A Little Schadenfreude to Sooth What Ails You

Ok, I realize I'm in the middle of telling the Dead Sea Salt story, but fuck that. Let me wrap it up quickly and hit the salient points for the one and a half people who, in my egomaniacally wild imagination, are waiting with baited breath to hear me say yes, I got worked over by a kiosk bimbo and stripped of sixty hard-earned American dollars and my dignity. And no, I have not used them yet. Which reminds me...

I started off my last blog by explaining how guys don't give a flying rat's asshole about getting cuticle pushes and brazilian waxes or anything that can't be handled with scissors and whatever hair-goo is in the bargain bin at CVS. Well let this be a testament to that theory. My face broke out last week. Not in an insanely gross way (like it did in middle school), but I cultivated a few more zits and blackheads than usual, and of course the crown jewel is the big ruby-red pimple in the middle of my right cheek. On top of that, I've been working a ton of overtime and my hands are taking a beating as a result. They're extremely dry and cracked, and my thumbs are essentially two opposable calluses. Right now, at this exact second, I have $60 worth of product that helps cleanse your face and exfoliate dead dry skin. AND STILL I have not used them for reasons I can't explain.

As someone who dealt with semi-bad acne in junior high, I can say with utter sincerity that back then I would have fallen to my atheist knees, like Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank, and thanked every conceivable God or holy alien in the book, IF my face suddenly looked as clear as it does now. That gratification would have been worth my indentured servitude for the rest of eternity.

I used to think the absolute worst part of it all was the false sense of hope inspired by those fucking Neutrogena commercials, which suggested the only reason my face looked like fried hell was because I wasn't cleaning it adequately. Cut to the graphic of a profiled pore looking like a crud-filled facial mine shaft about to erupt like Old Faithful. Thanks for that image.

Now I know the worst part wasn't the effect those commercials had on me, but the effect they had on the girls I was desperately trying to get into the back row of a movie theater. In near obsessive compulsion, I washed my face more often and with more cleansers, creams, bars, gels and foams than any mammal should in order to convince the world that I was not dirty. Little did I know what diminishing returns I was getting by constantly irritating my volatile skin. Ultimately it came down to nothing more than a crappy set of genes and hormones. There was no cleanser on earth strong enough to wash away the dirt in my pores or the shame in my teenage soul.

I was convinced it would never end. Because everything I saw implied the problem was dirt, and you can't very well rid the world of dirt, can you? I begged for Accutane, but my dermatologist insisted the side effects (depression, ironically) were quite extreme and my mild case didn't warrant such aggressive action. I only wish that some heroically empathetic individual could have tapped me on the shoulder and explained there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, but in a year or two my face would clear up on it's own. At least then I could imagine and dream about a brighter, clearer future.

I'm not self conscious about my skin any more. I wasn't scarred emotionally and I'm the first guy to point out how bad my skin is, and the last guy to ever call someone a pizza face. Why? Because it got better after I finished puberty and my hormones weren't on tilt. I said before that if one day I woke up and my skin was magically clear, I would have been overcome with joy and probably considered it some form of divine intervention. Well, my skin is basically clear now (aside from the occasional break-out), and I could care less. I just never even think about it.

Is this just a funny example of the banal, miniscule problems we thought plagued us as kids? Is it easy to look back and laugh, or should we just constantly be thanking goodness for all of life's pleasures we experience on a daily basis? Or more importantly, should be consider every bullet we dodge in life as a blessing of some sort?

There's a limit to the amount of stress or happiness a person can experience without the aid of drugs. I really wish I had the capacity for happiness to look in the mirror every morning and truly appreciate what it's like to not have a face full of pimples...or be homeless, or a quadriplegic beggar in some Calcutta bizarre. How sweet would life be if that was possible? But you see it works both ways, because it's perfectly plausible that the pizza-face teenager experiences the same level of misery as the quadriplegic beggar. Just because that's their condition. It's all they know. For example. I don't know if it's possible to experience more misery than when you wake up at 5 AM and as you slink out of bed and make your way to the bathroom, you stub your toe on the side of the bed. For that split second of crushing pain, you know exactly what it's like the be the most miserable person on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, it's a little more tricky to experience what it's like to be the happiest person on earth. Perhaps the key is pleasure taken from the misfortune of others, so everyone better thank God for that quadriplegic beggar who makes us look good. (Hopefully he's not that half a person waiting to hear the rest of the salt story. Talk about kicking a dude when he's down. Sorry bro.)

