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Post More Bills

A
fter a public outcry, the honchos at Major League Baseball decided not to let a movie company put ads on the first, second and third base bags. Some things are sacred. Why, if they allowed that kind of advertising in places like Coors Field, Qualcomm Stadium, Minute Maid Park, or Network Associates Coliseum, it might cheapen the entire sport. Besides, ads on the bases might distract fans from the twenty-foot-tall beer, shaving cream, and cell phone ads along the outfield fence. And it would be an affront to all the people in the stands wearing t-shirts and hats splashed with company logos and brand names and pictures of rock stars. They might miss the ad on the ticket stub that can be used as a coupon to get a dollar off a large, frozen pizza at the local big box store. Fans might miss the ad on the paper hot dog tray for the place that will change your oil and give you a free lube job with every $19.95 super wash. Advertising on the bases? An outrage! Please! Stop! Laughing! By the way, this post-game paragraph was brought to you by a subdivision of a giant multinational brewer who pretends to be a fledgling Mexican microbrewery even though that beer comes out of the same vat as all the rest of it.

We see so many ads that, like common viruses, we develop an immunity to them. So advertisers are always looking for new spots, new ways to get their message across. Eighteen-wheel trucks that used to be painted white or silver are now huge rolling billboards. It keeps painters employed and the trucks neat so what’s the harm? In big cities, the subways are covered in advertising; the revenue is used to lessen the taxpayer’s burden. I’m bringing this up because it strikes me that one place where advertising might break new ground and also benefit consumers is in the funeral trade. Why can’t the dearly departed’s favorite beer or his favorite team help sponsor his final rest? Let’s say a baseball fan dies. He may not want
Spiderman IV
advertised on the bases, but surely he wouldn’t mind having Chief Noc-A-Homa plastered all over the side of his coffin. Especially if it substantially lowered the price. Remember those telephones in the shape of footballs? Why not get buried in one? With plastics, they can make coffins in any shape at all. Imagine a giant six-foot-tall beer can lying on its side. The lid lifts up like the top of a barbecue grill. Inside is the man who drank two six-packs of the stuff every night while watching sports on his five-hundred-channel satellite dish. What could be more fitting, more touching, more appropriate?

A college football fan could get a coffin in the school colors. The inside would be full of pennants and memorabilia. He’d be supporting his team and easing his way into the hereafter at the same time. The Martha Stewart line of coffins would come in pastels with matching trim. Inside there would be an eiderdown pillow covered with a linen case and lined in the most tasteful white-on-white taffeta. The NASCAR model would come complete with STP and Napa Auto Parts decals. You could pick the number of your favorite driver. Why stop there? You’ve seen those new headstones with a photo of the deceased engraved on them? Why not a sponsor’s name as well? Say a normal headstone is three thousand dollars. Have the words “Got Milk?” on it with a picture of our late friend wearing a milk mustache and the price may drop to fifteen hundred. Tombs in the shape of bowling trophies could be very popular. Me, I’d like to be laid to rest under a large two-foot-high golf ball. On one side it would have my name and dates, on the other “Titleist.” Instead of putting housing developments around golf courses, wouldn’t it be more practical to put cemeteries around them? No worries about broken windows, no dings in the siding. Besides, I’d get more visitors from other golfers than I ever would from my family. And, like me, I’d know my visitors can’t hit the fairway, either.

Lord of the Earrings

A
fter attending a neighborhood picnic the other day I had to ask myself—Will I be the last man in this country to wear a goatee? Will I be the last guy on the planet to get a tattoo? Will I be the last overweight man on the planet to buy a motorcycle? Will I be the last man on my block to wear an earring? And will it go with my hearing aid? Or do they make hearing aids now that look like earrings?

I am so out of it, I don’t even know where to go to get my ears pierced. To that booth in the middle of the mall that all the sixth grade girls go to? I’d be so embarrassed if I ran into someone I knew.

“Hey, Jim! How you doing? I haven’t seen you since you shaved your head and grew the goatee. That’s a nice look for you—if you ever take up professional wrestling. Do they have a senior tour on the WWF?”

