Benny Jay: My Farewell Tour
Been going to parent-teacher conferences since Daddy Bush was in the White House — that’s a whole lot of time.
And now this is it. My youngest daughter is about to graduate from high school — my final parent-teacher conference.
Call this — my farewell tour….
The thing about parent-teacher conferences is that you think they’re so important when you have your first one. Like you’ll find some affirmation that you’re doing the right thing, if the teacher tells you how special your kid really is.
I remember hearing a parent giving Ms. Washington — my youngest daughter’s kindergarten teacher — all kinds of grief about a purple cow.
“My daughter painted her cow purple and you said that was wrong,” said the parent.
“Cow’s are supposed to be brown,” said Ms. Washington.
“But it’s not wrong to paint a cow purple….”
“Have you ever seen a purple cow?”
At the time, I sort of sided with the parent. But at kindergarten graduation Ms. Washington had the kids sing some song — I forget the name — about how they’re all in it together. Had them in perfect harmony — boys singing one part, girls another, then coming all together for the chorus. They looked like angels up there on the stage — eyes open wide as they followed Ms. Washington’s command. We parents were beaming with pride — cameras clicking everywhere. When the song was over, we burst into cheers.
Point is — you can’t achieve that kind of harmony if you let one kid paint the cow purple just cause she wants to.
Anyway, the first conference on my farewell tour is with Ms. Reist-Jones. She’s not like Ms. Washington. She’s an old Bohemian from New York City. Want to paint the cow purple? Fuck it — knock yourself out.
“This is my last parent-teacher conference,” I tell her.
“Last one?” she says.
“Yeah — it’s my farewell tour….”
“Well, had I known it was the farewell tour, I’d of brought the Jack Daniels….”
Great line. Cracked me up. I wish I had a teacher who knew how to deliver a good line. Probably wouldn’t have slept through so many classes….
It’s over to Ms. Gallardo. Teaches biology. Of course, she teaches more than biology. She’s teaching them about doing hard things that don’t come easy and using your time in a practical manner so you can keep up and you don’t fall behind so you’re cramming for a test on a subject you don’t really understand.
That’s my problem. Always one step behind — cramming for my life.
I wish I had a teacher like Ms. Gallardo to teach me how to effectively use my time so I could master intimidating subjects I don’t immediately understand….
Then I’m off to see Mr. English. He teaches English. I’m not making that up.
I really like Mr. English. He’s my kind of guy. Everything I like, he likes — writing, politics, sports.
He makes the kids rewrite their papers. A lot of kids think writing is all about inspiration. Like — oh, my God, this idea just came to me and now I’m done. Don’t even read what the write — just turn it in. I wish I had a teacher who took the time to teach me to take the time to make sure I said exactly what I thought I said….
After awhile, we start talking basketball. That’s how it is with guys like us — sooner or later the conversation always comes back to basketball. We’re reviewing a game that was played over a month ago, when I notice another parent at the door.
Oh, well, shouldn’t keep another parent waiting….
So that’s it. Down the stairs and out the door. My last parent-teacher conference — my farewell tour is done.
I’m standing on the corner thinking about all the great teachers my kids have had over the years: Bonnett, Fountain, Bates, Brink, Santos, White, Amrein, Madison, Trovato — just to name a few. I haven’t seen most of them in years. You know how it goes — every year it’s a new class. We’re all just passing through.
If this were a movie, I’d call them to the stage so they could take a bow.
But this is no movie, and I’m not on stage. Just standing on the sidewalk, watching other parents rushing in and out of the school. They’re looking at their watches, trying not to lose their minds.
One lady is talking like a maniac on her cell phone — dropping F-bombs left and right.
I recognize her panic. She’s got so many places to go and so little time to get there. Plus, she probably just got an earful about what a pill her teenager is. Like she needed a teacher to tell her that….
I don’t envy her. Nope, not at all. It was a great run, but now it’s over. We’ll see what happens next….
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Big Mike: Benny Jay Is Nothing To Me Anymore
I’ve had it with Benny Jay. I’m finished with him. Over. Done. We’re no longer friends.
In fact, I never was his friend in the first place. It’s just that he was such a pitiable loser that I let him think I liked him. Ugh. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
Oh, I put up with his bizarre ways. You know, the way he claps his hands like two marching band cymbals. That tiny little TV of his that was probably cool sometime around the Cuban missile crisis. His Ford Taurus. Jeez, what a pathetic dope.
