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Tag: Phillip K Ballz

Behold: The Magic Jell-O Keeping You Out Of Jail, Bro!

5 Min Read

When you hear ‘pudding’, you’re bound to ask “Yum! What flavor?”

This time, though, you best not ask (and you’re welcome for the favor…)


“The sign of a true friend is…’pudding on a condom for Phillip’?!? Um…I have so many questions that I’m not sure I want the answer to.”

My beautiful bride looked up from my phone, wide-eyed and side-eyeing me at the same time. She had been poking around my Notes app looking for my grocery list, and instead she apparently found my reminder where I keep a short list of potential stories to blog about in the coming weeks.

“That doesn’t sound quite right…lemme see that!”

I took a quick glance at it then got my eyes back on the road like the safe driver that I was.

“Ahh, I see, it’s just a typo,” I reassured her.

“Whew! No condoms were involved. That’s a relief,” she demurred.

“Oh, no, there was a condom alright.”

“So, it’s supposed to be ‘putting’? ‘Putting on a condom’ for your male friend is any better?!? Is there something you need to get off your chest, my dear hubby? You been keeping any skeletons in the ol’ proverbial closet?”

“What? No, no, no. I meant that the it was supposed to in, not on,” I clarified.

“Hold up, mister! ‘Pudding on a condom’ was a gross enough mental picture, and you mean to tell me what you wanted to describe was ‘pudding in a condom’?!? You’re one sick puppy” she deftly passed judgement on me.

“No, no–“

“Wait just one sec,” she interrupted my rebuttal and proceeded to open up the car door and wretch lightly.

“You’re lucky we’re at a stoplight,” I said in an attempt to implicitly reassure the Reader that I didn’t marry a woman who would have such poor executive function as to open the door while in a moving vehicle.

“Are you done ye–“

She held up her hand to stop me as she went for one last round:

*gaaaaaaag!*

“You’re such a drama queen,” I commented once she was done with her over-the-top expression of disgust. “And for the record, ‘pudding’ was a typo, too. I guess I got double autocorrected when I hastily made that note.”

“Oh great,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Lemme guess: I’m going to have to wait in suspense to find out what you really meant while you regale whoever will listen with another one of your trademark ‘short-story-long’ tales…”


“Hey, man, can you come over? I’m kinda in a pickle and really was hoping you could do me a favor.”

A little over a year after my ol’ buddy, Phillip K. Ballz, tried to sabotage my post-college career, I got a somewhat desperate sounding phone call from him. We had hung out on occasion since that particular incident–we both still lived in Manhattan after graduating from Kansas State–so it wasn’t completely abnormal for him to blow up my phone. However, I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t his usual laid-back self.

“Yeah, sure thing, amigo. I’ll be right over,” I said, blindly agreeing to whatever.

On the drive over, I mused to myself about the possible nature of his request.

“I probably better stretch my back first thing–it’s still a little tweaked from that one reckless round of disc golf, and I bet he needs my help moving a piano or some other heavy object.”

“Or maybe he needs my help giving Da Vinci, his cat with 6 fingers on each paw, a bath?”

“Oh, the possibilities are endless–but the truth is probably something completely asinine,” I thought as I got out of the car, somehow switching gears from bright-eyed imaginative optimism to overly-honest cynicism in the same mental breath.

“Jeez, there you are! Did you get lost on the way over here? Took you long enough!” PKB greeted me, clearly in the early stages of panic mode.

“I mean, I got a little lost in thought, maybe, but I otherwise came straight over here. What’s up?” I quipped, then inquired.

“Dude, so you know how I’m on probation, right?”

“Yeah, I’m mildly aware that you got into trouble with the law over some stupid recreational drug-related incident. So what about it?” I asked.

“Well, I have to take a certain test every couple months, if you know what I mean.”

“Really? That’s a condition of your parole?”

“My probation, not parole, you jackass. And yes, if I don’t keep my nose clean, then I’ll actually have to serve some time in the county jail,” he said with all seriousness.

“Well, good thing you know they’re going to test you in advance, right?”

His lack of response was starting to unsettle me.

Right?”

The look on his face said it all.

“You really are a proper dipshit, aren’t you? You mean to tell me that your dumb ass knew that you would get thrown in the can if you done and went and smoked a fat blunt…and then you done went and smoked a fat blunt? Un-effing-believable.”

“Look, it was several weeks ago, and it should have been out of my system by now, but when I took a home version of the test, it still showed up. You gotta help a brother out, man!” he begged of me.

“Uh, I don’t know what I could possibly do to help you out of this j–“

“You can pass the test for me, that’s what!” he said, interrupting me.

“Wait, what? Oh. I see…Well, you’re not going make me complicit in your illicit activities! I’m a man of honor and integrity! You can get one of your other heathen buddies to do it, and leave me out of this!”

PKB looked at me like I was dumb as a rock.

“All my other friends are potheads like me–you’re the only friend I have around these parts that hasn’t gotten high in the last two weeks!”

