Monkey-Fighting Snakes?

True gentlemen don't cuss.

"I've had enough of the monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane."

How to make German stick

My college career in German was headed by a fiery young piece of academic Euro-Trash named Frau D--. She was able to make the material very relatable. We had an entire unit on club etiquette, ordering drinks, and safe sex. She said something along the lines of, "Europe is a sweet place to hookup. It's a little harder for Americans over there because most countries hate you. It's not like a European girl coming over here." I muttered, "Amen for that, girl." This is one of those points in your life where you catch yourself, and beg the question, "Are you really that incapable of controlling your soliloquies? Ahh.... you're still speaking out loud!"

I only visited her office once. I was having trouble translating some passages of Goethe and asked for some guidance. After chit-chatting for a while she picked up her camera to show me some pictures of her most recent travels in Germany. She initially called me across the desk, but thought better of it and said, "Let me see what is on here. It was my husband and I traveling together."

When wishing us a Happy Halloween holiday she dismissed our lecture mit, "Und... keine sex ohne condome." Is a translations necessary? "And.... no sex without condoms." What a woman.

Guest Bartending

Oh, how I wish you could have been to my guest bartending. I will share some of the better anecdotes of the evening with you. I must preface my narrative with my views of bartending and life in general. I think bartending is the worst job in the world. Basically Carm (my bartender friend at Jekyl and Hyde herinafter J&H) explains bartending as: You work when everyone is relaxing, relax when everyone is sleeping, and sleep when everyone is working, you'll never have New Years, St. Patrick's Day or the Fourth of July off, and people think that everything behind the bar is for sale. "So, basically you are a zombie." I confirmed all of these as true in one night. Here is a list of some of the exchanges.

• Kid With A Terrible Fake ID: A rather young looking white male presents me with an ID of a 31 year old Hispanic male. "Ok mister Santos? Could you tell me your address." He of course knows to memorize the address for somewhere in Kentucky. He's not a complete amateur so I up my game. He actually knows the drivers license number, which in itself is a sign it's a fake. I ask, "Mr Santos. What's your sign?" He is now a deer in the headlights. I know he's a Pices because his birthday was only a few days prior. "Uh, Scorpio?" I tell him nice try and to please leave. He says, "There are tons of underage people in here, I'm going to call the cops." I simply tell him that there is a station next door and he can walk over there himself. Surprisingly he does. The cops show up and I tell him the story, serve them a "Coca-Cola" and they leave.
• The Girls Who Mistakes Hogging Up Your Time With Flirting: J&H has, for some unkown reason, renamed all of their normal drinks into monsters. A young lady walks up and asks, "What's in a Frankenstein?" I tell her that it is basically a gin and juice. "What's in a Dracula?" It's wiskey, soda, and grenadine. "What's in a Fang?" It's banana liqueur, pineapple juice and gin. "What would you recommend?" she asks batting her eyelashes. In other situation at a bar like this I would have taken this as a "game on" situation, but with a bar of three-deep frat boys calling for Miller Lites and confirming that they do in fact have money by waving it in your face I say. "Sweetheart, no matter what you order it's going to come out as a straight Jager-Bomb." Apparently I have insulted her as a human being, "Why would you do that?" My biting sarcasm has gone from nibble to chomp and I have alienated another patron.
• The Girl Drink Drunk: The well-dressed man getting plastered off of $5 cranberry and vodkas has asks me to "freshen him up." I make a comment on how much I like that his shirt is so shiny, and that must have cost "no less than $65." "Try 90." I tell him that I have the perfect drink for him: Ginger Ale, grenadine, and plenty of cherries. "What the hell is this? I wanted a cranberry and vodka!" I tell him that it's called a Shirley Temple and it's basically the same thing.
  

So as everything else in life, I am simultaneously the best and worst at what I do. I was slinging beers and shots like drunken cowboy and exercising a Scottish shepherd's control of the drunken sheep, but made enemies faster than it took to ring up their tabs before leaving in a huff.

Line of the night: A girl asks me if I came here often, went back and giggled to her friends. When she came back I asked her if she knew how much a polar bear weighed, and when she sat there dumbfounded, I said "Enough to break the ice?" gave her a free shot, she shot it (without taking the cigarette out of her mouth), and then said, "Wait, I don't get it."

Silence on the Bus....

Riding the bus is never just a way to get from one place to another. It has a very polarizing effect on me. When it is absolute hell it goes like this:

"Yeah, so, he doesn't have to pay child support when he's in jail. What's up with that?"
"I know, I know, and then Kaylie was talking shit about me on my MySpace page about Jeff."
I interject in their non sequitur exchange and say, "I'll switch spots with you, so I'm not sitting between you and your friend."
"Nah, it's fine."

When it is absolute bliss:

"My kid has the same hair as you. Except his mama's white, so it's not as nappy as yours. Oh, and since mixed babies are the best, he's a lot cuter than you are."
"Sir, I would hope so. It's hasn't been easy being this ugly."
"Oh shit! This dudes clownin' back here. Hey everybody...! [cue bus attention] this dude's clownnnnnnin'!"

