Ben's Web Log

Mel Gibson’s Rules for Good Living

ben — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:11:58 +0000

I find myself busy during the long holiday weekend, so my good friend Mel Gibson generously agreed to author a guest post.

People often ask me, “Mel, How did you become so successful?” The answer is simple. I’ve found that when you follow these simple rules for living, everything will come up roses.

If you make a movie about Jesus, people will let you say whatever you want.

If you make three buddy movies with a black guy, feel free to use the n-word all you like.

It’s bad form to burn down your partner’s house after she provides oral sex, UNLESS you explicitly inform you partner of your intention to burn before the sexual activity begins.

It’s surprising, but pigs in heat are amazingly attractive.

When it becomes inevitable that the one you love is to be raped by a pack of n-words, make sure she’s clear that you aren’t to blame.

Jews may have a lot of money, but they very rarely throw a punch. Say what you will about them, and your arresting officer will probably agree.

Get hammered. And stay that way.

Two Short Scenes From Real Life

ben — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:45:38 +0000

Scene 1: Master bedroom, theskinnyonbenny mansion.

Vanya, wearing a cowboy hat and climbing on to his mother’s back: Mama, I’m gonna ride you like a cowboy.

Mrs. theskinnyonbenny lets him climb up, smiling.

Me: That’s a much better response than I get when I tell her the same thing.

Scene 2: Mexican restaurant, lunchtime on Wednesday.

Benny, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny, and Vanya eat their lunch. Vanya catches the waiter’s eye and waves him over to the table.

Vanya: Hey, we don’t have any money. To pay for this. We come back tomorrow to pay.

Waiter just gives puzzled look.

Mrs. theskinnyonbenny: Way to go Vanya, now he’s going to be watching us like a hawk.

Tri

ben — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:40:54 +0000

You may have noticed that a very high percentage of the blogs out there have turned into parents writing about their kids. I know it’s just not that interesting, but when you have a little kid, you just don’t get out that much and find other amusing things to write about. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the quality of American writing is worse just because it’s such a pain in the ass getting a babysitter.

By the time this posts, I will be days in on a trip to a resort with lots of bars and gambling — a trip that includes many of the most fun adults that I know, and none of our children. But until that trip has come and gone, you’ll have to wait for stories fit for grown ups.

Until then, you’ll have to settle for a quick note about Vanya’s first triathlon. He did the RocketKidz rookies tri on Saturday, and surprisingly, he really, really seemed to enjoy it. It’s a very well-organized event. For the three and four year olds, the parent swims a short and refreshing lap with them, followed by a short lap on the bike, followed by a run to a finish line.

All of this was in a very nice park in North Baton Rouge that I have never as much as heard of. If the park itself had a brain, it would have assumed that light skin was an unattractive deformity passed on to a few unfortunate humans (which is actually kind of true if you consider the evolution of man). The park would have gone on to assume that the white minority had banded together to overtake the park and its surrounding areas, for the purpose of having a place to let our kids run. Perhaps the park would think, “What a shame — that the ugly white children aren’t allowed to play out there in the rest of the world.”

We’ll forgive the park its racism, because we’re worldly enough to see the healthy wealthy children. Many had serious competition level gear, and were there for business. Others were scared, but most were just playful and eager.

The results of such a race are meaningless. Parents could choose to drag their little ones through the pull at any rate they like, and some kids wore life jackets, etc. But even so, Vanya was the very last little guy to pass over the finish line. They went off in different groups, and he ended up not being the last place finisher when adjustments for starting time were made. But that’s two tris out of two attempts where the member of my house was last to cross the finish line, making it a family tradition.

My second favorite part was toward the end of the bicycle part. I drew up next to him to go into the transition area with him, and he slammed on his brakes and came to a stop.

“What are you doing?”

“I want you to give me a boost, so I’ll go faster.”

Oh.

My favorite part was at the beginning of the run. One of the volunteers handed him a cup of water like they do in serious races — never mind the fact that he was only 8 minutes of exertion into the race.

He stopped, drank it at leisure, and then carefully set the cup neatly and upright on the ground.

My pics are here. Race results for the little kids are here. Nice showing by the girls at the top of the heap, I noticed.

Let Me Take Care of This

ben — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:39:29 +0000

The news is tiring of it, but oil is still pouring into the waters of the Gulf Of Mexico as you sit and read. I wish I was in the government and somehow in charge of all of this. Here’s what I would do.

