Flying Starfish of Death
A Beach Slapped Humor Collection: 2008
Barton Grover Howe
BGH Publishing
Lincoln City, Oregon
http://www.bartongroverhowe.com/
Other Works by Barton Grover Howe
FICTION:
Beach Slapped: A Novel
Parrot Eyes Lost: A Surfland Day Trip
Smashwords Edition of Flying Starfish of Death: A Beach Slapped Humor Collection: 2008. Copyright © 2011 by Barton Grover Howe. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact BGH Publishing at bartongroverhowe@gmail.com.
Cover design by Sharalyn Hay
While the author has made every attempt to provide accurate contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is dedicated to two people:
Dave Barry,
who showed me in high school that just because you write about boogers and underwear doesn’t mean you’re not a writer.
Mr. Bill Tosh,
My 12th-grade journalism advisor, who allowed me to write truly dreadful humor pieces in the school paper as I tried to mimic Dave Barry.
I hope this book makes up for it.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank two people: My editor, who was silly enough in the spring of 2007 to allow me to name my column something vaguely tawdry and inappropriate only if her publisher approved. And my publisher, who having a much more ribald sense of humor than my editor, thought
“Beach Slapped” was a wonderful idea.
Contents
The one that started it all:
Attack of the Flying Starfish of Death
Coffee: Proudly, gladly addicted - Feb. 6, 2008
Love kills, just the way nature intended - Feb. 13, 2008
The sacrifices we make for spring - Feb. 20, 2008
No football is bad for children — and their teacher - Feb. 27, 2008
Crusading for a better cause: Me - March 5, 2008
It wasn't the worst winter ever; I said so - March 12, 2008
Big men, big boosters and the Big Dance - March 19, 2008
There are staples in my underwear — and I like that - March 26, 2008
History made interesting: NW Virgins - April 2, 2008
Man uses tools. I do not. - April 9, 2008
Teens almost always reign in California - April 16, 2008
Random adventures in la-L.A. land - April 23, 2008
Keep it simple for the stupid — like me - April 30, 2008
Disaster is my friend. Still want to be mine? - May 7, 2008
A coast is born, along with other bodily functions - May 14, 2008
Standing up for what I believe I'll mock - May 21, 2008
Wii need to exercise. Why not be lazy, too? - May 28, 2008
Ready, aim, retire: Saying farewell with style - June 4, 2008
Nerves, bladder spasms and other public traumas - June 11, 2008
Death on stage, golf, and other tragedies - June 18, 2008
A columnist and a crappy year turn 40 - June 25, 2008
Eat! Eat! Eat! It's the American way - July 2, 2008
For a better flying experience, carry a ham - July 9, 2008
Rocky Mountain High — way too high - July 16, 2008
Take my cars, my ships, but leave my beer alone - July 23, 2008
Buy local, and start buying me off - July 30, 2008
Reasoned debate has no room in this one - Aug. 6, 2008
I love Olympic Ping Pong; you can bet on it - Aug. 13, 2008
Making way for Shui in the front yard - Aug. 20, 2008
Funny, you'd think that would be funny - Aug. 27, 2008
Exercising my rights to avoid exercising - Sept. 3, 2008
Queens and races: When drag is a good thing - Sept. 10, 2008
Mennonite women make me stupid(er) - Sept. 17, 2008
Life in the golden age of nostrils - Sept. 24, 2008
Aquariums make excellent buffets - Oct. 1, 2008
A world without bathtubs or a bailout - Oct. 8, 2008
It had better be the thought that counts - Oct. 15, 2008
Voting for idiots, a.k.a., the average voter - Oct. 22, 2008
And now some endorsements that make sense - Oct. 29, 2008
Not sleeping with the enemy - Nov. 5, 2008
Fun with fall, the family, and the French - Nov. 12, 2008
Menacing visitors: Not just from outer space - Nov. 19, 2008
If you've never been hit by a bus, stop whining - Nov. 26, 2008
Clothes make the man. I must be a coconut - Dec. 3, 2008
Sliding into edible perfection - Dec. 10, 2008
Saying goodbye to some community Roots - Dec. 17, 2008
It's that most wonderful time of the fear - Dec. 24, 2008
A thank you to the Freds in my life - Dec. 31, 2008
Flying
Starfish
Of
Death
When I discovered Dave Barry sometime in the summer before my senior year of high school, I was in love. More than a date with the gorgeous cheerleader across the room, more than Tom Cruise’s six-pack abs, more even than the bright red Firebird in the parking lot, I wanted to have a gift for writing humor like Dave Barry. Alas — and this was the one thing they all had in common — I wasn’t anywhere close to having any of them.
My first attempts at humor writing were truly dreadful, as I did the one thing that no one who wants to be considered humorous should ever do: Tell other people about funny things. Funny things retold are never funny. I don’t know why this is true; it just is. And if you doubt that, just recall the last time someone told you something “you just have to hear,” because it was so unbelievably funny.
It wasn’t.
And neither was I.
As I ran off to journalism school and other professional endeavors in my life, I continued to read Dave Barry and other humor columnists, lamenting all the while I would never be that funny. As a professional aspiration, however, I pretty much forgot about it; journalism schools and newspapers are for serious writers who write serious things. To my credit, I was pretty good at it, winning awards every now and again as well as the occasional nice note from a reader.
In the fall of 2005, however, I was out reporting something eminently forgettable that required that I walk on the jetty in Newport, Oregon. Careful to not get too close to the water, I was watching my footing when a giant wave tossed a starfish out of the water and straight into my knee. Knocking me off balance, I went tumbling — right into my first humor column. And it was there I understood: Funny isn’t funny, pain is — as well as misery, trials and travails and all the other things that we bitch about on a daily basis.
