NSFW Implications! The post is interesting, but the content might be too far for some people, even though I’ll use faux language to tell it.
Pink’s birthname was Alecia Moore. It became Pink for two reasons. It later became intertwined with Steve Buscemi’s character “Mr. Pink” in Reservoir Dogs. Pink met Steve Buscemi on the streets of New York when her huge 2000 album came out. He didn’t know who she was and she over-excitedly attempted to explain her name and his involvement. Steve ran away, probably in fear of her exuberance. She said he was “scared s***less.”
The original explanation is, well, NSFW. A friend of hers had never seen a white woman’s . Upon seeing it, he commented on the color quite loudly. Her friends started referring to her as “Mr. Pink.” A joke morphed into an outrageously successful alter ego.
Though it pales in comparison to her name as a bit of trivia, Pink is Jewish, which surprises people.
It is unwise to leave a stack of traffic cones near the sidewalk. Especially when a creative prankster has to talk himself out of doing something ridiculous with them. I had to literally run away because the urge to be hilarious with these overwhelmed me.
Listen… People keep begging me to share more of my great ideas. And to use a LOT more words doing so. They complain that I keep things too short. And I think this is a really good one!
For comedy clubs, after the MC comes out and tells stale jokes laden with false enthusiasm, they should bring two people from the audience to the stage. The first one should be a volunteer. He or she has the opportunity to tell any joke they want. I think we would find some good comedians accidentally this way. I’ve known several people who would be phenomenal as comedians. They look at me like a three-headed armadillo when I point it out to them. The second person would be chosen randomly. They would be asked to tell a joke or do an ad-lib.
Both of these scenarios would drive audience participation and keep things interesting. It would also give all their friends and family an opportunity to witness most of them experience most people’s most fundamental fear: public speaking. Oh, and a really good photo-op.
Thank you for participating in my great ideas series.
I apologize in advance for my failure to write at least 11,256 words.
This is a personal story. Some humor, some violence – but most of all, it contains a thread of nostalgia for people no longer walking the earth with us.
My brother Mike is no longer here to add the details to the story. He was older and larger than me. He reminded me of this easily observable fact quite often. For some reason, he was at the bar with Dad. I’m 92% sure it was the Red Door. During a relatively short stretch of time, Mike often accompanied Dad to the bar during one of our several residencies in Tontitown. Mike was trying to do his homework. Mike used to like to tell the story of how the barfly would hit on him. His account of her appearance was hilarious. Whenever he brought up the story I would ask him, “Yeah, but if she had been good-looking, you would have acted differently.” Sometimes he would punch me in the arm and sometimes he’d say, “Duh. I’m dumb but not stupid. But there’s no way I’d engage with someone who might have been with Dad.” Mike often told a repertoire of versions of this story, full of detail and exaggeration. The bones of the story are true, though.
Dad was drinking too much, which is like saying don’t wash your dishes in the washing machine. I don’t know Tiny’s real name. His nickname derived from the allegedly hilarious observation that he was the exact opposite of diminutive. He probably weighed 350 lb and was about 6 ft tall. Tiny was at the bar, which was a rarity. He preferred to drink an entire case of beer at home. Mike surmised that he and Dad undoubtedly had been working on a truck at some point in the day. And ran out of liquor. In Dad’s world, that was as serious as skipping seven consecutive dialysis visits.
A couple of rednecks came into the bar. They weren’t regulars. Their faces were anything but regular too. Mike liked to quip that both of them could have been a carnival attraction based solely on their faces. Dad was playing pool and acting like a fool to amuse himself. The rednecks wanted the pool table. Back then, we didn’t have Appleby’s, where you could drink too much and pick on an urbanite for amusement. Dad called them his favorite word: “++++suckers.” One of the rednecks came up behind him and knocked him down with a pool cue. When my brother Mike turned around to take another look, he saw Tiny pissed off and getting up from the bar. Tiny was probably more pissed off that he had to leave his beer unattended than he was about my dad BobbyDean getting clobbered. The redneck swung the pool cue at Tiny. Tiny raised an arm and took the blow across his forearm. In a move regarded as one of the most foolish in human history, the rednecks did not take the opportunity to run out of the bar. Tiny walked towards them both. They both started swinging at him. Tiny pushed one of them so hard that it looked like an invisible tether yanked him backward. He grabbed the other redneck by the arm and swirled him around. Despite Tiny’s size, he grabbed the raucous redneck by the belt and picked him up, and threw him in the general direction of the other redneck. He bent down and helped my Dad get back to his feet. Mike did add that Tiny was breathing really hard but otherwise hadn’t changed expression during the entire altercation.
The rednecks took their time getting up. Nobody had anything broken. Dad was bleeding a bit but since it wasn’t gushing, the old rule of “If you can stand up, it ain’t that bad” applied. It’s a version of “Walk it off” that parents told people of our generation – even if an arrow protruded from our thigh.
When the two interlopers had regained the ability to understand English, Dad told them if they would stop acting like Mississippi refugees, he’d buy them both a shot. It’s anybody’s guess whether they accepted the offer for fear of another round with Tiny, or they understood that that was the way these things were supposed to be handled.
My brother Mike ended up sitting at the bar, surrounded by two redneck strangers, Tiny, and Dad. They acted like old friends who just finished trying to kill each other. Mike noted that the barfly was still making geriatric eyes at him. I’m sure that on some nights, Mike probably had a drink, whether he’d easily admit it or not. Knowing Dad, he probably insisted on it. It was a violation of his code of conduct for anyone claiming to be a man to decline a drink in the presence of other men. Later in life, Mike adopted the same outlook, for better or worse. Dad often required me or Mike to drive us all home if he was particularly drunk. We never understood what gauge determined this, as Dad drove even when his breath was flammable.
