Tag Archives: humor

Thank you for over-sharing.

12 May

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My yoga instructor this morning was a guy who takes it all a bit too seriously. In addition to wearing nut-huggers, sporting a thick ’70s porno ‘stache and playing a flute during class, he walks around projecting “deep thoughts” in a stage voice during the class.

(If this is ringing a bell: yes, I’ve written about him before.)

Today’s theme was “asking for help.” It was a great message: part of living in – or belonging to – a community is allowing people to help you. It’s good for you, and people enjoy being allowed to help. Nice lesson and I should probably try to follow it more often.

But where it went a bit sideways was in the examples he chose to share with us. During our 90 minute class, I learned:

  • He has a voice coach for opera
  • He has a language coach for foreign languages
  • He has a life/career coach
  • He once had $52,000 in credit card debt
  • He was able to pay it off using a debt relief service

Each revelation made me lose focus on my yoga pose and instead head down a mental HabiTrail of marginally related thoughts.

Of COURSE he has a voice coach! No wonder he always projects his voice like Tobias Funkë. I wonder if he’s capable of a regular conversation without a stage voice? 

I wonder what foreign languages he studies? Italian seems like a no-brainer because of the opera, but I’m also going to vote for Spanish. Because he looks like someone who would like to use authentic pronunciation when ordering at Taco Bell.

A career/life coach? Whoa – that one had her work cut out for her, because I’m not actually seeing opera singer + yoga instructor + floutist as an obvious career path. Also: I didn’t realize one could AFFORD a life coach in pursuing that career path.

Ah ha! Let me guess how you racked up $52k in credit card debt. I’m going out on a limb here, but – was it all the coaches? 

Or maybe it was the flute.

Or the shorts. 

Actually – there’s really just no telling.

Good thing I’m not modest. Or dead.

8 May

For Christmas Alan got me a massage and facial. Because I like to hoard gifts, I waited to cash it in until last Friday. Four months of anticipation? Now THAT’S what I consider a gift.

So I took the afternoon off work and headed to the day spa, hellbent on relaxing. In the changing room, I realized I wasn’t sure which service I was getting first, so I just shrugged, ditched all my clothes and donned the robe they provided me.

Minutes later, a middle-aged woman with an Eastern European accent who introduced herself as “Micki” and reminded me of Edna Mode from “The Incredibles” ushered me into a well lit room.

“Vee vill start vith your facial,” she told me. Then, gesturing at the padded massage table, she continued, “Remove zee robe and lie down face-up.”

I nodded and waited for her to leave the room, in standard spa fashion. In response, she simply crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Um,” I began, realizing she was expecting me to drop my robe. “I don’t have anything on under this. It doesn’t bother me, but I don’t want to offend you.”

She laughed. “Please! I’ve seen it all. I ‘ave two daughters and five grand-daughters.”

All rightee then. I dropped my robe and lay down on the table, covering myself with the sheet.

[Note: Apparently that sheet is a pretty important detail, because when I told Alan about my experience, he was incredulous. "So you just lay there NAKED through your entire facial???"]

The facial got underway and I received a lecture for being lazy with my skincare and only using a two step process – wash it, put on lotion. I somewhat redeemed myself by pointing out that I’ve worn sunblock on my face every day since college.

At some point during my facial, I became aware of a muffled bell ringing in the distance. For a moment, I wondered if it was a fire alarm, but I was so relaxed I chose to ignore it. Later, as we were wrapping up the facial, shaking her head Micki said, “Deed you hear zat bell earlier?”

Without waiting for my response, she continued, “Eet was a fire drill. Zey do zem all zee time in zis building. Zee other people took zer patients outside. Not me! If it really decide to burn, someone will come knock.”

Excellent. I could’ve burned to a crisp. Kind of an anti-facial.

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She then went on to tell me about the customer she was giving a Brazilian Wax when the earthquake struck last August. “We ran outside – she in a robe. The wax, eet harden. Wven we come back in, it take me an hour to clean her out!”

I think I’m glad I stuck with the facial.

Does it even matter if it’s true?

3 May

It was late. My sister was in the kitchen relaying a story to her husband about something embarrassing that had happened to her friend. It was for adult-consumption only. And then, out of the blue: a voice. “Hey – isn’t that Herbert’s mom you’re talking about?”

And standing there is her child, who – if he had a tribal name – would respond to, “Little-Pitcher-Big-Ears.” Record scratch.

So now a nine year old is equipped with a story that is attached to a real person and isn’t exactly appropriate for an elementary school audience.

This has happened to you too, right? I mean, I don’t even HAVE kids and I’ve had my words come back to haunt me, though it’s usually like when Ralphie swears as he flips all the nuts into the snow in “The Christmas Story” and everyone wants to know where he learned such an awful word. (Spoiler alert: his dad.)

