Coach's Corner

I have a 'dot com' of my own, and I'm sexually active. Things are falling into place.
Coming at you live from a bus somewhere.
Oh, I know that you probably figure the bus has gone the way of the horse-drawn, but when one can't afford a lease on the new Mazda 3, this is how man must traverse.
I sat in the back of the bus because I still want to be the cool kid, and on a coach line, no one can make me sit elsewhere.
Don't do that. Don't sit in the back.
I sat far too near a drunkard, who yelled a lot of profanity during our lunch stop because he didn't realize it was a lunch stop.
"How long do it take the driver to have his Jesus cigarette!? Let's fuckin' go!"
Later, he offered me straight vodka from a pineapple crush bottle.
He kept waking me up to shake hands with me, and he wasn't taking no for an answer.
"We're in this. You and me. We're fuckin' in it."
If he meant anything besides the bus, he was wrong.
We're not in it.
Another woman, who looks like she's kicking a drug, had been crying for the first half of the sojourn.
Now that we're into the second half, she's releasing absolutely ungodly farts back here.
It seems impolite to move now when I was willing to put up with buddy earlier.
He told me to charge his iPod because I "knew about that stuff," referring to me as a "pointdexter," which he pronounced incorrectly.
I think it's the glasses.
I'm heading to my homeland, and ultimately, the stage.
That crackly ol' mic. Can't get enough of it.
I've been watching some film about a preacher whose kid didn't die enough because they play bullshit movies during the bus trip.
I have a former blog post about being forced to watch a movie about a snowboarding chimpanzee through the same bus service, but I can't track it down right now. 
Anyway, there's not much of a point to this.
I'm just trying to get back into a daily blog routine, and some days aren't that interesting.
Primarily, I wanted to tell you about the drunk guy.

Don't Forget to Write

I tend to blame the outside world for my out-of-season hair and shabby clothes.
When I was a wee lad, shitty at basketball, I stumbled upon a word processor in Robert's house.
A word processor, for anyone born this side of Y2K, is (was) an electronic typewriter.
What a satisfying device!
Just like a regular typewriter, but it weighs twice as much and can't be used in a log cabin.
And it used to make that satisfying click-clackety noise as I typed along.
I used to write stories I called Murder, He Wrote.
Little stab stories about my buddies.
After the death scene, I'd pen, "That's the murder part..." 
Mostly, I just loved showing off my typing skills to my buddies, but they're not the only stories I've written for kicks.
I could be a gymnast, sure.
Or a teacher, I suppose. I'm actually qualified to do that.
However, I'd much rather be a writer.
Here are some of the perks to being a writer.
I know this is the 21st century, so I'll keep them nice and short, in bullet form.
Comin' at ya!

• Sleeping in is normal and, in some cases, encouraged
• Rampant alcoholism, though sad, is seen as okay by your friends and peers
• You're expected to wear large, comfy sweaters all day
• When people see you at your laptop in Starbucks and they think, "What a dick," you don't care because you're at work in a coffee shop, rather than being on a coffee break in a coffee shop
• Flexible hours, loose women
• Unkempt beards and hairstyles are fine
• People assume you're insightful, allowing you to talk over others at parties

The list goes on.
They say, "Everyone needs a writer."
I've found little proof of this.
Mostly because I never bother looking for work beyond the mailbox.
So today, I got on Twitter and hashy-hashy'd #bloggerswanted.
I'm a blogger. You want me?! Come n' find me!
Can't get paid that way, though.
So I went to them.
People just want bloggers for new fashion magazines that are never going to get off of the ground.
As it turns out.
None of them seem to be paying.
I can't live on sweaters missing a button, you dig?
I wrote a maid-of-honor speech for my former manager once, and I didn't know anyone who would be at the wedding besides her.
Everybody loved it.
In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David asks a doctor to look at a mole on his back.
The doctor is in a hurry and refuses.
Impatient, the doctor eventually asks Larry David what he does, and Larry says, "I'm a writer."
It just sounds so beautiful.
That's all I want to tell people. 
So, if you need something written, let me know.
I'd love to finally fulfill my destiny.
Until then, I'll keep polishing these gems for you fine tacticians.
Maybe the blog will catch on after I die.
#deceasedbloggerswanted

We'll Be Right Back

Is everyone sipping their tea? Good.
Everyone fantasizing about sleeping with a co-worker? Good.
We've got the right atmosphere going here at Tragic Hero, then.