So, that’s what I write about. For one thing, it makes me happy. There’s tremendous solace in knowing that now matter how miserable you might be, a good column will come out of it. For another thing: It seems to make other people happy. I get more feedback from writing about my underwear and my wife — occasionally in the same sentence — than anything I ever wrote for the mainstream newspaper.
We all have underwear, I guess.
More than that, however, I’d like to think people see a bit of themselves in what I write. This is a mixed blessing, of course; some people’s lives are really lame. More often, however, I take it as a compliment, especially when someone tells me they think I’m as funny as Dave Barry. Some loves never die.
For the record, I do not think I am as funny as Dave Barry. If I was, I’d be rich and could live off my catalog like he does. I appreciate the observation, though, especially when they bring donuts. And know you’re welcome to do the same.
The observations or the donuts, although both are better.
Barton Grover Howe
Lincoln City, Oregon
bartongroverhowe@gmail.com
Attack of the Flying Starfish of Death
November 2005
When I first moved to the Oregon coast, I immediately became aware of some of the dangers that lurk in that large blue thing to the west.
First I saw billboards warning me about beach logs. Then I heard about shark warnings for surfers. I even saw that other Newport sea lions had sunk a boat.
But no one told me about the starfish.
This story does not begin as these stories often do: with a bottle of Tequila and a case full of Jimmy Buffet songs. No, this story begins with my editor telling me I should go out and about the area and shoot some scenic pictures for the paper. I presume if she had known I was headed for the Yaquina Bay jetty she would have warned me about the starfish.
Then again, it’s hard to say with editors.
I should also in all fairness note anything related to the ocean seems to hate me of late. My fiancee and I are trying to wedding, and between our upcoming wedding and honeymoon we’d made plans for Cancun, Cozumel and New Orleans. Until the very waters of the ocean rose up and smote them from the earth, that is.
So to be honest I probably shouldn’t have been going near the ocean, but it’s pretty hard to take scenic pictures around Lincoln County if you leave that out. (Yes, I know, Toledo is pretty, but you’re missing the point.) So, mission in hand, I headed out onto the north jetty to get some pictures of seagulls, waves and sunets.
The waves were hitting pretty hard, so I stayed in the middle of the jetty, which is where I was when the wave hit. I knew I was far enough from the water, but nonetheless, I wrapped my camera up tight in my arms.
And that’s when it attacked.
Flying out of the wave, a starfish slammed right into my calf knocking my feet out from under me on the wet rocks. Unable to use my arms -- heck, unwilling; at least my body’s insured -- I crashed to the rocks, drawing blood from both knees and legs.
I looked like Sylvester Stallone at the end of a “Rocky” movie, assuming he’d been boxing an elf. I hadn’t been this badly beaten up since I was hit by a bus. (Don’t ask.) Maybe I should have brought that bottle of Tequila.
The first thing I did was call my fiancee, who took the time to tell me to get some disinfectant on it before she broke down in hysterics with her co-workers. She even called me later just to tell me she and her co-workers decided I had been attacked by a “shooting starfish.” (Did I mention they’re all editors?)
Needless to say, I’ll probably skip the worker’s comp claim, to save myself the humiliation of explaining how I was attacked by a starfish. This from someone who has been clocked in the head by a 97-mile per hour fastball while at work and once got a concussion on the job after being hit by an anorexic woman dressed as an octopus. (There’s the ocean thing again.)
This is not that bad, in so far that I’m not having hourly dizzy spells. (No more than usual, anyway.) But I will say I pretty much hate starfish now. That story about how if throw a starfish back in the ocean it’s start on making the world a better place? Hogwash. The only place I’m throwing a starfish I find on the beach is in a chowder bowl.
In fact, pithy moralistic stories aside, I find it rather wonderful that when you find a starfish on the beach it does no good to throw them back because it’s already dead. Ha! I’ll even go so far as to admit the logical part of me knows the starfish that flew out of the sea at me was likely already dead.
Too bad that’s smaller than the bitter part of me which knows it attacked me on purpose. “Estrellas De Mar Del Vuelo De La Muerte” I call it. And if you do a little research you’ll find the “Flying Starfish of Death” is responsible for hundreds of ankle and knee injuries every year, as well as the sinking of the Andrea Doria.
OK, perhaps that’s a little much. I’ll admit I talked to dozens of people at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and they all think it was a freak occurence. (Or a freak on the jetty.) One guy even suggested the starfish might have been dropped by a passing seagull that picked up more than it could carry.
Maybe. But that wold mean the creatures of the ocean AND air are out to get me, and I just don’t think I could handle that.
(And the rest, as they say, is history. Including the starfish -- which is still in my freezer.)
Coffee: Proudly, gladly addicted
Feb. 6, 2008
Today marks exactly two-and-a-half years since I moved to Oregon, an experience that has changed me in profound and meaningful ways.
I pee a lot more.
Part of it is the rain, of course. When I lived in Colorado, the sheer act of existing tended to turn one into a prune. The buffalo, the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, John Denver before plastic surgery — it’s where all the wrinkly mammals come from.
Beyond just massive involuntary hydration, however, since moving to the murk of coastal Oregon I have started drinking massive amounts of coffee. Indeed, the first place I ever went in Lincoln City upon moving here was Clipper Ship coffee. (They have very nice bathrooms.)
This is not to say I didn’t have coffee at all in Colorado. Countless were the afternoons spent with a warm cup of cappuccino poured down my pants to stay warm.
