misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

I had the recent misfortune of forgetting that I was a fat, out-of-shape, uncoordinated white thirty-year old with diminishing intelligence and ugly feet. During this bout of temporary amnesia, which occured several weeks ago, I became inspired to play a game of basketball with the local 18-year old black kids on the street court near my house. Suffice to say, hardly three baskets were made before my right knee twisted, popped, buckled, yelled, vomited, exploded and sent me crawling to the local emergency room. At the exact time of the injury, it sounded as if my knee was cursing at me, yelling, "Hey, dumb fuck. You haven't played basketball in two years. You're in New York City. You are fat. In fact, you haven't done anything but drink beer and masturbate for thirteen months. So at what point did you think I had the capacity to handle a game of basketball? You dumb ass. Take that!" Subsequent tests and MRIs revealed that I once again tore my cherished ACL and MCL. (Luckily, tests revealed that my DSL was in perfect working order). In retrospect, I was lucky to have torn my ACL, before my heart had a chance to explode from the exercise.

Regardless, when confronted with the option for surgery, I had to do some serious soul searching about the coming decade. Last time I tore the thing, I was a young buck at the prime of my burgeoning athletic career, and thus never debated the need for knee reconstruction. Now, however, times have changed. Do I really need to be playing basketball, tennis or go skiing when in my thirties? Should I devote myself to more intellectual pursuits? Does a fat thirty-year old really need an ACL? Will an ACL help me drink more beer? After some research, I determined the answer is no. The ACL does not, in fact, aid in the metabolizing of alcohol.

I am usually not one to draw attention to myself, but did want to justify my recent lack of writing. I have been strapped within a leg brace watching shitty daytime TV in 103 degree heat. Luckily, Manhattan isn't a place with lots of people or stairs, so i am thankful for that. Imagine if I had to worry about things like subway stairs, five story walk-ups, crowded sidewalks, and the kind of humidity that would be created if a giant vagina encompassed the city.

As I race towards thirty, I realize a shift is occuring without me even being aware of it. Basketball will soon be permanently replaced with movie watching. Skiing will be replaced with alcohol. And, as you are certainly glad to hear, jogging will be replaced with blogging. A writer doesn't need to be in shape anywhere other than the brain. And, last time I checked, there is no ACL up there.

I recently had lunch with a production house rep (I use the term "recently" loosely, of course. This was about two months ago ... I could have used the term "some months ago" or "a while ago", but decided upon "recent" due to its flexibility with time reference. Also before I proceed, I should explain that in advertising, production houses are the companies responsible for supplying the directors, producers, and editors for commercials. It is a lucrative business, so they employ "reps" to wine and dine people at ad agencies in an attempt to win their business. These reps are essentially salesmen, and display all facets of character you would think a salesman possesses, including an artificial persona, aggressive personality, and an inherited desire to refer to you as their "buddy" or "pal" or other term of false closeness. I should also point out that often times these reps are hot chicks, who use their sexuality to coerce men into believing that they, the rep, are in fact highly attracted to the man. I was not lucky enough to have been at lunch with such a rep, as the rep who was kind enough to buy me a nice seafood lunch was in fact a 38-year-old married man from Connecticuit). This rep, being older, and having had a drink at lunch, was kind enough to confide in me a few realities of being in the business of wining and dining. He confessed that sitting across from boring client for lunch and dinners as a job can actually become quite tedious, as the inane conversation becomes a piercing thorn in your psychic side. There are only so many repetitive conversations about politics, current events, and movies one can sit through before losing the ability to even pretend to be interested. As a defense against this tedium, he worked up a set of ridiculous questions that acted as amazingly successful conversation starters. He clued me in to one of his favorites, which I will share with you here. In practice, I have found it to be an immensely successful and creative direction to pull a conversation when the usual topics of George Bush, work, and movies have lulled the group into a depression. When this happens, all you have to do is lean back in your chair, clasp your hands together, squint your eyes in intense concentration and ask the table:

"Could you ride a bear?"

