Sunday encore: When breast implants are booby prizes

Sometimes it’s a reach for me to illustrate some of my posts with one tidy picture. But I try not to be too obvious. For instance, it would have been a cinch to snag a picture of huge boobs to bestow a picture on this one from 2009. Just a picture of a great big boob. Or a pair. But that would have been too obvious. Or, I guess, two obvious. So I used a picture of Bob Dylan because I mention Bob Dylan and I'm one of those guys who thinks you can never have too much Bob Dylan. I’m re-running this one today because the girl and her $8,000 breasts were in the bar last night. Nothing’s changed.

I pay no attention to either of the $4,000 boobs as they sashay into the bar, nor to the girl to whom they’ve been surgically attached.

As I’ve said before, I am not a boob man. I am an ass man.

And I drink in a bar with about a dozen other asses just like me.

But lots of the Regular Joes notice them, including one of the Regular Joes who’s sitting to my right and is conveniently named Joe.

“Oh, here she comes,” he says contemptuously. “Do you know he paid $8,000 to get her those breast implants? Can you believe it?”

No, I can’t believe it. It seems excessive, like ordering a new car with bigger, brighter headlights when the ones that come installed from the factory are sufficient in illuminating any darkened road.

And I’m confused by the etiquette of the gesture. How does that offer arise? Did he say he wouldn’t have anything to do with her unless she bumped up two or three cups?

I’d be hurt if my wife said I was deficient in a physical area and that she’d spend $8,000 to extend the length of my, say, nose.

The girl seems perfectly pleasant. I don’t know what would have been wrong with her old breasts. I doubt they were square or made funny corduroy noises when she was walking around bra-less.

In fact, the old breasts that the 50-something guy was concerned about probably weren’t even on this 30-something girl. They were probably on some ex-wife.

That’s fairly common. Many middle-aged men leave perfectly good wives for younger women who are bound to cause the same consternations that come with any matrimonial binding of the sexes.

I don’t see that happening to me. I love my wife and, besides, I wouldn’t want to have to go through explaining things like Bob Dylan to someone all over again.

But there’s no denying we live in a breast-obsessed society.

In truth, I’m always more interested in the guy who bought the breasts than the girl who’s accessorizing with them.

I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask him.

I’d like to know how you wrap breast implants that you intend to give as a gift. Do you put them both in the same box? Really, a box with one implant would likely spoil the surprise as to what’s in the second box, wouldn’t it?

And do you go in the operating room with the recipient during the installation? It would be like the reverse of being in the delivery room when your gal delivered twins.

But my observations lead me to believe he’s a tremendous jerk and I already have my quota of them in my life.

See, I’ve been a convivial person my whole life and I’ve always gone to all the places the other convivial people go. I’d never seen this guy before and now he and the $8,000 breasts are everywhere.

That would be fine, but he’s causing trouble in places where I seek sudsy serenity.

First I saw him being rude to a waitress at one local tavern. Already overwhelmed with customers, he summoned her by calling her name -- “Cara!” -- raising his glass and rattling the ice the way pet owners rattle keys to summon dawdling dogs.

To me, right there, that’s a hell-worthy sin -- and hell’s going to be mighty crowded if I ever get to decide who belongs there. Cara’s a professional. She’ll get there.

Then he went beyond the pale by coming into my home bar and stirring up trouble on a recent Friday afternoon. And it was all over a bar stool.

The breasts sat down in one where one guy’s wife had been sitting. A joke was made (it wasn’t even funny), then all of a sudden my Happy Hour turned into a wildlife special.

The breast buyer rose up like a fighting rooster -- cock, if you will -- and said the remark was an affront to his fair damsel.

The men had to be separated. It was all incredibly immature -- and that’s coming from a guy who sometimes wears big Wookie pajamas to work.

I kind of feel sorry for the girl, because now it looks like he owns more of her than just her $8,000 breasts.