The true blessing in disguise.

love,
Bobby

The Dead Sea Salt Story: Part 1

The great thing about being a guy is we're generally very low maintenance. We don't care about make-up or nails or dying our hair or whether or not short bangs are in this season. We don't give a rat's ass how big our pores are or if we have ashy elbows or manscaped eyebrows. If it was even a choice we made, I would call it liberating, but it's not a choice. Nature or nurture, we just don't care. Deodorant, brushed teeth, a dollop of pomade, and we're ready to go. These are the bare essentials. And that's if we think we might get laid. Remove the possibility of sex from the equation and things get dicey, quick. It's not at all uncommon to go days without showering, shaving or changing clothes. How much time and product are you willing to waste for vanity's sake? What does it say about self-worth if the version of you that rolls out of bed in the morning is unrecognizable from the version you share with the world? 

I remember times in high school when I would feel embarrassed if I realized I wore the same shirt two times in the same week. Einstein famously owned seven sets of the exact same clothes so he never wasted an ounce of brainpower deciding what to wear. This factoid might have been comforting to one of my ex-girlfriends, who no doubt would have been spared a great deal of shame and public humiliation if only she was as self-actualized as Bert Einstein. It happened in middle school, and she did something that landed her in hot water with the folks. I can't remember what, but that's not important. There was no doubt she was going to be grounded, but I honest to God think she would have rather had her old man go Joe Jackson on her ass than receive what I think is the greatest punishment in the history of kids getting punished: Her parents bought her a new outfit, and made her wear it to school every day for two weeks. Fucking genius. It was a normal outfit, and laundered every night. And still the humiliation was almost unbearable for her. And even I can empathize with that.

So, as a "guy," why do I own $60 worth of dead sea salt scrub and skin renewal facial peel? Well, I don't. I own $115 worth of dead sea salt scrub and skin renewal facial peel that I was fortunate enough to only pay $60 for because I sweet-talked the pants off the sales girl. If you believe that, feel free to stop reading now.

Allow me to set the scene. 

It's a few days after Christmas, my bank account is looking pretty stable for once, and I've got a stack of gift cards burning a hole in my pocket. I'm in the process of moving into a townhouse in a very swanky part of town, and me and my mates are planning a New Year's Eve bash, the likes of which will hopefully set the tone for the best twelve months of my life. Not only that, but I'm making it my mission to get some action on New Year's. Last year, I got into an incredibly embarrassing blow-out with my now ex-girlfriend around 11:45 PM. This resulted in her calling her dad to pick her up and me watching the ball drop without getting so much as a peck on the cheek while post-fight adrenaline surged through my body, probably wreaking havoc on my sensitive pores. This year I've got a chip on my shoulder and something to prove to the world and myself. I'm single, I'm not living with my parents anymore, and we're gonna have enough booze to date rape a wooly mammoth. I've got visions of sugar rum fairies rolling in my bed.

First things first, I need a haircut and maybe a new shirt and some shoes. I go to the mall, and the line for Mastercuts is forever long, so I put my name on the list and head off to do some shopping. This may have been a great time to splurge for Spa on the Avenue instead of Mastercuts, but despite my current financial security, responsibly managing money is of the utmost importance. I'm gonna be paying more bills than ever before, and the last thing my ego needs is for me to crawl back to mommy and daddy because I blew my budget on shoes that didn't get me laid. Bags in hand, I make my way to Mastercuts.

That's when I hit a speed bump. A speed bump in the form of a 5'4'' greek goddess, and I've got my lasers, I've got my tasers, I've got my ICBM's and my bazookas pointed right. At. Her. That fairy in my head has a brand new face. I don't ask her name, but I'm guessing Aphrodite. 

In hindsight, Medusa would have been far more fitting. 

It's getting a little late so I think I'm gonna wrap this story up tomorrow after work. This is what we call a "tease" in the biz.

love,

Bobby 

It's a Dawg Eat Dawg World

I know I promised the dead sea salt story next...and it's still coming...but I felt a need to share a story about a very bizarre incident from a few years ago.

I was perusing my favorite message board (theboreds.com) and came across a link to an article about a man from Tyler, Texas. His name is Christopher Lee McCuin.

First of all, notice the deliberate use of the middle name. The media includes all three names when reporting stories on such nefariously macabre individuals, so as to spare the other three Chris McCuin's in Tyler from being confused with the Christoper Lee McCuin. The last thing these hypothetically hard-working, God-fearing family men need is to be mistaken for America's Most Wanted next time they use a credit card at 7-11.

You would expect to hear about a story like this coming out of either Germany or Florida, but the fact that this originates from Texas adds a new wrinkle to the unique fabric of the situation. Another queer tidbit is the name itself. McCuin is what? Irish maybe? It just sort of sounds like a guy who's best friend is named Gordon Wellington. And finally, the nature of his crime falls in the arena of whitey, almost exclusively.

McCuin was arrested after police found him possibly preparing to eat the body parts of his dead girlfriend, Jana Shearer aged 21. He was also charged with stabbing his ex-wife's boyfriend, William Veasley, 42.

