Brad Maybe's Blodeo #0029 Europe II Part I

"Two Dorks On An Escalator" - St. Moritz, Switzerland

Remember That Time I Auditioned To Be In A Tool Video?

I dunno. Maybe.

Brad Maybe's Blodeo #0024

I dunno. Maybe.

Pull Over

I dunno. Maybe.

Some Buddies!

When I was a kid things were pretty different. We didn’t have the internet or cell phones, so we had to pay for music on cassette, play shitty 8bit video games, wait to see girls naked until we got them naked and do our bullying in a more in-your-face manner. Cyberbullying? Pfffft! We didn’t have dollar menus and endless microwaveable snacks, so there was like one fat kid at school. (He was “The Fat Kid.”) We didn’t have fancy malt beverages in tall cans, so if you wanted an alcoholic energy drink you had to put vodka into a Jolt cola. We didn’t have much, but I’ll tell you what we did have… sneakers. And for some reason I feel like writing about my first pair of cool sneakers.

I went to Winchester elementary school in beautiful West Seneca, New York. Back in the 80’s it was a pleasant little middle class burb. Today, not so much. I lived my K through fourth grade existence relatively care-free. I had some friends. I was in the smart reading group. And my mother dressed me like a little douche! (I emailed my mother to send me pictures from fourth grade, so I could show you. She said “I have two and I don’t think you’re in fourth grade in one of them and you’re in your football outfit in the other.”)

At some point in fourth grade I was made painfully aware that everything was not created equal. The blue non-assuming white stripped no-name sneakers my mother purchased for me at K-Mart would somehow become a focus of ridicule. The ORANGE and not RED tag on the back of my Levi’s would also become ammunition for little a-holes to make fun of as well. And even though I agreed with the notion that velour shirts were pretty lame and skuzzy, I got four of them from my grandmother every Christmas and somebody had to wear them! But this isn’t a story about blue jeans or tacky 80’s blouses; this is a story about sneakers and the boys and girls that filled them.

I have no memory of name brand anything until I got to the fourth grade. During that year a couple little shits discovered Nike and they slowly starting showing up in my classroom of 25 or so pupils. This was a fairly quiet movement until one afternoon. It was close to the end of the day and Mrs. Boobfield (Her REAL name.) did that thing where she appoints an annoying blabbermouth girl in charge of the class so she could shoot the shit with another teacher down the hall, probably Mrs. Saggyboobs (NOT her real name.) She’d be gone for a solid 20 minutes and if we kept it down we could do whatever we wanted.

This particular day I decided to stay at my desk, which was located in the back of the room, and read a Danny Dunn book. He was a boy detective that got into some pretty boring adventures all about science and math. He was my Harry Potter God damnit and in retrospect I got freaking gypped! There were no movies! Nobody died! No cool monsters and magic potions and Danny certainly didn’t bang his buddy Joe Pearson’s sister! At any rate…

As I’m reading about Danny and invisible paint or some shit, a few of my fourth grade classmates decide to adjourn to the coatroom. As my desk was positioned right in front of the coatroom I couldn’t help but hear the debate that ensued. Apparently one of the four Mikes in class was hassling one of the three Daves in class and a Steve and a Rich were milling around. The Mike was fronting on the Daves’ canvas Nikes because his leather Nikes were obviously superior! You can imagine how deep this argument got coming from a couple of ten-year-olds. The word excellent was thrown around like twenty times.

At the time, I was buddies (I’m foreshadowing!) with the Dave mixed up in this conversation. In 2012 he can go piss up a rope for all I care, but in 1980 I considered him my friend. I opened up the hood of my little desk threw in my Danny Dunn book and went to my buddy Dave’s defense.

“I like Dave’s sneakers better cause they got the blue thing,” I said as I hit the coatroom. “Much cooler then red.”

I only wish Admiral Ackbar was present in the classroom that day, because he could have warned me I was walking into a trap!

