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Advice - Spike Sez offers no-nonsense, practical advice for the lovelorn, lost, and stupid. If you feel you fit into one of these categories and have a related question, submit it to spike@onlineoffbeat.com, and if he feels like it Spike may respond.
Spike is NOT a licensed therapist and has NO training whatsoever in psychology or human behavior, but as he frequently says, “the fucking President has no qualifications for his job either, and look how well he’s doing.” Spike Sez is not affiliated with Spike TV, Spike Lee, or anyone else purporting to be named Spike.
Dear Spike — It seems like every time I go out to a bar I end up talking to some stranger who decides to tell me all his problems. I don’t know what it is about me that attracts these guys. Maybe I have a friendly face or look trustworthy or something, but it’s really getting annoying. I just want to go out to relax and have a drink and maybe get laid, but instead I get sucked into these long conversation where I feel like Dear Abby.
I don’t want to be rude, so how do I tactfully extricate myself from these situations?
— Troy, Chelsea, MA
Dear Troy — Way to bum Spike out. Just when he thought his readers were all from affluent communities you have to go and send a letter from Chelsea. And not even one of the good Chelseas, like in Manhattan or London. The Chelsea under the Mystic River Bridge! Spike didn’t even know people there could write. Thanks a lot.
Well, Spike certainly understands your pain. He so could not give 2 shits about anyone else’s problems, and yet for some reason here you are sending him a letter pouring out your troubles and expecting him to respond. It really is quite a mystery why it keeps happening. Spike goes out of his way to make it clear that he doesn’t care, and yet the letters keep coming. I guess it’s just Spike’s curse that he’s so sensible that other people seek him out for advice.
Anyway, Troy, onto YOUR problem (because, of course, Spike has NOTHING better to do). Why exactly are you concerned about being rude? What could be ruder than glomming onto a stranger and pummeling them into submission with tales of your miserable existence? The hubris boggles the mind. Assuming that other people should be interested in one’s problems is presumptuous and not a little narcissistic. Spike thinks one of the scourges of our society (along with smoking bans and the Olsen Twins’ midget-whore clothing line) is the compulsion people feel to share the details of their lives with everyone else. That’s why God made therapists and hairdressers. They are professionals who get paid to listen to other people’s shit. The rest of us shouldn’t have to suffer it: not on websites like FaceBook and UTube, not on reality TV shows, and certainly not in bars. As far as Spike is concerned, the only proper response to such intrusions is, “Do I look like I give a fuck?”
But Spike suspects that you’re too “nice” for that approach, which is probably why these losers keep coming up to you in the first place. They sense your weakness like Jennifer Love Hewitt sniffs out a cheesy role (or maybe even a cheesy roll, if the recent photos are to be believed).
So Spike suggests you use the tactic he perfected during the Clinton administration whenever he found himself seated next to Madeleine (I’ll-talk-your-ear-off-all-night-about-this-Middle-East-stuff) Albright at state dinners (where, of course, rudeness would have been inappropriate).
As soon as old Maddy would launch into one of her monologues, Spike would stare at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then point to his ears and say, “Dorry, dut I’b deap,” in his best Marlee Matlin voice. It never failed to work. Of course it helped that Maddy was so self-absorbed that she never noticed Spike smoking Cuban cigars and cracking dirty jokes with the Dalai Llama and Kofi Annan later in the evening.
Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? These sorts of bores love nothing more than the sound of their own voices, so the chances of one actually knowing sign language are pretty small. Of course they may decide to tell you their tale of woe anyway...in a really loud, slow voice so you can read their lips. But that might actually be amusing, especially if the bar is crowded and you keep giving them perplexed looks so they’ll repeat what they said...over and over again.
So ciao for now,
Spike
DISCLAIMER: Spike and Online OffBeat take no responsibility whatsoever for advice given in Spike Sez. Submit questions at your own risk to spike@onlineoffbeat.com. If no questions are submitted, Spike will make them up.
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Heading into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Barack Obama said, “There's no doubt that a campaign has to continually fine-tune itself.” Here are some suggestions that may help push him over the top:
• At the very least, wear a Reverend Wright “God Damn American” lapel flag.
• Forget the debates; challenge Hillary Clinton to a drinking contest.
• Every new campaign ad must contain at least one Monica Lewinsky subliminal message.
• Reach out to the working class. Propose a law that says “Jeopardy” cannot be harder to play than “Wheel of Fortune.”
• End every speech with “…and if they don’t like it, they should go back to where they came from!”
Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. Obama said, “I’d love to but my stove pipe hat is at the cleaners.”
The Washington Post reports that President Bush’s plan to contract federal jobs to the private sector has fallen short. However, Wal-Mart is still accepting part-time applications for Secretary of Interior.
John McCain visited New Orleans and said “Never again, never again, will a disaster of this nature be handled in the disgraceful way it was handled” -- despite his opposition to emergency assistance to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. He added, “There’s got to be a better disgraceful way to handle it.”
Bay State Bombast
The Boston Globe reports that a group of professional ticket brokers paid House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s accountant Richard Vitale -- who also gave DiMasi a $250,000 third mortgage at a very favorable rate -- to help convince the Speaker to pass a bill that loosened regulations on the ticket resale business. Last minute amendments to the law also:
• Made it illegal to bet when another story about DiMasi and influence peddling becomes public.
• Made it a crime to resell a Red Sox ticket to a tall person if that person will be sitting in front of Speaker DiMasi.
• Made it legal for citizens to use the State House freight elevator when carrying satchels of cash up to the Speaker’s office.
• Entitled Speaker DiMasi to a share of any income earned from scalping tickets to his fundraisers.
• Allowed the Speaker and 25 lobbyists to attend at least one free performance of “Riverdance” each year.
According to an investigation by city officials, workers and supervisors in Boston’s Department of Public Works routinely left the job early and failed to perform tasks such as filling potholes. A city spokesman said, “This is an insult to every worker who spends eight hours a day sleeping in his truck.”
An independent inspection of the Longfellow Bridge indicated the span is in worse condition than the state had previously determined. A spokesman for Boston’s Department of Public Works said, “Don’t worry, we’ll send somebody over by June, 2017.”
Small Street Journal
President Bush said the tax rebates going out on Monday should help boost the economy. As proof, he indicated homeless shelters and food pantries are growing at a record pace.
Media Bites
A TV ad, critical of Barack Obama, produced by North Carolina Republican leaders is creating dissension within party ranks. Some say it’s fair show a clip of Obama with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Other’s say special effects should be used to include Osama bin Laden, Willy Horton, and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Inside Scoop
Although John McCain’s wife publicly supports her husband’s presidential candidacy, whenever he flies on her corporate plane, she charges him for drinks and headphones.
Weekly Prediction
Hillary Clinton will give up her claim to Michigan and Florida votes but will assert that each overweight working class vote should be worth at least 1.5.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
Buddy returned to the apartment a couple of hours later, looking rather ashen.
“Jesus, that guy Paulie is a piece of work,” he said as he sat across from me. “Where the fuck did you meet him?”
“We used to work together at Blue Cross-Blue Shield,” I answered. “He got fired for calling customers ‘Poopsie” over the phone.”
“He had me make a bunch of stops on the way to his house, Stop and Shop, CVS, a couple of other places. He said he had a phobia about going into stores alone, so there I was going in with him. And I must have loaned him about fifty bucks,” Buddy shook his head.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever run errands with a guy dressed like a butterfly before?” I laughed. “I’ll pay you back the fifty, because believe me, Paulie never will.”
“You think this is funny? He said he had a line of credit at a club near Kenmore Square, and I let him drag me in there with him,” Danny said, coughing. “I was being polite because he’s a friend of yours. It was Alternative Lifestyle Night at the place, and we only left because Paulie was embarrassed about wearing the same outfit as another guy.” I really started giggling now, holding my gut and bending over.