“Oh,” was all I could muster.

You can’t argue with airtight logic like that.

“So…what do you need me to do?” I asked resignedly. I couldn’t stand by and let one of my oldest friends go to jail for a crime he did commit.

“Here you go. And you know where the bathroom is,” he said.

I looked down at the box he had just handed me.

“You gotta be ----- kidding me,” I muttered.1See the note at the end about the alternate ending that splits off at this point. “You could have at least got me some Magnums–I’m a ‘bigger’ guy, if you know what I mean.”

“Dammit, I got my test in less than 40 minutes, so forgive me if I don’t have time for your weird flex. Just go take care of business, will ya?” PKB said impatiently.

I didn’t bother shutting the bathroom door behind me to make sure he could hear everything.

“You know what they say really is true: size does matter…” I hollered across the house.

“Just shut your pie-hole and keep pissing in the condom!” PKB so rudely interrupted my punchline.

Nevertheless, I persisted: “…and you’re in luck cuz’ this big boy’s got a big ol’ bladder…”2As promised, here’s the original/alternate ending before I changed it at the last second.:

“Here you go. And you know where the bathroom is,” he said.

I looked down at the box he had just handed me.

“You gotta be ----- kidding me,” I muttered.

“Make it snappy though–I got my test in 45 minutes.”

“What the hell, Phillip? Cutting it kinda close, aren’t we?” I said somewhat incredulously, as I had no idea how close his head was to the chopping block. “Dammit, last thing I needed was pressure–you know I’m bladder-shy!” I said.

“Just go take care of business, will ya?” PKB said impatiently.

I skulked off to the bathroom, but intentionally left the door open so he could hear me when I loudly proclaimed, “I feel like this is a good time force some of The Jesus on you–and I quote: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life be pissing in a condom for his friends.’ This is literally What Jesus Would Do.”

“So, what’s your point, my dude?” he hollered back at me.

“Well,” I yelled, leaning back so my head was poking out the open bathroom door, “as The Jesus always says: ‘You’re welcome, you ----- dirty hippie…’ “


Content created on: 6/8/9 June 2024 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

How To Be An Unhelpful Friend To An Unemployed Man

4 Min Read

When you’re down on your luck, a helping hand should sound great.

But when your pal’s a dipshit, you have to worry about what you just ate…


“Would you like a cookie or two before you go, my hard-working amigo?”

Phil–not his real name, but not not his real name–proffered me a pair of mealy-looking cookies.

“Sure, why not? I did break a bit of a cold sweat this afternoon, and I sure do love me an…um…oatmeal, maybe?…cookie or two on occasion,” I said, graciously accepting.

Ol’ Phillip K. Ballz (or PKB, as I like to call him in these parts) and I had been good buddies back in high school, but for the most part had lived our own separate college lives–despite going to the same prestigious land-grant university. At this particular point in time, I had just graduated a month or so earlier (sorta), and was in the middle of “finding my way as an adult”. And by “finding my way as an adult,” I mean that I had no idea what kind of career I wanted to pursue, and was in the middle of job hunting just so I could pay my rent and put food in my mouth.

So when we randomly ran into each other and he discovered that I was hard-up for cash, he mentioned that his roommate and landlord, John–a guy I remembered from my freshman year as that one slightly strange hippie dude in the dorm that always wore a train engineer’s hat–was doing some landscaping in their backyard, and would be more than happy to pay me $70 for an afternoon of labor.

Of course I jumped on that meal wagon gravy train in an instant. I mean, what a deal: I would be getting exercise, some late-January sunshine, a wad of cash worth at least 5 weeks of groceries, and–best of all–get to hang out and reconnect with one of my oldest, most trustworthy pals. It was a win-win-win-win situation all around!

And now, after our hard day’s work, he was throwing in some bonus cookies?!? Heck, yes, this day couldn’t get much better!

As I started to chow down, it dawned on me that the baked goods weren’t oatmeal as I had previously surmised.

“Mmmm, say, Phil, what kind of cookies are these?” I said in between bites. “They’re not bad, per se, they just have an interesting texture I just can’t quite place. Somewhere on the spectrum between coconut and papier-mâché, if I had to guess…”

“Oh, those are John’s creation–and they’re full of exactly what you would expect a groovy dude like him to put in there.”

“So…dirt? Leaves? Is this nature-lovin’ mother ----- just collecting random items on the forest floor and throwing it in the oven or what?” I fancied a guess, knowing that it was slightly ridiculous–but that theory couldn’t quite be automatically ruled out, either.

“Nah, man, nothing like that, though he likes to sticky with ingredients on the more ‘natural’ side. You know, honey…seeds…nuts…plant fibers. Granola shit like that.”

“Oh. Ok. Yeah, I guess that tracks. And that is good enough for me. ‘Don’t look a gift house in the mouth’ and what-not, right?”