And what kind of earrings would I buy? And how many? I see a lot of guys wear diamond studs. Other guys have two little gold hoops on the same ear. Can you have a diamond on one side and a hoop on the other?

I don’t know the first thing about jewelry. What if getting an earring doesn’t make me look more macho but makes me look less macho? My macho cushion is not that thick. The wrong earring might send a message I don’t want to send. Instead of saying “When you see me coming better step aside,” it might say, “Let me hold your purse while you go shopping for fabric remnants.”

How do I shave a goatee? I’m not that artistic. The two sides won’t match. It would take forever. Call me crazy, but I want to spend less time in the bathroom, not more. And my beard color doesn’t match my hair color. My hair is salt and pepper (if you use that popular grey pepper) but my beard is salt, pepper, salt and more salt. Would an earring go with that?

Should I shave my head or go with that Johnny Depp
Pirates of the Caribbean
look? I could weave my car keys and reading glasses into my hair extensions so I would never lose them again and look dangerous and out of control at the same time—except for the tie and sport coat.

How do you pick a tattoo? Do you get references?

“Are you the guy that did Melissa’s tattoo? Nice work. It looks just like her ex-boyfriend. It’s really lifelike. Did you know he’s grown a goatee since they broke up? Maybe she’ll come in for a touch-up.”

And what would my tattoo say? “Mom”? My Mom would have hated that. Or maybe one of those things that look like razor wire circling my bicep. Oh yeah, I don’t have much of a bicep. A tattoo will only bring attention to it.

Would I tell Sue before I got my ears pierced? Before I got a tattoo, before I shaved my head and grew a goatee? Hell, no. Why should I? I’m a grown person, I don’t need anyone’s permission, she’s not the boss of me! That’s the whole point of the earring—it screams, “You can’t tell me what to do! I’m an outlaw, I live by my own rules.” And besides, all the other guys have them.

But if I just do it without telling her first, she’ll kill me. “Outlaw Renegade Macho Man Kicked Out of House by Tiny Woman” is not a headline I want to read.

When You Care Enough to Write Your Very Own

W
hen an elderly neighbor we barely knew died recently I went to the drug store to buy a sympathy card to send to his wife. I was looking for something sober and simple. A plain white card that said something like, “We were saddened to hear of your loss. Please accept our sincere condolences. Our thoughts are with you at this sad time.”

That, you cannot buy. You can, however, buy any number of cards with embossed silver lilies on the front that say, with small variations, “He was the best person on Earth and after he invented cold fusion and time travel he gave all his money to widows and orphans. When he wasn’t feeding the homeless, he was building them houses. Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa wished they were as good and kind as he was. I beg you to make it a closed coffin funeral or I might jump in. Why him, Lord, and not me?”

That was more than I really wanted to say. Maybe someone closer to him, say, the oil delivery guy or his septic tank cleaner, could send something that flowery, but I was practically a stranger. Besides, it was so vague, like one of those eulogies by a preacher who never met the deceased. I’ve been to funerals when after the preacher’s finished I take a second look at the program to make sure we’re burying the right person. If that card was too flowery, others were not flowery enough. I didn’t have the heart to put my signature on this one either:

“Even though he was in a nursing home for the last eight years and hadn’t spoken in six, we were shocked. We’d been planning to go see him for years and now it’s too late. If only he could have hung on until our kids finished soccer season, we could have been there for him. If you need anything, I mean anything, please let us know. Well, not on Tuesdays, that’s Jim’s bowling night. And Fridays are pretty bad, too. Sue’s taking that Thai cooking class. What’s going to happen to that big roll top desk he had? It would really look good in our library. I’m sorry, that was an insensitive thing to say. You might think it will look better in our family room. Who are we to tell you what to do? Thursdays are no good at all. That’s
Survivor
night. We never miss it. Now that I think about it, you’re the one with all the free time now. Maybe you should come over here and help
us
. They say work will take your mind off your troubles.”

While looking for something with just the right tone, I accidentally picked up some cards from the “Birthday—Seniors” section. “Hey, you old geezer, drop dead and make room on the planet for someone else,” read the first one. “I wanted to get you something extra special, but Dr. Kevorkian is in jail,” said the second. “I gave you this same card last year, but you probably can’t remember it, can you, you senile old fool?” said the third. I’m starting to think that what carried my neighbor off might have been a torrent of brutal birthday cards.

