Check out www.ChrisRodell.com!

(885 words)

I remember it was a steamy morning way back in August when I spent an hour or so posing for the literary equivalent of boudoir glamor shots.

I preened, I posed, I pouted.

It was all very appropriate because posing as a true preening author has led to so much pouting at the Rodell household.

But my debut novel would be coming out soon and I needed some classy author shots for promotional reasons.

So I got in touch with my friend Brian Henry. He’s an Emmy-nominated videographer and produced the excellent introductory video on the www.UseAllTheCrayons.com.

I call him whenever I need someone to photograph either me or Arnold Palmer, the legend I interview on a near quarterly basis.

So Brian is about the only thing Palmer and I have in common.

It was an unsettling time for me. I’d just been evicted from my Pond office, where I’d been “working” for seven years. I was, of course, stung by the new ownership move, but truly believe it’s important to embrace all change.

And Buck at the Tin Lizzy had offered me cheap penthouse space so that meant the eviction had overnight tripled my friendly drinking options.

This was before Jaffre’s had re-opened the building’s anchor restaurant. So on that steamy morning, Brian and I were free to roam the building for gritty backdrops. And in any building that dates back to the 1750s, there is grit galore.

Being photographed for promotional purposes stokes the ego. I’d brought a splashy wardrobe of shirts and figured my Van Morrison-style fedora would make a great prop.

It was very productive and I now have a handy trove of professional shots to deploy with a simple click.

This was useful because I knew I’d need at least a few for another promotional project I’d been putting off for 15 years.

I was about to brand the crap out of myself.

Sounds like a hazing procedure, doesn’t it?

It’s not.

Instead, it was an exercise in corralling my confusing and varied websites under one big umbrella.

Learned that from Arnold!

See, for years, chrisrodell.com was a non-entity. It did nothing. It languished. It just sort of sat there.

I can’t blame it. It was only aping the real Chris Rodell..

But I’ve always been fond of its stagnant content. It has my Enquirer stories, travel pieces for once-respectable newspapers, and some of the ones I did for Playboy, Esquire, Men’s Health, etc.

My favorite part was the deceitful homepage sticker that reads “On-line since 1982!”

Pure bullshit.

In fact, I don’t think I set it up until about about 2002, but I remember once seeing on the great Texas troubadour Joe Ely’s site a sticker that read “On-line since 1983!” and if I was ever stuck in an elevator with Joe I didn’t want to feel inferior.

And as many of us have realized, the web turns a blind eye toward deceit and exaggeration. 

Yippee!

In fact, for most of those years, my most prominent web presence was right here at the enigmatically — and instantly forgettable — named, EightDaysToAmish.com.

Then came UseAllTheCrayons.com.

It was like I was trying to hide from anybody who’d type “chris rodell” into any decent search engine.

The new book meant that had to change.

So I took those pictures and shipped them over to Robyn John at Apollo Design. She and Michael Swan have done a tremendous job for me.

Even in years when I was professionally tanking, I always looked like I was thriving, which recalls my old man’s line about appearing sharp on the golf course: “Takes years to play like a pro, but just minutes to look like one.”

I asked Robyn to create another top notch site that made ChrisRodell.com more like Chris Rodell.

I just love it.

Now, anyone searching for me will right away land on a website the showcases all I do. It has six distinct pages, including the heirloom “Freelance” one — my first — that has the great line about “Free Firewood! Who says this stuff doesn’t grow on trees?” Still get calls about that one.

My favorite?

Of course, it’s “The Last Baby Boomer.” It features a catchy synopsis of the book and three sample chapters. It also includes the gold sticker notification boasting the book is the winner of the prestigious TINARA award for satire.

What’s TINARA?

It stands for This Is Not A Real Award.

The web’s still not too picky about the facts it presents.

I hope you’ll check it out and share it with friends who might be interested in browsing nearly all 2,000 of the stories I’ve written since 2000 — and I apologize if that makes it sound like I’m assuming you’re all friends with escaped mental patients.

I’ll be talking about some of those stories today during an interview with my friend Suzanne Elliott for South Hills Living magazine.

There will be another photoshoot. It’ll be at Atria’s in Mt. Lebanon.

They asked me to be sure to bring the hat I’m wearing in many of the shots Brian took.

I’m happy to do so.