“It’s called a swoosh,” Mike shot back. Then with a little head nod in my sneakers’ direction he finished with, “like you should talk… buddies!”

If you were to look up the word “buddies” in a real dictionary, it will just tell you it’s the plural form of the word buddy. It’s a noun and it means friend or companion. But if you wanted to slum it on down to the Urban Dictionary you’ll find the particular definition that we’re looking for today.

From The All Knowing Mother Fuckers Down At the Urban Dictionary: Buddies – 1970’s and early 1980’s slang for off-brand sneakers.

Basically if you were wearing cheap sneakers from any dime store regional retail outlet, you were wearing buddies. There’s even an ode to them. Some of the older folks might remember this ditty. “Buddies! They make your feet feel fine! Buddies! They cost a dollar forty nine!” Depending on what part of the country you lived in the buddies were either $1.49 or $1.99. In Western New York we went with the $1.99 version. Realistically, a good pair of buddies would set you back like $12-$15.

Let us return to the coatroom where my sneakers were just referred to as buddies. Looking a little confused I just say, “buddies?” “Yeah, nice buddies,” laughs Mike. “You get those at K-Mart?” This is eight years before Rainman proclaimed it, but everybody already knew “K-Mart sucks!” All I could say was, “No!”

And then Dave turned on me too. “I’ll bet he doesn’t even know how to say the name of our sneakers.”

Thirty seconds ago these two were at each other’s throats, now they’re the Nike Brothers and all of a sudden they’re coming after me!

“Yeah, how do you say it,” asked Mike.

“Nike,” I say it so it rhythms with bike.

Mike burst into laughter and pronounced it the correct way for the occupants of the coatroom. “It’s Ni-key,” he enthused with an unbelievably smug self-congratulatory look on his face. The kind of face you dream of punching several times.

Rich and Steve took this opportunity to pile on and point out that they even “knew how to say it,” and whether or not that was true, they were given free passes to join in on the fun. Rich was wearing the same sneakers I was and Steve was sporting a pair of Buster Browns about six months passed their due date. I just stood there with a befuddled look on my face, as I was showered with a barrage of “nice buddies,” “do your feet feel fine?” and “you probably don’t even get good traction with those buddies!” For some reason we were really into traction back then.

Luckily, Mrs. Boobfield returned and ended the coatroom powwow. “Take your buddies back to your Danny Dunn book,” Mike lobbed with a whisper at me as he went back to his desk.

I went back to my desk and sulked for the last twenty minutes of school.

The sneaker war had just begun and Leather Nike Mikey would sit on his thrown as the biggest dick I’d know for several years to come.

Flash forward a couple months passed the coatroom confrontation and things hadn’t improved much for my buddies situation. Christmas was a bust and I didn’t fair that much better on my birthday either. My parents weren’t going to spend the money on nice sneakers for me. In retrospect I get it. I was an overactive kid that got into everything and I pretty much outgrew or ruined anything nice they got me. (Notice my broken arm in one of the pictures.)

“Please mom! I really want Nikes! I’ll take care of them,” I’d plead.

“Just like you took care of your digital watch?” she’d reply.

“C’mon dad! They don’t cost that much,” I’d beg.

“Neither did your ten-speed bike,” he’d say.

I was forced to wear buddies for the rest of fourth grade as the great sneaker renaissance happened all around me. Canvas and leather Nikes blossomed all around school. Kids dabbled in Adidas, Converse and Puma! Tretorns and Keds were declared NOT buddies by the powers that be and a minimum $20 difference in sneaker price separated the haves from the have-nots.

A class war was taking form and I felt like the first victim, although I did have an entire busload of allies. West Seneca was like any town with a good side and a bad side of the tracks and I wasn’t exactly living on the good side. Winchester Elementary had seven or eight busses that would bring all the kids to school and at some point in the spring of 1981 it was pointed out that most of the kids on one particular bus all wore buddies! It became known as the Buddy Bus and I got off at the last stop.