Put someone in jail. I’m going to find someone, really high up in BP, and I’m going to find some way to charge them with criminal activity. Criminal negligence? Violation of the Clean Water Act? I’m not sure what crime merits imprisonment, but there’s something or other. If it were an industry other than oil, and if it happened under the previous administration, W would have claimed it a terrorist activity and thrown someone in Guantanamo with charges and without a lawyer. Is that out of the question?

It’s true that the guy that I imprison aren’t smart enough to stop the leak or clean it up, but they set the bonuses for the people who do know, so I think this would be effective.
Fine BP 100% of their profits. There’s no reason for BP to show a profit. Every spare cent that they make needs to be going toward buying and building and hiring people and equipment for oil cleanup. Period. I don’t see how this could be questioned.
The limeys don’t like this notion because 8% of their countrymen’s pension payments comes from BP dividends. To that I say, piss poor money management, redcoats. But if any of your retirees is having trouble making ends meet, one of your own corporations might buy you some rubber boots and put you to work scooping tar balls off of once beautiful American beaches.
Can we get some engineers from Japan to take a look at the leak itself? Let’s not pretend that theirs aren’t better than ours. When is the last time your Honda didn’t start? If they aren’t around, maybe we can give the Germans a crack at it.
Open up the Mississippi. Push the damn oil away from here. Sorry Florida. Sand is probably easier to clean than marsh grass, and by the time it gets to you, it should be diluted. And it’s not like the whole Florida Gulf coast isn’t going to need a good scrubbing.

Our local paper is, of course, covering the spill with daily articles on page one, above the fold. One day, there was an article about the popular vacation destinations on the Alabama cost that included the tidbit that condos are providing guests with chemical cleaners to help them remove oily goo from their bodies.

Who are the insane rednecks who are still swimming in the oily goo? Please comment if you know. This has been bothering me for a couple of weeks.

Another Cartoon Post

ben — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:31:08 +0000

Vanya is all-in on an initiative to talk like Looney Tunes. For a couple of weeks, he’s been known to throw out a “What’s up Doc?” as he eats something that requires bringing hand to mouth. It doesn’t have to be a carrot. A pretzel, slice of apple, or even a sandwich will do.

On Sunday, I heard him say quietly to himself “What’s the big idea,” and I suspected that this would come up in conversation soon. And it did. After I rewired an electrical outlet, he came through the room where the outlet was and said, “Papa, what’s the big idea with this plug?” Since then, he’s dropped a couple more big ideas.

I’m looking forward to the inevitable “Sufferin Succatash”, as well as Foghorn Leghorn’s, “Ah say, Boy!”

While we’re on the topic of cartoons, you may have seen this action figure on Mrs. theskinnyonbenny’s Facebook page. We took Vanya to Target on his Gotcha Day, with the mandate that we would get him any one toy that he wanted. We played in there for probably an hour. There were dozens of Toy Story toys (including a giant $100 Buzz who walked and talked via remote control), but we also played with all kinds of superheroes and robots.


	Lamest Action Figure ever. She’s not even weighted in a way where it’s possible to make her stand up.

There were several packs of three action figures called “DC Universe.” Except for one, all of those had three super heros. The one that Vanya chose had Batman, a general, and an overweight black woman in a business suit. It is perhaps the oddest package of action figures ever marketed.

I knew that he just wanted Batman. I showed him several other Batman packs. Batman with much cooler costumes, Batman on a motorcycle, but I couldn’t outweigh the appeal of Batman plus two other characters.

The thing with the other characters is important. He already has at least one Batman action figure, so his marginal gain was just the general and the overweight business woman. Surely even a four year old can recognize this as a stupid choice. During the narrowing down process, I identified this as the ONLY TOY OUT OF THE HUNDREDS THAT WE PLAYED WITH that I really objected to.

But when we tired of the incessant playing, his clear choice was this particular action pack.

When we got home, I went to the internet to find out who the business woman is. Nerd readers can set me straight, but I got that there’s one series of cartoons where this woman is the super heroes’ government liaison. Since he actually has no powers, the super heroes delegate the governmental paper work to Batman. I guess Robin, Zan, and Gleek are all dead or something.

Wedding Wrapup

ben — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:55:14 +0000

Until I got a text message reminding me, I completely forgot that I told my cousin’s new husband, “I think it’s great that you were willing to marry JJ, given her non-functioning male genitalia and all.”

So I think that makes up for the fact that I didn’t take a picture of my junk with the disposable cameras at the reception. But if this bothers you, it might be best to stop reading the recap now. You can safely check out my pictures here.

