MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PRIVILEGES

It’s hard being a self-help guru, and I have to admit as a child I never saw myself doing this. However when my dreams of being a world-class donut-maker or a renegade long distance trucker fell through I had to find other ways to use the invaluable English degree that I spent eight long years of what my pops so eloquently, yet amazingly so accurately, described as “piss-fartin around” to obtain. How did he know? Lucky for me my pops wasn’t the only supportive member of the family. One Christmas, at age 27, when I had specifically asked for a vintage 1978 Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, my mom bought me a self-help get-a damn-job-you-slacker book called “What Color is your Parachute?” I look back now on that family Christmas photo and it brings tears to my eyes. All the little ones are holding up their favorite toy, my sister a beautiful pair of hand-woven spandex hotpants, my brother a state-of-the-art lightning fast 28k modem, my mom a gorgeously crafted set of ceramic country pig salt n’ peppa shakers, my dad his annual Old Spice soap-on-a-rope (why does he look so sad?), and me my self-help book that screams out to future generations of holiday picture gazers “I am a big fuckin’ LOSER. Look at how pathetic I am with my little book that tells me how to get my life together because I am way too busy doing absolutely nothing with my life to know that I’ll be bagging groceries when I’m 70, that is if I don’t throw my worthless ass into a pit of ferocious poop-flinging orangutans first.” Yeah, looking back, that’s when I decided to get it together.

So I decided to actually open the book, which is more of an effort than I made in eight years of college. A ten minute speed-read really opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong. “What are you good at?” it asks. “Where do your skills lie?” I thought about it long and hard over a couple of 40oz bottles of Olde English 800 (I love British beer) and came to the conclusion that no, my talent didn’t involve injecting jelly into deep fried fat and that no, my talent didn’t involve riding my 8-teen wheela on the backs of compact cars on the downhills of the interstate while jacked-up on speed. No, I was not good at these things, I always wanted to be, but I was not. What I was good at besides suckling on some malt liquor like it was my mother’s milk, entering Mr. Mouth tournaments, and hitting the snooze bar on my alarm clock, was listening to my other loser friends with their problems. I don’t look like a praying mantis but I swear these people must think I’m Larry King. Always crying about some thing or another. It was always “Why doesn’t my girlfriend hold me when I’m vomiting” or “How come my baby’s daddy don’t wanna go on the Maury Povich Show?” or “Why don’t she understand that the donuts I do in her parent’s lawn is a cry for help?” I would always answer their questions and give them good advice as to how best to deal with their problems, and I was always right, always. And so I decided that the lawd didn’t give me this voluptuous onionhead to sit around and eat Lunchables while bidding on Turtle Wax on the Price of Right. I had a purpose, a vision, and a serious need for money that superceded my desire to watch She’s the Sheriff reruns, so you know I was very, very serious.

I developed my patented 3-step self-help plan in order to ease the trauma and indignation of those who had to suffer from the humiliating, and often impossible trials of a 12-step program. I have thoroughly and scientifically outlined in an article printed in the American Journal of Psychology how it is more desirable to succeed in three steps then to fail in 12. And so naturally this concept caught on fire like children’s pajamas. Its success was quite logical really. We as Americans are always looking for that quick fix, that cheap-ass, half-sticking, generic brand band-aid to our emotional scars. Often in pursuit of this immediate satisfaction we could care less if the end result is less gratifying then waiting for the real thing, which of course explains the phenomenon of inflatable vaginas and McRib sandwiches. With its publication in the journal, the psychological and academic communities endorsed the program, but since no one except them reads their boring pedantic jargon-laden dribble, its popularity remained relatively esoteric. That was until Oprah came around. JACKPOT!!!!! $$$$$$$$$$ CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! $$$$$$$$$

