Liberace: I rest my case

A little pointless fiction to make you wish you hadn't eaten breakfast.

One name. That’s all it takes. If the world only needs one name to remember you, then you’re a sex symbol forever. Done deal. You could be ninety-seven years old, and to your core of devoted fans, the sound of that one word will still be a smack in the groin with a greasy feather duster.

My cousin Trayla had a thing for Napoleon. “That name, it just slides around your mouth like a popsicle blowjob,” she’d muse dreamily as I tried not to hear. “Makes me wanna quit taking showers, then find me a jockey to hump.”

Exactly. Disgusting, but on point. It’s a reflex, like yawning while your wife is yammering on about her feelings, or farting in anticipation at the McDonald’s drive-through. And thus it has long been for me with Madonna, that gap-toothed, furry-pitted goddess whose face I baptized in effigy a thousand times during my luckless high school years. MTV was my church, Madonna my sacrament, and I gave nightly praise.

Still, I was the laughingstock of Yahtzee Bootcamp ’09 when I admitted that my loins still burned for the Material Girl. The reaction to what I thought was a private conversation, whispered furtively in between drills, was completely disproportionate. It wasn’t like I stood up and announced, “I wanna stick my dick in your grandma!” (And maybe I do, but that bit of information is on a need-to-know basis, and only your grandma needs to know.)

Bixby, with his full-on man boobs and his halfhearted roll, had the nerve to snicker at me. He snickered so hard he had to blow his nose, and his Dizzy Gillespie tissue stylings made us the center of attention in the room. I tried to shut him up as Yahtzee Master Dale made his way toward our table; he was a no-nonsense motherfucker, and you’d better be talking about Yahtzee when he came around.

“This doesn’t sound like you’re thinking about the dice and the numbers,” Dale admonished us. “It sounds like you’re wasting your time and mine.”

I was ashamed and stared down at my now-still lap. Dale was about to move on when Bixby had to open his big mouth.

“Kevin wants to bone Madonna!”

Dale’s face was carved out of stone, but pebbles began to fall, then the pebbles gave way to boulders, and after the avalanche, the Master was barking laughter and slapping Bixby on the back. Everyone in the room joined in, jeering at me and rattling their dice. I wanted to crawl up my own ass and disappear, but it was clamped shut in humiliation, and there was no tiny crowbar in sight.

I opened my mouth to explain, to defend my position, to tell them that Madonna wasn’t so bad if you just did her from behind. In the end, I set my dice down on the table and made my way through the braying crowd with as much dignity as my club foot and bicycle shorts would allow. Dale bellowed at me as my hand touched the doorknob.

“Mister, if you walk out, you stay walked out!”

There was no going back, although I did call Bixby and ask him to bring my lucky pencil to me in the hallway. He was still blowing his nose.

It gnaws at me, late at night when the sheets are clammy with regret and I’m rewinding Desperately Seeking Susan. What might have been? Where would the dice have taken me? Would I be riding the Yahtzee high life if I hadn’t lost the Master’s respect? I’ve come to hold Madonna herself responsible for my failure, as if she and her pointy bazooms personally led me to confess our secret love twenty years too late for it to be anything but gross.

Madonna, you’ve had the world by the balls for decades. Did you really need to crush my dreams like one more set of grapes in your bony hand? I would shake my fist at you in quiet rage, but my wrist is kinda shot right now.

I want all my poems read aloud by George Gaynes

Let's ease into the year with a little bad poetry, shall we?

Palsy jazz hands and a white cactus growin' out your ear;
Albino jerky man, liver-spotted rattlesnake,
A brazen inch of pale ankle twixt cuff and sock.
Got more behind you than you got comin'
So why not shuffle to the chase?
No, thank you, kind sir;
I would not like to blow you.

Oh, also - I graduated.

The waiting is the hardest part:




Then I got up on stage and looked like this in front of people:




So now you must call me "Master." Or, you know, continue on with "asshole."

Seven-year bitch

Dusty, neglected, cobwebby...and for once, I'm not talking about my vagina. Gimme time, I'll get there.

