How ’bout a quickie?

Marilyn Monroe was once quoted as saying that if you can make a woman laugh, then you can make her do anything.

That may be true. But I say that if you make a woman point and laugh, then you might be a candidate for Viagra.

Thankyouverymuch.

Late breaking news

This just in, racing canceled today at York racecourse in England.

On the plus side, racing from York has been moved to Sargent Downs. The course looks nothing like York, but racetrack officials hope fans will be polite enough not to point out the difference.

I.B. Puffnstuff

Seems there’s been a little bit of controversy surrounding the latest stoner film “Pineapple Express.” The question has been posed: Are movies like “Pineapple Express,” “How High,” and “Half Baked” encouraging kids to embrace the mari-ju-wanna?

I’d like to answer this with a resounding “What the #&%@ are you parents doing sending your kids to see these movies in the first place?”

That said, I’ll admit I haven’t seen any of the movies listed above, at least not in their entirety. I did, in my younger days, watch a few Cheech and Chong movies without managing to turn myself into a pothead.

I’ve never been stoned. I tried once and although I did inhale, any beneficial effects must have been lost on me. I can’t even get high correctly, which means my short lived pothead days are over. That’s a good thing. Studies show that most people who overdose are drug users.

I’m just gonna let that one sink in a bit before moving on. Everyone ready? Okay.

At the very heart of it, folks who are high or hopped up are just funny, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got some vivid memories from college, but one of the most bizarre was from one night walking home from a party at the fraternity house. My roommate and fraternity brother had taken a hit of acid and as we turned onto one of the residential streets that led back to campus, he was suddenly taken with the notion that the trees were going to eat him.

And the kicker is that he was legally blind. Yeah. Helluva punchline, ain’t it.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. If he’d just done it more often (around me anyway), I’d be able to string a screenplay together from the experiences.

Just so there’s no mistake, drugs are bad. Mm-kay? But high people are a good source of comedy, and pretty much are a walking anti-drug commercial. I think they deliver the message a lot better than “From you, Dad! I learned it from watching you!”

So, please America, lighten up.

P.S.

Don’t you think a good name for the stoner set at Hogwarts would be the Harry Pott-Heads?

Another travesty

When I can no longer be served a double latte pretentia mokachino by a bikini-clad barista, then the terrorists have won.

Actually, I don’t even drink coffee. Frankly, there are vices out there that are a lot more fun. I’m not going into detail; just use your imagination.

You have to admit, though, that crossing the pretension of Starbucks with the cultured nuance of Hooters is a novel concept that could definitely have reached an untapped niche market: awkward teenage boys who want their first experience with frothy milk to be special. Because that’s what every hormonally-charged adolescent male needs—a quadruple shot of caffeine. Hopped up and horny is where it’s at.

This place could also have been a great boon to the Belfair local economy, but I doubt it’s the kind of economic stimulation that President Bush had in mind.

One wonders what kind of health plan the owners of Espresso Gone Wild offered its employees. The combination of exposed skin surface area and the use of products that spout scalding hot steam must have made for some high premiums.

Alas, unless the idea of barista babes catches on in more progressive areas of America like….well….oh, gee…let me get back to you on that.

Another welcome

Please welcome Rachel to the blogroll.

True story: Rachel student taught my high school band during my senior year. She is the first person I ever met who was a composer (Wes was the second), thus putting to death the notion for me that composers were mainly dead people whose corpses were being robbed of the royalties they so richly deserved.

She is now a Presbyterian minister, and has made allusions to blogging about what it was that led her to the ministry. I look forward to reading that post.

No pressure, Rachel.

So I give you, my former student teacher and fellow feline enthusiast, Rachel.

What’s in a name?

I was listening to a story on Marketplace the other day and heard what is probably one of the coolest names ever.

Rusty Gillette.

With a name like that, this guy could have been a 1930s or 40s era private investigator. With a secretary named Trixie and a third-floor walkup with only a desk fan to keep cool in the summer, and a drafty window in the winter.

Rusty Gillette….private eye.

When your submarine is only carrying half a crew…

First off, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Because I’m a lazy ass, I sometimes will steal interesting news items that friends have highlighted and riff on those items myself.

In this case, this comes from high school friend Lisa.

This got me to thinking (give him room, folks). Consider the words “organic” and “orgasmic.” If the ‘N’ is omitted from the word “organic,” then all that is needed to make the words match is a little s&m.

But wait. There’s more.

Consider the letters that the two words don’t have in common.

S-M-N.

Would anyone like to buy a vowel?

Yes. It’s true. If I’d been a student in the 1960s, the Russians surely would have beaten us to the moon.

* Bonus points for anyone who understands the toilet humor behind the headline.

This is a dramatization

As some of you know, I’ve been on stay-cation for about two weeks, and in my copious free time I’ve been watching some television. Mostly it’s back and forth between CNN and Comedy Central. On occasion I watch the local stations to catch the local news.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Lexington area personal injury law menu, there’s a guy out there who bills himself as “The Heavy Hitter.” If you watch his commercials, you’ll know why. They guy doesn’t miss too many meals. But it isn’t his girth that I’m going to take to task here. It’s the complete idiocy of his latest commercial.