My appearance on the Oprah show changed my life and lined my pockets. She had heard about me thru a friend of a friend of a friend of Steadman’s personal moustache groomer. Apparently somebody owed somebody who owed somebody else who was blackmailing Steadman’s moustache groomer’s wife’s second cousin about some internet pictures involving a sweet transvestite, a wayward eyelash, and a half-drank bottle of Cristal. Anyway I think that’s how it went down, but the point is I made it on the show. On that fateful day I shared the stage with Oprah and her emotionally supportive sidekick Dr. Phil. I began explaining the perks of my 3-step program to the attentive live studio audience who were all decked out in their fresh off the rack Oprah show pantsuits. Now I’m no Adonis, but I started getting the feeling that some in the studio audience were attentive to more than just my words. Perhaps it was that compared to Dr. Phil I was the most masculine thing that had been on that stage for a long long time. Then again maybe it was the healthy dose of voodoo-scented Axe spray I doused myself with prior to coming on stage that had put a spell on those sultry, otherworldly vixens in the audience. Regardless, I felt violated, and it felt good. I continued on and soon noticed Dr Phil was assaulting Oprah and I with his world-renown expressive non-verbals. He stared at me like the non-birthday sibling at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday bash. I stole his limelight and he wanted it back in the worst way. Sweat beads began trickling down his bulbous shiny head. He then shot a glance over at Oprah, and it was not kind. It was reminiscent of the look Brutus must have given Caesar right before he carried out the dastardly deed that would change what trust meant in friendships for the rest of time. He was definitely plotting. Oprah leaned over to the usually mild-mannered doctor and uttered “Et tu Philus”. It was then that he unfolded his legs, took both his hands off of his knee, stood up, and silent no more, lashed into me like the drunk sailor he probably used to be. He was on a rant, his arms waving like Captain Caveman as he questioned the validity of my findings and the soundness of my research. The audience was not impressed with his tantrum, in fact they were very disappointed in Dr Phil right then, but in an “I’m every woman” kind of way of course. But Dr. Phil was not done for he had a back-up plan. That crafty Dr. Phil, what could be next in his little bag of tricks?

“Yo mama so fat when I yell ‘Hey Kool-Aid’ she come crashing through the wall”

Oh no he didn’t…Oh yes he did! In a last gasp attempt to show me up Dr Phil started throwing Yo mama jokes at me like it was his job. Talking about how fat she is, and how poor she is, and how thick her glasses are, and how yella her teeth are…. How’d he know all that about her, Damn him!!!! I had about enough of his childish grandstanding and stood up to give him a painful close-up of the back of my hand. That’s when the big O jumped in…

“Phillip C. McGraw you sit down this instant before mama comes over and beats your bottom like a baby seal!”

“Yes, mommy…sorry mommy…I’ve been a baaaaaaad boy” he said in that annoying cryee-talkee-snivlee voice I haven’t heard since I was 6 years old. He then started confessing the pain of having over-sized man-tits and how hard it was living in the shadow of a media giant, and yada yada yada…shut up already!

“Whoa what a freak show this turned out to be.” I thought. But that freak show turned out the highest ratings ever for Oprah, and as a reward the next week on her show she threw me some table scraps and pimped my book I had written many moons ago, “Drunko the Clown’s Late Night Cookbook”. She even had Paul Prudhomme up on stage drinking cooking sherry and making my World Famous Eggieliscious Stovetop Stuffing Soufle and the always tasty Burnt Wienie Sandwich Surprise. Within days what once sat in the cobwebs of my hard drive jetted up to #1 on the NY Times Best Sellers List. I had been made…made by Oprah, but made nevertheless. I have more money and fame now than I ever hallucinated of having. My pops even got teary eyed this Christmas when he unwrapped his Old Spice Soap-on-a-Golden-Rope (those just had to be tears of joy this time). I don’t know how to ever thank Oprah. I’m thinking about showing up with a special gift the next time she has a self-indulgent Birthday Party To Me show. But what could you possibly give the person who has everything and owns everybody? A pair of silk thongs woven and hand-drawn from the womb of the endangered Himalayan spotted caterpillar - $250,000. Dr Phil’s actual head on a solid gold platter with a eulogy engraved by Toni Morrison herself - $1,000,000. A vintage 1978 Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, priceless. Indeed, membership has its privileges.

BOOGER FOR LIFE

I was over at my sister’s house the other day watching a National Geographic series on desert animals with my 7 year-old niece. One of the featured creatures was the Mongolian "hairy-kneed" Bactrian Camel. It was a grand camel indeed, but it looked very sad, and lonely even, like it needed a friend, or maybe just a hug.

“Uncle B, where is Mongolia?”