It was seven years ago that I set up shop at this address in Blogsylvania. I used to mow the lawn, water the plants, pick up the dog shit in the yard. Well, I've let the place go to hell, haven't I? Sorry about that; I doubt you'll get all of it out of your shoe tread.

I'm not going away, either. I'm content to be the eyesore in the neighborhood. Speaking of which, keep your sore eyes peeled for a new photo essay coming your way SOONER THAN YOU THINK.

Transmission ended. We now return you to your normal test pattern.

Lazy Bucky's Quickies - the better-get-a-post-up-in-June edition

So...we meet again. Let me give it to you in bursts, baby.

• After three years of reluctantly hustling and hawking cell phones, batteries, and whatever the hell those little metal things in the plastic bags are, I worked my final shift in Commission Sales Land this evening. I'd been pondering wearing the most bizarre hair accessories I could find for my special night, but instead decided to put on some makeup and wear clean socks; that threw everyone off balance. There are some people I will miss, co-workers, managers, and even a few customers; there are many more customers and maybe one past co-worker who will not be missed at all as I skip away from the cash register with a song in my heart and a glee club in my pants. I'll probably have much more to say about all this at some point, because you know I just can't shut the fuck up.
  
  
• Consequently, it's a party up in here. Let's rock it like Mom and Dad are on vacation!
  
  
• Things I may have said to the cats lately:
  
  "Favor me with a glance."
  "Thirteen - NO!"
  "Dammit, how do you always find the nipples?"
  "Cheeks so velvety they had to have their own song!"
  "Stop biting my feet!"
  "Are you mommy's little biscuit barrel?"
  
  I can't even begin to fathom why I don't get laid.
  
  
• School is whipping my withered brain back into shape with a quick-time harch. ("I love quick-time harch!" Tell me what movie that's from and I'll give you five Brain Points.) There's a lot of reading (textbooks and scripts), analysis, peer review, and writing. Lots of writing, and that's only going to increase as I draw ever closer my completed thesis project (a full-length feature screenplay, in my case). To be sure, I've already had several private meltdowns when deadline and inspiration weren't working in tandem, but sometimes I pull brilliant things out of my ass. Apparently, there's a library in my ass. Everything is cataloged in accordance with the Doody Decimal System.
  
  
• Songs that should be used in commercials:
  Pointer Sisters: I'm So Excited. I've long thought this should be used in an ad for Depends. I envision a chorus line of senior citizens, doing the can-can and singing I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it; I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it!
  Natalie Imbruglia: Torn. This would be perfect to advertise a sexual lubricant. A woman dejectedly puts band-aids on her ass as the soundtrack plays: You're a little late; I'm already torn.
  

Menage a triage

I have the sudden and overwhelming urge to save a life.

Probably NSFW.

Super Sexy CPR from Super Sexy CPR on Vimeo.

I'm afraid so, Grad...

...grad school, that is.

For those who haven't been victim to my blathering elsewhere, I gathered up my quivering nutsack and enrolled in school. I won't lie: the thought of returning to school after 15 years and amassing a whole new level of student loans gave me a few moments of genuine and spontaneous panic in the days leading up to my first class. Chair cushions may have been ruined in those moments; let's put them by the road and say no more about it.

One class down and ass deep in the second, I've gotta give it Bucky's Fickle Finger of Fuck Yeah!

I'm working toward a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. The main focuses of the curriculum are writing for movies, animation, and gaming. The pace is a bit insane, since online classes always move faster than their onground counterparts, and I can't remember the last time I wrote this much since I used to remember that I had a blog.

And the best part? When all this is over, I get to wear a cowl. I'm told the assless chaps/grad cowl look is all the rage in Milan. You know me - always fashion forward. Forward into a pair of oversized sweatpants, an "I fling poo" t-shirt, and salmon espadrilles.

In other "I'm so fucking sick of hearing her go on about this shit!" news, I bought a Kinect and now I am obsessed, hooked, jonesing if I'm away too long: I love Dance Central. Probably not enough to marry it, but certainly enough to hump it in the back seat of my parents' Pontiac.

