Is happiness a warm gun, or an electrified fence?

Sorry for the posting gap again. I've been debating whether or not to purchase a semi-automatic rifle, to protect my family from the roaming hordes that have begun terrorizing my neighborhood.

Let me take a step back.

I grew up in the suburbs (Glendale, WI, represent!). To me, people who looked their car and home doors were paranoid, or feral cityfolk. I thought you only had to worry about such things in places that also had sidewalks, and streetlights, and stoplights that kept working after 9 pm. Only suckers had to fence themselves off from their neighbors, was my firmly held 9-year-old belief.

Eventually, though, I moved to various cities, and learned the value of keeping my stuff safe. I also learned to never make eye contact on public transportation, to not flash your lights at a car without its lights on at night, never wear red or blue in public unless you want to be get wacked in a drive-by, and fuck the po-lice.

But for whatever reason, I thought Pittsburgh, specifically Squirrel Hill was different. It's the midwest! People are nice, obey speed limits, and are afraid of bridges and tunnels. Kids play ball in the street. People let you skip in line. Fathers will let you walk their young, nubile, naive daughter home at night, because you're such a nice-looking boy.

So I got sloppy. And I forgot the first rule of home safety - never expose bright shiny things to the seedy criminal element.

What I'm trying to say is, some fuckers stole our stroller.



It's not a TV. It's not a car. It's only the means by which I transport my child. No, these people aren't vile, scum of the earth. They are the lint from within my sweaty armpits. They are the goop from an infected ingrown toenail. They are weeping sores upon the testicles of society.

So what do I do? I'm locking everything up, tying everything down. I'm getting bulletproof glass for my car, and hidden machine guns in the headlights. I'm going to run an electric current through my grill so anyone who touches it gets 20,000 volts up the ass. I'm teaching child Kung-Fu, and giving Wife brass knuckles and a spiked bat. I'm having motion detectors put on my house, so anyone who approaches within 300 yards sets off piercing alarms and spotlights. I'm also training release the hounds with bees in their mouths so when they bark they spit bees at you (thanks, Homer, once again, for your brilliant insights).

So do I buy a gun, or what? Am I that guy? Do I have a rocking chair I can move to my porch and from which can eye suspiciously each and every passerby? Do I put my Glock in a locked case next to my bed, or get a thigh-holster and become a cowboy? Or one of those under-the-armpit bra-type thingies? Ankle holster? Attach it to an apparatus around my head? I need some good advice about joining the NRA.

Oh, and I have a kippah tan. That's right, because I'm bald, and whiter than Francis McKenzie Smithson, center for the Ku Klux Klan iter-racial basketball team (team name - the Alabama Pale Horses).

MMMMMMMMMM - beer

I'm from Wisconsin, where we're known for dairy products and beer. And sure, technically we are the main producer of neither cheese nor alcohol. But California can kiss my ass, because cheese is still ours. Let's see you ultra-hip San Franciscans wear foam cheese wedges. Maybe then we'll relinquish our smelly crown. Doesn't sit too well on your faux-hawk, now does it?

Whatever. At least we're still super fat.

But forget ice cream for a second. I'm here today to talk about beer. Glorious, wonderful beer.

I remember my first encounter with alcohol. Padre was hosting Bridge Night, because poker hadn't made its big splash on our naive Midwestern town yet. I wasn't more than 4, and came in to say goodnight to Padre and all his mustached friends. Next to his cards was a tiny glass of what I took to be chocolate milk. Padre drank chocolate milk for breakfast every day, and it made sense to me that he would also drink it at night, or at work with his lunch, or maybe from a sippy cup before he settled down for his nap.

But this was a new one on me: why would Padre be drinking such a tiny amount? And it was already warm! I asked Padre "can I have some of your chocolate milk before I go to bed?"

"N- uh, yeah, sure buddy. Just a sip, though, you don't want all that sugar to keep you up."

His friends grew quiet as they all watched me sip what I now know to be chocolate liqueur. "Ew, that chocolate milk isn't good anymore, Padre!"

Well that brought the house down. And I learned a valuable lesson: chocolate liqueur should never, ever be drunk. Ever. They were right to laugh at me. It's a silly, silly drink, good for little old retirees who have already killed many men, and so no one would dare laugh at their Nancy-boy cocktail.

So began a lifelong adoration of alcohol. I never really made it past beer, although Wife has matured to single-malt scotch. Now she sneers at people in bars who order blends, and ask for their 50$/shot Macallan on the rocks. "See that guy? With the ice? He shouldn't even be allowed to order. HEY PAL, WHY NOT LET ME PISS IN YOUR GLASS, IT'LL TASTE THE SAME." (Note: Wife may or may not actually have said that. But she's damn well thought it.)

Being from the great city of Milwaukee, when I saw this article I got immediately nostalgic. PBR is a legacy, one that used to reign over the Milwaukee skyline , like the Citgo sign in Boston


or some annoyingly huge building in New York.

And then I learn, after reading the whole thing, that PBR, Milwaukee's finest crappy beer, has moved to Chicago, of all places.

Well fuck you too, Pabst. I'm going to go drink Bud Light.

Ahhh who am I kidding, I hate the Belgians.

Child shall never be a rightist!

Wife has been spreading vile insinuations and rumors about Child. 

"Oh, look, he's using his right hand again! I think he's going to be a righty!"

Shut it, odious woman! Bite that tongue! I will not have my boy abandoned to the common, to the oppressive "norm." Righties have the numbers, the history, the language (Latin for left? Sinister), the spiral notebook, the baseball glove, the guitar, the high school desk, the scissors. They believe this dominance will continue indefinitely. 

How wrong they are.

