Waiting for "Lefty," maybe

One of the things that starts to dawn on a guy as he grinds his way through his sixth decade is that if he was ever going to get a cool nickname he would probably have gotten it by now. More than likely, there will be no Pee Wee, Doc, or Big D for me. Not Sparky, Bucky, Lucky, or Duke. Not Scooter, Skeeter, Slats, Slick, Slam, or Slim. No Shorty, Sleepy, Specs, Spike, Spud, Tiny or Tubby or Chubby or Chink. Nickname acquisition is a young man's game: George Foster wasn't more than 29 when got tagged with Pops.

Prime Example

Last week I wrote my 250th rant in a row, which I didn't notice until now. That's a lot of rants. It's a good time to pause and reflect. I feel that I have thus far accomplished as much as any one man could hope to achieve in terms of keeping the public eye focused on extremely large watering cans and also gigantic pencils. I have written about the best way to buy bananas, what I think of Jerry Lewis, and interesting things I've noticed while riding my bicycle. Admittedly, there has also been a certain amount of trivial filler.

Pet Theory

Your choice of pet says a lot about you. Like, getting a dog means you crave unconditional devotion, and keeping a cat indicates you're a sucker for emotional abuse. So what does ferret ownership signify? It certainly makes a statement, something on the order of, “I have so little personality that I prefer to be represented socially through a proxy rodent.” It's still a better pet than a rabbit, though. Did you know those cute floppy eared little balls of fluff eat their own babies? They also eat their own poop, redigest it, and poop it out again. Nature's postmodernists.

3 exercises in discretion.

When somebody tells you they're driving to the clinic for a stress test, that's the wrong time to say that if they'd regularly walked to the clinic they probably wouldn't need any stress test. You may remember exactly how many release-your-inner-millionaire books a friend has ever bought. There's no good time to mention that number, ever. And listen. Someday, let's suppose somebody gets up in your face all belligerent and asks, “You think I care what you think of me?” That's probably a bad time to point out that they're asking your opinion of them, right there.

Dagnabit!

I'd like to think that every week I say a clever thing or two here, so that anybody who happens to be reading it will say to themselves, “You know, that's right. I never thought of it that way. The fella that writes this thing has a lot on the ball.” But I may instead be providing sidekick humor. Sidekick humor is when you say a dumb thing that inadvertently steers the main character toward a smart solution. So a scrawny bewhiskered geezer spouts some inanity, and Roy snaps his fingers and says brightly, “Say! That gives me an idea!”

Not You Again

Contrafact. There's a word I'd never heard before. It means a musical composition that uses the metric and harmonic structure of an earlier piece. Like, every 12-bar blues is a contrafact, or how you can play the Flintstones theme over the top of "I've Got Rhythm." Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" is a new melody for "How High the Moon." Weirdly, "The Horst Wessel Song" is a contrafact of "How Great Thou Art." It's not plagiarism; a copyright protects melody, not chord structure. It's like life- you can't fundamentally alter its shape, but you can play whatever you want over the changes.

Rockstar

I know this sounds like a retelling of The Aristocrats, but it's seriously totally true. Last decade, there was this great little band from Detroit that was creating quite a buzz. Big crunchy chords, clever and insightful lyrics, a guy named John Speck with for real one of the great rock voices ever. And they make an EP that gets some major label attention, get signed, make a full-length recording, which, okay, the label sits on it for too long, but finally it gets released. Then... nothing. No sales. No airplay. And The Fags go their separate ways.