Category: General Cerebral Leakage (Page 16 of 26)

When she said “Farmboy, fetch me the finest seats in the house,” you know what he said?

“As you wish…”

“Hana hou!” In Hawaiian, that means “one more time!” or “encore!”¹https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/our-services/in-flight-services/hana-hou And for the Boss Lady and myself, it meant getting a second chance at a missed opportunity from our childhoods: seeing Rob Reiner’s 1987 block-buster movie, The Princess Bride.

“What?!?” you say? “How can this be true? Inconceivable!“

Yea, verily I say unto you, ’tis but true! You see, back in 2012 when we were living in Honolulu, one of the local theaters decided to start up their Hana Hou movie series, in which, on one special Wednesday each month, they would play a classic movie from Hollywood’s movie vault. I believe this is actually common now, but back then it wasn’t really a thing yet, so it was super exciting.

When we first saw the poster for The Princess Bride we ’bout crapped our britches in shear excitement! But although it was being shown on the largest screen in all of Hawai’i,²https://www.consolidatedtheatres.com/ward/cinema-info we were lucky to reserve ourselves 2 of the 225 seats available for this twice-in-a-lifetime event. In fact, I think we scored the last two tickets next to each other, so it was nearly an opportunity missed.

Well, it indeed lived up to the hype, and was perhaps one of the most incredible movie-going experiences of my life. It’s a pretty incredible energy when you get 224 hardcore fans of such a classic movie in an enclosed space–the place was literally buzzing with excitement!

Now, you may have noticed that I said “224 fans,” when there were 225 seats. Let me explain…

The Princess Bride is perhaps one of the most quotable movies ever. From “As you wish.” to “Inconceivable!” to “Stop rhyming, and I mean it!” *pause* “Anybody want a peanut?”, there are a plethora of opportunities to jump in and say your favorite line along with the character on screen. And believe you me, there was a lot of that going on that night, with at least a handful of audience members reciting dialogue during any given scene.

However, there was one quote, occurring several times throughout the movie, that seemed to unite the entire audience in what I can only describe as a religious experience: Iñigo Montoya’s “Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The only way I know how to explain the phenomenon we experienced that night is this: if you’ve ever gone to just about any church in America, there is a good chance that you’ve been in the congregation when they’ve recited the Lord’s Prayer. Well, it was exactly like that: everybody knew every word, but nobody ever figured out how to say it in unison, so you endup with this eerie asynchronous chorus of whispers, which would be freaky as ----- if you didn’t know what was going on. It literally gave me the chills. Or was it the creeps…?

Anyways, I was at first astounded that everybody in that packed-out movie house was still obsessed with this film 25 years later…but then I realized that there was one auspicious exception: the guy sitting on the other side of me was strangely silent the whole time.

It seemed that it was this virgin’s maiden voyage into our collective world of fantasy, and this grown-ass man was just now seeing The Princess Bride the first time in his whole life. How was that even possible?

I mean, are you kidding me??? The lone heretic in that entire place just happened to be sitting next to me? Super. When the gods of Hollywood would inevitably smite this infidel with a bolt of lightening, I just knew that my ass was going to get zapped too…

Shortly thereafter, and based on our experience the previous month with The Princess Bride, we made sure to be ahead of the game and bought our tickets early to Quentin Tarentino’s 1994 cult-classic Pulp Fiction–a movie that I, as a grown-ass man, actually had never seen.

Now, I was particularly proud of my purchase this time, as I had scored seats right in the middle, 3 rows up from the open aisle that divided the front seats from the back. I’m talking primo, grade-A location, man. This experience was going to be even better than The Princess Bride, I just knew it.

It turned out, though, that around that same time, the Boss Lady was kicking around the idea of getting a Master’s degree from the University of Hawai’i, and her on-campus interview inadvertently got scheduled for the same night as the showing of Pulp Fiction. It ended up causing us to rush across town to the theater, only to show up about 5 minutes late.

