My 03.14.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

Here's my "All Over the Map" from the 03.14.2012 Arkansas Weekly. Any resemblance to those living or dead is obviously intentional.

If you’re a frequent breakfast diner in the Batesville area, you may have seen them. They haunt three or four restaurants throughout the week, usually sometime in the 7 a.m. hour.

There’s Yeti, the only man in Independence County who could legitimately pass for a refined and civilized Abominable Snowman. Then there’s Sasquatch, a burly giant, with his full beard and long ponytail, who has somewhat of a lazy gait that gullible people might mistake as cool. And finally, there’s Lex Luthor, Jr., the squat former Marine who tragically missed his true calling as a drill sergeant.

Sasquatch is usually the first to arrive, and God help the other two if they aren’t at the table at the appointed time.

“Where you been?” Sasquatch usually demands in a booming voice.

“Well, I -- ” Yeti will begin.

“DON’T YOU LIE TO ME!” Sasquatch interrupts.

If Lex missed his calling as a Marine drill sergeant, Sasquatch missed his calling as a somewhat crazed, yet passionate C.I.A. interrogator.

After Sasquatch is satisfied with the others’ excuses for tardiness, the three will then study the menu and discuss what will be ordered.

“I should get the pancakes,” Yeti says. “Too fattening, though.”

“You on a diet?” Sasquatch demands.

“I know what I want,” Lex says as he slaps down the menu.

“Yeah, me too, bro,” Sasquatch says as he slaps down his menu. “Me too!”

“Right on,” Lex says.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Yeti says with a heavy sigh. He puts down the menu and covers his face with his hands. Yeti is the most problematic of the trio in terms of sheer emotional terror. In fact, he refers to this almost constant state as “emotional turmoil.” Every decision he makes in his life, large or small, is both predicated and then pondered by needless and anguished internal debates that will likely cause him to drop dead of a heart attack in, oh, maybe three years.

Yeti runs his fingers through his stress-induced, prematurely snow white hair and finally rests his head in his hands.

“I should get the pancakes,” he says.

The waitress arrives.

Sasquatch begins without the slightest bit of hesitation.

“I want the special, but I want three eggs, instead of two, over easy. Uh, patty sausage. Hash browns with, uh, lots of onions and cheese. And white buttered toast.”

The waitress looks to Lex.

“I’ll take a fried egg sandwich, cheese and bacon on wheat, please. Thank you.”

And now, Yeti:

“Ohhhhh,” he says. “I don’t know…”

Lex and Sasquatch sigh.

Five minutes later, Yeti orders raisin bran with bananas and skim milk.

***

Breakfast arrives, and Yeti looks at everyone else’s plate. He sees the plump, white eggs and crispy hash browns scattered and smothered on the plate of Sasquatch, and his heart sinks.

“I should have ordered that,” he says.

Then, across the restaurant, he eyes another waitress bringing a customer a plate of thick pancakes.

“No. Crap. I should have ordered the pancakes.”

“Oh lord,” Lex says. “Give it a rest.”

Yet, when Yeti looks down to his cereal and bananas, he admits it looks delicious.

He takes out his iPhone.

“Here we go,” Lex says.

The other two are used to Yeti’s practice of taking a picture of his meal. He doesn’t do it for every meal, but only for the tasty looking ones. Sometimes, he likes to re-live the memories of a delicious plate of food by scrolling through the hundreds of similar pictures he’s downloaded to his laptop. Sasquatch appreciates this somewhat quirky habit because Sasquatch loves food – period. If eating were a professional sport, Sasquatch would be its Muhammad Ali. Lex, however, simply thinks Yeti is nuts.

“Oooh,” Sasquatch says. “Let’s get one of the milk being poured onto your raisin bran!”

“Great idea!” Yeti says. He places the camera just so for the right shot, and then nods to Sasquatch. Sasquatch gently tips the milk into the bowl. Snap. The moment is now preserved.

