Man Martin's Blog, page 196

God Bless Americuh

I was in a Subway ordering a sandwich and had the privilege of standing next to perhaps the most repulsive human being in Chamblee, Georgia.  He kept berating the server with comments like, "I don't speak that kind of English," and "You're in America, you got to learn to speak English."  One of these signs was brought to my attention by Mark Childress, and then I found the others on the internet.  I love America.  I love the English language.  And yet there are so many people who see it so differently from me.

Pain and How to Exploit It

I have torn my ACL and am under doctor's specific orders to keep off my feet as much as possible.
This is the sort of thing, which, if applied judiciously, makes the world a living paradise: all nectar, ambrosia, and that sort of thing.
The first thing you need is to be able to pull a brave face.  If you can't pull a brave face, you're not really going to derive the maximum benefit.  The trick to the brave face is you must neither smile nor frown, it's all a matter of nuance.  You can smile a little, but you must do it with clenched teeth and lips tightly pressed together, but not so tightly they begin to form a duck bill.  There must be a hint of the sardonic, but only a hint.  The face of a man who has known things that must not be spoken into the fortunate ear of inexperience.  As I say, it's hard to pull off, but it's what really brings home the bacon.
Here's how it plays out in practice.

Self: Oh, let me do the dishes, darlin, you already made dinner.  (Begins to rise from sofa.  A surprised and muffled grunt of pain.  Pulls BRAVE FACE.  Returns to sofa.)  I think maybe I'll sit here just a little longer.  (Ruefully)

Nancy: No, honey, you just stay there.  You need to keep off your leg.

Self: (BRAVE FACE passim) No, really it's nothing.  (Lie back on couch.  Sigh.)

Nancy: Do you want be to put a pillow under that?

Self: (Very BRAVE FACE at this point, so brave it'd make you sick to look at it.)  Well, yes that might not be a bad idea.  (Bravely cooperates with the placing of a pillow under knee.)  And could you bring me a martini?  Two olives

You get the idea.  The injury is the necessary foundation, the roux, as it were, but you really can't get the full jambalaya without the brave face.  I do not wish to brag, but the true expert can make such claims as being unable to watch any movie with Susan Sarandon except Rocky Horror for fear of doing damage to his leg.  This sort of thing, however, should not be attempted by the beginner.  Start small.  You must be able to maintain your brave face without breaking into laughter.  That's the key.  It isn't easy, but well repays the effort.

On the Courthouse Steps

On the first Tuesday each month, foreclosed properties are auctioned on the courthouse steps.  This is not a metaphor or figure of speech, but an actual, verifiable reality.  I had the opportunity to witness this first-hand thanks to Spencer's boyfriend Glenn, whose company buys these properties as part of a hedge fund.  Of course, it goes without saying, that each one of these foreclosures represents the end of someone's dream, and who knows how much personal and financial distress.  Having said this, however, let it be known that I am what William F Buckley once called a Free-Market Voluptuary: I just love the free market and get down and roll in it whenever I can.
The way it works, if "works" can be employed to describe such a haphazard process, is that some flunky from a law firm will appear, willy-nilly, find a convenient spot on the steps, and begin reading from a fat stack of papers in a monotone voice usually reserved for Ben Stein imitations.  Potential investors hover close, listening through the babble of legalize about land-bound tracts and proceeding so many degrees nor'nor'east and parties of the first part or whatever, until they hear the opening price, say $100,000, at which, if somebody wants to bid, he'll say, "$100,001," and so forth.
The trick is, the representatives from various law firms are all reading off their foreclosures at the same time, with new ones showing up intermittently, old ones going away, and then sometimes coming back, and nobody making any huge effort to attract an audience, by say, shouting and waving his arms, saying, "Yoo-hoo!  Over here!  I've got some foreclosed properties for sale!"  Hence the reason I was needed; in fact there was a modest group of us there, making sure that Glenn's company wouldn't miss any of the properties they had on their list; they needed several bidders working at once and "runners" to go around and verify which law firms were present and reading out which properties.  If a successful bid was entered, we had to get the guy with the dough - a coworker of Glenn's who had an envelope of cashier's checks totaling over a million dollars.  I was given a list of properties with a maximum bid for each.  Most of the other folks there were clearly from other investing consortia, so we were cautioned not to let anyone get a peak at our maximum bid, and not to go around telling everybody our business.  I didn't get to bid myself, but I nearly did.  The two auctions I participated in, the opening price was higher than what Glenn's company was willing to pay.
I had one awkward moment: I saw someone I recognized, a man who sometimes works as a substitute teacher at my school.  He asked what I was doing there, and I gave the vague reply as instructed.  I had the horrible vertiginous sensation that his own property had been foreclosed upon, and he'd shown up in the forlorn hope of buying it back.  Other than that, the day was as entertaining and bizarre as any day I have spent.  On one side of the courthouse steps was another auction, having to do with taxes.  I asked one of Glenn's colleagues about it, and he admitted he knew nothing about it, that it was, as he expressed it in accurate but less than perfect grammar, "a whole nother thing."
Before leaving, I saw my substitute-teacher acquaintance in the thick of the tax auction, taking notes, and occasionally entering bids and realized he wasn't there to buy back his home after all.  He was just a plain old Free-Market Voluptuary.
Like me.