I really had to use the restroom, so I told the Boss Lady which seats were ours, and told her to go on in before someone tried laying claim to them. When I came out of the john, I knew that our seats–25 & 26, to be precise–was slightly closer to the right side, so I took the hallway that went to the right going into the auditorium.

To my surprise, the place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been for The Princess Bride, but the first 5 or 6 rows where our seats were were plum full. Assuming my life partner was already in her seat, I “excuse me, pardon me’d” my way past 20+ fellow patrons trying to enjoy the movie…only to find that the Boss Lady was not in her seat, and further, somebody else’s fat ass had set up camp in one of ours.

So what did I do? Well, I worked hard to reserve those highly-sought after seats for my Buttercup, and this Farmboy wanted what was rightfully his. So I went down the row, trying to figure out who didn’t legally belong, and who had just scooched over one seat out of courtesy to the mother- ----- squatter. It wasn’t until about Seat 7 or 6 that I found the culprit and kicked him out of our row. And then, after that, I had to “excuse me, pardon me” back over approximately 20 people who I had just forced to move one seat over…

Meanwhile…in the back row of the front section–on the far left side–the Boss Lady had set up camp in the handicap seats and was vigilantly watching for me to come in, so she could tell me that it wasn’t worth trying to get to our single seat and that it would be much simpler to find some open seats closer to the front.

Patiently watching for me in the dark, she heard a commotion behind her. Turning around the other way to see what the hub-bub was about, she quickly had her worst fears confirmed: there I was, “excuse me, pardon me, you need to move over to the seat that’s on your ticket”ing to the whole ----- row, single-handedly disrupting everyone’s movie-going experience.

Wondering where the hell she was, I started scanning the place as I viciously guarded my hard-fought prize–that primo, grade-A empty seat with my wife’s name on it–before I eventually locked eyes with her…sitting on the left side, of all places!

We had a bit of a stand-off, impertinently waving at the other to get their ass over to our respective locations: “Come over here!” “No, you come over here!” and what-not, until finally she very reluctantly caved. Of course, getting to her seat at this point was no easy task in the least, and she ended up having to climb over the bars in front the first row, “excuse me, pardon me” a couple seats over in Row 2 so she could climb over the lone empty seat there, and then “excuse me, pardon me” over a few more very perturbed patrons to finally get to me.

Needless to say, that was perhaps the least romantic date we’ve ever been on. Now in all fairness, from my perspective, I was fighting for the honor and comfort of my fair maiden. But in reality…

Well, if chivalry wasn’t dead already at that point in time, I had just murdered it in cold blood and then skull- ----- its rotting corpse, in front of roughly 125 onlookers…

The point of the story is: don’t be like me–be adaptable! In the end we decided the best way to deal with that utter fustercluck was to laugh at our incredibly embarrassing shenanigans–so embarassing that I had totally forgot that there had been a power surge that night and the theater had totally blacked out about 10 minutes from the end of the movie.³I found this out when searching old emails for the exact seats we had that night. Apparently, due to the black out, the theater was offering us free tickets to the next month’s showing of SpaceBalls. But you wouldn’t believe how many times I have had that used as Exhibit A against me since then, as irrefutable evidence of my inflexibility, single-mindedness, and inability to compromise.

These days, the Boss Lady only has to utter a mere 2 words to win any argument of that nature: “Pulp Fiction.“

To which, my only real reply is a solemn, demoralized whisper, also 2 words in length: “#NeverForget.”

…

Oh! And speaking of “adaptable,” the whole reason why I brought any of this up was so I could have an excuse to share with you the “Home Movie” version of The Princess Bride that I recently came across. If you ever wondered how your favorite celebrity spent their time during the Great Quarantine of 2020, may I present to you: Exhibit A.

“A” as in “f***ing AWESOME,” that is:

Content created on: 6/7 March 2021 (Sat/Sun)

Sometimes, the drunken truth can be the most sobering thing of all…

“I had a dream…” Is there really any other way to begin a tale of epic greatness? Of course not! And does every tale that begins like this end up being epically great? Meh. We’ll see.

