I was asked to blog in the voice of Bill O’ Reilly.

Here’s my 6/4/07 entry:

I couldn’t stop thinking about AC last night. She consumes my thoughts. Imagining her whispering right-wing rhetoric into my ear at night makes my body quiver like a little Asian schoolgirl. As a teenager I use to watch the The Addam’s Family and would get an erection anytime Morticia would speak French into Gomez’s ear.

“When I first saw you from afar, My heart flamed with fierce passion. And when you spoke French, ooh-la-la!…”

Except, I would puke if she spoke in the guttural, non-coherent, amphibious language of freedom-haters. Not to mention AC’s spectacular boobs arouse me more than any FOX intern I’ve ever met or hired. Not that I would ever suggest that I would hire a person solely on the size of their mammary glands (but it always helps ☺).

After Googling her for hours and drinking a Viagra cocktail and listening to my favorite Kenny Rogers CD, I felt weird and a little stalker-ey. You know Mark Foley-ish but with a woman not a page (although I’m sure that some liberal made him do it. Read here).

My eyes ached, my lower back was killing me and I felt my mouse finger cramping up so I decided to go to bed. However, AC is my crack. I needed one more hit. So as I began my ritual of clearing my history trail so my wife wouldn’t know what I was trolling the Web, I was unable to control my fingers as they typed “A** C****** sexy” into the search box. I was shocked and confused when one of the results was titled, “C****** Comes Out as Transvestite Trickster”.

The reason I was “shocked and confused” was because my state of arousal heightened, my face became flush and my heart raced. It all made sense. I never could understand how a woman could be able to produce such wonderful ideas and be my equal in the war against liberal faggots.

I passed out on the couch in my study and dreamed that we made sweet love. I’ll let you guess who was the top and who was the bottom.

(Hint: Jack was my favorite character)

I graduated from Lee High School in San Antonio, TX.

Lee High School Alma Mater

We all hail† to thee and thy name forever,

Robert E. Lee High;

Your Red and Gray will always wave

As will your banner fly;

Our hearts and loyalty remain forever

In your hallowed halls;

Your majesty will show the way.

There are no other peers

Your fame and glory will not die.

Robert E. Lee throughout the years!

One hundred and twenty six years after the end of the Civil War. During my sophomore year our mascot was downgraded from ‘Rebel’ to ‘Volunteer’. However, the Confederate flag was still our official symbol. Painted and printed on every wall, poster, pom-pom, and on the faces of enthusiastic attendees of pep-rallies. We had three different dance teams: Rebel Rousers, Dixie Drillers, and Confederates. I even had a flag sewn on the front of my Speedos® blasted across my crotch for the swim team and another flag on my skin cap.

My senior year, a small faction of black football players refused to don their jerseys emblazoned with the “Bars and Stripes” on their chest. Other students rallied behind them. Our demographics were divided into four major ethnicities: 60% Hispanic, 29% White, 8% Black, 2% Asian, and Ninook Sealslayer the Eskimo (or Inuit for the PC-people).

The football players who came forward stated that opposing players from the west side all black high schools were hitting them harder and threatening their lives. They were even getting tackled when they were on defense without possession of the ball. Concerned for their safety, they refused to play again until the flag was removed from their uniform.

The Daughters of the Confederacy pleaded to the school board that the flag represented the tradition of the South and paid homage to a great man who attended West Point.

The KKK came and set up camp in the parking lot. Things got heated when they vandalized the church next door. They spray painted a cryptic message, ‘Nigers Go Home’. The church left it up to show their ignorance for the English language.

The students against the flag used the analogy comparing the Confederate flag to the Nazi flag.

They invented this scenario:

Imagine the school was named Erwin Rommel High School in honor of the distinguished German Field Marshal. The mascot was the Desert Fox and the school flag was the very recognizable, satanic red, black and white Nazi flag. Now imagine, you are young 15 year old Jewish boy named Ned Finklestein forced to play defensive end with a swastika on your chest. What do you think would happen to Ned?

First of all, fuck the Confederacy, fuck the KKK, and fuck Bobby Lee!

I can’t connect with this analogy. Jews aren’t renowned as football players. Football owners but not football players. Ned’s father would had made a few phone calls to the superintendent and the board of trustees and gotten the name changed. Done and done.

Perhaps, if they had invented Antonio López de Santa Anna High School and had me imagine how it would feel to be a 15 year old redneck named Tex Alamo with a Mexican flag on your jersey and you had to play against David Crockett High School.

Now that’s something I could imagine.

Jeez, that’s horrible.

If you don’t believe me?

Read a forum I created on MySpace with Robert E. Lee alumni about the “KKK Incident”

Click here

† I always felt comfortable “hailing” to a Confederate flag

I don’t understand how people can narrow down all the important variables in a candidate into one particular issue. The single-narrow mindedness is maddening. There are a plethora of reasons to despise a politician. i.e…perpetuating the oppression of Cubans through our ridiculous embargo, non-involvement in Sudan, not being proactive in dispensing generic drugs to fight HIV in South Africa, not focusing on alternative energy sources like geothermal, tidal, or biomass fuel technology…and a hundred thousand other problems that need to be addressed.

Most jackasses can determine whom they will vote for simply by labeling the individual, “Pro-Life” or “Pro-Choice”. I’m not dismissing abortion as an insignificant matter. Personally, I’m not a big fan of it. However, that only pertains to the one I’m involved with and myself. I couldn’t care less what other individuals do. Does that make me an apathetic dick? Who knows?

Pro-Lifers say that every life is precious, and that you could be killing the next Mozart, Einstein, or Mother Teresa.

I see it differently.

Imagine if Mr. and Mrs. Hutt † had decided Planned Parenthood would have been a better choice instead giving life to their child. If they would have done that, the citizens of the desert planet of Tatooine wouldn’t have had to live their entire lives in fear because of one bloated, slug lord named Jabba. Obviously, he terrorized others because he was projecting his own insecurities caused by feelings of abandonment from his shitty parents. In addition, his self-esteem was non-existent due to his ongoing battle with his weight problem. Four bags of frogs and a couple of Jawas for lunch can’t be healthy. Jabba the Hutt’s life is precious?! He should have been aborted.

Granted, the original scene at Mos Eisley Cantina, where Han Solo blasted the bounty hunter, Greedo ‡, who was trying to collect♠ for the Abortion-Survivor, wouldn’t have taken place. Consequently, Luke and Obi-Wan wouldn’t have escaped on the Millennium Falcon which would have triggered a Butterfly Effect and the Death Star could still be fully operational to this day. However, that conflicts with my original hypothesis of killing Jabba at birth. Perhaps, Darth Vader should have been aborted. Unfortunately, Mr. Vader was formerly known as Anakin Skywalker. Which would have deleted Luke from the equation and he wouldn’t been able to fire his Proton Torpedoes down the exhaust shafts of the aforementioned Weapon of Mass Destruction. Quite the conundrum. In conclusion, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

There was a lot of sexual tension between Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia when they first met. It’s a good thing Yoda told Luke that Leia was his fraternal twin sister before he had died.

Who could imagine the birth defects of child produced by two Jedi twins.

2-1B MEDICAL DROID
His midi-clorians level is off the charts, over 21,000. Unfortunately, he also has an extra chromosome.

LEIA
What does that mean, Two Onebee?

2-1B
It means he has the innate ability to use the Force, but will have Down’s Syndrome as well.

LUKE and LEIA
NOOOOOO!

LEIA
Oh, Luke! What are we going to do?

R2-D2
(whirrrr-chirp-whistle-beeeeep-beep-whistle-blip-whirr)

C3-PO
Behave R2, it isn’t polite to call Master Skywalker’s son a retarded Jedi.

HAN
(smirks)Polite? This is history in the making. R2’s right. You’re son is going to be the first retarded Jedi.

LEIA
You’re an asshole, Solo!

HAN
Hey! Your Holy Highness of the Universe, if you would have fallen for me and not Golden Boy, you two wouldn’t be in this mess.

LUKE
Cool it, Han! I won her—fair and square.

HAN
Won her?! I don’t how things work on a moisture farm, but “sisters” are off limits where I come from…no matter how hot she is. Wookies do it, but their animals.

CHEWBACCA
ARRRGHHHHHHH!!!!

HAN

Shut up ya big baby, stop acting like an overstuffed Ewok.

CHEWBACCA
GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

HAN
Now you’re acting retarded.

LUKE
Stop saying, “Retarded.”

HAN
Why, because your son’s retar…

Fifteen years later (15 A.B.Y.)
Coruscant, capital of the New Republic
Jar-Jar Binks High School
Locker Room

I was a horrible person in 1995. My sense of responsibility was non-existent. I laughed at every bill that arrived in the mail. The fate of the envelope was one of two possibilities: opened and thrown away or unopened and placed in a growing pile. My financial situation was comparable to a Baghdad chandelier maker during Desert Storm. I felt like a truck driver who had jack-knifed his 18-wheeler and the ass end of the trailer was facing 45 degrees from the cabin—a point of no return. No matter what I tried to do to rectify my situation, it was pointless.

If potential success was measured in water, God let me fill up my bathtub and then pulled the plug in April 1994. I had dropped out of the Aerospace Engineering program at Texas A&M University, because of two reasons: I found out I was two inches too tall for the Space Shuttle, and I ran out of money. So I moved back to San Antonio for a few months, ultimately had to abandon everything and hopped on an Amtrak train bound for Daytona Beach, FL.

My life changed dramatically: Thursday Thermodynamics Pizza Night became Wet T-Shirt Contest at Razzles. Gone were the dreams of terraforming the surface of Mars into a hospitable ecosystem and replaced by large quantities of beer, shitty cover bands, lame raves in Orlando, and menial jobs.

I was employed at Aunt Catfish Restaurant on the Halifax River as a waiter. Tourist loved the overpriced fried crap, and waited up to three hours in the Florida sun for the experience of eating coconut shrimp and cornbread and the privilege of drinking super sweet tea out of Mason jars. To top off my misery, I had to introduce myself as Cousin Dan, because they wanted everyone to believe that we were all relatives of ole Aunt Catfish.

The only thing going for me was that I owned a baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes and a leather LeBra on the headlights and was making payments on a black 84’ Chevy Camaro. My credit was so horrible that I couldn’t even get a landline telephone in my name. I didn’t have any savings, so I was forced to get a $3,000 loan for the Camaro through a cutthroat used car dealer that required a payment of $75 in cash every Friday or he would repossess the vehicle. My bitchin’ Camaro would have been a lot cooler if it had a working stereo, an air conditioner, and I had a flux capacitor and an 18 gigawatt generator to transport me back to 1984 when a Camaro was “cool”.

