Monkeys Wearing Pants (3 page)

3. Interesting fact: the guy who makes the
blowfish sushi here is an ex-con.

4. Directions? Check. Snacks for the trip?
Check. Full gas tank in the old Pinto? Check…

5. Hey! Check this out. I just bought a diet
book by the doctor who killed Michael Jackson!

And the next five:

1. Something smells really, really weird in
here.

2. Ten to one I can still fit in these
jeans!

3. I’m pretty sure that mayonnaise lasts at
least 5 years.

4. Why does the voice on my GPS suddenly
sound weird?

5. I can almost reach it…almost…just a little
further…

But wait there’s more…

1) They say to turn off the computer before
replacing the RAM, but whatever...

2) Oh my God! Look at those cute little bear
cubs! Poor babies are all alone.

3) This black market Viagra doesn't work as
well, but you can't beat the price.

4) There's no way this door will open while
the plane is in flight, right?

5) Those damn gang bangers next door are so
loud! I'll take care of that.

6) Weird...I keep getting these messages, but
I don't know anyone on Skype named Rat Man.

7) Wow! Look at all the trucks parked in
front of that diner! It must be an awesome place to eat.

8) This new Dyson hand dryer is not only
great for drying your hands. Check this out...

9) I'm just heading over to the Mitt Romney
stump speech to freak them out with my Obama t-shirt. Ha! 10) I
swear to God that the sea monkeys are flipping me off. Really!

11. We cancelled the party, so I’m stuck
eating, like, 12 pounds of cheese dip.

12. LOL! I’m texting you from the carpool
lane right now!

13. I don’t care how gross this restroom is.
I’m using it, and I’m not coming out until I’m done!

14. If the friggin’ automatic pin reset
doesn’t work, I’ll just crawl in there and get those pins unstuck
myself!

I’m not obsessed with
getting older, and even though the time machine I ordered from Hong
Kong turned out to be a bread maker (my God, that was the worst
translation ever) I’m still not sweating my march forward to adult
diapers and thinking my wife is some lady from the Welcome
Wagon.

I'm feeling really old, like 7 or 8 in
underwear years.

Ten seconds after I turned 50, I started
getting mail from the AARP. They are relentless in their efforts to
have me join and are constantly reminding me of the savings an AARP
membership brings for things like burial arrangements, oversized
rectal thermometers, hearing aids and adult diapers. Seriously, I
get something in the mail from them at least 2 or 3 times a week.
You would think the AARP would be run by kindly, silver-haired
folks who like to sit around and reminisce about the times when gas
cost a nickel per gallon and you could have someone killed by a
gangster for half a cheese sandwich. But no, oh no. Apparently, it
is run like a Glengarry Glen Ross senior center, and someone keeps
shouting, “Get that bastard Waldrep! Sign him up! Seal the
deal!”

So, two of the top trending searches on the
internet today were “Grandparents' Day” and “Bladder Infections.”
I'm not saying they are related, but I did drink a huge glass of
cranberry juice after I got home today from meeting up with the
girls' grandma and grandpa just in case.

One minute, everything is going along great,
and the next minute, you wake up to find you have an ear hair long
enough to use as a high wire across Niagara Falls. What the
hell?

So, driving to Reno today, I realized that I
had left my right blinker on for like 10 miles. Christ, it's
starting!

I hope that my wife will still love me when
she has to wheel me around and change my adult diapers
(occasionally shouting at the girls, “Who fed your father
corn?”).

Sometimes, I think wouldn't it be great,
knowing what I know now, to go back in time to high school? Then I
remember algebra.

Has anyone actually died kicking a
bucket?

You know you are getting older when you are
trying to hold on for that rest area twenty miles down the road,
but your bladder keeps tugging on your shirt sleeve and saying,
"Are we there yet?"

It's not having two kids in college,
remembering the pet rock craze or the fact that I voted for Jimmy
Carter that makes me feel old. It's how far I have to scroll to
find my birth year every time I fill anything out on the
internet!

I hadn't realized this until recently, but
apparently, when Mr. Magoo died, I inherited his eyebrows.