Back in the summer of 2004, shortly after officially completing my undergraduate career at Kansas State for good, I had a dream that I had long hair. I don’t think there was anything special about this dream, nor was my hair particularly awesome, but I just woke up with this persistent nagging feeling “I need to grow my hair long.”

A few days later I was confident that this was exactly what I wanted to do, so I set about pursuing this newfound life goal of mine…by skipping my next haircut 6 weeks later. It turns out that you need a bit of patience if you want to have them luscious locks, so it’s good if you’re able to find a distraction to help you pass the time.

At first, my main distraction was repeatedly solving Rubik’s Cubes during my day job of solving cell phone customer’s billing problems. It wasn’t long before I realized that my brain was bored af at that job, and before I knew it, I had a new distraction, applying to grad school so I could fulfill a dream that, come to think of it, I never actually had in my life: becoming a Doctor of Physics.

Now, for anyone who has tried growing their hair out from a crew cut to a full lion’s mane, you probably know that there tends to be an awkward phase somewhere there in the middle (especially with my fairly curly hair, you kinda got to give up on the requirement that you’re stylin’ day in and day out).

Around February 2005, right when I was totally hitting peak awkwardness, I had a major breakthrough in my Doctor-of-Physics-non-dream/distraction. Hidden away in my spam folder, and thiiiiis close to being deleted without a second look, was an acceptance letter from the Department of Physics at the University of Florida. I hadn’t heard back from any of the other 3 schools I had applied to, so this was HUGE: I was going to get into grad school!

I was new to the grad school game, as I had never originally planned on doing anything of the sort with my life, and what I didn’t know before this moment is than an acceptance letter often will come with…A FREE TRIP TO FLORIDA! Well, not necessarily Florida, per se, but to wherever the fine institution of higher learning may be located, for a prospective grad student weekend. Pretty cool.

What wasn’t cool was the weekend I visited Gainesville happened to be the weekend that, for whatever God-awful reason, I was experimenting with using Nair as a longer-term solution for my facial hair. I vaguely recall that I had finally had it with shaving regularly, so decided to apply my genius-level problem-solving skills to the matter. On the other hand, I clearly recall that it made my face smell like a hot baloney sandwich–and it didn’t even work!

Fun fact, though, my ill-conceived adventures with Nair don’t actually have anything to do with the story. It’s just interesting to re-discover long-lost and/or repressed memories when one goes down the path of autobiographical exposition. But my hatred for my facial hair aside, I confess that I do indeed digress…

Despite the possibility that I reeked of old lunch pails, I hit it off pretty quickly with two other prospective students, Rebecca & Natasha. And, yes, the stereotypes are true: anyone named Natasha is probably Russian, so if you want name your kid Natasha but you’re a Proud American Patriot, just randomly change one of the ‘A’s to an ‘O’, and you should be good to go.¹That sentence wasn’t supposed to sound that Russian, but I couldn’t help leave my typo in.

Anyways, back to the story. Given that I recently casually dropped the fact that I had multiple (simultaneous) girlfriends earlier in my life, you may think that this story is going to end with “…and that is how I became an Orgy Guy, kids.” But to that, let me reassure you:

Nope, me and my gal pals were strictly platonic. Anyways, that Saturday night a bunch of us went out and hit up the Gainesville bar scene, so naturally I was rollin’ two deep with my home girls.

At one point in the evening, after we each had had a moderate-yet-responsible amount of drinks, Natasha stopped what she was doing and started staring at me. She then leaned over and, practically yelling at me in her thick Russian accent over the thumping club beats, she said something that shook me to my core:

“You know you look just like Napoleon Dynamite, right?”²At one point in time I could remember what I thought she was saying. Due to her accent, the bar noise, and the ridiculous nature of her accusation, what I do recall is that it was something waaaaaaaay different.