Damn, this kid is always trying to stump me. When my sister was pregnant I don’t remember her ever stating that part of my contract as an Uncle was to answer 1000 questions that progressively get harder as the years go by. Perhaps it was in the small print. I am hoping this is just a phase. Lucky for me I had taken a World Geography for Dummies course at La Universidad years ago.

“Well honey, Mongolia is a province up in Canada. They don’t like being in Canada so they speak French to piss…errr, to make everyone mad. Hey pass those Cheetos”

“Uncle B, do camels eat Cheetos?”

How cute is that. Do camels eat Cheetos? Where do these kids get these crazy ideas!

“HaHa! Of course they eat Cheetos, silly. Everyone eats Cheetos.”

When my sister got home, my niece ran up to her, and bouncing around in circles told her how she and I were going to Mongolia to feed Cheetos to the lonely French-speaking camels. My sister shook her head and shot that look over to me that I have learned to decode through the years to mean something like “What the fuck is wrong with you?” It was a look remarkably similiar to the one i got when I told my niece that the smushed squirrels on the road weren't really dead, they were just camoflauging themselves from predators.

On the drive home I was wondering why one must go to Mongolia to find the elusive hairy-kneed Bactrian camel. After all, isn’t this the same animal that can survive under the most extreme and adverse conditions, trekking miles in the hot Canadian desert sun, requiring little rest, and a mere gargle of salt water. Pure evolution alone would suggest we should see these survivalist camels on every street corner in America, but we do not. After exactly three point five countless minutes of deliberation, I concluded that the reason for this Darwinian contradiction is not due to some complex scientific notion of environmental variables but can be attributed completely to feelings, nothing more than feelings.

At a stoplight I put my thinking cap on, which I made out of multi-colored construction paper and goat glue just last week. I wondered how would it feel to be defined solely by your worst possible trait. When I was growing up, I knew kids who were “labeled” at an early age by some cruel observation of one of their peers; defined for life by their most visible defect or most humiliating moment. I prefer to call these “brands”, as labels are painless and easily removed whereas brands burn to the bone of your inner-being and last a lifetime. Examples: Fatty Patty, Two-Ton Tommy, One-Eyed Jack, Four-Finger Francie, Free Lunch Frank, Nose Hair Heal, Stuttering Sammy, Big Head Todd, Easy Alice, Boy Named Sue, et al. There was a kid on my bus in my first years in high school who was known as “Booger Brown”. I had the unfortunate privilege of going to catholic grade school before I attended public high school, so I knew nothing of the kid but learned quickly. Apparently a more popular kid in the 4th grade had caught Master Brown digging for gold in the ol’ honker one day when he thought no one was looking, and from that day forward he was known as “Booger Brown”. By the time I knew him in high school he was already a social recluse who burned the legs off of insects and listened to real bad heavy metal music.

I saw an old chum from high school a few years back and he still referred to our anti-hero as Booger. He shared with me that Booger had flunked out of welding school and joined a biker gang and that was the last he heard. A 30-some year old man still known as Booger, how absolutely sad. I suppose he will most likely end up being Grandpa Booger one day and his wife will be branded at the 25th high school reunion as Mrs. Booger.

This Mongolian “hairy-kneed” camel is no doubt feeling the same shame as Booger Brown. He has chosen to become a social recluse due to the unfortunate branding by the scientific community as being “hairy-knee, like he can help that. He chooses to stay in a remote part of the world so he doesn’t have to deal with the daily ridicule of the smooth-kneed populace, and only travels in caravans because he is socially insecure. He in a sense has joined his own biker gang, a downtrodden group of loners destined to spend their lives as a dysfunctional herd of misfits. Beasts of burden? I think not, and we wonder why they spit at us.

When I got home there was a message on my answering machine from my niece. She rambled on how she was going to learn French, and save her allowance money up for Cheetos for our trip to Mongolia where we would have the bestest time, and that if we didn’t go then I would be a big “Boogerhead” forever, and ever, and ever. Before she hung up the phone I think I heard my sister chuckling in the distance.

Me and my big mouth. Boogerhead. No way, I ain’t going out like that. I picked up the phone and called Air Canada.

“Um, yes, how much for two tickets to Mongolia?”