But as survey after survey shows, the people of the Pacific Northwest are the most caffeine-sodden, latte-laden, Frappacino-fraught people on earth. And while some people may call it horrifying that the average American adult now consumes 26.7 gallons of coffee a year, I call it pathetic.
Because while that sounds like a lot, it’s really not even 10 ounces a day. In the Folger’s family, babies can get more than that breast-feeding. I’m lucky if I don’t spill 10 ounces a day on my pants.
Truly, I figure I knock back about 40 ounces a day. There are probably health concerns with that, and if I could stop shaking long enough I’m sure I’d read them. But if I’m going to carpe diem on a daily basis, I need to seize a steaming mug while I do it.
Besides, living in Lincoln County it’s useless to try and fight it. This place is to coffee addicts what Las Vegas is to gambling addicts (and alcohol addicts, and sex addicts, and …) What’s the use of a 12-step program when Starbucks and Java Depot are 10 steps apart?
We get started early with our coffee culture here in Lincoln City. The Culinary Program at Taft High School 7-12 actually teaches students how to make coffee drinks, which they give to their teachers to sample and evaluate. Almost daily, the students run a coffee stand right outside my room, and although none of the baristas are still-suckling infants, with a day-care program right down the hall, I figure it’s only a matter of time.
Some people would argue coffee in school is a bad thing. They clearly have never greeted 32 teenagers at 8:20 in the morning. More than that, however, coffee is educational. Really.
Ordering multiple-shot caffeine drinks is based on Latin prefixes. “Triple” comes from the Latin “tri,” meaning three; “quad” means four, and so on. And while that might seem pretty basic, I think as people’s addictions intensify, we’ll be able to learn more even prefixes: the “Dodeca-shot,” for a latte with a dozen hits, and the “Google-shot,” the highest amount of espresso before infinity.
And understanding Latin is important; everyone should know a dead and nearly useless language. Ah, high school, where many a young maiden would greet me with it: “Cur etiam hic es.” (Why are you still here?)
It’s also useful, of course, if you want to work in a coffee shop. When I was a barista for an enormous, world-dominating coffee chain that will remain nameless, one of the great highlights of my life was calling for a “sex-shot.” The first time I had someone order six shots in a drink, I called it across the store with glee. To my knowledge, this is the only place outside of the adult film industry you can actually use this term.
Actually, turns out the latter is the only place. Apparently, you’re not ever allowed to yell the word “sex” while people are drinking hot beverages that close to their nose. They even cover it in training, I’m told.
Must have been in the bathroom.
Love kills, just the way nature intended
Feb. 13, 2008
Valentine's Day arrives tomorrow, and although I am a married person, I always greet it with a bit of dread. Flashbacks, I suppose, to my bitter teens, (and 20s AND 30s) when the day was a perpetual reminder that I was completely clueless about love and that no one was sending me cards or flowers.
My Mom doesn't count.
Every Feb. 1 it began the same: a lonely lament that built over the next two weeks as society, the mass media, any song by Michael Bolton, let me know that I was a loser. Silently stewing, I would stare across the room at my peers who were always better looking, cooler and driving the hottest car around. I hated them, though not as much as I hated Michael Bolton. (Let's be reasonable.)
Yes, I knew that someday none of that would matter. That someday I would be loved and I would value all the more that which had been so difficult to find. But I still hoped and prayed that on Valentine's Day at least, something could mar their perfect world, like having all their body hair ripped out by a combine.
That never happened to any of them, of course, although it would explain Michael Jackson in the 90s. For my part, I got married and happily embraced my new role: staring at single guys in bars and thinking, ‘Yeah, dude, she's with me. And you should SEE my car.’
And all those people I was jealous of? Some of them are married, some divorced, never knowing who sent them bottles of Nair in the mail.
That doesn't mean I'm any less clueless about love. Despite being what I consider to be the greatest husband ever — even in emergencies I never wear my underwear over my pants — I am constantly screwing up in the love department.
Even though love supposedly means never having to say you're sorry, I always do. Indeed, you would think doing it a dozen times a day would mean a lot of extra love, but apparently not. Even when I apologize EVERY DAY for the same thing, it doesn't seem to help in the lovin' department.
I blame the world.
As near as I can tell, there's not a single thing out there that serves as a good role model in understanding love. Take the plant kingdom, which has dozens of ways of confusing the issue.
At its most blatant, there's poison oak, which when you've been backpacking with your girlfriend for several days looks like an acceptable recommendation for a toilet paper substitute. (This happened to my buddy at summer camp in New York. They broke up.)
Even in the city it's not any easier. Every year, millions of people kiss underneath the mistletoe — a parasitic plant that smothers then eventually kills everything it gloms onto. Oh yeah, definitely love.
Then there's the animal kingdom. In the Disney version, spiders and bugs of all kinds meet, fall in love and eventually end up as a theme park ride. In the real world, the Black Widow spider makes love and stings her mate to death. Which is nice compared to the praying mantis, where she consummates conception by tearing off her mate's head and eating him. Metaphorically, they're all Elizabeth Taylor.
Humans aren't much better, even if you don't include Britney Spears. When teenagers ask how they'll know when they're in love, we tell them, “Oh, you'll just know.” Imagine parents teaching driver's ed this way: “Here's the keys to the Hummer! Those bright red lights? Don't worry about it, you'll just know.” (I think some do teach it this way.)
Even getting older doesn't make it better, and from what I see on TV, I think it's now actually worse. Younger people are allowed to be romantic anywhere: a movie, the couch, the backseat of a big car, the back seat of a small car, a moped. (Stupid gas prices.)