“Yup,” PKB agreed and then sat and watched intently as I polished off the second cookie along with two more that seemed to magically appear on my plate. “Now, where we? Let’s get back to regaling John and the others with the tales of our shenanigans from our youth…”


“You notice anything different?” PKB asked after getting lost in nostalgia for at least a good 45 minutes.

The question kind of came out of nowhere and caught me by surprise a little bit.

“Ummm…can’t say I really do. Anything different about what, exactly?” I replied, lightly confused.

A slight squeal came out of his lips–which I found rather quite odd–before clarifying.

“Like, do you feel any different, man?”

“Well, I am kinda full for once. You didn’t really have to offer me those 3 extra cookies–though I do immensely appreciate the generosity of you and John,” I said, taking care to express gratitude to my hosts for the 7 cookies had consumed in my state of hunger.

“No, not your stomach–does your head feel any different?” he queried with a cryptic grin.

“Alright, dude, what is up? You’re acting a little suspicious,” I said, cocking an eyebrow.

“They…*snort*…were,” he blurted out in between school-girl-like giggles, “POT COOKIES!”

He then bust out in a full-on fit of laughter after making his big reveal.

“WHAT?!?” I was slightly shocked. “So that’s why they felt like muddy straw in my mouth and had that odd after taste.”

“Ha, hah! I got you high-igh! I got you high-igh!” PKB reveled in having pulled a fast one on me.

“NO. Not funny. Bad friend. Bad friend!” I chastised my favorite dipshit.

“C’mon, you needed to relax and take your mind off of being broke. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Yeah, except that I’m in the middle of job-hunting. And now, if I finally land a job, what am I going to do if they make me take a drug test, huh? DAMMIT, you idiot. I can’t tell them ‘so sorry, but my so-called friend loaded me up on marijuana cookies and was too ----- naive to catch on in time. Please let me have this job anyways.’ Jeez, you’ve really screwed me over on this one, you fricking moron!”

Saying that I was displeased with his little stunt would be a gross understatement.

“Nah, man, you’ll be fine. Plus, there’s nothing you can do about it now anyways, so you might as well sit back and enjoy it.”

I sighed a sigh of resignation. He was right–at least about the fact that I couldn’t ‘un-high’ myself at this point–so I should soak in the time we had together.

“Ok, fine, whatever. But I can only stick around for another 15 minutes or so, and then I’m off to–oh for fuck’s sake, that’s where I have to go tonight?”

“What? What’s tonight?”

“You jackass, you better hope that I don’t say any incredibly stupid shit at Bible study…”


Content created on: 23/25 May 2024 (Thurs/Sat)

Celebrating 25 Years Of The Great 21-Trap-Flap Compromise Of ’98

6 Min Read

What’s that? You’re worried that maybe this ahistoric moment in sports may have scarred me for life?

Just wait until you see the other guy…


“You gotta be kidding me, man! I gave you a hole you could drive a truck through!”

I was one irate pirate, to say the least…

Now, we all know that scholars maintain that I wasn’t exactly what one might call an “athlete with some semblance of coordination.” But that didn’t stop me from playing football for good ol’ Rolla High School, no sirree, Bob!

Well, to be honest, it wasn’t like I really had a choice. With a student body weighing in at a whopping 69 students across 4 grades, just about every male was peer-pressured into joining the football squad so the Pirates could actually field a team. So despite my near complete lack of athletic ability, I was nevertheless involuntarily drafted to play.

And since I had hands of stone and an athletic mind just as dense, I landed on the offensive line–the center to be exact. Coach L figured that apart from the concentration needed to snap the ball to the quarterback or punter without screwing up, that position required the least thinking, and therefore where I could do minimal damage to our offensive efforts.

Heck, by my junior and senior years–when I was actually on the starting squad–I had made the poor life decision to eat so healthy that it was unhealthy, and was pretty light for a lineman (like, a good 20 lbs. lighter than your average corn-fed Kansan lineman). So for the most part, having me on the field was only marginally better than having no center at all and just having the quarterback snap the ball to himself.

In short, I plain sucked at football. And I felt bad for the 3-4 truly athletic guys who had to suffer thanks to me and the rest of the crew of mediocre players.

So, then, pray tell, why was I so pissed off that day in the locker room? Because despite all my sucking, there was one play that I executed like a mothertrucking champion: “21-Trap.” And how did I know I was so dang good at running this so-called 21-Trap? Because I, along with the entire team, was staring at videographic evidence of me actually doing my job right for once.

Just one tiny problem: our running back, an otherwise fine and intelligent athlete, couldn’t grasp the concept that he was supposed to run through the “1” gap.

Oh, what’s that? You’re not familiar with 8-man football plays? Well, fear not, Dear Reader, because I found a little resource to help you out. Please, observe the diagram below, in which the players on my team (on offense) are represented by circles.

In this diagram, I’m the center (black circle) and once I snap the ball, I take a hard right and block the dude trying to rush through the hole that will soon be created by our right guard (“RG”–red circle, and the “2” in “21-Trap” but not the “2” in the diagram) who was “pulling” left behind me and “trapping” whatever schlub he first ran into. And the result of this should be a big-ass gap where the left guard (“LG”, the “1” in “21-Trap”, but not the “1” in the diagram) was before he blocked to the right like me.

