Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Jack Spratt Could Eat no Fat....

Back Fat.

Back fat?

On MSN.com today under the health section was a listing for “Back Fat”.

The first thing that popped into my mind was a new Ted Nugent song.

Go ahead try it.

“Well I don't know where it comes from
But it sure do come
Don’t want it comin' for me
The pizzas probably do it
Cause they’re just to damn good
Much better than celery

They give me Back Fat Fever… Back Fat Fever…”

I take great pleasure in knowing that many of you will now have this song stuck in your head.

For those of you that just don’t get this look up Ted Nugent on Wikipedia.

Almost everything can be found on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately they have no references to “Back Fat”.

It also can’t help you with Homeland Security and the TSA.

Let explain.

I spent four days in Chicago last week.

I love Chicago.

I hate flying to Chicago.

I also hate flying back from Chicago.

Because I hate flying coach.

On the way to Chicago I had a Hassidic Rabbi fully recline his seat in front of me the entire flight.

His head was in my lap for four hours.

By the time we landed I actually felt a tad German.

On the way back I had made up my mind that no way in hell was I going to let that happen again no matter who sat in front of me.

I had the window seat and my wife had the middle seat.

At first I was feeling a little light headed because no one sat in front of us. We actually had three empty seats right in front of us. Can you believe it?

I was so happy.

Then it happened.

Coming on to the plane late were Conan the Barbarian, Helga the Circus Fat Lady and their demon spawn.

Well ladies and gentleman there’s a time in every man’s life were he needs to stand up for himself. A time to say I’m a man and I control my own destiny. A time to say I’m a man and I’m going to prop my knees against that seat in front of me, lock my arms against it and make sure that son of a bitch is not reclining that seat.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Conan sits in front of me, Damian sits in front of my wife and Helga sits on the aisle.

We take off and I’m ready.

There’s no way in hell that seat is reclining.

After we’re airborne Conan tries to recline.

Sorry sucker!!!!

He tries and tries. He’s now throwing his back against the seat trying to make it go back. Repeatedly he thrusts himself harder and harder at the seat.

All I could think of was a line from the war movie "The Longest Day".

“Hold until relieved….hold until relieved.”

My wife is mortified

She whispers to me, “Knock it off they’ll throw us off the plane.”

“Not at 30,000 feet they won’t”

“Idiot you’re going to cause a scene.”

Damian has now turned around in his middle seat and is looking over the seat at me.

“I want PEANUTS!!!!”

You know the expression, “No child left behind”?

They’re wrong.

We all know at least one child that should have been left behind and one of them was sitting in front of my wife.

“I want some Peanuts! I want some Peanuts!”

My knees are sore but I’ve held fast. Conan is frantically trying to force the seat back.

And then I hear Helga the circus lady talk, “Get the plane lady to see if she can fix it.”

The plane lady?

Conan’s hand reaches up to press the call button for the flight attendant.

My wife is now pinching the back of my left arm as hard as she can to get me to relent.

“Hold until relieved…hold until relieved…..”

“Sir, what are you doing sir?”

A flight attendant that looked like a six foot tall version of Wednesday from the Addams Family was hovering over us.

“I’m uh… stuck…. my knees seem to be locked against this seat. As you can see I’ve been trying to push the seat up to release my knees but the guy in front of me has trapped me here.”

My wife is now pretending she’s married to the woman on the other side of her.

Damian is yelling at the flight attendant, point blank, for some peanuts.

Wednesday Addams leans across my wife’s seat and in a voice normally reserved for morons says, “Sir, I suggest you move your knees. We have an air marshal on this flight.”

“Really? Does he have short legs? Maybe he’d like to sit behind this asshole.”

(Please let me have just said that in my head.)

I believe it was Mother Theresa or Jose Cuervo that said, “Timing is everything.”

Just as Conan gave one big push to recline I lowered my knees and let go of the seat. He flew backwards; the “Sky Mall” magazine in his hand flew over my head hitting the lady behind me in the face.

I know that because she yelled, “The Sky Mall magazine hit me in the face.”