The 80’ Mustang on the other hand was never hip, but it was free. My Uncle Howie had used it for years, handed it down to my cousin Marty, and finally bequeathed to me. Since we lived on A1A (a.k.a. Vanilla Ice’s “Beach front avenue”), the Atlantic’s salt air had corroded the exhaust manifold. The engine sounded like a throaty Harley Davidson chopper. I had to stop driving it because every time my brother Chris, and I drove across the Dunlawton Bridge to Aunt Catshit, we would get high as a kite from the carbon monoxide fumes. I parked it on our front lawn, handed Chris the keys, and wished him luck.

I had to carry full insurance on the Camaro, so I dropped the state required liability coverage for The Stang, assuming my little brother would take care of it, which he didn’t and left it untouched in the front lawn of our beach house. In the state of Florida, not having insurance can guarantee the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee will revoke your license. But as I mentioned earlier, I never read my mail. I had no idea I was driving around town with a suspended license.

One day, a buddy and I were pulled over by a courteous, female police officer a half mile from my house. We were coming back from 7-11™ with a six pack of Icehouse®, Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey® and a can of Kodiak® chewing tobacco. She politely told us that my passenger headlight was out, and asked me for my license, insurance, and registration. She came back to the car and asked me if I knew that my license was revoked. Perhaps she saw the sincere shock and confusion in my face by this information. Since we were only 2,000 feet from my house, she let my friend drive and I told me to take care of this immediately.

When I got back to the crib, I decided to start reading the mountain of mail that I thought would magically take care of itself. It was extremely depressing to finally put an exact figure on what I owed. Each letter dug me deeper into a pit of poverty. Discovery Card, Firestone, Montgomery Wards, Exxon, American Express, AT&T,…it just went on and on. Finally, I found a dusty correspondence from the DMV postdated from six months prior. I opened it and discovered my license had been suspended and I was given thirty days to prove that I had the minimum liability insurance coverage required by state law. I kept reading the mound of unread letters, looking for any “official” scary looking envelopes—I found four more. Two were from Florida DMV, one from The Courts of Daytona Beach Municipality, and the last one was from Daytona Beach Shores Police Department. Not good.

I felt like I had discovered a shoebox of letters from my long lost father that some bastard had maliciously withheld. Unfortunately, that bastard was me. Everyone thought I’d become a rocket scientist for NASA, now I was an uneducated fucking waiter in thousands of dollars in debt.

Each letter I read was more of a demand and less of a warning. It appeared they gave me a chance to pay a small fine and fix the problem, but since I hadn’t resolved it, they had elevated it to Code Red and revoked my license. They set up a court day, which I never showed up to. I guess that’s a big deal, because they issued a bench warrant for my arrest for “Failure to Appear”. I really feel they overreacted. I could understand if it was a big wedding, and the poor prosecuting attorney or bride would be standing there in tears just shrugging his or her shoulders constantly looking at the judge or minister and then self-consciously back at the courtroom entrance hoping I’ll be dashing in with sweat pouring down my apologetic face. But it wasn’t a wedding; just go to the next case.

What the fuck is the big deal? So I didn’t have insurance on a car that nobody drives—who cares? Well, I’ll tell you right now. They cared. They cared a lot.

The next week was shitty: I now had to walk across the Dunlawton Bridge in the balmy Florida heat, so I could be Cousin Dan. I tried to get my license back without going to the police station, but it couldn’t be done. That Friday, from nine am to five pm, I bounced back and forth between the DMV and the courthouse without success. After eight hours of bureaucratic bullshit, I decided I needed a night of drinking to remedy my aggravation. So my cousin Marty and I went to Razzles, the proclaimed hottest night club in the city. Since I couldn’t drive, I gave the keys to my Camaro to Marty. Normally, I always drove, but for obvious reasons, I couldn’t. We drank bottle after bottle of Icehouse®. For some reason, that was my beer of choice in 1995. It seemed sophisticated, yet rugged. Now it seems cheap, yet shitty.

Marty had drunk eleven beers and two shots of Jägermeister® to my seven beers and one shot of Goldschläger®. His toxin tolerance had always been higher than mine. I had the drug tolerance of Sandra Dee in the beginning of the movie of Grease. Since we blew all our money on booze, we couldn’t afford a taxi, not to mention our car would be towed in the morning if we left it over night.

So logically, we decided it would be best if Marty drove since his license wasn’t revoked. We stumbled to the parking lot and climbed into the car. In my head I told Marty to be careful because he was renowned for driving recklessly, but I was so drunk and about to throw up that it came out as, “Let’s get the fuck out of here (hic-cup)”.

He put it in reverse, braced his hand behind my seat, slammed on the accelerator and turned the wheel to the right. I lurched forward and hit my head on the dashboard. He devilishly grinned and stomped on the brake. I flew back to my seat and then went forward again, but I stopped my body with both of my arms. Again, my brain told Marty to be cautious because there were a lot of cops out that night, but it came out, “(belch) Hit it.”

We were only five miles from our house on A1A. Since we were going 60 miles an hour, it would have only taken us five minutes, however, the speed limit was 35 miles per hour. I started to hear sirens, so I looked in the rearview mirror and thought it was a team of fire trucks going to a high-rise apartment building on the beach. I started to scream, “Pull over, pull over, there’s a fire.” Marty slowed down and veered to the right to let them pass.

Except the fire trucks didn’t go by. Instead cop cars surrounded my Camaro and forced us to stop. Both our car doors opened at the same time, and several cops materialized on each side with high-powered MagLites aimed at our retinas. It felt like my corneas were melting. All the commotion was making me queasy. One officer took Marty’s license and went back to his patrol car. About five minutes later, he came back and ripped Marty out of the driver’s seat. He had some prior felony charge and this offense apparently broke his parole agreement. They demanded mine as well—I told them it wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t driving and that it was suspended. They told me to, “Shut the fuck up” and hand over my license. So I did.

Well, remember that “Failure to Appear” bench warrant thingy. Once they ran my license, it came back with a warrant for my arrest. Somehow, their system couldn’t differentiate between me being a rapist, my lack of insurance, or if I had illegally ripped off a mattress tag. For all they know, I could be a serial killer.

When they came back to the car, an officer snarled, “Well, looky here boys, looks like we got a goddamned fugitive from justice. Step out of the car, son.”

I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Confused I said, “No, I’m not a criminal. My license is just…”

At that point, he became enraged, grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out of the car. I could still taste the hot, cinnamon Goldschläger® and felt the Icehouse® swish around in my stomach. My mind raced back to my 2nd grade science project when I made a papier-mâché volcano: vinegar, baking soda, and little orange food coloring. Except this time, I was Mount Vesuvius and Officer Pompeii was going to get hit with my lava. He kept shaking me and telling me to stand up. Like carbonated soda, I reached the threshold of containment. I began to puke on the cop, straight from the scene from The Exorcist. I sprayed him with $47 worth of alcohol. I started at his waist and worked my way down to the tip of his shoe.

He screamed, “You better not have AIDS, boy!”

Disgusted, he turned me around and threw me to the hard-packed ground. He stepped on my back and roughly put handcuffs on me. The other officers were laughing, while Marty cheered me on. Bad move for him. An officer pushed him head first into the back of a squad car. Two different officers grabbed me and put me in the same car with my cousin. Once in, I passed out.

What I awoke to was the one of most disturbing things that I have experienced in my life. A goober police officer who looked like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons held my wrist with his left hand and was driving his fingernail of his right index finger into the flesh beneath MY index finger on MY right hand.

I yelled, “FUCK! OW!! What the fuck are you doing?”

I snatched my arm away and noticed I didn’t have my shirt on. I heard my cousin behind me inside a cell slur out, “They’ve been pinchin’ your nipples, tryin’ to keep you awake, the sick bastards.”

Officer Flanders went over to his cell and said, “Shut up, boy. We’ll take your boxers from you if don’t shut your monkey mouth,” and raked his nightstick across the bars.

“You’ve been puking since you got here. We didn’t want you to die in your sleep, so we’ve had to keep you awake.”

Rubbing my sore nipples, I said “Have you ever heard of smelling salts?”

I still couldn’t understand why I was in jail. I never had any trouble with authority. In fact, throughout my entire academic career, I had only visited the principal’s office three times in my life.

My first time was in 2nd grade at lunch, when I got spanked by a sadistic, draconian principal, who thought he was Shaft, because I had dropped my K.I.S.S. Thermos® which leaked all my Tropical Punch Kool-Aid; forcing me to go to the drinking fountain without asking for permission. I turned the white handle and my parched pallet enjoyed the refreshing arc of H2O. While standing there lapping the water like a thirsty little puppy, Principal Marquis de Sade pulled a paddle riddled with holes for less air resistance to deliver more speed and produce higher momentum to punish four to ten year olds for lack of obedience. He blasted three swats to my ass in less than second. He turned me around and shouted, “That will make you think twice before getting up and drinking water!” I was speechless. Terrified. I wanted to cry, but I was afraid he would slap my face and call me a baby. So I decided to piss my pants instead, like a man. The lunch room exploded with laughter and he spanked me again for peeing.

That same year at a different school, I pissed my pants again in P.E. while hula hooping and had to go and get a new pair of jeans from the vice principal.

My final and most recent episode, I was sent home my senior year at Robert E. Lee High School by idiot Vice Principal Valdez because my shorts were three inches above regulation. I pleaded with him to let me take my calculus test first, then go change, but he denied my request. Obviously, my GPA was not as important as properly-covered femurs.

Since I was an Air Force reservist at the time, I tried to reason with them and show them I also sucked Uncle Sam’s cock and said, “I’m in the Air Force. Have you guys ever served? I just got transferred from Kelly AFB, I was an air transportation specialist, now I’m at Patrick in Cocoa Beach with the 301st Search and Rescue Squadron. Call my unit. Talk to my First Sergent. Hell, I got Airman of the Year.”

They couldn’t care less and said, “Just shut up, Puke Boy, we’re taking you to county.”At least I had graduated from Piss Boy to Puke Boy.

About three in the morning, they let me put my shirt back on. Then they handcuffed our wrists behind our backs and led my cousin and me outside to a cruiser. We didn’t know where we were exactly, but it was a hot and muggy and I smelt salt in the air so we knew we were still on beachside. The two weasel cops signed us over to the new trooper and pushed us into the backseat.

