I Can't Make This Shit Up

 

Shiver Me Timbers

 

The big joke between my wife and I since we got back from vacation is that when people ask we say, "we went to the shore but didn't go in the ocean."

And it's true.

The water was freakin' cold.

Arctic cold.

Frigid you might say.

Somewhere in the high 50s/low 60s.

But that didn't stop this dude from tuning blue in the name of fun.

I think I went in twice in 10 days and only know am I starting to feel my balls and the tips of my toes again.

I think a road trip to Wrightsville might be on deck for Saturday.

The current water temp there is 79...

I Didn't Even Take This Picture

 

But I totally dig it.

Donut Burgers

 

Getting donuts on Sunday after mass is a Barbera family tradition that goes back as far as I can remember.

So when I was at the beach and I didn't see my brother around after mass on Sunday morning, my nephew Michael told me he went to get donuts.

"Creme donuts," he said.
"Ever had 'em?"

"Yeah I've had creme donuts before," I told him.

"But these have special creme," he said.

"Oh, you mean the kind that makes your teeth itch?" I said.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It's a Pop Pop term," I said and explained how my dad uses that term for things that are sweet.

My brother and sister-in-law returned, put the donut box on the table and then I opened it up.

Sweet jesus.

Would you look at those things!

My nephew referred to them as "donut burgers" because life for him is full of Simpsonalia.

These of course, should not be confused with these donut burgers which couldn't possibly be more disgusting.

Although I bet Homer would eat one.

R'n'R Beach

 

A Sea Isle City Sunset

 

Technically, it's probably Townsends Inlet.

The Cowtown Cowboy

 

Once you get over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, you hang a right on 40 and head east to the beach towns.

There's not much to see during this stretch except endless rows of corn or maybe the Jersey Devil which is known to inhabit the Pine Barrens of south Jersey.

And then there's Cowtown.

When I think of Jersey, rodeos don't immediately come to mind.

Nope, more like The Boss or Yo La Tengo maybe some Silver Queen corn or Maxwells in Hoboken.

I definitely don't think of cowboys and rodeos.

Cowtown has always intrigued me.

We should have stopped.

I always want to stop but am always too eager to get to the shore.

You'll know you are in Cowtown when you see the cowboy.

Of course it came up on us sooner than I expected and what with the digital camera taking forever to boot up and my wife's lead foot, I managed to only capture a sliver.

But I like the sliver.

Because that's just one of my patented typos away from silver.

And silver always makes me think of this junkie cowboy chestnut...

Weeeee!

 

Shortly after experiencing the joy that was the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, my kids lost their bridge virginity on this bad boy.

It's the world's longest twin suspension bridge and going over it, according to my 5-year-old, was like a ride at the NC Sate Fair.

I Heart Baltimore

 

Most of our family trips involved a direct line to three places: North Topsail Beach, cabins in Ashe county or going home.

Going west or east in the state of North Carolina, there's not much to see. Sure on the way to the mountains to get to pass by Winston-Salem which at least gives the kids something to look at besides trees and going east you get, well, you get to see not much of anything.

So when we saddled up to do vacation this year, the kids were jazzed at the prospect of staring off out their windows at something else.

They screamed when we entered the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore. They've heard the stories for years about Baltimore from my wife and I. Both of us went to school at Towson University which is located north of Baltimore.

I used to ride my mountain bike down Charles Street into the city and people watch at the Inner Harbor or maybe take a trip to the seedy side of town.

When were were courting, you could often find my wife and I seeing hair metal bands at Hammerjacks . I think we saw Slayer there. I remember I almost got thrown over the balcony's railing because apparently where I was standing had good sight lines and some metal head wanted that spot.

And of course they had heard many (censored versions) of rugby tales over the years that involve the Charm City.

So when we saw the city's skyline on the horizon with the harbor to the right of us, we debriefed the boys that the tunnel was a-coming.

If you find yourself with some time on your hands in Baltimore, don't forget to get yourself some pie from Rodney.

Souvenirs

What do you like to bring back from your family vacation?