The left rises as the right sleeps. We plot, using our legal pads and smudge-free pens, to overthrow the right's bloated complacency. Sure, there have been missteps (Ned Flanders, paragon of lefty-ness? Oops. And by Matt Groenig, lefty bulwark! That was a paddlin'. Oh, and Maybe Mike Vick as lefty QB Messiah, wasn't the best choice), but now we've got our own presidential candidate. Obama, the Magic Lefty. He's done more to forward our cause than Lefty Grove, My Left Foot, Left Behind, and other left-focused cultural highlights put together. 

And yet, the right won't go away. You'd think we'd be safe in our own home, but just yesterday Wife, in hysterics as I tried to use her discriminatory scissors to cut some bubble wrap, finally couldn't hold back. "Are you ok? Can I help you? Here, why don't I take care of that, and you go do something that caters to your... unique talents."

For too long we've had to deal with this sort of condescension. Child will not be raised in an environment that disdains a discreet, substantial minority. So I've tied his right hand to his side, and only present toys to his left side. I don't use the word right; if he's correct, I say so, and if he wants to turn not-left, I figure he wants to go "wrong." 

I'm sure he'll turn out healthy. But this, lefty parents, is what you have to do to combat thousands of years of oppression. Stand with me, and we shall overthrow the rightist regime.

“He brings peace! Break his legs so he don’t get away!”

I am cursed with a special torture. Everywhere I go, the home team wins a championship.

Once I thought this was a mere coincidence. In high school, when I was exiled from America’s Dairyland to the City of Windy Shoulders, the Bulls threepeated™. Easily explainable – Jordan, Pippen and Jackson, with some Rodman for insanity garnish.

Then, I went to college in the Big Rotten Suck-Ass Apple, and the Yankees go on a tear. I can’t rationalize the Marlins in ’97, though – I don’t even think G-d has a decent excuse for that nonsense.

Now, here in patriotism’s birth canal, I have seen the Patriots become a dynasty, and the Red Sox end 458 years of futility. This phenomenon can no longer be rationalized with some karmic quadratic equation. I am damned to watch other’s teams shower themselves in champagne like so much acid rain.

So here’s what I’m going to do. All those cities out there that could really benefit from one of their teams winning it all will get to bid for my services. Minimum bid is a house, couple of cars, and $1 million, post-tax, in cash.

Seattle: I know your town needs a championship. A ring would keep the Sonics in town, a Lombardi would allow everyone to stop bitching about the refs in the Super Bowl, and a World Series win would stop all that heckling Ichiro gets when he goes home for the offseason.

Phoenix: a ring proves that glorious passing and speed can beat rebounding, sound execution and lock-down defense. A Lombardi would really piss off football purists who understand the truism that is Cardinals suckitude. And a Cup would make everyone forget Mrs. Gretzky’s gambling problem.

New Orleans: you need a championship so people can move on from that natural disaster from a couple of years ago. Sandstorm, wasn’t it? Avalanche?

Chicago: you had your chance. Now you’ll have to wait another 44 generations for a new golden ticket. You blew all my mojo on the Bulls. You couldn’t let Barkley win just once?

Orlando: I’ll move there on one condition – I get to use Walt Disney’s zombie frozen head as a soccer ball.

Dallas: see, I really hate the Cowboys. Almost as much as the Packers. So I’ll need the services of Mark Cuban as my personal valet for 2 weeks out of the year, during which time I will be entitled to make personnel changes to the Mavericks, and wardrobe changes for Mark. How many billions of dollars does it cost to get a normal shirt, buddy?

Wisconsin: the Packers slipped in a Super Bowl win when I wasn’t looking. That alone is reason enough to withhold my powers from the Brewers. And they’re awesome this year – scrappy, young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It’s just too bad Brett Favre is a pill-popping hick. Trade him to the Lions, and maybe we’ll talk. But I doubt it.

Whew

The Simpsons Movie was fantastic. Not in a classic episode kind of way, but in a "hey, there's a cartoon penis!" kind of way. Also, I want a spider pig. Even though it can't spin a web. It's a pig, idiot.

Sacrelicious

I am afraid.

The Simpsons movie comes out this weekend. It comes out today, actually. Some of you may have already seen it by the time you read this. Disappointment is inevitable, I suppose – while they supposedly got most of the greatest writers back to work on the script, can it really compare to 4 of the best episodes, even chosen randomly? Am I going to wish I had spent those 2 hours watching The Monorail, Treehouse of Horror IV (the one where Homer sells his soul for a donut), Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk, The Last Temptation of Homer? Quite possibly.

How is the movie supposed to compare? The show has been around for 18 seasons, almost as long as my brothers, and funnier, too (couldn’t any of you have been banned or kicked out of a foreign country this summer? You guys were everywhere!) Whole friendships have grown out of shared love of individual characters. Hours and hours and hours have been spent in deconstruction and nostalgia, more than were spent, say, studying, or trying to attract a mate. As the whole of TV is to Homer, The Simpsons is my teacher, mother, secret lover.

But Phil Hartman is dead. Patty is out of the closet. And Ralph doesn’t even have to wear rubber pants anymore. These things won’t ever change.

So we move on. We hope the movie at least attempts to live up to our unattainable imagined ideal, and give Groening & Co. props for the effort.

Unless it blows, in which case we weep into gallons of sweet delicious beer, the kind you’d step over your own mother just to get.

Today is devoted to the show. So proclaim your favorite episodes, characters, lines. And let us all share in The Simpsons’ glowing warming glow.

For me, Ralph Wiggum is the beginning and end of Simpsons randomness:

“What’s a battle?”

“I bent my Wookie!”

“It tastes like…burning!”

“Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and then the baby looked at me.”

“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”