OK… I febrezed the dog, but that crazy bitch totally had it coming.

If you’ve ever read mkromd, then you know that my dog is insane and that she and I have a love-hate relationship. No really, at the risk of anthropomorphizing, you can tell that she loves to do things only because they piss me off. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes that poor baby is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, like when she got sprayed by a skunk and ran through DB’s house a few years ago; but other times, she’s a willing participant. And this time, she rolled in dog-shit…on purpose…then tried to rub against me…repeatedly…at a park…where smallish-sized children were playing. 

All jokes aside, she smelled worse than the victim in The Exorcist. And, because I kept running away from her, she thought I was playing, which made her want to play more, regardless of the fact that I was throwing water from my Kleen Kanteen and shouting, “The Power of Christ compels you. The Power of Christ compels you.” The saddest part of that story is that it’s totally true, but I digress. 

The point is that I will never understand how her canine brain translated my reaction to her behavior as, “Who’s a good girl and wants to play?” But I do know that, even though she was blissfully clueless, those kids figured it out pretty-damned fast, because - when they tried to pet “the puppy,” the only thing I could scream was, “Unclean! UNCLEAN!” and they stopped. OK, maybe they didn’t “get it” per se, but not one of them went home with dog shit all over them, and —years from now, when they work it out in therapy—I hope they stop repressing the fact that I did them a favor. They’re welcome.

At any rate, after twenty minutes of being down-wind on the humid walk home, I’d had it, and when we finally got to our yard, I tied her to a tree, put on rubber gloves, grabbed the dog shampoo, turned on the hose, and started scrubbing her. Now, she’s a Rotweiller/Lab mix and she loves water, so when it hit her pelt, her entire demeanor changed from, “I will cut the bitch who tethered me here,” to “Sweet Jesus, dog shit is magical! Not only do I smell like a Bull Mastiff’s ass right now but there are bubbles to chase. Dear Dog, please let there be bacon, too. Amen.” 

I’d say she’s bi-polar, but because she’s a dog, you’d have to multiply by seven.

Anyway…the whole thing was like Jackass meets the Dog Whisperer, the Home Edition, except there was no calm, assertive voice. Thanks to the amount of shit she was wearing and shaking onto me, the most I could muster was a whimper. It was literally ALL over her body and large parts of my soul…and, in the spirit of full disclosure, by the time I was getting it out of her ARMPIT and off my leg, I was feeling more inspired by Michael Vick than Cesar Millan, and that’s not OK…at all. Michael Vick did a really terrible thing; however, in my defense, I honestly felt like I was participating in some "Kafka does Febreze" commercial, minus the blind fold, and that’s when it hit me harder than a waft of wet dog shit…Febreze! So I did it. I went into the house, grabbed it, and sprayed her like a mugger getting maced. Please believe me, I know it’s wrong to expose your pets to chemicals but it was her or me. Besides, I like to think I invented a new flavor, Shitrus, but I wouldn't expect to see it on the shelves any time soon. Bold ideas take time.

What a long strange trip it's been...

One of my brothers is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and one of my brothers spent part of his college career following the Grateful Dead. In some ways, you immediately know they're brothers. In other ways, it's simply impossible to believe they share the same DNA. In fact, I’d argue that the only the reason you know they're related is because they're both shits. Don't get me wrong. They're good brothers and I love them, but they're complete and total assholes sometimes... especially when they decide that the sole purpose of their existence is to mess with mine.

Allow me to elucidate.

Ten years ago, when my mother had open-heart surgery, my three siblings, my dad, my cousins, my Aunt and Uncle, and I were in the waiting room, when my oldest brother, the CPA, said, "Does anyone want to get a cup of coffee?" Against my better judgment, I said yes. Later, when we were alone in the elevator, he casually stated, "Can you believe they're replacing mom's mitral valve with one from a chimpanzee?" At said moment, I flipped shit (no pun intended… as chimps actually DO throw poop). I seriously freaked out so hard that to this day I wonder if Hospital Security still watches the footage from that security camera during their Christmas parties. I know I would.