And it’s not odd at this time to see some diners in the restaurant stop what they are doing and look to the sight of the pony-tailed giant pouring milk into his breakfast partner’s cereal while the latter takes a picture.

There are diners who simply look at this sight with a combination of confusion, amazement and perhaps a little disgust. The other diners, the regulars, are used to it.

The three men then begin eagerly consuming their food. The conversation veers from business to gossip to Yeti’s consistent emotional turmoil. We won’t detail that point of the conversation at this time. Suffice to say, Sasquatch and Lex each give Yeti conflicting advice which makes things even much worse for Yeti’s mental stability.

However, it is guaranteed that the conversation and the breakfast will end with Yeti stating after a long and pained sigh: “I should have ordered the pancakes.”

My 03.07.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

My "All Over the Map" from next week's Arkansas Weekly:

I bought some new shades.

And, if I say so myself, I look damn cool when I wear them.

Mid-‘70s Peter Fonda cool.

And these aren’t some high dollar sunglasses. These aren’t Ray-Bans or Oakleys. I bought them for less than twenty bucks at the discount store.

You know you’re cool when you rock in a pair of generic sunglasses.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to wear these sunglasses all the time. Outside. Inside. Eating breakfast. Eating lunch. Eating dinner. Watching TV. At the movies. Visiting with Mom and Dad. Shopping. Shaving. Doing my P90X. Knitting. At the dentist. At bridge club. At fight club. (Oops. Shouldn’t have said that. Not supposed to talk about fight club.) At the bank. Even at work.

See.


Pretty cool, huh?

I’ll even start wearing them in church. And, no, that’s not disrespectful. I saw Stevie Wonder wearing sunglasses at Whitney Houston’s funeral, and that was in a church. So...bam.

Really, I don’t think it’s odd to begin wearing my pair of sunglasses all the time. Look at Jack Nicholson. He wears sunglasses at the Oscars and the Lakers games.

Or The Blues Brothers. They wore sunglasses all the time. Or George Michael. He wears them constantly. He probably even wore them when he was arrested in that Beverly Hills rest room.

Wait. Never mind. Scratch the George Michael reference.

***

If you look closely at my picture, you’ll notice I also have a toothpick in my mouth. The toothpick compliments the glasses, and don’t tell me it doesn’t. So, in addition to wearing the sunglasses all the time, I will now also start having a toothpick in the corner of my mouth.

I’ll nibble on it, or slowly twirl it around with my tongue. And when I’m talking to the ladies, I’ll occasionally touch my toothpick and roll it with my thumb and forefinger.

That will show I might be interested in what the ladies are saying to me. Or I might not be interested. The ladies will never know. That will keep them off guard. And curious.

Always keep the ladies guessing, gentlemen. That’s a little tip I learned from Shep, the elderly fellow who used to pick me up at the playground when I was a kid. We would drive around in his van and eat ice cream, and he would always offer advice on how to be a smooth operator when it came to the ladies. I never asked for the advice. I mean, I was around eight. In fact, now that I think of it, I never asked Shep to pick me up at the playground, either. Don’t get me wrong. Shep was a nice man even though he occasionally drooled on himself. He always had plenty of candy and ice cream. We would listen to Mitch Miller on the 8-track as we drove around. And for some reason, he always wore an old rumpled raincoat. Even on sunny days. I guess that was his trademark look -- just like my sunglasses and toothpick.

So, I’ll start wearing the sunglasses and twirling the toothpick all the time. And maybe I’ll add a cowboy hat. And not a conservative cowboy hat. I’m thinking of a cowboy hat with the crinkled brim and a rattlesnake hide wrapped around the top.

And you know what would look even better? A full length men’s fur coat. And I would simply leave it on my shoulders. No sleeves for this master of disaster.

So if you see a guy, say, in the grocery store, wearing some damn cool sunglasses, a cowboy hat with a crinkled brim, and a full length men’s fur coat on his shoulders, it most likely will be me.

I’ll probably be leaning on my cart, listening to some foxy fellow shopper eagerly telling me all her secrets as I slowly twirl my toothpick with my forefinger and thumb.

