Napalm and Silly Putty (14 page)

Time to head home, folks. Let’s get on the checkout line here and read People magazine. By the way, I must admit I’m a real sucker on the checkout line. I’m an impulse buyer. Anything that’s on display, I want it. I even buy things other people leave behind.

“Wow! Extra spicy diet fudge raisin tartar sauce. Must be a sale. Great. I got the last one!”

One last thought: have you ever been on the express line and tried to convince the tough-looking Hispanic girl with the tattoos that twenty-seven packages of hot dogs are really just one item? I’m always grateful when she finally gives in. “Go ahead, mister, it’s quicker than beating the shit out of you.”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-52” ??WELL, AT LEAST THE PLATE WAS BLUE ?

I often wonder why there’s no blue food. Every other color is well represented in the food kingdom: corn is yellow, spinach is green, raspberries are red, carrots are orange, grapes are purple, and mushrooms are brown. So where’s the blue food?

And don’t bother me with blueberries; they’re purple. The same is true of blue corn and blue potatoes. They’re purple. Blue cheese? Nice try. It’s actually white cheese with blue mold. Occasionally, you might run across some blue Jell-O in a cafeteria. Don’t eat it. It wasn’t supposed to be blue. Something went wrong.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-53” ??FUSSY EATER ?

When I was a kid, I was a fussy eater. That’s what they called it at our house.

“He’s a fussy eater.”

“Fussy eater” is a euphemism for “big pain in the ass.” They’d trot out some food, and I’d say, “I don’t like that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I know I don’t like it. And I know that if I ate it, I would like it even less.”

“Well, I like it. Mmmmm! Yum yum!”

“Hey, Ma. You like it? You eat it!”

Sometimes they would try to corner me with logic: “Well, how do you know you don’t like it, if you’ve never even tried it?”

“It came to me in a dream.” Big pain in the ass.

Some things I didn’t like because of the way they sounded.

“Don’t sound right to me, Ma. Say that again?”

“Asparagus.”

“No, I don’t like that.” Imagine. I got away with that for eight or nine years.

To this day, there are still some things I won’t eat because of how they sound. Yogurt sounds disgusting. I can’t eat anything that has both a “y” and a “g” in it. Squash is also badly named.

“You want some squash?” Sounds like someone sat on dinner.

“How would you like a nice tongue sandwich? It’s made from slices of a cow’s tongue.”

“Hey, Ma, are you fuckin’ tryin’ to make me sick?”

There are also foods that sound too funny to eat. Like guacamole. It sounds like something you yell when you’re on fire. “Holy guacamole! My ass is burnin’!”

Or when you can’t remember the name of something. “Ed, where’s that little guacamole that plugs into the lamp?”

Another food too funny to eat: garbanzo beans. Sounds like acrobats. “Ladies and gentlemen, from Corsica, the fabulous Garbanzos!”

On the other hand, there were some foods I didn’t like because of how they looked. That seems a bit more rational.

“I don’t like that! It don’t look right to me. Did you make that, Ma? Yeah? Is there a picture of it in the cookbook? I’ll bet it don’t look like that.”

Of course, some people will eat anything, no matter how it looks. I saw guys like that on the chow line in the army.

“Hi, boys! Whaddaya got? I’ll eat anything. What’s that called? Never mind, gimme a whole bunch of it.”

“It’s rat’s asshole, Don.”

“Well, it sure makes a hell of a fondue.”

Not me. I don’t eat anything I don’t recognize immediately. If I have to ask questions, I pass. I’m not at dinner to make inquiries. Gimme somethin’ I recognize. Like a carrot. I know I can trust a carrot.

Now, there are some foods that even though I know what they are, I still don’t like their looks. Tomatoes, for instance. My main problem with tomatoes is that they don’t look as though they’re fully developed. They look like they’re still in the larval stage; thousands of tiny seeds and a whole lot of jelly-lookin’ slime. “Get it off my plate! It’s slimy!” It’s like that stuff at the end of an egg.

Of course, I know it’s not the end of an egg . . . it’s the beginning of a chicken!! “It’s hen come! Eeeeaaaaghhh! Get it off my plate!”