Anyway, I don't know why I was so upset. I honestly don't. It could be because I've always supported People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It could be because I felt out of the loop for not knowing. It could be because I was simply emotionally and physically exhausted. Whatever the reason, I truly went totally ape shit (pun intended that time). There were tears... there was snot… and my voice shot to a decibel that only dogs could hear. Later, when we got back to the waiting room, my sister could see that I was completely distraught and asked what happened. At the top of my lungs, through muffled sobs, I said, "I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT NOT ONE OF YOU WAS HUMAN ENOUGH TO TELL ME THAT OUR MOTHER WAS GETTING A MONKEY VALVE!"

As the ENTIRE waiting room stared on in horror, my oldest brother grunted, "They ruined it! RUINED IT… Damn them. DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL…" and shook his fist at us... exactly like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. As my sister hugged me and started laughing, my other brother softly added:

    Cost of open-heart surgery... $25,000

    Cost of a monkey valve... $10,000

    Fucking with your sister while your mother is in surgery... priceless

It's funny, unless your siblings give you a shirt which says that for your birthday (instead of giving you real gifts)... but I digress. The point is that our poor mother left the hospital last Wednesday, fell on Monday, had hip surgery on Tuesday, and has been on morphine ever since to help with the pain. And, because opiates cause you to hallucinate while you dream, she’s been tripping harder than Jerry Garcia in the 1980s, which is ONLY funny because my brother, the ex-Dead Head, is the one spending the most time with her at the hospital this week. As they say, karma’s a bitch. 

In fact, it’s such a bitch that the other day she was hallucinating hard enough to think his hand was food and asked if she could have a bite. When he told the nurses, they said, "That's nothing... she sings in her sleep, too." To which my brother replied, "In other words, when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza-pie, that's an opiate." It's all fun and games until someone gets that on a birthday shirt next year. 

Talk to you later.

Country Roads... Take me Home

I once got a greeting card that totally sums up how I see word problems, “If you have four pencils and I have seven apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof? Purple, because aliens don’t wear hats.” And that’s where this week’s story begins. 

You see, while last month… three was a magic number, this month - it’s been the trifecta. My mom went into congestive heart failure, getting home to see her has been one SNAFU after another, and – before I left for Appalachia, I hit my step-kids’ Calculus teacher’s car… which was parked at the time… with my brand new Jeep… which was moving. When we exchanged information, I said, “What are the odds that I’d hit a Math teacher’s Volvo?” To which she replied, “Do you really want the answer to that question.” No, no I don’t… but A+ for humor.

It was completely my fault, and she was great about it. Honestly, she was lovely in a “shit happens” kind-of-way, but the woman at Geico was awesome, seriously awesome. When I told her what happened, she said, “In other words, if car A is doing three miles an hour in a parking lot and it hits car B that’s doing zero, how much damage was done and what is it going to cost you?” Well played Geico lady. Well played. 

At any rate, as the Customer Service Rep and I went through the questions, she was upbeat and kept me focused on the positive by reminding me that things could have been much, much worse - a process which I found myself repeating on the back roads that you’re forced to take if you want to get to my home town. Well, that and the fact that I wished I’d paid more attention in Math class because I kept asking myself, “If car A is a hybrid, and it’s 10:00 at night, and you’re driving through what appears to be a Deliverance theme park, where everything is closed, and your rental car’s check engine light is on, and the mountains make it difficult to get cell phone reception, and the only thing you’ve seen are pickup trucks with gun racks… how many hours will you be missing before someone actually notices?” 