And I may be interested in what she is telling me.

And I may not be.

Because my eyes will be hidden behind my shades, and she’ll never know.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how I’m gonna roll.

Shep would be proud.

My 02.22.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

Here's my "All Over the Map" from this week's Arkansas Weekly:


Either it was a bug or some bison chili from the night before, but last Tuesday, my stomach had trouble deciding if it should empty its liquefied contents out the top way or out the bottom way.

Now that we have that out of the way, I had not been sick in a while. That day, I woke up with somewhat of a vague sense of nausea. Still, I showered, dressed, and drove to town. Somewhere between Walmart and The Home Depot, that vague sense of nausea was now a sudden full-blown pounding on my door.

The night before, some buddies were over at my house, and one -- the outdoorsman, a guy who worshipped Grizzly Adams -- brought bison chili. I dislike the taste of game. I can’t even eat venison. Grizzly, Jr. once claimed he has eaten speckle bellied goose that was better than the finest filet mignon, a claim I find a tad too...what’s the word...oh, here it is: insane. So, if he is the buddy who says he’s bringing dinner, it’s likely going to be a meat from an animal that our ancestors used to kill and eat on the frontier. And, of course, that night Grizzly, Jr. brings bison chili.

Which brings us back to the nausea at my door that Tuesday morning.

It was somewhere around the local Sherwin-Williams store when I saw the bison chili once again. Another friend was with me this time. We were heading to breakfast, but with the situation rapidly changing, I knew I was getting ready to turn him around and take him back to his office.

But, it was too late.

I stopped in the middle of the road, right in front of that aforementioned Sherwin-Williams store, and I opened the door.

“Eww,” my pal said as my bison chili splattered back into the world. “What’d you have for dinner last night, bud?”

“Bison chili,” I croaked out.

“Yup,” he said. “That’ll do it.”

***

My two other friends from the bison chili night at Rob’s managed to elude the magical combination of fun that my grandmother used to call “the up-chucks and the trots,” which made me think I probably had a bug. I was running some fever, but as I thought later, maybe it was the bison. One friend just had a scoop of the chili on a cracker that night, and the other, Grizzly, Jr., has eaten so much bear food over his life that his constitution would likely welcome rotten possum meat with open arms. He wouldn’t even feel as much as car sick.

I decided to try and sleep it off, so for over two days, I basically stayed in bed. I’d occasionally wake up for the business that, by now, you’re probably tired of reading about. And as I slowly felt better, I started doing some work and watching a little bit of television.

For some reason, the past year has been on turbo charge for me. There’ve been some major, but positive challenges at work. I finally moved into a new home, a process that seemed endless. And, perhaps most stressing of all, the 16-year-old daughter started driving.

No wonder I’ve been feeling frazzled.

Maybe all of this was just my body saying it needed to zone out for a bit. When I slept over those two days, I slept heavy as many bizarre and vivid dreams came and went. And while awake, I worked a little more and watched a lot more television, a habit I don’t practice as often as I did ten years ago. (Betty White’s still kickin’? Wow. She’s everywhere on television. Who’d a thunk she’d be the final Golden Girl remaining? I always picked Bea Arthur to be the last one standing.)

I halfway enjoyed being sick -- which sounds weird, I know. Sleep was great, for the most part. No one interrupted me while I worked. And, I managed to lose a few L.B.s through some dramatic bouts of “purging.” But by Thursday, I was ready to get out of the house and back to work.

I do know that, stomach bug or bison, I’m still staying away from anything that Davy Crockett might have eaten in his day that wasn’t a cow, pig, fish or chicken. Give me a red-blooded beef burger from E & B’s, and I’ll be fine, thanks.

My 02.15.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

Here's my "All Over the Map" from the 02.15.2012 Arkansas Weekly:

Sometimes I don’t think too clearly.

A good example: Last week, when I made the incredibly stupid decision to order “skinny” jeans from The Gap’s website.