Since belts can be used as weapons, they had taken Marty’s away. He was wearing extremely wide oversized pair of JNCO jeans, which were barely in style. Without a belt, they were at his ankles and revealing his purple, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” Fred Flintstone boxer shorts.

We were both writhing in pain from having our body weight against our pinned back arms. Being 6’6” with disproportionably long legs, I had to do something. So I slid my wrists down, hooked them underneath my feet, and brought them to my chest. What a difference. I stretched back and forth and cracked my neck. It was a small victory in a shitty situation. I felt like Anne Frank enjoying a jam sandwich. I wasn’t free, but damn this jam sandwich tasted like a dream. I wanted to share my contortion technique with Marty so he could benefit from my discovery.

Since his bulky JNCOs were at his ankles we couldn’t get his wrists underneath. I guess we were making a lot of noise because the officer told asked us what we were doing.

I politely replied, “Just getting comfortable.”

He saw my hands were free in the rear view mirror and his eyes bulged out like the Run Away Bride from Georgia. He slammed on the brakes and our heads slammed forward. “Who do you think you are—goddamn Houdini? Tryin’ to escape, that’s a felony offense!”

“I’m not trying to escape,” I said, “I’ll put them back if you want.”

He finally settled down and we drove to the Volusia County Correctional Institution. Scenes from Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor flashed in my head. I prayed that our cellmate would be like Cheeseburger, an intimidating exterior with a teddy bear heart.

We had to relinquish all our valuables, which were annotated. Nicotine products were confiscated and thrown away. Marty had a pack of Marlboro Light® and I had a can of Kodiak®.

We then joined ranks with ten other “criminals”. Single file, heel to toe we marched raggedly one at a time into an office and were told to undress. My flaccid penis shriveled to the size of a tator tot. They manifested your clothes to your list of items and issued you an orange jumpsuit, flip-flops, a comb, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. In most rap videos you see a young hip-hop artists sporting a fly, loose-fitting suit, they’re tailored for the average 5’11’ thug not a seven-foot, albino Ethiopian.

I needed a custom job. Perhaps an XXLT, but they gave me a Medium. Essentially, it was an orange bathing suit from the 20s. A tight-fitting, one-piece pair of knickers that exposed my calves and gave the appearance of me smuggling golf balls in the groin region. Also, it accentuated my normally flat buttocks into an Orange Dreamcicle®. I think this was my punishment for puking on the cop and trying to escape. After dealing with city cops, I had come to terms with the apathetic nature of my captors and nonchalantly said, “Would you mind if I had a bigger size? This one is a little tight?”

The officer didn’t even look up from his paperwork and said, “Why? You want to look pretty for the ladies?”

“No, this will be fine. I’m sure everyone will enjoy it. Thank you. It must be really hard living your life with such a little dick.”

Not the wisest comeback. It was somewhat of a blur after that. Things went downhill from there. They separated Marty and I and put me in a holding cell with some more drunk kids.

Now I had no idea what time it was. I was really hungry and was surprised when they delivered brown bags containing bologna and cheese on Wonder Bread and rotten apple. However, they had miscounted the prisoners and shorted us by one. I wasn’t quick enough to snag a bag, so I called a guard over to tell him they made a mistake. To my great fortune, it was Officer Little Dick and he just sneered at me and turned his back.

I dosed in and out of sleep on the bench in the corner as my stomach growled. Hours later, we were escorted out of the holding cell and told we were being assigned to Cell Block Ten. Fuck. This was it. My innocence would soon be gone. I tried to replay my crappy Taikwondo moves in my head, but I had to drop out at yellow belt because I ran out of money. My self-defense only worked if they grabbed the left lapel of my jacket with their right hand. My flip-flops were especially loud and my orange jumpsuit was riding up my ass. I clutched my toothbrush and vowed I would gouge out the eyeball of any dumb motherfucker who tried to mess with me.

When we arrived at Cell Block Ten, it was filled with a couple dozen tables with newspapers and televisions suspended from the walls. Sunlight bathed the area from white portholes near the ceiling. Expecting the worse, I was surprised to see more now-sobered people like me staring into the distant in their own insular world. I released my Kung-Fu Grip off my toothbrush, found my bunk, and went to sleep.

Marty finally found me and shook me violently, “Wake up, dumbass! They’ve been calling your name for the last ten minutes. Someone bailed you out.”

“Me. Who? Who knows I’m in here? I just want to sleep.”

“Get the fuck up! Go sleep at home.”

I rolled off my bed and got dizzy when the blood drained out of my head. Marty started to laugh when he saw my skintight body suit. “Shut up, dude. My head hurts,” I said.

I slowly walked to the exit door and a guard grabbed my arm. We went back to the receiving room and retrieved my belongings minus the can of Kodiak®. As I was filling out the final paperwork, I asked who bailed me out and how much was it? They told me that someone named Mr. Galbreath had dropped $500 bucks to set me free. I couldn’t place the name and then I realized it was the name on my paycheck. It was the owner of Aunt Catfish, the restaurant where I worked at. I crept outside and fortunately it wasn’t the owner but his son, Brandon.

He was really good-natured about the whole thing and said everybody was laughing about it back at the restaurant. No one could imagine Cousin Dan in prison. I laughed half-heartedly to make him feel comfortable. The air-conditioner felt wonderful in my face as I rested my head on the passenger window. I asked him why his father had bailed me out. “We need you to work section seven upstairs, and you’re the only one available who can handle it,” he said.I couldn’t fucking believe the only reason I was being bailed out was because they couldn’t fill a shift. God forbid, another fat fuck NASCAR fan doesn’t get his hush puppy and homemade cinnamon roll.

But I was just glad to be out so I said, “Great, can we swing by my place so I can shower and get something to eat?”

When we drove up to my house, I saw the reason for my night in hell. The baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes, and a leather LeBra on the headlights.

We should be proud of our legal system. They had righted a wrong. I was a criminal because I didn’t have insurance on an un-drivable car that was permanently parked.

God Bless America!

In 1992, I was drained. Why? I was nineteen and carried a full course load of freshman engineering classes at Texas A&M, worked a full-time job as an assistant manager at 7-11™, served the Air Force Reserves as an Air Transportation Specialist in San Antonio, and donated plasma every week for extra cash. Sometimes I would go for two months without a day off. This particular night was the tale end of four fortnights of school, labor, military and loss of precious bodily fluid. Simply saying I was “exhausted” would be like describing a Titanic survivor as “wet” or Pinochet and Hitler as “very assertive and proactive.”

I had just driven back from my monthly reserve duty Sunday night. Texas A&M was located in College Station and Kelly AFB was about 180 miles away in San Antonio. Monday, I had Calculus, Political Science, and Chemistry 101 from 8am to 1pm. Donated some plasma from 2pm to 3pm, then went home for a nap. Woke up around 8:30pm and went to work at 7-11 for the graveyard shift.

I got back to my studio apartment at six o’clock Tuesday morning. My vision was cloudy and my body felt numb. It was crucial that I go to sleep immediately because I had an eleven o’clock Engineering Graphics class. Except I had overdosed on chili cheese dogs, nachos, chimichangas, Cherry Coke Slurpees, and Funyans and my stomach was killing me. Instead of passing out onto my twin size bed, I bee-lined it toward the bathroom.

My digestive system impatiently sent repeated signals to my brain requesting immediate action to alleviate the situation. My brain responded by quickening my pace and shoving the bathroom door open. There seemed to be an obstruction behind the door, possibly a wet towel that had fallen off the hook. The amount of force being delivered was not sufficient enough to overpower the static friction produced by the damp cloth and the tiled floor. My digestive system pushed the “For Emergency Use Only” button and my arm received a surge of unparalleled strength. I slammed the door against the wall, almost puncturing the door knob through the drywall. Fortunately, the towel was there to absorb the wooden tsunami and acted as a buffer. In a one sweeping motion, I flipped the light switch on, pulled down my pants and sat down on the toilet.

As tired as I was, it was a magical moment of peace. Similar to Siddhartha’s revelation with the river, I felt relaxed. I sighed, placed my forearms on my knees, and looked to my right for a magazine. I found the magazine next to the “towel.” But the “towel” was not a “towel,” it was a coiled snake. A five-foot ball python named Houdini, to be exact. He was named Houdini obviously because he could escape any enclosure. I had him in an aquarium with a lid laden with encyclopedia books, volumes. He had somehow used some ancient technique to miraculous raise the cover stacked with Britannica’s volumes A through M.

An ordinary person unaccustomed to serpents would have freaked the fuck out, but it was a weekly encounter that I had with him. I found him in the most unexpected places: On top of door jams, in my plants, under the couch…etc. My seventeen year-old brother Chris had asked me to baby-sit Houdini because our mother had threatened to kill it if it escaped one more time.

I agreed because ball pythons were renowned for being timid hence the name “ball” because they usually curl up into a scaly sphere out of fear. Up until this night, Houdini had never scared me and we had cohabitated in harmony. But let’s reenact the episode from his point-of-view. He had probably slithered to the bathroom because it was dark and damp, a perfect python environment. Through his tongue, he could sense the vibrations of me opening the front door and walking quickly in his direction. Again an ordinary snake would have scurried off, but he was also familiar with me. His next reaction was completely justifiable. Doing nothing more than resting his belly, he was mortified when I callously slammed his body against the wall and turned on the lights, torching his eyes lacking eyelids.

Houdini acted like a cobra being hypnotized by a Calcutta snake charmer’s flute. His head rose slowly while his neck stiffened. His head rotated in a small circle. I’ve never been this close to a snake in strike mode, especially with my pants down. I tried to reason with him, “Houdini, think about what you’re doing. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. For Christ sake, come on—let’s just settle down.”

He couldn’t hear me, the Dark Side was flooding his senses with Fear and Anger. Since I couldn’t reason with him, I started to yell, “I swear to God, if you draw blood, I will kill you. Do you understand me? You will die!”

His head stopped revolving, springing back a fanged mousetrap. I was petrified. How could this little bastard turn on me? Did I not feed him mice every week? Clean his cage? Save his life from my mother’s death threat? His ingratitude hurt my heart. I realized I had to put the emotional damage aside and deal with my imminent peril. I kept shouting, “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t…”

He lunged at my calf. I jumped up and to the left into the bathtub. I grabbed the shower curtain to keep myself vertical. Defying physics, the three-dollar plastic curtain seemed capable of bearing my weight. I started to lose my balance and grabbed the curtain with my other hand and the extra weight ripped it from the first shower ring. The second ring sustained me once again for the same amount of time as the first, giving me a false sense of security. Once the third ring failed, the others rings popped off like the buttons of groom’s tuxedo shirt on his wedding night. I came crashing down into the tub. Houdini wasn’t content with just scaring me—he wanted to taste my flesh.

