Be Careful With The Buck-Teeth

I stumbled into the break room at the place I occasionally show up to work recently to get a cup of free & putrid coffee. A bald-headed man with strange facial hair was standing in front of one of the coffee pots. He had some of that fake creamer (the kind that's not liquid) that he was pouring into the bottom of his little white styrophone cup. The flavor of said fake creamer was hazelnut. I seized on this fact and even though I didn't know this baldy's name, I engaged this man in a little break room conversation. I asked him, "Are you a fan of Shirley Booth?" He didn't respond to that beyond a look of confusion mixed with horror. I pressed on, nonplussed "I for one think Shirley Booth is hot. I mean in that show she was always parading around in that maid uniform, and maid uniforms are always hot. Hazel was hot." He responded by kind of shaking his head uncertainly. The woman who works in the break room and is in charge of the coffee and whatnot was standing within earshot of myself and this strange fellow. And she started laughing pretty hard. I said to her, "Don't you at least agree with me? Hazel is hot as hell." And while Shirley Booth may not not in fact be hot as hell, and while Hazel was an unwatchable piece of 60's garbage, it's really best not to argue with my warped logic in situations like the one I'm describing. That will get you nowhere. So the lady who makes the coffee and whatnot around the place I occasionally show up to work just kind of shrugged her shoulders and said, "Whatever you say, _____." As for the bald-headed man whose name I don't know, I haven't seen him around the break room since this tragic incident took place. He probably thinks I'm crazy...

Brandon & I were out at Sloppys a week ago Friday. It featured the typical crowd doing their typical drinking, with one exception. There was a buck-toothed woman in the joint I'd never seen before. She made it a point of grabbing the bar stool to my right & while I wanted to ignore her entirely & focus on the various baseball games on the shitty TV's at Sloppys, that's not what happened. That's never what happens. I learned through some light bar banter that this woman's name was Cheryl. She works at a factory in Browns Summit. She has 2 kids - one 20 and the other 17. Did I mention that Cheryl had buck-teeth? This woman's jaw was a mess. As a result of the jaw and all the buck-teeth flying everywhere, Cheryl was a little on the repulsive side. At one point she stood up to go say hello to the infamous Michigan Molly (who happened to be sitting way down the bar from me for once). And seeing buck-toothed Cheryl stand up was alarming as well. She had one of those odd pear-shaped bodies. She looked like a blob of sorts and the fact her jeans were too tight didn't help matters at all. Cheryl sat back down & I did a shot of the infamous rock-gut whiskey. It was then that I decided to talk a bit more personally with buck-tooth Cheryl. I asked her if Brandon & I could guess her age. She didn't really give me the okay but I plowed ahead anyway. I said, "You look like you're 28 to me." She said, "I told you I had a 20 year-old. I can't be no 28." I said, "I could easily see you giving birth at 8 years old. You've got those hot breeder hips I find so tempting." Brandon started laughing. She responded by attempting a seductive smile through her arsenal of jagged teeth pointed in various directions & said, "I'm older than you think I am." I shot back, "No way you're over 35. No way in fucking hell." Brandon kept laughing. Cheryl said, "I'm older than 40." I replied, "Don't fuck with me Cheryl. That's cruel & I'm a very shy and sensitive guy." More laughter from Brandon. She finally came out and said she was 44. When learning this I had to tell Cheryl, "Well, forgive me for not believing you. But you really look way younger than that. You must have steered clear of the meth." Cheryl was quite sheepish (and ignorant) about my insincere display of silliness. When Brandon & I went outside to smoke, he asked me "How old did you really think she was?" I said, "55, easy. Easy. I would have never for a second thought she was still in her 40's." Brandon wholeheartedly agreed with that. He thought the chick was at least 50 as well. I took off from Sloppys shortly after that, thinking nothing of Cheryl after leaving. I drove over to Wing Joint, sat down at the bar, ordered a beer and another shot of the old rock-gut crap. I was feeling pretty good. About 15 minutes passed & I'll be damned but this buck-toothed Cheryl woman appears seemingly out of nowhere to my left. She must have overheard Brandon & I discussing a change of bar venue at Sloppys. That's all I can figure. I ignored her, took another shot, and left Wing Joint. And I think a very valuable lesson can be learned as a result of my little encounter with buck-toothed Cheryl. Not a valuable lesson for me, of course. I never learn. Never. But a lesson for all the real people who drop in on this retarded blog from time to time can be learned. It's this - if you decide to pass the time at a dive bar by fucking with a middle-aged, buck-toothed, meth addicted, factory worker, don't tip your hand about what bar you're going to next. That's the kind of sound advice you can only get here.