Benny Jay’s Ride — The Man Hasn’t Had Sex Since The Clinton Administration
But I’m afraid he’s crossed the line. And look, I tried to forgive weird affinities he has for Sam Fuld and Dusty Baker. We’ve agreed never to mention those two names in front of each other again. Probably just like James Carville and Mary Matalin have worked out their political differences. Now, Benny Jay has proven himself to be the equal of those two gargoyles.
One more thing. I stayed true to this bum when he…, when he…, oh Christ — I can’t even say it! But I must. I have to come clean. The world has to know what I’ve endured these last thirty or so years. Lemme take a deep breath or two. Okay. There. I can do it.
Benny Jay once said to me he liked the Carpenters! Good god in heaven! And get this — as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he started singing “Rainy Days and Mondays.” My keyboard is shorting out right now because it’s drenched with my bitter tears.
Even The Carpenters Are Bored By Their Music
This is all true. His like for, ick, the Carpenters isn’t even ironic or somehow related to a creative re-imagining of their songs like that If I Were A Carpenter disc featuring Sonic Youth, Shonen Knife, and other cool bands.
No. He just liked the Carpenters. What a meathead!
Still, I remained by his side. Then, with the help of Milo, his hoodlum sidekick from Gary, Indiana, he initiated a campaign to pressure me into ending my boycott of Facebook. That’s okay. I’m strong. I can take it.
But listen to what this very, very sick man said in his last post. On Thursday, April 22nd, 2010, in The Third City, Benny Jay wrote these words:
Facebook was okay when he could make fun of Milo and me for not being on it. Now that we’re on it, it’s so obviously not cool that he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Sort of like admitting you like Barry Manilow — who, by the way, I really like very much.
space
I am so sorry I have to burden you, dear reader, with this account of atrocity. Please don’t avert your eyes. Look, look! Get the full impact of this man Benny Jay’s depravity.
… Barry Manilow — who, by the way, I really like very much.
And I thought Glenn Beck was a stain upon humanity’s soul.
No, This Isn’t Benny Jay’s High School Graduation Picture
Who can blame me for turning my back on Benny Jay now? Barry Manilow is the turd in the swimming pool of American culture. Not that American culture is anything to brag about, mind you. Sheesh, I mean there’s been Jenny McCarthy, Three’s Company, Bill O’Reilly, cinematic remakes of Car 54, Where Are You? and Starsky & Hutch, and even KFC‘s new Double Down weapon of ass destruction. But Barry Manilow makes all of them look like high art.
Barry Manilow’s first big hit — oh, I remember it well, like the time I caught the mumps — was Mandy. This abomination hit the charts in winter, 1974, right around the time that OPEC was embargoing oil to the United States and Dick Nixon‘s henchmen were about to be indicted for sodomizing the US Constitution. But those were mere trifles compared to the damage done by Mandy.
Don’t look away. Here’s a sampling of lyrics from the song.
space
I remember all my life
Raining down as cold as ice
A face through a window
Crying in the night…
space
It gets worse. Much worse.
spacespacespace
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Happy people pass my way
Looking in their eyes
I see a memory
I never realized
You made me so happy
Oh, Mandy
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Now get this. The goddamned song was about a goddamned dog. Don’t let the history revisionists fool you. People now say the dog story is an urban myth. Pshaw. The song was sung by Barry Manilow. A love song. A precious, treacly, hyperglycemic, mushy, steaming pile of emotional smut. It had to be about a goddamned dog.
Barry’s In Love
Horrible but true, Barry Manilow went on to record more dreck and even today wows them in Vegas (where else?)
Want more? People wondered where Barry Manilow got a scar on his right cheek. His mother revealed that when he was a little boy, a little girl had beaten him up! And this — he once told Ladies’ Home Journal that he’d tried marijuana but didn’t like it. Ladies’ Home Journal! How about this — Ronald and Nancy Reagan moved next door to him after they left the White House. Barry Manilow complained to Us magazine that he couldn’t sunbathe in the nude anymore because of all the Secret Service agents snooping around. The very thought of Barry Manilow sunbathing in the nude makes me want to go on a month-long fast.
Barry Manilow is pals with Liz Taylor. I don’t even need to make a snarky comment about that. A few years ago, he claimed he woke up in the middle of the night and walked into a wall, knocking himself out and injuring his nose. Puh-lease!
Barry Manilow’s music was once put to good use, though. In 2006, Australian cops took to blaring his music through loudspeakers to disperse gangs of youths.