Makes it feel like ChrisRodell.com is becoming more like Chris Rodell.

Now, if I can only convince one or the other to get off his ass to start earning some money.

Related . . .

So what’s Arnold Palmer really like?

Farewell, Pond office! I am outta here

My new office

Jaffre’s opens today at Tin Lizzy!

Someone stole Buck’s book at Tin Lizzy!

RRS: "Oh, Man(dy)! My night with Manilow"

(857 words)

I once took a Mexican girl who barely spoke any English to see U2, an Irish band, in the Dixie town of Nashville.

It was a diversity extravaganza.

It was 1987. I remember meeting her at a party where the music was loud enough to mask our difficulties communicating. I remember doing a lot of smiling and nodding. She was very pretty.

Eager to spend more intimate time in her company, I told her I had two tickets to see U2 on “The Joshua Tree” tour. Did she like U2?

“Si!”

I don’t know if the party music and my attraction to her had exaggerated my impressions of her English, but whatever fluency she had vanished the instant I opened the car door for her.

In fact, the only word of English I remember her speaking the entire evening was at the very end when I asked if I could kiss her good night.

“No!”

I felt used.

It was the second time in six years a pair of tickets to a popular concert left me feeling that way.

And while U2 was a multi-cultural affair, the previous one was anything but. In fact, I remember it as the whitest night of my entire life.

Yes, in 1981 I attended a Barry Manilow concert at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena.

My date was my father.

Manilow was here again on Friday for a well-reviewed show that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called “an escape into some kind of soft pop time warp.”

He played, “Old Songs,” “Can’t Smile Without You,” “Even Now,” “Trying to Get the Feeling Again,” “I Write the Songs,” and a score of other catchy hits from the 1970s.

And I love them all.

My musical bona fides are unimpeachable. My first album was Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” My first concert, Joe Ely opening for Tom Petty. I rocked back then to Seger, the Stones, Dire Straits and the Kinks. Still do.

But when Dad was driving us to early morning hockey practice, we’d often listen to Manilow. Had any other lip-reading motorists been paying attention, they would have spied us singing, “At the Copa! Copacabana! The hottest spot north of Havana!”

They were good times. My old man was the greatest.

But I was cool enough at the time to know Manilow wasn’t.

That’s why I was shocked to come home on Thanksgiving break from my freshman year at Ohio University to see that Dad had bought his young hockey fan two tickets -- not to a Pittsburgh Penguins game -- but to the Barry Manilow concert.

I still wonder if he was cunning enough to foresee exactly how it would all play out.

I remember sitting by the phone and coming up blank trying to think of the girl I could ask that wouldn’t respond with hysterical giggles. Manilow’s not exactly a great first-date icebreaker.

I certainly couldn’t ask any of the guys I know. The would all laugh me off the planet.

Well, all but one of them would.

And he was at that moment sitting in his recliner across the room immersed in “Bowling for Dollars.”

Uh, Dad, I was thinking . . .

“Sure! I’d love to go!”

There were many, many other male couples there that night, but I’ll bet out of the 17,532 Pittsburgh Fanilows, we were the only father/son duo.

Dad didn’t care one bit. In fact, he was euphoric.

Leaving the building, he kept gushing about how much he loved Manilow and how it was one of the greatest nights of his life.

I wish I’d have anticipated that reaction when he’d parked the car. See, Dad hated to pay premium prices for parking. This wasn’t a problem at many suburban venues.

But at sold-out Civic Arena shows that meant parking deep in the crime-ridden neighborhood known as The Hill District. That’s where Dad found a freebie spot amidst the abandoned vehicles and burned-out tenements.

I remember looking in the shadows for parolees ready to pounce. It was late on a school night, but no one was sleeping.

I know this because I kept seeing them look out their windows to see the middle-aged white man bouncing down the sidewalk singing:

“And it’s Daybreak! If you wanna believe!

It can be Daybreak! Ain’t no time to grieve!

Said it’s Daybreak! If you’ll only believe!

And let it shine! Shine! Shine! All around the world!”

As I said, I believe there’s a place for Manilow and his music. I just didn’t believe it was at midnight in the Hill District in 1981.

Of course, maybe I’m letting my prejudices get the better of me.

Maybe those young hoodlums were transformed by the sound of my Dad warbling Manilow’s greatest hits.