So now, our running back (the yellow “2” in the diagram)–who will remain mostly anonymous–had it easy: our running back, who I shall only call “Double-B” (who, incidentally, was the brother of “Double-D”, of Shotgun Wedding infamy), just had to run slightly left and directly on through that hole and, more often than not, right into the end zone.

But three games into the season, and what did every game tape show? They all showed the same dang thing: RG pulling left, LG and me blocking hard right, and Double-B…absolutely not running through the huge fricking patch of amber waves of grain in the 1-Gap. Instead, homeboy would do something like this:

Now, it doesn’t take a wild imagination to realize that about 1.5 seconds after the ball is snapped, the black circle and the yellow “2” circle will be occupying the same physical space. So is it really a surprise to hear something like this:

“STOP GETTING IN MY WAY!”

Yes, that’s right, upon watching the game tape, Double-B had the, um, ‘footballs’ to yell at me. So I had to set the record straight.

You stop running into me, you dumb jock! The “1” gap is on the LEFT…you know, where the GAPING HOLE in the line is,” I retorted. “I’m tired of being the one to receive the credit for the tackle just because you don’t know how to count to 3. Do you know how embarrassing it is for the announcer to give me credit for doing the other teams job? You’re making me look like a ----- moron out there…”


“Holy sheets, dude, that is one gaping hole!” Phillip K. Ballz, my best friend and star tight end on the football team, exclaimed as we trotted off the field after failing once again to make into the end zone against those pesky Satanta Indians.

“Thanks..I guess. But you meant to say ‘that was one gaping hole’, right? Yet another gaping hole that our ol’ dipsh*t Double-B didn’t have the sense to run through…” I muttered in disgust.

“No, man, I mean your elbow…you got a flap of skin flowing in the breeze and you’re gushing blood everywhere!”

I looked at my right elbow, which was a little sore after the full force of the barrelling train we called Double-B smacked into it during–you guessed it–21-Trap.

I gasped lightly in horror at the sight of an almost entirely red forearm.

“Darn you, Double-B! Darn you to heck!” I shouted as I shook my fists–one pink and dry and the other one sanguine and bloody–into the air.

“Dabnabbit, BJ, stop being such a drama queen!” I could literally hear Coach L’s eyes rolling behind me. I turned around toward him to reveal my bloodied arm, channeling my inner Carrie.

Coach L was non-plussed.

“Put a BandAid (TM) on that and get your lily-white ass back in there! I need you to at least pretend to play defense…”


“Bum Ba-dum Bum Bum Bum Bum!”

The photographer handling my senior pictures cocked her head at me quizzically.

“Huh?!?”

“You know, the commercial1Okay, so I’m pretty sure this commercial wasn’t out back in 1998; I openly admit I am using it here for comedic effect.…’We are Farmers, Bum Ba-dum Bum Bum Bum Bum!’ ” I replied.

“The insurance company? Okay…”

“You asked me about the BandAid (TM) covering half my right arm that you are going to have figure out ways to strategically cover up, right?”

“Yeah…and…? I’m not making the connection here,” she said, with a lost look in her eyes.

“Ok, I admit that it’s a bit of a stretch…you see, my family and I are a bunch of farmers, and therefore very ironically, don’t have health insurance to cover stitches when you lose half the flesh on your elbow playing football. Yup…it’s just superglue, BandAid (TM), and bit of Duck Tape holding me together,” I regaled her.

“Oooh…maybe we shouldn’t cover that up after all. It’s like a badge of honor showing off your raw masculinity while playing a man’s-man’s sport–“

I cut her off before she could make the situation any more awkward.

“A teammate did this to me. I caught some friendly fire during the one play that I know how to run…which happens to be the one play where he cockily thinks he knows where he’s supposed to go, but actually doesn’t,” I explained.

“Oh,” she murmurred quietly, “I see. So are you, like, holding a grudge or something? You sound pretty bitter…like this is something you would still be ranting about 25 years later…”

“What? Who me? Do I look like the type of guy who would let something like some mild physical disfigurment fester for a quarter of century and then finally air his grievances in a semi-public forum? Pfft! Please!” I said dismissively.

“Ok, I believe you. But then tell me this: how are you emotionally handling this betrayal then?” she asked gently, as if this had somehow become a therapy session instead of a photoshoot.

“Oh that’s easy. With my incredibly poor blocking abilities up front on the line, my dude gets the living sh*t knocked out of him just about every other play. By my calculations, they guy’ll have CTE by the end of the season. So it all basically evens out.”

“Really? You think long-term brain injury and a barely noticable scar on your elbow are roughly equivalent?” she asked humbly-yet-increduously.

“Look, that butthead ruined my senior pics, so no, I ain’t never letting that sh*t go…”


Content created on: 14/15 October 2023 (Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

But Dad! I’ll Never Get Sick And Tired Of Being Unique!

