VILE SMILES

How about that? The Phillies won the World Series. I’m not going to be afraid to tell you that I did tear up a bit watching it all go down last night. I mean, we haven’t won a championship in a bajillion years and I was so happy that wives, girlfriends, and illegitimate daughters throughout the Philadelphia area would not have to go back to work/school tomorrow with black eyes and missing teeth. A buddy of mine removed three fingernails from his fiancé’s fingers for each interception McNabb threw in the Superbowl……….no no no….I’m just being silly.—We only joke about domestic abuse because it is much more appropriate than actually doing it. Jeez-Lighten up.

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In the midst of my joy…..no fuck joy– I’m a big boy so I am going to use big boy words. I have a goddamn website so I need to man-up. Here we go…In the midst of my elation (OH SNAP) I realized something: I don’t like baseball. No seriously—I fucking loathe it, I find it excruciatingly boring. I hate the fact that you can be the poster child for “Fat, Old, Bald, and Shitty” (Guess I’ll call it FOBS. Neat) and be a very successful professional athlete. I hate that there are 87 teams,437 games in a season, and two teams make the playoffs. It blows.

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However I did make it to a couple of games this year. My company which will remain nameless up to the point they fire me (which is viable) has season tickets up in one of those hot-shit boxes (not a shit box) where you don’t have to commiserate with all the poor people. I like going to drink beer and do Philadelphia Soul chants. Other than that, I am passing the time by counting all the people in the stands who I think have actually killed a person, are cheating on their wives, or didn’t go to college. This is a long drawn out explanation I will get in to at another time but I can do all three with creepily astonishing success by measuring the distance between people’s eyes and how blue their jeans are…..sounds crazy but I’m like fucking Nostradamus over here…..a Nostradamus that will punch you in the throat if you try to look at his junk when he is taking a whiz.

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Anyway, I went to a game this year and they were giving out Opening Night shirts. I know jack shit about baseball but what I did know is that there was a game the day before. I’m all like, “Typical Philly. They have leftover shirts from yesterday and are still giving them out tonight. What a bunch of cheap bastards.” A girl no older than seventeen sitting in front of us says with a “does this guy sit down to pee?” look on her face, “That was Opening Day dude. Like during the daytime. This is nighttime, a la Opening Night. The shirts aren’t leftover.” Her dad turns around in disgust and sees that I am sitting with my girlfriend. His disgust turns to sympathy or empathy (I don’t know the difference) for her as you can see he clearly thinks I would have no idea of what to do with a naked woman. Not wavered by my faux pas and with an ere of cunty blasé-ness I was all like, “…………….” Actually I was all like nothing. I sat there and said, “Oh my bad” and chewed my fucking gum.

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The shirt stayed in my car for the better part of six months. I used it to wipe my hands when I checked the oil, take beer caps off when I was drinking and driving (kidding. Just trying to fit in), blow my nose, and even wipe my ass when it got all itchy. I remember it specifically because well…..I guess it’s hard to forget wiping your ass with a tee shirt while you are driving. Now I just remembered I haven’t written anything in over three weeks and the last time I did, I wrote about drinking pee in my car. “Way to knock ‘em dead Ryan. We really adore your command of syntax and structure while providing us with ever dynamic and exciting content. A true gem.” Whatever—back to ass wiping in the car because don’t act like you never done it you scumbag. Ugh you make me sick. But for real for real—I totally desecrated my Phillies tee shirt. The Phillies I watched win last night. The Phillies that made me cry.

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It really just goes to show you that I have all these strong opinions but at the end of the day I am just a big pussy that has no idea what he is talking about. Again however, a big pussy that has no idea what he is talking about who will punch you in the throat if you try to look at his junk when he is taking a whiz.

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Go Phils.

I’m going to get something up like tomorrow-ish. It will be Monday so I will be full of all types of piss and vinegar. Mmmm piss mmmmm vinegar. No I don’t drink pee. But I have. Ok fine, I’ll leave you with this snippet- I used to always have a case of water in my car because water is good for you. You would be in my car and be all like, “Yo Ry-dog-pass me some agua fria.” And I’d be like, “No fucking problem my main man. You got it!” I would give it to you and then I would ask you to shut the fuck up and drink the water so I could rock out to Disintegration…..gently rock out.

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So one who drinks a lot of water in their car has a lot empty bottles in their car. Occasionally I would pee in the bottles while I drove; especially when I would get stuck in traffic. Haha—You just got a mental image of my penis! Queer. Anyway so yeah—I’m a scumbag and would have bottles of piss in my car. You see where this is going?

