on my face.

I've Had it with Frankenberry

Frankenberry is the biggest loser among cereal mascots. He just doesn't have anything going for him. Cap'n Crunch is even cooler than Frankenberry, and he's obviously insane. I'm not sure which mental affliction incapacitates Cap'n Crunch, but he might also be suffering from alcohol withdrawal. His voice is always shaky, and he doesn't seem to have total control of his body. Tony the Tiger is such a goody suck-up it makes me sick--of all the degenerate cereal mascots, Tony would be the worst to hangout with. I wouldn't trust Count Chocula alone in my house for five seconds, but at least he would be interesting, while Tony the Tiger would probably want to talk about Michael Moore Movies all night. I can't figure out Snap, Crackle, and Pop. It's like they want to hang with the Keebler Elves, but they're just too white bread.

Parking Passes, State Parks, and Probable Cause

In high school I didn't have State Park Pass sticker on my car so I faced the possibility of fines or having my car towed if I parked inside the park. Well, really I faced having my mom's Pontiac being fined or towed since I didn't own a vehicle. Luckily a golf course and country club that abutted the state park owned a massive parking lot, and I could park there and ride my bike onto the trails to avoid buying a pass. I'm not sure if that golf course still allows cheapskates to park in their lot, but it would have been easy for them to make some sweet money by having all of our vehicles towed. It was easy to tell which vehicles belonged to bikers in a country club lot because all the Cavaliers and Minibuses with bike carriers stood out against the Cadillacs and Lincolns. It was kind of like in high school how the "drug dogs" happened to single out every car with Grateful Dead stickers for searches.

My Other Shirt Has a Popped Collar

The popped collar is one of the first cultural anomalies I've been old enough to follow through a couple cycles. I've been able to draw on a personal history of watching a trend rise and fall and then rise and fall again. I don't remember when the trend became cool back in my childhood, but I remember thinking that maybe it was time to start folding my collar down after seeing the last clip of Murder, She Wrote where they guy rips the sheet out of his typewriter while wearing a red polo with a popped collar. I'm not really sure when popping a collar became cool the second time around, but I can say that its eventual usurpation and propagation by guys with spiked hair and spray-on tans was its downfall. What's most interesting to me is how the popped collar trend has shifted so quickly from fashion forward to the branding tag of a major loser so quickly. It's similar to the way scientists will breed very simple organisms with short lifespans when they're trying to study evolution. Based on my observations, we should see popped collars jump back in to popular culture in about 2036.

Entering the Seminary

I met a young guy who'd entered the seminary to become a priest and we got to talking over a few drinks. He was family of a friend of mine, and I didn't want to be rude and ask a bunch of uncouth questions about things I've always wondered when men enter the priesthood. I settled on one question that wasn't too rude or presumptuous, and waited for my chance. When my friend got up to go to the bathroom I asked: "Do they have any classes to teach priests how to sing?" During church services priests have to belt out a few lines and universally they're pretty terrible. He said there's one class that they can take relating to choirs and singing in front of crowds, but it's an elective. The whole premise of elective classes in seminary was too much to process.