In my defense, if a child correctly deploys a word that can function as EVERY one of the nine parts of speech, then I say: we should let him, regardless of age.

I digress. The point is that when my sister retold this story to me – in all its sordid details – it completely cracked me up. “Can I blog about it?” I asked.

She paused. “Can you make it anonymous? So the person doesn’t know my child knows her business?”

And that’s when the fun began.

Me: “Sure. Like, I’ll say it was about a teacher from his school?”

Her: “Except make it an art teacher because he doesn’t even HAVE art.”

Me: “And I’ll make your son a DAUGHTER.”

Her: “And make the story I was telling about her something gossipy instead of something funny.”

Me: “And I’ll make you my FRIEND instead of my sister.”

Her: “And make me the daughter’s ‘mother’ instead of her ‘mom.’”

Mom, indeed. I think we’ll go with “mum” just to really throw them off the track.

Disclaimer: All names, places, and events contained herein are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people, events or conversation is sheer coincidence. Also, I’m pretty sure there are no children named Herbert. 

Pesky? I prefer “clever.”

27 Apr

I don’t own a television. I’m not saying that in a superior way, the way vegetarians inform you that they won’t eat flesh. I don’t have a television because a) I prefer to read, b) I think they detract from a room’s design, and c) I’m too cheap to pay for cable.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t watch television. Admittedly, it’s probably amounts to only two hyper-calculated hours per week, but still – I’m not living in a total cultural void. Alan serves as my enabler. HE believes in television, so he records Mad Men shows we both enjoy, and I venture his way once a week to watch them.

And when the shows we watch are off-season, we check out a new series (most recently Breaking Bad) using his Netflix account. Kindly, he has lent me his password so that I can occasionally access something without him. I rarely do it (did I mention: I like to READ), but periodically I do hop in there and make his queue a bit more, um, interesting. I think he appreciates it.

Here is what I added last night:

  • Reach for Me: When his new hospice roommate — 25-year-old Kevin — moves in, the quiet life of senior citizen Alvin turns upside down. (Don’t you think Alan will LOVE that?)
  • Politics of Love: Politics makes strange bedfellows, but never stranger than when a sexy, savvy, African-American Republican reluctantly falls for his counterpart: a beautiful Indian-American Democratic campaign volunteer. (Timely. It IS election season, after all. And before you try to claim this must be sci-fi because there are no African American Republicans, let me remind you: Michael Steele.)
  • Don’t Go Breaking My Heart: Recently widowed mother of two Suzanne catches the eye of her dentist, who secretly hypnotizes her during an appointment to make her fall for him. (Because nothing says SEXY like a medical professional taking advantage of you while you’re in the chair for a procedure. THAT is the stuff dreams – and lawsuits – are made of.)
  • The Human Centipede 2:A disturbed loner is so obsessed with the shocking horror film The Human Centipede that he decides to replicate the movie’s grisly experiment. In this metasequel, the stakes are raised as 12 unlucky souls endure surgical hell. (Actually, I think Alan might have added this one himself. Nevermind.)
  • The Minis: Worried he can’t afford his son’s tuition, Roger — a little person — tries to get his friends to enter a basketball tournament with a big prize. (I would like to meet the screenwriter who thought, “Ah ha! Little person, big prize!” And then punch him in the face.)

The best part of meddling with Alan’s queue isn’t even watching him sift through the items that populate it. It’s seeing the “intelligent” recommendations at populate as a result. The formula I just created with these movies looks something this:

Hospice + racial/political switcheroo + widowed date-rape + human centipedes + Dennis Rodman =

Netflix's "Recommended for Alan" pick.

Actually, that sounds about right. I guess technology IS smarter than we are.

Is that a banana in your pocket?

26 Apr

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. You’re supposed to carry a poem in your pocket and share it with friends, co-workers, strangers, etc. I’m all for making the world a little more poetic, so I plan to participate.

While I have a few poems that are definite favorites, given my twisted sense of humor, I thought it would be hilarious to have a poem on hand that is guaranteed to result in an awkward exchange.

I picture someone stopping me at the water cooler to share a verse by Emily Dickinson… then I’d whip out this one in response:

To Speak of Woe That Is In Marriage

by Robert Lowell
The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor’s edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It’s the injustice . . . he is so unjust—
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant.”
 

AWKWARD. Even better if the person I’m reading it to is married.

Or making a production of unfolding a large piece of paper, only to quote Shel Silverstein’s two sentence poem, Plunger, which has been lodged in my head since second grade:

Teddy said it was a hat, so I put it on. Now Dad is saying where the heck’s the toilet plunger gone? 

…

What verse will YOU carry with you today? Any favorites you’ll share?

In full seriousness, here is mine:

so you want to be a writer? 
by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

 

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