We had a good weekend up in beautiful West Monroe, Louisiana. We arrived late Friday afternoon, and I complained about the 3 1/2 hour drive, realizing mid-complaint that everyone else in the conversation had driven for 8 or 10 or more hours, and with more kids. I was really complaining about having to slow down to 45 and pass through one shitty little North Louisiana town after another, but I couldn’t choke that part out. So I just mentioned that my 3 1/2 hours felt more like 4, and that we hadn’t even stopped at Fatty’s Cracklins in Mississippi, despite the allure of the cartoon pig on their sign.

(Just typing Fatty’s Cracklins makes me need to go poop. Hang on, and I’ll come finish this post in a few minutes….)


	Just another afternoon at the compound.

Once upon a time, my grandparents bought this lot in West Monroe. Back then, it was out in the country. My mother finished her childhood there with her four sisters, and there’s some dispute about who was responsible for taking the one-legged grandmother who also lived there to the bathroom.

Once my mother’s generation was grown, one of her sisters moved to that house, and all of her children grew up in that house. Then, when she moved away, her son bought the place. On that lot, he built two new houses, one of which he moved into, and one of which one of the other sisters bought. What calls the Martins to this particular plot of land escapes me, but so it is. All of this is to give you some context for what I’ll refer to as “the compound.”

When we arrived, we walked around to the back of the compound, starting a full weekend of sitting around, nursing a drink, and making fun of each other. My first really good laugh was when my nephew turned to see an uncle pointing a rifle over the pool full of kids (he was using the sight to try to identify a particular bird of prey), which pretty much scared the bejesus out of him.

That night, many of us from my generation sat in the kitchen, eating a snack made out of saltine crackers. They were tossed in some sort of oil and seasoning mix and then dried, so that they tasted similar to large Cheese-Its. This is particularly funny, because the Martin women share a pickle recipe with something oddly in common.

The pickles are very good, and one time, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny asked me to find out how they were made.

“Do you know what the main ingredient is?” I asked.

“Duh. Cucumbers.”

“In fact, you’re wrong. They start with DIFFERENT PICKLES!”

Yes, my mother and aunts make pickles out of different pickles. And now, I guess, crackers out of different crackers.

I think that there’s a cookbook idea there, and I assigned my cousins the homework of coming up with recipes for snacks made out of other snacks. I’m going to try to make pudding out of Chips Ahoy.


	This is what happens when you bring babies to weddings.

Saturday morning was more of the same. After a long nap, we dressed, and went to the park for the wedding. It was very nice, and then I sweated through my shirt dancing and drank the bar out of gin, which is usually a sign of a good reception.

For some reason, I gave special treatment to the male members of the bride’s family. I gave her brother Josh a good, hard slap on the ass while yelling “Wooooo,” and it gave me pleasure to hear him lean over to another cousin of ours and say, “That hurt like hell.”

Later, I gave my Uncle Larry sort of a clumsy but dirty shimmy where I started low and worked my way up to where I was looking into his uncomfortable face. Come to think of it, my sister owes me a buck for that one.

And then of course, packed into a cab with God knows who on our way to a local watering hole, I thanked her new husband in the manner I described above.

So maybe I won’t even be invited to the next party. But I had a good time at this one.

Simon says try to make up a post about squirrels that uses the words “stinking ass”

ben — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:14:54 +0000

When you adopt a child, especially one from an orphanage in another country, you have an expectation of watching your sort of weak, sickly kid bat last in the batting order and get playing time only when the game is out of hand. And that’s a fine way to go through a sporting life. I played baseball for many, many years before working my way out of the nine hole and right field, and I had fun all along the way.

But I ended up with a kid who thew his first spiral at the age of three. He’s as strong as a bull and freakishly fast. Somehow, I ended up with an athlete. Until it comes to swim lessons.

Swim lessons have been an exercise of holding onto the side of the pool while crying. Just like they were around this time last year. He got through his first lesson without tears this afternoon, but no one was mistaking the kid at the far end of the pool for Aquaman. Nevertheless, he was pretty proud of himself at the end.

As we drove away, he passed two joggers, running shirtless. Vanya looked out his open window and shouted, “Hey! You running NAKED!” I’m not sure they made out what he said, but the one closer to our car looked over, so they definitely heard that he said something to them.

I had told him that we could go play on the Indian Mounds if he got through swimming without crying, so we pulled into a parking lot, and climbed to the top. I had my headphones with me, but it was a pretty evening, and I was enjoying the quiet. There was a far away air conditioner and an occasional car, but mostly, it was just the sound of little bare feet running through the grass.

Vanya ran up and down for a couple of laps, and then asked if he could catch a squirrel who was standing nearby. Knowing that he was asking if he was allowed (not whether he had the ability), I gave him the green light. So he chased them up a tree, and then he waited under the tree, noodling that since they went up, they would sooner or later come down.