But for older people, things have gotten so bad, drug companies have had to invent an arousal pill that lasts 36 hours. Because it's not enough just to be in love. Now people have to go on a picnic, carve a statue or — this is my favorite — drag two bathtubs out to the hillside, fill them with warm water and then soak naked looking at the view before they're actually allowed to be amorous.
This is not to say sex equals love. But let's be honest, love shouldn't have to involve the most complicated grassy knoll since Dallas in the fall of ‘63.
Which is why this Valentine's Day, I will just keep things simple and make dinner. And when I forget to turn the oven off, I'll just tell her it was because I wanted to keep her feet warm. No, it didn't work the last time. But she loves me, and hopefully that's once again enough to keep her from biting my head off.
I assume that's just a metaphor.
The sacrifices we make for spring
Feb. 20, 2008
Reveling in the recent re-emergence of the sun, I put on a pair of shorts, went outside and pondered the brightness and the searing lights that were my legs.
They are very hairy, too.
This is certainly not the first time I've noticed this; I can't get within six inches of Velcro. But in the dazzling sunshine outside the Chinook Winds Fitness Center, the contrast between light and dark, hairy and pale-skin scary was never more clear. And as I looked at the golfers lined up for their first day on the links in months I decided that spring had sprung early. That, and comb-overs don't respond well to breezes.
Now I know the spring equinox isn't for some time, and, yes, as of today it is raining again. But after endless weeks of having rain blown sideways up my skivvies, I'll take anything I can get. Yes, the calendar and Punxsutawney Phil may say spring is four weeks away, but I know two things: 1) Anyone who lets a rodent forecast their weather is an idiot. 2) If faith can build a bridge, then it can certainly bring a season.
With that in mind, it is time to begin the rituals of spring. It's time to say good-bye to murky and hello to perky! Break out the barbecue! Clean off the sunglasses! Buy a new bottle of Nair!
All over the world people have their native rituals for spring, an effort to commune with nature, celebrate the rebirth of life and occasionally hang with dead people, like they do in Japan. Called, “Shunbun no hi,” (translation: “vernal equinox day”) it's an official national holiday spent visiting family graves. I actually celebrated this holiday once in Tokyo where I did my part by eating a lot of dead things. I made sure they weren't related to anyone I went there with.
Some people might think it's weird to observe the exuberance of spring with a bunch of dead people; it's not like they play Frisbee. But life is life, even when it kills you.
Like some of the big trees in the Nelscott construction zone: finally blooming in the sun, the extra weight of their leaves seems to have knocked them over. Some people would say this was a bad thing, but I just choose to believe they've become easier for midgets to decorate come Christmas; you know they'll still be there. (The trees, not the midgets.)
This perpetual inactivity in the center of town, too, I take as a sign of spring; in many nations the beginning of spring marks World Storytelling Day, a global celebration of the art of oral imagination. And really, what could possibly be more creative than anything coming out of the mouth of an ODOT person? 2014, we swear.
There are other signs, of course. On the beaches of the Taft District, children and their parents can witness the miracle of life:
“Mommy, what are those sea lions doing on top of each other over there?”
“Well, honey, they're... uh... well, they're... Honey, why don't you look over there at those teenagers having the bonfire? Maybe they're making S'mores.”
“Mommy, they're doing the same thing as the sea lions.”
Everywhere in town people are hoping to welcome the return of warm weather's crowded streets much the same way the Aztecs did, by having people killed. Called, “Tlacaxipehualiztli,” (translation: “flaying of men”) this annual ritual celebrated spring, sprouting and fertility with the sacrifice and flaying of captives, mock battles and gladiatorial sacrifice. In honor of the god Xipe Totec (translation: “huh?”), the priests would spend 20 days wearing the victims' skin. (Not available at Tanger.)
Ah, spring tourists. A quick reminder of what our summer will soon hold, the visitors have returned to our streets, bringing traffic to a halt as they drive 10 mph under the speed limit looking for God-knows-what. (Though one assumes not an Aztec.)
This past Saturday, in the midst of the first tourism-related traffic jam of 2008, I heard one driver unleash a stream of invectives the likes of which I haven't heard in quite some time. Apparently having forgotten that this happens every year, she questioned everything from their driver's license status to their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of T-shirts.
My wife can be a very scary person. (I forget she's from New Jersey.)
For my part, I think I'll just chill. (Literally — it's still only 48 degrees.) Content in the knowledge that spring is here — or soon will be — and that whatever frustration change might bring, it is not my problem.
After all, my wife knew I had hairy legs when she married me.
No football is bad for children -- and their teacher
Feb. 27, 2008
It’s been 24 days and I’m not doing well.
My students were the first to suffer. In the midst of creating their Global Studies homework assignment I left out China and listed The Philippines twice. Then I hit the wrong key on my computer and played a Celine Dion song instead of Jimmy Buffet.
Deleting 1.3 billion people, dropping 7,100 Pacific islands in the wrong place, and filling the room with the world’s most annoying French-like person: it was not a good week.
And this was just the first seven days. It’s been 17 more horrible days after that and there are still dozens to go before my nightmare ends.
There’s no football. That, and Celine Dion has stopped playing Las Vegas and is free to roam the world again.
From the opening day of college football in late August to the Super Bowl in early February, my weekend life is a simple one. I wake up Saturday morning, watch ESPN Game day, pray yet again that this is the day Lou Holtz will actually die right now, and start watching football. I conclude Sunday night by watching Sportscenter, hoping to catch highlights of all the games I missed because God has limited to my home to just five televisions.