“And when we got to his flophouse,” Buddy continued, “he didn’t have a key, and his landlord was nowhere to be found. So I climbed the fire escape and broke into Madame Butterfly’s room, because again he had a phobia, a fear of heights.”
“He has a fear of everything except driving other people up the wall,” I explained.
“And those other people who were here today,” Buddy said. “They all seem like cooked birds, too.”
“Well,” I replied, scratching my chin, “Sven is okay if you don’t piss him off, but that's a bullshit story about his so-called dueling scar. He really got cut up by a whore in Hamburg. Now, Doris, she’s your basic career panhandler, which may be morally repugnant but which doesn’t meet the clinical definition of insanity. And Daniel grew up Catholic but went to public school, and I think he actually wanted to have his ears boxed by nuns like a lot of the other kids he knew. So now he’s compensating by literally being more Catholic than the Pope.”
“I think I mentioned something about being roomies when we were drinking last night,” Buddy said. “But maybe living with you on a regular basis would be a little too -what’s the word?- ‘bohemian.’”
“Sure, I understand, Buddy,” I said, doing my best to act disappointed.
Buddy stayed until Thursday of that week, bunked at an uncle’s house for a few days after that, and then moved back in with his wife. After he was gone, I called Paulie and talked about it.
“Hey, you really gave Buddy the works, huh?” I asked.
“It’s not much worse than what I’ve done to you on occasion,” Paulie said.
“And the rest of the cast was brilliant,” I said in praise of Sven, Doris and Daniel.
“What cast? You don’t need a script with some people. It’s like improv, except the actors think it’s real.”
I believe that the contemporary term for Buddy’s little baptism is, “intervention.” And I’m happy to report that he’s doing fine. Dragoslva learned that there was a colony of her countrymen living in Vermont, so she convinced Buddy to move there. They now own a Zaglavakian-themed restaurant and motel near Killington.
“It’s a goldmine,” Buddy told me recently. “It’s the Zaglavaks’ home away from home, the skiers think it’s exotic, and the snowboarders are all addicted to plum brandy. Dragoslava’s grandmother darkens her skin at a tanning salon and passes herself off as a gypsy fortuneteller. Everybody’s happy!”
The other principals who attended the impromptu party at my apartment that afternoon have also had some changes in situation. Sven got a little too old to be a bouncer, and he’s now a trainer in the sport of Ultimate Fighting. Danny, one night as he was walking from the train station to Pope Raoul’s house, looked up and saw an unidentified flying object over Forest Hills. He now lives in Roswell, New Mexico and operates the Universal Chapel of Extraterrestrial Angels and Saints.
Paulie and Doris were married in 1993, but Doris died in 1998, leaving her entire estate to a shelter for unwanted ferrets. Not long after her death, Paulie found a job as an activities director for a nursing home. He still works there, although he got into a bit of trouble two years ago when one of his innovations, a geriatric production of “Riverdance,” caused minor cardiovascular accidents for two of his hoofers.
When rent control ended, I moved farther north, into Big Hair Territory, where I still live. It’s not quite so bohemian, but the pizza is wonderful.
(the end)
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
I talked to Paulie for a couple of minutes and returned to my stool. Duke, a WWII veteran, ex-boxer, and former bookmaker, was regaling Buddy with an anecdote.
“My division was sent to the Philippines after the Germans surrendered,” Duke said. “There were nationalist guerillas in the hills, so we got combat pay, but all we ever did was eat bananas and go bowling. One guy I knew made a pet of a monkey, and he cried his eyes out when he couldn’t bring the thing back to the States with him. I heard he ended up marrying a woman who looked like a chimp.”
Buddy squirted some beer out of a nostril as he laughed at this. Duke insisted on giving us one last round on the house, and after drinking it we took our leave. As we were walking back to my apartment, I asked Buddy what he thought of Whitman’s.
“I know the place is kind of a halfway house for unattached male nuts,” Buddy answered. “But it’s a panic!”
The next day, Sunday, at a little after 4:00 p.m., Buddy and I were watching a football game when my doorbell rang. I pushed the intercom button and asked who was at the door.
“Let me in, you philistine,” a familiar voice announced.
“Come on up,” I said, pushing the door release. “It’s my friend Paulie,” I said to Buddy. “He drops in once in a while.”
“That’s cool,” Buddy shrugged.
I met Paulie Gomes at the door of my third floor walk-up. He was accompanied by Sven, a tall man with a shaved head and an ugly scar on his left cheek; Daniel, a middle-aged guy in a rumpled suit; and Doris, a mature woman who dressed in ragged clothing and carried four shopping bags filled with books, papers and other bags. Sven and Daniel were fellow insomniacs I knew from an all-night diner. Doris was a familiar figure who had a regular begging station in front of the local Baskin Robbins.
“I bumped into some friends!” Paulie smiled. He was a tiny fellow, about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and on this occasion he was wearing a butterfly costume, complete with antennae, wings, black tights, and little slippers.
“Is that your Sunday best you’re wearing?” I asked.
“I’m doing a children’s play at a little venue in Inman Square,” Paulie said. “I want to stay in character as long as possible. And since lepidopterans don't carry luggage, I left my street clothes at the theater after today's matinee. I'll pick them up on Tuesday."
“Oh, you’re a character all right,” I replied.
I asked everyone in and introduced them to Buddy, who didn’t seem overly fazed by Paulie’s manner of dress. Paulie and Sven sat on the futon-couch, Daniel and Doris sat on the loveseat facing them, and Buddy and I sat on metal folding chairs on either side of my stereo, along a wall that was perpendicular to the other furniture. Paulie had assembled quite a crew. Sven was a reputed deserter from the French Foreign Legion. Daniel belonged to a quasi-Catholic sect whose members believed that the true pope was a twenty-year-old short order cook who lived with his mother in a dilapidated house near the Forest Hills MBTA station. Doris the bag lady was actually quite well off, but sometimes I gave her a buck in the hopes that she’d leave me something in her will.
We talked about various subjects for an hour or so, over beer and wine. When the conversation got around to religion, Buddy informed our guests that he had been married in a Zaglavakian Orthodox ceremony.
“Zaglavakian Orthodox?” Daniel asked, looking surprised. “But they’re schismatic!”
“Who are you calling, ‘schismatic?’” Paulie interrupted. “You’re the one who thinks the pope is a kid in Jamaica Plain.”
“His Holiness Raoul the First lives in Roslindale!” Daniel shot back.
“Hey, don’t make fun of the man’s religion,” Sven said, turning to Paulie.
“I’ll make fun of anyone or anything I want,” Paulie sniffed. “I’m an artist, Scarface.”
“I got this scar in affair of honor, in a duel, you silly little insect!” Sven roared, bringing his face closer to Paulie. “If you weren’t so small I’d challenge you to fight with cutlasses on Cambridge Common.”
“And if you weren’t so much fun to ridicule, I’d call the French consulate to see if I could get a reward and have you sent back to Timbuktu or wherever you ran away from, you big, bald prick!” Paulie screeched.
“Oh, that language, Paulie,” Doris said.
“Yes, and on a Sunday,” Daniel interjected.
Someone banged on the other side of the wall where Buddy and I were sitting and asked us to quiet down. The room was silent for a minute, and Paulie was the first to speak, asking Buddy if he was interested in playing Evil Eye Fleagle in an avant-garde production of “Li'l Abner.”
“Er, I work nights,” Buddy stammered.
Things petered out over the next half hour. Daniel was late for an audience at Raoul’s “palace,” and Sven had to get to the club where he worked as a bouncer. Doris said that she had an appointment to meet her investment adviser at her house in Arlington, and Daniel chided her for conducting business on the sabbath.