I threw the shower curtain on top of him and dove head-first through the door. Somehow I phenomenally managed to roll into a somersault, stood up, did an about face toward the bathroom and slammed the door shut, all in one fluid motion. I was trying to slow my breathing down because I was hyperventilating, forcing myself to breathe through my nose and out my mouth in a steady manner. My heart felt like a rat trapped in sealed in a Tupperware® container. My right hand still gripped the doorknob and my left hand pushed on the doorframe sealing the door. To an outside observer, it would have been ridiculous to assume Houdini would have been capable of opening the door, but they had never been attacked by a five-foot python while sitting on a toilet.
My winter trench coat was hanging to the right of the door on a hook, so I grabbed it and threw it down on the ground to block the ½-inch gap between the door jam and the bottom of the door. Feeling a little safer, I let go of my white-knuckled grip and stepped away from the door. I felt a bit of chill and my body shuddered uncontrollably. I realized my pants were still down around my ankles. I reached down, pulled them up, and buckled my belt.

I went to my closet, grabbed my .22 caliber rifle and a box of .22 long shells. I unlocked the loading tube, unsheathed it from underneath the barrel, filled it with 17 rounds, inserted it back into the hollow cylinder, and locked it back into place. I grabbed the cordless phone, a pack of Djarm® clove cigarettes, and a lighter. Placed a chair about seven feet in front of the door, lit a clove, and called my little brother in San Antonio.

My mother answered, “Hello?”

“Mom, it’s Dan. Can you wake Chris up?” I said.

“Honey, are you alright? It’s six fifteen in the morning,” she asked, “Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I need to talk to Chris,” I said, “it’s about his snake.”

“Houdini!” she screamed, “Kill that motherfucker! Oh, sorry about the cussing, but I knew it. Kill it, you have to kill it.”

“Mom settle down!” I said, “Just get Chris on the line.”

I heard her fumble with the phone and yell, “CHRIS!! CHRIS! Houdini just try to strangle your brother. WAKE UP!”

I had the rifle trained at the door jam, resting on my lap with the stock underneath my armpit and my finger on the trigger. Chris finally stumbled to the phone in the kitchen. “What’s goin’ on?” he said wearily.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m going to shoot your snake,” I said calmly.

“NO! You can’t! I’ll come up and get him. Please don’t shoot him,” he cried.

“Then Mom will kill him. Either way he’s going to die,” I said.

Chris started to cry and begged me not kill him, “Pleeeease, don’t kill Houdini. Pleeeease…” he sobbed. It hurt my heart, I felt like I was telling Timmy that I had to shoot Lassie in the head because he tried to bite me. I then said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up the phone.

I put the safety “on” and leaned the gun on the wall next to the door. Lit my clove cigarette and inhaled an intoxicating drag of spiced flavored smoke. I held it in for four seconds and felt my brain being massaged with narcotic stimulation. Once relaxed, I realized that I had initiated the confrontation and he had only reacted defensively with the primal instincts infused within him from a million years of evolution. It wasn’t personal. In fact, he had probably already forgotten the incident since reptiles lack memory. They only have RAM but no hard drive.

I smoked the rest of my clove, unloaded my Remington, hung up my coat, and went to bed. I couldn’t kill Lassie. Houdini was truly an escape artist and this time he had escaped death.

I was asked to deliver an eulogy last night at their 2-year anniversary of How to Kick People at Mo’Pitkins.

Here it is:

I will never be able to forgive God for this despicable thievery of two talented wordsmiths. God damn you, God! Why did you take these precious souls away from us? Was it because Bob was an atheist or was it because Todd was a Jew? Well, he didn’t have a choice. His mother inflicted him with her Hebe-o-nistic blood. He was just a baby, he didn’t know any better. Sorry about that. I just needed to get that out. My therapist calls this ‘cathartic bursts of clarity’.

I do thank God for taking them at the same time. One could only imagine what kind of an alcoholic Bert would have become without his life partner Ernie. Oscar without Felix, Batman without Robin, Lion-O without Snarf or insert the names of the countless other ambiguously gay but seemingly platonic relationships that have existed between two grown men.

If they were in fact gay, though we will never know, Bob would have definitely been the “top” and Todd would have been the “bottom” or the “cow” as they say in Chelsea.

Two peas from two different farms destined to be in the same pod. Bob’s farm was in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. Todd’s farm was in Albany, the capital city of this great state of New York.

Evolutionary biologists have claimed that the DNA in humans only varies 2% from chimpanzees. Bob and Todd’s had to have been less then .001%. If scientist had made a comparative analysis of their DNA strands, the only difference would have been the additional strands of hair attached to Todd’s face.

They’re similarities surfaced at a young age. At the age of twelve, they both played Dungeon and Dragons. Todd always played a frightened, half-elf druid who dreamed of being a bard and Bob played an enigmatic, seductive female necromancer who had an unhealthy relationship with her cat.

They both started a monthly show in high school. Todd’s show was called, How to Embrace Self-Doubt and Bob’s was called I Enjoy Kicking People.

It was predetermined by the “scientist” above for them to collaborate together. Two similar protons placed in a particle accelerator destined to collide and create an astronomical show, How to Kick People.

The hippest show in town. Its been featured in the New York Times, The Onion, TimeOut New York, and L Magazine. You name it, they’ve been on it. Since its inception, I’ve always wanted to perform on How To Kick People. As a performer, the first email request is always a delicate situation. You have to be assertive but not invasive—funny, but not too funny—flirtatious but dismissive at the same time. I’d like to read my first e-mail to Bob and Todd requesting to be on their line-up.

May 28th, 2005
Hola,
Congrats on both your nominations for the Emerging Comics awards.
I’m available this year but 2006 and 2007 do not look good. If you have any cancellations or future spots available, I’d be delighted.
I’ve written a few pieces that I would like to work out.
-Dan

I figured they get thousands possibly millions of emails everyday. So I waited. I decided to make a follow-up email six months later.

November 8th, 2005
Gentlemen,
I’m willing to give hand jobs for a spot on H2KP

-Dan

I finally got a response.

December 18th, 2005
Keep your pants on Allen. We hear you.
-Bob

Unfortunately, I never got to give those hand jobs.

I’d like to read a poem entitled, Where are you Bob and Todd?
(cue music: Rose from The Titanic Soundtrack)

Where are you Bob and Todd?
The Village needs you.
Who will the hipsters turn to?
Our daily reality is affected by your possible mortality.

Grief, Anguish, Heartache

Embryonic Vonneguts aborted at the first trimester of life.
Transient textual prophets taken away against their will.

At least Hemingway controlled his own demise
with Cheney’s weapon of choice.

Damn you Thanatos! Damn you Osiris! Damn you Hades!

Fortunately, their words have been immortalized on the Web.
God bless the Web,

God bless America,

and God bless the troops!

Where are you Bob and Todd?
The Village needs you.

(fade music)

Andre Du Bouchet hosted the funeral. Mike Albo, Dan Cronin, Lisa Whiteman, and Chris Regan also delivered eulogies as well. Mr. and Mrs. Levin also renewed their vows under the direction of Todd’s will.

What exactly is a kWh?
According to Whatis.com, “kWh is a kilowatt-hour which is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt of power expended for one hour of time” or simply power multiplied by time.

How much power is in a kW?
3,600,000 joules

(The equivalent of the amount of energy exerted by 45,000 Tanya Harding henchmen swinging 45,000 bats (80 joules per hitman)†)

What the hell is a joule?
One joule is defined as the amount of energy exerted when a force of one newton is applied over a displacement of one meter.

(One joule is the amount energy required to lift one apple (100 grams) exactly one meter on Earth)

Jesus Christ! What is a newton? Can you eat it?

No silly. One newton is the force required to cause a mass of one kilogram to accelerate at a rate of one meter per second squared. Think back to high school physics. Force equals mass times acceleration. Remember the dude that got hit on the head with the apple. That dude being the asshole who stole the title away from Leibniz as the “inventor of calculus”.

For fuck’s sake, what does this have to do with my electricity bill?
Everything. The utility company only charges seventeen cents a kilowatt-hour.



Not shabby, considering that a lightning strike generates about 250 kWh which would only cost $42.50 or a little less than two and a half hours of the average hourly wage for a U.S. citizen ($17.03).

So now when people rudely ask you how much you make, be vague and tell them you make enough money to make about eight hundred and thirty-three lightning strikes per year††.
(Hint: Your annual salary divided by your $42.50)

†17¢ seems so much cheaper than $450,000,000 ($10,000 per thug)
††This is the best way to be blown by a rocket scientist or a common nerd

I was a horrible person in 1995. My sense of responsibility was non-existent. I laughed at every bill that arrived in the mail. The fate of the envelope was one of two possibilities: opened and thrown away or unopened and placed in a growing pile. My financial situation was comparable to a Baghdad chandelier maker during Desert Storm. I felt like a truck driver who had jack-knifed his 18-wheeler and the ass end of the trailer was facing 45 degrees from the cabin—a point of no return. No matter what I tried to do to rectify my situation, it was pointless.

If potential success was measured in water, God let me fill up my bathtub and then pulled the plug in April 1994. I had dropped out of the Aerospace Engineering program at Texas A&M University, because of two reasons: I found out I was two inches too tall for the Space Shuttle, and I ran out of money. So I moved back to San Antonio for a few months, ultimately had to abandon everything and hopped on an Amtrak train bound for Daytona Beach, FL.

My life changed dramatically: Thursday Thermodynamics Pizza Night became Wet T-Shirt Contest at Razzles. Gone were the dreams of terraforming the surface of Mars into a hospitable ecosystem and replaced by large quantities of beer, shitty cover bands, lame raves in Orlando, and menial jobs.

I was employed at Aunt Catfish Restaurant on the Halifax River as a waiter. Tourist loved the overpriced fried crap, and waited up to three hours in the Florida sun for the experience of eating coconut shrimp and cornbread and the privilege of drinking super sweet tea out of Mason jars. To top off my misery, I had to introduce myself as Cousin Dan, because they wanted everyone to believe that we were all relatives of ole Aunt Catfish.