I do other things in the middle of course: I eat Doritos, I drink beer and occasionally respond to random noises coming from other places in my home. (I believe they come from something called “wife.”) I also grade homework and create lesson plans and assignments for the coming week, which is how 62 students at Taft High School 7-12 came to temporarily believe that General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Vietnam War. (If this makes sense to you, please enroll in my class.)
Because when there is no football to watch, there is no routine, there is no clarity. Forced to do my work without the presence of football, I watch other things like highly distracting 007 movie marathons and end up getting confused: “Class, this is James Ghandi. He liberated India and Pussy Galore’s bra.”
Football, you see, is not distracting. Consisting of five to 15 second plays interrupted by endless blather, beer commercials and mindless crowd shots of idiotic, shirtless fat men covered in body paint, you only have to pay attention to the action about 20 percent of the time. The other 80 percent can be used getting schoolwork done, making guttural noises at “wife” and buying body paint on the Internet.
Not everyone in America appreciates this of course; there were some 200 million Americans who didn’t watch the last Super Bowl, and in fairness they can’t all be wrong. Except that they’re morons.
Consider this: football is the only sport important enough to Americans that the U.S. government gets involved over nothing. In basketball there’s bribing of officials, in hockey there’s blood-laden physical assaults, and in soccer there’s such staggering boredom it should be criminal, but no one in Washington, D.C. cares. Yes, baseball did merit the Senate’s attention. But only after it became clear that some players were so artificially pumped up and filled with ‘roid rage that they might burst out of their shirts and turn green right on home plate. (Now that I would watch.)
Only football is so critical to our nation that even in the midst of drinking with lobbyists, an impending recession and the war in Iraq, members of the U.S. Senate started asking about football tapes. In a process normally reserved for the likes of Nixon and waterboarding CIA agents, your federal government wanted to know why someone would delete a tape of the God-awful New York Jets, a team so clueless they don’t even know they play their games in New Jersey.
The other reason football rocks is because it’s ours; nobody else plays it. OK, strictly speaking this is not true, since there is a Canadian Football League. But they play by different rules, so like most sports in Canada, it’s totally screwed up. (Really, have you even tried watching curling? It’s like shuffleboard for frozen people.)
Other countries have tried playing football, but it has failed everywhere else — England, Germany, Spain: all a bust. Even in Japan they have a hard time filling a stadium for one game. This in a country so crazed for sports they have “Extreme Ironing.” (They even have divisions: Freestyle, Urban, Rocky, Forest and Water. Truly.)
Some people take this as a sign that football isn’t a real sport, but since when did Americans need everyone else to do what we do to be great? Nobody complained when we stormed Normandy Beach and liberated Europe. (In all fairness, Canada was there, too. Curling still sucks.)
And so I sit on my couch mindless, vaguely wondering about increasingly loud gutteral noises, (“toilet,” “fire,” “run”), all the while counting the days. There are 184 of them before joy returns to my life: Aug. 28, when North Carolina State visits South Carolina. Wherever that is, though, I assume it’s not in Canada.
Crusading for a better cause: Me
March 5, 2008
Between my regular activities: teaching, bartending, dressing like large furry animals, and fitting in those last-minute needs, like waxing up my Ralph Nader voodoo doll, I don’t have a lot of spare time. But every once in a while I get an extra minute, so I’ve decided to start a crusade.
They must be fun; people have been having them for centuries. From what I remember of college, they seem a lot like fraternity parties: buildings get lit on fire, there’s lots of acts everyone tries to deny later, and history never seems to appreciate it near as well as the people involved. I think I could avoid that last part by keeping beheadings to a minimum.
What I need to figure out first is what to call it, and then what to actually crusade for. (You would think it would be the other way around, but after watching, “Cloverfield”and Paris Hilton I realized a catchy title will get you just about anything.)
I thought about keeping it simple: The Crusade. But it turns out The Church has used that title at least 10 times during the past two millennia, and I really don’t want to make them mad over issues of copyright infringement.
Anyone incensed enough to burn Joan of Arc at the stake just for using the name of Noah’s boat is probably not someone I want to mess with. And to think all this time I thought actually looking at a Playboy was the worst thing I could do. (I was just Xeroxing the interviews, I swear.)
I could call it the Community Crusade to fight trash on the beach, the lack of crosswalks in the south end of town, hefty people in Speedos; any of these would be a wonderful cause. Indeed, I can see my crusade making this entire community better. Or at least the restaurants down on SW 51st Street better; who can eat after seeing a half-naked fat guy in spandex?
But let’s be honest, when it comes right down to it, the question is always this: What’s in it for me? What do I get out this crusade? Heck, I am the fat guy in the spandex.
That’s why I’ve decided I’m going to do something that makes me omnipotent: all knowing, all powerful, and regal centurian of the universe, or something that’s close in a town of 7,800 people.
Maybe I’ll run for city council.
I have considered this at times, but after knowing Councilman Jim Kusz, I thought I wasn’t up to it. Because even though Jim might vote on something and make everyone mad, sooner or later their house is going to catch on fire, he will pull them out of a burning building, and they will say, “Thanks, Jim! I take back all those rotten things I said after you voted to turn my yard into beach access!”
If I were to see one of my constituents house on fire, my first thought would have to be: “Hmm, I wonder if those flames are from my crusade?” I am not moral enough or smart enough to be a councilperson, I thought.