The Buddy Bus’ route took it to the edge of South Buffalo, which was a real shithole and some of that poop rubbed off on my part of West Seneca. It was because of this proximity to South Buffalo a secondary term for buddies was born… liberty leapers. A few blocks into South Buffalo there was an old school shoe store located on Seneca Street. Liberty Shoes was probably the shit back in the 1950’s, with a big city store front display filled with shoes. But in 1980 it was a shell of its former self and specialized in selling buddies. I’d say almost every kid that rode the Buddy Bus sported liberty leapers at one time or another. Back at school the kids wearing buddies breathed a sigh of relief whenever a pair of liberty leapers strolled by.

(Author’s note – I’m just realizing how much this narrative sounds like A Christmas Story. Damn you Jean Shepherd! Watching that movie 800 times has influenced me in ways I don’t even know!)

I was determined to break the buddy cycle and I put forth a long term plan that my parents eventually agreed to. If I got good grades at the end of fourth grade and did all my shit show chores over the summer I could get a pair of Nikes for the start of fifth grade. After mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, keeping my room clean and skimming our white trash above ground pool all summer I was awarded a pair of canvas Nike sneakers with a blue swoosh! I was psyched! I couldn’t wait to prance into school on Monday with my first non-buddies and/or liberty leapers.

Unfortunately I literally couldn’t wait and the Saturday before school was to start, I snuck out with my new sneakers on! I had to show them off to my follow Buddy Bus buddies! They weren’t that impressed for some reason.

At some point in our afternoon adventures we were hopping a fence to get from one point of our neighborhood to the next, a fence I had hopped a thousand times. I placed my left foot into the middle of the fence, pulled myself up and swung my right leg up and onto the top of the fence. As I pulled my left foot up and prepared to do the actually hop, my right sneaker got caught on a sharp edge as I jumped over. The sharp edge snagged my right sneaker, leaving it with a nice long rip. The snag threw my momentum off balance and as I hopped over the fence sent my left foot straight into a sufficiently deep mud puddle that I should have missed by about two feet.

It was upon learning of this event my mother coined the phrase, “this is why you can’t have nice things.”

As I rode the buddy bus on Monday morning, I couldn’t help but staring at one pristinely white ripped sneaker and one dingy mud stained sneaker. They didn’t even look like the same pair. My new fifth grade classroom was almost empty when I got there, but quickly began to fill up. To my surprise nobody seemed to care about footwear and the morning flew by wonderfully.

It wasn’t until we were all lined up against the wall to head to lunch when Leather Nike Mikey saddled up next to me and said to everyone in earshot, “What’s the matter Brad? Did you get your sneakers at the Salvation Army?” What a dick!

Five years later Leather Nike Mikey cut off two of his fingers at BOCES and the last I heard he just got fired from a dog food factory for pissing in the dog food vats. In some small way that makes me happy.

I dunno. Maybe.

Brad Maybe's Blodeo #0023

That Broad You Hate Or Love Or Don't Know About!

The first time I heard “Born To Die,” the single, from Lana Del Rey I instantly loved it. Simply put, it just sounded different and beautiful, plus I was watching the video and sideboob is still boob. It conveyed such urgency. It gave me Goosebumps all holiday season long. As I digested the song, it slowly became apparent that there really isn’t an original thought in it. From the stringy intro, dead beat and opening line, “feet don’t fail me now,” it’s a cliché train wreck. I was listening to the song drunk a few days ago and I swear to God she sang, “a watched pot never boils.” And yet I still LOVE it!

I agree the SNL appearance wasn’t anything special. I thought she looked hot in her dress and her backing band looked expensive, but those moments her voice dropped down to the floor were cringe worthy.

I was excited to get a hold of the full album, Born To Die, and since last Saturday I haven’t been able to make it passed the sixth song “National Anthem.”  I have OCD so I have to start from the beginning every time I try to listen and the same thing happens.