I’m always looking for deals on denim jeans because, for some reason, my size (35W/34) is hard to find. So when I came across my size on sale on The Gap’s website under the “skinny” fit section, I grabbed a pair without really thinking that the punk-retro style of those jeans would look absolutely ridiculous on any guy above the age of 40.

Particularly if that guy had prematurely white hair and a generous abdominal paunch.

Like me.

However, the night I got around to opening the package from The Gap, I was surprised to find that the jeans did not look too narrow in the legs. Maybe they weren’t that bad, I thought. I’ll give ‘em a shot.

***

The next morning. I’m wearing the new jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater that feels as if it has shrunk.

I’m at breakfast with my friend.

And he can’t stop laughing.

“Seriously,” my friend says as he tries to compose himself. “Did you look in the mirror before you left your house today?”

“Yes,” I say with a sigh.

“Okay. And when you looked in the mirror before you left your house today, did you look closely at what you’re wearing?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he says as he takes a bite of his waffle. “So, when you looked in the mirror before you left your house today, and you looked closely at what you’re wearing, did you think – in all seriousness – that you looked good?”

He starts to laugh, but his mouth is full and he is still talking.

“Because you don’t!” he says. “You don’t! Those jeans are horrifying! And your damn sweater is too tight and wrinkled! You look like a goofy nerd! Go home and CHANGE!”

And with that, a few wads of waffle shoot out of his mouth as he busts out laughing again.

***

I don’t go home to change. I’m already late for work.

I walk into the office with a healthy complex about my poor choice in denim.

I greet the receptionist, ready to confront my wardrobe issue head-on.

“Okay, look,” I tell her. “I screwed up when I ordered these jeans, so I need your advice.”

“Oh, great,” she says with a little suspicion. She’s worked with me for years and knows I’m not right. “I’m not gonna have to tell you how your butt looks in them, am I?”

“No,” I say as I walk around her desk. “See? I got the skinny fit by mistake. They look horrible, right?”

“They, uh…Yeah. They really don’t look right on you.”

I sigh with resignation. I notice my back aches. I try to stretch.

“Oh…My back is killing me,” I say.

“Well,” the receptionist says, “if your back is giving you trouble, that’s probably a good sign you’re too old to be wearing jeans that look like that.”

I decide to go home and change.

My 02.08.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly:

Here's this week's "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly:

Arkansas Weekly is sent to the printer the Friday before our publication date. So, even though Super Bowl XLVI has already been decided as you read these words, the game has yet to be played as I type them.

As most of you know, I am a sports freak of the highest order. I take all athletic competition seriously, and I immerse myself in all types of news, statistics and history regarding professional and collegiate sports. And based on my vast knowledge of football, I can tell you – without hesitation – that the Super XLVI Champions are Peyton Manning and the Baltimore Colts!

Don’t tell me you’re not amazed. Seriously. Don’t.

It’s like I’m Nostradamus. Or The Amazing Kreskin, right?

But I have no psychic abilities. No. The only tools I use are mental, intellectual and, uh, mental.

Or something like that.

Anyway, based on my remarkable ability to access the ginormous sports database in my head, I’d like to offer you some Super Bowl trivia in honor of the Colts Super Bowl XLVI win this past Sunday.

Super Bowl II, 1971 New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath throws for a near record 4,087 yards in the second Super Bowl (1971) as the Jets defeat the Tennessee Titans. After the game, Namath, wearing nothing but fur cowboy chaps and a leather vest, hops on a chopper with pop ingénue Joey Heatherton and heads to a nearby Shakey’s Pizza to celebrate.

Super Bowl VIII, 1973 Perry Mason and Ironside star Raymond Burr receives a then-record $4,000 to perform in the first (and last) live Super Bowl commercial as he demonstrates the new “softy tip” applicator for Preparation H on himself.