Prostitution is totally legal in some places.
These are the places I would most like to visit.
I've often thought about picking up a Japanese prostitute - just Japanese.
And it's not even like I'm into the whole Asian scene.
I mean, I'm not not into it, but I'm sure that any of us could say that.
We've all been to the Chinese buffet.
We've all been to the intimate massage parlor.
This is not racist. Stop thinking that it is.
Anyway, for those of you who have been fans since the beginning, you'll know that the Asians tend to be into me.
Which is fine.
None of this has to do with the prostitution thing.
Perhaps it's the appeal of the love hotel that actually fuels this bizarre, unaffordable fantasy.
I don't want to contract a sexual disease in Tokyo, I just want to spend a night in a structure shaped like a rocket ship.
Again, most of us could say that.
I think I'm a little more romantic than usual today because I've been listening to The Cars.

I've listened to little else, though.
I used to pride myself on pretending that I knew a bit about music.
It's nice to be able to feel superior to others for no good reason.
I worked at that music store.
I was a part of the scene, even if it was the machine part of the scene.
The scene's machine.
I used to just sit and listen to music.
These days, I spend fifty percent of my music time listening to the same videos from my YouTube playlist over and over.
The other fifty percent is spent listening to YouTube's goddamn ads.

No escaping them.
Ads.
Although I have no concrete notion of why, George Meyer is a hero of mine.
He once said that if he had a choice between ridding the world of nuclear war or advertising, he'd choose advertising.
Impassioned, I realized that I agreed with him as I read it.
Television commercials are one of those things that seem to affect me differently than everyone else.
Like, when I hear a television commercial I begin cursing immediately, and I try to find a way to stop it.
That's what I was getting at with ads on the Internet.
The Internet is slowly undoing TV (finally).
We have Netflix now. We have projectfreetv (not that I endorse it [obviously I endorse it, we all do]).
There are options that no longer involve a cable box.
You can still watch hillbillies shoot alligators with shotguns, and you don't have to DVR or schedule yourself around it.
And no ads!
Then they started adding ads.
Now there are just as many online as there are everywhere else.
I guess that's nothing new.
I mute commercials as soon as they come on.
All commercials, no matter what medium I'm watching them through.
It's one of those things that people find odd about me, while I find the opposite odd about everyone else.
My sister-in-law asks why I mute commercials and the only thing I can think to ask her is, "Why wouldn't I?"
Why wouldn't I?
What commercial am I going to hear that I need to hear?
I know the products.
KY Warming Sensation if I want to masturbate when the power goes out and there's no heat.
McDonald's if I want to fit in while feeling ashamed of myself.
Swiffer Dusters if I need to, inexplicably, clean the blades of my ceiling fan.
Who gives a shit? I don't need some voice actor from Toronto yelling at me about mutual funds while I'm eating a sandwich.
Do you?
And they're so goddamn loud.
The volume is jammed up four or five notches above whatever you considered a comfortable decibel to begin with.
Unnecessary loudness drives me crazy.
It's the reason I have a tough time in sports bars and grade seven classrooms.
Never mind the fact that they're everywhere.
Just think about how many commercials you have been fed so far in your life.
All adverts; not just TV. Print ads, radio ads. On-the-side-of-bus ads. All of them. 
How many hundreds of thousands? That's the number you're probably looking at.
Hundreds of thousands of yammerings about Pokemon and fuckin' Sears outlets.
Now, how many more will you see before you die?
Really think about it.
It starts to make sense when you really think about it.
It's something that I never asked for, and I don't want it. 
I might have to see them, but I'm not going listen to them too.
I'd love a job writing them, though.
Another thing I'd be good at if someone just gave me the chance.
Watch, I'll show you:

Ahem:
Hoping to lose your virginity on a date in Dad's van?
Tired of dirt not showing up on your car's paint job? 
Or maybe you just really hate your wife. 
Treat your car to smooth, refined Turtle Wax. 
Only idiots get their cars professionally detailed. 
Do it yourself with the shine that takes its time. 
Turtle Wax.