When I was young, I had a black lab mix named Flo. Flo would do the same thing, oblivious to the fact that the squirrels went from treetop to treetop in our forested back yard. She would wait at the bottom of a tree for six or eight hours some days, while the squirrels were off doing their thing wherever they wanted to be.

Flo would also take the opportunity on cool fall days to nap on the warm asphalt road in front of our house. Cars would pull up and crawl to a stop, the occupants thinking, “Oh shit, I don’t want to go tell these people their dog is dead.” But as the car came to a complete stop in front of her, Flo’s tail would wag in anticipation of meeting the people. Whack whack whack, the tail banged the asphalt. She usually didn’t get up until someone physically made her.

The sad thing is that Flo is the smartest dog that I’ve had.

Today’s squirrels didn’t have the luxury of a jump to a neighboring tree. We watched them from the ground, finding them easily by looking for the shaking leaves and magnolia blossoms. Finally, one decided to get down. He did so by diving straight down, hitting branch after branch, and finally launching himself toward the ground from about 12 feet up. He hit with a good, solid thud, stood still for about two seconds, and then took off again.

When we got home, we fixed dinner, played outside for a little while, and took a bath. During bath time, Vanya decided to lead a game of Simon Says. I hadn’t realized until today that he knew the game. Apparently, they play it in Episcopal School from time to time.

His Simon Says couldn’t be easier. They ALWAYS start with “Simon says,” so you’ll never, ever face elimination, and the instruction is always to touch a body part. “Simon says touch your knee. Simon says touch your hair.” Like I said, it couldn’t be easier.

This particular round started with “Simon says touch your balls.” I chuckled and played along as Simon directed me to touch other body parts. Most were innocent, but he also worked in “touch your penis” and “touch your boobies” along the way. “Touch your bottom” is fine with me, although I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until that turns into, “Simon says touch your stinking ass.”

It won’t be nearly so funny when he pulls one of those during school.

The Night We Went to a Hot Dog Place

ben — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:03:10 +0000

Last night, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny told Vanya to stop doing something or other. He ran over to me, crying, and sobbed, “Mama, you don’t love me anymore!”

That’s how I’m feeling about my blog this month. I’ve got nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing — new going on that would be at all interesting to anyone. Not that this stops me from writing most other months, but for some reason, it is right now.

On the other hand, I have a few notes on ideas to blog about that have gotten added and ignored for months. So I suppose I could go back to one of those.

One night when we were in New York, Amanda and Clay took our kid back to the hotel with them, leaving the rest of the grown-ups free to try a bar that Mrs. theskinnyonbenny had heard of. The bar was called PDT (standing for Please Don’t Tell), and going there definitely made you feel like a hotshot.

To get in, you have to phone their unlisted number that afternoon. You can’t call before 3:00, and by 3:15, they’re booked up for the night. Those of my approximate age will remember dialing their university’s telephone registration system for scheduling classes. Redial – busy signal – redial – busy signal – redial – busy signal – redial – busy signal – redial – busy signal. You got to where the muscle memory was automatic, and then you got three seconds of stupidity, when your brain couldn’t figure out what to do when the sound on the line was something other than the busy signal.

I got through to PDT at 3:10, and I was invited to show up at either 5:00 or at 11:00. We took the 11:00 seating.

After dinner, we went to another place that Mrs. theskinnyonbenny had heard of, but there was a line outside, and Shelly couldn’t use her crutches as a way to talk us to the front of the line. It wasn’t like one of those LA nightclubs where everyone in line is young and buff. Most of them looked like dirty hippies. But it was a democratic place, and we were in back. So no dice.

We went to another place that wasn’t noteworthy at all. And then, before 11:00, we headed to PDT.

We had a filthy, sexually graphic in the cab, where I explained to the ladies among us that if a date goes moderately poorly, and if the female is considering giving a hand-job, but nothing more serious, then the kinder thing to do is nothing at all. Because the handshake that we can give ourselves is always better than what you ladies will be able to deliver. I asked the cab driver if that was an abnormally nasty conversation or if that was pretty normal, and he seemed to indicate that it was somewhere between normal and the worst that he had heard.

PDT has no sign, and it has no door to the outside. To get in, you go into a hot dog stand. It’s a brightly lit, metal furniture, Dairy Queen-looking place. To the side, there is an old fashioned phone booth. You go into the booth, pick up the phone, and tell the person who you are. The back of the phone booth opens, letting you into a dark and comfortable bar.