According to reports, Shearer's mother was told by McCuin to "look in the garage" where she discovered the mutilated body of her daughter. She then flagged down a police officer on the road.

McCuin called 911 after the mother left the house. According to reports, he told the dispatcher that he was boiling Shearer's body parts and preparing to eat them. When police got to his home, they discovered one of Shearer's ears boiling in a pot, and an unnamed piece of her flesh on the kitchen table, with silverware placed beside it. The rest of her body had several "chunks" missing from it... (Wikipedia.)

I don't really wanna comment on the crime itself. That's a discussion that I might get into when I decide to do a 6-part blog miniseries. I'm still getting my feet wet here. I will say this. The most important issue in this entire situation is that this guy is black.

I have to admit, I am impressed with the strides in equality made by our modern culture. Where sexually repressed/physically abused white males previously held a corner in the market, this brother is shattering through the glass ceiling of ghoulishly violent crime. I say bravo. Dr. King is probably looking down and smiling as a single tear wells up out his eye.

This in the same year as the United States elects the first African American president, Oprah is the highest paid person on television, Will Smith is one of the top-grossing men in Hollywood, Tiger Woods is the highest paid athlete in the world, and 9 our of 10 Billboard's top songs of 2008 are performed by African American artists. And racism is still a problem in our society?

The next time Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton gets behind a podium during black history month and waxes on about how far the black man has come, but how much further they have to go in order to overcome their disadvantages through history...somebody please just stand up and throw a fucking rotten tomato right in their grill, and boo them off stage.

love,
Bobby

(P.S. I personally think the triple entendre in this blurb title is quite clever.)

Prologue: The First Blog

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

I ripped that off from Carl Jung.

Here's something else I'm ripping off from a Chuck Palahniuk seminar on writing fiction: including factoids and quotes gives the narrator an heir of credibility (obviously to be exploited later), which hopefully makes them at least seem like the smartest guy in the room, and thus worth listening to. When that hook is set, that's when you start weaving in your kooky manifesto. Regurgitate enough esoteric bullshit which no one could possibly call you out on, and people start to assume you know what you're talking about. I'm one paragraph in and hopefully I've accomplished that already.

This is like how you get your cat with all the extra bilirubin in his piss to eat that kidney medicine. Just try getting that little fucker to swallow it whole and you're gonna end up speeding to the E.R. with your severed finger on ice. Instead, grind it up and mix it in with a can of fancy feast (go ahead and splurge for the gravy-lovers variety,) and he'll be begging for it the second you walk in the door after work.

Last week it was pointed out to me that I have a George Costanza wallet. If you don't watch Seinfeld on the regular, picture a cube of a worn leather, some six inches square, crammed full of everything but American currency. I have two excuses. First, an abundance of Christmas gift cards, which is obviously a problem most people would be happy to have. Second, for the past few months I've been scratching notes for "comedy material" (and I'm using that term very loosely,) down on countless scraps of paper and storing them in my wallet. Some of it is movie ideas, some quotes I hear from insane Jamaican drug-dealers I work with, some lists of crap I wanna do before I die...but mostly stuff I just wanna complain about.

It's a new year, and I'm going green. No more rainforests will be leveled for these scraps of paper splitting the seams on my wallet. Also, I started recycling and I now have a more fuel-efficient vehicle : )

Unfortunately, despite all my recent life-style changes, I don't currently have a girlfriend. In addition to the more typical girlfriend duties, I need someone to complain to and share stories with on an almost constant basis. Someone who will always be there to vent to and never complain about me complaining. Maybe even someone who appreciates it.

Who knew the ole' porn box could actually be useful on an emotional level too?
Girlfriend-schmirlfriend.

It's amazingly therapeutic to pull that release valve on your brain and share your thoughts with another human being, even if they don't offer any input. Putting ideas into words forces you to give everything a second thought. Writing it down makes you give it a third and fourth. I think this is something close to what Jung was talking about with the whole "looking in your heart" business. I want to be an open book. I want to be unfiltered. I never understood the concept of young girls keeping a diary which their mom or little brother would inevitably find, and make your next Sunday dinner feel like that dream when you're inexplicably naked in front of your entire biology class. That's just not an impulse I could readily identify with. Maybe the danger of it all was a motivating factor. Hopefully this blog will be something like a diary that you're all invited to read. Doesn't that sound intriguing?

Since I can't afford a therapist, this blog will be my therapist, my girlfriend and my soapbox. I wanna look inside and put it on the outside for all to see. I don't really care if anyone reads it on a regular basis, but just knowing that it's out there in the aether somewhere is comforting enough.

In my next post, I'll tell the story about how I spent $60 on an 8 oz. jar of dead sea salt, and why I consider that a great deal.

love,
Bobby