Despite all this, Benny Jay wrote … Barry Manilow — who, by the way, I really like very much.
I’d quit this damned job if so many people didn’t depend on me for their livelihoods.
The Third City Editorial Staff
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Randolph Street: Spring Color
The painted trees are located at the south end of Lincoln Park. All photos © Jon Randolph
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Benny Jay: The Barn Boss Takes A Stand!
Like Gandhi, Mandela, Lech Walesa and many other great men in history, Big Mike Glab — the Barn Boss of this scabby, flatulent outfit — is taking a stand.
In his case, he’s determined to drive Facebook to its knees.
Despite all the pressure Milo and I can exert – and we’re exerting everything we can — he won’t have anything to do with it.
The irony is that without Big Mike, we wouldn’t even be on Facebook. In fact, until Big Mike signed up and collected his 97 friends, I thought Facebook had an age limit. Like you couldn’t sign up if you were over sixteen….
Big Mike hounded Milo and me to join. Said we would draw more readers to The Third City if we did.
I relented – just to shut him up. Wasted the better part of a Sunday starting my account. Plus, I got into all kinds of trouble with my wife for posting an unflattering picture of her thighs.
I wasted even more of my life badgering Milo into signing up — talk about a stubborn mule! Now Milo spends more time on Facebook than my teenage daughter – but that’s another story.
The thing is — ever since we hopped on to Facebook, Big Mike’s hopped off. Says it’s a matter of principle. Something about Facebook being really dumb.
That’s what he says, but I know what’s really going on. Facebook was okay when he could make fun of Milo and me for being uncool for not being on it. Now that we’re on it, it’s so obviously not cool that he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Sort of like admitting you like Barry Manilow — who, by the way, I really like very much.
I love Barry Manilow!
I can’t say that I blame Big Mike – I don’t know that I want to be affiliated with any social network that would accept a couple of losers like me `n Milo as members.
Anyway, Big Mike announced he was boycotting Facebook. Wrote a blog bit about it and everything. He still has his account, but he won’t do anything with it. Not asking for new friends. Not accepting friend requests. Not writing little posts. Not responding to little posts other people write. Like a tree standing by the water, Big Mike will not be moved.
Ordinarily, I’d be impressed by his unwavering stance. But this is business. This whole Facebook thing is part of our brilliant strategy to become the world’s richest men by writing a blog. Or at least make enough money to buy a sports car. As a matter of fact, I got my eye on this little red Mustang….
But Big Mike’s still stuck on 97 friends. How the hell am I gonna buy that little red Mustang if Big Mike doesn’t get more than 97 friends? My 87-year-old aunt’s got more than 97 Facebook friends and she’s not even on Facebook!
By the way, if you think I’m pissed, you should see Milo. He’s steaming. Calls me everyday to complain about it: “Fuckers costing me money,” he says. “Of all the Barn Bosses in the world, we get him….”
Finally, Milo cooks up another one of his great schemes where I’m supposed to post things on Big Mike’s Facebook wall – you know, to lure him to respond.
“What do I write about?” I ask.
“The Cubs – the Barn Boss is crazy about the Cubs. He’ll never be able to resist an opportunity to talk about those worthless bums….”
So I go to Big Mike’s Facebook wall and write: “Cubs win, Cubs win.”
Nothing – no response….
Then I write: “Carlos Marmol is the world’s greatest relief pitcher.”
Still no response….
So I drag out the heavy artillery. I write: “The Cubs wouldn’t be losing if they’d kept Dusty Baker as their manager.”
All’s forgiven, Big Mike!
Something else you need to know about Big Mike. He hates Dusty Baker. Which is really weird cause he used to love him. In fact, Big Mike spent the better part of the `90s telling me Dusty Baker was the coolest manager in baseball. When the Cubs finally hired him, he wept.
Why the flip? Big Mike’s got this complicated explanation about relief pitchers. But it reminds me of an old college pal who used to be best friends with this girl. Then one day he wouldn’t even talk to her. I asked what happened and he said he hated her. Later I find out they had this Me and Mrs. Jones Thing going on and she broke his heart. I’m not saying Big Mike and Dusty had a thing going on, I’m just saying….
Anyway, I post the Dusty Baker comment and guess what? No response. Big Mike’s great Facebook boycott continues.
Wow, that’s discipline. He actually passed on a chance to rip into Dusty Baker. A weaker man would have crumbled. Obviously, Big Mike’s a man of steel.