I was sitting at Scams Lakeside the other night & the damn NFL Enrty Draft was on a couple of the TV's in the place. I paid as little attention as possible to it. However, one very disturbing trend emerged that even this disinterested observer took notice of. That would be all the damn hugging. After each pick, a draftee would walk onto to stage and Roger Goodell would hug the draftee for like 30 seconds. I kept waiting for Goodell to start making out with some of the dudes. When did they start all this unnecessary and creepy hugging at the NFL Entry Draft? I was weirded out by the whole thing.

I was watching a rerun of Hee Haw recently on some channel. It was unwatchably stupid. The clothes were amazing though. The episode was out of the mid 70's I'd guess and seeing the mixture of horrible 70's clothes with country music sensibility was not easy on the eyes. I always enjoyed Hee Haw when I was a kid. Who doesn't love Lulu? Fucking Lulu - she's enormous. And ugly. A perfect combination.

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The Bigger The Stalker...

I found myself sitting on a bar stool recently at the always atrociously awful Sloppys on N Elm St. I believe it was a Tuesday evening. The much-maligned Michigan Molly waltzed her wantonly & time weathered ass into the joint, and sure enough, sat at the bar stool two spots to my left. I immediately ordered a shot of the most repulsive rock-gut scotch they hide deep in the bowels below the bar. And that was a wise move on my part. I have some experience in these types of situations. You know, the types of situations where you can't possibly be intoxicated enough not to hate where you are or anyone within 10 feet of where you are who happens to represent the worst that womanhood has to offer in the known world. As always, I knew what was coming. Questions. Questions. And more questions. "How are you, Jack?" & "Are you having a nice spring, Jack?" & "Why do you seem so unhappy, Jack?" Things like that. The question about unhappy Jack was easy enough to answer. I simply told her I'd been listening to The Who quite a bit. That reference flew right over the woman's head. Usually the best way to proceed in a scenario like this is to try and get the terrible person to move on to another terrible bar (preferably Ass Traps or The Wench). The thing is that I can never get Michigan Molly to leave a bar. She's so fantastically clueless that she never gets offended at what I say to her. So, given that she wasn't about to leave, I decided that I better get the hell out of there my own damn self. I ordered one more evil tasting scotch shot & an indiscriminate light beer to chase the shot with. And I drank up pretty quickly. But before I could get the hell out of Sloppys, I got several uninteresting pieces of news from Michigan Molly. One, she was on Spring Break from her job teaching Sex Ed to wheelchair bound 2nd & 3rd graders. Two, she had a big tennis match coming up against some perceived foe. Three, she's contemplating moving into some old man's guest house on Lake Townsend (and yes, I noted the irony of her mentioning Lake Townsend after my Happy Jack reference flew several yards above her boil riddled head). The thing about Michigan Molly renting a guest house did catch my attention a bit. While telling me about all the perks of living on this giant estate (horses, golf, massive dildos everywhere, etc.), Michigan Molly mentioned that the man who owned said estate looked like a "fat Bill Murray." I asked if this fact turned her on. She seemed put off by that. I delved a little deeper into this "fat Bill Murray" comment. What I did was note that Bill Murray is a very talented man. A genius to be accurate. And this is when she said it. This is the comment that this whole stupid paragraph has been leading up to. Michigan Molly informed me that she loved Billy Murray in Animal House. All I could really think to do at that point, having paid my tab, was finish the last few gulps of the indiscriminate light beer I'd been tolerating, get up from the bar stool, and say, "So did I, Molly. So did I." I felt like a beaten man. I felt about as low and depressed as I've ever been in my continuously & habitually low & depressing life. Everything worked out okay though. There are several other bars within about a 5-7 minute drive of Sloppys. I simply drove to one of them and got hammered.