7 Min Read

You ever wonder why you fought with your dad so much when you were a teen?

Oh, if only we could ever get to the root of it…


“Dammit, son, not again…again! You’re an embarrassment to all the farmers of Morton County…dear lord, why me?!? Why am I stuck with the kid who can’t appreciate his G0d-given beautiful blonde hair?”

Honestly, I’m not sure how I was expecting Dad to react when I unveiled my latest hairstyle featuring half-red/half-black on top, with natural sun-bleached blonde on the bottom.

I mean, I was doing it for the proverbial sh*ts and giggles during an uncharacteristically boring stretch of my final summer on the farm before college. Yes, yes, you remember that summer right? The Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99? Yeah, that one. This was the product of the sole week that defied one of our mantras of that summer, “Never a dull moment!”

Ol’ Papa Bob, on the other hand, didn’t seem to appreciate neither the “sh*ts” nor the “giggles” aspects of the situation. In retrospect, I would venture to say he seemed a little tired of my version of teenage angst playing out as me running around the country side looking like a techni-color jackass.

“Tired?” you ask? Oh, yes, this wasn’t the first time him and I danced this little dance…


“Whoa! Who’s the new guy?!? Seems kinda odd, ya know? Like, who transfers high schools in the middle of November?”

“I can hear you–I’m standing right here!” I reminded my classmates as they murmured about me from a few lockers down.

“Wait…what?!? I mean, Who?!?” was the inevitable reply each time, as their eyes told them one thing, yet their ears told them something completely different.

“‘Tis I, the Noble and Beloved Junior Class President Runner-Up!” I would reply every time.

“The heck is going on here…wait…can it be? BJ, is that you? What in the tarnation did you do to yourself?!?”

Honestly, when I dyed my hair black on a lark, I didn’t anticipate the most enjoyable benefit of doing so: confusing the living ----- out of everyone I know, and getting to watch it play out in real time as they look me directly in the face and slowly but surely put the pieces together.

“Uh, yeah, so I thought I would try something new and dyed my hair black. What do you think?”

“I think you look like a totally different person…and also, damn, son, I never realized you had such thick, bushy caterpillars for eyebrows. But, hey, props to you for really committing to the part and dying them as well…”

“Yeah…I didn’t realize my eyebrows wear so bushy either, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have pulled this stunt…”

Speaking of ‘stunts’, you probably already guess that my Diddy was none too plussed to come home from a hard day out in the fields to find that his son had conned his stepmother into letting him make use of her leftover black hair dye.

“Oopsies! Well, I guess were stuck waiting for it to grow out now!” was logic that didn’t do me any favors, nor managed to make him any less irate.

Quick side note here: ‘Daisy’–the one who supplied me with the dye and applied it–wasn’t really upset with me, in part because she had as much a hand in it as I did. Well, she wasn’t upset until she had one of her rolls of film developed and found that I had taken the liberty of taking a black-headed selfie with her camera.

How did I discover this factoid? I totally bet you’re wondering that right now, right? Well, I’ll tell you how: once when I borrowed her sweet, sweet Eagle Vision, I discovered torn up bits of something in that part of the door you pull on to shut it. I soon realized it was that one selfie I had totally forgot I had taken. Not to let my effort to be in vain, I collected all 30-40 tiny pieces, and successfully reconstructed the picture, holding them all together with masking tape on the back. In fact, I probably still have that trophy picture to this very day…

But I digress…

Later that spring…

“Oh happy day! Our spring school portraits are in!” all of us students exclaimed, though we were all still unsure of why we had school pictures taken again despite knowing full well that the ones they took in the fall would be the ones used in the yearbook.

“Oooh, that’s unfortunate, buddy,” one of my random classmates commented as the looked at my pictures over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I suppose I didn’t put much forethought into what I would look like several months after dying my hair black…”

“Don’t worry,” they half-assedly tried to reassure me, “I’m sure you’re dad will still proudly distribute these regal pictures of you to all your family members. Even if you look like a ----- skunk…”


“Stone Temple Pilots are playing in Amarillo?!? Tonight?!? Phillip K. Ballz, you best not be yanking my chain, ya hear?”

“Nah, man, I swear I’m shootin’ straight and true–do you think your dad would take us?” Ol’ PKB wistfully inquired with his trademark half-assed Texas accent.

“I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot…I’ll get right on it!” I said with measured optimism.

Seeing as how it was the last day of my Sophomore year of high school, and was about to head off to live in sunny Southern California with my mom for the summer, I felt there was a tiny glimmer of hope that Dad would at least be open to taking us two dumbasses 2-1/2 hours due south to see a band he had never heard of play…right?

Okay, actually I wasn’t that optimistic at all, so you can bet your buns that I was quite surprised when he said he would take us–“If we can score some tickets, that is,” he said.

“Holy sh*t! He said ‘yes–contingent upon the logistics working out!’ Can you believe it?!?” Yup…I’m pretty sure that’s how I shared the good news with PKB.

