Another Muckin' Funday

Originally I was going to post a short story I wrote about working a temp job a few years back during the Christmas season. It was going to be the first installment in an ongoing series about various jobs I'd held (over 75 at last count) to be entitled "It Was Just Another Gig."


But work sucked a big floppy donkey dick today, so I am going to write about the one thing that motivates me get up every morning and go to work: Women. I am setting the Waybac Machine to last Saturday, when the store was graced by an extremely beautiful woman.

So, without further adieu, here is a little ditty called:

"Another Girl, Another Planet, Another Saturday Night."


I knew it was going to be a good day as soon as I heard the mellifluous strains of Sam Cooke's "Cupid" over the loudspeakers at Big Lots.


"Cupid, draw back your bow..."


One of the greatest songs of all time. Graham Parker did a nifty cover of it on Mona Lisa's Sister back in the day.


"And let your arrow fly/ Straight to my lover's heart for me..."


Yeah, nothing says Love like having a guy shoot your paramour in the heart with an arrow.


I bought a package of Maria's Gameso cookies (bread group), a bag of teriyaki-flavored beef jerky (meat/possibly dehydrated steroids group), a four-pack of cinnamon applesauce (fruit group), and two bottles of Mountain Dew Voltage (caffeine group). It was Saturday, I was filling in for Josh, and it would be the 12th out of the last 13 days that I would be working. At least Haley was working also-- I had worked by myself for the bulk of the last two weeks-- so I was feeling like a school kid on the last day of school.


It was sunny and in the 70's when I opened the store up. The parking lot was vacant and I feared it was going to be slow in the store as this was a day born for parks and backyard BBQ. We had a few packages to ship out, but for the most part it was going to be a good day to do not much of anything. A couple FOTS (Friends Of The Store) were going to be coming in, so entertainment would be free and abundant. Haley and I hit the ground running and started putting away the stacks of books that came in Friday. Friday had been a day of Romance and Mystery.


Nick showed up in his natty new Fedora, ready to do a side job for the owner: Shucking Porn. You see, we only sell new porn. It comes from a distributor in shrink wrap. We strip the wrapping off and remove the jacket from inside the fold of the case. Pulling it out slowly, we then slide the cover into a binder. Every page in the binder has a number, so we put a that number on the newly denuded DVD case. When a customer thumbs through the folder and finds something to wet his/her appetite, then we fetch the movie from storage and the discreetly slip the cover out of the folder and proceed to the checkout phase of the transaction.


Ergo: Nick's a Porn Shucker.

*


About 11:30 that morning The Mad Russian showed up. He is our resident Vinyl expert and an all-around good guy. He says he's from Brooklyn, but his accent says it's from the Eastern Bloc of Brooklyn, if you know what I mean. And I'm reasonably certain that you do. Nick is a Commie Pinko, so he and Jeff have a lot of propaganda to mull over. They are comrades-in-arms, you you could say. Hot-to-Trotskyites.


Later I'll give you a rundown, and perhaps a rubdown, on some of our other irregulars, characters like Robert, the walking Ralph Stedman cartoon. But for the here & the now I want to tell you about what happened when this particular blond came in to the store. The Mad Russian had stepped out for a bit, so I had no warning of her arrival. I was busy shipping out some books. Haley was vacuuming on the middle of the store and Nick was in the back with the porn, so this woman was able to slip into the store fairly easy. It wasn't until Haley switched the vacuum off and the store fell silent that I looked up and saw this woman.

More specifically, I saw her ass. It was majestic, like when you are driving across the flatlands of eastern Colorado and you start to see the Rockies rising in the horizon. Twas a thing o' beauty. She was standing with her back to me as she perused our Graphic Novel rack. I had yet to graphically ogle her rack, but the afternoon forecast now called for showers of attention and light drooling.

She had tight faded jeans on, and a white t-shirt. Her cornsilk blonde hair hung down past her shoulders. I gazed slack-jawed at her for a moment before my peripheral vision caught Haley, who was staring at me thinking I was staring at her. Haley looked at me quizzically, and I pointed to the blond, who was just out of Haley's line of sight. I pointed to where I was looking at and Haley peered around the corner where our store bathroom is. She turned back and gave me the "All men are dogs" eyeroll and switched the vacuum cleaner back on.


The blond worked her way back towards the front of the store and finally placed her items on the counter. She was smoking hot. You know how smoking hot actress Jeri Ryan ("7 of 9" on Star Trek: Voyager) is? Well this woman looked exactly like her.