All I could think of at the moment was, “Who shops at the Sky Mall?”

Who gets on an airplane, looks at that magazine, and impulsively orders a treadmill, an upside down tomato garden or a rusty gears clock?

Seriously, do you know anyone that’s ever ordered anything from the Sky Mall?

And why was Conan reading this?

He was probably just looking at the pretty pictures.

Wednesday Addams is now really pissed off with me and informs me that she will be watching me the rest of the flight.

So I ask her for a copy of Sky Mall magazine.

She wasn’t amused.

If MSN.com had only posted todays article before I went to Chicago.

Then I could have blamed my behavior on, “Back Fat Fever….Back Fat Fever….”

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

What happens in Vegas can leave a mark.

After almost thirty years of marriage I can finally say with complete confidence that I will never understand women.

Oh I’ll fear them.

But I will never understand them.

My wife spent the weekend in Las Vegas with three of her friends that all turned fifty years old this year.

They drove to Las Vegas in a big blue van.

Sort of a menopause road trip.

You couldn’t pay me enough to be in that van.

I’ll bet they broke the air-conditioning in the first fifty miles.

Leading up to the trip I had to hear about all the things they were going to do, all the things she was going to need, and all the things I was going to have to do while she was gone.

I paid strict attention like I normally do for an hour or four and when she finally finished I snapped out of my self induced coma.

She finished with the familiar line….. Did you hear anything I just said?

“Yep. Every word of it.”

“Then what did I just say.”

“Um….something like, “On the way we’re going to stop at an outlet mall and blah blah blah blah…….. and don’t let the dog touch my camera.”

“Idiot, we don’t even own a dog.”

“Then why would you worry about a dog touching your camera?”

“I asked you if you remembered to charge my camera.”

“To take a picture of a dog?”

“Calabrese you would think that after thirty years you would at least attempt to listen to what I’m saying.”

“I attempted it. You lost me after outlet mall.”

“Look numb nuts I need my camera charged so I can take pictures of our trip. We’re going to have fun and I want pictures to share with the girls later.”

“Fine I’ll charge the camera. Um… Did you say anything about a dog at all? I could swear you said something about a dog.”

“Don’t make me kill you.”

I then noticed the cardboard box on our dining room table.

“What’s in the box?”

“Party supplies for our trip.”

“Honey? There’s nothing but Johnny Walker Black and low fat graham crackers in the box. Scotch and low fat graham crackers? That’s your party supplies?”

“I’m on a diet.”

“Nice diet. You’ve got all the essential food groups in there.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“You know friends don’t let friends drive and eat graham crackers.”

“These are not for the van. This is for the hotel room.”

“Scotch and low fat graham crackers? What are you girls gonna be listening to while you eat and drink this? Tonight we’re gonna party like its 1939…..”

“You’re just jealous because you’re not going to Vegas.”

“Honey, first of all I don’t drink scotch. Secondly I don’t eat graham crackers and third if I ever found myself trapped in a Las Vegas hotel room with four fifty year old women who were drinking scotch and eating graham crackers it would either mean I was some sort of bizarre strip-o-gram, I had lost a major bet or both. But jealous? No I would never be jealous.”

“Whatever. Just remember to charge my camera. That’s the one thing I need you to do. Charge my camera. Can you remember that?”

“Of course. I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!”

“Okay Fredo, just remember to charge that camera.”

“Trust me.”

So they leave and I have the whole weekend to myself. Just me. No one else. I could have done anything I wanted. What did I do? Well on Saturday I woke up a round 2:00pm and then I took a nap. On Sunday I got up bright and early. I think it was around noon and then I had breakfast and then I took a nap. I’m a wild man when the woman is not home.

She gets back around 9:00pm Sunday night.

I looked at these women as they piled out of the van.

It was scary.

My wife looked like a tired angry coal miner.

I turned into Sgt Schultz. “I know nothing, I see nothing, I say nothing!”

I help unload her stuff from the van.

I notice her cardboard box of supplies is still full of graham crackers but there’s no scotch.