Another Reason I Never Made It as a Cartoonist

"Judging by the fingerprints, I'd say we were looking for a fairly large man."

Today my oldest daughter is getting married.To those of y...

Today my oldest daughter is getting married.
To those of you who have seen your child married, the first sentence will be so fraught with meaning, you will need read no further.
It seems incredible to say this, but it seems to me a child's wedding is an even more significant turning point than your own.  For Catherine, she's in love, Drew loves her, and the wedding is today.  All of this is a very big deal, no doubt, but there's also an element of "well, this is the next step in my life," a kind of naturalness and ease.  (When Catherine reads this, she will not doubt shriek - I can almost hear it as I type these words - "Ease, what the hell do you mean ease?!")  But she can't know what I know, how I see this wedding as only a parent can, as both insider and outsider.  I have known Catherine's growing up in a way that she herself could never know, and I know what an unendurably aching sweet thing time is, that great invisible, soundless sweep that gives us all things and takes all things away.  Last night was the rehearsal dinner and I looked over the families and friends under the tent - we'd rented this big honking tent for the front yard, all lighted inside with little white lights, and after the sun set, there was this place in the darkness, all lit from the inside, filled with happy beautiful people, many of whom had come from far away, to see this day.  Today those same people, and more, will be on hand to see me pass my daughter to the young man who is her love.
It is a happy day.

Man Martin Paperdoll!

Just cut out and play for hours of make-believe fun!

Chickens vs Vegetables

There are those who maintain that if you have chickens, you must not have a vegetable garden, and vice-versa, and if you think otherwise, you're just living in a fool's paradise.  Chickens are chickens, is what they say, and vegetables are vegetables, and never the twain shall meet, and if the twain ever do meet, it's Katie, bar the door! 
There is wisdom in this; indeed, raising chickens and vegetables in the same household is like hiring a shepherd who's also part time werewolf.  I will not say it can't be done, but one would be well-advised to think twice before attempting it. 
Letting chickens out after putting in seed, for example, is nothing short of catastrophic.  Chickens have very limited means of entertaining themselves and hunting and digging out every last kernel of Silver Queen you've laboriously installed into the soil is for them the greatest sport imaginable.  They are also known to wreak havok with tender sprouts.  Even when the plant is of a certain size, and they no longer show an interest in it as such, they will discover a veritable congregation of worms gathered around the root ball, and will dig and scratch until the okra plant, or whatever, is felled and lying on the ground. 
And the thought of what they would do to the vegetables themselves makes each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine.  I have seen with my own eyes a chicken gaze at me with an expression of such concentrated innocence, you could have squeezed it into a glass for juice, whistling a carefree tune between its beak, observing the butterflies dart hither and yon, as if nothing could be further from her mind than ravaging the plump tomato and mere eighteen inches beyond her left shoulder, meanwhile, when she thought I wasn't looking stretching out with one leg, towards the plant, a red orb hanging trembling among the verdure, sidling inch by inch ever closer... ever closer.  There's a line about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance and thus it is with chickens and vegetables.
You with the feathers, yeah, you, I'm talking to you.  I got my eye on you.
Be warned.

Cleaning the Chicken Coop

No actual chickens were harmed in the making of this blog.
The illustration is included for metaphoric purposes only.My daughter's getting married in a few more days, and I had to clean up the chicken coop.
This is not the sort of sentence you get to write everyday, and you have to make the most of it while you can.  We're holding the rehearsal dinner at our house, and we want everything spic and span.  I took a weak solution of bleach water and scrubbed down the roof, which has gotten somewhat mildewed over the previous year.
Then, later the same day I visited my friends Chris and Jenny because Jenny has sweetly - sweetly! - volunteered to translate the wedding ceremony into Mandarin - some of Drew's family don't speak much English.  All of this sets me to thinking about the cycle of life, time's winged flight, and that sort of thing.  As I type this, it is still dark outside, and I can hear the morning birds singing on the lawn.What a beautiful thing life is!  Shame on anyone who is not as happy as a king.  My daughter has fallen in love and family will come from far and near to celebrate that fact.  Perhaps, one day, in the fullness of time, Drew and Catherine will clean a chicken coop for their own child's wedding.
I could hope for nothing more.

