The famous French/Belgian scientist, Menage Viagra, dropped his suitcases.  They hit the carpet with a muffled << PORN >> sound, causing a bottle of poison marked “XXX” to fall out. 

“Let me get that for you.” Breathless and sweating, due the cabin’s 110 degree temperature, the hot stewardess picked up the bottle and handed it back to him.  The bottle of poison was for use in a scientific experiment, but even so, it was barely legal.

In fact, the girls who worked with Viagra avoided it.  Sometimes he wished those girls would toughen up a bit.  Like the time they had difficulty learning how to use a webcam to share scientific data.  In frustration, he had shouted at them: “It’s EASY.  Webcam.  GIRLS!”

Acknowledging the flushed stewardess, and accepting a virgin daquiri with a cherry twist, the scientist smiled and said “Thank you.” But his mind was on his daughter’s financial aid assistance for a special private school for girls (erected in 1969).  The application they had filled out together seemed to throb in his memory, mocking him with its first two questions: DESIRED FIRST YEAR TUITION:  FREE SEX:  FEMALE

Still, his daughter was vying for a cheerleading scholarship, which helped her chances; they had ironclad academic standards but very loose cheerleader rules.

Viagra sighed, and fiddled with a photograph of his cat, Entendre.  It was such a beautiful snapshot of the pussy that he was going to have doubles made.

He turned his mind back to his work.  “It’s been a long journey of serious scientific discovery, academic research, and profound intellectual labor, but--” He smiled hopefully--"We’re nearing the climax.”

There’s an outside chance that I’ve seen every episode of “Saved by the Bell.” (The original class, not those poseur “New Class” kids with the token Screech.)

My eyes welled up a bit the first time I saw “Somewhere in Time” starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

My eyes welled up a bit the first time I saw “Robocop” (the part where all the cops turn against him and start shooting him and it’s just very sad).

I not only settle for the path of least resistance, I settle for the path that lets me sleep until noon.

I once had a dream where I was dressed as a superhero, and I was strolling up and down in front of other superheroes solemnly intoning: “I trust we’re all going to be extra careful on patrol tonight.  Now more than ever we must protect the citizenry.”

Girl drinks are tasty and they have cute colors.

My high school prom date (junior year) threw up on the highway because I took the turns too fast on our way back from a nice dinner.

Put “Achy Breaky Heart” on the jukebox and there’s a better-than-average chance that I’ll burst into song.

Even if there’s perfectly good food in the house, I find it almost impossible to resist the clarion call of a frozen pizza--the gross kind that bleeds greasy orange sauce.

Despite the universal female disdain for “tighty whities,” I always feel as though boxer shorts are the first garment one dons on the way to assembling a full-fledged clown suit.

One of my favorite pontificators on quotidian existence, Dan, wrote about how he likes a particular squeaky door in his workplace because it sounds like a duck.  He recommends that his readers find something trivial but amusing and absurdist in their professional environments that provides comfort and solace during hard times.

I have a little something like that.  A Vice President of my department, who is no longer with the company, once noticed that the job I perform is completely different than my official job description, since my job radically changed after I started doing it.  She asked me to write up a new description that reflected my actual duties.

So I did, and at the end of the document I put:

Additional qualifications:

Equal parts dog and cat person

Must be able to yodel

Skilled at necromancy

And she approved the whole description without reading to the end, and Corporate HR never read to the end, and now it’s part of my official job description, and it’s sitting in my file, and sometimes when I’m having a hard day, this gives me joy.

I’m thankful for eagle-eyed people like Abby who spot the pop culture monstrosities that I overlook.

She wrote:  “Starbucks sponsors the Independent Film Awards. Allow me to pick out the two keywords in that sentence in order to make the ten-thousand-spoons-when-what-you-really-need-is-a-fork deliciousness crystal clear. Starbucks. Independent. Yeah, that’s what I thought they said.”