The album starts off strong with “Born To Die,” and then something weird happens during track two. Del Rey begins “Off To The Races” with a great lazy road-weary swagger, singing something about her Las Vegas past, an L.A. ass and her old man’s love of cocaine… I’m half expecting somebody to get shot by the end of the song. But no! For some reason Del Rey keeps conjuring Betty Boop for this poop-ooop-e-doop rap which can only described as off-putting.

 “Blue Jeans,” is literally just there. I can’t say if it’s a good song or a bad song. Would it work at the end of a Grey’s Anatomy episode with a trite Ellen Pompeo monologue over it? Definitely!

“Video Games” brings the album back. I just love the silly modern theme of video games juxtaposed against the stylish retro arrangement of the track. It’s beautiful. I’d love to throw it on and bang your mom. It would really tie a spring/autumn sexcapade together. I see this album becoming the cougar’s official mating call. “Fuck me young man, then you can go play Space Invaders,” a cougar might say.

“Diet Mountain Dew,” just makes me think of Portishead. It doesn’t sound much like Portishead, but by this time in the album I can’t stop thinking about Portishead live at Roseland. (Just a truly brilliant record.)

“National Anthem.” It sounds like it’s ripped right from Paris Hilton’s new album, or Kim Kardashian wrote half of it… I dunno, but I have to stop listening to Born To Die during this song. Can somebody tell me if there’s anything else worth my time after track 6?

Like most reviews of Born To Die, this one is almost just as useless. She’s selling records. She’s got buzz. If she starts getting spins on the radio, Miss Del Rey will get to have a nice 2012. She’s got two great songs, maybe three, and that’s a lot!

I dunno. Maybe. 

Huffing Rears It's Ugly Head

They don't mess around in Colorado! Just ask these two little future criminals! Guess what Breana (left) and Alyssa did in school that earned them a 10-day suspension and a possible expulsion from the Lewis-Palmer Middle school.

That’s right! They’re Huffers!

Breana "lost her breath" in gym class and fast thinking Alyssa said, " why not just use my prescription asthma inhaler. It works for me, a diagnosed asthma sufferer. So, it stands to reason it will work for you too Bree! Puff away!"

Breana's heart rate shot up to 160 bpm and she walked slowly over to the nurses office to see “sup?” Nurse Busybody promptly informed the principal and she suspended the little dopes for violating the school's policy on sharing prescription drugs.

For reasons unknown, the principal upped the suspension from the normal 5 days to 10 days and in a letter to the girls' parents stated she was recommending their expulsion from the school district.

No articles I read mentioned the principal's name, but thanks to good old Google. I found it, Caryn (sic) Collette, and her email address… CCollette@lewispalmer.org

I felt compelled to write Caryn (sic) a little email, just to let her know that I supported her decision!

Dear Caryn (sic),

I just wanted to commend you for your brave decision to hand down the appropriate punishment for two students who were sharing prescription drugs on school property.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read you suspended these two "huffers" for 10 days and recommended their expulsion! Kudos to you!

It all seemed instantly suspicious to me when I read that Breana Crites was feeling shortness of breath in Gym class. I mean c'mon why would a healthy 13-year-old all of a sudden be that short of breath? She hasn't been diagnosed with asthma!

I have a theory as to why this happend. I believe Crites and Alyssa McKinney were up all night at one of those Huffer/Rainbow parties I heard about on Oprah. If you're unfamiliar with these types of parties, let me explain.

Kids will fill a garbage can with paint, gasoline, orange juice, nail polish remover and as many Sharpies as they can get their hands on and then they Huff their ever loving brains out! Usually while listening to some sort of satanic themed music... like LMFAO. Then all the girls put on a different color lipstick and the boys line up against the wall. I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. I'm assuming they're all into tossing salads and drinking urine too, but I can't say for sure. I suspect they also enjoy the Japanese art of Bukkake as well. Perhaps they like sharing a cup too, if you know what I mean. ;-)

So, you got two girls hung-over from a good old fashioned Huffer party and now they find themselves in PE chasing the dragon. I'll bet before they concocted their plan to get high on McKinney's inhaler, they broke into the Boy's locker room and Huffed all the sweat socks and athletic supporters they could get their noses on. Did you ever see the movie "Porky's?"