The only thing going for me was that I owned a baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes and a leather LeBra on the headlights and was making payments on a black 84’ Chevy Camaro. My credit was so horrible that I couldn’t even get a landline telephone in my name. I didn’t have any savings, so I was forced to get a $3,000 loan for the Camaro through a cutthroat used car dealer that required a payment of $75 in cash every Friday or he would repossess the vehicle. My bitchin’ Camaro would have been a lot cooler if it had a working stereo, an air conditioner, and I had a flux capacitor and an 18 gigawatt generator to transport me back to 1984 when a Camaro was “cool”.

The 80’ Mustang on the other hand was never hip, but it was free. My Uncle Howie had used it for years, handed it down to my cousin Marty, and finally bequeathed to me. Since we lived on A1A (a.k.a. Vanilla Ice’s “Beach front avenue”), the Atlantic’s salt air had corroded the exhaust manifold. The engine sounded like a throaty Harley Davidson chopper. I had to stop driving it because every time my brother Chris, and I drove across the Dunlawton Bridge to Aunt Catshit, we would get high as a kite from the carbon monoxide fumes. I parked it on our front lawn, handed Chris the keys, and wished him luck.

I had to carry full insurance on the Camaro, so I dropped the state required liability coverage for The Stang, assuming my little brother would take care of it, which he didn’t and left it untouched in the front lawn of our beach house. In the state of Florida, not having insurance can guarantee the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee will revoke your license. But as I mentioned earlier, I never read my mail. I had no idea I was driving around town with a suspended license.

One day, a buddy and I were pulled over by a courteous, female police officer a half mile from my house. We were coming back from 7-11™ with a six pack of Icehouse®, Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey® and a can of Kodiak® chewing tobacco. She politely told us that my passenger headlight was out, and asked me for my license, insurance, and registration. She came back to the car and asked me if I knew that my license was revoked. Perhaps she saw the sincere shock and confusion in my face by this information. Since we were only 2,000 feet from my house, she let my friend drive and I told me to take care of this immediately.

When I got back to the crib, I decided to start reading the mountain of mail that I thought would magically take care of itself. It was extremely depressing to finally put an exact figure on what I owed. Each letter dug me deeper into a pit of poverty. Discovery Card, Firestone, Montgomery Wards, Exxon, American Express, AT&T,…it just went on and on. Finally, I found a dusty correspondence from the DMV postdated from six months prior. I opened it and discovered my license had been suspended and I was given thirty days to prove that I had the minimum liability insurance coverage required by state law. I kept reading the mound of unread letters, looking for any “official” scary looking envelopes—I found four more. Two were from Florida DMV, one from The Courts of Daytona Beach Municipality, and the last one was from Daytona Beach Shores Police Department. Not good.

I felt like I had discovered a shoebox of letters from my long lost father that some bastard had maliciously withheld. Unfortunately, that bastard was me. Everyone thought I’d become a rocket scientist for NASA, now I was an uneducated fucking waiter in thousands of dollars in debt.

Each letter I read was more of a demand and less of a warning. It appeared they gave me a chance to pay a small fine and fix the problem, but since I hadn’t resolved it, they had elevated it to Code Red and revoked my license. They set up a court day, which I never showed up to. I guess that’s a big deal, because they issued a bench warrant for my arrest for “Failure to Appear”. I really feel they overreacted. I could understand if it was a big wedding, and the poor prosecuting attorney or bride would be standing there in tears just shrugging his or her shoulders constantly looking at the judge or minister and then self-consciously back at the courtroom entrance hoping I’ll be dashing in with sweat pouring down my apologetic face. But it wasn’t a wedding; just go to the next case.

What the fuck is the big deal? So I didn’t have insurance on a car that nobody drives—who cares? Well, I’ll tell you right now. They cared. They cared a lot.

The next week was shitty: I now had to walk across the Dunlawton Bridge in the balmy Florida heat, so I could be Cousin Dan. I tried to get my license back without going to the police station, but it couldn’t be done. That Friday, from nine am to five pm, I bounced back and forth between the DMV and the courthouse without success. After eight hours of bureaucratic bullshit, I decided I needed a night of drinking to remedy my aggravation. So my cousin Marty and I went to Razzles, the proclaimed hottest night club in the city. Since I couldn’t drive, I gave the keys to my Camaro to Marty. Normally, I always drove, but for obvious reasons, I couldn’t. We drank bottle after bottle of Icehouse®. For some reason, that was my beer of choice in 1995. It seemed sophisticated, yet rugged. Now it seems cheap, yet shitty.

Marty had drunk eleven beers and two shots of Jägermeister® to my seven beers and one shot of Goldschläger®. His toxin tolerance had always been higher than mine. I had the drug tolerance of Sandra Dee in the beginning of the movie of Grease. Since we blew all our money on booze, we couldn’t afford a taxi, not to mention our car would be towed in the morning if we left it over night.

So logically, we decided it would be best if Marty drove since his license wasn’t revoked. We stumbled to the parking lot and climbed into the car. In my head I told Marty to be careful because he was renowned for driving recklessly, but I was so drunk and about to throw up that it came out as, “Let’s get the fuck out of here (hic-cup)”.

He put it in reverse, braced his hand behind my seat, slammed on the accelerator and turned the wheel to the right. I lurched forward and hit my head on the dashboard. He devilishly grinned and stomped on the brake. I flew back to my seat and then went forward again, but I stopped my body with both of my arms. Again, my brain told Marty to be cautious because there were a lot of cops out that night, but it came out, “(belch) Hit it.”

We were only five miles from our house on A1A. Since we were going 60 miles an hour, it would have only taken us five minutes, however, the speed limit was 35 miles per hour. I started to hear sirens, so I looked in the rearview mirror and thought it was a team of fire trucks going to a high-rise apartment building on the beach. I started to scream, “Pull over, pull over, there’s a fire.” Marty slowed down and veered to the right to let them pass.

Except the fire trucks didn’t go by. Instead cop cars surrounded my Camaro and forced us to stop. Both our car doors opened at the same time, and several cops materialized on each side with high-powered MagLites aimed at our retinas. It felt like my corneas were melting. All the commotion was making me queasy. One officer took Marty’s license and went back to his patrol car. About five minutes later, he came back and ripped Marty out of the driver’s seat. He had some prior felony charge and this offense apparently broke his parole agreement. They demanded mine as well—I told them it wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t driving and that it was suspended. They told me to, “Shut the fuck up” and hand over my license. So I did.

Well, remember that “Failure to Appear” bench warrant thingy. Once they ran my license, it came back with a warrant for my arrest. Somehow, their system couldn’t differentiate between me being a rapist, my lack of insurance, or if I had illegally ripped off a mattress tag. For all they know, I could be a serial killer.

When they came back to the car, an officer snarled, “Well, looky here boys, looks like we got a goddamned fugitive from justice. Step out of the car, son.”

I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Confused I said, “No, I’m not a criminal. My license is just…”

At that point, he became enraged, grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out of the car. I could still taste the hot, cinnamon Goldschläger® and felt the Icehouse® swish around in my stomach. My mind raced back to my 2nd grade science project when I made a papier-mâché volcano: vinegar, baking soda, and little orange food coloring. Except this time, I was Mount Vesuvius and Officer Pompeii was going to get hit with my lava. He kept shaking me and telling me to stand up. Like carbonated soda, I reached the threshold of containment. I began to puke on the cop, straight from the scene from The Exorcist. I sprayed him with $47 worth of alcohol. I started at his waist and worked my way down to the tip of his shoe.

He screamed, “You better not have AIDS, boy!”

Disgusted, he turned me around and threw me to the hard-packed ground. He stepped on my back and roughly put handcuffs on me. The other officers were laughing, while Marty cheered me on. Bad move for him. An officer pushed him head first into the back of a squad car. Two different officers grabbed me and put me in the same car with my cousin. Once in, I passed out.

What I awoke to was the one of most disturbing things that I have experienced in my life. A goober police officer who looked like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons held my wrist with his left hand and was driving his fingernail of his right index finger into the flesh beneath MY index finger on MY right hand.

I yelled, “FUCK! OW!! What the fuck are you doing?”

I snatched my arm away and noticed I didn’t have my shirt on. I heard my cousin behind me inside a cell slur out, “They’ve been pinchin’ your nipples, tryin’ to keep you awake, the sick bastards.”

Officer Flanders went over to his cell and said, “Shut up, boy. We’ll take your boxers from you if don’t shut your monkey mouth,” and raked his nightstick across the bars.

“You’ve been puking since you got here. We didn’t want you to die in your sleep, so we’ve had to keep you awake.”

Rubbing my sore nipples, I said “Have you ever heard of smelling salts?”

I still couldn’t understand why I was in jail. I never had any trouble with authority. In fact, throughout my entire academic career, I had only visited the principal’s office three times in my life.

My first time was in 2nd grade at lunch, when I got spanked by a sadistic, draconian principal, who thought he was Shaft, because I had dropped my K.I.S.S. Thermos® which leaked all my Tropical Punch Kool-Aid; forcing me to go to the drinking fountain without asking for permission. I turned the white handle and my parched pallet enjoyed the refreshing arc of H2O. While standing there lapping the water like a thirsty little puppy, Principal Marquis de Sade pulled a paddle riddled with holes for less air resistance to deliver more speed and produce higher momentum to punish four to ten year olds for lack of obedience. He blasted three swats to my ass in less than second. He turned me around and shouted, “That will make you think twice before getting up and drinking water!” I was speechless. Terrified. I wanted to cry, but I was afraid he would slap my face and call me a baby. So I decided to piss my pants instead, like a man. The lunch room exploded with laughter and he spanked me again for peeing.

That same year at a different school, I pissed my pants again in P.E. while hula hooping and had to go and get a new pair of jeans from the vice principal.

My final and most recent episode, I was sent home my senior year at Robert E. Lee High School by idiot Vice Principal Valdez because my shorts were three inches above regulation. I pleaded with him to let me take my calculus test first, then go change, but he denied my request. Obviously, my GPA was not as important as properly-covered femurs.

Since I was an Air Force reservist at the time, I tried to reason with them and show them I also sucked Uncle Sam’s cock and said, “I’m in the Air Force. Have you guys ever served? I just got transferred from Kelly AFB, I was an air transportation specialist, now I’m at Patrick in Cocoa Beach with the 301st Search and Rescue Squadron. Call my unit. Talk to my First Sergent. Hell, I got Airman of the Year.”

They couldn’t care less and said, “Just shut up, Puke Boy, we’re taking you to county.”At least I had graduated from Piss Boy to Puke Boy.