I’m sure Mike learned more from observance that night than he ever could by staring at his textbook. Mike was brilliant but also brutal in his approach to certain situations. If you doubted him, he’d bend your thumb backward or hit you precisely in the neck in such a way that you were immobilized long enough to regret it.
PS The picture is a composite of their approximate appearance at the time.
It’s bizarre seeing my name everywhere now. It’s bad enough that every school-aged child must learn my name as part of the alphabet, followed by the agony of solving for X when they stumble into “math.” And most maps tell me where I am by noting, “You are here,” accompanied by an X on the diagram. Dang it – I know where I am. Most of the time, anyway.
Years ago, the NWA Mall opened a store geared toward memorabilia for the Malcolm X movie. They invited me to come and take a bounty of X-related merchandise. When the radio station The X changed its name, I wrote them a letter, which they amusingly read on the air.
All I’m asking of Elon Musk is that he gives all of us named X a little compensation. I think 50K would be nice. There aren’t that many legally-named X people in the United States. More publicity. I saw that the account that has the X name on “Twitter” might indeed get quite a bit of money for the name.
It’s a strange coincidence that I came to the name X with a flip of a coin; otherwise, my name would be Q.
Complaining is easy, much like opening a two-lb bag of Doritos and finding yourself licking the empty bottom corners of the bag.
I’ve had my apartment for two years today. I miss the two known drug dealers who once graced us with their presence. They don’t even send me Xmas cards anymore. If you have 14% of your apartments occupied by those, leaving your box of Barbie dolls unattended in the car is difficult. People who sell drugs aren’t dangerous by themselves; they do, however, often attract people you’d see on the Washington County detention roster. (You know the ones. They often look like they’ve spent the entire night in a carnival porta-potty.) I miss my huge mismatched art project that once dominated the fences outside. I took it down a year ago. Earlier this week, I pulled the commemorative purple tile I’d made to remember it. I’ve occupied myself otherwise by leaving strategically placed items in a LOT of different places over the last year. Somewhere, my large tile with a secret message on the back still towers above the ground, high up in a tree that I probably should not have climbed.
One such secret prank I did still amuses me, though I’m not proud of it. A particularly angry person at some point walked out of their residence to discover a gift certificate to Shakes, in hopes that it might lessen their angry, aggressive attitude. I left a note encouraging them to be silent if they couldn’t ever say anything nice. But I also wrote that there is hope for everyone if they’ll just slow down long enough to see that there are blessings and people around them worthy of appreciation. I doubt my attempt helped them. I would call it catharsis, but fancy words like that violate standards in the South.
The last two years seem tenuously stretched to accommodate five times as many days as they contained. That’s a good thing. Time flies, but it also distorts, like bargain-bin yoga pants.
Back to complaining. Complaining serves us in small doses. It allows us to vent and release pressure. It works until we find ourselves beyond the wall of negativity. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Or altitude. (Go lie down for an hour.) Continuing to spew negativity past that point infects the people around you. Do what normal people do: drink excessively or dive into capitalism by collecting penguin trinkets to fill your walls. It’s easier to cure alcoholism than negativity. You can hide the alcohol, but there’s always going to be a reason to bitch and moan. Or moanbitch, if you need another invented word. As you read this, I’m sure you have such a person in mind. If it’s me, I will take the news better if you write it on a $100 bill and hand it to me.
It seems like I started with a unifying point. But I’ve been listening to political speeches and can’t seem to conclude anything. I noted that it gave me the urge to tell many other people what to do and how to live their lives while simultaneously becoming wealthy at taxpayer expense.
One song which gets my feet tapping is “Dedication To Me Ex” by Lloyd. It’s infectious and gets stuck in my head like a badly-thrown ax. There’s something about the funky old-school feel of the song that’s never aged for me.
Years ago, I was blasting it on the work computer, filling the warehouse with the vibe of the song. I downloaded a mess of songs, most of which I’d never heard before. I still play it at high volume at 3-4 a.m.
A co-worker came running up to say, “X, you can’t play THAT song in here. You’re gonna get in trouble.” I looked at him like he was crazy.
“Why? It’s a cool song!”
My coworker looked at ME like I was crazy. “Yeah, it is a great song, but it’s dirtier than Grandma’s Sunday dish towel.”
He walked toward the back where I keep the computer loaded with music. He listened for about a minute and returned.
“Huh! I’ve never heard that version before, X.”
“What other version is there?” My coworker still thought I might be joking with him.
“Well, he isn’t talking about love in the version I know. Look it up, and you’ll see why.” He laughed about almost running to the back to shut it off when he heard it begin playing.
I did listen to it a little later, the explicit version. He wasn’t kidding.
The weird thing? I didn’t watch the video until a couple of months ago. There is both a clean and an explicit version of the video, too.
This song, and a few others like it, pulled me out of a funk this morning. I lit the warehouse up with booming energy. I sometimes remember my coworker’s face as he ran up to me, wondering if I might lose my job.
X
P.S. I remember the first time I heard the newer song “Favorite Song” by Toosii. I’m not a fan of his music. I heard the song without knowing the artist – a habit that I love doing. There’s something undeniably hypnotic about the chords and melody. I’m the same way about the artist Lloyd. I’m not drawn to any other songs of his I’ve heard. And that’s okay with me.
Based on obvious need, I invented a new app called WhereWolf. If you’re drunk, you only have to say “WhereWolf” to your phone. It will speak in a mom’s voice, telling you exactly where you are and to get your ass home.
I used points to get this roll of “for rectal use only” labels at no cost. Something compelled me to purchase it. What kind of shenanigans could I possibly get into with such an amazing item? .
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 