The Random Thoughts of a Sometimes Bored White Guy

The icon of quirky observations, Jerry Seinfeld, once recalled that Halloween in the later years of one's childhood became more of a chore than a joy. "Doorbell, costumes, candy, let's pick up the pace here," he recalled in complete deadpan fashion. His musings remind me of those days of early adolescence when I knew I was getting too old to keep up the trick or treating but I didn't want to give up the candy. However, when I finally did stop, it became apparent I had been doing it out of self-imposed obligation instead of any great desire to do it. I didn't exactly notice that I was short on cheap, discounted orange-wrapped caramels nor would it have broken my heart if I did notice.

In other words, I was tricking or treating because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. Heck, all things considered, I'd rather have been watching the game.

Of course, in adulthood Halloween more about the costumes and less about the candy (but probably a little bit about the drinking). To be honest, however, I cannot remember the last time I ever attended a Halloween party. In fact, I think Halloween ceased meaning anything to me when I turned 16. There was always a paper or project standing in the way. If not that, I was pretty much content with the "Halloween" movies. Honestly, popping "Halloween" into the VCR was about the extent of the effort I put into October 31 for a long, long time. You'd sooner see me out of the house before or after Halloween, not during.

However, years of relative non-participation in Halloween has not left me blind and deaf. I see people's Halloween photos and I hear all the stories. And I can't help but wonder where the line between "dressing seductively for Halloween for fun" and "dressing seductively for Halloween out of obligation" begins and ends.

I know, I know: I'm only the 417,239th person to opine on this subject. I'm not breaking any creative ground here. Go ahead and Google the word "Halloween" with the phrase "dressing like a whore." BOOM! Big-time hits. It seems as though cleavage and hosiery are big time buzz words on the North American consciousness come October. Which reminds me, given that it IS October and it's actually pretty frikkin' chilly on Halloween night in a lot of places, I'm sure that the titular "sure is cold in here" joke will be posited in roughly three out of every four Halloween parties in the Midwest this year. Hardy-har-har-har.

Mind you, this is a phenomenon that, not surprisingly, has taken hold with women far more than men. This is not to say that there won’t be a few thousand gym rats taking the opportunity to dress as a shirtless fireman. You know the guy: in his mid-20s, always looks tanned even when it's ten below, always makes sure that people see him in his workout garb on his way out of work and secretly harbours a desire for the return of Zubaz pants. This guy will show up to the pumpkin day parade wearing the fireman costume with the cheesy Chippendale's suspenders and then conveniently complain about how hot it is in said outfit roughly...three minutes into the party. He will make tangential references to six-packs and beef to draw attention to his abs and pecs so every woman at the party will love him. Every other man at the party will hate this guy and spend every second minute mocking him for the rest of the night, completely oblivious to the irony of the situation when they spend every other minute ogling Tina in her "I'm a nurse, but a NAUGHTY nurse" outfit.

In fact, I think the whole "sexy vocation" theme has taken over the sensibility of Halloween for a lot of adults. Whereas it used to be about imagining a world where the undead inhabit the streets, it is now about imagining a world where the unclothed inherit the office. In fact, if you really want to be lazy about it, you could just show up as your current job description and cut off half your uniform. So Sandra the secretary cuts in her skirt in half and leaves her blouse open and all of a sudden she's "Sandra the sexy secretary." Julie the cop ties up her top in a knot and swaps her pants for hot pants and she's "Julie the bad cop...in a good way." And Sally the Hooters waitress.....just comes straight from work with what she already has on.

As I have stated before, I'm not trying to take away from my appreciation of the female form. I'm sure that I be quite the hypocrite when, mere days after railing against the inanity of obligatory Halloween skankiness, I’ll be found fawning over Mile High Mandy. (Y’know?: She’s the stewardess who will do anything to make your trip more enjoyable). It's just that when the provocative Halloween costume becomes so repeated that it is a prerequisite instead of an unexpected visual.....well, it's still nice to look at a beautiful lady but it's not the same thrill it used to be.

You know how takeout food usually tastes ten times better when you weren't expecting it? Like in that rehashed commercial where the kids and mother come home scared to death because Dad is cooking supper and silly TV viewer, everybody knows it's not a man's job to cook! Then, all of a sudden, like a beacon of bright light, "Dad's meal" consists of the fried chicken he ordered. Everyone is ecstatic. Fried chicken is way better than Dad making us a salad!