All I can surmise is that they must have been having some kind of boob special the day she got hers.

He paid for two big ones and she wound up stuck with three.

Regular bar patrons need personal seat licenses

(1,020 words)

I’m hoping today’s Happy Hour will go better than last Friday’s and it will if Dave implements an idea I’ve been hounding him over for months.

Yes, it’s time for The Pond to issue personal seat licenses so regulars can be assured of our favorite stools.

I don’t bar hop. Never have.

I find a place I like with lively people whose company I enjoy and settle in for laughter, conversation and all sorts of sudsy poignancy until they throw me out.

And they never throw me out.

They may turn the music up so they don’t have to hear me talk so much, but they never throw me out.

My life has been enlivened with great drinking buddies, guys who, like me, enjoy a convivial stretch in a warm tavern with a friendly bartender.

It’s been that way ever since I was 12.

I remember many times in college in Athens, Ohio, when me and one of my drinking buddies were in a bar from 1 o’clock to 2 o’clock -- and I’m not talking one hour.

One particular time it was a Sunday and we were deathly hungover from the typical Saturday raucousness. 

I remember the next day some friends couldn’t believe we’d persevered under our conditions when fellow sufferers wasted an entire day in bed with blankets pulled up over their heads.

One asked later if it was a challenge to our constitutions.

“Well, the first eight hours were a little difficult,” George said.

Fast forward to about 1992. I was working at a small two-person newspaper office that was strategically located right next door to a really great bar. My co-worker was also my drinking buddy, bookie and fellow Pirate season ticket holder.

He was like the Swiss Army Knife of drinking buddies.

We’d become friendly with some other guys who’d visit the bar to watch the games with us.

During one of the commercials, one of them asked if Paul and I ever went anywhere else.

Paul pointed about four stools away and said, “Sometimes we sit over there.”

So you understand my history. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to my drinking establishments.

That’s why Fridays at The Pond have become such a challenge. I fear the place is becoming too popular. 

Dave, the third generation owner, feels this, too. In that way, he’s becoming like his old man, Dick, one of the sweetest and most kind men I’ve ever known.

Dave tells the story from about 15 years ago when he wanted to introduce his Dad -- his co-worker -- to some fresh faced young patrons who’d found the bar and felt right at home.

His Dad cringed in dismay and said, “Oh, please, I can’t take another generation!”

Now Dave and I are alarmed about the encroach of yet another generation. It’s ruining the Friday Happy Hour. I’ll let Dave tell it.

“Around 5 p.m., I look around and everything’s great. All my guys are right here where they all belong and I think it’s going to be all right. Then at 6 o’clock it starts. All these strangers start coming in and I begin to realize what Dad meant.”

I wish I could do something to help my friend. Maybe me and the rest of the regulars could consume so much alcohol he wouldn’t need any other customers, but that would likely lead to encounters with DUI checkpoints and angry spouses and pretty soon we’d be doing all our drinking home alone with electronic monitoring devices strapped to our ankles.

It helps if you consider The Pond like it’s a more rectangular version of the Monopoly board and instead of tokens like silver shoes, jalopies, thimbles and choo-choos, the board is populated by paunchy middle aged white dudes with beer farts and receding hairlines.

Boardwalk and Park Place are right there as soon as you get in the door. Those seven or eight stools are where the regulars sit. No one sits directly opposite near Baltic because you’re usually all alone and it’s like staring down a really ugly firing squad. 

So last Friday I walked in around 4:30 expecting one of the prime seats to be available only to be startled to see a nice young couple inhabiting Park Place.

It threw everything off. Gary and Chud were at St. James Place, Chuck was parked at Atlantic, and Teacher Dave was at Marvin Gardens. Worst of all the Joes were scattered to all four corners.

One of things I love about The Pond is there are eight Regulars Joes and all them are conveniently named Joe. Sit next to any Joe and you’re in good company.

Me? I felt like I was in jail with a Do Not Pass Go card for a beer coaster.

