Blame It On My Muse

While being parked outside a hospital, I observed a man entering it with what looked like one of those coolers that they transport organs in. I also noticed that his head had been shaven in a way that looked like he had had intracranial surgery of some kind, and my muse, who leads a rather idle life, offered these thoughts: 1) Times are really tough when someone needing a brain transplant has to bring it to the hospital because his insurance doesn’t cover transportation or 2) This guy had to actually go out and find his own brain, because the donor search program is so inefficient, and 3) if he’s operating solo, where did he get it? Were laws broken? People killed? Has Costco got some shady deals going on and he got a case of them to improve his chances?

One of my favorite pastimes is hurling epithets at the drivers of other cars, for example, animal-human billingsgate such as capybara-face, mandrill-buttocks, and horse gonad-head, with the aid of my muse, of course, but yesterday, she made me aware of my apparently unconscious habit of always adding the prefix, “little,” when I curse out someone in a small car. So it seems I have either deduced that only little people drive little cars or that the cars, themselves are responsible for their reckless actions, which means I am tossing verbal invective upon inanimate objects. I have been doing this for such a long time that I’m not sure I can stop, although my muse, whose name, by the way, is Plaigia Rizem, has suggested that I just continue my harangue against the little cars, but just spice it up a bit by actually getting out of my vehicle and yelling in the driver’s window, and that inevitably, some big guy or woman would emerge, face crimson-faced with rage, and smash me to a brew-spewing pulp ( Do I drink and drive? Certainly not, Plaigia simply wanted me to use “brew-spewing pulp.”). After concluding that my muse may have a chronic and severe mental illness. I came up with a less lethal cure: I downloaded a picture of Andre the Giant driving a Mini-Cooper, which I now have clipped to my sun visor. It works perfectly, and, in fact, I’ve even doubled my curse word per vehicle output, with nary a thought about size.

Today, I was almost sideswiped by a red pick-up truck with a Confederate flag decal, and Plaigia whispered in my ear, “Red truck, red neck, red state, read ( past tense) nothing.”

Lastly, before retiring to her muse mews she inspired me to write a sentence representing the awesomEST state of the English language in America: “The formAlly laXadaisical realAtor showed her mischievIOUS side by giving her clients jewelEry made from nucUlar waste.”

Top 15 Rejected Spoleto Event Ideas

1. Overeaters Anonymous Ballet Company presents: "Swine Lake"
2. Gentlemen's Club's G-string Quartet
3. John Graham Altman's All WASP adaptation of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess": "Poopsie and Biff"
4. City of North Charleston presents: A Taste of Spruill Avenue
5. The Howard Stern Topless Lesbian Dance Company presents: The Nutcracker (dedicated to Rush Limbaugh)
6. Jeffrey Dahmer Finger Painting Exhibition (done mostly with other guy's fingers)
7. The original version of the "Irish River Dancers": "The Irish Cirrhotic Liver Dancers"
8. A performance by the Citadel's crack haze team, "The Moultrie Street Maulers" (city firefighters will be on hand)
9. Day of the Night Heron (at Washington Park): Jalapeno bloated avian park residents strafe a 30x30 fast canvas at point-blank range, with artistic results
10. Children's Spoleto Event: the combined horse carriage companies of Charleston present: "Bobbing for Roadapples"
11. College of Charleston fraternities present at the Stern Center: "A Barf College Display"
12. The Meeting Street Knife and Gun Corps: Off-duty muggers entertain with precision marching during daylight hours. No evening performances due to prior commitments.
13. Charleston Bartenders' Association presents: "The Whiz." Each bar sponsors its most prodigious beer guzzler in a urination for distance competition at Johnson Haygood Stadium. Multi-colored food colorings provide special effects.
14. Homophobes International presents: "An evening with Jesse Helms." The NC Senator discusses his cause and effect theory on males with ponytails and homosexuality.
15. The Prostitutes Association of America, under the direction of its President, Tanya Joyce ("T.J.") Hooker, presents: "Hooking is a F***ing Art." Similar in concept to the AIDS quilt, a vast display of mattresses are "laid out" at the North Charleston Coliseum.