Exactly like this:





"May I say you look more like a 9 out of 9, miss?"

I made some small talk as she flashed the roadblock on her ring finger. "Is that a real diamond, or a Dylithium crystal, miss Nine O' Nine?" She mentioned her husband as soon as there was an opening in the conversation.

She was getting some birthday gifts for him, she said. Lucky fella, like she isn't the perfect gift right there. It was clear she was as smart as she was pretty, completely without pretension or avarice, and, as I soon found out, she had a delicious sense of humor. Ten of Nine.

One of the books she was getting him was called "Bitter Grass," a screed against Marijuana written in the backlash of the Hippie movement, circa nineteen seventy-nixon. I had just stumbled across this particular book a few days earlier and saw that it bore a star next to its price on the inside page. That meant the book was posted on Amazon. It was so thin it would be impossible to find if it was filed on the shelf so I put it on a display easel. And after sitting in the store for years, the book was now being purchased. Sweet.

I told 9 of 9 that I would have to take a moment and remove the book from our Amazon inventory as to not accidentally sell a book we no longer had in stock. I then told her that we would take 20 % of the purchase price off since we had to pay that to Amazon if we sold it online. She lit up like a Christmas tree. She hadn't noticed Nick skulk behind her to perch himself against the front door. He was on the outside of it. He had put his fedora back on. He had a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked like the spy in the movie who gets shot by the double-agent who sneaks up behind him while distracted by the beautiful dame.

I noticed all of this while I was busy keying in the wrong ISBN number on the book, providing a stall so Nick and I could savor a little of the H & the N. I stammered an apology and she said something in reply, but I heard nothing but a siren's call coming out of this perfect mouth:

I couldn't believe no one else came up to the counter the entire time she stood there. It was like there was a magical little circle around her. And the longer she stood there, the more she glowed in the natural light coming from the back of the store. The more orange the sky became the more luminous and blond she looked in contrast to every thing around her.

Goddam she was hot.

I danced the conversation around like I was Baryshnikov. She held her own in the conversation. It was great. I ran through the premise of "Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical," complete with impersonations of most of the cast. I told her she could check it out at the library, and how subversive would that be? She giggled and her straight-laced, bishop in the church, missionary-style every Tuesday husband was a million miles away, falling out of orbit with this Borgalicous babe. She was having fun.

But all good things have to come to an end. And that's what we were left with, her end, walking away after waving goodbye one last time, her bounty of greatly-reduced books in hand.

"Dude, you had her up at the counter for twenty minutes," Nick said. "You are my hero! That was fuckin' awesome!"

"All in the line of duty, comrade. All in the line of duty."

*

Later that night, on the interminable bus ride home, I thought about all the beautiful women that I've seen in the store. That I've wanted to make love too. That I am not going to be making love to. Cupid just toys with me. I'd like to shoot him with a bow and arrow. And Sam Cook, you got a lot of nerve. As a matter of fact, for the second time today, a Sam Cooke song is going through my head:

"Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody..."

But it gives me hope for the new day. Every day the store brings beautiful women into my life: tall redheads with freckles the color of cinnamon, bosomy brunettes with eyes the color of Robin's eggs, blondes with brains and whipsmart quips.

God, I love them all.

Oh yeah, let's not forget Otto. You'll like Otto. But I'll have to tell you about her next time on...

"It Was Just Another Gig"

The First Annual Michael's Used Books Classic Parody Issue, Vol. 1

“A Congress of Buffoons”

I was almost three inches into Gravity’s Rainbow when Mr. Fineman, my employer, made a rather blustery entrance into the bookstore; the jarring sound of the bells strung from the front door made me turn sharply, forcing my stout body and keg-like arms to, in turn, knock several weighty tomes from their perch upon the antiquarian desk that doubles as our shipping area. Their fall was muted somewhat by the sudden appearance of my left food, which bore the brunt of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks like a classroom full of somnambulant freshman.

The book, itself, was leather-bound Easton Press, priced at a song: $53.96.