So this nice young couple out for a good meal and some chat at a friendly tavern had ruined the night for everyone else.

The nerve.

I ended up going home sober and crashing my family’s girly movie night, so the couple’s inconsideration had a ripple effect far beyond The Pond, and that just never happens with the hootch-free ponds found in nature.

“Don’t blame me,” I said, explaining what happened. My wife shook her head in routine exasperation, but my elementary-age kids understood instinctively.

You don’t take another kid’s seat.

Personal seat licenses would prevent this from happening again.

If lieu of that, I’m going to recommend Dave put up a “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign so he could steer people to where they belong.

I’ve seen him excel in this role. I remember one time when two young rowdies were misbehaving over around Ventnor Avenue. They weren’t bad guys. They just needed a little seasoning.

They did know enough to realize their behavior was out of place. One of them asked Dave if he’d recommend a place where the two loud friends could sit and not bother his regular customers.

Dave’s answer was brilliant.

“Racers.”

Racers isn’t some obscure Monopoly property.

Racers is the bar about a quarter mile down the street.

Related . . .

Weddings, friendship & a pooka named Paul

When Facebook becomes Fakebook

“I love you, men!”

A galling story on useless body parts

(776 words)

I’ve known people who’ve returned from vacation without golf clubs, sweaters and sunglasses.

Joe’s the first one who’s ever come back without his gallbladder.

He’s maybe my favorite of the bar’s eight Regular Joes who are all conveniently named Joe.

He’s 72, looks 58 and acts 23. He’s just a lot of fun.

He was returning from Hilton Head when he started feeling severe abdomen pains around Bridgeport, W. Va. He told a friend he needed to be dropped off at the nearest hospital right away.

Happily, the two were in a car, not an airplane, or this story would have a more gruesome ending.

The ER doctors determined the trouble was his gallbladder. It had to come out.

So a lot of us learned a lot about the gallbladder about which we’d previously been ignorant.

For instance, we all have ‘em but don’t really need ‘em.

Most of us confused the gallbladder, which we never think about, with the urinary bladder, which we think about every four beers.

The gallbladder stores bile from the liver until it is needed in the digestive system to break down fatty foods and cholesterol. That sounds more useful than it is.

Turns out the gallbladder is like the fourth “wax” option at the automatic car wash. You feel better about having it, but you don’t really need it and no one will notice whether it’s there or not.

The human body is chock full of useless organs. 

These include commonly understood body parts like tonsils, adenoids, wisdom teeth, and the all-too-often cranky appendix.

It’s a lot of excess weight.

Joe, in fact, said he lost 15 pounds after they removed his gallbladder. I don’t know whether that means these popsicle-sized organs are incredibly dense or the weight loss was a coincidental side affect of the tricky treatment.

He started to tell me, but I was already getting bored and ready to move on to other topics.

See, one of my useless organs is the part of my brain that allows others to concentrate when someone’s talking about their health.

I make an effort to appear concerned and then once it registers I’m ready to change topics to the things that matter more to me, like the baseball playoffs and if Joe’d gotten laid in Hilton Head.

I envision a day when Americans are so obese that we opt for elective surgery to remove unnecessary body parts as handy weight loss methods.

I’ll bet right now if you removed all the body parts I don’t need or things I don’t use I could drop 40 pounds pronto. Excess weight’s not really an issue for me, but I believe in being prepared in case someone notices I’m still using profile pictures from my svelte 1997 days.

I’d start by having my left thumb severed. It doesn’t do squat. Neither does yours, I’ll bet.

Pay attention next time you type something. Or just glance at the shiny worn parts on your space bar. There’s none on the left side. We type with eight fingers and one thumb. The left thumb just sort of dangles there.

When it comes to typing, the left thumb doesn’t lift a finger.

Same goes for hitchhiking. Even southpaws rely on their right thumbs to bum rides.