But that was before I read in the paper that one of my elected councilpersons actually explained his opposition to the quality and feasibility of a local construction project by pointing to Hoover Dam, an edifice of such poor quality it’s only been holding back 28.5 million acre feet of water for three-quarters of a century. Having read that, just nine months after I saw a city councilperson soliciting another councilperson’s vote at a public memorial service, I’ve decided I am not amoral enough or stupid enough to be a councilperson.
Instead, I think I would like to be Lincoln City’s man of the year. I’m certainly qualified: I’ve been here for a year, and from the amazing numbers of chest hairs caught in my sweatshirt zipper, I’m reasonably sure I’m a guy.
Now I know that I have not done all the wonderful things that last year’s Man of the Year, Dick Meehan, has done. Yes, I volunteer, but unless I can do it in a mascot suit and hug cute co-eds mugging for pictures on the beach, I’m not interested.
Rather, I see myself as a vital link in a community that produces wonderful people. Take three potential women of the year: Diane Kusz at Tanger Outlet Center and Heather Hatton and Theresa Simmons from Chinook Winds Casino Resort. Every year they give out hundreds of hours of their time, and thousands of dollars to programs all over the city. I personally have gotten nearly $5,000 for my different activities at Taft High School 7-12 from them.
Where would they be without me? Given their level of involvement and kindness, if they couldn’t give all that stuff to beggars like me, they’d probably have to donate it to each other, and then they’d all go to prison. See what I do for this town?
Definitely Man of the Year material, and I’m sure everyone who is opposed to beheadings will agree with me.
NOTE: To vote Heather Hatton, Diane Kusz, Theresa Simmons, or any of the other wonderful women in this town Woman of the Year, see the application on page XX in today’s edition of The News Guard. You can nominate a man, as well, but Barton would prefer it not be him. Not only is he not a Man of the Year, but based on his ability to use power tools, he might not even be a man.
It wasn't the worst winter ever; I said so
March 12, 2008
Bartending the past week at the Historic Anchor Inn, I broke for a moment from confusing Corona for Tequila — they’re both from Mexico — to think to myself, “Wow, I’m glad this crappy winter is over.”
I only thought this; I would never say it out loud. That would invite the inevitable commentaries from everyone in the bar. (I swear there are always people there. WHAT is their deal?)
I’d get one of two observations. One would be that this winter has been just like every other. Never mind that we got pounded by the longest sustained hurricane-force winds on record. Never mind that we’ve had just one five-day break from the rain since September. Never mind that it’s the snowiest winter in the Cascades since the Donner Party dined out.
To them, this winter is just like the other ones, and nothing I, a scientist, or a wind gauge, can say will change that. In a way I admire their serenity; it must be nice thinking nothing ever really changes. On the other hand, it’s not the most practical way to go through life. “Brake noise? No, they always sound like that!” And then they rear-end a ’74 Pinto and explode.
Which is still better than the other kind of people, who no matter what you say, their life is always worse, always more negative. “The giant December storm? That was nothing! You shoulda seen this town after the storm of ’62!” Never mind that they’re only 38 years old.
The world is full of these people; you’ll find them in every profession: The mechanic who somehow needs to tear apart your whole transmission to fix your muffler. The coach who needs to win by 10 instead of three — in baseball. The president who claims a friendless country with the economic output of Finland is going to bring on World War III.
They get their jollies from being negative and want to make sure everyone else is, too. If given the chance to meet Will Rogers, they’d not only dislike him, they’d say the plane crash was his fault. “If God had meant for man to fly, he would have kept puttin’ stewardesses in tiny skirts.”
Many of these people are on the local TV stations, where they work as weathermen. Never content to just say it’s going to rain, they’ve invented a whole vocabulary for themselves. Starting with “sprinkles and “showers,” then running the gamut to “stormy” and “hands-free enema,” they seem to be at their best when they are scaring the bejeezus out of people.
The bane of the tourist trade here on the coast, they see one green dot on the Double- Doppler Enema-tracker 6000 radar, and they say it’s raining. Partly sunny becomes partly cloudy. Even when they comment, the glass is half full — it must be because of rainfall.
I think they should take all these people and stick them at their own TV station. It would get huge ratings because all the negative people could just flip to one channel. “Thanks for that weather report, Phil; clearly that raindrop in Depoe Bay was terrifying to everyone, including the whales. In other news, environmentalists are reporting the wild population of the endangered California Condor is up to 36. Does this mean more bird crap on your car? Back in a minute.”
Lou Dobbs could host everything on this channel. Lou is a member of what I call the cable TV “angritocracy,” people who make their living by being negative all the time, no matter how clueless they need to be. Incapable of saying anything without being indignant — “I don’t think there should be a St. Patrick’s Day,” (he honestly said this) — I think he’s headed for a Howard Beale moment straight out of “Network.” Although it will be fatal, I’m sure Lou will take satisfaction in the afterlife knowing that he messed up the studio, making the CNN custodian really angry.
This is not to say everything he and other members of the mostly-conservative angritocracy utter is always crap. On his Thanksgiving show he once noted it was Thursday. (I checked.) Nor would it be fair to say only conservatives get this bent out of shape on a regular basis.
More than one liberal Democrat person is currently distraught because although the country finally has a viable woman and a viable African-American running for president, they think it’s unfair that they are both running at the same time. And while some are simply content to wonder why they couldn’t come years apart, I think it’s inevitable that someone soon will claim we won’t have true progress until it’s an African-American woman installed as the most powerful person in the free world. (Oprah, apparently, is not enough.)
That’s why I keep my negative observations to myself, and even try to make them cause for celebration. Yes, I mourn Will Rogers, but I take some solace in knowing he never had to wreck his world-view by meeting Donald Trump.