Guess that’s why he’s the Barn Boss….
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Big Mike: Big Swingin’ Dicks
Who knows what they’re going to be teaching in history classes fifty or hundred years from now — if they teach anything at all. With all the budget and program cuts these days the school day of the future may well entail taking attendance at nine in the morning and immediately sending the kids home.
As an aside, even the schools of liberal bastions like Bloomington, Indiana, are suffering. Every once in a while I talk to the librarian of one of our fine schools. She told me not long ago that the school board had a meeting during which they broke the bad news that there’d be no more money for the library for the rest of the year. Naturally, the librarian piped up. After she’d had her say, one of the school board members said, wearily, Look, this school system is having a budget crisis — we can’t afford things like books now.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Books!
How do you respond to that? May as well shut the schools down tomorrow and let the kids have a little fun.
Anyway, history. If some miracle occurs and they’re still talking about silly things like The Past in schools in the year 2090, how will they characterize our age? I had the American Revolution, the Civil War, Manifest Destiny, the Great Depression, and World War II all misrepresented to me by my elementary and high school history teachers. Assuming they don’t whitewash the zeitgeist of this era (a pipe dream, I know, but let’s pretend), what will they call it?
Father, I Cannot Tell A Lie — I’ll Leave That For The History Teachers Of The Future
I have an idea. Two groups of highly competitive, extremely high profile men really dominated the last twenty or thirty years. I’ve taken to calling it the Age of Reagan but, honestly, I don’t think old Dutch himself could have envisioned how this age turned out.
How about this? The Big Swingin’ Dick Era. Yup. Perfect.
Just as Washington, Lincoln, General Custer, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ike ideally represented the aforementioned ages, these bubble/crash times are perfectly embodied in a couple of guys named Gordon Gekko and Sammy Sosa.
I’ve stolen the idea for the moniker from my new hero, the author Michael Lewis. And by the way, stealing is an entirely appropriate activity, considering the times. In his book, Liar’s Poker (probably the single best resource to understand what Wall Street is and does) Lewis talks about the most successful, revered guys at the old investment banking firm Salomon Brothers. They walked around like strutting peacocks. They gained cred by screwing the crap out of anybody and everybody. They earned respect by gambling with anything from retirement funds to the contents of orphans’ piggy banks. If you were a newbie in the firm, you could only hope they’d consider you the societal equivalent of dog shit — that’d be better than how they viewed most tyros. You’d only begin to be accepted in their club when you showed a capacity to foist losses and bad debts on unsuspecting customers — and, rather than rue your sins, you crowed about them.
They were called, Lewis writes, Big Swinging Dicks.
They didn’t care about anything but making money and making sure you didn’t. Anybody else’s financial success meant there was that much less money for them to stuff into their pockets. But, as long as you had made that money, they’d coo, why’ncha lemme invest it for ya?
Gordon Gekko, of course, was Oliver Stone‘s creation — and a Big Swinging Dick. When Stone’s movie, Wall Street, came out in 1987 Gekko was so loathsome, so amoral, so downright shitty that he was seen more as a cartoon character than a realistic representation of any living person. Boy, were we naive back then!
Gekko’s signature line was, Greed is good. (That’s not really what he said in the movie, but it fits.) And even if he was a cartoon character, way, way, way too many young people dreamed of becoming him. Sorta like kids from my era aspiring to become Scooby Doo. Only Scooby Doo wasn’t the personification of evil. Lewis tells of writing Liar’s Poker as a precautionary tale, hoping that perhaps smart college kids would read it and decide to shy away from business school and study things that might benefit humanity, like oceanography or physics. To his surprise, Lewis was inundated with letters from college kids asking how they could get into Wall Street. They wanted to be Big Swinging Dicks!
Free market fetishists, of course, felt BSDs were brilliant and rational. There was no need for regulation. They could police themselves. They’d never do anything that might jeopardize their self-interest or the good of this holy land’s economy. Right — except send it tumbling into the shithouse.
Sammy Sosa was known as Sammy So-so back in the mid-90s. He was an okay ballplayer — could hit a few home runs and hustled a lot but was prone to throwing the ball over the upper deck roof, going into excruciatingly long slumps, and pouting now and again. Then, in the spring of 1998, he showed up in training camp looking like a Marvel Comics superhero. He had muscles on top of muscles. I think they made a jersey for him out of a square-rigged sail. He went on to hit more home runs over a five-year period than any player in the history of the game.