I wonder if the cards are having the opposite effect of what is intended. Instead of saying “We’re thinking about you,” they may be saying “This is all the time I’m willing to waste on you.” One card company has a slogan, “When you care enough to send the very best.” They’re right. I did what I should have done from the start and wrote a note to the new widow on my own stationery. Weeks later she told me it was the only handwritten note she’d received.

Dude, Where’s My Horse?

H
ey, pardner, when you’ve had enough of the hustle and bustle of city life, it’s time to visit the Lazy A Hole Ranch in the heart of the pristine, unspoiled, uncrowded, undiscovered Mosquito Grande Mountains.

Not for tenderfeet, the Lazy A Hole is that real cowboy experience you’ve been looking for. Imagine getting up with the sun after sleeping under the stars. Imagine brushing off spiders and centipedes as you crawl behind the nearest tree to use our huge, spacious, open-air, pine-scented bathrooms.

The Lazy A is not only fun, it’s educational! You’ll learn how to identify crawling, flying, and stinging insects, a wide variety of nocturnal rodents and multiple bird droppings up close and personal-like. You’ll learn by actually touching them which plants will sting and cut and which ones won’t; you’ll learn which ones will leave a nasty rash. No need for book learning and memorization here. Once you’ve spent an evening pulling burrs out of your underwear, you won’t never forget what purple thistle looks like.

Then Cookie will serve you a real cowhand’s breakfast—blackened eggs, blackened toast, blackened bacon, blackened home fries, blackened orange juice. From roadkill to free-range beef, there’s practically nothing he can’t blacken, and you’ll wash all of it down with his blackened coffee. None of your citified, fancy-schmanzy latte grandes out here, no sirree.

No fancy-schmanzy city doctors, either. Rope burn? See Cookie. Dislocated shoulder? See Cookie. Snake bite? See Cookie. Broken bone stickin’ through your skin? See Cookie. He’s got a wide variety of ointments and folk remedies that have kept our ranch hands on the job for years past their due date. Just ask One-Eye Pete, One-Arm Dave, or me, Coughin’ Bob: would we rather go to a doctor or just see Cookie? True, we did lose One-Ear Joe in an unfortunate branding iron accident but that ’twere mostly his own fault.

At the Lazy A, you’ll be doin’ the job of a real, honest-to-God cowpoke—mine. I ain’t been able to do much since I caught that horseshoe in the head. Cookie puts a stinging poultice on it once a week made out of ground up lightning bugs and axle grease, but there are some things modern medicine can’t yet fix. You’ll cut cattle, stack hay, feed the calves, clean the barn, and mend fence in the heat and in the pouring rain, all the time waving and slapping at black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes as big as your boot.

And don’t ignore the health benefits of the great outdoors. Some spas charge you thousands of dollars a week to take a few mudbaths and to lose a few pounds. At the Lazy A you’ll get more exercise in one afternoon slapping away no-see-um bugs than you’ll ever get at some high-faluting air-conditioned health spa. Mud bath? By the end of a Lazy A day you’ll get covered in filth nature’s way, on the back of a horse.

You’ll feel the calories burn away after fourteen hours on the back of a sweaty horse in the blazin’ sun. Hell, if you don’t get skin cancer by the end of the week, we ain’t been doin’ our job. ’Course you won’t be gettin’ it on your inner thigh, ’cause that skin’ll all be gone by the end of the first day. When it comes to losing ugly pounds, Cookie’s food puts the Atkins, the Zone, and Sugar Busters diets to shame. I’ve been losing ten pounds a year right steady. I’m down to 130. I can get my whole body in one of my old pant legs.

But the most important thing is the memories you’ll have for the rest of your life: discovering you’ve bedded down on top of a fire ant’s nest; nearly getting washed away in a flash flood; catching your pant leg on fire and having your new ranch friends stomp it out for you.

If this sounds like the life you’ve always dreamt of having but never did, give us a call. It’s only $2,750 a week. Plus tax and tips. For $2,850 a week I’ll let you do my laundry, too.