“Paulie,” I said, as the other three got up to leave. “I don’t think you should be riding the T dressed like that. And I know you probably have less than a dollar in your pocket, if butterflies have pockets. How about if I pay for a cab?”
“Oh, that would cost a fortune, Jimmy,” Paulie said. “Does your friend Evil Eye have a car?”
“Ah, sure, I’ll give you a ride,” Buddy said. “Brookline isn’t too far.”
“I’ll stay here and clean up,” I said to Buddy. “After you get back we’ll talk about, you know,
your situation.”
(to be continued)
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
The New York Times reports that the Pentagon used a group of high-ranking retired military officers, each now a military contractor, to appear on news shows and promote the Bush Administration’s Iraq policies. Here are some of their comments that didn’t make it on the air:
• Pay no attention to that Bush flunky clutching my balls.
• The United States has no chance winning in Iraq without my new combination night vision goggles/electric toothbrush.
• To show you how well my WMD detector works, we’ve hidden a nuclear bomb under one of your seats.
• Tim, I’m wearing a pair bullet-proof underwear and loving it!
• Oprah, let me just say this: You get a tank, and you get a tank, and you get tank and you get a…
A Washington Post article questions whether John McCain’s bad temper will prevent him from getting elected or affect his ability to govern. It might if his first State of the Union Speech begins with: My fellow Americans, you want a piece of me?
Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to visit an American synagogue. He was greeted with cries of “Wow, now that’s a Yamaka!”
Barack Obama told a rally in Paoli, Pennsylvania that Hillary Clinton “has internalized a lot of the strategies, the tactics that have made Washington such a miserable place where all we do is bicker and all we do is fight.” Clinton responded, “Finally, he says something nice about me.”
Bay State Bombast
Three things to watch for in tomorrow’s Boston Marathon:
• When congratulating the winners, will Mayor Menino be provided with Kenyan, Ethiopian, and English translators?
• Will Gov. Deval Patrick watch the race on TV while exercising on his treadmill, thus allowing him to devote a chapter in his upcoming book to “the time I ran in the Boston Marathon.”
• Will the runners who finish the marathon vomit as much as the marchers who finish the St. Patrick’s Day Parade? Small Street Journal
NBC announced it will start creating programs around sponsors’ products. The first show will be called “My Name is Earl the Maytag Repairman.”
Media Bites
CNN business reporter Richard Quest was arrested in New York City’s Central Park after curfew with methamphetamines. A judge sentenced him to spend ten consecutive hours in a locked room listening to Lou Dobbs commentaries.
Inside Scoop
Despite his speechwriters urging, Barack Obama refuses to use the term, “kick some serious al Qaeda butt.”
Weekly Prediction
To seal a Pennsylvania Primary win, Hillary Clinton will get drunk, get a tattoo, and wake up the next morning in bed with her husband.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Cartoons / Humor
Boston Outsider / Humor
For five years during the 1980s, when the People’s Republic of Cambridge still clung to a vestige of socialism, I lived in a rent-controlled, 1.5 room studio apartment just east of Harvard Square. It was cheap, and I didn’t own much of anything, so it wasn’t a bad arrangement. One Saturday night, as I sat in my tiny abode watching “Twilight Zone” on a New Hampshire UHF station, I got a call from my friend Buddy Feeney, who lived in Revere.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Buddy said. “I've got a big favor to ask. Would you mind if I stayed at your place for a while?”
“Shit, Buddy,” I answered. “You’ve seen how small this place is. Are you having problems at home again?”
“’Problems’ isn’t the word,” he replied. “If I stay here much longer, you’re going to be reading something awful about me in the Herald.”
“All right,” I said. “Just for a week or so. And make sure that somebody knows where you are.”
Buddy arrived the next night, toting a small suitcase. I gave him my visitor parking card so that his car wouldn’t get towed, and he settled in. After using the bathroom, he came back in the main room with a big smile on his face.
“I just took a piss with the bathroom door open,” he said gleefully. “I haven’t done that in eight years!”
“I’ve been pissing with the bathroom door open for quite a while now,” I said from my perch on a folded futon . “And it’s no big deal. Maybe I’m just jaded.”
“Listen,” Buddy said as he sat on a moth-eaten loveseat. “I know you think I’m a jerk for being here instead of with my wife and kids. You’ve seen Dragoslava lately. She’s still a hot little number after having three children, but life with her has turned into one, big pain in the ass. She and her relatives are the only Zaglavakians this side of Chicago, so my in-laws use my house as their own personal ethnic club. They come and go as they please, playing accordions and drinking plum brandy. And when they run out of plum brandy, they help themselves to my beer.”
“Call up ‘National Geographic,’” I laughed. “They can go to your house and film a special.”
“It’s no joke,” Buddy said, lighting a Marlboro. “You know what it’s like at Easter? A priest with a beard three feet long comes over and stinks up the place with incense. It’s supposed to be an exorcism. The whole tribe goes in the back yard and roasts a pig, and at the end of the night they dance around dressed like garden gnomes while Dragoslava’s grandmother lights firecrackers.”
“Don’t you remember?” I asked. “I was at one of those parties. The roast pig was delicious.”
“The pig tastes wonderful until you find out how much you’re being porked,” he replied, not cracking a smile.
I decided not to give any lectures about the sanctity of the marriage bond. The next six days passed smoothly. Buddy worked the night shift at UPS, and I worked days at a health insurance company, and we barely saw one another. Saturday evening rolled around, and I wondered when I should broach the subject of Buddy’s checkout time. At about six o’clock, I asked him if he wanted to go to the Square for a couple of beers.
“All right,” he said, enthusiastically. “Brewskies in freaky Cambridge!”
I brought Buddy to Whitman’s, a little watering hole that I often visited on J.F.K. Street. On the way there, as we were walking along Mass. Ave., a man in an Uncle Sam costume rode by on a unicycle.
“What’s with that character?” Buddy asked. “July Fourth was three months ago, and Halloween isn’t for another three weeks.”
“That guy always dresses like that,” I said calmly.
“You know, Jimmy,” Buddy answered. “You belong in this neighborhood.”
When we got to Whitman’s, about a half dozen regulars were there. Buddy took a stool to my left at the bar. Duke the bartender saw me and got a Budweiser out of the chest, and I told me to make it two. Duke was his natty self, dressed in a white shirt and striped necktie, and as usual he was flouting Commonwealth of Massachusetts law by drinking a Ballantine Ale as he worked.
An old-timer named Red came in and sat on Buddy’s left, ordering a straight shot of Mr. Beantown rye, cheap whiskey from the bottom shelf. He told people that he drank rotgut to express his solidarity with the working classes, but it was really because he was always broke. Red started telling Buddy stories that I’d already heard a hundred times before: about how he’d been a union organizer, how he’d served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, how he’d once had a girlfriend in East Berlin. Buddy ate it all up, and he bought Red a couple of shots of good stuff before the old raconteur made his exit.
“You’ll have to excuse me, comrades,” said Red. “I have to go home and write my column for the Daily Struggle.”
“Hey, a real commie,” Buddy beamed after Red left.
“A real commie?” I asked. “A real barfly is more like it. Didn’t you notice that he switched from Mr. Beantown to Old Granddad after you started paying?”
Before Buddy could answer, a scruffy regular called Jerry the Poet, seated three stools to my right, stood up and treated us to some verse. Holding up a shiny, new nickel, he recited:
“Find a nickel.
What the fuck?
All the day you’ll have good luck.”
“Hey, watch the language, you bastard!” Duke yelled, and the room exploded in laughter. A bespectacled sot named Lenny, who always sat at the far end of the bar near the men’s room, offered some literary criticism.
“That piece is rather derivative,” he said, pausing to take a puff of a huge green cigar. “There’s a poem that’s almost identical to that, but it’s about a penny.”
Buddy, all the while, was enjoying himself immensely. After the seventh round of drinks, he got around to the matter that I had been avoiding.