See? We've all seen so many commercials we can write them ourselves.

Pad Tired

One time I was in some place where they sell items.
Wherever.
Some trollop was there with her daughter, who was maybe five.
The kid was fucking around, being five, making noise, making demands.
The mother stooped low, and I overheard her hiss, "You're embarrassing me."
And I thought to myself, "No lady, you're actually embarrassing her."

What's more unbeatable than cancer?
The effort to beat cancer.
That's not supposed to be uplifting.

So roll out the carpet sample and bound up your feet, it's Turpin's birthday today.
She swallowed one of my gray hairs that fell off of my scalp once.
It was really gross.
Y'know, she used to have it going on, sure.
We all know that.
I mean, get her drunk on three coolers; sporting mens' glasses frames; setting up the tent by herself.
She was the full package.
But she's got these kids now.
She's also married to my best friend, but that's just a movie plot.
That ain't no thang.
But these kids, I'll tell ya.
They just, you can't get rid of them, can you?
A gaggle of children are sort of like an inapporpriate racial slur at a dinner party.
Once it's out on the table, there's no getting rid of it.
I love them.
The boys are always good for a laugh, and Rowan's old enough now that Peter can teach her to call me 'Uncle Fartface.'
It's perfect.
They all came on out to Pasadena ("Where?") for a visit, and that was good enough.
Sometimes the little ones get uppity, but you just have to give them one of those Heinz baby food things.
It's like a juice box, but it's a bag and it has peas in it.
All mashed up!
Water's great for kids. 
They're entertained by it, they can drink it (we were in a freshwater environment), and they can urinate right in there and no one needs to know about it.
We had a lovely day.
One of the little fellas wouldn't join us during snack time, but Andie managed to lure him up to us with cheezies.
They always want to eat. They're like the dog.

Yes, it was a helluva afternoon.
But then nightfall came.
Sorta.
It was gettin' on duckish.
That's dad's term for dusk.
Had to feed the babies. Had to feed everyone.
So, I was making pad thai in the kitchen because it's not just my sexual specialty.
The dish is perfectly suited for children. It can be family friendly if I'm not making it at the bordello.
It took me a while to prepare it, and the children seemed more fussy than usual.
By the time I had finished cooking, the children were all calamity.
They were just shrieking, oh how they were shrieking.
And I was thinking, "Let's jam some noodles and shrimp in these fuckers and smoke a joint."
This is the thought process of a bachelor. I'm unfit to babysit, everybody!
Nothin' doin'. They wouldn't eat anything.
They were screeching because they were hungry, reaching for food, but when I'd try to feed them...
Oh ho. What a loud, unsolvable pickle.
And I just remember thinking that I badly wanted to drown them.
To be fair, the pad thai was probably too spicy. 
Anyway, it got worse at bath time.
They couldn't have made more noise if you were skinning them.
Andie and I were outside of our home, and the catterwauls echoed in the evening sky, emitted from our bathroom.
It sounded like an asylum.
It makes no sense. When you have no children and you look at something like this, it makes no sense.
How does this become normal? How could you let this become your day?
Until you see pictures of them all camping.
Until you see them laugh and do all of the sweet bullshit that Anne Geddes loves to photograph.
Then it becomes a little clearer.
You see that they're all where they should be, and that feels right, so long as they're only visiting for a short time. 

Yes, the birthday girl has come a long way since our muted flirtations as twelve-year olds.
Sure, I have a thin mustache now and Sarah shaves her legs, but otherwise little has changed.

They call that a mom bathing suit.

I want to do a photoshoot with the boys in which we're all Greasers.
Sarah says I can give them cigarrettes, so long as I don't light them.
It's going to be great. 

Until Then

I once was a young lad, a-writing

Til I no longer found it exciting

Now I sit and I stare at my curl'd belly hair

And I muse on the matter of timing

I'll write something real tomorrow. 

Or perish!