Top 15 Most Frequently Overheard Tourist Comments About Charleston

1. “Unless you’ve got couple of hours to spare, don’t mention ‘Hugo’ to any of these people.”
2. “We want to tour the Citadel campus. Should we arm ourselves?”
3. “The first thing I want to see is that finishing school for Transsexuals, Gordon Langley Hall.”
4. “‘Most Polite City in America,’ my ass! Some 80-year-old Scarlett O’Horror just told me I’d soon be needing some emergency proctological surgery if I took one more picture of her cupola.”
5. “Sure I’ve heard of the Spoleto Festival. When do they start blooming? And how many does it take to make an average float?”
6. “I hear if you give a Charlestonian a word association test, the term ‘booze-hound’ 90% of the time elicits the response, ‘Episcopalian’.”
7. “This is a city completely devoid of rats. I understand the roaches chased them away.”
8. Tourist #1: “Some sections of it remind me of Sweden.”
Tourist #2: “A liberal attitude toward sex?”
9. “I heard that inbreeding was once so bad among some of the old Charleston families that when a kid was teasingly called ‘four-eyes’ by his peers, he may not necessarily have been wearing glasses.”
10. “Did you know that some of these old building are pre-Strom Thurmond?”
11. “I heard they had to postpone the repair work on the old Cooper River Bridge for a week, when a shipment of Crazy Glue was lost.”
12. “A mixed marriage here is when a Charlestonian marries someone from North Charleston.”
13. “We’re just staying one day. My parking meter expense loan was denied.”
14. “I don’t care how great they say it is, I’m not eating any of that she-crab soup.”
15. “I know it sounds crazy, but every once in a while, I get an urge to just sort of wander down the middle of the street like I was in Disney World or something.”

Big Apple Broadway Food Fest

I’m certainly not a professional food critic, but I can eat and write, sometimes simultaneously; therefore, I am as qualified as the next guy to give a personal assessment of the food and restaurants I have experienced. And nowhere, except maybe Paris, have I dined better than in New York. Like Paris, there are thousands of restaurants, from world famous ones to cozy neighborhood eateries, but up or low scale, most all of them have one common characteristic—terrific food.

I’ve only eaten in a couple of the famous ones in New York and the food was great, but without a doubt, my favorite New York restaurant is Carmine’s, a spacious Italian eating place on 44th Street near 7th Avenue, right in the middle of the theater district. “Phantom” is playing directly across the street and that ancient après theater watering hole, Sardi’s, is a few doors down. We go to Carmine’s every time we go to New York. It’s always something my wife and I look forward to as much as anything else—and there is lots of “anything else’s” in New York. Why do we return to this particular establishment every year like half famished grizzlies to their favorite stream? Why are Carmine memories causing me to keep replacing my saliva spotted writing paper? Baked clams, simply the best thing I have ever tasted. Succulent morsels smothered in olive oil, garlic, Italian seasoning, parmesan cheese, bread crumbs and I don’t know what else—they won’t tell, and why should they? We always get a dozen each for an appetizer. One time, though, I’d like to just eat clams all night, just stuff myself with them ‘til I weighed as much as Chris Farley, but not fat—solid clams, so many that I couldn’t even drink another Peroni (though that’s hard to imagine), so many that like in the cartoons, you could look into my eyes and see the clam level. Well, I don’t think my wife would put up with that, but you get my drift: the clams are fantastic.

And even though the clams are to Carmine’s what “Seinfeld” is to NBC, there are a cast of other “stars” such as the entrees, which are served in “family style” helpings (enough for four people with normal appetites to eat). Everything is good. The last time we had lasagna, the pasta had an almost silk smooth texture that I had never before experienced. You could actually make a meal of the huge Italian bread basket assortment that is never allowed to become empty. Included in the assortment are the most delicious, fresh baked dark and white breads and rolls, pizza bread with Italian sauce and romano cheese, breads with nuts, and my favorite, a short fat sesame seed encrusted breadstick which leaves you with a wonderful toasted sesame aftertaste.

If you’re looking for a quiet and romantic repast with your paramour, go somewhere else. Carmine’s is lusty, bustling, noisy and energetic. People are eating, drinking and enjoying life. There are large families, assorted tourists, business men and theatrical types. The restaurant, in fact, has sort of encapsulated the spirit of Manhattan itself, as if they picked up the shell of the building and lowered it down on 44th Street, ensnaring hundreds of willing victims.

The wooden floors, despite the flinging of marinara and bread crumbs, are spotless and there are white clothed tables stretching from the front windows to the rear. A long bar is on the right and there is another room upstairs. The walls are covered with pictures of earlier generations of New York Italians, some anonymous to me, some more recognizable personages like Fiorello La Guardia, and Mario Lanza. Occasionally behind clinking glasses and silverware, you can detect faint melodies of familiar operas.

We’ve not yet seen any celebrities in Carmine’s, but Madonna frequent it when in New York, and I’ve noticed that David Letterman is awarding free dinners to Carmine’s to audience members who play his goofy games. I’m starting to sound like one of those tabloid writers, specifically Michael Musto of the “Village Voice,” so I’m excusing myself from further show biz chat.