Make no mistake: I'm not a dancer. Even if I think I am when I'm drunk, it ain't so. But it doesn't have to be pretty for this game - your limbs and such have to be doing approximately the right thing, but not exactly, which is good; I'm too old and tubby to defy gravity like the impossibly hot young things you can pick as your dance instructor/guide. Um, not that I think any video game characters are hot, certainly not, because that would be, you know, weird. ahem

No, I'm sure I look like a manatee mime when I'm playing, but here's the prize in your Cracker Jacks: I've lost at least 15 pounds since I started playing in January. I have finally found an exercise where I never miss a workout, I never slack, because I can't wait to get in front of the TV and play the damned thing. Also: a bra is mandatory, especially if my poor sister is around to witness the flappery. I think it's a good rule of thumb that one's breasts should not provide sound effects while exercising. Later, though, after you've polished off the fifth of Jack and you're reaching for the Crisco, all bets are off.

And that's how you start off with a discussion of higher education and wind up with buttsex jokes. I have my own special map, and all roads, circuitous or direct, lead to the gutter.

Mullet over

Prologue

The mullet: having your cake and eating it, too. Except the cake is really ugly, and it tastes like shit.

****************************************************

I heard him before I saw him.

Now, as we all know, I get a lot of "Sir" and "Oh, I thought you were a guy" from well-meaning but retarded confused customers. Just the other day, a little boy grinned up at me and gleefully, evilly declared, "You look like a girl!" Oh, snap!

But this guy had a certain eloquence, and as I negotiated the distance between a printed page and my face, which is truly a joy with the state of my eyes and the age of my glasses, his voice wafted across the counter:

"I was quite pleased by your hair when I realized it belonged to a young lady."

Well, there's a fine how-do-you-do! Amused and caught slightly off guard, I raised my already-beleaguered eyes and was faced with a sudden and overwhelming vision: The Greasy Silver Mullet.

Let us agree as a group on something that I feel should be self evident: there's really no good time for a mullet. When the bearer of the mullet is pushing sixty and has a face that looks like the moon shortly after an unprovoked attack by rabid asteroids, the clock has struck shave-that-fucker-off-o'clock. Bristly buzz cut on top, yellowed and fairly dripping shoulder-length party in the back; could you have looked away? I couldn't. God help me, I couldn't.

He said something charming about thinking I was a long-haired man, but I must confess that I was looking at his hair with far more concentration than I was affording his words. The Greasy Silver Mullet was like a train wreck, a train wreck with scissors and a long-empty bottle of shampoo.

Before I had to pretend to make actual conversation while staring at this guy's 'do, my co-worker returned from the stock room with whatever product the Mullet Man was buying. I thanked my lucky charms for the reprieve and hurried off to another part of the store to rearrange some displays.

Dammit, I should've made for the bathroom.

By the time I saw him coming at me, fried-egg eyes intent on me from behind his ten-pound glasses, it was too late; the Greasy Silver Mullet had me frozen, helpless in a tractor beam of disgusted fascination.

He was one of those customers who sees me tending to a task, and must think he's "rescuing" me from work if he comes over and yammers at me about bullshit I never wanted to hear. Here's the news, buddy, and you can still smell the ink: I'd really rather be wearing a fiberglass tampon. (Or maybe I am...but that's another post for another time.)

I don't know how long he talked at me, because all I could see was the Greasy Silver Mullet. It delivered its own soliloquy to me, one that spoke of exotic places and stout ales, of midget bowling and darts gone wrong (but, interestingly enough, not a word about fresh water); it aspired to be a lawyer, or a hockey player, but never a cobbler, just for the record. Ginger or Mary Ann? Well, Ginger, certainly.

"...and I've been sick since January."

My focus snapped back to the Man with the Mullet. The Weirdo-Magnet alarm started chiming politely and discreetly in the pit of my stomach.

He was reaching for his pocket.

"Then I coughed today and..."

His hand was coming out of his pocket. I couldn't react quickly enough; I was suspended in greasy Jell-O.