So, a nurse from Kaiser just called to
schedule my first-ever colonoscopy. Apparently, I'm at the age
where it's a good idea to occasionally shove a rubber broomstick
with a camera on it up my ass and put the smack down on my colon
until it gives up the goods. What goods? I don't know. Maybe it's
been withholding information about my small intestine harboring a
fugitive hamburger for the past five years. Maybe my colon has
turned into Section 8 housing for polyps, and it's cramming them in
there like drunk college students in a phone booth (I know, I
know...what's a phone booth?). At the end of the conversation, the
nurse did ask me if I had any questions. “Just a comment,” I said.
“I lost a mini-Beanie Baby in 1998, so while you guys are in there
doing the Roto-Rooter thing, maybe you can just take a peek for
me.”

“A Beanie Baby?” she responds, puzzled.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn't ask except that it's
collectible. You know...” Silence on the other end of the line.
Now, I've got her. “And,” I add, “what about any spare change you
might find? I get to keep that, right? You guys don't divvy that up
while I'm knocked out and butt naked, right?”

“Change?” she asks softly.

“And what about the rights to the video?” I
ask. “I mean, you guys are rolling while we all take this mystical
journey up my ass's dryer vent, right? I'm not going to wake up and
have some kinky video of my internal junk on YouTube, am I?”

“YouTube? What do you mean, YouTube?” she
asks.

“Listen,” I say, “you're right. Let's cross
that anal passage when we get to it.”

So, we say our goodbyes. I'm pretty sure my
chart has now been flagged at Kaiser. That's OK. When I go in for
the colonoscopy, just before they put me under, I'm going to tell
the doctor that I knew I was supposed to eat lightly and then fast
right before the procedure, but that week-old tuna casserole wasn't
going to eat itself when I woke up that morning...

What is going on with my bladder? My bladder
used to be the size of a Coleman cooler. Honestly. When I was
younger, I could take in and hold more water weight than a
pregnant, two-hump camel. I was a human wading pool. I once drove
16 hours straight from Washington State to Northern California
consuming, along the way, 12 bottles of water, 10 cans of soda and
a bottle of healthy tea that I bought by mistake. Did I stop and
pee along the way? No. I held it like a man and didn’t even have to
start clenching until the last 100 miles (the last 20 minutes, I
admit to doing the crazy-leg, Mexican hat dance in the car…not
recommended). When I finally let loose, I peed for about two hours
straight, making me somewhat of a hero among truck drivers, race
horses and (I’m pretty sure) volunteer firemen. Today, my bladder
is about the size of a dried lentil. If I back out of my driveway
in the morning and there’s condensation on the windshield, I have
to run back inside to go to the bathroom. If I’m driving, the
minute I twist open the top of a bottle of water, my brain sends a
signal to my urinary tract to start doing the Macarena, and I’m
looking for a place to pull over and try my luck on the urinal
bull’s eye. If I get a soda at a fast food drive-thru, the second I
take the paper off the straw, I have to park and actually go into
the fast food place, which very much defeats the purpose. If I’m
driving along and, God forbid, the songs “Smoke on the Water,”
“Bridge over Troubled Water” or “Madman across the Water” comes on
the radio, I get an immediate, cringe-worthy urge to go. And
sometimes, when I’m driving through a forest and I really don’t
have to go, I’ll still pull over, walk into the woods and let
loose. Of course, that has more to do with being a guy and just
digging the fact that I can pee on a tree than having a bladder the
size of a sea monkey. I’d love to keep writing, but I gotta go…

I still have my wisdom teeth, and lately,
they have been doing their best to push through. I don't really
feel that much wiser, but I signed up to re-take the SATs just in
case.

So, two of the top trending searches on the
internet today were “Grandparents' Day” and “Bladder Infections.”
I'm not saying they are related, but I did drink a huge glass of
cranberry juice after I got home today from meeting up with the
girls' grandma and grandpa just in case.

One minute, everything is going along great,
and the next minute, you wake up to find you have an ear hair long
enough to use as a high wire across Niagara Falls. What the
hell?