This is a brilliant question. It immediately spawns a myriad of further questions. What kind of bear are we talking about? Polar bear? Grizzly bear? Panda bear? How long would I have to ride the bear? 10 seconds? A minute? Would someone be there to restrain the bear when you were thrown off? Would you need the use of a saddle of some sort? Or is the backbone of bear curved enough to allow for comfortable seating? How would you approach the bear? How good is a bear's hearing, anyway? What clothes would be proper for riding a bear? Jeans? Shorts? Is there some sort of fabric that annoys a bear more than others? And what does a bear's fur feel like? Does it poke?

I could go on. Hearing people's technique for how they would approach and ride a bear has made for many intriguing insights into personalities. It also reminds you of the point of a conversation .. to think and wonder and have fun. With no further ado, here is the my answer to the question:

I would be able to ride a bear. I give myself about ten seconds. I would personally pick a black or brown bear, as they are more manageable than polar bears or grizzly bears. (in response to the obvious answer - panda bear - I can say that growing up in San Diego, I learned panda bears can actually be quite vicious .. and, for the record, a koala bear doesn't qualify. They are too small to be ridden, for one thing, and on the other, who is going to fly to Australia just to ride a bear? I am keeping myself in America, with perhaps the option to take a trip to Canada. I also don't trust an animal that eats Eucylaptus as it's main source of nutrition. Those are some nasty farts.) My personal approach would be to find a bear that is sleeping (or distracted in some way. as example, i could bring a large tub of unfiltered bee honey and set it immediately in front of the bear, that may keep him interested for several minutes). I would wear jeans and a blue T-Shirt, and be barefoot (to minimize the sound i would make as i approached the bear). I theorize that blue is a relaxing color and would chill out the bear more than other colors. I would wear no cologne, as I think I once read that bears are very sensitive to smells (apparantly, Old Spice throws any bear into an instant rage). Upon reaching the bear, I would attempt to lay ontop of it, more than mounting it, as i would a horse. This would give me the ability to wrap my arms around its neck, which I believe to be critical to the riding of a bear. I assume at this point the bear feels my arms wrapping around its neck, it would wake up, giving me very limited time. If the bear decided to stand upon its hind legs, I would be immediately fucked. I do not have the strength to hang off of a bear's neck while standing. I personally feel a bear would stay shocked for a few seconds that something was trying to ride it. Assuming, of course, I am the first person to ride this particular bear, the bear would kinda be clueless about what was happening for a few moments. Then once the bear realized there was a tall, fat, white guy hanging from his neck, he'd get pissed, and then run around in an attempt to dislodge the unwanted bear jockey (me, in other words). I would be able to cling to it for perhaps ten yards of running before losing hold of the neck and being thrown off. And then, the unfortunate part of riding a bear would happen, which is that I would most likely be eaten by the bear. Or at least mauled. But, at that point, before the pain of the the bear-inflicted injuries set in, I could make the statement, that for ten glorious seconds of my life, I was the best bear rider the world ever saw.

Now that, my friends, is the kind of question you want to be asking at your next dinner party.

Dear Girl with a Tattoo,

I saw you the other day walking down 7th avenue. You were of medium height, in your early twenties, wearing worn-out flip flops, cradling your Nokia cell phone between your tanned shoulder and your thrice-pierced ear. You walked as if you had no bones, your limbs loosely moving, as if made of licorice. You used your hands often when you talked, like you were finger-painting the air. You exuded an air of self-importance, thinking you were the sun, and the problems you were complaining about were the planets. From what I could gather from your end of the conversation, with me aptly filling in for the other side of the phone, a guy named Thomas was dicking you over. This Thomas was apparantly telling you one thing, and doing another. And you are fine with that, but you just want him to tell you what the deal was. I soon lost interest when I became distracted by the large, unsightly tatoo covering a large portion of your lower back, a lower back I could see in clear view thanks in no large part to the low-cut Seven jeans you were wearing, and white Gap tanktop clinging to your sweat, a tanktop much too short for your torso.