About three in the morning, they let me put my shirt back on. Then they handcuffed our wrists behind our backs and led my cousin and me outside to a cruiser. We didn’t know where we were exactly, but it was a hot and muggy and I smelt salt in the air so we knew we were still on beachside. The two weasel cops signed us over to the new trooper and pushed us into the backseat.

Since belts can be used as weapons, they had taken Marty’s away. He was wearing extremely wide oversized pair of JNCO jeans, which were barely in style. Without a belt, they were at his ankles and revealing his purple, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” Fred Flintstone boxer shorts.

We were both writhing in pain from having our body weight against our pinned back arms. Being 6’6” with disproportionably long legs, I had to do something. So I slid my wrists down, hooked them underneath my feet, and brought them to my chest. What a difference. I stretched back and forth and cracked my neck. It was a small victory in a shitty situation. I felt like Anne Frank enjoying a jam sandwich. I wasn’t free, but damn this jam sandwich tasted like a dream. I wanted to share my contortion technique with Marty so he could benefit from my discovery.

Since his bulky JNCOs were at his ankles we couldn’t get his wrists underneath. I guess we were making a lot of noise because the officer told asked us what we were doing.

I politely replied, “Just getting comfortable.”

He saw my hands were free in the rear view mirror and his eyes bulged out like the Run Away Bride from Georgia. He slammed on the brakes and our heads slammed forward. “Who do you think you are—goddamn Houdini? Tryin’ to escape, that’s a felony offense!”

“I’m not trying to escape,” I said, “I’ll put them back if you want.”

He finally settled down and we drove to the Volusia County Correctional Institution. Scenes from Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor flashed in my head. I prayed that our cellmate would be like Cheeseburger, an intimidating exterior with a teddy bear heart.

We had to relinquish all our valuables, which were annotated. Nicotine products were confiscated and thrown away. Marty had a pack of Marlboro Light® and I had a can of Kodiak®.

We then joined ranks with ten other “criminals”. Single file, heel to toe we marched raggedly one at a time into an office and were told to undress. My flaccid penis shriveled to the size of a tator tot. They manifested your clothes to your list of items and issued you an orange jumpsuit, flip-flops, a comb, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. In most rap videos you see a young hip-hop artists sporting a fly, loose-fitting suit, they’re tailored for the average 5’11’ thug not a seven-foot, albino Ethiopian.

I needed a custom job. Perhaps an XXLT, but they gave me a Medium. Essentially, it was an orange bathing suit from the 20s. A tight-fitting, one-piece pair of knickers that exposed my calves and gave the appearance of me smuggling golf balls in the groin region. Also, it accentuated my normally flat buttocks into an Orange Dreamcicle®. I think this was my punishment for puking on the cop and trying to escape. After dealing with city cops, I had come to terms with the apathetic nature of my captors and nonchalantly said, “Would you mind if I had a bigger size? This one is a little tight?”

The officer didn’t even look up from his paperwork and said, “Why? You want to look pretty for the ladies?”

“No, this will be fine. I’m sure everyone will enjoy it. Thank you. It must be really hard living your life with such a little dick.”

Not the wisest comeback. It was somewhat of a blur after that. Things went downhill from there. They separated Marty and I and put me in a holding cell with some more drunk kids.

Now I had no idea what time it was. I was really hungry and was surprised when they delivered brown bags containing bologna and cheese on Wonder Bread and rotten apple. However, they had miscounted the prisoners and shorted us by one. I wasn’t quick enough to snag a bag, so I called a guard over to tell him they made a mistake. To my great fortune, it was Officer Little Dick and he just sneered at me and turned his back.

I dosed in and out of sleep on the bench in the corner as my stomach growled. Hours later, we were escorted out of the holding cell and told we were being assigned to Cell Block Ten. Fuck. This was it. My innocence would soon be gone. I tried to replay my crappy Taikwondo moves in my head, but I had to drop out at yellow belt because I ran out of money. My self-defense only worked if they grabbed the left lapel of my jacket with their right hand. My flip-flops were especially loud and my orange jumpsuit was riding up my ass. I clutched my toothbrush and vowed I would gouge out the eyeball of any dumb motherfucker who tried to mess with me.

When we arrived at Cell Block Ten, it was filled with a couple dozen tables with newspapers and televisions suspended from the walls. Sunlight bathed the area from white portholes near the ceiling. Expecting the worse, I was surprised to see more now-sobered people like me staring into the distant in their own insular world. I released my Kung-Fu Grip off my toothbrush, found my bunk, and went to sleep.

Marty finally found me and shook me violently, “Wake up, dumbass! They’ve been calling your name for the last ten minutes. Someone bailed you out.”

“Me. Who? Who knows I’m in here? I just want to sleep.”

“Get the fuck up! Go sleep at home.”

I rolled off my bed and got dizzy when the blood drained out of my head. Marty started to laugh when he saw my skintight body suit. “Shut up, dude. My head hurts,” I said.

I slowly walked to the exit door and a guard grabbed my arm. We went back to the receiving room and retrieved my belongings minus the can of Kodiak®. As I was filling out the final paperwork, I asked who bailed me out and how much was it? They told me that someone named Mr. Galbreath had dropped $500 bucks to set me free. I couldn’t place the name and then I realized it was the name on my paycheck. It was the owner of Aunt Catfish, the restaurant where I worked at. I crept outside and fortunately it wasn’t the owner but his son, Brandon.

He was really good-natured about the whole thing and said everybody was laughing about it back at the restaurant. No one could imagine Cousin Dan in prison. I laughed half-heartedly to make him feel comfortable. The air-conditioner felt wonderful in my face as I rested my head on the passenger window. I asked him why his father had bailed me out. “We need you to work section seven upstairs, and you’re the only one available who can handle it,” he said.I couldn’t fucking believe the only reason I was being bailed out was because they couldn’t fill a shift. God forbid, another fat fuck NASCAR fan doesn’t get his hush puppy and homemade cinnamon roll.

But I was just glad to be out so I said, “Great, can we swing by my place so I can shower and get something to eat?”

When we drove up to my house, I saw the reason for my night in hell. The baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes, and a leather LeBra on the headlights.

We should be proud of our legal system. They had righted a wrong. I was a criminal because I didn’t have insurance on an un-drivable car that was permanently parked.

God Bless America!

Hey guys, my inbox has been flooded with emails from fans asking me, “What is the best way to kill a killer whale?!”



Good question!

Some people love large, commercial nets, others use decoy seals loaded with C4 and amazingly there is a growing number of old-school, harpooning elitists.

After much thought, I realized that killer whales are mammals and as a card-carrying mammal I breathe involuntarily regardless of if I’m awake or asleep. However, killer whales (aka…orcinus orcas) live underwater which means that “they have to actively decide when to breathe“.

Boo-yah!

Since, whales are never completely unconscious. All you have to do is wait until they are in their semi-comatose state of “Dead Man’s Float”, swim to them (I’m guessing very quietly) and give one solid hit to the head with a mallet would work.

Prior to moving here in June of 2001, I worked as a pawnbroker for my family’s pawnshop in Virginia Beach and performed regularly at Thoroughgood Comedy Club. I was an aspiring comedian on my way to be a road comic middling up and down the east coast. I got engaged to a young lady who I had been dating on and off for five years. We bought a townhouse together (well technically it was in her name so “we” should be amended to “she”. A wiser person would have seen this as a telling foreshadow of what was to come). During those five years, the aforementioned young lass went back to school for her master’s degree at Old Dominion University. She had a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from U. Conn but decided it was worthless when she found out that there were no whips or Nazis involved in the actual field work. It mostly involved labeling chips of bone fragments in a musty room. During her studies, she began a metamorphosis. Slowly she gained about twenty pounds, got glasses, and braces—a reverse Cinderella story.

I wasn’t deterred by these superficial changes. I was smitten and blinded by true love. I should also reveal the fact that Virginia Beach and Norfolk has five Navy bases and has the highest rate of eligible bachelors (eligible meaning douchebag sailors) and ranked second as the fattest city (Hence the reason why Norfolk is pronounced, “No-fuck”). With that said—at the time, I wasn’t fully aware of my self-worth and thanked God for anyone to put up with my neurosis. I felt if she left my life, I would be doomed for eternity, never to be loved again (fucking pathetic).

Somewhere within the five years of our courtship, we had taken a seven month sabbatical. My friends were very disappointed in me when they heard that I had decided to get back together with her. Someone told me, “If someone gives you a spoonful of poo, why would you ask for another?” I should have listened but again I didn’t know my self worth and had a second helping. I proposed on Christmas Eve of 2000 and are wedding date was scheduled for August 2001 in Hawaii.

Everything was moving along swimmingly for an average couple living in Suburbia. A yard, a lawnmower, a cat, a fireplace, a laundry room, an office, a guest bedroom, a garage, a grill, etc…I knew I was on a path to domestication when I bought a twenty-five pound bag of winter rye grass seed and a seed hopper at Home Depot and was excited as I drove home to my wife-to-be.

As our wedding date approached, my fiancé finished her degree, landed a job, lost the twenty pounds with yoga, got contacts, had her braces removed, and started to go to a tanning salon. In one month, she had transformed into a sexual butterfly. Think Sandy from Grease or Tony Danza’s daughter in She’s Out of Control. She became the knock-out girl I originally fell in love with. Life seemed incredible.

In April of 2001, she informed me that she was going on a cruise to the Bahamas with her teenage sister for some bonding time. Having two brothers myself, I completely understood her want of one-on-one time with her sibling. Why not? The previous year they had gone to Cancun. Unfortunately, we ran up a four hundred dollar phone bill because she wanted me to be there and spoke every night. However, this particular trip I didn’t even receive an email. Something seemed amiss but I didn’t put too much thought into it because it was ship in the middle of the ocean with limited access to telecommunication.

She came back tanner and hotter than I had ever seen her. I quickly set her bags down and leaned down to kiss her passionately. However, my sexual energy was rapidly dissipated by her cold response. She returned my advance with a contrived, emotionless embrace equivalent to a great-aunt who you are meeting for the first time. The psycho jealous part of me immediately started to chant in my head, “She fucked someone!” I shook that off as immature thoughts and gazed in her eyes. She quickly looked away and walked into the living room and sat on the couch. Not good. She was avoiding eye contact. I asked, “Do you want me to fix some eggs?” trying to sound casual. She stared out the window and stroked our cat Buddha. I nervously observed her with my peripheral vision and stared at the frying pan. As I flipped the eggs over with a spatula, my mind was flooded with images of her in a cabin in various positions, sweating, panting, crying out in ecstasy…the eggs…focus on the eggs…make the bad thoughts go away.

