Let Me Be Frank With You

I’m sitting here watching the Today Show and they’re showing a preview of this year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love holiday traditions and all of the festivities associated with this time of year. However, I believe they’ve really gone off the rails with this “parade”.

When they do that thing where they halt the parade and do a little song and dance number for one of those musicals I’ll never see, I weep for parade purists everywhere. The rest of it is great but the Broadway show stuff is not a good fit.

I sometimes fantasize that I have a remote control hooked up to a set of loudspeakers in Times Square. Just before the Broadway people take center stage, I sit my deviled egg down and click the clicker to blast Transiberian Orchestra electronic Christmas music at decibels that nearly make your ears bleed. The Broadway people would be confused enough to cancel their performance and would shuffle on down the parade route. After a couple of years of this, they’d probably decide that it’s not worth entering the parade anymore because they know that guy in Kentucky has his remote control at the ready and isn’t afraid to use it.

Once the Broadway folks pull out, it would make room for more high school and collegiate marching bands, a troupe of dancing poodles and/or perhaps a few pipe and drum bands made up of first-responders. THAT’S the type of stuff I like to see at a parade.

If Macy’s keeps this up, I’m going to quit buying my Alfani undershirts and clearance rack suits in their stores.

A bee just landed on my face while I was driving at approximately 45 mph. I almost blacked out from swatting my face so hard. The force of my slap knocked the sunglasses off my face and into Jason’s lap (he thought I was having a seizure because I went from zero to nuts in less than a second).

Reeling from my bee slap, the stunned bee fell to the floorboard. I tried unsuccessfully to stomp on it while simultaneously attempting to maintain control of the Prius. Jason confirmed that he watched it slowly crawl up my pant leg and fly out the window. He said that it had an expression of regret on his tiny bee face. Obviously, I put up more of a fight than that bee bargained for. Frank 1-Nature 0.

Just saw two ‘hood rats enter the mall decked out in their ‘hood rat gear (baggy pants, flat-billed marijuana leaf baseball cap, ski cap, etc.). The guy with the ski cap put on some of those oversized headphones for the walk with his homie.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I were marijuana leaf hat guy, I’d tell headphone guy that if he wears those headphones while we’re out together, he can just go alone. I’d continue on with something to the effect of “we’re in our mid-20’s and whether this is all an image thing or if you enjoy music that much that you have to listen to it each second you’re awake, this isn’t working for me. You’re either going to need to grow up and act your age or don’t call me anymore to hang out in the mall in the middle of the day. It’s ridiculous that you expect me to walk around with you wearing a set of headphones. That cool guy (me) eating his Chinese food in the food court (and everyone else) is going to think I’m a horrible conversationalist and you’re a tool. Let’s just stop this right now.”

This is probably why I don’t have any ‘hood rat friends…because I just couldn’t leave that whole situation alone.

Sitting behind two men who shave the hair on their arms, wear skinny jeans, toddler-sized shirts and bathe in Halston Z-14 cologne. Out of all of the colognes on the market, these two Nancy-boys have created a fragrance force field using the only cologne that makes my face get hives when I’m around even a molecule of it.

I need some business cards printed out so that I can hand them out to men who take a whore’s bath in Halston Z-14 before climbing aboard a bus, train, plane, elevator or other confined space. The card might read, “The normally affable man who has handed you this card has only one known allergic reaction: an allergic reaction to Halston Z-14. You have evidently sprayed yourself with at least seven pumps of this cologne and, as a result, you’re putting out dangerously high levels of allergen into our shared space. Kindly remove yourself from the area and find a suitable location to wash away the excessive cologne on your person. Similar to drinking alcoholic beverages, it is your civic responsibility to know your limit when applying cologne. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.”

For many years now I have found myself driving at night in unfamiliar places listening to the radio – it comes with the job. Each time that the Delilah Show comes on, I can’t bring myself to change the channel. It should be noted that I don’t really like this about myself but that’s the way it is.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the premise of the Delilah Show, she’s an overly silk-voiced DJ who takes calls from the broken-hearted, jilted lovers, recovering addicts and other emotional black holes to pretend that she cares about their respective problems after they pour their hearts out to her on her nationally syndicated radio show. Her solution to each problem? Play a song. Dedicate it to the caller or to the subject of the caller’s source of pain to make things all better.

I get wrapped up in listening to all the tales of woe and frequently wonder (sometimes aloud in the solitude of my rental vehicle) if the caller might better their situations by taking some sort of action rather than starting a pity party for themselves on a nighttime radio show?