We did, of course, eat at other Italian restaurants in New York and they were all great, but not one of them had clams comparable to Carmine’s. And I haven’t found any Italian food here in Charleston that even comes close. In fact, if by some sort of papal intervention, a Carmine’s would end up here (maybe it could be called “Carmine’s Slightly South of 44th Street”) the locals would be delirious with “clam fever” and I would not only achieve my Chris Farley look-alike goal, but probably end up like the late John Candy as well.

An unlikely scenario, so in the blandly flavored interim, I can only whisper in the ears of the local Italian restaurant community like that self important businessman sharing his sacred mantra with Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” “Baked Clams.”

(Originally published July 1997)

Runner's Revenge

The most annoying denizens in the runner's world, apart from cretins who yell out "Hot enough for ya?" and think they're being terribly clever, are dogs. Not big dogs, mind you, who either ignore me or lick me, which can actually be quite refreshing on a scorching day, but those nasty little ones—the yapping, nipping curs who look like rats with collars.

I usually handle these encounters by screaming, "Go home, you little son-of-a-b*tch," an insult that I, of course, realize loses its desired effect in the canine world…though unconsciously. I'm sure it's aimed at their masters anyway. However, I've devised a much better strategy for dealing with the Rat Dogs' feral attacks. The next time I go running I plan to take two things with me:

1. A tranquilizer-laced piece of meat, and,
2. A white squirrel skin

As soon as the little Gremlin (that's what they remind me of, those little creatures from that sci-fi movie that were all teeth) approaches, I hand him the Meat-Mickey, which knocks him out immediately. Then I stuff him in the squirrel suit, working as fast as Jim Fowler might with an anesthetized lion, realizing that any second the creature could awaken and wreak bloody havoc. Once the beast comes out of its coma, we now have a non-climbing, barking, squirrel those owners will recognize it as their psychotic FiFi only after the neighborhood cats have had their way with it.

A bit heavy-handed, you say? Obviously, you're not a runner. So let me close by saying this to my running brethren: I pledge to rid us of these yipping, yapping Rat-faced Devil Dogs, street by street, subdivision by subdivision, city by city. By the way, just so you won't think I'm totally demented, I'm not killing the squirrels, I'll be utilizing the omnipresent roadkill. So it's not animal cruelty, it's community service.

(Originally published May 2002)

Scream of Consciousness # 8

1. Family Outing: A gay time was had by all
2. Joe Cocker Spaniel: Rare breed of dog that has foreleg spasticity and an inability to bark high notes
3. Sand Bag: Especially unattractive harem member usually banished to the desert
4. Artiefacts: Debris associated with Howard Stern’s comedic sidekick, such as empty Jack Daniels bottles, pizza boxes, cup cake wrappers, race cards, etc
5. Lox Populi: New favorite at Katz’ Deli in NYC
6. Oddvark: a weird looking aardvark
7. Pyromania: burning desire
8. “You’ve got class”: A possible compliment, depending on the level implied
9. “High” School: Willie Nelson’s alma mater
10. Total Recall: gas conservation strategy for SUV’s
11. “Citizen Kane Mutiny”: The greatest movie of all time
12. Woodpecker: What got Pinnochio into more trouble than his nose
13. “More bang For Your Buck”: Bunny Ranch slogan
14. Sex Cymbals: potentially dangerous marital aid
15. Auntie Bellum: Auntie Mame’s pugilistic sister
16. Sponge Bob No Pants: A tipsy beloved children’s icon shocks his audience
17. Dinner tube: That roll of waist fat eventually acquired by immoderate eaters
18. Flying Wedgie: Dreaded football offensive formation thought to introduce traumatic hemorrhoids
19. Boulevard of the Concubines: Proposed new name for Remount Road in North Charleston included in the city’s Image Improvement Plan
20. “Members Only”: Name of a Greenwich Village male homosexual club
21. Yellow Stain National Park: Winter nickname for one of America’s natural wonders thought to be a reference to a lack of port-a-lets during the snow season
22. Personal hang time: Increases with age, eventually becomes permanent, cured ironically by rigor mortis
23. Internal Relations: Incest
24. White Trash House: 2012 and a victorious Sarah Palin moves into the presidential mansion
25. Dead Wood: place and reason Miss Kitty dumped Matt Dillon
26. “Blow the man down!”: gay pirate threat
27. Bejeweled: Opposite of castrated
28. Bulgarity” Bulgarian epithet
29. Think Tank Top: What Sarah Palin wore to the Heritage Foundation meeting
30. “Whoriffic”: Most frequently used adjective to describe Pam Anderson