T-shirts from the boardwalk?

Check.

Sea shells combed from the sea shore?

Check.

Sand in your car?

Check.

This year we decided to add something else to the fold: head lice.

Yeah.

Fuck me.

At one point during our stay at the Jersey Shore my son complained about an itchy scalp and how he had found a bug in his hair but I chalked it up to sand and told him to wash is hair a little better.

But after that I noticed he kept scratching his hair behind his ear like a dog.

Wednesday we took the ferry from Jersey to Delaware and made our way to Ocean City, Maryland, to see the in-laws. We crashed early and got up the next day and hit the boardwalk so the kids could do the whole skeeball-in-the-arcade and rides thing (which every kid must experience once in his lifetime) and then retreated to the condo to rest.

My wife took a nap while I entertained the kids by initiating some PS2 because even though me and the old lady were bushed, the kids took a cat nap in the car on the way back.

At some point Spencer scratched his hair again and pulled out a bug.

"Here," he said.
"These are the bugs I have been finding," he said.

It was as big as a grain of rice.

I took the bug into the bathroom, called my wife and mother-in-law in and we all looked at it and said, "head lice."

Then the mad scramble to delouse his ass began.

My wife darted off to CVS and purchased some lice killing shampoo. When she washed out his hair a good 60 to 75 adult lice floated down the drain. [The wife said I was exaggerating and should reduce the number in half - ed.]

After the shampoo (i.e. a pesticide) you are required to take a fine-tooth comb and comb out every possible strand of hair to remove the bug... only my son has a mop of hair.

It was painfully clear that he needed a haircut as we're talking total infestation.

And he acted like Samson.

I called Jersey and gave them the news but as we looked deeper into the how, why and where of it all it became painfully obvious that he probably had them before we left and that he probably had them for awhile.

The life cycle of head lice is about 40 days and you can't see an adult until after about 20 days.

Ad therein lies the psychological disturbance of it all: they could be everywhere.

Beds, blankets... you name it.

I've heard of people having head lice but never has the full scope of it been communicated to me: the three-times-a-day combing of hair to find nits and nymphs, the endless washing/drying everyday of everything your head has touched, and the overall pain in the ass of at least seven to ten days combating it just to wait and see if you have got them all.

Re-infestation is common.

So for the last day we have been delousing the homestead, the kids and ourselves.

What a way to end your vacation.

Enough already.

Really.

Somebody bring the good news, I've had enough of the bad...

Just Got Back...

... from a very long vacation which involved beaches and shores, bridges and tunnels, and even a bridge-tunnel.

Until I can pull my head out of the sand, let's take a look back at previous summers had here at the House of G.

In 2005, it was all I could do just to survive the summer with two kids, my oldest on the brink of kindergarten.

By 2006, summer was far more enjoyable but it took me weeks to post about it. Expect the same this year.

Last year, I was quicker on posting about my vacation exploits, but still wrestled with the art of Blogger and its pic-posting cousin Picasa.

Vitaminenergy Colon Cleansing

A few weekends ago, Father's Day to be exact, I attended a 3-on-3 soccer tournament that my 8-year-old son played in.

This was one of those full scale tourneys with all kinds of sponsorship tents dotting the landscape.

As is par for the course in these situations, free swag was to be had just about anywhere and everywhere and I decided that since I was up at the crack of dawn and had to work later in the day, that I would try a Vitaminenergy drink.

I'm no stranger to energy drinks.

Years ago when they first entered the market one of my newspaper colleagues and I decided we'd do a little "research" and sample these new beverages for a possible story.

At the time, none of them really grabbed a hold of me but if I had no access to coffee and needed a eye-opening jolt, I'd probably reach for a Red Bull.

Anyway, I'd had the vitaminwaters before - and although I wouldn't recommend them to anybody - I figured since I was in the middle of nowhere that their version of the energy drink would suffice in the pinch that I was in.

Pinch.

Remember that word.

When my wife saw that I had a cold beverage she asked for a sip and then asked where I got it. I told her they were free and pointed her to the company's tent. We both downed our drinks while waiting for my son's team to collect their medals.