But beyond everything I've seen while riding a bus (emo teens feeling each other up, and hicks spitting chaw straight onto the floor) and heard (a 15-year-old girl named Princess going straight from telling me a story about stabbing her step-daddy while he tried to rape her into trying to come and hang out at my house) and experienced (businessman on derelict bum fist fights) I have never experienced the ultimate nirvana in public transportation: absolute silence.

I owe my skill of instant reaction to the unexpected to baseball and my father. Baseball, being the most boring of all sports to play and watch gives a young man a lot of time to think. In the field you think through every possible scenario before the pitch, double in the gap to you left, single right at you, where the runners are, who is batting, stealing, sliding, who's on deck, what pitchers they have in the pen, a bunt, why they call it bunting, bunt cake, pan cake, pan fried, fried rice, rice paddy, paddy wagon, grand wagoneer, "I want a Jeep," ad infinitum. After a while this just becomes a meditative trance know as "the zone", where you not so much react as anticipate the world that you are now one with. My father taught me how to do this, himself being far too meditative for his own good.

I apply this to every moment of my life. When I ride the bus and we go over a bridge the scenario of a fiery bus crashing into the river runs through my mind: calm the passengers, move everyone to the bottom of the bus, release both hatches, swim to safety. Today, while I was thinking about what I would do if I was suddenly stabbed by the man audibly praying behind me, the bus stops dead. That is when I achieved full enlightenment. For those 10 blissful seconds it was completely silent and complete dark. The stop marquee restarts and simply says,

"Clever Systems -- Ltd."

Go bus, I'm late for work.

The Lizard King of the Salvation Army

I was running errands on the South Side and decided to stop in at the Salvation Army to do a little scrounging. They have a rack next to the register that I think they think would be labeled as "stylish." I would not recommend aforementioned rack for men as it is usually Sean John, Wu Wear, and Ecko, but a few items did catch my eye, namely 5 pairs of leather pants. It is items like these that make thrifting fun. Thinking of the history and love bestowed up something as intimate as leather pants is hard thing to ignore on a rack. Upon closer inspection they ranged in waist size from 28 to 42. What sort of man with a 42 waist thinks he can pull off leather pants is either brave, stupid, or has a biting sense of irony. My co-worker Brian said he likes to think of it as a skinny man that got progressively fatter and finally decided to give up once he ballooned 14 inches around the gut.

My amusing thought of a 42" waisted man with leather pants was interrupted by a rather tall man reaching across me for the 34 waist leather pants. As I'm holding the 28s (my assumed size in leather pants) up to my face for inspection he asks me, "Hey man, did you see these leather pants?" I told him that in fact did see the leather pants that I was holding and described them as "rock star". Apparently he took this not as benign comment about pants but more as stage direction in a comedy of errors. He gripped the leather pants to his chest and started softly "Try to run, try to hide..." I said, "Sir?" Apparently this was the fuse to set of his rock star powderkeg. He throws his head back and thrusts the leather pants above his head now yelling, "Break on through to the other side, break on through to the other side, Break on through-oh," and he takes off running, swinging the pants around like a Terrible Towel, "Oh yeah" and repeating at naseum "Break on through, break on through, break on through."

Now, my simple proximity to the Lizard King and short exchange with him was enough for the other shoppers to assume that I was either his friend, or social worker. By the time he had switched over to singing "Sweet Child of Mine" everyone was looking at me to control this outburst. I simply made eye contact with a few people and just shrugged my shoulder. I figured this was ambiguous enough to either say, "I don't know him" or "I know him all too well." He finally stopped when it came to the solo part of "Sweet Child of Mine."

He took a bow, and I gave a slow clap.

Gymnastics?

In chit-chatting with a co-worker about what a kick-ass stay-at-home dad I would be, we somehow started talking about her friend that actively tried to turn her child gay. At first I was struck by the audacity of trying to turn your kid gay. But, after thinking about how many people try to turn their kids straight, my audacity turned to intrigue and then as always self-reflection and confession. This is where gymnastics came into play.

I am going to relate this story with comments embedded throughout.

Looking back on it, it would seem that my mother got her way when it came to all things raising the chilluns. We took music lessons, participated in school plays, and went to the dentist, usually against my fathers will (I mean they are baby teeth and going to fall out, what's the point). It seems the only time that he put up a fight was when my mother tried to enroll me in ballet (gay). He had to take a stand (straight). He made the counter-offer of dirt bike (super straight). My mother held strong with ballet (gay). He slowly worked his way down the straight pyramid to football (pretty straight), hockey (straight), lumberjack school (super straight but none existant). My mother held strong until my father essentially gave in and let forth the suggestion of "gymnastics" (gay).

Talking to him about this negotiation years later I asked him, "Dad, how exactly is gymnastics straighter than ballet?"
"I don't know I remember watching the '88 Olympics and thinking those dudes looked pretty manly. Then I saw that your mother made you lime green lycra pants for practice. And it was pretty much over when I saw your floor exercise."
"Yeah the palma horse is pretty much the equivalent of a mechanical bull at a gay bar."
"Well, I realize that now."

My co-worker and I aggreed that the vault was probably the manliest. You could imagine some dude in armor hurling himself over a horse to stomp on the bones of his enemy.