» More Terrible Hotels

Next time, I'll just STFU and smile.
Mid 70s. Working as a bellhop in the Hotel Drake Wilshire in downtown San Francisco. Dressed as an organ grinder's monkey, schlepping a couple of cases downstairs for a couple. Standing in the lift: They are chattering away in machine gun Russian. I am zoning out staring at the brassworks around the floor numbers.

At the lobby, I hold the door open for them. They say "Thank you" in moderately accented English. I give them a polite you're welcome / "Pazhaloosta" in reply. The woman steps around and presses the Close Door button and then hits Stop. The guy, chattering excitedly pushes me up against the far wall without really touching me; asking how much I spoke, where I learned it, etc, etc...

What the unholy fuck they were talking about, I had no idea; desperately telling them that I got the sum total of my rooski from the movie Patton, that I was a student, this was a temp job, I wasn't a CIA operative, and certainly not stupid enough to blow my cover if I WAS. (The CIA was a little bit smarter back then, ... or ... at one time I used to think so.) Took several minutes before they let me out. Scared me no end.
(Thu 27th Nov 2014, 18:31, More)

» Bizarre leaps of logic

Better health for all
Very young sprog of a daughter standing at the sink cleaning her teeth. She pulls the brush out of her mouth, wand waves it at me and opines hydrophobically: "You know Da', if all the world's food were toothpaste, we wouldn't need dentists." ... Who was I to argue?
(Thu 12th Dec 2013, 23:55, More)

» Real Life Slapstick II

Little piggies on a Sunday morn
Ahhh Sunday mornings in the Nu Nited States Air Force; good for sleeping in. Semi-sacred for peace and quiet. Except for our military constabulary: The APs, or Air Police as they would prefer to be known, or "The Apes" as we enlisted swine called them. (This was 1975. Del Rio Texas. Not quite the end of the world, but you could see it from there. Started out doing our duty, but ended up just doing time kind of boring.)

Sgt. Ed Clark, on patrol and vigilant: Caught himself a bicyclist at 7:30 in the A.M. swinging through a stop sign on an otherwise car-deserted air base. "Whoop! Whoop!" said his siren in a quick double tap blip. "Pull over to the side of the road!" growled his loudspeaker. He turned on the twin rotating Smokey-and-the-Bandit bubblegum machine lights of his patrol cruiser and yanked the emergency brake with a ratchety grind.

I'd always been an early riser, and the siren blip got me up to see what the miniscule excitement was about. Got to the baracks window in time to see Sgt. Clark closing his cruiser door, eyeballing his quarry, adjusting his wheel cap, flipping open his ticket pad, hitching his gun belt up over his just-a-hair-under-regulation gut paunch, and saunter slowly over to the bicyclist.

A bit of background: Ed Clark was a beady-eyed Silurian, an I.Q. just above room temperature, with a flabby moon-face graced by a very unflattering child molestor mustache. He'd come to the base fresh from cop school only a month or so before, and to our barracks' Shit List just a week or so after by giving in to his curiosity with the "thingy" in the middle of his room ceiling, thereby setting off the fire alarm at 2:45 in the morning mid work week. The thingy cover was found in his room floor center by the fire department as they made the rounds throughout the recently vacated rooms as we all grouchily swatted night bugs in the road out front.

Ed launched into his cop explanation as to why he stopped the cyclist. As he was warming up and getting going, he stopped mid-harangue and noticed that one of the lights atop his cruiser had stopped rotating.

He strode quickly back to the car, piggy-eyeballed the offending light up and down and swiftly smacked the mechanism upside its' perspex cabesa. The light once again started 'round. A curt head nod, he quick stepped back to his perp, and continued to explain in police parlance punctuated with pen wags that a bicycle was no different than a motor vehicle when it came to obeying traffics signs and laws and that a ticket was in order.

A click of his ballpoint, pen poised to do the deed, ... aaaaand he spies that his light has once again stopped rotating. Shoulders up, chin out, stomp-stomp-stomp back to the car. A scowl, a lip pout, a cocking back of a pudgy right shoulder and a mighty open-handed Thuh-WHACK onto the plastic cheek of the light covering .... which promptly dis-attached itself from the chromium plated base, liesurely arced, tumbled, and spun through the air, bouncing singularly off of the cruiser hood, twice along the ground, and came to rest at the feet of the bicyclist. A pregnant pause as all of us watched it rock once and come to rest.

At this point Your Dear Narrator doubled over laughing loudly enough to be heard by Constable/Ape Clark who was last seen by me attempting vainly to see which room window the hoo-raw was coming from. No idea as to the fate of the cyclist.
(Tue 7th Oct 2014, 21:39, More)

» Fairgrounds, theme parks, circuses and carnivals

Of Water Parks and Cruelty to Children
First Born was 8. Hot summer's day and off we go to Water World. Featuring a newly installed enormous, 3-story tall, 45-degree, drop-and-plop-into-pool, slide.

Daughter wasn't having any of it. I being a good da' cajole, Dutch Uncle, and arm twist her into trying it. She at the top displaying serious symptoms of marthambles and space rabies in hopes of not having to go down the slide.

After much public hystrionics, she climbs into the slide, screaming like a gutted rabbit all the way down, a flailing landing, ending up with a Boo-Hoo-Hoo finale of an exit, and me getting the hairy-stinkeye-YouSHITparent! treatment from the rest of the queue behind.

5 minutes later it's lipperty-lipperty-lipperty "C'nwedoitagin! C'nwedoitagin!" Sorry kid, need some meds for the daggers in my back. We both have scars of different sorts from that day.
(Fri 10th Jun 2011, 19:23, More)

» Public Nudity

A Thank You Jesus! moment
Highway 20. Northern Cascades. Out of Winthrop WA, heading west. Nothing but big tree boonies for 104 miles (165 km). Pretty, but boring drive. Following a very small clutch of cars. One of which filled with nubile cuties.

75 miles along, the cutie filled car pulls ahead. Not 3 minutes later it is stopped at the side. Forest has been logged off, clear cut to the ankles, left and right, for at least a quarter mile. One cutie beating feet for the distant tree line. Just as we pull up to the 3 o'clock position, she stops no more than 100 yards out, drops trou revealing an eye-searingly quick flash of apple-ass cheeks, and cops a squat for a piss.

Banged a Morse tune on the car horn just for her in gratitude. So hoping I embarrassed hell out of her.
(Sat 19th Jul 2014, 5:04, More)