An internal dialogue began:

As I carefully placed the eggs on a plate and buttered the toast, she turned to me and said quietly, “Dan, I have something to tell you.”

I left the plate of food on the counter top and walked out to the living room and sat next to her. She looked at me. Here eyes were vibrating and slightly teary. She looked me in the eyes and said, “I kissed someone on the cruise.”

“WHAT!? How could you?” I cried out and stood up and placed both my hands on the mantelpiece and stared at with wall in front of me. She started to cry and I felt this white cloud of rage ebb through my body. I closed my eyes and let it fade out. I finally turned around and rubbed out the rest of my anger from my eyes and face with the palms of my hand. I massaged my forehead with an up-and-down motion. My hands still smelled of bacon and butter from the meal I just made her. It made me feel nauseous. I started to relax and started to rotate my fingertips on my temples to bring me to a sedated state. I opened my eyes and looked at her. I wanted to be an adult. I want to have a mature response. So I firmly planted my left hand on the mantelpiece and calmly said, “Obviously, this is a cry for help. Something is wrong with our relationship. I want to fix it. I still want to marry you. I still love you. I forgive you.”

And how did my precious love-of-my-life respond you ask?

It reverberates in my head to this day. In fact, every time I need to illicit rage, sadness or combination of both all I need to do is raise my left arm and look down to the right. My body responds to this like Pavlov’s dog does a bell.

Here is what she said verbatim:

“You forgive me? (confused smirk) I don’t want your forgiveness. If I had a chance to do it again, I would.”

As traumatic as this tale may seem to be, I thank her for what she did that day. If she hadn’t done that, I would probably be in a sexless marriage, own a pawnshop and perform comedy sporadically throughout the South.

A few years ago I was standing in front of the iconic Bowery Poetry Club which is across the street from the infamous but now closed CBGB. I was smoking a cigarette with fellow performers and I confessed,
“Even though I’m not that religious, I feel a little guilty because I woke up this morning, masturbated and then realized it was Easter.” Before anyone could respond, a guy standing next to us started to mumble, “An erection, a resurrection…he had an erection on a resurrection…An erection, a resurrection…(repeat)”.

I would have normally dismissed the guy as a “normal”, crazy homeless guy but I noticed the marquee stating that Jim Carroll, the author of The Basketball Diaries, was performing in a half hour. So instead of walking away from him like my friends did, I approached him and offered him a cigarette. Next thing I now I’m listening to a personalized spoken word piece about my erection and Jesus. Groovy.

Wikipedia tells me Jim was born in 1950 but I was shocked to see how old he actually looked. I would say he was in between Zsa Zsa Gábor and the Crypt Keeper.

The government would save so much money on the War on Drugs if they just took Mr. Carroll on tour to high schools across America. All they would have to do is introduce him to the class and say, “You can do drugs but…” and make an awkward, cartoon-y side glance to Jim. Done.

My girlfriend and I attended a Comedy Central taping of Live at Gotham a month ago to support a few friends.**

In the world of comedy, your first Comedy Central debut is a milestone in an unpredictable career choice. I liken it to an Associate’s Degree (perhaps even a certificate from DeVry or commercial driver’s license from a truck driving school).

A Half-Hour Comedy Central’s Presents would be your Bachelor’s, a Conan, Kimmel or Ferguson your acceptance into a graduate program, a Letterman or Leno being your Master’s and your own special on HBO representing your thesis that enables you to obtain your Doctorate. Essentially, a Ph. D in funny. I was going to wedge in another analogy about the various festivals (Montreal, Aspen, Edinburgh, and Melbourne) but I think I’ve bored myself with the over usage of metaphors, allegories, similes and analogies (I can never tell which are which).

Anyways, I digress. Regardless, I was very proud of my friends performing that night. Each one had worked very hard to get to that point.

Unfortunately, some drunk escort/hooker/bitch woman with a creepy, old, rich dude and a bottle of $300 champagne ruined it for us.

My friend had the last and most difficult spot and was killing but the hookerslut kept slurring, “He’s not funny. This sucks. I can’t believe they
let him perform.”

(Note: She was high-five-ing her sugar daddy when the host** was shitting out his crowd-pleasing, misogynistic jokes).

The Gotham staff had already approached her twice and were keeping an
eye on her but they didn’t want to cause a scene.

To retaliate without making a scene and disrupting my friend’s set, we did the most childish and passive-borderline-psycho-aggressive act. For the record, it was initiated by my girlfriend which was extremely uncharacteristic of her. She strategically tipped over my unfinished Heineken with the intention of soaking the overdone-airbrushed-Glamour Shot in the mall-feather-boa-wearing-back-flab-trying-to-escape-satin-dress-hooker’s expensive purse that was covered with feathers (probably from an endangered species). However, the pool of beer wasn’t moving as fast as we wanted. So I ever so slightly lifted the table at one end to create an angle allowing gravity to create enough force for the puddle of beer to over come the static friction of the table (I believe physicists would call that coefficient μ or mu) to pull the fluid toward trainwreck’s purse.

It was exhilarating. We felt giddy. Since it was torrentially raining, freezing, windy and she was wearing a skimpy, slutty dress, I took their umbrella and placed it six tables over as we left.

Fuck her, don’t mess with my friend’s careers.

**Names withheld to protect their identities

Not sure when I’ll be able to post again. The holoscreen said something about Thundera being unstable and that the planet is about to explode or some shit. WTF??! This sucks! I finally have a hot date this weekend. Awesome. The one shot I had to score and the universe decides to blow up my planet. I’ll be the only Thunderian who dies as a virgin. Jaga told us to pack tonight and that we are leaving at oh-dark thirty. I really hope we leave that stupidass, golden-boy Lion-O. What a queer! I honestly feel that he’s gay. I mean…nothing against gay people. I mean…I like Tygra and everything (although he hasn’t officially come out of the closet…we all know it). Back to Lion-O, the reason I think he’s gay is because he’s always trying to wrestle. It just gets weird sometime. Not to mention the way he stares me down when we have to shower together at school. Maybe I’m just reading into it too much or maybe he’s just envious of my package. It’s not my fault that he’s older and less endowed. He looks like he just got neutered. Anyways…I gotta log off. I don’t want to get yelled at by Ole Jaga-nut tomorrow morning.

Shame #1:
Graduated from Robert E. Lee High School

Shame #2:
Being the lead singer in the insanely popular Christian boy band called the,
Flock of Mullets.

Shame #3:
Becoming a fork lift driver in the Air Force to free myself from a trailer park in South Texas

It was the summer of 1988. I was visiting my family in Daytona Beach. My cousin Marty and I had spent the entire afternoon skimboarding…well—he was, I was trying. Some people ask, “What is skimboarding?” Essentially, a skimboard looks like a cross between a boogie board and a surf board.

I like to call it a “fiberglass razor of death”. How do you use it? Simple: you hold it in your hands, run with it, throw it down, jump on it and hydroplane on an inch of moving water above sand. Easy. No problem. Obviously, this is all theoretical horseshit. It only works if you have the natural athletic aptitude of an Olympian. Unfortunately, I have the natural aptitude of a paralympian. What they forget to tell you is that when the water washes out, the board stops but you don’t. Your momentum launches you into a painful trajectory that only ends when you roll to a stop in the hard-packed wet sand. It’s the equivalent of getting in the back of a pick-up truck on a beach, giving the thumbs up signal to your buddy, wait until he has picked up some speed and walk off the bed of the truck. Doesn’t sound that inviting but for some reason I did that over and over for hours. My body was begging me to stop. My back was bleeding from the sand abrasions. I learned quickly that sand fucking hurts. As I lay in the shallow water bleeding to death, the Sun glistened on the wet sand and made it sparkle. I had an epiphany: If glass was made of sand, then the reciprocal of that is—sand is made of crushed glass. That’s when I decided I had enough. I wasn’t going to continue rolling around in crushed glass for pleasure.

So I decided to abandon this foolhardy attempt to be an extreme messiah and levitate on water. I grabbed my Morey slick-bottom bodyboard and headed into the ocean. My cousin followed suit and got his surfboard. My wounds hissed as the salt water made contact. I felt like a vampire being bathed in holy water. Once the pain subsided, I relished in the moment and realized the conditions were fantastic. Even though dusk was fast approaching, the water temperature was not too cold and the waves were perfect. However, another set of conditions were also perfect which wasn’t desirable: our proximity to the pier (chum, bait, etc…), visible shrimp boats, and my bleeding back—A classic recipe for a shark attack.

We were fearless immortals trapped in teenager bodies. As we were facing the beach and waiting for the next set of waves, we heard screams to the right (north) of us coming from a dozen tourists. They were screaming, “Shark! Shark!” and swimming furiously to land. To a non-Native, this would be extremely alarming but as a townie this was an everyday occurrence. Nine times out of ten it turns out to be a school of bluefish or a dolphin. The key factor in telling the differences between a dolphin and a shark is the fin and the way it moves. Sharks have a triangle and dolphins have a curve. Dolphins go up-and-down and sharks go side-to-side. Basic marine biology.

Marty and I were not going to throw in the towel just because some hillbillies from Kentucky thought Flipper was Jaws. My cousin was closer to the “shark”. He was north-east of me about thirty yards away. We made eye contact and laughed at the idiot tourists who frantically fled for their lives. Marty’s attention went back to the upcoming waves. He laid on his stomach and looked over his left shoulder ignoring the chaos to the north.

I was going to do the same but I still had to swim farther west. About a minute later, I saw the infamous fin that created the terror. Just as I suspected it was rising up like a dolphin, not side-to-side, but it was weird because the small fin never went down, it just went up. Then I realized it was only the tip of the fin that was moving up. It was only the periscope of a nuclear submarine. Once the entire fin had surface, I was staring at a very large triangle that was moving side-to-side. Holy Christ! The hillbillies were right. It was a shark! My synapses and neurons were trying to get the word, “Shark!” out at a volume loud enough for Marty to hear. At the same time, the waves we were waiting for came in. Relentlessly, pounding me away from my cousin. I tried to yell out the monosyllable word but my brain misfired and spat out, “F..fi…fin! Big fin!” My cousin barely heard me over the roar of the surf. “What?” he screamed. I autistically kept rattling off, “Fin, big fin, fin…” “I can’t hear you”, he said annoyed and waved me off as he devoted his attention to the wave that was upon him. I looked to the left and saw the fin speeding in his direction and slipped beneath the surface. With a last ditch effort, I reached within and belted out one more warning, “Fiiiiiiinnnnn!” He looked at me confused, confidently paddled his arms, fluidly hopped up on his board and surfed to the beach with ease.