"...this came out."

He whipped out and unfolded his handkerchief in one surprisingly deft motion.

My mind screamed "AAAAAAAAAH! What the fuck?"

There it was, the lavishly bloody handkerchief of a pockmarked man with a Greasy Silver Mullet, apparently for my dining and dancing pleasure. Because I am destined to See These Things.

****************************************************

Epilogue

Does anyone know the ETA for eyesight recovery after repeatedly dipping one's own face in boiling water? I'm just askin', you know, for a friend.

Teenage mutant ninja assholes

Six or seven young men, probably spanning the magical ages 17 to 20, almost walk past. Almost. Then one turns on a whim, redirects his friends, and just like that, the store is fully stocked with a species I like to call Teenagers With Time To Waste.

One of the younger guys approaches me, his face the very picture of cherubic sincerity, and asks,
"Excuse me, ma'am - do you have vibrators?"

So that's it, huh? A little game of Shock the Old White Lady? (Hint: He has picked the wrong Old White Lady.)

I play dumb. "A vibrator? For what?"

"Ummmm...." His friends are tittering behind him as he grins and drops his gaze. "I don't think I should say."

I nod understandingly. He seems slightly uncomfortable now that the Old White Lady has become his vibrator confidante. "We do have a massager," I tell him, leading him to the product and putting it in his hand. His friends are loving this.

He turns the package over and around in his hands, his face a battlefield of curiosity and mild disgust, and blurts out, "This too big!"

Everyone laughs, and I figure that'll be the end of it. But now they're all loosened up and rowdy, and pretty soon the store is filled with the sound of teenagers being as loud as we all know teenagers can be.

Another one of the guys finds a megaphone, and wants me to unbox it so he can check it out.

My personal thoughts on the matter: Giving an obnoxious teenager a megaphone while in a store with other customers present is almost as intelligent a notion as giving the window seat to a sumo wrestler with explosive diarrhea.

I refuse to unbox the megaphone. Megaphone Dude and I go 'round a little bit; these guys were amusing at first, but now they're collectively getting on my nerves. One of his friends leans around me to read my nametag.

"Hey..." reads tag again "...Katty?" Well, yes, I can be catty, but it's not how my name is pronounced. Nice try. I acknowledge him anyway.

"Are you married, Katty?"

It's an odd question, so I give an odd answer. "Yes." I have no idea where this conversation is going, and I'm not sure I want to know how he'd respond if I said "No."

He looks surprised. As he probably should. He demands, "To who?"

I turn, lock eyes with him, and answer clearly: "My wife."

There is a split second when the whole group screeches to a completely silent halt; all that's missing is the sound of a needle ripping across vinyl. Then a collective "Whoooooooooooooo!" erupts from all the friends. Without another word to me, they turn and head for the exit in tandem and with all due haste. It's kind of amazing, like a school of fish who change course on a dime at the scent of danger or muff divery. The last thing I hear from them as they hustle out the door is "There's some freaky shit goin' down in here!"

Freaky shit, indeed. Score one for the Old White Lady.

Mystery meat revealed!

It's time to whip out the meat. Well, the source of the meat. And it's not even really meat. Nor is it labia (this time).

Meaty drum roll...






















It's all about the pretzels. But then again, isn't it always about the pretzels?

Everyone gets five brain points for playing. And a pretzel. See me around the back of the building at closing time.

Mystery meat challenge

The game is afoot!

This was an innocent enough picture before I took it to Photoshop to produce a fucked-up platter of mystery meat. My challenge to You, Internet as a Whole (all ten of you), is to guess what the subject of the photograph was in its pre-meat life.

The first correct answer will earn its author 10,000 - that's right, ten motherfucking thousand - Brain Points.* Oh, yeah, I know better than to offer Rice-a-Roni (the San Francisco Treat) as a prize; I learned my lesson the hard way.

So, tell me - what the fuck was this before I turned it into mutant meat?








* Brain Points can be redeemed for bragging rights at any participating Home Depot, Showbiz Pizza, or Victoria's Secret location.