The other books that were sent hurtling footward were slightly slimmer volumes of equally turgid prose. Frightfully their fall from grace was compounded by the fact that I had just set a rather ample root beer float atop that particular stack, which I intended to eat after I supped on a delicious cheese steak sandwich done in the style of the Philadelphia masters.
Mr. Fineman intrusively walked around the front counter towards the shipping desk forcing me to roll my chair out of his path in order to avoid being waylaid. Curling the corners of his mouth into a scowl, he looked down at the pile of books splayed out on the dusty floor, their fine cloth covers now wearing a Jackson Pollackian masterpiece in mustard and peppers, then looked up at me and bellowed, “Where the hell do you think yer going?”
As I explained that I was merely following protocol by vacating an unsafe work area and finding refuge until my superior officer had cleared the area, I felt the effects of my sudden lurch backwards in the chair and silently passed gas. This timely event gave me the subterfuge I needed to navigate myself out of this seemingly inexorable situation.
“I smell gas!” I yelled. “Flee! Panic! SAVE YOUR SOULS!” I rocked forward to try and extricate myself from the cozy leather rolling chair, but after two vigorous attempts ceded to strategy of staying seated.
“I don’t smell nuttin’” said Mr. Fineman. He was right. The sulfuric haze that rippled through my Corduroys (ah, Cor Du Roy—the Fabric of Kings) was already beginning to lose its pungent bouquet. “Well, didja at least get all the packages shipped before da’ post man got here?”
“Well not exactly, sir. I had some quality control issues that had to be rectified before I…”
“I don’t care what you had to rectalfy,” Mr. Fineman hissed, “how many of them friggin’ books did you ship out today?”
“Numerically, the answer would be zero,” I replied slowly, wanting to savor the pocket of mustard I discovered tucked in the crook of my mouth. “I had not completed my first quality control assessment yet.”
“Wha?”
“Quality control assessment, sir. In all honesty I cannot ship an item out until it reached the standard set by this store’s very name: “Fineman’s Fine Used Books.” Because,” I said, lowering my voice to sotto, “quite frankly sir, some of these books are in less than fine condition.”
His eyebrows knitted a quilt of bewilderment. Undaunted, I drove my point onward like Patton through Palermo, “I didn’t ship anything out because I need to wade through this dreck and drivel before I can judge whether it is of fine enough quality to forward on to our beloved patrons. I would need some assistance, a secretary of some sort. And butler. There is a lot that need to be buttled around here. Why, look at this place…it’s positively ramshackled!”

[To be continued…]

My New Avatar

Best of all, it's life size.

You're a brave man, Michael Stroganoff

When I was young, and life would throw me a curveball that caught the inside part of the plate, my mom would tell me "You're a brave man Michael Strogoff!" I never knew what the hell she was talking about, thinking she meant something about the soupy hamburger and pasta dish.

So today, at the book store, I am going through a box of books we had taken it and I see a copy of Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne. I never knew he wrote a book called "Michael Strogoff." So now I gotta read it; the missing key to my childhood may lie betwixt its covers. A childhood which now has assumed a much more alluring stance, what with the addition of this newly fabricated wrinkle.

I'll tell you all about the book as soon as I finish reading Nicholas Dawidoff's The Catcher Is A Spy (Sons of Moe Berg unite!).

I am collecting stories from work, got a few good ones recently, but today I am posting a piece I wrote awhile back that is part of a trilogy of sketches. Here, then, is part one:

Her hand was hot to the touch. Burning hot. There was no way it was the result of the weather, it was Summer in Vegas, yes, not Venus. I had been working in the store less than a month, but she was by far the most beautiful woman to come in to the store. She looked like an old crush, a minx with fox-colored hair named Alyssa.

She was shaking my hand and eye-fucking me at the same time. Sirens were going off in my head but I rode my racing heart full speed ahead. She had asked me if I was Michael-- the name of the place is “Michael’s Books & CDs,” after all-- and I fumbled my name, it came tumbling out of my mouth like a bag of marbles on cement. She told me hers: Jessica.


“Jessica,” I thought, added an image to complete a mnemonic device to ensure I would never forget her name. “Just like the sexiest redhead in movie history,” I smiled to myself.

Jessica Rabbit.

Fuck like a bunny.

My train of thought let out a blast of rich, dark smoke. The store was dead, not a customer in sight, when she had walked in. She was looking for a certain book by a certain author, and I happily escorted her over to the shelves where such a book might rest. We stood there and talked about books, and I smelled a hint of beer on her breath. It was one in the afternoon.

College girl.

I found out she was a writer, and then I exposed myself to her. I succumbed to my base urges and whipped out my swelling literary aspiration and boldly waved it in her face.

She liked what she saw. She soaked in all its thick promise- I had teased her with the outline of my novel- and she wanted more. I stopped short of taking the next, logical, step-taking complete advantage of her- and tucked everything back in place. I could see the potential for as much damage as pleasure, and decided to do the right thing. God damn morality.