“You know, Jimmy,” he slurred slightly. “The week is almost up, and I know that your apartment is too small for two people, even with us working separate shifts. How about if we get a two bedroom place together?”
The whole week I’d been wondering if Buddy was having marital problems because of being in love with someone else. But it turned out that he was in love with something else, in love with born-again bachelorhood, in love with idea of being footloose and fancy-free.
“Let’s talk about that when we’re sober,” I said. I excused myself to use the bathroom, and on the way back to the bar, I got on the payphone and called a certain Brookline rooming house, asking for Paulie Gomes, a friend who was a would-be actor and borderline lunatic.
“Paulie,” I said, when he got on the line. “I have a little job for you.”
(to be continued)
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Humor / Possible Captions
Possible captions
• And then he’s driving me to Disneyland. What a country!
• One chocolate, one vanilla, both with jimmies.
• When you see a guy reach for stars in the sky, you can bet that he's doing it for some doll.
• And finally I said, “Okay, you can drive the Popemobile.”
• No matter what I say, that stupid grin never leaves his face.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Cartoons / Humor
Advice - Spike Sez offers no-nonsense, practical advice for the lovelorn, lost, and stupid. If you feel you fit into one of these categories and have a related question, submit it to spike@onlineoffbeat.com, and if he feels like it Spike may respond.
Spike is NOT a licensed therapist and has NO training whatsoever in psychology or human behavior, but as he frequently says, “the fucking President has no qualifications for his job either, and look how well he’s doing.” Spike Sez is not affiliated with Spike TV, Spike Lee, or anyone else purporting to be named Spike.
Dear Spike — I don’t really need your advice, but I want your opinion on something.
The other night my husband and I had a party with some friends and colleagues. While we were having cocktails the subject of political sex scandals came up (Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, in particular). Much to my surprise, the men were much more adament in their condemnations than the women. The women all seemed to feel that mistakes happen and that while cheating is wrong, it doesn’t mean that a politician can’t still do a good job. The men, on the other hand, felt that cheating was evidence of poor character and judgment and therefore made the guilty parties unfit for political office.
Why do you think men are less forgiving of politicians’ infidelities than women? I would think it would be the other way around since in all of the instances we were discussing the wives were the victims.
I should probably tell you that all of our guests were married and ranged in age from early-40s to late-50s. It was a pretty even mixture of Republicans and Democrats. Most of the women, like myself, are stay-at-home moms and most of the men work in finance, earning fairly substantial salaries.
Any insights? And by the way, which candidate are you supporting for the Presidential election? Just curious.
— Enid, Weston, MA
Dear Enid — Wow. Last week a letter from Wellesley and this week a letter from WESTON! Who knew that Spike was so well read by the Boston-area elite? Spike feels just like Florence, the maid on “The Jeffersons”: still doing the same crappy job, but at a much better address.
Now let’s see if Spike has this right: a bunch of rich, middle-aged men at a party vigorousy condemned some other rich, middle-aged men for cheating on their wives. Hmmm. Why would THAT be?
Griiiiind. Splash. Drip, drip, drip. RIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!! Time to wake up and smell the coffee, Enid! Do you suppose maybe it was BECAUSE THEIR WIVES WERE IN THE ROOM?
Good Lord, Enid, what did you expect them to say? “Gee, I don’t see anything wrong with that?” It’s called self-preservation. No rich guy of prime cheating age is going to say he doesn’t have a problem with infidelity in front of his wife. That would be just like saying, “Hey honey, why don’t you hire a private detective to follow me around and put wiretaps on my phone? Oh, and while you’re at it, start checking all the charges on my credit cards each month.” A man would have to be a special kind of stupid (to quote Marsha Warfield) to step into a pile of shit like that.
And be honest, Enid. When you and other little wifeys said, “mistakes happen,” you didn’t really mean that either, did you? You just wanted to see what your husbands would say if you made it sound like you didn’t think cheating was such a big deal. You were trying to lull them into a false sense of security so they’d reveal their true feelings.
And what’s more, Spike suspects you already knew the truth about what was happening at the party and just wanted to see if Spike would betray his gender by confirming it. Well guess what? He would, because Spike thinks that infidelity is the most horrendous and unforgivable act imaginable...as his husband who reads this column would undoubtedly tell you. It’s just bad, bad, bad.
You clearly have way too much time on your hands, Enid. Perhaps if you spent a little more of your stay-at-home-mom time being a mom, or showing your husband that you appreciate the fact that he busts his ass so you can loll around your big house in Weston all day, you wouldn’t have to worry abut whether he’s planning to trade you in for a younger model, and you wouldn’t be wasting Spike’s time with your clever little games.
As for your question about which candidate Spike is supporting in the next election, Spike supports no one...because Spike is a sovereign nation.
So ciao for now,
Spike
DISCLAIMER: Spike and Online OffBeat take no responsibility whatsoever for advice given in Spike Sez. Submit questions at your own risk to spike@onlineoffbeat.com. If no questions are submitted, Spike will make them up.
Cartoons / Humor
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Hillary Clinton and John McCain have branded Barack Obama an elitist for saying that small-town voters in economically distressed areas are “bitter.” Obama must take immediate steps to show he’s a regular guy. Here are some suggestions:
• Pledge to appoint a Secretary of NASCAR.
• Be videotaped at a firing range shooting at bottles of Gray Poupon.
• Pledge to use his position as ex-president to eventually earn $109 million in about eight years.
• Announce he’s started smoking again and is up to three packs of Camels a day.
• Dump his wife and marry a woman who is both babe-a-licious and heiress to a beer distributorship fortune.
The New York Times reports that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is having a hard time finding a job. In fact, he’s so desperate he’s placed an ad on Monster.com reading, “Will say ‘I don’t remember' for food.”
John McCain outlined his plans to ease the burden on struggling American homeowners. The plan is very simple: If you no longer own a home, you won’t be struggling.
It’s been reported that Hillary Clinton is starting to lose the support of white women in Pennsylvania. However, she’s still polling strongly with white women who have mistakenly claimed to have taken sniper fire.
Bay State Bombast
Disgraced former House Speaker Thomas Finneran, who pleaded guilty in January 2007 to federal obstruction of justice charges and is currently a radio talk show host on Boston's WRKO, has registered as a Beacon Hill lobbyist. He recently signed his first client: the National Association of Chutzpah.
Small Street Journal
American Airlines received clearance from federal aviation officials to return all of its 300 grounded jets to service. However, it has changed it’s slogan from “Something special in the air” to “Are you feeling lucky?”
Media Bites
It’s been reported that CBS is considering outsourcing some of its news-gathering operations to CNN. In a related story, Fox News is considering outsourcing some of its news-gathering operations to an old woman with a ouija board.
Inside Scoop
At the very least, Jimmy Carter hopes to convince Hamas to switch from suicide vests to suicide cardigan sweaters.
Weekly Prediction
In order to nail down the Pennsylvania youth and Amish vote, Hillary Clinton will claim that as a teenager she used to drag-race her parent’s horse-drawn carriage.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
It was late afternoon on the last Monday of August, eight days before the start of ninth grade. Weasel Mullins and I were pitching quarters against the wall of our junior high school when Nickie Tsakos came by.
“Where you been?” Weasel asked.
“Greek School,” Nickie moaned.
“What’s that, something to do with bum-blasting?” Weasel smirked.
“Ha, ha, Asshole,” Nickie said. “I go to my church and study ancient Greek. It’ll come in handy if I ever go back in a time machine and want to talk to Socrates. I’ll be doing it every weekday, once regular school starts.”
“I don’t have to do any Irish shit after school,” Weasel replied. “But if I were a girl I’d be stuck taking step-dancing lessons.”
“You’d look cute kicking up your heels in a green dress,” Nickie laughed. “You got the red hair and all.”