By Poseidon’s Trident and Odin’s Balls, he did it. He had escaped the jaws of an ancient creature designed with the only purpose to kill. I nearly cried in the joy of his salvation but before I could celebrate, my own sense of mortality overwhelmed me. There was only twenty-five yards between a very disappointed, hungry shark and my bleeding back. The foreboding fin resurfaced where Marty once was. I was petrified. My arms and legs involuntarily started to quiver as if I were being mildly electrocuted. Then the million-year-old cartilage and teeth of death submarine submerged for another attempt at supper. My brain finally regained control of my motor skills and it commanded every molecule in my body to head west towards the beach.

I floundered and thrashed. The waves were tirelessly hammering me. Somehow my one year of varsity training as a swimmer left me and I couldn’t catch a wave with bodyboard. So I detached the Velcro wrist strap and attached it to my ankle. In hindsight, I should have just let the stupid board go but I paid a hundred dollars for the board and I only made $3.35 as a bag boy. Fuck that. So know that I freed my arms, I unleashed two gangly windmills and swam ferociously to shore. I didn’t lift me head to breath nor to see where I was going. I let my intuition and fear drive me in. In fact, I didn’t stop until I felt sand. I practically “swam” twenty yards in the sand. I grabbed a double handful of sand and kissed it. I was immediately surrounded by a circle of hillbillies and I remember hearing them say in a southern twang, “Man, you were lucky. There was a dang shark out there boy.” No shit.

My family still makes fun of me for crying out, “Fin!” They hope that I’m never in a burning building because I would be quivering in the corner screaming, “Heat! Heat! It’s very smoky!”

As you already know or do not know, I attended Robert E. Lee High School. This is me (14 years old) gearing up for a 100 meter breast stroke race against the Yankees. Believe it or not, my black Speedos (not shown) had a Rebel flag on my crotch.

That’s a horrible name for a baby.

How about:
Rub a Dub Dub…is there Virgo in your Tub?

Or Leo, Pisces, Gemini…there are twelve astrological signs to choose from.

Why CANCER?

That’s just mean.

If you’re going to fuck the kid by giving him a weird name at least be kind enough to give him the name SCORPIAN. At least the kids at school will think twice before beating him up.

This is the piece I read last night:

When people ask me how old I was when I lost my virginity, I tell them nineteen years old. Deep down, I feel like a liar. Technically, I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. It all depends on how you define the word: virginity. I’ve always been fascinated with sex. I drew my first naked picture of a woman when I was six years old. I remember scrawling out a mutant like figure with a pencil and made sure to scribble a bushy triangle between her legs. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking at, but I knew that’s what I wanted to see.

I fondly remember my grandfather’s ritual of speeding up over railroad tracks. We would soar through the air like Bo and Luke Duke in the General Lee. The quick up and down motion made my “privates” feel funny. My grandfather was a half-Sicilian, Fred Flintstone-like character who served as a sergeant in the Marines in WWII. He would stomp on the accelerator and launch his 1975 Ford Fairmont over it. Once we landed on the other side, he would scream out, “Wham bam, thank you, ma’am! I bet that tickled your little willy.” Indeed it did. I always pondered those words. “Wham bam, thank you, ma’am!” That sounded wonderful.

I masturbated for the first time when I was seven. Daisy Duke was the first woman bestowed the honor of my sexual desires. I’d stare at my Dukes of Hazzard lunch box and my Dukes of Hazzard bed sheets. Then I would go out back, climb the metal pole supporting the porch roof and repeatedly slid up and down it. Eventually, I learned the best technique was to climb to the top and dry hump the bar. I never came. At least, I don’t think I did, but I do remember feeling guilty when my mother asked me what I was doing out there. I lied and told her I was practicing to be a fireman. She would say, “You will make a great fireman,” and I would then say, “Thanks.” Technically, I wasn’t lying. I was just practicing to be a volunteer fireman in Hazzard County that would someday rip off Catherine Bach’s Daisy Dukes and fuck her in a mound of hay in Uncle Jesse’s barn.

Not to brag, but when I was fourteen I had the opportunity to have sex with a buxom bar maid at The Thirsty Dragon tavern, but the Dungeon Master instructed me that I had to roll my saving throw versus disease to see if I would get infected with Consumption which was ravaging the countryside. Since I was playing a half-elven bard, I decided it wouldn’t have been a wise decision. Now if I was playing a dwarf, I would have definitely fucked her. Everyone knows dwarves have a higher resistance against diseases. Well not everyone, just other virgins who play Dungeons and Dragons. So even in the fantasy world created by fellow sex-deprived dorks, I still was a virgin because I was afraid of a fairy-tale form of AIDS.

Then my sweet sixteen came upon me. This was the year I theoretically lost my virginity. I was six foot two and weighed 120 lbs. I wore turtlenecks and tuxedo shirts with vests and a rhinestone bolo tie. I also exclusively wore slacks that I tucked into my black, pirate boots that were decorated with buckles. I was the epitome of virgins. It was cruel joke when the school administrators mandated every student to attend an annual AIDS Awareness class. I apologize to all taxpayers who had to waste their money on me. At the time, I couldn’t have gotten laid in a fallout shelter in Tahiti during a nuclear holocaust with a pocketful of Ecstasy. I spent the summer with my cousin Marty in Daytona Beach, Florida. We both worked as bag boys at Albertson’s grocery store. Marty was the exact opposite of me: son of a coach, linebacker, weight lifter, beer drinker, sexually experienced, steroid-user and extremely aggressive. I on the other hand was the Thespian treasurer, member of the chess club, emcee for the dances, competed in poetry, interned as a juggling clown, did the announcements, tutored algebra, played Prince Dauntless in the musical Once Upon a Mattress, and was Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh.

After working the three to eleven nightshift at the grocery store, Marty and I drove across the street to Burger King to get something to eat. 1989 was a pathetic year to be a teenager: post-metal and pre-grunge, a purgatory of no identity. Marty hated going home early so he decided to drive around. I suggested, “Why don’t we just go home and play Tecmo Bowl or MegaMan on your Sega?” Marty snarled back, “You’re such a fag! Don’t you ever want to get laid?” This seemed like a rhetorical question and I was going to call him on it, but I refrained because I thought if I would have asked him, “Is that a rhetorical question?” that kind of language would confirm my “fagginess” by Daytona Beach standards. So I said, “No, I’m not gay and yes of course I want to have sex at some point in my life.” “Sure you do,” he said doubtfully and then said, “We gotta figure somethin’ out, this sucks.” Then he jerked the wheel of his mom’s 87’ Chrysler LeBaron to the right and sped down a back road. “I got an idea!” he proclaimed. “Do you want to get you dick sucked?” he asked. “What?!” I replied. “Do… you… want… to… get… your… dick… sucked… tonight?” he said slowly as if I was mentally challenged with a hearing impairment. “By who? You? I told me I’m not gay!” I said confused. “What? No, dick nose! Not by me! A girl!” he answered. We took a left on Ridgewood Avenue and headed north. “Where are we going?” I asked. “Just shut up and trust me. If it wasn’t for me you’d be a virgin for the rest of your life.” I pondered that last statement. “A virgin for the rest of my life”. Those words lanced through my heart. Would I be a virgin for the rest of my life? I nervously stared out the window. How was he going to get my dick sucked? Were we going to Julie’s house? The poor girl with no self-esteem, who sought everyone’s approval by blowing the entire football team. No thanks. We took a left on Second Avenue. This was my first time on Second Avenue. We’ve been warned our entire lives never to go near Second Avenue. It leads to Cracktown and it’s filled with whores and drug dealers. “Where are we going?” I asked. “Just shut up, I told you I was going to get your dick sucked. You don’t believe me? You think I’m a liar?” he barked back. I locked the doors and answered, “No, I don’t think you’re a liar. I just don’t understand why we are driving down Second Ave at midnight.” He rolled down my window using the automatic control lever with his left hand and pulled up to a corner occupied by a prostitute. “What are you doing? I’m not go—” “You’re such a pussy,” he said under his breath and then called out to the street walker, “Hey, baby. Are you a cop?” “No, baby, are you two cops?” she said, the standard salutations of people about to engage in criminal activity. I stared straight ahead as my heart pounded against my chest, it felt like a rat trapped in a sealed Tupperware container. “How much would it cost to give my cousin a good time?” he asked. She touched my chin and said, “You’re really cute. I’ll only charge you $10. How old are you, sweetie?” “Nineteen,” I lied. I don’t know why I lied. There isn’t a legal age to use the service of a prostitute, but that was the age that popped into my head. She laughed and said, “Sure, you are baby.” She got in the back of the car and we drove to a discreet location away from the main traffic. Marty got out of the car and sat on the hood to make sure no one would come up on us. She moved up to the driver’s seat and gave me the lowdown, “I’ll suck your dick for 7 minutes or until you blow your load, which ever comes first.” Nauseously and awkwardly, I said, “Oh…okay…alright, let’s do this.” The time limit didn’t bother me and ten bucks seemed like a reasonable rate. I was more nervous that I would explode the moment she made contact and be ridiculed by Marty the rest of my life. Marty peered into the windshield with a sinister-looking frat guy grin and made the universal hand gesture of palming a head up and down on his crotch. I shooed him to look away for privacy and took note of the time.12:03AM. My entire upbringing told me that this was wrong but the warmth of her mouth negated my guilt. Being a blowjob-receiving neophyte, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Marty turned around and pantomimed me to slap her ass. Being a gentleman, I decided to rub her back. The misogynist on the hood was disgusted by my sensitivity and turned around. At 12:07AM, only four minutes later she stopped and said it would cost another $10 for her to finish. I only made $3.35 an hour as a bag boy and only had $10 left. We argued for three more minutes, then she hopped out of the car and we drove away from Second Avenue forever.

From now on, when people ask me when I lost my virginity. I’m not going to lie anymore. I’m going to give it to them straight, “I officially lost my virginity at nineteen, but when I was sixteen I lost my dignity.”

Click here for a very sexy review by Flora (although her initial assessment starts off a little rocky, I’m pleased with her conclusion).
Here’s an excerpt:
“Next up, reader number 4 and the first male reader for the evening, Dan Allen. A tall, skinny comedian and blogger. Not a guy I would immediately be attracted to….but then there’s the f*ckability factor.”

Click here to read the rest of the review

Click here for photos of the reading

Click here for Brian Van’s photos

Click here for Gillian’s photos