You’d think I’d be satisfied with that brilliant slam on Alanis Morrisette; but no, I can’t put the item out of my mind.  It’s clear that I won’t be able to exorcise this demon until I make a dumb joke about it.  So here goes:

“I’m sure we’re all looking forward to the My Big Fat Non-Fat Cinnamon Latte Award.”

Hey.  I really do feel better.  Now I can go outside and play.

I see tons of movies.  I mean, a lot.  But without fail, every year, I see only a handful of Oscar nominees.

This year is no exception.  I’ve only seen two of the best picture nominees.  And for one reason or another, every single nominee annoys me.  Let’s find out why:

Gangs of New York. Wait a minute.  You mean DiCaprio wasn’t actually killed at the end of Titanic?  That was just a special effect?  And now he’s in yet another sweeping three-hour epic?  Michael Moore can call off the dogs; we know why Columbine happened.

Chicago. Musicals turn me into the grumpy father from Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail: as soon as characters open up their mouths, I want to run in and shout “Stop that!  Stop that singing immediately!” The whole genre is lost on me.  Except for Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha, that Buffy episode, and anytime I feel like belting it out in the shower.

The Hours. I read the book and it was decent, but I’m boycotting the movie.  Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf?  There’s a brilliant casting idea.  If you must acknowledge Kidman’s work, couldn’t you just make up a category called “Best Performer with a Fake Nose”?  You could throw in Roberto Benigni from Pinnochio, Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, and Jennifer Aniston from The Good Girl.

The Two Towers. I saw this one and it was okay, but I don’t appreciate the glamorization of leading men with beards.  Listen to what girls talk about these days: it’s Aragorn this and Aragorn that.  I don’t like beards.  They’re itchy to grow and they leave little red scratchy marks on the faces of others.  Hollywood needs to get a social conscience and stop brainwashing our youth with the message that if you grow a beard, you’ll play a key role in the eradication of ancient evil forces.

The Pianist. I concede that this is a great movie and a genuine work of art.  I’m as sick of Holocaust movies as you are, and the first half offers nothing new, but the final half is riveting and it ends up being about larger issues of art and destiny.  No really.

Still, all Holocaust movies must have a contrived, sentimental scene that wrenches you out of the reality of the story.  In this case--I’m not spoiling anything significant here, but skip down if you’re Mr. or Mrs. Anal Guy or Girl about these kinds of things--prisoners from the Warsaw Ghetto are waiting to be carted off to camps.  A man starts reading aloud from a dog-eared copy of “Merchant of Venice"--Shylock’s speech, of course.  “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” As if you’d be reading Shakespeare and making profound literary statements when you’re half starved and about to be sent to Hell. 

The scene is equivalent to the one in Schindler’s List (which did not appear in Thomas Keneally’s book, Mr. Steven “I Should Just Stick with The Goonies” Spielberg), where Schindler starts pulling stuff out of his sock drawers: “These jockey shorts!  I could have sold them on Half.com and saved one more life!  These Trojans!  I didn’t require such extravagant luxuries!  I had benevolent goodness to spread on this Earth!’

Or however that scene goes.  I tried to put it out of my memory by beating myself about the head with a croquet mallet, so I may be fuzzy on a few details.

Next time: I get seriously annoyed about the nominees for “Best Key Grip.”

The inestimable Kerry from the Safeword suggested I submit my new word, “slothpants,” to the Pseudo Dictionary.  I’m pleased to announce that the word is now officially part of the pseudo-lexicon.

This is a perfectly fine intermediary step until it’s accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Also a priority item: getting White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer to legally change his name to “Avid Flashdancer.”

Lounging around in sweatpants is so comfy that I never want to go running in them and get them all sweaty.  Which is odd, seeing as they’re sweatpants and all.

Therefore, I’m officially changing the name of the garment.  They are now called “slothpants.” I think this makes more sense.

If you refer to them as “sweatpants” in my presence, thus reminding me that I don’t actually have the power to rename a word in the English language, we are totally done with one another.  I mean it; you can’t come over to my house or anything.