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One Saturday morning I’m walking out to my car nursing a 5 alarm hangover. I was having dreams the whole night of swimming in Gatorade from being so dehydrated. Super thirsty obviously I get into the car and reach for one of my trusty water bottles, “Oh here is one! Wonderful.” Five seconds later, I realized that I just guzzled about 10 ounces of my own piss. Do I go inside and brush my teeth? Get totally grossed out and vomit? Nope-because I had some Trident in the car. The end—I’ll hit you up with something of substance (by my standards) like asap.

What’s shake-in’ momma? It’s been all like a month and such—-I needed a bit to incubate some more only-funny-for-me-and-people-that-know-me humor. I can’t hold a candle to the witty quips that fat-greasy guy that lives two floors above you is hammering out everyday…two, three times a day. As you know, self deprecation always makes for a great read; fat guy writes…..oh sorry—blogs (fags) about discovering he can fart the first few chords to Stairway, the bohemian slut….oops I mean “freespirit” names her latest bout of Chlamydia “Larry the bummer,” and then there is that hero who quit his hedge fund gig to mail cans of Goya beans to Darfur orphans——oh the faux-pas’s he chronicles in his new found holier than thou existence; “I mention Hang Seng nowadays and people ask me if it’s good with soy sauce. No but seriously, it’s all about the kids now. They just saw their mother hacked to pieces and I make it all better with some good ole frijoles negroes” (That means black beans—pick up a Spanish dictionary you fucking racist). Haha-I’m a massive self important mega-douche-oh me-I’m saving the world.” Not really self deprecation there…just me getting all cunty I guess……stupid do-gooders with all they’re do-goodness. So please take all of this into consideration when you size up the fact that I consider myself better looking than your boyfriend and really don’t have that much to complain about. As much I would love my debilitating neurosis to kick in on a daily basis and write about the spiders singing constantly in my head, I love even more the calm of an uneventful month.

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As much as I promised myself I would not get all political, I think I just might have to. This is because I can’t keep promises. I lie to everybody. Minds as well lie to myself too.

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So word on the street is we are getting a new president. Every self respecting hipster is getting up at the ass-crack of 11am, doing an entire gram in one line, and making their way to the nearest Whole Foods to sit out front all day to register people to vote. These 364 day-a-year-garbage-pales turn into civic superstars even if it is just for a blink of an eye. On any normal day when I want to go get the best yellow fin tuna salad on earth, I already get solicited to sign up a petition to stop global warming, get asked if I want to adopt a puppy, save a whale, plant a tree, name a tree, and hug a seal. I have my responses for all memorized to rebut each in rapid fire so that I can safely navigate to the front door of the store without getting caught up in some mindless banter in which I would quickly lose interest anyway because in mid-conversation a white boogey would fall onto your petition clipboard and you would nonchalantly rub it on your gums without missing a beat. So I try to hit them with “Sorry but my family-my family that is allergic to whales that is; well our baby seal jacket factory is powered by the demise of the planet. To toast our record breaking profits everyday, we sip puppy milkshakes and uh we uh um……fuck trees too. Thank you—gotta go get my tuna.”

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I have that all down to a science and it gets me through with no problem but now I am confronted with, “Hey bro. Are you registered to vote?” “No, sorry I don’t vote.” You know what happens when you tell people you don’t vote? Time stands still. You look around and everybody is staring at you like you are holding an Ebola sandwich. I could get into the whole spiel about how I feel my vote is irrelevant and the Electoral College is flawed but I would be mostly regurgitating something I pulled up on Wikipedia. I want you to know that I think you are smarter than that and would easily catch on…..your so Colombo. But in a nutshell that is pretty much how I feel. Be it the black guy, the white guy, or that guy in the painting in Ghostbusters II, I could honestly care less who is running this country because in all seriousness, at the end of the day it really does not affect how I go about my business. Yes I did go to college—and if you went, there is a really good chance mine is better than yours. So I’m no dummy but just have my own little take on things. I think it’s great that you vote because that is your thing. However, I can’t put up with being judged by people who justify their existence with their little political hobby that comes around once every four years. All those tee shirts you are making with Obama’s name rhyming with different words, the clever bumper stickers, the hours registering people, the colorful signs, the rallies you attend while screaming a candidate’s name over and over again is for me; the biggest fucking waste of time. You will have a bigger impact on the world painting a barn. I will be honest to admit that the majority of this cynicism is birthed from experiences in my neighborhood with a certain type of person. These are the borderline destitute hipster-ish folk that make my neighborhood so posh.