Maybe they set down their crack pipes and said, “Damn! You know, that old white dude’s right. It CAN be Daybreak!”

Whether or not it happened that way, I can not say.

But of this I’m certain:

If my date that night had been anyone other than my own Dad, I’ll bet I’d have gotten laid.

Related . . .

My 25 most played songs

Turn the Page: A Bob Seger salute

Cool/uncool music judged by . . . me!

“Hey Hey Johnny,” songs for dead celebs

Stones 50 best? ForGRRRt about it

For Boss fans only: A Springsteen career retrospective

A rooting fan's guide to baseball playoffs

This, my favorite sports season of the year, is being sullied by love. The four remaining baseball teams representing four cities are each appealing in their own ways.

I have no one to hate.

Despite signs of promise, the The Pittsburgh Pirates for the 19th year in a row have failed to make the playoffs (nostalgia note: it was 51 years ago today that Bucco Bill Mazeroski hit the most famous home run in baseball history to beat the N.Y. Yankees in the World Series!).

So without a home team to root for, I need an artificial reason to cheer for a city that is deserving of riotous celebrations and property damage.

It would be simpler for me if the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs were contending because I could reflexively root for their opponents.

I hate the Red Sox because their fans raced from lovable losers to obnoxious winners in near record time. And I hate the Chicago Cubs for reasons detailed in this 2008 post I deftly titled “I hate the Chicago Cubs.”

The baseball playoffs are down to the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Detroit Tigers vs. the Texas Rangers. Let’s break ‘em down:

One of my favorite literary characters, Capt. Augustus McCrae was a Texas Ranger in "Lonesome Dove," so they have that going for them. Plus, most of my favorite music has Texas roots. Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Delbert McClinton, Robert Earl Keen, Ray Wylie Hubbard are all Texas true. But despite his preppy upbringings that always makes me suspect he’s a closet Red Sox fan, so is George W. Bush. If Texas wins, it’ll make Bush happy, so they’re out.

They’re playing the Detroit Tigers. What American doesn’t root for Detroit? Detroit welcomed my fellow Steeler fans with open arms when it hosted our 2006 Super Bowl victory. The retro ballpark, which I’ve been to, is a dandy. If they beat the Rangers, it’s likely they’ll have Bob Seger sing the national anthem and I love Seger. Plus, them winning keeps alive my opportunity to tell the story about how Detroit used represent the USA in the world’s only international tug of war. In what should inspire an Olympic competition, they used to string a stout mile-long rope across the Detroit River between the city and neighboring Windsor. If Detroit wins I promise to share my promotional efforts to organize a trans-Atlantic tug-of-war between America and Europe. Go Detroit!

St. Louis is one of the few great American cities I’ve never been to. But my very good friend, Angelo Cammerata has. He’s the world’s longest serving bartender and the folks at Anheuser-Busch rolled out the red carpet for him 2007. They gave him box seats at a Cardinal game and introduced him to the roaring crowd on the Jumbotron. I like it when a city showers the people I care about with cheer and warmth.

But I like it even better when they do that with me. And that’s what happened in Milwaukee. In the fall of 2008, the whole state of Wisconsin treated me like I was Big Cheese -- and that’s something that really matters there. I was there on a travel story (recap here). Over six nights I played golf at all the state’s finest courses (Whistling Straits and Erin Hills) and was wined and dined at all their top restaurants. On my own, I found an outstanding Milwaukee bar that treated me so well I actually considered relocating my family just to be within stumbling distance. It’s Sobelmans. They didn’t even know I was a travel writer and thus felt no unnatural obligation to shower me with warmth and freebies. They were just naturally nice. If I’m ever within 250 miles of Sobelmans I’m automatically going back. Milwaukee also has one of my favorite offbeat tourist attractions, the Bronz Fonz. So I want Milwaukee to beat the Cardinals.

That pits Milwaukee vs. Detroit in my World Series.

This upsets my friends who hate the Brewers for beating up on the Pirates, but I have to root for Milwaukee to win it all. I just met so many friendly people in Wisconsin and had so much free, fine fun. Everyone was just so nice.

So take note, Boston: I can be bought. Prepare the finest hotels, alert the golf courses and start the lobster pots a boilin’.

Chicago, don’t even bother. I think we all need to hang onto at least a little hate.

I wouldn’t want people to start confusing me with Wisconsin.