Do you think Maggie Gyllenhaal would be willing to get married just so she could acquire a last name that people could pronounce and spell?*

It’s totally worth putting a call in to her agent.

*Dear reader: Please keep it to yourself that having a last name that sounds like a first name carries its own unique set of nomenclature confusions.  I appreciate your support in this matter.

Although she often seemed sad, my grandmother’s face would always soften and lighten when she looked at me.  This was true even when she lost some of her mental faculties and couldn’t remember the people around her.  If I visited her in the nursing home and stood in front of her, she would smile and nod--as though she was warming herself in front of a fire that she could barely see.

The home had little to do with her sadness; even before those days, she would sit and play solitaire for hours on end with a half-empty bottle of wine next to her.  “Haunted” is too strong a word.  It was more like resigned disappointment.  As though the world had failed to meet certain, exacting expectations.

I grew older before I found out what happened before I was born.  My mysteriously absent grandfather had a way with hitting the bottle, and eventually he had a way with hitting the road.  This explained lot, but it didn’t all come together until I saw a photograph of my grandmother as a young woman.  She was stunning--a model’s cheekbones and gorgeous black hair.  Combine that kind of beauty with a rigid, conservative upbringing in the ‘20s, and you end up with a traditional girl who expected to marry Prince Charming and stay married for the rest of her life.  She ended up married to Jim Beam, who really can’t claim any kind of blue-blooded pedigree.

It would be easy to conclude that she wandered into the chambers of her mind and shut off all the circuit breakers marked “Love” and “Sex.” I suppose she did.  But when I was nine, I made a fantastic discovery--I found a trashy thriller novel on her sofa, pushed face down to bookmark the chapter. It was by Eric Van Lustbader, which has to be a pseudonym because it’s just too accurate a name on multiple levels.  His characters hunger passionately after each other.  Their underclothes are torn in fits of torrid romance.  Everyone carries a gun; the heroes have to fight ninjas.

I devoured the novel and gorged myself on the salacious prose.  Afterwards, I was sated enough to spare a moment’s thought for my grandmother.  After all, even though I didn’t know the details about her marriage or her upbringing, I knew she was alone and that she sometimes seemed sad.  I thought, “Good for you, Nana.  You should read more books like this.”

I regret that she left us before I could grow old enough to connect that sense of childhood approval with my adult desire to help her do even better.  Because I know what I’d like to do.  I’d sit down with her and lay the book in front of us.  I’d say, “I know you were sold a bill of goods as a kid, and I want to make sure we’re on the same page.  This book is a pretty good start, but I want to make sure you realize that, in real life, people do hunger passionately, underclothes can get torn--in that good way, not in the way that you accidentally catch yourself on a nail or something.  And it’s worth keeping your head up to watch for whatever might be lurking around the corner--even if, y’know, you go your entire life without meeting a ninja.”

I can’t believe there’s a job title at my company called “Functional Team Manager.” Isn’t being functional a prerequisite of middle management, at least in theory? I don’t go around calling myself “Competent Communications Manager.” I like to assume that it’s implied.

Since we are apparently allowed to put extraneous words in our titles, maybe I can add a few that give more of an idea about who I am as a person. For example: “Sensuous Communications Manager Who’s In Tune With Your Feelings.”

That’ll fit on a business card, right?

I finally understand why girls love shopping.

I used to hate it.  I couldn’t believe they created a magazine for the subject; I’d rather read about intestinal flu.

I hated it for two reasons.  First, I knew that the salespeople would recognize a complete clothes ignoramus as soon as I walked through the door.  They’d think to themselves: “Score.  Get an easy commission and offload crappy merchandise at the same time.”

Think I’m kidding?  Let me tell you something: that fierce jungle cat, the Le Tigre, wasn’t extinct as long as I was still in high school.  And Members Only jackets?  I was the very last member.

Second reason: as a result of the first reason, I hate talking to salespeople in clothing stores.  I avoid them.  I barely meet their eyes.  They say: “Can I help you find anything?” And I grunt something in ancient Sumerian.