I’ve even learned to do it with weather. Some years ago I was living in Spokane during one of their worst winters on record. Long and brutal, I still hoped it would snow just two more inches, giving that winter the official title as snowiest ever. And content with a hot chocolate and Bailey’s (or Tequila, or whatever) in my hand, I watched the snow drifts outside shift in the wind, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Lou Dobbs was under one of them.
Of course, it didn't snow again. And that winter passed into the books as another bad one, but not the worst one, certainly nothing worth getting worked up about as the years passed.
I can’t tell you how angry I was.
Big men, big boosters and the Big Dance
March 19, 2008
Basketball-loving humans everywhere — particularly the male kind — are excited this week. The NCAA tournament and its 65 teams from all over this great land are about to get down to business in “The Big Dance,” assuming the players are done getting tattoos.
Part of this excitement is the mere fact it’s called “The Big Dance.” For many men, this is the first dance they’ve ever actually understood. Until the NCAA's and putting teams into a bracket came along, what men understood about dances came from what they learned in middle school.
That’s where dozens of boys cower along a wall, too terrified to talk to the girl across the way, (largely because in the week since the boys asked the girls to the dance, the girls got breasts and grew a foot). Eventually one boy gets up the courage to speak: “Hi, Becky. You have really pretty teeth.” And then he throws up on her.
The Big Dance, however, requires no such testosterone-sucking terrors. Yes, it still involves talking to people who are much taller, but that’s only because you’re celebrating the big game with the winning team. (This, too, can involve throwing up.)
No, all The Big Dance requires is that you pick a team, root for them until they lose, switch your allegiances to someone else, and then swear you were for them all along. With 65 teams — even Portland State — in the tourney, there really is someone for everyone. (Alas, this does not work for Oregon State. Losers of the last 21 games, the only thing they were eligible for was the “Death with Dignity” law. They failed at that, too.)
So for Vikings fans, followers of the woefully average Ducks — 18-13? There must be a mercy rule for teams with ugly uniforms — and people all over the state, their team selection is easy: it’s their alma mater or home state’s school. And to all of them, no matter how small their team’s chances, it’s not just The Big Dance, it’s The Big Dance after Their Sister’s Wedding. (Throwing up is not OK here, unless they play “The Wind Beneath My Wings.”)
Their team is their life, and as long as their boys are in it, they will focus on little else. I have two friends like this, and I will keep their names private, although for identification purposes I will label them “Rudy Shuping” and “Dave Price.”
“Rudy” is from “North Carolina,” a huge basketball state, while “Dave” went to “Kansas,” a giant, flat armpit in the middle of nowhere. Both of them take great pride in ribbing the other one during the basketball season, and even more so during the NCAA tournament.
I am proud to say, however, that both are rational human beings, and neither one has ever painted their entire bodies in team colors (That I know of.) And should their team not win the final game, both will be OK. Rudy, I suppose, will return to thinking about what most North Carolinians ponder: giant masses of roaring, rotating energy punctuated by periodic moments of destruction (hurricanes and NASCAR).
Dave, however, I worry about. In Kansas they have nothing but basketball, and when it’s gone, there’s nothing but seven months of wheat, tornadoes and wondering longingly why nothing interesting ever happens there. (Save for the six-legged cow. Seriously. It’s on I-70.)
Which is why I think I find myself occasionally rooting for the Kansas Jayhawks, which as an alumni of the University of Missouri is fairly close to blasphemy. I think I do this for two reasons: 1) Missouri stinks this year. Again. 2) My friendship with Dave, who has been known to host barbecues with beers and grilled oysters during Jayhawaks games. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems rude to pray for someone’s misery when they are feeding you. (Not to mention shortsighted; Dave has a lot of oysters.)
What’s also true, however, is that I just don’t hate the Jayhawks that much. This might surprise some people. Indeed, it was in the pages of this very paper, that I advocated the Goodyear blimp crashing into the Jayhawks football team. I have come to realize this was ignorant. (The Goodyear blimp is helium. I should have hoped for the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg — much more flammable.)
More than that, however, there’s just not room in my heart to despise the Jayhawks right now; I have to save that room for hating the Oklahoma Sooners and Nebraska Cornhuskers. Also being an alumni of the University of Colorado, I hate Sooners and Cornhuskers more than just about anything. When it comes to basketball, I’d rather them lose than Colorado win. If I saw either one on the side of the road, I’d run them over.
OK, perhaps that’s a little much. It would dent my car. But after spending most of my youth watching my CU Buffaloes get annihilated at just about everything by these two teams, I truly despise them. As far as I’m concerned, they should pack all of them up and ship them off to some foreign country.
On the Hindenburg.
And so I find myself, ever so slightly, pulling for the Kansas Jayhawks, Lord, forgive my Missouri soul. My loathing of Nebraska and Oklahoma — the enemy of my enemy is in my bracket — forcing me to do something I thought I never would.
But I must admit it’s more than that. Friendship is too valuable a thing to toss aside over a basketball game, even in The Big Dance. And as I look at Dave, excited ever more with each game his Jayhawks win, I know that where there is joy there is beer, and he will keep buying me some.
There are staples in my underwear -- and I like that
March 26, 2008
I consider myself a fairly average American.
I drive a car I don’t really need because it’s fun. I believe Lee Greenwood’s, “God Bless the USA” is the single greatest song ever written for the first 96 hours of every July. I prefer my sandwiches have at least two different kinds dead mammal on them at a time, with no less than one-quarter pound of each. (My favorite: Burger King’s triple patty bacon Whopper; proof that a burger can have more meat than an actual cow.)