This tattoo engulfed my imagination. It was of no discernable image, but rather a mesh of colors and shapes, straight from the imagination of your tattoo artist to your skin. It seemed to be something of an eagle, with wings spread, the tips reaching the beginnings (or ends, depending how you look at it) of the slight roll of fat pushed up by your jeans. This eagle-type creature (may have been a Phoenix or mythical creature from American Indians, as that seems to be today's theme in tattoos, using an image from a culture you are not a part of. Black men with chinese characters, white fraternity boys with African artwork, girls from Nebraska with ol' Irish letters, etc.) was not deftly created, as either you were drunk when receiving it, or the tattoo artist was drunk when giving it. The ink seemed to leak out of the feathers, and the lines were blurred, seemingly viewed through a pair of glasses that had been dipped in vegetable oil. There was some sort of spider or other arachnid clinging to the beak of the eagle-creature. Somewhere on the breast of the bird-creature was an initial, or some sort of text .. it seemed to make out MJZ or MGT or something similar.

I wanted to inform you, Tattoo Girl, that i have now seen tattoos on girls like you for about eight years now. These tattoos do not make you a bad girl, or, for that matter, even an interesting girl. Your sorority probably made you get it a few years ago, and you wanted to make a statement, which you did. You are telling me you are a higher middle-class girl from a well-to-do town somewhere in Illinois or Massachusetts. You drive a Volkwagen Jetta, black, 2003. Your name is Laurie, or Jenn, or Tamara. You smoke about ten cigarettes a day, usually only when drinking, which is three times a week. You own Britanny Spears CDs, and think she is cute. The most dangerous thing you ever did was doorbell ditching your History professor's house when a sophomore in college. You're about as adventurous and different as toilet paper. You want your tattoo to represent that you aren't from the suburbs, that you aren't a goody goody, that you didn't go to University of Maryland on your parents dollar, that you didn't spend your junior summer backpacking through Western Europe. Your tattoo, ironically, is an image of all these things. It is the mark of the suburbs. The mark of being from a rich family. The mark of being as rough around the edges as caviar. You are branded cattle. You sister, with the bumble bee on the ankle tattoo, hides it with a sock. Your other sister, the butterfly above the left ass-cheek girl, only shows it when in a bathing suit. But you are from the same club.

Tattoos have been wrought of any meaning. Used in the past to mark criminals or royalty, identify sailors and soldiers, express heritage and rank, mark membership in a clan or family, now it is used as a form of self-expression for pissed-off suburban chicks who have a secret guilt that daddy makes six-figures a year and the closest she came to starving was when TCBY ran out of White Chocolate Supreme. If you are going to get a tattoo, at least try something original. Put a full Tahitian-style tattoo over the left region of your face, injected by ink from native plants with a bird-skull needle. And get the image of something true to your heritage, such as a recreation of the BMW you drive, the Orange Juluis you drink at the mall, or the shots of Jamermeister you drink at the bars.Think it through. Be authentic. Stay true to what you are. If not Chinese, don't put their characters on your arm. If not American Indian, don't use their imagery simply because you think it is cool. In ten years you'll stop thinking it is so cool, anyway, and you won't be able to do anything about it then. Leave eagles, bumblebees and butterflies to nature, and, while your at it, try to find your own. I myself recommend leaving your skin unmarked. If you are unhappy with the way it looks, take it up with God, not your local tattoo parlor.

It is advice I've been given innumberable times, though I've never giving it myself. I've seen the advice given to others time and time again. It is, without a doubt, the most useless advice i've ever gotten in my life (aside from that time I was a senior college racked with confusion about how to spend the rest of my life and some old guy I met from the South told me "When the alligator in the swamp has a dirty duck in his jaws, a storm must be a brewin." That was, looking back on it, the most useless advice I've ever gotten. This is next.)

Let me give you the context:

Recently, while at work, I was in a negative mood (I know this hard for most of you to imagine, but every once in awhile, my cheery disposition is replaced by one of sarcastic awareness). Upon seeing my sour-lemons face, a co-worker smiled, patted me on the back, and pronounced his solution to my problems, "Dude, you need to get laid."