So what happens when salespeople sees an anxious, on-edge shopper?  They immediately pull up their walkie talkies and whisper, “We got a Winona Ryder here on the second floor.  Don’t worry--I’ll keep an eye on him.  Have Manny and Jack wait outside with sniper rifles if it gets ugly.”

This makes my shopping experience even more stressful, because I’m expecting to get jumped as soon as I leave the store:

“Hands in the air buddy!  Let me see what you?ve got in your jacket there!”

“But I didn?t take anything.”

“Oh yeah, then what do you call this? A bag of croutons!”

“What do you care?  This is The Disney Store.”

And so on.  But yesterday, that all changed.  I found a pair of perfectly fitting Guess classic-fit jeans for $18.00.

$18.00!

My heart is singing.  My mind is sizzling.  My spirit is dancing.  This is shopper’s high!

So now I’m thinking two things.  First, girls are pretty smart.

And second, I’m thinking that maybe next I’ll get a pedicure.

If the show weren’t already ending this season, I might just have to stop watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Not because I don’t still love the series in its seventh season, but because its star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, is such a yogurt head that it pains me physically every time I read an interview with her.*

It’s not that she’s dumb.  She seems reasonably able to breathe and walk without assistance from others, but her worldview is clearly distorted from being an actress all her life.  She always says something that just makes me want to slap her.  And her latest quirky quotable?  Her explanation of why she’s quitting the show after seven seasons:

“This isn’t about leaving for a career in movies, or in theater--it’s more of a personal decision. I need a rest. Teachers get sabbaticals. Actors don’t.”

Actually, you know what, I retract this entire tirade in progress.  Now that I’ve written down her words, I really do see her point.  Sarah’s right.  It’s so much easier being a teacher than a highly paid actress.

After all, do teachers have to memorize pages and pages of dialogue, fight choreography, and stunts?  Heck no.  They get to just hang out with students all day and maybe correct some homework.  It’s like a working vacation.

And after all, do teachers have to worry about heavy income tax payments or keeping up appearances on a lavish Hollywood lifestyle?  No sireebob.  With an average salary of $45,000, they are spared the burden of all those crushing financial decisions.

And after all, did they offer Sarah first crack at being Daphne in this summer’s masterpice, “Scooby Doo”?  No way.  They went to tons of high school teachers first.  Only after Mr. Baldrick, a physics teacher from North Dakota, turned down the role because he had “too much grading to do” did they finally relent and say, oh okay, let’s talk to that blonde chick from the show with the vampires.

Some of you live in Los Angeles.  If you see Sarah--just give her a slap from me.  All right?  Thanks.

No one appreciates my little gestures of kindness.

I’m aware of the fact that I am--well, let’s put this bluntly--quite a bit cooler than most of my friends and associates. But I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable around me.

So I’ve been walking up to them and saying “I just want you to know: I’m still I’m still Greg from the block.”

To my astonishment, the frequent response is “Shut up you halfwit.” This is what I get for being magnanimous.

1. It’s a great and startling thing to make Helen Jane laugh.
2. It’s a great and startling thing to be old enough to have dinner with someone you’ve known for over twenty years.
3. Second hand, unverified: It’s impossible to sell used Philip K. Dick books on Half.com because coding on the site prevents people from trying to sell porn.
4. There’s a store in San Francisco in which the first half is nothing but bongs and the second half is nothing but gay porn, meaning that some people have a strange idea of what constitutes “getting the munchies.”
5. Apartments don’t clean themselves.
6. Novels don’t write themselves.
7. If you put a Weber starter chimney in a Weber grill and use no-light briquettes, the result is a column of flame so high that Zeus is likely to peer down from Mt. Olympus and snap “Look, I’ve left you all alone for the last several millenia, so do you think you could return the favor and stop burning my ass?”
8. If this upcoming Bay Area evening is even a tenth as gorgeous as this Bay Area day, I retract all the grumpy, cynical posts I’ve ever made on this site.*

*Except the ones I really meant.

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