The answer is ZERO because you call your older brother and you make him navigate you home. Actually, it’s zero MINUS the two hours that I spent being lost because my cell phone kept cutting in and out. Yup, I got lost in my home town for two hours… and here is how the conversation about that went… 

• mkromd – I’m SO lost… and OMG, we have an "Exotic Dancers" club now? What exactly does THAT look like in Appalachia?
• mkromd’s brother – We don’t have a strip club. Where in the HELL are you… and wait, WHY WOULD I KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE?
• mkromd – Ugh. You’re dead to me. There’s NOTHING else open. Should I stop and get help?
• mkromd’s brother – Um, no. My guess is that the dancer is exotic because she speaks in tongues and handles snakes or she's hairy enough to double as the bouncer and would have to get off stage to give you directions. Keep driving and tell me the first river you cross…

No really, where I come from, you still follow the streams to find your way home and there’s comfort in that. It may be why I think that progress progresses too fast. Anyway, when I got to the hospital this morning and told my mom, she said, “I already heard.” That’s when we tweaked our word problem and she made me show the work to get full credit. Here it goes:

If it takes Driver A two hours to get home MINUS fifteen minutes of ADHD musing MULTIPLIED by the 95% chance that this will happen again, how long will it take for her sister and brothers to tell their mother what happened? Nine hours. That’s right, I arrived at midnight and by 9:00 AM she’d heard the story three times. You know… although I wept my way through every Algebra, Geometry and Calculus class that I ever took, I am 100% certain that our gene pool needs more chlorine.

Talk to you later.

Bad Company

For the last two weeks, I've had the flu, and - when I'm sick, I have a tendency to whine, sleep, and read. In other words, it's not all that different from when I'm healthy. At any rate, the other night, after finishing my book, I ended up reading Rolling Stone's, "100 Greatest Singers" and saw that Paul Rodgers from Bad Company came in at number fifty-five. Though they don't need my approval, I must admit - it was a good pick. After all, when Jim Morrison (number 47) died, the Doors wanted him and - more impressively, after Freddie Mercury died, Rodgers toured with Queen. For the record (no pun intended), Freddie Mercury was number eighteen on Rolling Stone's list.

Now, if you think Paul Rodgers can't bring it, I challenge you to listen to him sing, "I Want it All." Keep in mind that Freddie never performed it live because he was so sick. If you want to hear him, you have to listen to the album, and - if you've never heard it, go do it now. That said, if you listen to it and hear a man ravaged by AIDS instead of an artist's sheer will power and ability to accomplish perfection regardless of his circumstances, you're dead to me.

But I digress, the point is that only a handful of days ago, my mother went into congestive heart failure again. By the time I got the call, she had already been stabilized and was lucid. In fact, I was lucky enough to talk to her shortly thereafter. Like every good mom she said, "You're sick. Please don't drive or fly home while you have the flu. You'll never get better. Besides, if you walk through the door, I'll be convinced that I'm dying and no one wants to tell me."

You laugh, but when my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer, he told the doctors and all of us that he didn't want to hear the details. He knew it was fatal but he didn't want to know how long he had. He didn't want to be told what to expect. He wanted his life to be on his terms, including what he did, how he felt, and when he died... not according to some self-fulfilling prophesy that a team of doctors handed to him. For the record (again no pun intended), it worked. A headache remained a headache, a stomach ache remained a stomach ache, a muscle spasm remained a muscle spasm - not a symptom that the end was near or an omen of terrible things to come.

Like my mom, he was adamant that I not come home when I couldn't. Instead, we talked on the phone several times a week and wrote long, rambling letters to one-another, much like the non-sequiturs that I blog about… and music. We talked a lot about music. As a professional Jazz pianist for more than fifty years he was fortunate enough to meet, watch, and jam with a lot of pretty relevant musicians. Plus, he just knew a lot about music.

Anyway, when I talked to my mom and mentioned that DB is playing in a band again, I was blown away by how much she knew about Blues. She’s a CPA with an MBA who was an Executive all of her life. This is a woman who admits that she voted for Nixon and may have actually missed the Sixties. Seriously. Upon hearing the shock in my voice, she said, “Honey, I spent almost as many nights watching your father play piano as he spent playing.”

You know, I simply never thought about it.