When the rare intrepid reporter would ask Sammy how he’d added all the bulk, he’d laugh and claim he’d never lifted weights a day in his life. Naturally, the rumors began flying that he was juicing up. When he was called before a congressional committee investigating the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in professional sports, Sammy, who’d previously been as gabby as a sorority girl on a Red Bull bender, suddenly had trouble speaking English.
Steroids and PEDs became baseball’s biggest scandal since the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series. Now, I don’t believe that steroids and human growth hormone are like spinach to Popeye. They aren’t magic elixirs. But the home runs flew out of the park during the steroid era like never before. Records fell and — whaddya know? — attendance soared. Lots of people assumed it was all because of the ‘roids and Sammy was the poster child for the era. He had the biggest swing in the game.
Sammy’s Bustin’ Out All Over
Baseball bosses dragged their feet for nearly twenty years before they seriously outlawed PEDs. Then they even banned amphetamines –pills so endemic to the game that players who went out on the field without dropping a few were said to be playing “naked.” Now, home runs are down and attendance is starting to lag so people are saying — post hoc ergo propter hoc notwithstanding — it was all because of the juice.
Whether you believe it was the juice that made Sammy one of baseball’s Big Swinging Dicks or not, that fact remains that he was (allegedly) cheating. I might add he wasn’t necessarily breaking rules — at least not any with teeth in them and that baseball authorities were serious about enforcing.
Baseball bosses let it all happen. They let the players police themselves, which means there was no policing at all. It was Wall Street all over again. The right tells us big government and a lot of regulations are worse than the fires of hell but this era of deregulation and laissez-faire in the financial markets and on the ball field isn’t exactly my idea of heaven.
So yeah, I suppose history teachers of the future will tell schoolkids that the turn of this century was the Age of Sarah Palin, say, or the Dancing With The Stars Era. But they’d be lying. Things never really change.
“For Homework, I Want You To Read About Those Quaint ‘Oughts“
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Benny Jay: Jane Harrison
It was Jorge Casuso who introduced me to Jane Harrison. That would have been 1983, or 1984. I don’t know — after awhile all this stuff sort of flows together….
We were hanging out in Logan Square back then, I remember that. Eating at the local restaurants and drinking in the bars. No pressing obligations. Stay out late. Sleep late, if we slept at all.
Jorge heard that there was a lady in Logan Square named Jane who had hooked up with another lady named Sally Levin to start a weekly neighborhood paper called the Logan Square Free Press that was looking for writers.
Paid fifteen dollars or so a story. That’s beer money. Or pizza money in my case. Cause I never was much for beer.
So we went to Sally’s house and hooked up with Jane who hired us right then and there. Said we could write about anything we wanted.
I tested her. Started ripping into the local ward bosses for their dirty deeds and two-timing ways. Jane loved it. Never blinked. Used to read the copy, laugh and say: Oh, this is really going to piss them off….
Great lady. Nice on the outside, tough as hell on the inside. It takes a special kind of courage to pick on a neighborhood bully.
I wasn’t the only writer she employed. There was the great Achy Obejas, who has gone on to become a fine novelist. And David K. Fremon, who wrote Chicago Politics Ward by Ward, one of the best books ever written about local politics. And Jorge, of course, who moved to Los Angeles to write screenplays and novels. And The Third City‘s very own Barn Boss — Big Mike Glab himself.
In time, Sally took a job as a teacher and Jane ran the paper herself. This was before the Internet. I’d drop off the column at their storefront on California. While Diane Scott, another local writer, typeset it, Jane and I’d shoot the breeze. Jane was a great conversationalist. Had that raspy laugh. Knew all the gossip.
Plus, like I said, she was fearless. One time some goon from the local ward boss came by flashing a pistol. Jane kicked his ass out of the office. I’d have been hiding under the table. I guess Jane knew he was all bluff.
Anyway, the ward boss finally got wise. He created his own neighborhood paper. Sent his boys around to solicit ads from the local establishments. The locals told Jane they couldn’t afford to pay for two local papers. And you don’t want to piss off the local boss, so….
She closed the paper in 1987. Just ran out of money. I wish this story had a happier ending. But, alas, sometimes the bad guys win. In fact, most times the bad guys win — especially here in Chicago where the locals are generally too cowardly to take a stand.
Didn’t see much of Jane over the years. From time to time we’d have a reunion — get together and talk old times. She died December 30, 2009.