Now they've ruined jukeboxes

I feel sheepish criticizing something I loved longer and spent more quality time with than even my family, but neighborhood bars are starting to suck.

I know. That’s like worms criticizing dirt.

I’ve loved my family for the nearly 11 years I’ve had them, but I’ve loved being in bars for about as long as I was biologically capable of conceiving a family, or at least since I was able to obtain a convincing fake ID.

What’s wrong with neighborhood bars?

Jukeboxes.

They are one of the man’s few inventions that as they’ve gotten better and better have gotten worse and worse.

Guaranteed, any jukebox from any local tavern or pizza joint even from the 1970s is far superior to any dazzling new internet Tunetown.

An old jukebox would have maybe 100 songs -- 50 two-sided 45s -- from an eclectic mix of top popular artists of the day. Guaranteed, they’d all have something by the Rolling Stones, The Who, Linda Ronstadt, Elvis, The Eagles, Boz Scaggs, Elton John and some of the still-memorable one-hit wonders of the day.

The owner decided what deserved jukebox inclusion. And by doing so he or she was setting an artistic boundary as imposing as any bouncer.

The fortunes of a bar’s reputation rested on the quality of its jukebox every bit as much as the charm or shapeliness of the person pouring the drinks.

Today’s jukeboxes have maybe one million songs on them.

There’s something for everyone.

Please all and you please none.

A jukebox with one million songs puts tasteful people like me at the mercy of morons.

Understand, I love all my fellow man. My fellow babes, too. And I go out of my way to make them all feel welcome when they stranger on into a bar where my frequent over-consumption makes me feel like I have a proprietary stake.

Blacks, gays, Hispanics, Muslims, Orientals, liberals and even sadly misguided conservatives -- at one time or another I’ll bet I’ve bought them all at least a drink or two and sought common philosophical ground.

I welcome the whole rainbow of humanity to sit down and share a drink with me.

Just leave your crappy music in your car.

That’s why the new mega-song internet jukeboxes are such disasters.

Now someone who doesn’t know any better can come in and instantly demolish the atmosphere of a really rockin’ bar.

That’s what would happen if, say, my daughter, 10, came into the bar with her allowance and what would have to be an incredibly realistic fake ID. She wouldn’t play Hayes Carll, Joe Ely, Steve Earle, or any of the Texas troubadours whose music enlivens any really cool tavern.

No, she’d play Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift and other saccharine pap from groups like the cast of Glee.

It would be so embarrassing I’d almost be hesitant to bum $5 off her before ratting her out for being underage.

Now, I love that little girl, more than Tom Petty even -- and Petty’s always been there for me. Sure, Petty’s never called me stupid, told his friends I smell bad and screamed he’ll die if I make him listen to one more Bob Dylan song, but the daughter wins my affection because in between bouts of tweener hostility she’ll still crawl up on my lap for sweet cuddling.

I reserve the right to change my evaluation of the two if Petty ever calls and says he’d like to come over and cuddle.

My point is the tavern owner should never abdicate his or her social obligations to pander to musical misfits who think Van Morrison’s best song is “Brown Eyed Girl,” think Mark Knopfler retired after he folded up Dire Straits, and love Lady Gaga but have never heard of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.

Because I love rock ‘n’ roll. So put another dime in the jukebox, baby.

Here are 10 songs guaranteed to set a great vibe in your local tavern:

• “Piano Man,” Billy Joel -- Look around as everyone starts to sing along and you’ll see each of the characters depicted in the 1973 song in every bar you’ve ever been in.

• “The Road Goes on Forever,” Joe Ely -- This is Ely’s 1992 superior version of the Robert Earl Keen original. It kicks more ass than an impatient mule farmer, as does much of everything both Keen and Ely have ever composed.

• “Highlands,” Bob Dylan -- at 16 minutes, 32 seconds, this is the only song likely to get you your money’s worth in a day when a single juke box song costs as much as a draft beer. It’s so slow and swampy people hate for the first five mintues, become curious during the second five and finally start to dig it during the homestretch. I always play it at least twice in a row.

• “Sultans of Swing,” Dire Straits -- Maybe the greatest guitar song ever written with sneering Knoplfer lyrics about the boys in the corner who “don’t give a damn ‘bout any trumpet-playing band” because “it ain’t what they call rock ‘n’ roll.” This sure is.