At any rate, given that she dropped a bomb on me, I felt obligated to share my day with her, including the fact that during lunch, my straight, hot friend admitted that he stripped his way through college. Yes. Really. And that’s when I told my WASP mother that I’d missed my calling. I should have been a DJ at a male strip club, because – honestly – if the movie Magic Mike has taught us anything, it’s this... unlike men who prefer their strippers with no clothes or plot, women want their dancers to emote and I want to give that to them. I have no desire to see men pull-off their pants. I want to see them pull-off stripping to Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler or Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson. Think about it:

• Cost of a drink at a strip club - Seven dollars
• Cost of a lap dance - One dollar
• Watching some pompous, fully-waxed, twenty-five year old guy's face as Amazing Grace comes over the speakers and he has to drop it like it's hot - Priceless

There really are certain things that money can't buy. 

After she told me she’d miss me because she was certain that I was going to Hell, we laughed ourselves into a coughing frenzy. Given that I only had the flu but she was recovering from congestive heart failure, I was certain that this would kill her and that my siblings would kill me because of it. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Instead, I get the opportunity to spend another Mother's Day with her. That's right. I'm going home to Appalachia. I might be Bad Company but I’m a good daughter.

Besides, even if it weren't a holiday to celebrate the incredible job she's done raising us, I'd want to see her. Like my father, she’s my hero. Even from a hospital bed, she could laugh and she could make me laugh. I guess that, while the exuberant cry of youth may be, "I Want It All and I Want it Now," the wisdom and temperance of age gives you a different perspective: who you are when it's hard is who you really are and what you do with the time you have is totally your choice. To quote Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” It worked for Freddie Mercury... It worked for my dad... Clearly it works for my mother and I hope to God that it works for me.

Talk to you later. 

Three… it’s a magic number.

And who am I to question the wisdom of Schoolhouse Rock: “The past and the present and the future; faith and hope and charity; the heart and the mind and the body give us three.” Think about it, even jokes follow the Divine Trinity. For example, a plane goes down over the Amazon, and there are three survivors – a Tibetan, an Englishman, and an Irishman. The good news is they’re rescued by natives. The bad news is that, unbeknownst to them, the people who save them... are cannibals.

Anyway, a month goes by, and one day, the drums start beating, and the natives start chanting, and the chief rushes into the tent and grabs the Tibetan, who says, “What are you going to do with me?” To which the chief replies, “Well, we’re going to skin you, use your skin for a canoe, chop you up into little pieces and serve you as dinner.” Peacefully, the Buddhist says, “I’m from a long line of pacifists and cannot participate in this violence. Can you give me ten minutes?” The chief lets him meditate, the monk stops his own heart from beating, and sure enough he dies and is dinner. 

The next week, once again, the drums start beating, the natives start chanting, and the chief rushes in and he grabs the Englishman, who says, “What are you going to do with me?” To which the chief replies, “Well, we’re going to skin you, use your skin for a canoe, chop you up into little pieces and you'll be dinner.” Aghast he says, “Good God, man. This is completely unacceptable. There's no dignity in that. I’m a nobleman from a long line of Dukes and Duchesses. Do you have a revolver?” The chief hands the gun to him, he kills himself, and sure enough – he’s dinner. 

The next week, yet again - the drums start beating, the natives start chanting, and the chief rushes in and he grabs the Irishman, who says, “What are you going to do with me?” To which the chief replies, “Well, actually - we’re going to skin you, use your skin for a canoe, chop you up into little pieces and you'll be dinner.” Resided, the Irishman says, “Look, I’m from a long line of alcoholics. Do you have a bottle of whiskey and a fork?” Confused, the chief hands both things to him. Within minutes, the Irishman downs the Jameson’s and proceeds to stab himself repeatedly with the fork. Dumbfounded, the chief says, “What the hell are you doing?” To which the Irishman simply replies, “Fuck your damn canoe” and passes out. 