“You think Irish dancing is real funny?” asked Weasel, narrowing his blue eyes. “You know what ‘Greek dancing’ is slang for, don’t you?”
“Fuck you,” answered Nickie.
“Exactly,” cackled Weasel.
“What about you?” Nickie asked me. “You got any Italian duties?"
“On Wednesdays, you know, Prince Spaghetti Day, if my mother is busy watching ‘Dialing For Dollars,’ I have to stir the red gravy so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.”
“A Meatball who eats meatballs,” Weasel said. “It’s fucking cannibalism!”
“Well, what does your family eat on Wednesdays, Weasel?” I asked. “Plain boiled cabbage?”
“No, you ignorant Wop, we eat fried peat moss on Wednesdays,” Weasel snapped.
The three of us pitched quarters for about another hour when Manny Oliveira joined us. Manny was an immigrant from Portugal, a good-natured kid, but Weasel love to ride him.
“How’s it going, you foreign fuck?” Weasel greeted Manny.
“Is that nice, calling me a ‘foreign fuck’?” Manny asked. “At least make up something original.”
“All right, your new name is 'Linguicia Breath,'” Weasel answered.
“I’ve heard worse,” Manny smiled. “Now let me in this game.”
Manny kicked our asses, winning almost every round. About half the time he actually tossed “leaners.” Weasel was amazed at Manny’s advanced state of assimilation.
“How did you learn to pitch a quarter so close to a wall like that?” Weasel asked. “I didn’t even know they had walls in Portugal.”
“There was an advanced civilization on the Iberian Peninsula when your ancestors were running around naked,” Manny proclaimed, puffing up his chest.
“Maybe that’s how the Irish got so many freckles,” I volunteered, “going bare-ass in the sun for centuries.”
Nickie guffawed, and Weasel threw his last quarter at him. It was hot out, and Manny offered to treat us to slush at Mike’s Spa. Mike’s was owned by Miksa “Mike” Kolbasz, known in town as, “Mike the Polack.” Mike was actually from Budapest, but he was the first Hungarian that anyone in the neighborhood had ever met, and nobody was sure of the proper slur. We went into Mike’s, and Manny, Nickie, and I got lemon slushes, lemon being Mike’s best flavor. Weasel, always the showoff, ordered a combination of lemon, cherry, watermelon, and root beer. An aroma of cooking filled the store, and Weasel, after taking the first lick of his combo, asked Mike what the nice smell was.
“My wife is making goulash in our place upstairs,” Mike, a short, powerfully built man, grinned. “It’s Hungarian stew. If you boys stay on my good side, I’ll give you all a taste someday.”
We went outside and finished eating the slush, and as we were walking up the street, Weasel announced, “It’s not right that Mike is called ‘Mike the Polack’ when he’s not even Polish. From now on, he’s officially, ‘Goulash Gus.’”
“Wait a minute,” said Manny, “if he can be ‘Goulash Gus' when his name is really Mike, then I want to change my nickname to ‘Portagee Pete.’”
“Listen,” said Nickie. “You’re not a Pete, and Mike isn’t a Gus, but I’m a Nickie, so I should be ‘Nick the Greek.’”
“There’s already a ‘Nick the Greek,” a big gambler guy," Weasel retorted. “I’m calling you, ‘Jackie Onassis.’”
”Jackie Onassis is a chick,” sniffed Nickie.
“So are you!” Weasel blurted.
Nickie tackled him on to the lawn of a house we were passing, and they started wrestling. An old woman came out on the front porch and started bawling something in a foreign tongue, and Manny shouted something back, and I deduced that they were conversing in Portuguese. She went back into her house and reemerged waving a two-by-four, and we hightailed it to Nickie’s, which was five blocks away
“Hey, what did you say to that woman?” I asked Manny, as we sat in Nickie’s living room.
“I called her, “Linguicia Breath,’’ he said, poker-faced.
We all roared at that, and I knew that Manny was going to be a fine citizen.
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Cartoons / Humor
Boston Outsider / Humor
I drive to Somerville today for my father’s memorial Mass, and who do I see in the church parking lot afterwards but Louie Malatesta, the owner of the Bonbon Salon, where I once worked. (“Straight as a pin, but ugly as sin,” is what we used to say about him.) He introduces me to his new wife, a cute little Filipino woman. I’ve heard that she brings him to Mass every Sunday and that she made him throw out his Bo Derek movie collection and his bong. She’s pregnant, and they seem happy.
After I drive Ma home to her condo, I go to the old neighborhood and take a look around. Our old house is still painted reddish brown, but the lawn Madonna is gone, and there’s a rainbow flag on the porch. I imagine that there’s a nice lesbian couple living there, and that in between softball games they have long heartfelt talks about being oppressed by the Patriarchy. Patriarchy. . . I remember that word from the Women’s Studies course I took as an elective at U.Mass. when I was going there nights for my business degree. It’s just a fancy way of saying that men can be jerks, but with four older brothers I didn’t need Women’s Studies to gain that insight.
Our old street is populated by professionals and Tufts professors now. I see a few helmeted children riding bikes around, and I laugh thinking that a kid who used a crash helmet back in my day would have been teased about it for the rest of his life. The four or five blocks where my brothers and I played were Kid Heaven. There were kids everywhere, running around and raising hell, kids and their mutt dogs.
Many of the canines were siblings to one another. There was a low-rent dog breeder on the other side of our block. He owned a male German shepherd and a female collie, both unfixed, and every time they had a litter, he’d sell the puppies for eight dollars each. The local children were all influenced by television, and so a female dog with collie features might get the name Lassie. Because “Hogan’s Heroes” was a popular series, dogs with dominant shepherd traits were often dubbed Klink, Schultz, Burkhhalter or Hochstetter, although a female could be Helga or Hilda. I suppose that a male poodle would have been called LeBeau after the French P.O.W. on the show, but this is a moot point, since the poodle breed was unknown in the neighborhood. A kid with a poodle would have been as big an outcast as a kid in a bicycle helmet.
Across from the former Scompigliati mansion is the Jamesons’ old place. Mr. Jameson was a tall, thin man who worked in a candy factory, lugging around sacks of sugar that weighed almost as much as he did. His wife was addicted to Franklin Mint collector items, and their house was full of Elvis Presley commemorative plates and scary porcelain Shirley Temple dolls. Every night at about seven, when Mr. Jameson was on his fifth tall Narragansett, he’d look around the house at all the gewgaws and start yelling at his wife about the household budget. Then she’d yell back at him about his drinking.
I was walking by the house with their son Sean once when such a dispute began.
“My parents are chanting Vespers,” Sean said, making a joke of it.
But I could see that he was embarrassed, so I invited him to come to my house to watch “Star Trek.” We were about fifteen then. Sean was in my Spanish class at Somerville High. He was my first boyfriend, a perfect gentleman who preferred studying to sports. My brother Eddie, of course, thought that Sean was a little too genteel.
“Face it, you big-haired bimbo,” Eddie advised. “The kid’s a fruit.”
Sean did break my heart and leave me after high school, but it was to go to a Jesuit seminary. He was always good at Spanish, and now he’s a missionary priest in Peru. He travels to mountain villages that are connected by primitive dirt roads, and sometimes he rides on a donkey like Jesus entering Jerusalem. Sean’s two siblings took divergent career paths. His older brother Billy is in prison for robbing armored cars, and his younger brother Tommy is a Somerville cop. If there had been a Jameson sister, she would have been bound by the Law of Cliches to become a whore with a heart of gold.
The trip down Memory Lane has been nice, but it’s a long ride back to New Hampshire, and I think it’s time to go. My husband Kevin has our little ones, Liam and Fiona, all to himself, and they can be a handful. My life is wonderful, but on the drive home I can’t stop thinking about Sean Jameson. One year at a school reunion I saw a picture of him that had been taken in a Peruvian town. He was bearded and dressed in peasant clothing, surrounded by children and dogs, and I thought that he had managed to travel thousands of miles and still find a bit of home. I think I’ll send his mission a little donation.