Last week, her family had a memorial at her house in Logan Square. Told stories. Drank. I kept looking for Jane at the kitchen table. But, of course, only her spirit was there.
I met her brother, John, and her sister-in-law, Ann, and her three grown children — Peter, Kim and Leslie. Her brother asked me how I knew Jane. And I told him about writing for the Free Press. He laughed and said Jane always did like to stir things up.
At one point, her son in law the musician — Tony Garrett — jammed on his African drum. It was a driving jam — relentless and full of spirit. Just like Jane.
As her family reminisced, it dawned on me that Jane was about as old as I am now when I met her all those years ago. All the things on my mind in this phase of existence — kids in college, older parents, bills, mortgages, cars that don’t work — they must have been going through her mind back then.
Not that you’d know it. Jane never blinked. Printed what we wrote. Encouraged us to write more. Tough lady with a big heart. The world would be a lot better if we had many more like her….
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Two-Headed Boy: New Kids On The Block
The Clothing Store has big glass windows that look out at the rest of the outdoor mall. Now that it’s springtime, the trees are blooming and children coast by carrying brightly colored balloons. It’s easy to gaze longingly outside and lose track of the tasks at hand. Recently, I was gazing outside, thinking of life with a jet pack, and I was rudely interrupted.
“Exuseeeeee me,” a saliva-drenched voice slurred. It was a teenager that looked like a Latino Eddie Munster.
“Do you know where the Eternally Twentysomething store is?”
No, I replied. I didn’t even know we had one of those bratty stores. A lot of their adolescent styles are similar to those carried at The Clothing Store, so I could see them taking some of our business.
“It’s my first day and I’m gonna be late! I don’t even know where the store is!”
The slick gremlin quickly ran out of the store to find his place of employment. How do you not even know where you applied for a job?
A half an hour later, a dye-job redhead girl came in asking for directions to Eternally Twentysomething. It was her first day and she was also tardy and confused. I really missed a golden opportunity to mess with the heads of my new mall rivals.
“Oh, I know that store. You have to walk into the Baby Gap fitting room and start screaming. Soon a secret door shall appear.”
Before long the entire mall was crawling with the store’s ubiquitous yellow bags, a telltale sign that the store had finally opened. I decided to venture in to enemy territory to see what this place is all about.
I entered and felt like I was walking through the set of a smash Disney Chanel sitcom. There were tacky chandeliers everywhere, more mannequins than employees, and bizarre candelabras. One of my friends swears by their men’s section, so I decided to check it out. Their shitty quality clothes look just like our shitty quality clothes! This place needs to go.
Competition aside, I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses. So sue me, I look 5.6% cooler now.
With the sassy sales associate’s voice still ringing in my ears, I left the store with strange feelings. Did I have some new sense of pride in The Clothing Store now that I’ve been working there for six months? Do I now truly believe that the enemy is everywhere? Maybe my life is just getting complacent to the point where I just need a good rivalry.
The mall’s ecosystem is built on phony pleasantries to the point where it’s almost sickening.
Hi, How are you?
Can I help you find anything?
Everything is way too polite between these pristine white walls and gravel walkways; maybe it’s time to spice things up. A prank war with another store could be epic. Here are Two-Headed Boy’s potential ways to bringing the ruckus to the opposition.
1) Hide a beehive in the break-room closet. Employees will think the buzzing is their IPhones vibrating — until it is too late.
2) Tell a crazed homeless man that you will buy him dinner if he finds the golden amulet that is hiding somewhere on the Eternally Twentysomething premises. Total bonus points if you get him to believe every sales associate is a member of the Cossack horde.
3) Walk up to register without saying a word. Pull a bowl, cereal and milk out of a bag and mix ingredients. Proceed to gaze emotionlessly at the employee while eating cereal in complete silence. Leave without saying a word.
4) Assemble group of friends and dress in Heavy Metal Parking Lot-style outfits, proceed to tailgate to what you believe to be a Quiet Riot concert. If Segway-riding rent-a-cops interfere, tell them they aren’t feeling the noise and shotgun another Stroh’s.
Quiet Riot
Chances are none of those will happen, but the cereal one is probably the most feasible. If you are at a register some day and you find some stray Fruity Pebbles — you know what’s up.
By Two-Headed Boy
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Guest Blogger:
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Candyman. Written by Benny Jay. Read by Joel Reitsma, Lorenzo Toia, Ray Jay 3000, Andy Orscheln and No Blaise. Produced by Jus Buckingham of King Conundrum Productions.
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