“Well, hot dang! I better pack my bag–the concert starts in like, 4 hours, right?”

“Oh, right, yeah, I guess we better start heading that way whether we have tickets or not…”

Now, friends, I need to remind you that this tale is taking place in 1997, a good few years before Ticketmaster started ruining the experience of live music for concert-goers all across this fine nation. So if one wanted tickets to a concert, then most likely you would have to call up the box office and see if they had any available.

Also, cell phones weren’t ubiquitous back then, and even if you were lucky enough to have one of those bag-phones in your car, one surely couldn’t afford to waste their precious 45-minute monthly allotment on hold with the Amarillo Civic Center.1I did my homework, and the internets verified my memory of this whole ordeal: https://www.setlist.fm/stats/concert-map/stone-temple-pilots-bd6b9ee.html?year=1997.

Somehow, these factors, combined with the fact that the only ride me and PKB had was Peppermint Paddy–my less-than-reliable red-and-white pickup whom you might remember from this story and it’s sequel–ended up with us following this convoluted plan as follows:

Step One: My adult sister, Denise, who lived in Amarillo, would try calling the venue to see if she could get us tickets. I’m not sure if somebody thought that her being physically closer might give us a better chance, or what the logic was here. I suppose it would be cheaper for her to be on hold, since it would be a local call…and I guess she would be stationary after all, unlike the rest of us, thus allowing her to make the call in the first place.

Step Two: Dad would get cleaned up after a half-day farming in the dusty-ass fields of Kansas, and would then hop in Daisy’s much more reliable–and very, very, sweet–Eagle Vision, and then proceed to our rendezvous locale: the metropolis of Goodwell, Oklahoma, about 45 minutes into the route to Amarillo.

Step Two: Meanwhile, PKB and I would pack up in Peppermint Paddy and putt down the road to Goodwell as well…and for the life of me, I don’t remember why we all didn’t all just drive together. But we didn’t.

Step Three: Once at Goodwell, Dad would call Denise from the payphone of the lone convenience store in town, to see if we had tickets or not.

Step Four: The three of us would then proceed to Amarillo in the Eagle Vision, arriving just in time to rock out to the sweet grungy vocals of a fuschia-headed Scott Weiland & Co…

Um…Step Four of course was the contingency, depending on Step Three to come through with tickets for us.

Well, as you probably have guessed by now, this is not the story of “that one time I saw STP live.” Nope, nope, nope. The one time the Universe shines kindly on me, in whence Dad actually agrees to one of our dubious schemes, it has to turn right around and deny us with a sold out show.

Or, as Hercules would say:

“Welp, what do we do now, Dad?” I inquired, kicking stray rocks in that Goodwellian parking lot.

“Well, boys, I need to go take care of some more farmy-type stuff while I have the daylight, I ‘spose…you got your truck, so go do whatever you want for the rest of the afternoon, and I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Whatever I want, you say? Hmmm…interesting…”

“Ok, see you later, Farmer Bob!” unlike me, PKB wasn’t one to mince words.

Well, I’ll spare you the details (I mean, haven’t you suffered enough already?), but let’s just say, yadda yadda ya, and that’s how I ended up in a McDonald’s bathroom in Guymon, Oklahoma, getting my hair dyed a not-as-bright-fuschia-as-a-grungy-sixteen-year-old-would-like by his best friend.

Later that evening…

“What in the funk?!? Dammit, son, why is your hair pink?” my old man demanded to know.

“It’s fuschia, Dad. Or at least it was supposed to be…”

“Oh, your ass is going to be fuschia once I get done bustin’ it! Dammit, boy, what’s wrong with you?”

“Look, I’ll be leaving for California in a few days, so you won’t have to worry about the corn or the wheat or some random cows seeing you with a pink-headed boy in your pickup, heaven forbid…”

Later that summer…

“Welp, here I am at the Amarillo airport to pick up my youngest child…I hope he has literally outgrown that pink hair of his…” Dad no doubt thought to himself as he waited at my gate–remember when you could still do that?–ever so patiently.

“‘Tis I, the Noble and Beloved Son!” I proclaimed when I finally stepped off the plane.

Dad just stood there for a moment, taking in the sight of my hair, which by now had grown out about an inch and a half of blonde roots. Oh, yeah, and that half inch of pink hair I had at the beginning of summer? That was now a half inch of orange tips, thanks to the SoCal sunshine.

Dad just buried his face in his hand.

“Cheeses H. Crikes,2Actually, he would have said something more like “Jesus H. Christ” but I’m trying to keep this story Mom-friendly somehow you look even dumber now, son…”


The point of the story is that another fantastic perk of being blonde–male or female–is that you have a blank canvas right there! Sitting on top of your ol’ noggin’! Just waiting for Teenage You to paint a picture for all the world to see! One that is an expression of your True Self, your Inner Soul!