And I hate change. I want to know that when I wake up every morning that things are pretty much the same as I left them the night before. That applies to everything from underwear to my morning routine.
Let us first talk about my underwear.
Like many men, I have my favorite undies. Undies that are so well-worn, so broken in that were it not for the fact that talking to your crotch in public places is frowned upon, men would name each pair.
Just because I don’t give them names doesn’t mean I don’t know them, however. My favorites are my Philippine underwear, and I always know them because they still have staples in them.
See, when you have your laundry done in The Philippines, they staple small, numbered slips of water-resistant paper to the clothings’ tag, so they know whose is whose when the load is done. (Group laundry tip: make sure no one within three spots of you in line lives under a bridge.) It’s been seven years since those staples went in, and I still know every pair of underwear they’re attached to.
Mainly because they occasionally come loose and poke me in a certain part of my backside. (I am very glad the staples aren’t in front.) Now, logic suggests I would get rid of these undies, or at the very least get rid of the staples.
But I don’t like change, so I wear them until a hole opens up between the legs that gets as large as the leg-holes themselves. When I have to throw them out, I say a little thank you to them, for the good years they have given me. (Seriously.)
And saying goodbye is only part of the problem; throwing out one pair means bringing in a new one, one I don’t know. For after nearly a decade with a pair of undies, I know each by touch. I know if that pair’s waistband has thin or heavy elastic, and whether or not it will fit under the pants I want to wear that day. (Triple patty bacon Whoppers don’t leave much room for error.)
Because getting my pants on every morning is hard enough for me. As someone who does not like change, my brain is programmed into certain routines, and when I can’t follow those routines I end up with painful injuries and duckies coming out of my pants.
Let me explain.
Last week I was buttoning up a pair of pants that have one of those inside buttons along with a metal latch that you need to fasten before securing the outer button. It was quite an ordeal, owing to the fact that I had on new undies from The Gap with a pretty hefty waistband.
Trying to wrench the inner button and latch closed I actually pinched a nerve, rendering my hand useless for the rest of the day. (This is true.) There is nothing like telling one’s students that you can’t type that day because you have suffered a devastating pants injury.
Worse, however, these pants got me out of my routine. Pants should be simple: close the button and zip up your pants. Two steps, two simple steps that most men learn to do in their sleep. (And undo, which is why you’ll always find guys napping in he barco-lounger with their skivvies on display; when they laid down their pants were closed.)
But after an outer and inner button and an inside latch, my brain simply knew it had completed at least two steps. It was done. For my brain it was time to move onto other things, like where I might kill a cow.
Of course this still left one step undone. Suffice to say, there’s nothing like having one of your peers have to take you aside and tell you your barn door is open. Unless it’s your students asking you why you have rubber duckie prints coming out of that barn door.
It’s better than staples, I suppose.
History made interesting: NW Virgins
April 2, 2008
As a writer for the leading source of news, commentary and coupons on the central Oregon coast, I feel an obligation to write about things other just my body hair and underwear collection. Writing about other people’s underwear is fun, too.
Unfortunately, not everyone wants to be on record with their underwear as part of public life, which is why I will start writing about dead people’s undies. To that end, this week I introduce Professor Historical Dude, the coast’s foremost authority on area history. Committed to explaining our area’s often tumultuous history, Professor Historical Dude will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the truth, even if it involves making things up.
Part I:
A virgin territory gives birth
Native Americans had lived on the Oregon coast for centuries. Unfortunately for them, white people discovered there was money to be made in jamming salmon and oysters into cans and mailing them to New York. Like most things associated with New York – crime, pollution, the Yankees – this did not bode well for our coast’s first residents. Within just a few decades most Native Americans had been moved from their ancestral homes, the government convinced that they were incapable of living in harmony with settlers.
Instead, they settled on white people being incapable of living in harmony with each other. In the Willamette Valley, the coast was known as a place where “criminals” and “paupers” lived, while locals were called, “fern jumpers” and “clam diggers.” So heavy were their comments with quote marks, it went unnoticed that no one outside of England had actually been called a pauper since 1643.
This was the north Lincoln County of the mid-19th century: White people misunderstanding Native Americans, the bounty of our ocean shipped somewhere else, poor people struggling to make a living, and wild ferns roaming the streets forcing people to jump out of the way. In other words pretty much the same as today, save for the ferns.
Change, however, was coming. Soon those ferns would be replaced by another form of life. Wonderful and weird at the same time, some would see them as more valuable than a million ferns, while others would say they were as dumb as one.
They called them tourists.
The vague and varied history of tourism does not often allow historians to say, “This was the first tourist.” Sometimes it’s just impossible to know. In Niagara Falls, who’s to say who was just a local and who was scoping out a place to die in a barrel? When Coney Island first opened, how do we know it wasn’t a resident who first paid $14 for a hot dog?
Other times, history is inconvenient. Even though Roy Disney purchased the first ticket to get into Disneyland, his brother Walt Disney had his picture taken with the two people who were next in line. (This is true.) Roy, however, did get the last laugh on his brother; Roy’s not dead.
But here in north Lincoln County we do know the names of the first tourists: Salem newlyweds Jason & Anna Lee and Cyrus & Susan Shepard. Jason Lee was originally from Hollywood, where he had hung out with Mallrats, chased Amy, and pursued a personal Dogma, but eventually fled because everyone thought his name was Earl. Which was still better than Cyrus.
Anna and Susan had come to Salem by ship from Boston. As was customary at the time, their transport ship had stopped in Hawaii along the way, ensuring that both of them were so seasick that going to the rainy and empty Oregon coast seemed like a good idea.