I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that once these two little deviants were strung out on the smell of balls and feet, they decided to add a little asthma inhaler to the mix to keep their buzz going. But Crites got more then she bargained for when she suffered an allergic reaction to all that fun.

I stand by your decision 110%! You are a brave lady Ms. Caryn (sic) Collette! Someday when this expulsion comes back to haunt these young girls in ways that they can't even imagine, you'll be able to hold your head up high and say, "God damn it, I'm quite a glorious douche, ain't I?" Shit you can say that now!

Good for you Caryn (sic)! God bless you and keep you.

GFY,

Brad Maybe

I’m awaiting the principal’s response!

I dunno. Maybe. 

Demi Moore's REAL 911 Call!

Can I Toss That Salad (Out The Window) For You!

Great news everybody! It looks like Doris is still sticking to her new year's resolution to only eat salad on the subway! And doesn't she look great?


The second she popped the top on that puppy the smell of raspberry vinaigrette filled the car and didn't make anybody nauseous.


Everybody thought it was cute the way she quickly said, "yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum," after every bite in a Gollum voice. 


When she was halfway through with her salad a bum asked her for a dollar so he could go buy a salad. She replied with a polite, "fuck you smelly." 


When she was finished with the salad, she pulled a chicken burrito out of her purse  (Breaking her new year's resolution.) and announced, "If any of you fags wanna bite... come and get it!" One guy looked like he was gonna try but she stared him down.


She spit the last bite of the burrito on the floor and said to the bum that asked her for a dollar, "don't choke on it sweetheart."


We pulled into Union Square she stood to exit and as she made her way to the door, she grabbed some guy's ass and called him a pussy. 


When the doors swung open she looked at me and said, "I bit the dick off the last guy who tried to take my picture without me knowing, just so you know."


She exited the train alone and as we pulled out of the station I thought that's how I wanna act when I'm a senior citizen. I got a burrito for dinner that night. 


I dunno. Maybe. 

Did You See The River Of Blood In Dallas?

Terrible story on Yahoo today about a "river of blood" outside a Dallas area meatpacking plant. As much as the picture and story are sickening, I couldn't help wondering if a local Death Metal band was packing up a video camera and heading down there to shoot the video for their next hit single, "BLOODY RIVER!"

I Read Your Bio & It Pissed Me Off

Cheyenne Marie Mize "Wishing Well"

Music is pretty funny. I listened to this song, “Wishing Well,” for the first time today and I liked it without knowing ONE thing about the artist. Some squaw… that’s all I knew! I’m assuming she’s a squaw with the name Cheyenne Marie Mize.

I simply enjoyed what was placed in front of me… one song, no pictures, no videos, just two minutes and eight seconds of audio. “Sounds like Grace Potter,” I thought. “I’d listen to the album for sure.” (Ironically, I liked Grace Potter before I heard her music. Anytime a hot stacked 5’10” blonde chick wants to do anything, I know I’ll like it. Singing, stand-up comedy, stripping, acting… whatever!)

Then I read Cheyenne's bio… and I still don’t know one thing about her.

It opens with, “Whimsical, haunting, dreamlike music that eschews the traditional formulae.” I put down my sandwich, went outside onto the street and yelled, “WHAT A FUCKING ASSHOLE!” Forgot the fact that “whimsical, haunting, dreamlike music” is utterly fucking useless, let’s zoom in on “eschews the traditional formulae.” I don’t know what annoyed me more;

1. Using the word eschew.

2. Taking the dickhead route of spelling formulas by using “formulae.”

3. The overall audacity of the statement.

If you’re going to say your music isn’t written like MOST music, then it better sound like something I’ve never heard before! She’s a bluesy folk artist from Kentucky! She’s didn’t discover a 13th note!