Or, as in my case, you can vandalize it with a spray-painted message to your loving father that simply says “Suck it, Dad…”


Content created on: 27/28/29 January 2023 (Fri/Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Whoever Said Nicknames Were Supposed To Make You Feel Special?

4 Min Read

What?!? A special name just for me???

Oh, wait…that kind of ‘special’…


“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”

In the beginning, those words were music to my ears. You see, in high school I lived on a farm a few miles outside of our local raging metropolis, Rolla–no, not the one in Missouri, but rather it’s lesser-known red-headed stepbrother in Kansas. And for quite some time I didn’t have my own transportation, so just walking or driving to a friend’s house wasn’t an option at my disposal.

So you could imagine that nothing could break my serial sense of boredom quite like those blessed words, “Bee-Yhey! Telefono!” That, my friend, was the sound of my bestie, Phillip K. Ballz (aka PKB) blowing up our home phone,1This was circa 1996 after all, before I could ever dream of having my very own cellphone. perhaps offering to come pick me up in his mom’s forest-green Ford Explorer so we could go back and kick it at his place in town.

“But, why the, uh, ‘unique phrasing’?” you are indubitably asking the screen of your mobile device.

Well, I’m glad you asked! My dearest stepmother, “Daisy”, was Mexican, and despite living in the U.S. for at least 10 years and having mastered the English language, she never really got around to figuring out how to master the pronunciation of my commonly accepted moniker, “B.J.” As they say here in the South, “bless her soul.”

Anyways, every time ol’ PKB or anyone else called for me and she answered, the silence of our double-wide trailer would soon be broken by broken-sounding English reverberating off every wood-paneled wall in the place:

“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”

Somebody calling just for little ol’ me?!? I feel so special…


“BEE-HEY, TELEFONO!”

Well, as it turns out, that phrase, when heard muffled on the other end of the phone line, can be music to other people’s ears as well.

It didn’t take long before I found out that my dearest dipshit, PKB, found this to be comedic gold and soon was using it publicly in our high school, whether referencing me directly or indirectly. And high schoolers being the immature bunch of dumb-asses that high schoolers tend to be, it wasn’t long for this very much unwanted moniker spread like wildfire through the hallowed halls of Rolla High School.

Sometimes, I got the short version lobbed in my direction–“Bee-Yay!”, “Bee-Hay!”, “Bee-Yhey!”–no matter what ‘flavor’ of my newfound nick-nickname my fellow students preferred, they were always sure to include the very important “!” Well, technically, if this were a comic book, their speech bubbles would need to include the bonus upside Spanish exclamation mark–aka el signo de apertura de exclamación:2https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/what-is-the-upside-down-exclamation-point *ahem* ¡Bee-Yhey!

Other times, when my cohort of jackasses were feeling particularly ornery, I might be lucky enough for them to include my nick-last name: “¡Bee-Yhey! ¡Telefono!

Usually, referring to someone and including their last name would be a sign of respect. This was not one of those times.

In fact, The Legend of ¡Bee-Hey! got so out of hand that in our Sophomore English class, when tasked write and illustrate a children’s book, the Real ¡Bee-Hey! chose to write about a substance-abusing (but very sanguine3I’m using definition #3 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sanguine.) extraterrestrial. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the classroom, my brother-from-another–my classmate with whom I not only shared a first name, but also a birthday–ol’ Roberto chose to immortalize ¡Bee-Hey! for generations to come.

Did he write of tales of a dashing and debonair young man, the kind that men want to be and women want to be with? Were we regaled with all the adventures and conquests of a man in a foreign land who, like Cher or Beyonce, had a last name but never needed it? Are millennials worldwide indoctrinated from childhood with strange-yet-true stories that someone only as special as my alter ego could generate?

Nope, not so much. But at least Roberto managed to nail that “special” part on the head. A little too hard actually: this version of ¡Bee-Hey! appeared to suffer from a brain injury or some other developmental issue. I.e. he was “special” in all the ways one wouldn’t want to be.

Por ejemplo, did this ¡Bee-Hey! have a modestly successfully career as a published physicist/neuroscientist? No, but his employment was almost as illustrious, with him tackling the challenging task no one else at the local restaurant would even dare think of attempting: sorting out the clean forks and knives after they were ran through the industrial dishwasher.

But fortunately, ¡Bee-Hey! was blissfully obliviously to his station in life, and never once did that smiling idiot caricature of me ever cynically wonder” ¿Cómo se dice en English ‘chinga mi vida’?”4Mother, if you’re reading this, please don’t bother running that through Google translate. This, in stark, stark contrast to the real-life ¡Bee-Hey!


The irony of all this is that occasionally I find myself envious of ¡Bee-Hey!’s unburdened and uncomplicated life. It’s taken awhile, but I have slowly come to embrace my inner idiot–er, I mean ‘simpleton’–and I guess you could say the point of the story is: take ownership of whatever it is that makes you “special.”–even if some of things aren’t exactly the most flattering.