They had won the tournament in a shootout with my son making the winning goal.

Talk about feeling some serious dad pride... or maybe it was the drink I just consumed.

At some point during the 45 minute ride home my bowels started to alert themselves to me that they needed attention. But unlike coffee and its shit-conducing factor, this wave quickly appeared to be one that I wasn't going to be able to hold back for very long (but I did make it home).

Once we arrived home I dashed in the door and made a bee line to the bathroom. As soon as I got my shorts down and relaxed did the stream of shit start. Actually, calling it "shit" would be a mistake as this was more like I turned on the faucet that my anus does indeed NOT have and listened to myself pee out my ass.

That's about the only way to explain it: I was peeing out my ass.

Phew.

Glad that that was over, I made my way to the couch to recover only to hear my wife go into the bathroom.

I spent the next several hours peeing out my ass much to my dismay, each time thinking, "I can't possible have any more in there can I?" and then proved wrong by my bowel-spitting butt.

I was about two shakes of a fig tree away from calling off work but I needed the money (because of that damn car thing) and decided to be a trooper and head off to work.

It probably was a good thing because it forced me to not think about my pissing anus as well as being a good exercise in butt clenching.

Not only could I not think about even touching food, just looking at water conjured up memories of peeing out my ass. Yet it was almost one hundred degrees and I was working outside with visions of dehydration dancing in my head.

Alas, I made it out of my shift alive and without having to spray my colon into some stranger's tiolet and I did choke down some carbs as we cleaned up.

The next day my wife said she had the same problem and we both deducted that it had to have been a result of those drinks.

Vitaminenergy... don't say I didn't warn you.

When You Can Truly Be Self-Referential

So I went back through my archives and found that in the summers of '05 and '06 I barely had the time, energy or inclination to post what with having to deal with the two boys 24/7.

Last year around this time, I was still in recovery mode from having hernia surgery. I remember I watched a lot of movies, mostly in the middle of the night after the pain meds wore off and I found myself wide awake in a silent, somber house with nothing else to do.

I would lay on the couch, sit the lap top on my chest, plug in some headphones and satisfy my film watching desires. But one thing that was increasingly obvious was that I was beginning to go completely bat shit crazy from being tethered to the house.

Then, much like now, the family vacation is on the horizon and I can smell the ocean air already.

This year we are switching it up a bit and taking the kids to the beaches of our youth.

Maybe we'll find the mighty conch again.

Or maybe some shark's teeth.

But despite my enthusiasm to show the kids what beach life was like for me or what it was like for my wife, I will undoubtedly miss North Topsail this year...

Wow

How come nobody told me about this movie?

Squirrels: Friend Or Foe?

I was turning into my neighborhood the other day when a squirrel ran across the street in front of my car so I stomped on the brakes to let the little fella get passed.

As I was about to push down on the accelerator, another squirrel appeared from the brush and made the dash across the street only he was followed by another one , two, three, four, five, six... SEVEN... EIGHT!

That's right eight friggin' squirrels all ran across the street in one lot.

I feared they might be copycat rodents trying to take a page out of the book these Russians wrote.

But then I remembered Charlie from last summer and I can't imagine that guy wilding about the 'hood.

I find the things a mild nuisance, especially when they are looting the bird seed from my feeders or trying to burrow into my attic's crawl space, but for the most part I feel I have a harmonious relationship with those guys.

But I have found that most people either love them or hate them.

How about you?

Chlorine, Sunscreen and Steve Miller

The smell of those three combined will always and forever conjure up memories of my days as a pool boy.

No shit.

I was a pool boy at the Beverly Hilton back in the early '90s.

At the time, I sort of hated my job.

You see I moved to Los Angeles to get into the film business but after a short foray doing p.a. work I landed a gig being a gopher-turned-copywriter. The office was full of characters but this isn't a post about working at Davis*Glick.

After I left that job I bounce around doing more p.a. work and even had a stint working as a fact checker and proofreader at Sassy's little bro publication Dirt before finding myself as a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles - which quite possibly could have been the most interestingly shitty job I've ever worked.