She bought a book, and thanked me for the inspiring words. Then she did the stretch that cat-like women do that allows you to let your eyes roam all over the undulating lands of their bodies. I said, “The pleasure was all mine,” and that would be the last lie I told her.

That's when she stuck out her hand, searing herself into my soul. Her hand was hot to the touch.

A Tease

I have several ideas that I have thrown together and are now simmering on the back burner of my mind.

Could be a heart stew. Could be ptomaine. Life's a crapshoot that way.

Here is a random part of it, the Evil Henchman's name:




More to follow, as well as a rambling essay of deviency (and how to do it right!).

Take Me Out To A Ballgame...

[This piece, in an earlier form, was published on theloveofsports.com, in their "Old School Love" column]

Immortality: in sports sometimes all it takes is a fraction of a second to turn obscurity into history. Once second you’re Vinko Bogataj, competing at the Ski-flying World Championships, dreaming of ending up on the medal platform, next you’re forever the guy hurtling end over end as Jim McKay intones the classic phrase: “The agony of defeat.”

Sometimes the journey to immortality takes a little longer.

That’s the way it was for Rick Lancellotti. Rick’s claim to fame is that he is the real-life “Crash” Davis; he is the minor league’s all-time home run king. He hit 276 home runs over a twelve year span between 1978 and 1991. He had three brief stints in the Majors, hitting .169 with 2 homers in 65 at-bats. His tenure so tenuous he wound up wearing four different uniform numbers in three years.

Through it all, Rick Lancellotti played in 15 different leagues over the years, and on teams spanning the globe: Canada, Colombia, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Venezuela. He wound up his career with the Parma Angels in Italy, where he won a best hitter award in the European Cup.

You know it’s not too shabby when your road trip reads like a two-week European vacation. Home games in Parma? Dove firmo?

Never one known for his glove, Rick was a DH trapped in a first base/outfielder’s body. The lanky lefty was drafted by the Pirates in 1977, eventually going to San Diego’s AAA team in Las Vegas. A late addition to the Las Vegas Stars’ inaugural season in ’83, Rick hit .302, with 9 dingers and 32 ribbies in 30 games.

Looking up Rick’s stats I came across the roster of the inaugural team and next thing you know I’m riding a wave of nostalgia like I’m Kelly Slater in Waikiki. There were some famous names: future Padres manager Bruce Bochy was a back-up catcher, and Tony Gwynn had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rehab assignment there. Kevin McReynolds was the league’s runaway MVP, hitting .377, 46 2B, 32 HR, and 116 RBI in just 113 games. Jerry Davis hit .298, with 23 HR and 100 RBI; Rogers Brown added .331/15/70 in a mere 97 games.

The team took advantage of the local climate—hot and dry as a pizza oven during the summer—and boasted eight players with double digit home run totals. If Rick had hit just one more, they’da had nine.

The Stars also had balance: 7 players had enough larceny in their hearts to swipe at least ten bases. They were an exciting team to watch, most of their home games wound up with football scores. There were lots of 14-10, 17-13 games; some wins, some loses. Playing in a hitter’s park-- in a hitter’s league-- schooled a young pitching staff that included Andy Hawkins (6-4, 6.43 ERA), and future Cub’s pitching coach Larry Rothschild (9-2, 5.09).

One of the most memorable wins was a Sunday game in which they fell behind early and looked bad doing it. By the late innings the crowd had thinned out and my friends all wanted to join the exodus. But I, having years earlier left a USC-Notre Dame football game five minutes before Joe Montana decided to kick start his legacy, firmly said “I ain’t leavin’ till the last out is made.”

Miraculously the Stars started to make me look good, stringing together a rally of bloop hits, walks, and forced errors, getting within two runs in the ninth. Then, with two on and two out, Joe Lansford—former All-star Carney’s big little brother-- lumbered to the plate. Listed at 6’5 and an only-if-he-lifts-one-leg-off-the-scale 225 pounds, Joe Lansford was an imposing presence at the plate. In 140 games that year, he hit 27 dingers and tied McReynolds for the team lead with 116 RBI’s. He could rake. In this specific at bat, however, he was doing a very good impression of a guy waving a fly swatter blindfolded. The first pitch was high and Lansford’s bat low.

Strike one!

My friends all stood up-- half cheering, half eyeing the exits. The next pitch bounced in the dirt just in front of home plate, but not before Joe had a chance to swing wildly over it.

Strike two!