Many people could lose about two quick pounds of ugly by having their ears removed. It’s amazing how many people have ears but fail to listen.

I’ve heard it said we only use 10 percent of our brains. I’ll bet 98 percent of men are perfectly content with that equation as long as another comparatively inconsequential recreational organ a little further south keeps giving it all its got. 

It might be beneficial if people who contend they are “right-brained” or “left-brained” had the half they deny needing simply removed so all the cerebral energy could be concentrated in the remaining area. It’d be like adding horsepower to a sports car by stripping away the frilly extras.

The world is full of mean and heartless people. I wish we could, purely for the sake of experiment, physically remove their hearts just to see what happens to people without heart.

We might learn something, or at the very least drastically reduce the jerk population.

Of course, the most obvious weight loss could come from our meatiest region. That means anyone could lose about 20 quick pounds if they’ve ever admitted to having ever done a job half-assed.

Coming from me, I know, it’s a suggestion that takes a lot of gall, more than my friend Joe could ever dream of mustering.

Especially now.

Related . . .

• I am becoming lefthanded

• End world hunger: become a breatharian!

Wingin' it at The Pond

I’m convinced homelessness will be eliminated when Habitat for Humanity begins using discarded chicken wing bones to construct residential dwellings.

This occurred to me yesterday afternoon when I watched one of the Regular Joes run through a plate of hot wings like his pants were on fire, which I suspect they were about 20 minutes after he’d consumed them.

As I’ve pointed out before, there are six Regular Joes in my bar and they’re all conveniently named Joe. It’s as comforting as it is confusing.

This is the manliest of the Regular Joes. He constructs and repairs 1,500-degree furnaces in the local steel mill. He’s so manly even dweebs like me begin to feel marginally manly when he lets us sit within four bar stools of him.

He’s the kind of guy who douses things like bananas and ice cream with Tabasco so it’s always fun to watch him ramp up a menu item that’s already described with the adjective “hot.”

First he applies a 40-second dusting of pepper so thick it begins to eclipse the sunset-colored wings.

The real fun begins when he reaches for the Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. It’s a kind of rectal rocket fuel favored in Thai restaurants where they want to kill off their customers.

It has a banty rooster on the label and when Joe squeezes the bootle you can almost hear the rooster scream. He shoots a pencil-thick stream of the stuff all over the plate until the appetizers resemble a hearty sort of soup.

Then he begins to do what looks like orally dry clean the bones. You don’t want to tell a guy like Joe this but, man, the guy really sucks. I’m always surprised when he doesn’t eat the bones just to teach them a lesson.

Four minutes later and all that’s left is a pile of bleached bones so white it looks like they spent a month in buzzard country. We instinctively begin inching away in case he’s still hungry enough to seize one of us by the neck and squirt Srirachi up and down our arms.

I’m mystified by our national wing mania.

Hooters Restaurants estimates it sells more than 30 million pounds of chicken wings each year, which is odd. I thought people went to Hooters for breasts.

And how did a meal as messy as chicken wings become a finger food?

The same restaurants that hawk chicken wings -- and there’s a joke in there somewhere -- would eject any customer that ate spaghetti with their hands, but it wouldn’t be any messier than eating sauce-slathered wings.

And the concept of flying chickens always confuses me. Is the chicken evolving into a flying bird? Or did it once have the ability to fly and is losing it?

Certainly, there’s no danger of ever seeing airborne chickens again, not with us gobbling all their wings.

I guess a chicken can fly, but it can’t be very far or very high, not without the assistance of a Joe-sized slingshot.

My 10-year-old daughter can step over chicken fence and I guess chicken fence was designed by crafty chicken farmers to contain wanderlust-stricken chickens.

I might not mind it so much if it wasn’t for the waste. I see all those bones and the recycler in me becomes restless.

Native Americans, as cited here from this June 29 post, used every bit of the buffalo they slayed. We nibble at the measly meat and pitch the bones.