Oh, I’m fun in the coffee shop.

Lobsters and crabs don’t look like food to me, either. Anything with big pinchers crawling toward me sideways doesn’t make me hungry. In fact, my instinct is “Step on that fuck! Step on him before he gets to the children!”

And I definitely cannot eat oysters. Not for the usual reason—their similarity to snot—but because when I look at the whole oyster I think, “Hey, that’s a little house. Somebody lives in there. I’m not gonna break in on a guy just to have a meal. He might be making a pearl. Maybe he just brought home a do-it-yourself pearl kit and cleared off the dining room table. Who am I to interfere with the plans of an oyster?”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-54” ??RUNNING HOT AND COLD ?

The refrigerator butter warmer is a strange invention. Originally, humans were cold so they built a warm enclosure. A house. Cold outside, warm inside the house. Everything was fine until they realized that inside the warm enclosure the meat tended to spoil. So they built a cold enclosure—a refrigerator—inside the warm enclosure. Warm in the house, cold in the refrigerator. Everything was fine until they realized that inside the cold enclosure the butter got too hard to spread. So they built an even smaller warm enclosure—a butter warmer—inside the cold enclosure, which was already inside the larger warm enclosure. Strange.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-55” ??ICEBOX MAN ?

Around our house I’m known as Icebox Man. One of my duties is keeping people from standing too long with the icebox door open while they decide what to eat. You know, someone smokes three joints and decides to inventory the refrigerator. Drives me crazy.

“Close the fuckin’ door, will ya? You’re letting out all the cold. Here’s twenty dollars, go down to the Burger King! I’ll save that much on electricity. Close the goddamn door! If you can’t decide what you want, take a Polaroid picture, go figure it out, and come back later. You kids are lucky. We didn’t have Polaroids, we had to make an oil painting.”

I try not to let them get me down, though, because Icebox Man has an even bigger job: picking through the refrigerator periodically, deciding which items to throw away. Most people won’t take that responsibility; they grab what they want and leave the rest. They figure, “Someone is saving that; sooner or later it’ll be eaten.” Meanwhile the thing, whatever it is, is growing smaller and denser and has become permanently fused to the refrigerator shelf.

Well, folks, Icebox Man is willing to make the tough decisions. And I never act alone; I always include the family.

“I notice some egg salad that’s been here for awhile. Are we engaged in medical research I haven’t been told about?”

“May I assume from the color of this meat loaf that it’s being saved for St. Patrick’s Day?”

“Someone please call the museum and have this onion dip carbon-dated.”

“How about this multihued Jell-O from Christmas? It’s July now. If no one wants this, I’m going to throw it away.”

Did your mother ever pull that stuff on you? Offer you some food that if you didn’t eat it she was “Just going to throw it away”? Well, doesn’t that make you feel dandy?

“Here’s something to eat, Petey. Hurry up, it’s spoiling! Bobby, eat this quickly; the green part is spreading. If you don’t eat it, I’m going to give it to the dog.” It’s so nice to be ahead of the dog in the food chain.

Icebox Man has had some interesting experiences. Have you ever been looking through the refrigerator and come across a completely empty plate? Nothing on it but a couple of food stains? It’s unnerving. I think to myself: “Could something have eaten something else? Maybe the Spam ate the olives. Maybe that half-eaten chicken isn’t really dead. He’s living on our food.” Sometimes I picture a little mouse in a parka, hiding behind the mustard, waiting for the refrigerator light to go off so he can resume his cold-weather foraging.

Probably the worst experience is reaching into the refrigerator and finding something you simply cannot identify at all. You literally do not know what it is. It could be meat; it could be cake. At those times, I try to bluff.

“Honey? Is this good?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like, well, it looks like . . . meat cake!”

“Smell it!”

“It has no smell whatsoever.”

“That means it’s good! Put it back. Someone is saving it for something.” That’s what frightens me; that someone will consider it a challenge and use it in soup. Simply because it’s there.

It’s a leftover. What a sad word: leftover.

But think about this. Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put them away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: “I’m saving food!” Then, a month later, when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: “I’m saving my life!”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-56” ??DOG MOMENTS #3 ?