It opens with him approaching a jail cell. Behind bars are George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Franklin. They all have this green cast to them; green like, say, money. For those of you playing at home, Washington, Grant, and Franklin are the faces on the one, fifty, and hundred dollar bills, respectively. The whole point of the ad is to say that the nasty insurance company is locking up YOUR money. I’m not disputing that insurance companies are nasty, so let’s move on.

So we’ve got Green Washington, Green Grant, and Green Franklin behind bars in some television jail cell. And while we are treated to this site, the following offensive word appears at the bottom of the television screen.

“Dramatization.”

Let me say that again.

“Dramatization.”

Are you #$%@% kidding me?! Really? Because for a moment I thought that The Heavy Hitter™ (he gets a quarter every time someone says that) had somehow used his demonic powers (that he got in one of several deals with Satan, along with a passing grade on the bar exam…it’s a bundle plan) to not only bring the dead back to life, but to also turn them green. I’d love to have been in the advertising board room when that decision was made. I had thought about writing a fake script as to how that conversation went, but my mind can’t wrap itself around the fact that it happened at all.

Plus, I’m just lazy today. But I think we can all agree that if you watch that commercial with the aim of calling this guy for legal help, and you need the visual cue to tell you that the three dead statesmen with the greenish hue are just pretend, then you’d probably be doing yourself a favor if you went outside and beat yourself in the head with a sledgehammer a few times.

And if you die, just get him to bring you back to life. Minus the greenish hue would be preferable.

Remembering Kita

While much of the blogosphere will no doubt be reflecting on the death of former White House press secretary Tony Snow, I’m a bit more concerned about a certain feline that Mr. Snow might see walking around the afterlife, wondering where her owners have gone.

Kita, our 21-year-old brown tabby cat, died very early on Saturday morning. My wife, Julia, and I were with her in her last moments. At 21 it can be easily argued that she lived a full life, and she did. Julia rescued her 18 years ago. Kita was the first cat she ever rescued. I’ve only known Kita as long as I’ve been with Julia—about six years—and she never acted like the oldest cat of the bunch. When Julia and I met, she had four cats: Kita, Gaby, Topper, and Zephyr. We had to have Topper euthanized in 2006 because of his failing mental health. He was 14. Zephyr is that age now, and still the mascot of the house. Gaby is about 16 or 17, longhaired, beautiful, and somewhat of a bitch. But in her case, good looks really do a lot to take the edge off her attitude.

In recent years, we’ve added a few youngsters to the bunch, Lulubelle, Evie, Cubby Bear, and Jersey, but to me Kita will always be the Grande Dame of the pride.

She was graceful and cool, and had a beautiful face; almost Egyptian. It befitted the nickname Julia had for her, “Princess Kita.” When Kita spoke, she did not do so with an obnoxious meow, but rather a tiny coo. Sometimes, in that coo, you could almost hear the words, “We are not amused.”

She patiently suffered through the dozens of foster cats that have been in and out of our house the past three years, and did not launch into a tirade whenever one of them made the mistake of getting too close to royalty.

At the core of her, Kita was a gentle and fair creature. It really is true that the cat picks the owner, and I still remember the night right in bed when Kita crawled onto my stomach and chest and started kneading her paws into me. It was as though she was stamping me with her seal of approval. Then she started purring and her ears got warm, a sure sign of a happy cat.

We may never know another like her, but Julia and I are blessed for having known her at all.

News that doesn’t really suck

Like press secretary-turned presidential chief of staff C.J. Cregg on my favorite political drama “The West Wing,” I am the wrong Democrat to talk to about affirmative action.

I have come to the conclusion in recent years that I am too Caucasian and too male to write for my beloved hometown newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader. From the time I graduated up to now, I’ve applied there about six times. Three times they were kind enough to send me a rejection letter. The other three, they didn’t even bother with that. Waste of paper, I suppose.

So I’ve quit applying to the Herald-Leader, even if I see a job opening that I like, that I’m just perfectly suited to. For that matter, I avoid any media companies who make grandiose pronouncements in their employment ads about how important diversity is in their workplace. The louder they are about it, the smaller my chances are at even getting in the door.

Of course, I could just be bad journalist.

But the headline of this piece is “News that doesn’t really suck,” so I suppose I should dismount the soapbox and cut to the chase.

Today a colleague of mine—one of our contributing editors here at Thoroughbred Times—asked me if I was interested in contributing to a magazine she’s doing some work for. Turns out they need to pad their quota of male contributors. Can ya beat that?

I certainly hope my masculine editorial presence helps fill the void.

I won’t say what this publication’s per word scale is; just that it’s more than my own personal freelance rate. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 15 cents a word for written pieces, $20 an hour for editing. Thank you; drive through.

Nothing is solid yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Flippin’ sweet.