There are only a few tables, and then a long bar. It was dark enough to pull out my joint at the table just to say that I did. The fact that it went unnoticed might speak to the private nature of the tables, or it might merely reveal something about the size of my hog.

There’s a large menu with drinks that taste like anything you can imagine. If you like a good mixed drink, you will very much enjoy a visit. If you find yourself in the area, drop me a note, and I’ll send you the phone number.

The night ended very, very late. 2:00? 3:00? I’m not sure. I know that Mary Ann freaked out that the cab driver had taken us to a different borough on the way back to our hotel (he had not), and I know that Mary Ann’s alarm went off at 4:30 so that she could jump up, leave, and make it to the parade (she did not — at least not for another hour or two).

It would have been nice to use this story to introduce a new site. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny has promised to start publishing a blog about cocktails and bar/restaurant experiences on therotgutfiles.com. As you’ll see if you follow the link, it just gets you back to my home page. Please let her know that you want to start reading her work.

Spill

ben — Sat, 15 May 2010 04:00:39 +0000

Every day, the headline on my local paper gives me an update on how the geologists and engineers are going to stem the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I know the engineers and the geologists brainstorming in a Houston conference room are smarter about these things than me, but when they’re down to stuffing the hole full of tennis balls and used baby diapers, I think that maybe I could have come up with that suggestion in a shorter time span than three weeks.

I’ve been meaning to post a detailed travel log, but from Easter Sunday until the following Tuesday, our family sailed out of the lake, into the gulf. We sailed alongside dozens and dozens of boats harvesting the shrimp, oysters, and crabs. We crashed into waves and took fresh, salty spary in our faces. For 30-45 minutes, we enjoyed the company of a pod of dolphins, some of whom surfaced so close that we were looking right into each others’ eyes.

I’m glad that we went when we went, because I have no clue when the water will be clean enough to have a similarly enjoyable trip. Four years? Eight? More? I tend to be pretty optimistic, but it’s really hard to stay positive.

At least I can sail in a lake that’s closed off by protective boom. The white sand beaches of Alabama and the Florida Gulf Coast are going to have it much worse. I love being a handful of hours from a nice beach, but when will that be true again? They cleaned Valdez-spilled oil off of rocks. How do you clean it off of grains of sand?

But there will be time to worry about that later. Right now, let’s figure out how to stop the leak.

Call my a cynic, but I’m fairly convinced that BP’s first priority was to try to harvest the leaking oil. They made the world wait a few days while they built a house-sized 70 ton chamber to funnel the leaking oil up to ships. But the pipe to funnel the oil up froze shut, so nothing made it up to the ships.

To me, this is success. I doubt the oil would have moved the 70-ton house. And if there’s a little ice keeping the oil out of the gulf, so be it.

So I don’t get why they hauled this thing out of the water and went to plan B, which I guess still hasn’t worked. Headlines tonight say, “BP could begin siphoning oil leak overnight.”

What the fuck?

“Could?”

“Siphoning?”

How about we just shut the whole thing down?

Let me know where to send my dishtowels and tennis balls.

Green Monster

ben — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:17:13 +0000

Lately, Vanya has been afraid to be on his own after dark, expressing fear of “The Green Monster.”

Of course, I can’t help but think of Fenway, and the part of my brain that thinks I’m raising a Yankees fan bothers me a great deal.

I don’t think he’s actually heard of Fenway Park, or of the Boston Red Sox, as there’s not much interest in Major League Baseball around here. We’re going to the LSU game later today, and that’s as big-league as it gets. And it’s plenty enough for me.

Vanya can throw the baseball hard enough to hit my mitt with a satisfying pop, and he throws it pretty accurately. He also throws it left-handed, even though he’s taken to doing most things righty. It’s enough to make you think of playing in front of the Green Monster.

He can also put a better spiral on a football than I’ve ever been able to do, and at the age of four, it’s hard not to think that he’ll grow up to be a man’s man. He’ll be the type of guy who knows what’s what under the hood of a car, I bet.

Last week, we were watching Dancing With the Stars, and Erin Andrews was dancing in a dress that barely covered her bosoms. “HEY PAPA! SHE HAS BOOBIES!”

That made me laugh, and that was encouragement enough for him to continue to comment on Andrews’s boobies.

“You know, it’s not polite to talk about boobies in front of your mother.”

The next woman to dance — I don’t know who it was — had on gloves.

“PAPA, WHAT’S THAT ON HER HANDS? THAT’S GLOVES!”

“SHE HAS GLOVES AND BOOBIES!”

I asked which he liked better — her gloves or her boobies. He thought for a second or two before deciding that the gloves were better.