Thanks for the advice, good sir. However, I am going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there. Assessing my situation, I can truthfully say, when it comes to improving my mood towards life, there are a number of things I need more than getting laid. Let me provide a few examples: I need a million-dollar beach house somewhere on the Bermuda coast. I need a job that pays me a six-figure salary to write horror screenplays. I need knees that don't snap everytime I try to use them. I need a cute golden retreiver puppy that walks itself and is able to shop. I need infinite frequent flyer points that get me anywhere in the world I want to go for free. I need a brain that can beat anyone at Jeopardy. I need a retirement plan that isn't dependant on the performance of Krispy Kreme stock. I need a live-in chef particularly skilled in the art of fried potatoes. I need a body that could be featured on Men's Health Magazine. I need a magical keg of beer that will instantly create any brew i want for eternity. I need ultimate wisdom, with the ability to provide the perfect quote for any situation. I need a 140-foot yacht with 7 rooms, two dining areas, a pool, three hot tubs, and a wetslide into the ocean. What I DO NOT need is to insert my penis inside of a girl's vagina for twelve minutes until I ejaculate semen. That doesn't solve my problems for longer than twelve minutes, unfortunately. And, unless I'm doing something wrong, it doesn't solve yours, either.

From the time I was in sixth-grade, and Gary Thompson sat in the Meadowbrook Middle School locker room describing the act of "popping a cherry", sex took on mythical status. Part of this was the way the Catholic Church forbade sexual pleasure or thoughts, and coupled with intense descriptions of classmates, sex scandels described in the news, and the endless references in movies, magazines, and literature, I assumed that sex was the end-all, be-all of human existence. It was about as high as we could go. The ultimate in human experience. Why else would it dominate every song, movie, and story I ever came into contact with? Why would everyone talk so incessantly about it? It must be trancendental, if grown men left wives for it, famous politicians risked ruin for it, and criminals risked jail for it. Growing up, every teen movie was about the quest for it. I thought that unless I achieved it, I would be a ruined wreck of a man, unaware of the greatest pleasure we could achieve as a human race.

Suffice to say, when I finally had my first sexual experience, I expected the heavens to open and bathe me in showers of gold. I expected a chorus of the sweetest voices ever to fill the air with the sweetest sounds I've ever heard. I expected a game show announcer to appear from another dimension and hand me rolls of cash. I expected something radical, like the development of super-hearing, or X-ray vision.

I got none of these things. It felt really good for a period of time (roughly two minutes), then it stopped feeling good, and I got pretty tired. Afterwards, I examined my hands ... I still had ten fingers. I looked at my feet .. yep, they were still ugly. I looked at myself in the mirror .. I looked exactly as I had before my penis entered my first ever vagina. People are ruining lives over this? Am I missing something?

Now, don't get me wrong. Sex feels good. Really good. I look forward to it. It gives me a good feeling. But so did seeing Notre Dame for the first time, coming out of the Paris Underground Stop at 1:13 A.M. after a 10 hour plane flight. So did floating in the South Pacific outside of a speck of a Fijan Island somewhere between New Zealand and California. So does playing trivia at T.G.I.F while sipping on a 22-ounce Hefeweizen and eating artichoke dip. So does listening to a great new song. Hell, even watching an episode of 24 gives me longer bouts of pleasure than sex sometimes does.

So why does it dominate our culture? Why don't we talk about Notre Dame and T.G.I.F more than sex? That is a pleasure that dogs, whales, and pigeons can't experience, unlike sex.

It is kinda like the movie Caddyshack. For years and years, I had heard people quote the movie. During movie arguments, man about man would state that it was the funniest movie they'd ever seen. Brilliant. Genius. Unparalleled.

Then I saw Caddyshack. Unless I watched it wrong, I watched a fairly unfunny, poorly-written movie that may have been funny in 1981, but only if you were high or seven-years old. Even then, it was less disappointing than sex. Maybe from here on out, when I am looking down, people can slap me on the back, grin wildly and say, "You need to watch Caddyshack."