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Advice - Spike Sez offers no-nonsense, practical advice for the lovelorn, lost, and stupid. If you feel you fit into one of these categories and have a related question, submit it to spike@onlineoffbeat.com, and if he feels like it Spike may respond.
Spike is NOT a licensed therapist and has NO training whatsoever in psychology or human behavior, but as he frequently says, “the fucking President has no qualifications for his job either, and look how well he’s doing.” Spike Sez is not affiliated with Spike TV, Spike Lee, or anyone else purporting to be named Spike.
Dear Spike — I’m an attractive single woman in my early-50s. I’ve tried my hand at relationships but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me, and I’ve finally decided to stop looking. My life is very full and satisfying as it is and I’ve reached the point where I realize I don’t need a man to make me happy. Still, sometimes a gal gets a little “lonely,” so occasionally I’ll go searching online for a guy who might be looking for some company for the evening.
About 5 weeks ago I found an ad from a married couple looking for another woman for “occasional, no-strings, casual encounters.” I’ve never had any interest in other women, but the idea intrigued me, so I responded and we set up a time to meet the following Wednesday night.
“Bill and Susan” and I met in the lobby bar of a nearby hotel and we immediately hit it off. They’re both in their mid-40s, both professionals like myself, have 2 teenage girls, and they’ve been together for 22 years. Despite my nervousness, their warmth immediately put me at ease and I had a wonderful time getting to know them. In fact they’re exactly the sort of people I would want to have as friends: intelligent, thoughtful, and kind, with many varied interests.
Anyway, as the evening went on it became clear that the attraction was mutual and we ended up renting a room. I won’t go into detail about exacty what happened, but it was extremely exciting for me, and “Bill and Susan” apparently enjoyed it as well since they emailed me the next day to see if I was available the following Wednesday (as I found out, their daughters both play basketball and usually have away games on Wednesday nights).
We got together again the next Wednesday and the one after that and both times it was wonderful. It seemed like I’d finally found a situation which really suited my needs: steady sex with partners whose company I enjoyed, without all the complexity of a relationship.
But then suddenly I stopped hearing from them. The Friday after our last encounter I sent “Susan” an email to see if they wanted to meet the following week for our regular Wednesday night get-together and she never responded. I sent her another email that Monday but still no response. It’s now been almost two weeks and I haven’t heard a word from them.
Needless to say I feel quite hurt by their sudden decision to apparently end our relationship. At the very least I’d like to talk to them to see if I did something wrong. As I said, they’re exactly the sort of people I’d like to have as friends, and even if sex isn’t part of the equation I’d still love to get together with them socially.
I’d give them a call but to be honest I don’t have a phone number or even a last name. I’m not even sure if “Bill and Susan” are their real first names. Part of their initial request was that all communications be handled by email. And all of our trysts took place at the hotel. What do you think, Spike? Should I continue emailing or should I just let it go? This was a completely new situation for me and I’m not quite sure of the proper etiquette.
— Alice, Wellesley, MA
Dear Alice — You dirty slut you! Trolling the internet for hook-ups? With a man AND a woman at that? And you, a 54-year-old professional woman from WELLESLEY! You naughty, naughty lady! Spike thinks he may just have found a new best friend (not literally, Alice, so don’t start stalking him with emails).
But seriously, Alice, what part of “occasional, no-strings, casual encounters” didn’t you understand?
“Occasional” means once in a while, not every week (and way to kill the illicit thrill for “Bill and Susan” by emailing about your “regular Wednesday night get-together.” Yeah, that sounds sexy...like a bridge club or quilting bee.). “No-strings” means no commitment, as in “this will continue at our mutual discretion only so long as BOTH sides want.” And “casual” means informal: no rules, no expectations.
You need to look at the facts here, Alice. You are/were “Bill’s and Susan’s” fling. You weren’t their lover or their new best friend. It seems to Spike that they made that very clear both in their ad and by the fact that they insisted all communication happen only by email. They wanted very clear boundaries between what happened in that hotel room and the rest of their life. If they’d wanted more from you they would have invited you over for dinner and introduced you to the kids. But they didn’t.
Spike understands your hurt feelings, but you really have only yourself to blame. You entered into something without really understanding (or accepting) the rules. You make that clear when you say they decided “to apparently end our relationship.” You didn’t have a relationship. You had a mutually advantageous arrangement. You also talk about wanting friendship with “Bill and Susan.” While I’m sure they think you’re a lovely person, they weren’t looking for a friend. They just wanted someone to spice up their sex life for a while. It seems to Spike that you developed a crush of sorts on your playmates and wanted to take things to a more committed level. You said you're unsure about the etiquette for these types of arrangements. Well, the primary etiquette is that you don’t try to change the rules once you’ve agreed to them, and that’s what you wanted to do. “Bill and Susan” may have sensed that and that’s what precipitated their sudden communication break.
On the other hand, maybe they just got busy with real life. Maybe they took the kids to Disneyland for a week. Or maybe “Bill’s” mother suffered an aneurysm and they’ve been too busy shuttling back and forth to the hospital for a hotel quickie. Or maybe they spent last Wednesday working on their taxes. Who knows? There are thousands of legitimate reasons why they may not have contacted you.
Of course three nights of clandestine naughtiness with you may just have been enough to scratch the itch they were feeling and now they’re ready to close that chapter of their lives.
Now, would it be polite for “Bill and Susan” to respond to your email and tell you that they’re no longer interested in getting together if that’s the case? Sure, but that’s kind of like breaking up, isn’t it? And the whole point of this for them (and for you, so you claim) was to avoid all that kind of relationship stuff. They just wanted to have some fun, and sending a “Dear John” email isn’t fun.
So Spike sees two options for you. If you can’t deal with a truly “occasional, no-strings, casual” arrangement then you should just let the whole thing go. Be thankful for the fun you had but move on to something better suited to your own sensibilities. If, however, you think you COULD honestly be in a casual arrangement with “Bill and Susan” without wanting more, then send them one more email saying, “Hey guys. I hope you’re well. If you ever feel like getting together again you know how to reach me. Alice.” That will indicate clearly that you’re still willing to play while not presuming any sort of friendship or commitment.
Spike, however, suspects that you’re not really cut out for being anyone’s occasional play thing and should just move on. Despite your assertion that you’ve given up on relationships and have a full and satisfying life on your own, Spike thinks you still feel a strong need for emotional connection. How else to explain you latching onto “Bill and Susan” like Carnie Wilson onto the latest weight-loss surgery?
Spike applauds your adventurousness and willingness to experiment, Alice, but ask yourself this question: Which Oscar-winning actress do you feel is most your kindred spirit? Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, or Tilda Swinton? Ha! That was a trick question, because if you were really ready for an arrangement devoid of any emotional connection you would have said, “Nicole Kidman.”
So ciao for now,
Spike
DISCLAIMER: Spike and Online OffBeat take no responsibility whatsoever for advice given in Spike Sez. Submit questions at your own risk to spike@onlineoffbeat.com. If no questions are submitted, Spike will make them up.
Humor
Possible captions
• You say surrender, I say invasion.
• And now, a very special edition of “Judge Judy.”
• My mistress wants to know who designs your pantsuits.
• Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
• Well, George Bush called me “one cute Kraut.”
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
Now that my Friday shift at the Bonbon Salon is over, I’m sitting at one of the mirrors working on my own coif, using a ton of hair spray to get it nice and high, and in my head I’m saying, “Screw you” to all the hippies who bitch about the ozone layer, because I don’t take crap from people who piss me off. The streets here in Somerville are only semi-plowed after yesterday’s storm, and after I leave the shop and drive to my neighborhood, I get a nasty surprise. My parking space across from Mrs. Flaherty’s house, the space I shoveled myself and marked with two trash barrels, is occupied by a big black Oldsmobile, and I have to park three blocks from home instead of three doors away. Somebody is going to pay.