Once I realized what she was saying, I gotta admit that I had to angrily disagree with her just a little bit on that point.

Nope. No way, no how. She apparently had gotten too comfortable with me and thought she could light-heartedly rile me up by invoking the nerdiest cultural icon of 2005. I mean, we were all physics nerds, but how dare she single me out as nerdier than the rest of us.

I told her she was clearly full of shit, because, for starters, I was blonde and Napoleon was a red-head, but she was unmoved by my argument. I looked to Rebecca to be a tie-breaker, but she just shrugged and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess I could kinda see it.”

I wasn’t completely butt-hurt over these accusations, but I did feel a little bit like they were picking on me, albeit in good fun. I got over it quickly enough, writing it off for the ridiculous claim that it was.

About an hour later, the ladies had finally managed to drag me on to the dance floor against my will. Against my will–because unlike Napoleon, I didn’t have the sweet moves of his that I’m about to show in you in GIF form:

But I was making the best of it, and thanks to the Power of Alcohol, was managing to have a pretty good time.

I was in the middle of groovin’, when out of nowhere from behind me I feel a hand on my shoulder. Since the only two people I actually knew in the whole town was right in front of me, I was a little confused as to exactly who the hell would be touching me without my consent.

I turned around to see it was none other than…two drunk dudes that I had never seen before in my life. While I was still trying to figure what the heck was happening, one of them blurted out:

“Napoleon Dynamite! Awesome!!!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” I screamed that way you scream when you realize that you’ve been in denial with a very uncomfortable truth about yourself.

I was like, “You too, really? Did these girls put you up to this? The Russian girl put you up to this, didn’t she? TELL ME THE TRUTH, YOU DRUNK UNDERAGE BUMS!”

“Nope, dude, I don’t know that girl. But what I do know is that you look exactly like Napoleon Dynamite. I just figured you had to be doing it on purpose. I mean, it’s not even Halloween, though, so that takes some commitment, my man.”

At that point in time, the other drunken guy chimed in, “Just one line–any line–from the movie that’s all we ask!”

Trying to swear at the cursed situation I found myself in, I turned my face to the side and let out a “Gosh…”

But before I could finish my mild oath, the small crowd around me erupted in cheers.

“OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD! That was AWESOOOOOOOOME!”

*Sigh* While I had strongly favored my theorem that this was all an elaborate Natasha-prank, as I scientist I had to respect a statistically significant number of unbiased observations.

I was awash in a confusing cocktail of emotions in regards to my self-identity, so once I got away from the cheering masses I ducked into the nearest bathroom, took a good hard look at myself in the mirror, and way-to-accurately recreated both parts from this iconic scene:

Content created on: 20 February 2021 (Saturday)

Take a look inside the Book of Forbidden Fruit, if you dare.

But, young lad, can you handle what you may find in there?

Mojo. True story: I once had it out the wazoo. You may recall just a few days ago I #HumbleBragged about one of my hot-n-heavy girlfriends from first grade. Yeah, that’s right I said one of them. There were multiple, if you didn’t pick up on that.

I forgive you if your immediate reaction is, “What the heck happened?!?”

Well, first, thanks for being so intimately interested in my life. And second, are you okay if I don’t exactly answer that question, but kinda do?

*Pauses for the consent of the Dear Reader*

Okay, I didn’t hear you say “no”, so I’ll take that as a “yes!”¹Well, this is problematic. Consent granted!

Yessiree, Bob, I was indeed a stud muffin all the way up through second grade. Then third grade hit, and that’s when I moved from sleepy little Richfield, KS to the thriving metropolis of Springfield, MO.

Now, my new school, the fabled Christian Schools of Springfield, was actually about the same size as my school in Kansas, so in this case size truly didn’t matter. My theory is that my Kansas rad-itude must have just not translated too well to the muggy, humid atmosphere in Missouri.