Super Bowl VIN, 1975 Geritol sponsors first televised Super Bowl halftime performance. The show stars Florence Henderson of The Brady Bunch and Jim Nabors of Gomer Pyle performing a medley of Black Sabbath songs. The pair gets into trouble with the FCC when Henderson rips off Nabors’ shirt and ‘accidentally’ exposes his underarm hair.

Super Bowl VIP, 1985 The Green Bay Packers introduce the Tickle Formation to football. With a game-winning touchdown on the line, the Packers offensive line suddenly begins aggressively tickling the opposing Chicago Bears defense after the snap. As all the Bears drop to the turf in giggle fits, Packers quarterback Jessie Dumplins walks into the end zone for the win. Dumplins’ wife, Chickinah, is credited for the idea.

Super Bowl VAN, 1994 Dallas Cowboys offensive caterer Crisco St. Feldman is arrested after the Cowboys win over the Sioux Native Americans. Authorities find a highly intoxicated St. Feldman in his hotel hallway wearing nothing but a set of Michelin All Season Radials and loudly accusing a shocked group of little people conventioneers of hiding inside his hotel wastebasket and spying on him.

Super Bowl XENU, 2004 Orlando Dobermans defensive center George Gobel, Jr. becomes the first football player to actually decapitate another football player (Butch Cartlidge of the Kansas City Royals) during the big game. The Dobermans mascot, Fang, escapes from his trainer, runs across the field, swipes Cartlidge’s head by the helmet strap, and runs away with it. As everyone chases Fang around the field, CBS plays the theme music from the Benny Hill television program and converts television coverage to fast-motion black and white.

Super Bowl XHIBIT, 2009 The biggest Super Bowl halftime show in history unfolds with the Charlie Daniels Band, fireworks, dancers, Ice-T reciting poetry, parkour, Cornel West, Charro, the Love Boat singers featuring Gavin MacLeod, the recently removed mole from Enrique Iglesias’ cheek, Garrison Keillor, Tim Allen, Tim McGraw, Tim McCarver, Tim Robbins, Tim Tebow, Tim Burton, Tim Conway, Tiny Tim’s widow, and narration by Morgan Freeman. The show ends with a memorial to Kansas City’s Bruce Cartlidge featuring an emotional appearance by a now ashamed, humbled and very old Orlando Doberman mascot, Fang. Fang tries to exhibit remorse by walking slowly across the stage with his tail between his legs, but as everyone knows, Dobermans don’t have tails, so the show comes to an awkward end.

My 02.01.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

Here's this week's "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly:

I’m an idiot.

Yes. Most of you who know me are likely nodding in agreement right now, but people in dire need of some brutal self-truths are usually the last to realize such things.

This isn’t anything new. My family, friends and pretty much everyone here at work have basically come to terms with my sluggish mental comprehension. They know that when explaining things that might be particularly hard for me to grasp, they must talk very slow and sometimes draw helpful diagrams.

Like, at work, when they tried to explain the concept of profit and loss. Or the time when my parents told me that most high school kids did not still sleep with their mommy and daddy at that age.

Now, I’m not a complete idiot. By that, I mean I can do most day-to-day things by myself, like ordering a pizza over the phone, successfully operating a toilet, or putting my shoes on the correct feet. (Though I do admit I have driven all the way to work before realizing I put my underwear on over my pants.)

But, for the most part, I spend much of the day in a clueless state.

A fine example of my lack of any measurable sense of aptitude would be my purchase of some reading glasses last summer. My eyesight has been slowly fading, and this makes sense, of course. Most folks my age (early 30s, cough) have glasses of some sort, and over the past few years, I’ve noticed words becoming fuzzier and smaller. So, I started wearing some low strength prescription glasses.

But last year while on vacation with my kids, I forgot my glasses. I slipped into a bookstore and found a pair of what I believed to be some acceptable and -- even though my children and friends would soon make fun of them -- stylish reading specs. They were even bifocal reading glasses, so as my vision deteriorated through time, I would be able to simply look down through the stronger bottom half for better sight.