Looking to get out of the messenger racket, I skipped work one day and applied for a job as a valet parking attendant at the Beverly Hilton. I had spent semester breaks and summer vacations as a car courier in the Metro DC area driving various makes of cars along the way. After I filled out my application I sat in the Human Resources office for an interview in which I was politely declined that position because of my inexperience driving Bentleys and Rolls Royces.

The next day when I got home from 10 hours in the saddle, there was a message on my answering machine which asked if I wanted to be a pool attendant.

I said yes.

My first day on the job I found out the hotel was the place Heidi Fleiss got busted.

I soon would discover that the place was ground zero for a lot of things.

The hotel was owned and operated by Merv Griffin and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that Merv liked to eat pool side everyday and that he had a batch of CDs that you were required to put in rotation on a daily basis. Two that I remember were Steve Miller's Greatest Hits 1974-1978 and Elton John's Greatest Hits 1976-1986. And if you didn't have these CDs in rotation or had switched them out for something else (I once brought in Dinosaur Jr.), you would get a visit from management.

Management hated me because they thought I had the best job in the world because all I did was hang around the pool all day. That's because they weren't there in the early morning to see me take the better part of two hours to clean the tiles, sweep the deck and vacuum the Olympic-sized pool.

I also had to clean the fountain.

And of course service the need of every douchebag who stayed at the pool from celebrities and wanna-be celebrities to contestants on one of the many shows Merv created or produced.

Oh and toss in some soccer hooligans.

A few months into the job it was obvious why I had gotten hired: I was white... and Merv liked boys. But there was a hitch at the onset - I had a tattoo on my calf. I'll never forget the hilarity at having to bandage up my calf every morning for two weeks before I finally convinced the assistant managed that a sore that doesn't heal is far more offensive than a tattoo on the calf of a young man working at a pool in Beverly Hills.

One day while I was sweeping the deck of the ever present flower pedals, I heard the sound of a band coming from the ballroom. The hotel is the host for the Golden Globes and several other industry events so it wasn't unusual to see celebs walking around or hearing noise coming from the ballroom as it readied itself for some monstrous event. But on this day I had to draw myself closer because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The band was sound checking with Spinal Tap's Big Bottom.

The next day I read in one of the trade magazines that AFI honored director Rob Reiner the night before and that - yes - it indeed was Spinal Tap that performed.

There are many stories, too numerous to tell in one blog post.

I wrote about the Christmas tree fiasco last summer after Merv passed away.

And there was the time Dr. Ruth demanded I get her an LA Times which found me running all over the hotel trying to find a copy (it was late afternoon and most of the comp issues had disappeared) only to return to find Dr. Ruth asleep and shortly thereafter, the LA Times in the deep end of the pool.

In 1994, California - and its Rose Bowl in Pasadena - hosted the World Cup. This was a nightmare for me. During that World Cup I would come to work to find the entire contents of some one's fruit platter floating in the pool (thrown from the balcony I assumed), ejaculate in the gym bathroom, or broken glass at the bottom of the pool.

Good times.

Although Argentinian women were a sight to behold.

The Germans were rude and poor tippers.

And the Columbians all wore mock afros like Carlos Valderrama. But they soon would morn another teammate who was murdered for having scored a goal on his home team. Legend has it that the gunman hollered "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooool!" for each of the 21 bullets he shot into Escobar's body.

Another time I had a visit from la mafioso, the mafia, when one guy paid me handsomely to make sure his wife never stayed into the sun too long while he was handling some business throughout the day and then there was the Saudi-American kid George - a liaison for some sheik who was pissing away his oil money at the hotel - who approached my fellow pool boys and I and asked if we would be male strippers for the ladies in the sheik's entourage. It seemed the ladies had grown tired of the men and their strippers and wanted to do something as payback. The hilarious thing was that we didn't even have to get naked, rather just show some skin that was deemed inappropriate to be seen by their beliefs.

