Phillip’s Coming To Dinner (A Cautionary Tale)

In the years since our time working together in retail hell, Phillip* and I had kept in sporadic contact. Just when I’d start to wonder how he was doing, the phone would ring or an email would arrive. This time, it had been somewhere in the neighborhood of a year without contact when I received a call from him. As usual, Phillip’s voice was its upbeat self (monotone, except for the upward intonation always on the last syllable). He talked of his new job, new house, new car, all of the good turns his life had taken. Phillip was a good guy, but a good guy hounded by demons of which his dominance over waxed and waned like an AA member who is forever re-achieving that 30-day sobriety coin. This is why hearing about the good things in his life was reason to rejoice. So, before hanging up, I invited Phillip to the house for dinner. We’d make gnocchi, it’d be a good time.

It’s just dinner. What could possibly go wrong?

Phillip arrived, had found my directions clear enough, had hit no traffic, etc. Waiting for our guest was a 4-pack of his drink of choice, Guinness. I told him to take home whatever he didn’t finish because neither myself nor my wife are big beer drinkers. “I’ll probably finish ‘em,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t like to leave a Guinness unopened. It’s a crime, Mike. I can’t do it.” And with a click-fwwish, he opened his first can.

A Corporate Bull and an Evangelical Walk Into a Coffeeshop

When this happened, I hurried to get it down while it was still fresh in my mind. There is a maximum 24-hour lifespan for any information stored in my brain. Once that time is up, it’s lost forever and my 20GB brain retains its constant (although, admittedly useless) 19.5GB of free space.

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Having stimulated the nation’s economy with a $2.50 purchase (you’re welcome, America), I sat down at the one free table in the coffeeshop and set to complete a copywriting task. At the next table, a woman spoke to a teenage girl in what sounded like a monologue disguised as advice, sounding somewhat scripted (or, at least, rehearsed), the moments of inflection delivered with the sincerity and spontaneity of a laugh track. The woman’s voice rose and fell in volume, so that sentences that began with, “Once you invite God in…” and “Here’s what God wants for you…” then fell to a low and inaudible tone, the words lost on bespectacled busybody at the next table.

Vivien is pleasantly surprised to learn that we’ve replaced her usual fundamentalist dogma with Folgers Crystals.

At the table behind them sat a man in the middle of an animated discussion. I’d presumed he was talking to someone sitting across from him, but

My Alter Ego

Yeah, I have one. And it’s a girl.

Back in 2008, I started writing as a character named Valerie Atherton. She was created in response to the masculine-dominated fanboy blogs, many of which were so myopic in their tastes, but also their attitude of never being pleased. Movies are nitpicked and dissected ad nauseum and there was a sense of entitlement about them, a sense that studios needed to somehow check in with these “fans” before making any major decisions because, well, they knew better.

So, I created Valerie, a self-proclaimed ‘movie reviewer writer person’,  to not only add a female voice, but a female voice that would piss them off to no end. One reader called Valerie, “…kryptonite to fanboys.”

Aaay! It’s Fonzie Day

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With the exception of my first felony, growing up on that particular Oregon street was innocent, quiet and, if I’d known what a Beaver Cleaver even was, maybe even Cleaver-esque. Hillsboro was the sort of Nilla wafer-flavored suburb that angsty teens hated for its lack of anything interesting that ever happened, and the neighborhood cops loved to patrol for the exact same reason.

The self-centered, myopic life of a child is all about living in that particular moment, playing an endless number of games, using anything and everything as a toy and basically overworking one’s imagination like it were a Dickensian workhouse orphan. At 4 years old, life was simple, fairly straightforward and free of the obstacles that life would present in the following years (obstacles like telling time and learning to write a capital Q.) Each day was (if the system of mathematics I made up was correct) 132 hours long and a week was made up of, like, three months.

“Oh yes, sir. That’s is absolutely right. Going into space was way easier than writing a capital Q in cursive. That’s just damn near impossible.”

I would wake up, have breakfast, play some games that I may or may not have made up and, more or less, go to bed feeling that I’d accomplished

Holiday Rules For Everyone

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“Home is where the heart is.”

“Don’t spend more than you can afford.”

Advice that has been handed down for generations and stood the test of time are the result of a combination of common sense, downhome know-how and a cycle of emotional abuse that perpetuates the strict demands of those relatives long dead.

Holiday advice is, in many aspects, a tradition. And, for much the same reason that certain decorations are dusted off every year, despite their cracking, bending and being covered in black mold, tradition is one of the hallmarks of the holidays. (Fun fact: It is also one of the hallmarks of Hallmark!)

“Wait, so why am I putting this giant, Indonesian centipede on the tree, again?”
“‘Cuz it’s tradition, silly!… Now, where did that scorpion run off to?”

With tradition comes unspoken (but occasionally yelled) rules that are drilled into your young psyche, put through the ringer of dysfunctional family gatherings and, for a large investment, can be purged and unlearned through years of Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

As you ready yourself for a day of overeating, passive aggressive conversations and the opening of presents and old wounds, my egg nog-addled brain has put together tips that I believe will make this holiday season a win for you and a heartwarming* memory for your family (but, then again, I believe our cat understands everything I say).

*By  heartwarming, I mean in the emotional, full of good will sense and not in the defibrillator set to maximum sense.

LINK: M-I-C… See That Exit? K-E-Y… Why? Because You’re Fired!

Below is a link to my newest article for Forces Of Geek and editor Stefan Blitz.  I am taking a break from FOG for a few months, so please send me off by clicking on the link below.

Thanks!

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 M-I-C… See That Exit? K-E-Y… Why? Because You’re Fired!

Mouseketeer Roll Call! 

Bobby!  
Annette!
Sharon! 
Lonnie!
Cubby!
Mary Danella Espinoza…?

* insert sound of record scratching here *

Holiday Captions For Awful People

Ho x 3!

With Christmas fast approaching, America’s holiday traditions are in full force: overeating while forgetting that gluttony is a sin, giving gifts you can’t afford to relatives you can’t possibly like and, all the while, feeling like you’ve contributed to the peace on Earth and goodwill toward man because you spent $.99 on a can of cream of mushroom soup and dropped it into the donation bin at work.

And so, I felt that it would be nice to share a little Christmas spirit with my readers (both of you) and all of the Google-bots that truly are the beating heart to my blog’s self-esteem.

Feel free to download these images I do not own and share them with your loved ones. Or just share them with your family.