Big Dog, Little Dog

Dogs come in all sizes. There are lots of little dogs, and lots of big dogs. And when I say big dogs, I don’t mean just big dogs. I mean BIG, FUCKIN’, HUGE GODDAMN DOGS! Some people got huge dogs that look more like livestock. Dogs that oughta be wearin’ commercial license plates.

“What the hell is that?”

“That’s my dog.”

“Jesus, man, he blocked out the sun!”

“That’s Tiny. He’s a Great Alaskan Horse Moose Dog. Say ‘hello,’ Tiny. No, no! Tiny! Put the man down! Bad dog!”

Little dogs are different. Little dogs jump all around, and their legs move real quick. They got those teeny little legs. They got legs that if you feel around under the fur it’s like a pepperoni stick under there.

Sometimes they jump up high. Some of ’em can jump clear up onto a real high bed.

[Boing!]

“Holy shit, what a jump! Lemme see ya do that again.”

Put him back on the floor.

[Boing!]

“God, I can’t believe it. C’mon, one more time.”

Back onto the floor.

[Boing!]

And I make him keep doin’ it and doin’ it, over and over, until he gets all tired out and can’t quite reach the bed anymore. I let him fall short a few times and crash back onto the floor. Then and only then, if I decide I want him on the bed, I put him up there myself. It’s my decision; I buy the dog food.

Fleeky Disappoints

Besides, if you do allow him on the bed, sooner or later he’ll create an incident. Before the evening is over, he will force one of the humans to turn to the other and say,

“Honey, did you fart?”

“Not me. I thought you farted.”

“Not me! Phewww! That’s not even one of my farts! I told you, I’ve got four farts. My Heineken’s fart, my broccoli fart, my rice pudding fart, and my nondairy creamer fart. And the fart I’m smellin’ right now is definitely not one of mine.”

[Sniffing]

“Wait a minute. I know! The dog farted!! Fleeky farted! Fleeky, why did you fart? Look at him! Look how guilty he looks. He knows he farted. I seen his asshole open up. I seen it. What? Well, I just happened to be lookin’ at his asshole by chance, that’s all. What kind of a question is that? I was simply glancin’ at his asshole, and I saw it open up. I thought he was doin’ some kinda deep-breathing exercise. I had no idea he was into chemical warfare.”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Dom\\Desktop\\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\\Napalm_body-contents.html” \l “TOC-57” ??SHORT TAKES ?

I don’t mind leaving my house as long as I don’t have to look at a lot of unattractive Americans in the process. Visors, logo hats, fat thighs, beer bellies, bad haircuts, halter tops, cheap sneakers, camcorders, and unattractive children wearing blank expressions. God, these people are ugly. I stay home a lot.

I always refer to any individual member of the Red Sox as a Red Sock. Is this correct?

America: where the Irish, English, Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, and Italians all came together to kill Indians, lynch niggers, and beat the shit out of spics and Jews.

Next guy who says to me, “Badda-boom, badda-bing,” is gettin’ kicked right in the fuckin’ nuts.

I was one of the people at Woodstock who took the brown acid. Lemme tell ya, there was nothing wrong with it.

NEVER FORGET, HITLER WAS A CATHOLIC.

Here would be a good epitaph for some guy: “I want everyone to know it was great being alive, and I really enjoyed myself. I especially enjoyed fucking and going to the movies.”

If you listen to his voice carefully without looking at the screen, Ted Koppel sounds like he’s taking a shit.

There’s a thing called shaken-baby syndrome that people get upset about. Personally, I think you have to give ’em a good shake, or they don’t bake uniformly.

The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice.

If a movie is described as a romantic comedy you can usually find me next door playing pinball.

Somehow I enjoy watching people suffer.

My most frequent sex fantasy: to work in a delicatessen and have a woman come in and ask me to give her a pound of tongue.

And I’d say, “Well, I don’t get off till four o’clock.”

And she’d say, “Well, I don’t get off at all, that’s why I want some tongue.”

If they decide to cover Viagra under Medicare, we’ll all be paying for other people’s hard-ons.