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Most of the year: Blah blah blah I can’t pay rent..blah blah my friend’s gallery blah blah shitty coke..blah blah blah I can’t believe I’m working the day shift…blah blah good coke..blah blah I fucked him too..blah blah I dunno, like 5 shots of Jack blah blah.

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Election time: You live in a democracy and have the privilege to have a say in who runs your country. God, it’s so easy to be blasé about it. In some countries, people are dying to cast a vote. What? Your too cool to vote?

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Yup- That’s it guy. I’m too cool to vote. I’m also too cool to sing Happy Birthday. You nailed it right on the head.

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I know there are the good eggs out there that genuinely mean well and want to make a difference. They won’t bother me when I want to get a bite to eat. They don’t wear their affiliation like a tangible accessory….like a patch….like in the same font as those Black Flag patches….wait a minute?….Is it still cool to like Black Flag and if so is it still cool to rock the patches?…..That’s punk dude—punk is so dead. Are you sure? Yeah I’m sure bc my friend’s gallery said so. That doesn’t make sense. Your face doesn’t make sense. What? Whatever bro-Vote or Die

“I got a twenty dollar advance on my credit card. Haha how about that?” No no no—not me you pee hole - rather the version of my dad if he didn’t stop using heroin and breaking his hands on the back of people’s heads 20 years ago sitting on the barstool next to me. He looked like he rolled around in dried up poop and bought his clothes from the Flintstones. These are hard times and the economy is blah blah blah, unemployment is at its highest rate since the Coolidge administration, affirmative action is being such a massive asshole, and your wife has a penchant for licking the milkman’s taint, so I know there is nothing better then putting back a few to make it all hazy and forgettable. But seriously dude? Twenty dollars? Cash advance? While we are at it let’s give Alex’s Lemonade Stand a little run for their money and have you set up shop out front of the bar hawking your blood, semen, and retinas.

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I have a general contempt for the majority of people I come across so one would assume that I was adept for keeping my disgust somewhat subtle just out of politeness as to not offend……which now that I think about it is kind of ironic. Not today. Apparently I had a “Oh my God—if somehow there was a way for a bucket a vomit to be a person and if that person came strolling into the bar right now, I would rather talk about Bud Dwyer and the apocalypse with him than have you sitting next to me, blabbering about your awfulness” look on my face. Because this went down:

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20 dollar advance guy: You got a problem?

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Me: Actually it’s “Do you have a problem.” And no, I do not have a problem. I think I just swallowed a bug and got Tabasco in my eye at the same time.

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20 dollar advance guy: Don’t get bad with me motherfucker. If it comes to fisticuffs, it will be the last thing that you do.

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Me: Fisticuffs? Is that a new shot? Maybe you can take that twenty bucks you scored and buy like four of them. Go home to the wife and kids and tell them instead of the staple Dominos Meatlover’s that you usually get on Wednesdays, daddy took the money to go be a shithead.

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20 dollar advance guy: Listen you little shit; you are very close to getting your ass handed to you. I could buy this whole bar. I could buy you.

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Me: I don’t think “years of my life I spent being a bulbous cancer on society while blowing guys for meth” are an accepted currency in these parts. Furthermore, stating you can buy me is helping the validity of your threats. Do you want to beat my ass or eat it? Make up your fucking mind guy. Lastly, please forgive me but that potato sack-ish wardrobe doesn’t really scream the aesthetics of a fiscal juggernaut.

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20 dollar advance guy: (starts to advance—haha-get it?.ah whatever—-towards me): Listen if you want to do this we can….

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Me: Do what? Check it out—If you were going to do something, it would have been done before the first inarticulate syllable left your lips. You probably never saw anything through that you set out to accomplish and I really doubt that you are going to start today. Listen Tom. Can I call you Tom? You look like a Tom. So Tom, when you tell the story to all your friends at the tattoo party about the asshole at the bar who’s ass you almost kicked, make sure you correlate it with the day when you went borderline-homeless-person and took out 20 bucks from your credit card. So right when you start to feel all bad ass and such, you start to remember that your are as relevant as the neon gravel in a fish tank.

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20 dollar advance guy: Fuck you. You’re not even worth it. (walks to the door)

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Me: Good talk Tom.

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Hey is this a variation of some sort of snobbery? Sure as shit it is. But you know what? I was thinking the other day when I was driving down the street—you see some goofball walk in front of you and you go, “Check out this strap on” I know the same thing is going on when I am strutting my fairy ass around some times; people in the car are all like, “Is that dude wearing a fucking bandana?” “How old do you think he is Marty?, 24, 25?” “No way that guy is easily 27. Holy shit, check out those jeans-I think I just saw his shit move” then in unison they go—“Hahahaha get over yourself bro. You’re about as cool as our friend Jenny’s little brother Sam who got shot down for the prom by the chick with those gnarly titanium crutches.” So the point being that we all put ourselves out there, so we should all expect it.