I passed on that one, as well as the numerous propositions I got from old men(most "straight" men from the Midwest or deep South) for "massages" and by the Costa Rican hairdresser who worked at the salon on-site who wanted to know how big my "pee pee" was on a almost daily basis.

My colleagues and I had develop a certain pool boy speak that would allow us to openly comment on guests without them having a clue as to what we were talking about. One of the others guys would routinely order room service out by the pool and sign the number of the suite of one of the guests. Unlike my recent gas station attendant confession, these will remain secret only to be reveal within the pages of a book or through the courier font of a screenplay.

Looking back, it wasn't all that bad of a job. I made close to 30k, had health insurance and great benefits, two free meals a day and could stay at any Hilton for free if not really cheap. I also used my job to set up a complimentary dinner at Trader Vic's the night I proposed to my wife although since she suspected I would propose during that dinner, I gave the double-pump fake and waited until we drove out to the beach at Malibu after dinner to get on my knee.

But it was the tediousness of fighting boredom that got to me. During the non-summer months, there'd be a string of days upon days where you wouldn't see a single person to give a towel to, place a cushion on the lounge or sell overpriced Coppertone to yet you we confined to your post lest some guest did miraculously appear and expect to find some 90210 cast-off waiting to serve them hand and foot.

I've been told recently that the hotel is slanted to be razed and subsequently erased from history so that they can erect something else in its place.

Because that's how Hollywood sends its loved ones out to pasture...

Fluffer

This time last year I was talking about Christmas In July and prepping for hernia surgery.

But I still managed to be a soldier of rock and roll.

I have to say, in retrospect, that having a vasectomy was much more pleasurable than having a hernia and the subsequent bruising that followed.

Welcome To The Peloton

One summer tradition I have adopted since becoming a stay-at-home- dad is the watching of the Tour De France.

My fascination with cycling goes way back to when I was a little grasshopper. But while BMX and mountain biking has figured prominently in my life over the years, ever since I saw the move Breaking Away in the late '70s I have had a soft spot for road racing.

By the '80s, I was a full-on fan of Greg LeMond who was the first American to win the Tour. I remember reading a story in Sports Illustrated (?) about how LeMond would put his body through Herculean demands, one time riding while in the throes of a diarrheea attack.

I've also been intrigued by the story of Marco Pantani so much so that I wrote a song about the guy.

Then there was Lance Armstrong and his amazing story that if you don't know at least part of then you'd been living under a rock for the last decade. He's the only man to win the race seven times... in a row. Calling that one of sport's greatest achievements is an understatement at best.

In recent years the Tour has been plagued by a host of controversies but yet I still find it to be a joy to watch.

This year I'm pulling for Cadel Evans as well as George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde and hope to see the coveted yellow jersey on one of them.

Thunder & Lightning

We had some crazy storm roll in Friday night which put a damper on everyone's jonze for a fireworks display.

The storm came on with a vengeance and with little warning: one minute we were out back grilling at my brother-in-law's watching the kids in a water balloon fight (which escalated into a hose fight that I may have gotten the worst of) and then next minute we were dodging thunder clouds and lightning while trying to light off some fireworks.

I was determined to use up my left over bottle rockets from last year but the wind kept blowing out my lighter.

When I saw a bolt of lightning and heard the loud clap of thunder I threw in the towel and retreated to the comforts of their house.

The next day when we came home after spending night, we had no TV, no phone and no internet service.

Some of our tomato plants got whacked as well as sunflower or two by the storm.

And that's when my wife yelled, "Holy shit!"

As you can see by the looks of these pictures, it appears the tree house got hit by lightning when we were gone.

Check out the zipper-like strip that goes up the bark of the pine tree... or the hole in the roof... or the shredded plywood?

Fucking nuts, eh?

Not The Car Of My Dreams But...

 

We finally got a new car to replace the one that was destroy by some crook during a crime spree.

While the Ford Taurus Wagon isn't the vehicle I would have bought had I been able to by any car, sometimes you make do when you have little in the way of funding and time is of the essence.

It's got the space, decent mileage, has doors, roof, windshield and was less than $10,000.

Plus it can double as a camper or band van...