Let me stop right now to add that it was a truly horrible swing. He looked like a well hit tetherball wrapping around a schoolyard pole. My friends were headed up the concourse, fishing out their car keys, when pitch three was delivered- and, KARACK!, promptly launched over the scoreboard in Left. It was the longest walk-off home run my friends never saw.

Ultimately the Stars, aided by the late-season pick up of Lancellotti, finished the season 83-60, two games out of first place. They made it to the semi-finals of the PCL playoffs before being eliminated. In the process, they captured the attention of jaded Las Vegans and made minor league baseball a part of the “Entertainment Capitol of the World.”

In 1984, his first full season with the Stars, Lancellotti drove in 131 runs and finished second in the voting for League MVP. The Stars had a lot of talent on that team, as well as a lot of personalities. Their catcher, Doug Gwosdz, had one of the best nicknames ever: “Eye Chart.” Doug could have used one, his numbers (.228/6/27), were myopic. Even with his personal success, it was the end of the line for Rick in the Padres’ organization. He would return to the PCL a couple years later, though, having a monster offensive season for the Giant’s affiliate in Phoenix. He hit 31 homers for the Firebirds, but it wasn’t enough to catch on with the parent club.

Rick put up some awesome numbers. I don’t care what the level of competition it is--even if you’re talking stickball-- 276 homers is a lot of homers to hit. But the numbers that really popped out were these: Rick Lancellotti played for twenty teams, in fifteen leagues, in seven countries, spanning four continents. You gotta give some Old School Love to a guy who can produce anywhere.

If you’re wondering what Rick Lancellotti is doing these days, he’s running the Buffalo School of Baseball, as well as working as a hitting instructor for the Kalamazoo Kings. Every day, he’s bringing a world of experience with him-- literally-- as he teaches a new generation of players to do what he did so well. So, I guess you could credit him with a lot more than 276 home runs being hit. A tip of the cap, then, to Rick Lancellotti-- the Minor League's all-time home run king.

A Book Lover's Dream

I am gonna be lazy and post an amazing film from 4th Estate Publishers' 25th Anniversary. It was produced by Apt Studio, and they are genius:

A while back I chopped down the olive tree in front of my house, even though I’m allergic to the olives and it was a big ass tree that nearly fell on top of me when the wind shifted just as I cut through the trunk. I was glad to suffer through the pain and risk, though. The way I looked at it, each one of those olives that were weighing heavy on that tree’s branches was a potential olive tree in itself, and would eventually add to the local pollen count if it reached maturity.So, I planned on getting them before they got me.

Well, right before I walked outside to start the job I was watching ESPN. They were talking about an athelete who had just gotten arrested for DUI. Like that’s news. Later, when I went inside to get some water, they were talking about a Nascar driver that had gotten pulled over for drunk driving. Not the same athelete from before, but a brand new bag of douche-iness.

This recent upsurge in the number of celebrities getting DUI’s (which reminds me- how surprised can you be about somebody with the last name of Busch being arrested for a DUI?) is quite alarming. Something needs to be done about it.

The problem isn’t so much the self-indulgent, ego-driven nature of the celebrity lifestyle.The root of the problem- the crux of the biscuit, so to speak- is that we have too damn many celebrities.

Anyone can be a celebrity these days.

Anybody.

I think we need to thin out the ‘glitterati’ a wee bit. I know that sounds harsh, but when you look at the direction our Prison Industrial Complex is heading- it won’t be long before sport hunting becomes a way to thin out the burgeoning ‘criminal’ population. A violent solution aimed at a mostly non-violent class of people.

I say, spare the imprisoned souls. Go after the ‘celebutantes’ and ‘celebutards’ instead.Especially the ones with dogs named “Tinkerbell” and shit.

Or anybody who names their kid after a character in “Jungle Book,” say.

Now I know the taking of a human soul is a terrible sin- the worst- but I’m talking about reality show contestants, people who do “Celebrity Rehab” as a career move, and the Hilton sisters. They’re soulless. That should mitigate the sin to merely ‘Venal,’ I’m sure.C’mon, these people have about as much soul as Pat Boone’s version of “Tutti Frutti.”

Speaking of Pat Boone, he’s one of the first out of the chute. Remember that “In A Metal Mood” album he did a few years back? Let’s just say Satan’s pissed, and God’s not taking his phone calls anymore.The way I justify it is this: Just like the potent olive, destined to become a fruitful tree, these celebrities are just seed bearers for a whole new crop of potential misery.However- again just like the olive- if enough pressure is applied to the seed it can produce a handy product that we can actually use.

Just think about it for a while.