Cluckbucket.com says if you lined up all the wings Hooters sells every year it would encircle the earth at the equator, a pseudo-fact which, if you’re like me, is already beginning to brain barnacle for future useless retrieval.

That sounds like a lot of fun, but lacking in any practical application.

That’s why I’d like to see my idea of using chicken bones to construct residences for the homeless.

We can call it “Bones for Homes.” I think it’s an idea that’s bound to really take off.

Yes, take off like a chicken.

When breast implants are booby prizes

I pay no attention to either of the $4,000 boobs as they sashay into the bar, nor to the girl to whom they’ve been surgically attached.

As I’ve said before, I am not a boob man. I am an ass man.

And I drink in a bar with about a dozen other asses just like me.

But lots of the Regular Joes notice them, including one of the Regular Joes who’s sitting to my right and is conveniently named Joe.

“Oh, here she comes,” he says contemptuously. “Do you know he paid $8,000 to get her those breast implants? Can you believe it?”

No, I can’t believe it. It seems excessive, like ordering a new car with bigger, brighter headlights when the ones that come installed from the factory are sufficient in illuminating any darkened road.

And I’m confused by the etiquette of the gesture. How does that offer arise? Did he say he wouldn’t have anything to do with her unless she bumped up two or three cups?

I’d be hurt if my wife said I was deficient in a physical area and that she’d spend $8,000 to extend the length of my, say, nose.

The girl seems perfectly pleasant. I don’t know what would have been wrong with her old breasts. I doubt they were square or made funny corduroy noises when she was walking around bra-less.

In fact, the old breasts that the 50-something guy was concerned about probably weren’t even on this 30-something girl. They were probably on some ex-wife.

That’s fairly common. Many middle-aged men leave perfectly good wives for younger women who are bound to cause the same consternations that come with any matrimonial binding of the sexes.

I don’t see that happening to me. I love my wife and, besides, I wouldn’t want to have to go through explaining things like Bob Dylan to someone all over again.

But there’s no denying we live in a breast-obsessed society.

In truth, I’m always more interested in the guy who bought the breasts than the girl who’s accessorizing with them.

I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask him.

I’d like to know how you wrap breast implants that you intend to give as a gift. Do you put them both in the same box? Really, a box with one implant would likely spoil the surprise as to what’s in the second box, wouldn’t it?

And do you go in the operating room with the recipient during the installation? It would be like the reverse of being in the delivery room when your gal delivered twins.

But my observations lead me to believe he’s a tremendous jerk and I already have my quota of them in my life.

See, I’ve been a convivial person my whole life and I’ve always gone to all the places the other convivial people go. I’d never seen this guy before and now he and the $8,000 breasts are everywhere.

That would be fine, but he’s causing trouble in places where I seek sudsy serenity.

First I saw him being rude to a waitress at one local tavern. Already overwhelmed with customers, he summoned her by calling her name -- “Cara!” -- raising his glass and rattling the ice the way pet owners rattle keys to summon dawdling dogs.

To me, right there, that’s a hell-worthy sin -- and hell’s going to be mighty crowded if I ever get to decide who belongs there. She’s a professional. She’ll get there.

Then he went beyond the pale by coming into my home bar and stirring up trouble on a recent Friday afternoon. And it was all over a bar stool.

The breasts sat down in one where one guy’s wife had been sitting. A joke was made (it wasn’t even funny), then all of a sudden my Happy Hour turned into a wildlife special.

The breast buyer rose up like a fighting rooster -- cock, if you will -- and said the remark was an affront to his fair damsel.

The men had to be separated. It was all incredibly immature -- and that’s coming from a guy who sometimes wears big Wookie pajamas to work.

I kind of feel sorry for the girl, because now it looks like he owns more of her than just her $8,000 breasts.

All I can surmise is that they must have been having some kind of boob special the day she got hers.

He paid for two big ones and she wound up stuck with three.