But the one thing that bothers me more than anything and gets me really fired-up is when the caller finishes the story and then asks Delilah if she might play a song that would capture the essence of the situation. “WHY WOULDN’T YOU PICK YOUR OWN SONG!”, I’ll sometimes scream at the top of my lungs. If you’re going to call a radio show to carry on like that, shouldn’t you at least come prepared? Maybe you’re in your current predicament because you can’t master such menial tasks such as making such trivial decisions for yourself? Then I start to think whether or not it’s healthy for me to have these thoughts? Then I think whether or not I should continue listening to Delilah and how I could probably advance my station in life if I could take the times like these spent over-analyzing relatively trivial things and put the effort towards more worthy pursuits?

I often come to the conclusion that I should explain all of this ad nauseam to Delilah by calling into her show and then requesting Overkill by Men At Work.

One time several years ago, I recall sitting in the dugout during a softball game next to some guy who played for us for a game as a fill-in. He was one of those guys who has a pot belly, softball pants, batting gloves, eye black underneath his eyes and his own $800 bat that he takes with him to the park from Thursday evening through the weekend. You know, the type who plays on 3 teams and the hangs around at the park hoping someone might use his recreational mercenary skills?

Anyway, I looked over at him while he was watching the game and saw his profile, silhouetted by the sun. The outside of his nose had stiff quarter inch long hairs standing straight up all over it. It almost looked like one of those furry dandelions you see on an untreated lawn. I couldn’t look away. “Was he aware of this?”, “How could he not be?”, “Didn’t he have any loved ones who might suggest he pluck them?”, “Do his friends tease him about it?”, “Do they itch?”, “Are they firmly or loosely attached to his nose?”, “How could that possibly not bother him?” All were questions I wanted to ask as I gazed at his unusually fuzzy nose.

I tell you all of this as a backdrop and probable reason that I spent 45 minutes on the couch in my hotel room last night trying to pluck 2 similar hairs from the outside of my nose with my fingernails. It’s the small details that count with personal grooming standards.

PUBLIC BEWARE: while flipping channels tonight, I stumbled across a show called Grandmother Lovers on TLC. As its name implies, the show featured randy 70-something year old women and the young men (most of whom part their hair in the middle) who find them sexually irresistible.

I’m all for people of all ages finding love but the exploration of this particular niche fetish is a little too much. Specifically, the parts where they steal away in the bushes for a session of open-mouth soul kissing. (I just gave myself the heebs by typing this.)

During lunch today, I exchanged pleasant small talk with the cashier who rang up my lunch at a place kind of like Whole Foods.

As I accepted my change, the friendly cashier said “Enjoy your food!” to which I quickly replied, “You too.” Realizing my auto-pilot-response error, I quickly “recovered” by adding “You too! …enjoy your cashiering!”

Although I sounded like a condescending a-hole by telling him to enjoy his cashiering (according to the guy who was with me to witness the exchange) I certainly didn’t mean it to sound that way. I guess I should avoid trying to correct myself in similar situations in the future. I feel way better about looking like a moron instead of looking like a jerk.

I ate an entire bag of root beer flavored candy today. From start to finish, it took me about 45 minutes. It wasn’t a small, two or three serving bag either. It was one of those bags meant to last for two or three weeks when shared by an entire Walton-sized family.

I’m not sure why I do this but I know one thing, I can NEVER AGAIN be alone in a room with a large bag of candy. I have ZERO candy self control. It’s very similar to the way a toddler goes after candy:

You’ll ruin your appetite.
Give me the candy.

You’ll make yourself sick.
Give me the candy.

You’re a 43 year old man with elevated blood pressure.
PUT THE CANDY IN MY STINKIN’ HAND!!

I’ll be lucky if this gluttonous display of lack of self-control doesn’t result in an instant Type-2 dia-beetis diagnosis. Never again! I’m off the candy now for good.

I’m pretty sure that all coveted longstanding recreational boogeyboard records in the Male, Over 40, 225lb-plus category were shattered earlier this week when a certain large, pale man from Kentucky took his skills from the muddy banks of the Ohio River to the sugar-white sands and turquoise waters of the Emerald Coast. In particular, those records related to longest time spent floundering around on his back in the surf, unable to get back on his feet in six inches of water while loud cries of “I used to be in shape!” were repeated between desperate gasps for air on account of the relentless pounding of the surf. They’ve never seen anyone quite like me here.