I ran into someone at work recently, someone I hadn't seen since like last July. This person asked me, "Where have you been hiding yourself?" I replied, "The Prison Farm."

I ran into a 2nd person at work I hadn't seen in quite a stretch that same morning. This person said, "I heard you've been working in Durham." I replied, "That's a damn dirty lie."

I ran into a 3rd person that same morning at work. This person happens to be a woman I hadn't seen in 6 years. She also happens to be one of the women who stalked me. This particular stalker did her stalking 11 years ago. I blogged about being stalked in a post from 2009. And to recap the thrust of that stalking post: Being stalked sucks. It's not all it's cracked up to be, that's for sure. It's a bit of a nuisance, if you know what I mean. Anyway, this stalker chick said to me, in a sick and perverted lilting voice, "Long time no see, stranger." Now, I wasn't expecting to see this stalker ever again. I had no heads up that she'd be in the building working. In other words, she caught me off guard. I did manage to regain my composure though. I said, "That's true. It has been a long time. I guess the reason it's been a long time is because you've obviously been spending hours a day at the Golden Corral." Which might be true. I have no idea. The reason it might be true that this stalker has been spending hours a day at the Golden Corral over the past 6 years is because she's put on a good 60 pounds. Or a bad 60 pounds. Or some kind of 60 pounds. I was super depressed over the whole incident. Not so much because I ran into this stalker so unexpectedly after 6 years. Although that didn't help matters. What I was so depressed about was the fact that this stalker of mine had gotten so fat. Back in 2001 when she was stalking me, she wasn't the hottest girl alive by any means. But she at least was reasonably not terrible looking. And if you're gonna be stalked by someone and have to carry those memories around with you for years, it's best that the stalker at least be reasonably not too horrible looking. And those are the memories of this stalker I've been carrying around about her (even the last time I saw this stalker in 2006 she was not bad looking). But now that's all ruined. Now, whenever I think of this stalker moving forward, I'm gonna picture this fat-ass woman saying, "Long time no see, stranger." And that really sucks. Damn my luck.

I've been passing the time the last month or so by watching reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210. It airs on something called Soapnet Channel. I've been enjoying it immensely. My girl Valerie Malone...

You're just like Mary down in Mexico on All Souls' Day

Oh By The Way, Which One's Floyd?

I was at one of those terrible pharmacy type stores earlier buying a couple packs of smokes & this old timer with a putrid male perm happened to be in front of me in the old queue. He was buying a small bottle of some generic pink Pepto Bismol crap. His total for this purchase was $3.19. He then proceeded to pull out a checkbook. Yes, he paid $3.19 with a check. I stood there in utter disbelief as this dude took 2 minutes to write a check for $3.19. Finally, after the 100 year-old clerk processed his check and the geriatric check-writer took off to get loaded on generic Pepto Bismol, I said to the ancient looking clerk, "I haven't seen someone write a check for 3 bucks in like 25 years. Does that happen often in here?" This nasty old bag informed me that some older folks don't believe in using check cards. I said, "What the hell is there not to believe in? It's a damn debit card." She then let me know that someone had written a check at this pharmacy for 17 cents recently. That's when I lost it. I really did. I broke into convulsions of laughter. The only question I had for the Methuselah-esque clerk was, "What can you even buy here for 17 cents?" She replied, "We were running a special on used condoms." I asked, "How used were the condoms, ma'am?" She looked a little stumped on that one, but pulled herself together long enough to give me an answer, "Sonny, we got them from an old folks' home, so there wasn't much jizz in them & what remnants of pecker tracks that was in there was saturated with apple sauce." I told her I appreciated her candor as well as her grammar and took off out of that damn pharmacy.