However, still having the confidence of a hot dude, I thought myself to be all that and a bag of chips. Alas! Over the course of my third grade year, this metamorphosized into cockiness unbeknownst to me. Problem was, no one bothered to tell me.

Now, for most of that year, I had been pining after the cutest girl in my class, Andrea B., though my affection never seemed to be quite requited. But late in the spring of that year, my luck²I didn’t say good luck. You just assumed that’s what I meant. was about to change.

It so happened that the church I went to, the fabled Baptist Temple, was across the street from the CSOS grade school building and used the classrooms for Sunday School. Ever being the rascal that I was, about once a month or so, myself and another like-minded classmate/churchmate would stay in the building after Sunday School was over, and we would break into our classroom and pillage our teacher’s candy supply.

One of these times, I got a little too comfortable in my crimality and decided to poke around my classmates’ desks. Lo & behold, what did I find? A diary with Andrea’s name on it…SCORE!

There was a page in there where she had written down the name of everyone in our class, along with a short, very private sentence stating how she really felt about them. Oh, boy that was an interesting read!

Then I got down to my name: “Can be a real jerk sometimes!”

That wasn’t true! I wasn’t a jerk! What a jerk thing of her to say!

Oh, but the knife wasn’t done being plunged into my heart just yet. I could clearly see where she had erased what she had wrote at first: “Kinda cute. I think I might like him <3.”

Not gonna lie, that cut straight to the bone. Apparently my first impressions weren’t my problem. It’s the whole “getting to know me” part that seems to be sabotaging my relationships…

Well, one would think that this would have been a sobering experience for me, and that I would have lived a life on the straight and narrow from there on out. But, hey, where would the fun be in that?

What did I do with this newfound trove of forbidden knowledge? A few days later I thought it would be a GREAT idea to tell all the other boys at the lunch table all the little juicy nuggets I had uncovered in her diary. Well within earshot of her, too boot!

It wasn’t long before she realized what I was up to and immediately stormed over in a whirlwind of angry tears.

“And you wonder why I think your such a jerk!”

As she stomped off still sobbing, she left me standing there, completely stunned.

Holy shit, I really was a huge jerk. And what a meta way to find out such an ugly self-truth. Touche´, Universe, touche´.

And that, Kids, is sorta-kinda how I lost my mojo…

Content belatedly created on: 18/19 February 2021 (Thurs/Fri)

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and it’s time to get your funk on, baby!

But first, you’re gonna have to get that funk the funk off you…

When I was a studly young Sophomore in high school, I lived on the farm with my dad in dusty-ass Southwest Kansas. Occasionally my unpaid labor on the farm wasn’t enough to get the job done to his satisfaction, so Dad would hire a farm hand to help him out.

Well, it just so happens that during this epoch in my life, Dad’s go-to guy was ol’ “Dirty Bob” Harris. I shit thee not–this was this guy’s actual nickname that people used when speaking directly to him. This moniker was well-deserved, too: he was a bachelor probably in his 60s who lived south of Rolla in a little shanty of a trailer, chain-smoked, and, when feeling particularly hygienic, would bust out his pocket knife and clean out the grit from underneath his grubby-ass fingernails. In fact, the one condition Dad had for his continued employment was that he had to take a bath at least once a week. Talk about setting the bar, pretty low, right?

I always thought that was kinda gracious of Dad, seeing as how a weekly bath wasn’t nearly enough to keep him from imparting a semi-permanent stank to our pickup, tractors, and other implements in which he spent more than 5 minutes. I would beg Dad over and over again to consider spending just a little more money on external farm labor, hoping that he would hire Clean Bob instead. But, NOOOOOO, apparently Clean Bob was outside of our price range. So there I was, stuck with the privilege of having Dirty Bob’s b.o. rubbing off on me any day I had to ride in the pickup with him.

It got worse though. You see, even though there were only three employees on the farm, there was definitely a power hierarchy. Dad (also a “Bob” FWIW), unfortunately, wasn’t afraid to pull a power-move when he had to. So being El Jefe of the whole operation, he got exclusive use of one of our two tractors to himself…meaning that us peons, Bob and I, had to share the other tractor.