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So what am I doing now? Watching the Thomas Crowne Affair whilst ironing my week’s worth of bandanas. I’m not into curvy chicks or poor people. I like gin and gently caressing my ego. Many will attest to my toolness. But I will always be able to find twenty dollars. Hold on—one two three—okay-just wanted to get it over 900 words.

I never got into hunting. I knocked a rabbit’s eye out with a rock and broke a seagull’s wing with a slingshot on separate occasions. Both times I threw up. Both times I cried. Both times my grandfather was looking at me with utter contempt and a “Did this kid grow up in a pussywillow cabin on licorice lane?” sigh on his face. I could just never get into it.

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To this day I don’t think I have really ever held a gun, lit an m-80, or taken a girl on a four wheeler to go drop acid in the woods….or whatever you people that grew up eighty miles from the nearest building over five stories do. However the Darwinian itch sets in and in an attempt to avoid my testes retreating back into my abdomen to transform into a vagina, I go to extra lengths to get all-hunter/gatherer whenever given the chance. It has nothing to do with being in my mid-twenties and realizing I have to get all drastic and fetch me a grizzly’s index claw to make up for the fact I never came home with a scalp. (Wait, do you scalp animals? See?-I don’t fucking know. I try to talk about hunting and end up sounding like a serial killer) Rather I keep it to the confines of my apartment and has mostly to do with smaller game.

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I had a totally mice infested apartment in Manayunk three years ago. It started with me being a lame-ass and setting up the mouse traps around the place which did prove pretty effective. Being the freak that I am, I deemed that this was not nearly exciting enough. One night about half way into a bottle of Bombay— by myself I might add, I saw one of these little jerkoffs scamper across my kitchen floor. As is frequently the case when I drink gin, I was totally naked except for a blue bandana on my head. I went to my bedroom and grabbed an air gun that I have had since I was fifteen and set up camp in a corner of my kitchen to wait for him to come out from under the refrigerator. After about a minute and a half I got impatient and started talking shit…..to the mouse- “Come on out asshole! I already killed your whole family! What a bunch of dumb asses!”—I swear there is psilocybin in gin. When he wouldn’t come out I would fire a warning pellet at the fridge. I clearly had underestimated my opponent and advanced tactics were in order. From my corner I hopped up on top of the island so he couldn’t see me and fired pellets all over my kitchen for the better part of two hours. I never saw him.

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Next morning I go to take out the trash and my neighbor Katie is out on the porch.

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Katie: What’s up Ry Ry. Long night huh?

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Me: No I actually stayed in and just laid low. Had a couple drinks but kept it rather gentlemanly.

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Katie: Haha right. You know you should probably keep your blinds shut. But if your idea of being gentlemanly is screaming to yourself and running around your apartment with a semi dangling around, then you pulled it off pretty well. Jesus Christ Ryan it was like you were reenacting Lord of the Flies.

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Me: I had a semi? Weird. No actually I was trying to catch a mouse. Sorry about the blinds but I just got a little tipsy and…

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Katie (interrupting): You know what- I really don’t need to hear the rest of it. From the day I moved in and your idea of conversation was to tell my mom something about your ex girlfriend having to crush up Valtrex and put it in her Cheerios. So now nothing really surprises me.

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Me: Oh c’mon. She asked me if this is a nice neighborhood. I just made a point to highlight the low crime rate but that some of the people are shitty or just complete whores. Whatever-she laughed.

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Katie: Right. Well good luck with the mouse. Later

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I caught the mouse a few days later when it walked into one of the traps. But there is something to be said about getting all nude, going on a vision quest in your own home, and shooting shit. It makes you not feel as much as a half man.

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Fast forward to last night and I have a mouse. I don’t want to act like too much of a freak by slipping myself a mickey and grabbing an axe out of my closet as to totally creep out my girlfriend. So I try to act somewhat like a human being and set up a couple of those sissified traps. You can imagine my elation this morning when I wake up and the traps are still spring loaded but the food on them is missing. This could quite simply mean that I have cockroaches as well but I am going to tell myself that I have met a true opponent—He is the Houdini-mouse who can pull off death defying mouse acts like and acrobatic backflip over the trap and eat the peanut butter whilst in mid-air……or I have roaches.

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Nevertheless all Friday plans are off as I have to get out of work and go track down some war-paint