Nose Hairs and Ear Hairs

Dear Powers That Be:
I wish to register a complaint with whoever's in charge up there of hair follicles or whatever about this disposition of hair on my head.  As hair has fallen from my scalp, leaving it as bare as the windswept plain, it has begun sprouting from my nostrils and ears.  This has been going on for sometime now, and I'm sure you think it's very funny, but really enough is enough.  Losing your hair is bad enough without losing it and then finding tufts of it growing from holes in your head.  This is tantamount to a surgeon removing someone's leg and grafting onto his chin.  I cannot understand what purpose this serves, except to get a good laugh up in heaven, unless this is evolution's way of warning off potential mates: Stay Away From This One!  He's Got Hair Coming Out of His Ears!  Similar to a Monarch Butterfly's bright colors warning potential predators: Back Off!  Not Good to Eat!  If you don't mind my saying so, the Monarch Butterfly got the better end of that bargain, and I'd switch places with him in a second as far as hair growing out of the ears is concerned.
In fact, as I think of it, it seems to me you have reserved your cruelest jokes when it comes to aging especially for the human species.  The Silverback Gorilla, for example, develops gray hair along its back, but it doesn't seem to do him any harm.  In fact, the whole species is named for it.  It's a mark of dignity.  No one would call the human species Homo My-God-What-Is-With-Your-Toenails-They're-Disgusting-Cover-Them-Up-Why-Don't-You Sapiens.  The male peacock, upon approaching its dotage, may lose its magnificient plumage, but it doesn't start growing feathers out of its beak, or if it does, it's something I'd like to see.  This is the whole essence of my complaint: it's sad enough losing part of your face without having it switched around on you, as if the gods had suddenly started to play Mr Potatohead with your appearance.  I know you are all powerful and infinite and everything, but if you think it's a piece of cake mowing down the shrubbery in your ears and nose each morning, I suggest you try taking some part of you, like say, a supernova, and sticking it somewhere it doesn't normally belong, your ass comes naturally to mind, but that's just a thought, and see how you like it.
Sincerely,
Man Martin

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Fig 2 Fig. 1So there's these three guys in a plane, and one's a pediatrician, one's a doctor, and one's a lawyer, and the pilot comes back and says, wait a minute, the first one's an osteopath, it's funnier that way, and the pilot comes back and says they're going down and they'll have to jump except there's just one parachute, so the osteopath says, wait a minute, I think there have to be at least two parachutes because otherwise it wouldn't be as funny because, well, anyway, the pilot says there's two parachutes, but that doesn't make sense either, because the pilot needs a parachute, or he wouldn't be so calm, or maybe the pilot says there's three parachutes but he's wearing one of them - that's the ticket! - or he says there's three parachutes and the osteopath says well that should be plenty because that's the sort of thing an osteopath would point out, and the pilot says but I'm already wearing one of them, so it's pretty clear one of you will have to jump, and the osteopath says, one thing they taught us in osteopath school is I can't remember just what the osteopath says he learned in osteopath school, but it's just as well because he's been getting all the good lines anyway and it's not his joke, so just to recap, the pilot comes back and says he can't be bothered to count them right now, but however many parachutes there are there's one too few, and the osteopath says something he learned in osteopath school about self-sacrifice and nobly jumps out of the plane to a certain death which I say good riddance because that osteopath was nothing but trouble and I should've gone with the pediatrician in the first place, but the pilot says we're still going down, and someone else is going to have to jump, and the lawyer says what the hell, I thought we were only one parachute short, and the pilot says, oh, by the way, when I say jump, I mean jump without a parachute, but the lawyer says I thought we had enough after the osteopath left, and the pilot says, no, I must've miscounted, because we're still one short, and the pediatrician says we're only talking about two or three parachutes here and it's not exactly long division, and the pilot says, look, up your mind who's going jump because that's the whole point of the story, and the lawyer says this isn't going to work because the punchline is when I throw the doctor out, but we
Fig 4 Fig. 3need one more person to voluntarily leap to his death after making a noble sentiment so we can build suspense, and the doctor, who doesn't like where this is heading says, well, maybe there's another passenger around here, if you keep miscounting the parachutes, maybe you miscounted them too, so they look around and can't find any more passengers, and the doctor says to the pilot, take off your parachute for a second, I want to check something about the straps, and the pilot says I'm not falling for that one, and the lawyer says, we might as well get this over with, and says the one thing they taught me at the American Bar Association is, and hell I can't remember what it was, but it was really funny in context, maybe about putting other people first and he throws the doctor overboard which isn't nearly as surprising as I meant it to be and then the pilot looks around and says damn, I think we had enough parachutes after all, and come to think of it, the plane's not going down, and we'll be in Phoenix in an hour.