The bio then went on to describe her 2010 debut album, Before Lately, as a “slow-burning, introspective, meditative affair.” Coincidentally, so was my last dump. I swear to God my last shit could be described the same way. It burned, I was in there for at least 45 minutes and I thought about how I would have changed my childhood, if I could. “Slow-burning, introspective and a meditative affair!”

Some other highlights of the bio are “sonic palette,” “dynamic moods,” “resplendent piano swing,” “conjures a bombastic form of classic college radio songwriting, “full desert chamber rock,” “monolithic walls of cavernous sounds,” “continuous parts of a complete whole,” “likely be enjoyed in different mental states,” and “lending a cohesion to this sonic kaleidoscope.”

The only thing the precious bio actually got right was describing this song “Wishing Well,” as “using only a dense array of percussion.” Well done! But then the description of this track spun out into “classic R&B flavors and adventurous modern pop.”

I don’t mean to pick on the Mize here. She didn’t write this shit, and I’m wondering if she even read it. I’ve read thousands of bios and album reviews in my day and this shit just pisses me off. Why do people who write about music feel that have to be more creative then the music? If you’re writing a bio, tell me about the artist. Don’t jump into your thesaurus and pull out resplendent array of sonic bovine manure.

I dunno. Maybe.    

ESCALATOR!!!!

I Dunno. Maybe.

BRAD JOBS – WORK IS MY NEW FAVORITE

On April 1, 1987 I officially joined the elite never-say-die American work force. I’ll never forget walking to “work” that first morning, in the snow because I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and thinking how cool it would be to get a check for $85 dollars EVERY week!

Sixteen-year-old Brad was hired to be a telemarketer (BOOOOOO!) for Kayak Pools – a rusty white trash oasis right in your own back yard! Every Monday-Thursday from 6-10pm and 12-4p on Saturdays, I sat in a little cubical annoying people for $4.25 an hour!

Basically, if you went to any amusement park in the 80’s there was probably a Kayak pool set up somewhere near the entrance and some little piece-of-ass got dad to fill out an “interest” card in exchange for a free pair of flips flops or some other piece of crap and an endless stream of phone calls. I called hundreds of those a-holes.

Surprisingly, I was good at my job and I’d get more “sets” then most people in my group. A set is when one of those a-holes actually agreed to allow another a-hole to come to their house at a set time and give them a high pressure douchey sales pitch to buy their own eye sore filled with water.

Outside of all the cash I was raking in and my stellar job performance I met an 18-year-old chick with a car! It was an old school VW bug that I crashed twice! Once I backed it into her house and the other time I side swiped a pole! More importantly, we lost our virginities to each other and she gave me the best present a boy could ever get - my first blow job! I believe on the job those are called “perks!” Coincidentally the blow job took place in a pool! It really was all coming together quite nicely.

Real quick sidebar here. This is a list of all the places I banged my 18-year-old girlfriend that summer. On a bridge that was still under construction, behind Chuck E. Cheese, my mom’s bed, her mom’s bed, my bed, her bed, several pools, lake Erie (We really liked wet coitus apparently.), Canada, two football fields, and the Blue Bird Motel. One time I banged her while I was wearing her one piece bathing suit… her idea.

Just one more really quick sidebar. Our song was… “Head To Toe” by Lisa Lisa And Cult Jam. Also her idea.

But it wasn’t all blowjobs and hot teen sex in exotic locations. Powers were conspiring against me! By the time August rolled around relationships were straining. My girlfriend and my boss were growing weary of Brad Maybe.

Eighteen-year-old girlfriend was leaving for college in Boston soon and she pretty much had had enough of my teenage bullshit! We got into some dumb argument, didn’t talk for a week and then she was gone. We never said goodbye and we would never see or speak to each other ever again. As I’m writing this now, I really think that’s fucked up. I’d Google her to find out what she’s up to, but I don’t have any luck with that.