Oh, and there’s definitely an upside to this naive optimism: I get to enjoy a little chuckle to myself in those very special moments when I have the pleasure of making a new acquaintance with a native Spanish speaker.

You know…that moment when I get to explain to them that “my name is Robert, but I go by ‘B.J.’,” and without fail, they repeat back to me “¿Bee-Yhey?”

*snort*

And always, also without fail, I can’t help but mentally respond with “That would be Dr. ¡Bee-Hey! ¡Telefono!, PhD to you, buen señor or señorita…”


Content created on: 19 August 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

A Special Message For The Man Who Demands A Refund

4 Min Read

You want your money back, Dad?

That’s funny, cuz I’m the one getting short-changed here…


“Karma is a biscuit–“

Wait. That doesn’t sound quite right…

Oh, yeah, that’s right…what the proverbial “they” say is actually ‘karma is a b*tch’, but for some reason we don’t use that ‘b’ word in these parts of the internets…I guess you get the lame ‘biscuit’ instead when one indecisively attempts to be politically correct and/or non-misogynistic, yet still wants to spit out certain quotes that reference colloquialisms involving female dogs.

Anywho…so y’all know what I mean when I say ‘karma is a biscuit,’ then, right?

*wink, wink*

Well, if you’re wondering why I bring up the concept of karma–or as we white appropriatin’ folk say, “what goes around comes around”–may I turn your attention to Exhibit B: aka last week’s tale about my first vehicle, Peppermint Paddy.

Seriously, if you haven’t read it yet, take a few moments to go back and enjoy it. Otherwise the rest of this won’t make as much sense. Ya really gotta get the full context to appreciate it, ya know?

So…you read it, right? Sure…sure you did.

Just in case you maybe didn’t, the brief summary is that my wonderful father gave me a gently used farm truck for my first vehicle in high school. When the starter went out and when, many weeks later, he decided to get around to fixing it, what appeared to be yet another act of parental altruism just turned out to be a ruse to get free labor out of me and my friends. And then he appropriated my truck for his own purposes. Yup…that sounds about white–er, I mean ‘right’.

But even if you didn’t read all of the story, at least you read the punchline at the end right, so I don’t have to remind you how it all ended.

Yes, yes, you already knew that the final zinger was “Why, that son of a biscuit…”


So now that you’re all caught up, you surely understand that I couldn’t help but go full-on schadenfreude when that very same starter we replaced in last week’s episode lasted him…wait for it…a whole whopping 2-and-a-quarter days before going kaput.

Not being one to tolerate any crappy craftsmanship unless it was his own, Dad promptly pulled the busted starter out (well, he made me pull it out, actually) and marched right on down to the local Co-op–which, in no relevance to this story but should be noted anyways, was managed by the dad of none other than my buddy from the original Peppermint Paddy fiasco, Phillip K. Ballz–and demanded an exchange for the defective part they had sold him.

Now, PKB’s dad, being an honest businessman (unlike some other dads in this story *ahem*), obliged and promptly replaced the now-completely-ruined starter with a brand new one, a $79 value (that’s $143.87 in 2022 dollars, you know).

And though it was April by this point in time, it quickly started to feel much more like Groundhog Day. Not the holiday itself, but the 1993 Bill Murray sci-fi comedy about living the same ----- day over and over.

After that second starter suffered the same suspicious fate as the first, Dad marched once again back down to the Co-op and gave them an earful about selling such cheap parts…then promptly asked for another exchange, because, well, we got to keep the family business in business, and fixing his own ----- truck still wasn’t an option.

“What are the odds?!? Either that whole dang factory is just pumping out worthless starters, or–more likely–they’re intentionally sending all their rejects to me!” Dad said after demanding an exchange for the fifth starter that somehow had mysteriously broke within two uses.

The whole time I was shaking my head and laughing at the same time. Like, how was Dad failing to grasp Occam’s Razor: “The simplest explanation is most often the right one”? No, instead the man was literally coming up with highly, highly improbable conspiracy theories instead of facing the cold hard truth that was staring him in the face.

Like, Dude, maybe–just maybe–it’s not the five–no, now six–starters that are what’s broken. Perhaps you should take Peppermint Paddy back to the wheat field where you found her and ask it for a refund.

The funny thing is you’d actually get that refund, because, ya know, you spent a whopping $0 on it.

Anyways, the whole literal and metaphorical situation couldn’t help but make me think of a particular “inspirational” poster I once saw at a Hot Topic in the mall.

Dad, this very special Father’s Day point of the story goes out to you (RIP, Papa Bob):

And you know what? In the end I find that I love you all the more for all that rascally dysfunction you breathed into my life.

Why? Because you taught me that when it comes to being a father, there is nothing more important than being “a man, a character.”

*checks notes*

Oh, wait. Oh, fork me. That was supposed to be “a man of character.”

Son of a biscuit


Speaking of which, Happy Father’s Day to all you dirty sons of biscuits out there!

Go ahead–sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of the fruits of your loin’s labor!


Content created on: 10/11/17 June (Fri/Sat/Fri)

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