Being almost one-hundred percent Irish, not only do I get to tell that joke – I get to dedicate it to the city of Boston, which has almost as many Micks as Ireland itself. Nicely done Bostonians. Nicely done. Also, because this post is about the rule of three, last month the following three things happened:

1. My karma ran over my dogma passed the “10,000 readers” mark
2. My blog on Salon hit the “5,000 readers” mark
3. My manuscript is actually being reviewed by a real editor

I know, I know – it sounds more impressive than it is, but one day I hope to post something along the lines of, “A blogger, an agent and a publisher walk into a bar…” Talk to you later.

Lenny Bruce was not afraid.

For those of you who are now humming, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," you're welcome. For those of you who know the lyrics because you:

• Owned the REM cassette tape, Document.
• Sat in bed with nothing more than your notebook, pencil, Walkman, and teenage angst, pressing Play, Pause, Rewind, Play over-and-over and-over until you captured each and every word...

Well done. For those of you who did it any other way (even because you were born after 1987 and have never heard of a company called Memorex), you're a poseur (you know who you are).  All jokes aside, ironically enough, this post has NOTHING to do with that song. It's actually about Lenny Bruce.  

If you don’t know much about him, you should Google him. If you love him, then you already know that he inspired almost every comedian since then, and – if he didn’t inspire them, at the very least he set the precedent which protected them from being arrested for using obscenities on stage. That’s right, if you like George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Louis CK, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Rita Rudner, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Robin Williams, or anyone else who ever told a dirty joke – you should thank Lenny Bruce.

Now, at the risk of only giving you the Reader’s Digest condensed version of history, the story goes something like this… He was arrested in 1961 for using the term, “Schmuck,” on stage. Then he was arrested again in 1962 and twice more in 1964 on similar charges… by undercover cops who were in the audience documenting every word that came out of his mouth. At his trial in 1964, free thinkers like Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, and others testified that it was a violation of free speech, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Regardless, he was convicted, sentenced, and died during the Appeal process. He later received a full posthumous gubernatorial pardon, the first and only in New York history. 

You know, they say no one reads the retraction on page five, but Lenny Bruce may be the exception to that rule. His pardon said, “If you are an adult and you bought a ticket, you consented to the content. If you don’t like it, leave. He didn’t come to your house and hold you hostage. You paid to watch him perform. ” Amen Lenny, Amen.

That said… he went too far. Unfortunately, the process bankrupted him, and I mean that in every sense of the word – financially, spiritually, and comedically. Initially, no one would book his show because they feared the police would be in the audience and everyone would get busted. Then, no one booked his act because he stopped being funny. He was so disgusted and depleted by the lack of protection from that kind of brutality that at times he would simply sit on stage and read the First Amendment into the microphone. 

Please don’t ever let me become so bitter that I’m more consumed by anger than laughter. Please don’t let me go down a slippery slope where I become that person. You know who I’m talking about… that crazy lady on the block who mumbles and hands out feral kittens on Halloween. The woman who opens the door dressed like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, and you’re like, “Nice costume.” And she says, “What are you talking about? I just got home from work.” And even the kids are like, “Thanks for the rabid cat and the chewing gum, ma’am” but are actually thinking, “She’s fucking insane. Can we please leave?” And because this is about Lenny Bruce, don’t be angry about that joke. Those kids learned that word from their parents – not the crazy woman who answered the door. But I digress. What I’m trying to say is… please don’t let that happen to me - where one day you’re fine, then the next day you drive to work in a dirty wedding dress and people refuse to make eye contact with you. 

That shit happens (or so I’m told). 

Anyway… the POINT of this post is to apologize for the recent lack of humor in my other ones. Life has been hard lately, very hard, but whose isn’t? Besides, Lenny’s legacy wasn’t simply fighting for what’s right. It was his brilliant sense of timing and an uncanny, unfiltered, uncensored ability to laugh and make us laugh – at him, at life, and at ourselves. 

With that, all I have to say to you is this, “LEONARD BERNSTEIN!” Well, that and talk to you later.