I don’t really mind kids blasting their music
at gas stations or convenience stores. I think that kids of every
generation have done that (although, blasting Bachman Turner
Overdrive on my 8-track with my tiny car speakers didn’t exactly
cause the windows to shake). I think I’m going to get a new sound
system with massive speakers and a roof-mounted woofer and start
blasting “Muskrat Love’ by the Captain and Tennille. I think that
would make a bunch of teenagers freak out and start clawing at
their ears. Oh, middle-age payback is sweet!

So, driving to Reno today, I realized that I
had left my right blinker on for like 10 miles. Christ, it's
starting!

I hope that my wife will still love me when
she has to wheel me around and change my adult diapers
(occasionally shouting at the girls, “Who fed your father
corn?”).

Sometimes, I think wouldn't it be great,
knowing what I know now, to go back in time to high school? Then, I
remember algebra.

You know you are getting older when you are
trying to hold on for that rest area twenty miles down the road,
but your bladder keeps tugging on your shirt sleeve and saying,
"Are we there yet?"

It's not having two kids in college,
remembering the pet rock craze or the fact that I voted for Jimmy
Carter that makes me feel old. It's how far I have to scroll to
find my birth year every time I fill anything out on the
internet!

I hadn't realized this until recently, but
apparently, when Mr. Magoo died, I inherited his eyebrows.

I'm wondering how old a guy has to be before
he can join the "Men wearing plaid shorts, black shoes, and white
athletic socks club?" I think I would really rock that look.

I travel quite a bit for my job. After not making
it in stand-up comedy, as the lead singer of a rock band or as a
professional basketball player, I navigated to the next logical
choice…retail. Here are a few of my observations and mostly true
accounts from my travels. All aboard! (That’s a poor choice of
words as not one of these anecdotes takes place on a train. I
apologize profusely. I really feel terrible now).

On the almost four-hour plane ride from
Seattle to Anchorage, the nerdy guy sitting next to me really,
really wanted to have a long conversation about all of the Resident
Evil games and movies, including what my opinion was about each one
and how I would rank them and which ones had the best CGI, etc. I
asked him how much he knew about massive genital warts somehow
forming in the shapes of former famous presidents’ heads, not
unlike a little Mt. Rushmore in your underpants. Surprisingly, we
did not talk much after that.

Who decided that you had to have a PhD to
figure out how to set the alarm on a hotel clock?

Just went through security at Fairbanks
Airport. It was me and seven TSA agents. Not another soul in sight.
It took fifteen seconds to get through. I felt like I was sneaking
on the best ride at Disneyland in the middle of the night.

So today, as I was driving to Reno, a woman
driving a U-Haul moving van almost ran me off the road (and over
the side of the mountain) when she tried to get into my lane with
me in it. After getting back on the road (and peeing myself ever so
slightly), I passed her and just drove on. Ironically, about twenty
minutes later, I was at a rest stop talking on the phone when who
should pull in? Yes, the U-Haul death dealer. I went up to her and
said, "Hey, no biggie, but you almost killed me back there. I'm
just saying..."

She replied nonchalantly, "Oh, really? Sorry
about that," and that was it. I left. It was the most
anti-climactic, near-death, road rage experience ever.

Yes! Only 950,246 miles to go to be a Million
Miler on my airline card!

I just spent ten minutes looking for my car
in a parking lot. Oh yeah, that's right – I’m thousands of miles
from home and driving a rental.

Ok, in hindsight, it’s not a good idea to
start a two-hour drive with a couple of bran muffins and a huge
energy drink...

I dutifully passed through the TSA scanner,
assuming the awkward, frozen-in-time, jumping jack position with my
feet in the yellow footprints on the mat. Then, I walked out and
put my feet, once again, on the yellow footprints, waiting for the
crossing guard (I mean super-motivated TSA agent) to give me the
thumbs up and let me retrieve my belt, shoes and 11 pounds of loose
change from the plastic bin at the end of the conveyor belt. That’s
when I got the bad news. “Sir,” the TSA agent told me, “I’m afraid
we’ve detected a groin abnormality in your scan.” I looked back at
the scanner, and, sure enough, my Lego-man, yellow outline of a
body had a small, red square smack dab in the general vicinity of
tighty-whiteyville.