“I know nothing, I see nothing, I say nothing!”

I help carry her luggage and crap upstairs for her to unpack.

She unpacked without saying a word but she grunted a lot.

At that moment she kind of reminded me of me after I try a sit up.

“I know nothing, I see nothing, I say nothing!”

She starts to undress and I notice something on her back.

Right above her butt.

IT’S A TATTOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sgt. Schultz went out the window!!!!

“What the hell? Are you nuts? You got a tattoo? A tattoo? You’re fifty years old and you got a tramp stamp over your butt crack? What happens is Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas and you need to take that back!!!!!”

“Calabrese…. I’m going to only say this once. I’ve been trapped in a van with four other menopausal women for eight hours fighting through heavy traffic. I’m tired, I’m irritable, I may go off at any moment. Don’t F#*^ with me right now. Am I clear?”

“Hell no!!! You got a tattoo!!! A tattoo!!!! Jesus woman what the hell were you thinking? Tell me you don’t have any extra piercings to go along with that!!!! Did you go Vegas for the weekend or prison? How drunk were you to get a tattoo? What the hell is that anyway a bald eagle or Charles Manson? I can’t believe you could be that stupid. What are you going to tell your great grandchildren forty years from now? Great grandma and her friend Johnny Walker Black decided that they wanted the Hindenburg permanently etched above her ass crack so the nurses at the home would have something to look at during her sponge bath???”

“Ten.”

“What?”

“Nine.”

“What are you doing?”

“Eight.”

“Oh you think you’re going to do a countdown like I’m supposed to be afraid or something? Well you don’t scare me Miss Tattooed San Diego.”

“Seven.”

“Hey I’m not the one in trouble here you are. You know what wild and crazy things I did this weekend? I took two naps. When I woke up no one had drawn anything above my ass. You know why? Because I’m an adult.”

“Six.”

“Stop counting! This time… for the first time in thirty years of marriage… I’m right!!! Did you here that? I’m the correct one. I’m the one who is acting responsibly. So you go right ahead and count away woman but you can’t win this one. TA DA!!! I’m the victor on this!!!!”

“Five.”

“Go ahead and count! Count all night! But you’re going to have to tell your sons that there mother wants to look like drunken trailer trash. Go ahead. Count. Count away!”

“Four.”

“Stop counting!!!! You have no right to be mad. I’m mad. You can’t be mad. You’re the one that finally screwed up! I’ve been waiting years for this moment. This is my moment! So stop counting.”

“Three.”

“What are you going to do? Sprinkle graham crackers all over me. Cause you’ve got plenty of those left. I guess no one eats a box of graham crackers and then says, “Oooh I feel like getting a tattoo.” You couldn’t eat a few graham crackers? You had to drink a bottle of Johnny Walker Black?”

“Two.”

“AWE COME ON!!!! Stop it! You know I’m right! I’m right! Let that sink in for a moment. Your husband finally wins. I may get that tattooed on my right butt cheek. Right next to “exit only”.”

“One.”

“Oh Crap…..”

“It’s Henna.”

“Umm…. That’s it? It’s Henna? No psycho rage thing? No yelling? No explosion? Who’s Henna? Is she some famous Las Vegas tattoo artist or something?”

“This tattoo isn’t permanent. It wears off. Henna is an ink. Think of it in your pea sized brain as “magic marker”.”

“Uhhh……Oh…. Am I dead?”

“No you’re not dead. You’re just an idiot. An idiot that just made a complete ass out of himself. I was going to tear you a new one Calabrese but now I don’t have to. You know why? Because I won again. I’m 30 – 0. Undefeated. You lost again. Now let that sink in. I am the champion, I am the champion. No time for losers cause I am the champion…. of the world.”

“Damn….. Can I ask you one question?”

“Could I stop you?”

“What’s that supposed to be a tattoo of?”

“A dove.”

“Huh…It looks more like The Grand Canyon.”

“OUCH!!!! Not the face. Not the face! I know nothing, I see nothing, I say nothing!”