• “Change The Locks,” Tom Petty -- From “She’s The One,” the ’96 Petty album known only to the most devout, this was an outstanding rock soundtrack to the forgotten indy movie. Petty’s only twice recorded another’s songs for his studio albums, I think. It’s a pickiness that works well here with this outstanding Lucinda Williams rocker.

• “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” David Allan Coe -- This list is light on country, which I revere, but I never skip this on the jukebox. It’s classic country and goes out of its way to ensure listeners realize it with its uproarious last verse.

• “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin,’” Rolling Stones -- The Stones have so many indelible hits this great jazzy number often gets overlooked. This opens the ears of innocents who think they know all about the Stones from “Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Satisfaction.”

• “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” The Who -- From the opening chord to Daltry’s final euphoric shriek, this mesmerizes throughout.

• “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” Elton John -- The first song on the first album, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” I ever bought. At 11 minutes, 11 seconds, it’s one of music’s most epic and eloquent rockers. The virtuosity dazzles still and the song is a surprise reminder that in 1973 when rock ‘n’ roll was at its best, Elton John was among the very best.

• “American Pie,”Don McLean -- This is it, the greatest jukebox song ever recorded. It’s tuneful, mournful, exuberant and tells the story of rock in such allegoric detail that it’ll ignite conversations clear through last call.

Rock on, my friends, rock on.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Like any earth-conscious soul, I’ve been troubled ever since learning of the existence of massive floating islands of plastic garbage sprawling across the planet’s oceans.

One, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, according to Save My Oceans, twice the size of Texas.

That comparison seems unfair -- to garbage dumps. The Texas Hill country is splendid, but much of vast west Texas is so desolate even native troubadour Joe Ely says it only holds scenic appeal to men just released from long stretches in the pen.

But what to do about continent-sized masses of plastic garbage floating in our once-pristine oceans, most of which could probably have been recycled.

Clean it up? That sounds utterly futile. It’s just too massive.

And where would you put that much garbage? I guess even west Texans would oppose it being dumped all over them -- although all that shiny plastic would certainly add welcome sparkle to the landscape’s bleakness.

I say the solution is to colonize it.

But with whom? Should its purpose be penal or pleasure?

I thought long and hard about an idea that seemed to make perfect ironic sense: a Garbageological Guantanamo.

I thought it should be a penal colony for anyone who’s ever been busted tossing a Coke bottle or McDonald’s cup out the window.

But I had to discard that idea because I realized that over-population would soon sink the plastic island. There are just too many people who just don’t give a damn. They toss plastic bottles and trash-filled grocery bags out the windows of their cars all over my quaint little town.

I’d understand this if, say, their cars were about to be used in the royal wedding parade for Will and Kate. But that’s usually not the case.

Their cars are crap, too. And they dress like bums to boot.

It’s a pity because most of the really trashy people on the planet can’t be shamed into not littering and they are so pervasive that I’ve never heard of a single person getting busted for littering in a world that is literally awash in trash.

So until we change the laws and allow for vigilante homicide of petty litterers, there’s nothing we can do about it.

Then I thought maybe we could skip the common white trash trashers and go after the big guys. You know, the corporate big shots who are polluting our streams and air with careless business practices that earn them millions while poisoning the planet.

I know, I know. It was just a joke. We don’t punish people who do that. We offer them tax breaks. It’s stunning the multi-million dollar give-aways Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is showering on fat cat donors from the Marcellus Shale gas industry at the same time his budget is forcing teacher layoffs all across the state.

So how about this? Instead of disparaging the massive plastic islands that are killing our marine life, we promote it as posh island living.

Yes, island living, the epitome of modern chic. People dream of hitting the lottery and picking up and moving to St. Barts or Virgin Gorda.

It would be an easy sell, I think, to pitch condos on an island that can pick up and move so residents wouldn’t have to.

Either way, something must be done. This is a very depressing problem on levels ranging from intellectual to just plain icky.

Researchers say more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds die each year from ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic.

So the fish eat the plastic and then we eat the fish. It’s a dreadful cycle destined to end, I guess, with the food chain becoming a real chain like the kind hardy mountain folks put on their tires to negotiate deep snow.

Fish are attracted to the the shiny bits of plastic for the same reason deceptive Rapala lures work so well.