When I open the door at home, my big Italian nose picks up the scent of pasta fazool, the macaroni and bean soup that my mother makes on Fridays during Lent. It’s supposed to be meatless, but Ma starts it by sautéing salt pork and herbs in olive oil. She says that a little meat is okay if it’s, “just for flavor.” Yeah, right, I’d like to see the catechism where she found that loophole. When I go in the kitchen, I see that there are two soup pots on the stove, and I figure that Ma has invited her cousin Chooch, who has an appetite like a Clydesdale with the munchies, over for dinner.
“How was work today, Tina?” Ma asks when she sees me.
“Work was okay, Ma, but somebody stole my parking space,” I tell her, and she gives me a little sermon about loving your enemies. Then she shuts off the soup and heads to the cellar to do laundry.
Well, I decide to give my latest enemy some tough love. I go to the fridge, grab a carton of eggs, and bring them outside to where that stupid Olds is parked. Then I smash the whole dozen on the bastard’s windshield, hoping that the mess will freeze. I retrieve the trash barrels from the sidewalk, remembering to put the egg carton in one of them. I wouldn’t want to litter.
About a half-hour later, I’m eating at the kitchen table with Ma while my brother Eddie is on the kitchen phone calling in basketball bets. Ma opens the fridge to get some cheese.
“Where’s that dozen eggs I had?” she asks. “I need them to make manicotti on Sunday.”
Shit, why didn’t I think to replace the eggs? Those chemical fumes I inhale every day at the Bonbon are rotting my brain.
“Um, I brought them to Mrs. Flaherty,” I lie. “She usually eats seafood or eggs on Fridays, and I thought she’d have a hard time getting to the store with all the snow.”
“What a little saint,” Eddie smirks. “Maybe next Friday you can go fishing and catch her an eel.”
“Mrs. Flaherty?” Ma says, sounding surprised. “That’s who the extra pot of soup is for.”
Before I can think up another whopper, the doorbell rings. And because it’s my lucky day, in walks Mrs. Flaherty, who just turned seventy-five, and she’s with her sixty-year-old baby brother, Ed “Happy” Duggan.
“Happy drove down from Woburn to check on me,” Mrs. Flaherty informs us. “He found a parking space right across from my house, but someone egged his windshield. What’s happened to this city?” she sighs.
Now I remember that Happy, who needs to wise up, drives a black Oldsmobile. Ma looks hurt, but if she rats me out, Mrs. Flaherty is going to find out just what’s in that soup.
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Despite allegations of fatal shootings of civilians and tax violations, the State Department has renewed Blackwater USA’s multimillion-dollar contract to protect diplomats in Baghdad. However, Blackwater, which has received almost $1.25 billion in federal contracts since 2000, must adhere to the following conditions:
• During training sessions, Blackwater cannot invade West Virginia.
• All Blackwater human resource personnel must follow the Geneva Conventions when interviewing persons for secretarial help.
• Each Blackwater employee must partake in a yearly comprehensive three-second review of the United States Constitution.
• No waterboarding USO entertainers.
• Monthly status reports must be printed on index cards (until George Bush leaves office).
According to just-released records, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton have made nearly $109 million since they left the White House. And that’s not including money for Hillary’s upcoming book, “It Takes a Gated Village.”
Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr has formed a presidential exploratory committee and may seek the Libertarian party nomination. Possible campaign slogans include: “I’m not joking. I’m really running for president.”
John McCain said he would not underestimate the severity of the U.S. economic crisis -- after he used half of his wife’s fortune to fill up the Straight Talk Express.
Bay State Bombast
The Massachusetts state Senate approved a bill that would allow teachers who fail the certification test three times to receive a waiver and teach. Supporters of the bill claim the test doesn’t accurately evaluate a teacher’s skills. Perhaps there could be a new test in which a sample question would be:
Two trains leave from Boston. One is going to Chicago at 50 mph and the other to Cleveland at 75 mph. What is your middle name?
Gov. Deval Patrick claimed in his book proposal -- which landed him a $1.35m book deal -- he filled Boston Common with 10,000 people. It turns out most people came to see Barack Obama. Here are a few other claims in Patrick’s proposal:
• In 1963, thousands of people trekked to Washington, D.C. hoping to catch a glimpse of 6-year-old Deval Patrick watching Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.
• In 1969, almost a half a million people spent a weekend at Woodstock watching 12-year-old Deval Patrick witness one of the greatest moments in rock and roll.
• Each day, people line up behind Patrick to watch him buy his coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Small Street Journal
Rifle manufacturer, Henry Repeating Arms, asked gun dealers to make extra safety inspections after discovering it had accidentally shipped four guns loaded with live ammunition. It also reaffirmed its Second Amendment right to blow a customer’s head off.
Media Bites
Oprah interviewed a transgender man who is six months pregnant. She later dedicated the show to Jerry Springer.
Inside Scoop
A man has been hired to give John McCain a mild electrical shock each time he says the words “young whippersnapper.”
Weekly Prediction
A video will turn up on YouTube showing Barack Obama in a synagogue listening to a rabbi say, “And don’t get me started with the goyim!”
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
I wondered how I could rid myself of this mother lode of filth, and I immediately thought of my uncle Sal, who dealt in dubious merchandise. After locking up Richie’s treasure vault, I called Sal and made an appointment to see him on the following Saturday night.
When Saturday afternoon came, I was in Braintree at the Dom DiMaggio Lodge, the local headquarters of the International Society of Garibaldians. The Cattivo family was descended from a long line of anticlerical agitators, and so a memorial service at the lodge would be the closest thing to a funeral Mass that Richie would have. In attendance were a handful of lodge members, about twenty people from the Bunker, Richie’s sister Marie, and his daughter Lucretia. Richie’s ex-wife was conspicuously absent, which cemented her image as an evil shrew in the minds of Richie’s sales colleagues.
At the front of the room was a table bearing Richie’s college graduation picture, along with an urn containing his ashes. As I took the lectern to speak, I recalled something Richie once told me, “If you’re going to lie, make sure that the lie contains a grain of truth.”
Thinking of Richie’s fondness for strippers, I told my audience that the departed appreciated the performing arts. Awed at how Richie had managed to keep his perversion under the radar while amassing all those magazines, I said that he was a quiet man who loved to read. And in light of Richie’s admission that he had spent countless thousands of dollars on lap dances, I lobbed the biggest bullshit grenade of my life.
“We all know that he was a great salesman,” I said solemnly, looking out over the small crowd. “And I believe this was because Richie, in this cold, impersonal world, truly knew how to develop a sense of closeness with people.”
In the front row of mourners, a buxom redhead named Eileen, who had been the favorite object of Richie’s covert ogling, began to sob loudly. I almost started bawling myself.
After the service was over, Marie thanked me for speaking and asked if I had had a chance to inspect Richie’s storage locker.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s full of books.”
“Oh, yes, like you said, he loved to read,” she replied, smiling sweetly. “Are you going to keep them?”
“I’m going to donate them to a library,” I answered, too timid to call her bluff, if it was a bluff. “I’ll have that key for you next week.”
“The library. Richie would have wanted it that way,” she beamed.
A few hours later, I was sitting at a table in the Honey Melon Lounge with Uncle Sal.
“Jesus, this is all that’s left of the old Combat Zone,” said Sal, looking around the room through thick eyeglass lenses. “I thought you were a monk or something. Why’d you choose this place to meet?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Listen, Uncle Sal. You can have all those stroke mags for free. I just want them to go away.”