I used these glasses on a constant basis. If I was working or reading, and I wasn’t able to find them, everything stopped. I had have to have my glasses to see what I was doing. I thought they were even better than my old prescription glasses.

Until, that is, a recent night last week when my buddy looked through my specs.

“Uh, what’s the magnification on these?” he asked as he tested them out.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I just picked them up at a bookstore, and I’ve used them ever since. I love ‘em.”

“Well, do you use the bifocal part?”

“No, I’m not that bad off yet,” I said with a chuckle.

“Then, uh, why use them if you’re not looking through the bifocals?”

“Because the regular magnification is perfect for me,” I said. “It really helps.”

“Uh, there is no regular magnification,” he said as he handed the pair back to me. “The top part is not magnified. It’s just a clear plastic lens. It’s just like you are you using your regular vision.”

I grabbed the glasses and put them on, indignant. “No,” I said. “That’s not correct. The top part is magnified. These glasses help out tremendously.”

I pulled them off and on to compare. Everything did look the same. Another friend took them and looked through the lenses.

“No, Rob,” the other friend said, “there’s no difference. The bifocal is the only part of the lens that’s magnified, you big dork.”

So, for almost a year, I’ve been wearing glasses to help me read, thinking all this time that they were invaluable for my everyday routine, when in fact, I was looking through clear, unmagnified plastic lenses.

What an idiot.

My 01.25.2012 "All Over the Map" from Arkansas Weekly

Here's my "All Over the Map" from the Jan. 25, 2012 issue of Arkansas Weekly:

As a person who likes to keep my intellectual juices flowing like an open fire hydrant, I’m constantly scouring the internet, newspapers, radio and periodicals to ensure I’m fully updated and acquainted with world events.

One periodical that is usually ahead of the curve when it comes to breaking news that affects us all is, of course, Star magazine.

And the Jan. 23 issue is a stunner!

First, we not only learned that 42-year-old Jennifer Lopez is allegedly paying her 24-year-old “Boy Toy” $10,000 a week, but then we turn the page and discover 39-year-old Cameron Diaz has new boobs!

However, I’m just skimming the surface of what this monumental issue of the Star fulfills in terms of hard-hitting and influential scoops. In fact, the cover boasts two – two! – colossal Kardashian jaw-droppers!

The first is the claim Bruce Jenner, also known as the creepy stepdad of the Kardashian clan, is a cross dresser. Apparently, it’s somewhat of an open secret in the Republic of Kardashian. Jenner even has a closet full of women’s clothes specifically fitted for him, according to the magazine.

This somewhat makes sense if you’ve followed the plasticization and metamorphosis of Bruce’s face in recent years. He recently had both ears pierced with matching diamond studs. His face is slowly tightening and increasingly becoming sculpted-looking. And his eyebrows are waxed into narrow feminine strips.

Yep, it’s really not hard to envision Bruce giggling and sharing a chardonnay with the girls after a long shopping day on Rodeo Drive. In fact, now that I think about it, I bet he looks pretty damn hot in a sequined mini dress and high heels.

The other Kardashian shocker in this issue of Star is the allegation that Khloe, the younger sister of Kourtney and Kim, is not truly a Kardashian! That’s right. The magazine suggests that Kris, who was formerly married to the late O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian, had an affair and the result was Khloe.

Apparently, this is old news to the Kardashian clan. Khloe has even questioned the lack of physical similarities between herself and the sisters. However, it’s interesting to note what is not addressed in the article -- specifically the name of Khloe’s possible father.

However, I believe I’ve found the identity of Khloe’s mystery dad. After careful research and investigation, I can safely say that it’s possible that the father of Khloe is one, Andre the Giant.

I know. That’s shocking, and since Andre is no longer with us, it might be hard to prove. But pull up one of his wrestling matches on You Tube. Or watch his incredible performance as Sasquatch in the famous Six Million Dollar Man episode. I think you’ll agree that if you squinted your eyes to make the television image seem a little fuzzy and then muted the sound, then you would not be able to tell the difference between the two.

Seriously.