Some dead white poet wrote something about April being the cruelest month. I'm not sure who the poet was, as I never read the poem (hell, I've never read any poem). But I overheard some unbathed hippie classmates talking about this whole April being cruel deal back in my days of pursuing an English degree at TOSU. It's interesting to note that the unbathed hippie students were discussing this April being cruel issue with an unbathed hippie professor. But I digress. I never gave too much thought to this whole poetry conundrum since those halcyon days in college where I'd show up to class at least 3 or 4 time a month. At least. Some months I'd make it to 6 or 7 classes. I was a real overachiever in those days. But Saturday night I got to thinking very seriously about this dead white poet's assertion that April is the cruelest month. What I decided is that the dead guy was just a little off. See, Saturday night was March 31 - just before April started. And what I witnessed in the 2nd half of that 2nd game from NOLA might be the cruelest thing I've ever seen in my entire fucking life. Poets - way off once again. Why does anyone waste their time studying that garbage? In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo...Bullshit. No, they don't. Chicks I overhear tend to come and go talking of the best way to treat their damn yeast infections...

Our friends who happen to pull for the Duke Blue Devils have had it bad. They got blown off their home floor by UNC, pounded into submission by the Noles, then were embarrassed by a team from the Patriot League - in the Gate City no less. For that loss to Lehigh, Brandon & I were out at Scams Lakeside. The bar was packed. There had to be 75 folks wandering around drunk, ripping their stupid brackets to shreds after Mizzou lost to those brothers from the MEAC. The funny thing was, I didn't see one Duke fan anywhere. Maybe they were all at the Coliseum witnessing the crushing choke firsthand - I have no idea. All I know is that I kept looking for someone wearing Duke blue to mock until they either cried or took a swing at me. Either way would have been okay by me. Alas, nothing. Hell, there were more folks at the bar rooting for the Michigan Wolverines at the time. And they choked as well - losing to the damn Ohio Bobcats...

I was out not too long ago at some joint called Buck Naked Saloon - Brandon is interested in one of the chicks working the bar there. Hence, we've been there a few times recently. Anyway, I was sitting at the bar chatting with a fat man sporting tons of chest hair. I mean this dude's chest hair was amazing. Thick and luscious. And a little creepy if you ask me. But whatever, to each his own. All I know is that if I had chest hair that was like 2 inches thick, I'd hide as much of it as possible under several t-shirts, a button down, and a blazer. But that's just me. What this wild chest hair freak and I got to chatting about was the band that was about to start playing at the old Buck Naked Saloon. They are called Sock Monkey. This hairy freak asked if I liked the band. To be honest, I couldn't recall if I'd ever seen the band around town. And I was honest with chest hair boy about that fact. But I did tell him this, and this is the absolute fucking truth, "I do wear socks. And I like monkeys." The dude didn't have a thing to say to that. After about 20 seconds I asked him, "Do you like Camper Van Beethoven?" He said, "Huh?" I explained, "I've heard about people camping. And I know there is a dead composer named Beethoven." I could hear the damn rocks bouncing around in this chest hair dude's almost shaved head. I tried one more on this genius. "Do you like Pink Floyd?" He suddenly got excited. A light bulb went on somewhere. He said, "Fuck, yes. Pink Floyd rocks!!!" I said, "The only problem with that is this - yes, I know there is a color called pink & I have heard of Floyd being a noted barber of days gone by, but Pink Floyd sucks. They suck the soul out of you with every cliched second of their mind-numbingly stupid lyrics." The guy didn't seem too keen on chatting with me after that. Brandon noted shortly after the hairy chested Pink Floyd man walked away that I was by far the best person in the entire city of Greensboro when it came to the tricky skill of getting losers to leave a bar. It might be the only thing I'm good at, when you really think about it anyway. But it is something. It's a strength. And you gotta go with your strengths...

Pictures of Matchstick Men