Therista Barcel, my boss, was an attractive African-American woman in her 30s. She had long dark hair, an impressive figure that often stuck to the beautiful little sleeveless Summer dresses she wore to work every day, was an intolerable bitch, and she had a couple of huge hairy lady armpits. Sometimes people will say they get lost in a person’s eyes. I got lost in Therista Barcel’s armpits for four hours a day.

My relationship with Therista was stormy at best. She didn’t like me right off the bat and one fateful day in the break room would seal my fate with her. I spent one of our 15-minute breaks, in front of a little audience, trying to name Therista’s armpits. I don’t remember many of the names I came up in my brainstorming session, but I killed the entire break! And at the end of the break we all agreed from this day forth Therista’s armpits would be known as Mr. T and The Pit Slop. At the time, giving names to your boss’ armpits didn’t seem like something that would have any kind of negative repercussions down the road.

A couple weeks later as we were all busy making our annoying phone calls one of the big managers came into our area to make an announcement. When he inadvertently used the expression “pit stop,” he got a huge laugh from the group and raised the eyebrows of one Therista Barcel. It didn’t take long for Therista to get the information she sought and pretty soon she knew why Mr. T impressions had become a big hit around the office lately. “I pity the fool who doesn’t know Secret is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman!”

At the end of my shift the following Saturday I was summoned to the back office and fired! They said I lied about the number of calls I made that day. It was a bullshit claim that couldn’t be proved either way and left me with no options to dispute my termination. I was basically fired for naming a woman’s hairy armpits. And I can live with that.

This experience better prepared me for the string of jobs that I would get and ultimately get fired from over the next several years. I was fired from my next job for not wearing socks.

I dunno. Maybe. 

DELICIOUS PIE!

IT TASTED LIKE PIE! LIQUID WARM PIE!!! I DRANK SIX AND THEN WENT TO A BAKERY AND BOUGHT A PIE! 

I DUNNO. MAYBE.

Does anybody think my piece of Tuna looks like South America? When I was eating it, I pretended I was Unicron, the planet eater from the Transformers, and I was devouring the continent. Getting hundreds of thousands of thong bikinis from Rio caught in my teeth. I probably should have kept that all to myself.

I dunno. Maybe. 

I dunno...

Right up your butt!

New Year's Resolution & A Scumbag I'm Related To...

At some point last month, I decided my new year’s resolution would be to write more… and not just childish tweets about my balls or venting about the endless d-bags in the world that annoy me. Although I do love my balls and there’s never a shortage of things that force me to drop F, C, S and A bombs on Twitter, but I want to write stuff with some meat! Really dig in, show off my love of the language and craft nifty little essays that portray me as a complex guy. So, here we are on January 5 and I’m finally getting started on what I’m sure will become a doomed resolution! I also resolved to stop drinking diet pop (Yeah I said pop!) and that one is still going strong!

What to write? I sat down at the computer for some inspiration! Should I write about an album or band I like? See my Twitter feed, “everything sucks.” Should I write about movies or TV? I could only think of one reason Fox shouldn’t cancel Terra Nova. A thoughtful piece on why porn on the internet is killing intimacy? Too hacky. Write about my chosen profession of radio? I’m trying not to sound like a dick. And then I decided, just to get the ball rolling, to go to that deep well people have been using for inspiration for years and years! My fucked up family!

I already wrote a couple things about my parents, that I never put online, but I wanted something fresh! I started Googling my old man’s side of the family. JACKPOT!

Here’s my family in a nutshell. Mom and dad are divorced. Everyone on my mom’s side is either dead or dead to her and/or she’s dead to them. Dad’s side is a lot more interesting. My Dad has 3 brothers and one sister. According to my mom, they have FOUR different fathers! So that would make my unbearably religious grandma the OBM – Original Baby Mama. Shiiiiiit!