If it keeps going like this, the fresh sushi I so enjoy will differ little in content from the little plastic replicas they put in the windows of the restaurants to lure in guys like me.

It’ll be a sad day for anyone hooked on sushi.

As if planetary matters could get any more sad.

Undercover Boss -- me!

I remember seeing the first “Undercover Boss” promos and thinking, gee, what a novel idea. I’d love to watch a show where the CEO is revealed to be a moron and emerges with a new respect for working stiffs.

And, of course, I haven’t watched even a minute of it. I watch enough mind-deadening TV that I don’t need to pump more reality sewage into the swamp -- and that sounds like the premise for “Undercover Mob Boss.”

Yet, I remain charmed by the concept and think how much fun it would be to have a role in the show.

Since I work alone, can’t afford to hire anyone and even coke-headed producers wouldn’t dream of putting a show like that on the air, I spent yesterday pretending I was the Undercover Boss of myself.

I auditioned the 23 or so distinct voices in my head and allowed one of them to step forward into the boss role to survey what I do, how difficult it is, and gain a new appreciation for the peon employee.

That’d be me.

Undercover Boss: “Morning! I’m here to work with you.”

Me: Welcome aboard. I’m prepared to share with you all my secrets. Ask me anything.

U.B.: “Let me start by saying how handsome you are.”


Me: "And let me start by saying what a fantastic start you're off to, my brown-nosing little friend!

Camera pans to a sign on the door that says, “All Guys Welcome! My Door is Always Open, My Toilet Seat is Always Up,” as I let him in to the shabby little office right above my favorite bar.

U.B.: “Quite an office you have here.”

Me: It’s like a little clubhouse. I told my wife a few years ago I wanted a ‘Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio’ poster for my birthday. She said, ‘What, are you still in the eighth grade?’ I told her no, but my office is.

Camera flash summarizes the first three hours of the morning with clips of me tossing wadded up pieces of scrap paper into a 5-foot high waste paper basket nailed to the wall 12-feet from my desk. The ones that miss, about 50-percent, I then thud chip into a lower waste basket with my pitching wedge (camera shows startled diners in the bar below spilling hot soup in their laps as the jarring noise sparks alarm).

U.B.: “Do you ever do any work here?”

Me: Not really. I try to avoid things that make me sweat or cause my brain to hurt.

The show segues to a shots of me expertly juggling three bean bags and swapping punch lines from movies like “SlapShot!” “Hot Fuzz,” and “Zombieland” with old friends on the speaker phone. The iPod blasts a lively playlist of Delbert McClinton, Todd Snider, Joe Ely and Kris Kristofferson.

U.B. “I packed a lunch. Do we eat here in the office?”

Me: Rarely. I spend so much time deep inside my own head, I really need to get out and see people. The isolation is the worst part of the job. So about once a day I pretend someone’s phoned in a bomb threat and I dash downstairs to the bar for safety and suds. Let’s pretend that right now so we can get good seats in time for the Showcase.

Cameras cut to me and the U.B. sitting on bar stools getting ready to ridicule goofy contestant bids on “The Price is Right.” After Drew Carey announces the winner to the Showcase Showdown and the comely supermodels wave the show to commercial, we watch the local news and return upstairs.

U.B.: “What’s the biggest misconception about how you work?”

Me: “That I’m drunk all the time. I joke about it a lot, but it’s surprising and a little disappointing how often I’m sober. But I perpetuate the myth so others can have vicarious fun.

The afternoon work session is a virtual rerun of the morning fun enlivened by a segment where I show the U.B. how I prank bar patrons in the parking lot by pushing my car’s remote panic horn button the instant they slam their car doors. Hiding behind the curtains, we both crack up at their muddle-headed confusion.

U.B.: “Well, after watching you work, I think you’ve earned a little bar time.”

Me: What a splendid idea! I think you’re going to work out fine here, kid!

The U.B.’s voice over concludes the show: “He doesn’t earn enough money to warrant a raise, but I can’t fire his lazy ass ‘cause he’s good for morale. He’s worked for me for nearly 20 years and still have no idea how the hell he does it.”

The picture fades to black after the camera pans across the stoic faces of the bar regulars looking on in disturbed silence as me and my imaginary U.B. yuk it up in the corner.

The phrase “Another day, another dollar,” would fit perfectly if you just subtract the part about the dollar.