Growing concerns about grass, toenails

My idea of a perfect day is anyone but me mowing my lawn while someone lovely gives me a pedicure.

It’s never happened. I don’t expect it ever will.

In peak growth season, I cut the grass at least once a week and my toenails -- they’re perennials -- about once every ten days.

Both ought to be cut more often, but they are maybe the two most dreary maintenance tasks of my entire existence.

I used to enjoy mowing the lawn at the old house where I had an old push mower. Guys get a pit crew rush out of any manual labor with a racing element.

I could speed mow the old lawn in 37 sweaty minutes. Of course, when it was done that rapidly, there were bound to be casualties. I’d carelessly mow down rose bushes, ornamental hedges and occasionally my sunbathing wife.

But it was always a thrill to dash to the ‘frig for some quencher suds and look up at the clock and see -- shazam! -- I’d shaved another 30 seconds off my best time.

That’s never happened when I mow my toes, the most tedious grooming task in a dapper gent’s life.

I’m forever barraged by advertisements hoping to get me to purchase pharmaceuticals that will get parts of me to grow. I’m thinking, of course, primarily of my hair and my penis.

No thanks.

I have all the hair I need.

For reasons of taste I’ll refrain from detailing the reasons why I don’t wish to see my intimacies extended. It’d be unseemly and I wouldn’t want to start a riot among the groupies.

But how come there’s no pill to halt toenail growth? It’s not like hair styles. You don’t get bored with the length of your toenails and one day think, what the hell, I think I’ll go for a Katy Perry look.

No, they’re just little utilitarian toe helmets. You can paint them, but I can’t imagine even the foot fetish deviants slobber over nail length.

I try and trim mine before they get long and sharp enough to sever Val’s Achille’s tendon when I crawl in for a snuggle.

I’ve only had one pedicure in my life and I recall it with the same emotional gratitude as the night I lost my virginity.

It was a revelation. I did it for a travel story and wrote about it in this very early blog post, one of my first 10 or so. The above picture is the result (you can play guess the feet!).

But I can’t justify paying someone to cut my toenails so at some point today I’ll grab the clippers and start rolling around on the floor like a chubby contortionist.

And I’d be mocked if I paid a kid to climb on the old John Deere and mow the lawn for me.

Most people would be more understanding if I’d get busted paying for sex with a prostitute, something a married man would never dream of doing -- at least admit out loud to dreaming of doing.

It’s probably true that I could find 100 prostitutes who’d take money to have sex with me, but none of them who’d take the same amount to come to my house and mow my lawn.

I guess they have their own set of standards which we’ll without further comment here call cockeyed.

This is just one of those days when I wish all the companies devoted to researching ways to make everything grow bigger and faster would about face and figure out ways to make everything stop growing.

I want things like my grass, my toe nails and my darling little daughters to stop growing and just stay the same as they are. Same goes for my sports leagues, the number of TV channels I receive or my waistline.

Enough with growth. Enough with expansion.

Please don’t grow alarmed at my odd melancholy.

The feeling will pass.

I’ll grow out of it.

We need more rich, happy drunks

I’d been snapping at the kids. I was surly with waitresses. My hair trigger temper meant a trip to the grocery store for milk might end in newsmaking road rage.

Finally my wife had had enough.

“Just what is wrong with you?” she asked.

You know, I said.

“You can’t be serious.”

I couldn’t be more serious. Destruction of the culture is no joking matter. And that’s what we’re about to witness.

Yes, they’re remaking “Arthur.”

That’s the 1981 Dudley Moore movie, a classic. Worse, they’ve cast talentless bore Russell Brand as my drunken hero, Arthur Bach. 

He’ll be the role model for me if, cross your fingers, I’m ever bestowed with instant and bottom-less wealth. There’s never been a better example of a happy drunk than Arthur Bach. He left $1,000 tips, was kind to and revered by his staff of flunkies and drivers, and generally laughed through life as though he were being tickled by a giant invisible feather.

I remember the first time I saw the screwball comedy. Behind my laughter, I trembled. I was fearful they were going to ruin Arthur in the end by making him poor and happy or -- worse -- sober and happy. But the producers never flinched. In the end he got all the money, he got the girl and, I suppose, stumbled through the rest of his life without ever drawing a single sober breath.

Many good people will argue that America’s decline began when they took prayer out of the schools.

I argue it began when they stopped putting booze into the American male.

It’s been more than 30 years since even prudent amounts of alcohol were acceptable. Today, even moderate amounts of stress-reducing spirits are deemed irresponsible by the zero tolerance crowed.

Thus, today’s typical male is wound so tight that without release they eventually bust in some spectacular mid-life crisis. Happens with women, too.

Certainly, people drinking too much is a scourge. It causes havoc on the highways, tension in families and a reduction in otherwise productive lives.

But the same could be said for excessive sobriety. Many of the most damaging wars in world history have been instigated by sober crusaders fired with religious passions.


That's a lot of work for a happy drunk.

Me, I try and be moderate in all things -- and that includes moderation, a philosophy that gives me license to engage in excessiveness whenever it suits me.

Too many people in general and wealthy people in particular trudge through life as if were an exclusively grim endeavor. True, living’s not for sissies.

But if perpetually destitute people like me can find happiness, then certainly wealthy individuals should.

There’s a real poverty of rich, happy drunks like Arthur Bach.

Many of the most successful and wealthy men in the world are grim teetotalers. You never see Bill Gates giddy. Sure, Dick Cheney’s made an illicit fortune, but the only time he seems to get the least bit loaded is when he’s carrying a weapon that’s likewise.

And that brings us to Russell Brand, this generation’s answer to tedious gimmick comic actor Pauly Shore.

Now, instead of the refined and elegant Dudley Moore, our 21st century Arthur will be played by a reformed drug addict without dash or wit. Plus, promotional interviews will feature Brand regaling us with the contrast of his old life and how he’s straightened himself out.

He’ll demonize a lifestyle he exalts in his 2007 autobiography, “My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs & Standup.” The book’s dedication reads, “For my mum, the most important woman in the world to me. Now for God’s sake, don’t read it.”

He’s engaged to marry Katy Perry, whom Maxim (certainly not me) says is the hottest woman in the world. The only way she’d be the hottest woman in my house is if my wife went out shopping.

Still, she’s not without appeal. What she’s doing with Brand is a mystery. Clearly, she should be upholding another grand Hollywood tradition by homewrecking the Branjelina sham "marriage."

So I’ll be in a foul mood until Brand’s “Arthur” is released next year to what I’m sure will be scathing reviews.

It’s a situation sorry enough to drive a man to drink, a temptation to which I won’t for now succumb.

I might over-imbibe. It's happened before. And I wouldn’t want to do anything to damage the reputation of happy drunks.