Today we’re going to focus in on the youngest member of my grandmother’s brood, my uncle Robbie. Total fucking scumbag. When I was a little kid I observed Robbie’s favorite pastimes on many occasions and they included; smoking weed, stealing money, stealing stuff that was worth money, hitchhiking, using the N-word, fishing, putting Pepsi in his bong, listening to 2112, abusing cats, molesting children and fucking his dirty fat girlfriend. He also had some of the greasiest long hair you ever did see and quite possibly the world’s worst case of eczema on his hands and arms. I’ll always remember him scratching so much my grandfather Spike (I swear to God my grandfather’s name was Spike.) would often smack him right at the dinner table. WHAP! “Quit scratchin’ will ya!” Spike would say. Just imagine a really fucking scaly, dirty, Rush loving pile of shit and you got my uncle Robbie.

I’m pretty sure the last time I saw Robbie was in 1990 and I haven’t talked to anybody else on my dad’s side of the family since the late 90’s. So, I don’t really know what he’s been up to. Every now and then my mom would tell me some story about how he got caught stealing money or that his new girlfriend was 78-years-young. In all honesty, I really didn’t care to hear much more until the story started with where they discovered his body and how he met his grizzly end.

And now the point, with only SLIGHT embellishments.

On November 27, 2006 Robbie was walking around Kaisertown, the Polish section of Buffalo. If he had the money, I’m assuming he was high on weed. If he was broke he probably hit his 78-year-old girlfriend’s medicine cabinet and put together something to “take the edge off.” Let’s say he was high on a cocktail of Alzheimer’s and arthritis meds when he decided to go down by the creek behind my grandmother’s house. A spot that he enjoyed all of his favorite pastimes going back to the late 70’s. Here’s where it gets disturbing.

I’m not sure if the dog was his or if the dog just happened upon Robbie, but for some reason he decided to pull out a knife – or let’s assume he was just walking around with a big knife in his hand the whole time – and not only did he kill this poor “mixed-breed” dog but he mutilated it as well. Total fucking scumbag. This is all according to Buffalo District Police Chief James Shea. The “total fucking scumbag” part is not in Shea’s official report… it’s just kinda implied.

What does the average person find when they look for a “forgotten” family member on Google? Maybe they got married? Divorced? Had a kid? Not me.

When he was caught and questioned by police you wouldn’t believe what the dickhead had to say. He said he was walking along the creek with the dog and a monster jumped out! He was actually high enough to tell the cops that a monster jumped outta the creek! And while he was fighting the monster, the dog got stabbed! I’m a bit ambivalent about the monster story. Obviously I’m outraged about the poor dead dog but telling cops you were attacked by a monster is kinda funny.

His monster defense only bought him some time however and the court ordered a psych evaluation only delaying his day in court.

On July 10, 2007 Robbie pleaded guilty to one felony count of animal cruelty and was scheduled to be sentenced on October 9, 2007.

Sadly, I don’t know if Robbie had to spend any time in the pokey, looking up the records online is a racket. My old lady claims to know nothing about this incident and I’m not calling anybody on the old man’s side of the family.

Based on a little nosing around I did on pet-abuse.com, I made some interesting discoveries. A dipshit in Yonkers got 15 months in jail for slashing a puppy across the face with a knife and the puppy lived. Some douche in Little Falls got 60 days with a monitoring bracelet for stabbing a puppy with a drill and it lived! But another asshole in New York Mills killed a kitten with an unloaded BB gun and got one to three years in state prison.

I’ve deduced, based on those sentences, that Robbie got at least a six month sentence in county. I like to think at some point while he was in there 20 black guys beat the shit out of him a couple times… real good. Now he’s out and down by the creek, popping cholesterol pills to get high, listening to 2112, and thinking about molesting some children. Total fucking scumbag.

I dunno. Maybe.