“Oh, they remind you of your friend who died, huh?” he replied. “Don’t worry, kid, I’ll throw you a few bucks. We’ll take a crew with a truck down there Monday night.” He turned to look at a dancer on a nearby stage, chuckling, “Look at the cantaloupes on that girl. Those boobs are harder than the ones on a statue.”
“They’re as false as everything else in the world,” I replied, pausing to take a sip of my twelve-dollar Budweiser.
“You sound really depressed sometimes,” said Sal. “It’s a sin to be so hopeless.”
Uncle Sal had studied for the priesthood before leaving the seminary to marry Aunt Filomena. He was correct in stating that Despair was a grave offense against the Holy Spirit, but since he had no objection to watching nude dancing or trafficking in secondhand pornography, he must have forgotten the teaching about Lust. Discussing theology with him was always quite instructive.
“Richie, the guy who left me all the dirty books, he was never baptized,” I said. “What happens to his soul?”
“Never baptized?” he asked with a pensive look on his face. “That’s like being granted a delay of a court appearance. He has to wait around somewhere with all the babies who died without being christened, and with all the non-Catholics. He has to stay there until the end of the world. It used to be called ‘Limbo.’”
I pictured Richie, longing for a massage or a peepshow, spending eons among billions of whirling dervishes, meditating gurus and wailing infants, and I started giggling uncontrollably.
“Hey, first you’re all down in the dumps, and now you’re laughing like a broad,” chided Sal. “You’ve always been a little goofy. I think you need to get married.”
Uncle Sal was right about my needing female companionship. I thought about Marie Cattivo, who seemed as if she still had some life in her, and I decided that I’d ask her for a date after Richie’s estate was settled. If she was as devious as I believed she was, she could probably teach me a thing or two.
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Boston Outsider / Humor
I took a deep breath and did my best to calm down. Zack gave me the name of the hospital where Richie had been taken. I said goodbye to Zack, called the hospital, and spoke to a friend who worked in Admitting. She confirmed that a Richard G. Cattivo had been dead on arrival earlier in the evening, and I felt like crap thinking that my last conversation with the poor sad bastard had consisted of wisecracks.
A couple of days later, Richie’s next of kin, his sister Marie, came to the Bunker to collect a few items that were in his desk. Ted, our shift manager, led her over to my work station and introduced us. She was a pretty woman of about fifty, with pleasant blue eyes. Ted went back to his office and let us have a few words alone.
“According to the autopsy, Richie must have died of a massive heart attack that morning,” Marie said. “That thing with the snake was post mortem. Mildred is off the hook.” She smiled wryly, sniffing back tears. It looked as if there was still a joker left in the Cattivo family.
“He talked about you a lot,” she continued. “I found a metal box full of documents at his apartment, and there was a note saying that he wanted you to have something of his if anything ever happened to him.” She reached into her purse and took out a key attached to a plastic tag with the name and address of a storage facility on it. On the key itself was a number that I assumed was the number of a locker. She handed me the key, and then she asked if I would speak at a memorial service that was to be held for Richie the following Saturday.
“Sure, I’ll say a few words” I answered, thinking that Richie had probably alienated all his old friends during his race to oblivion. “And I’ll give this locker key back to you after I see what he left me.”
“Thank you,” she said, embracing me and softly brushing my cheek with a chaste kiss. “I gave all the information about the memorial service to your boss, Ted.”
After Marie left, I got to thinking about the storage locker. Had Richie hidden some loot to keep it out of the divorce settlement? What was in there? Gold ingots? Paintings from the Gardner Museum heist? I decided to go to the place right after work.
I found the storage facility easily enough. Richie's locker was good-sized, and from the outside it looked big enough to hold a couple of rooms of furniture. I unlocked the door and went inside.
There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place. Lining the walls were hundreds of piles of pornographic magazines. My curiosity outweighed my revulsion, and I inspected the goods. The collection was sorted by category. It did not include kiddie porn or bestiality, and it was all heterosexual in nature, but there was plenty of variety. There were publications featuring women with big augmented breasts, big natural breasts, and big miscellaneous breasts. There were pictures of midget women doing naughty things with humongous men. There were ethnocentric magazines such as Belgian Bazooms and Eskimo Ecstasy. There were several issues of a leather-fetish quarterly called Nazi Knockers.
I was left in a quandary. If Marie knew what was in here, and if there really was a note from Richie bequeathing all these riches to me, then Marie must have thought that Richie had passed the torch of lechery on to me after death. If Marie didn’t know what was in here, and if I returned the key without removing the locker’s contents, then her eventual discovery of the all the low-rent erotica might sully the memory of a departed brother. If there was no note from Richie, and if Marie was just too embarrassed or lazy to clean out the place, then she was really a piece of work. All Richie had ever told me was that he had one sibling, an unmarried sister named Marie, so I didn’t know what to think.
(to be continued)
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
Cartoons / Humor
Boston Outsider / Humor
I soon realized that I was the only person at work who knew the truth about Richie. The official story in the “bunker,” which is what we called the windowless basement room in which we toiled, was that he had lost a lucrative job because of corporate downsizing and that he had left his wife because of infidelity, her infidelity. In one version of the soap opera, Mrs. Cattivo had dallied with the Roto Rooter man. Another rumor was that she had gotten involved with a group of high school athletes and had done something kinky with a lacrosse stick. Richie claimed that he wasn’t behind all the gossip, but conversely, he seemed to do nothing to dispel any negative notions about his ex.
He kept a low profile at work, never making overtures to female coworkers. (“I don’t shit where I eat,” is the way he put it.) Occasionally, when a well-endowed woman walked by, Richie would look at me and cup his own hands in front of his chest, Guy Sign Language for “nice rack,” but he always made sure that nobody was looking. And there were times when he would express remorse for ruining his marriage, and I would feel as if he was seeking some sort of absolution. But over the months, as his sales figures and commissions steadily rose, I could sense that he was growing restless.
“I’ve been looking to get my own place,” he said to me one day in the elevator after work. “Living with roomies is cramping my style. You live alone, right? I tell you what,” he continued, arching his eyebrows. “Let’s go to your place and call an escort service. We can get a couple of girls and have a little orgy. I’ve been doing pretty good at work, so it’s my treat”
“Richie,” I sighed. “My apartment is two lousy rooms. And the lease says that I can’t have pets or whores.”
“Okay, we have the party at a motel,” he persisted.
“I’m too shy for orgies” I said. “Why don’t you do it on your own and videotape it, and then enter an over-forty amateur smut contest.”
“Oh, I forget,” he sniffed. “You’re a big Catholic. Some gimmick, that Heaven thing, a deal you can’t close until you’re dead.”
“Yes, I’m an old lady trapped in a man’s body,” I replied as the elevator reached ground level. “See you tomorrow, Casanova.”
Richie failed to show up for work the next day, and he didn’t call to say where he was. Our manager was worried sick about his ace salesman, and I just sat there with a smirk on my face, picturing Richie all tuckered out from a threesome. After my shift was over, I called Richie’s home number and got his roommate Zack.
“Dude, Richie’s gone,” Zack said, as I could hear female wailing in the background.
“Zack, what go you mean, ‘gone?’” I asked. “And who’s that crying?
“That’s Chloe,” he said, referring to Richie’s other roommate. “We came home from the coffee shop about an hour ago, and Richie was on the living room floor all cold and gray and shit. And Mildred was wrapped around him.”
“Zack, who the fuck is Mildred?” I yelled, wondering why Richie had neglected to tell me about his concubine or whoever she was.
“Mildred is our boa constrictor, Dude,” Zack drawled. “Richie must have knocked her tank over when he fell.”
“You say he fell?” I said, my heart racing. “And he was gray and cold. . . .”
“Yeah, Dude,” Zack said as Chloe continued her eerie noises. “Richie is dead.”
(to be continued)
jim@onlineoffbeat.com
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