His own flesh and blood–can you believe it? He made his own last-born son share a tractor with the stinkiest mother- ----- in all of Morton County! I really should have called Child Protective Services on his ass and reported him for cruel and inhumane child abuse….

As much as I loved working on the farm with the Bobs¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rWP_PGfiow (huge ----- eye roll here), what I really enjoyed doing with my time was chillaxing with my city-slicker bestie, the infamous, Phillip K. Ballz.²Featured thus far in: Solamente Selena, Back In The USSR, and Blowin In The Wind.

If I was lucky, I would get to hang out with him on the weekend. And if I was real lucky, I would get to hang out with him the one and only Saturday night Leslie, his hot-as-hell cousin from Texas, was coming to visit him.

Sure, I may have been a bit, uh, “ambitious” thinking that my scrubby butt had a chance of romancing her, but what can I say? I’m a dreamer and an optimist at heart. In BF-Egypt³Bum-Fuck, Egypt, for you geography scholars out there. Kansas opportunities like this didn’t come along very often, so I had to give it all I had, right?

I could feel it in my bones that colder winter day in ’97: that evening I was sure to have a date with destiny. But first, I had hot date with Tractor #2, as Dad had graciously agreed to let me take off a little early that afternoon once I finished plowing one of our many huge tracts of land⁴Inappropriately applied Monty Python reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=g3YiPC91QUk first.

When I got in the tractor that morning, I could definitely tell that Dirty Bob had been stanking it up in there quite recently. But, I figured it would be no problem–I would just take a nice hot shower afterwards and go on my merry way to Phillip K.’s. Look out, Leslie! Here comes your Casanova!

Now at this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wait just a tick there, Buddy! I know the Boss Lady’s name sure ain’t Leslie. That must mean…no. It can’t be. How ever in the world did your plan to court and marry your high school best friend’s cousin from out of town go awry?!? ‘Twas foolproof!”

Funny you should ask. In the end what screwed me over was Dirty Bob’s dirty smoking habit. Apparently when you smoke as much as he did and rarely bath or wash your hands, it turns out those hands will get covered in the most horrible smelling layer of smoke/nicotine/sweat/dirt funk. And then when you drive a tractor, you forever funkify the steering wheel for the aspiring young Don Juan that has to drive it after you.

It was only when I got home that evening and had washed up that I made the gruesome and horrifying discovery–now my hands smelled like Dirty Bob! I washed them over and over until they were almost bloody, but to no avail at all. I was doomed. Doomed, I say!

I lathered them in Old Spice aftershave, hoping that would overpower my dear sweet Leslie instead of the scent of Old Dirty Bastard Spice that I couldn’t seem to quite shake, and headed on over to P.K.B.’s house in town. Ol’ Phillip K., though? He sure noticed the smell and started endlessly ribbing me about it.

Figuring he would have some sympathy for a brother-from-another-mother looking to become a cousin-from-another-grandmother (you know, by marrying his hot-ass cousin, and what-not), I shared with him how distressed I was on account of how the Universe and Dirty Bob had conspired and done gone and blown my chances with Leslie. Big mistake. My god, he simply would not let me hear end of it, about how absolutely ridiculous I was, thinking I had any chance in hell with her.

Harrumph! What a prick.

Oh, and it turned out that she decided at the last second to not come hang out with us after all.⁵At least I don’t remember hanging out with her… So it was a basic all-around shit-show in the romance department for me that weekend.

The point of the story is, don’t ever let your dad hire anybody who unashamedly has “Dirty” in his name. But if he does, at least you can always blame him for the reason why you’re not dating the hottest 17-year-old in the 5-State Area. And that’s the only reason.

After all, you’re nothing but a studly young Sophomore stallion, right?

Content created on: 27 January 2021 (Wednesday)