If you ate that food everyday and saw it coming, you'd be sick and bored. I'm not saying sexy Halloween costumes will bore us, but you can't replace the thrill of the unexpected. Consider it the difference between the joy of the kids in the “Hot For Teacher” video and the joy of Donald Trump winning the lottery. Both happy but one clearly more interested than the other.

Besides that, now it’s come to the point where wearing something remotely resembling scary induces scowls. Gone are the days when a guy would show up to the bar on Halloween night and go "Wow! Did you see Jessica in that Elvira costume? I've been waiting to see her in getup like that for three years!" These days have been replaced with drunken fratboys remarking, "I can't believe that Jessica had the nerve to show up dressed as a zombie. She wasn't even a HOT zombie! Why doesn't she take the money she used for pancake makeup and buy a pushup bra or something?" Whereas the one scantily clad lady in ten used to stand out and make the horndog's day, now the one in ten that bothers to think outside the seduction box ruins it.

The problem now is that less and less women want to be “THAT person, the annoyance” and still think they can be “THAT person, the hottie standout.” So instead of dressing like a tarted up schoolgirl because it's a fun thing to do, it's dressing up like a tarted up schoolgirl because "Hannah and Holly are too and I'll be damned if I let them get all the attention." That and more people have to work out to get into Halloween shape when it used to be their respite from the workout they did to get into summer shape. Shame, really.

Then again, I suppose it's equally weird that one would advocate being surrounded by people trying to look like grotesque rejects from a David Cronenburg film over anything else. So to each their own.

I guess the moral of the story is dress as you like and people don't like your costume, give them the stale leftover candy from Halloweens past. You know those Rockets/Smarties that actually are the third-rate knockoffs? Save the real deal for anyone who appreciates your creativity.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been invited to a man-whore Halloween party. I sure hope that showing up dressed like Woody Allen counts.

BMN

There's nothing like an imaginary friend to get you through the trials and tribulations of childhood. At the age of five, I had an imaginary friend named Jason. Oddly enough, he didn't really do anything interesting. You'd think with the power to imbue a character with any traits I wanted, I might have given him capability to fly. I could have at least carved him in the image of the Fonz-- complete with leather jacket and surefire capacity to fire up jukeboxes at restaurants nationwide. My imaginary friend lasted for about a month, I believe. I'm not even sure why I had one in the first place. I suppose he would have been better located in the psychosomatic-inducing unpopular days of junior high. Had he been born in 1990, Jason may have lived a long and fruitful existence.

The moral of the story is: if you're going to make something up, it needs to have a purpose. Making something up for the sake of making it up is either delusional or it's art. Maybe both.

So what do I make of the "War Against Christmas?" You may be asking yourself, a) "what is the War Against Christmas?", b) "what does this have to do with imaginary friends?" or c) "what can I drink that goes well with reading this article?" I'll happily answer your first two questions.

First, the "War Against Christmas" is the belief that non-secular forces have hijacked the Christmas season and made it inappropriate to even reference Christmas during breakfast. Second, I've found in my personal experience that the "War Against Christmas" is as unimagined as the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or K-Fed's singing career.

In my youth, there was a family of Jehovah's Witnesses that down the street. Their house was notoriously unlit and unapproachable every Halloween. The overly noted irony of Jehovah's Witnesses turning away people at their door aside, the general reaction amongst myself and my childish bretheren was "yawn, next house, please." Had my parents worked for a conservative news channel, they may have made an incident out of this. I can imagine what the speech might have sounded like:

"This neighborhood was founded on the values of giving out candy to our kids. It is a simple fact that 98% of the houses on this street celebrate this ritual. Not saying "Happy Halloween" to not offend our neighbours is an outright blasphemy. In fact, I suggest that you boycott everywhere these people shop. Can you imagine giving out candy from the same grocery store which these admittedly well-groomed Halloween-less heathens shop? It's an insult to our local witches, pagans and otherwise prudish sorority girls who inexplicably dress like porn stars on October 31st!"

The easier thing to do would be to accept the neighbour's freedom to clench their candy like Scrooges, politely acknowledge them in public and snicker at them behind their back. That would have been the Canadian way. However, this alleged "War on Christmas" is just that: a war, dammit!! You don't say "hello" to your heathen enemy when there are battle trenches to be dug, blockades to establish and all-around hostile attitudes to convey.

One conservative critic weighed in on the subject last year with the heartwarming text, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." I immediately thought "I don't know what 'worse than I thought' means since I had no idea any such plan existed." Evidently the statistics that suggest that over 95% of people celebrate Christmas were down from what the author was expecting. Evidently a handful of alleged instances where schools and workplaces don't put up a Christmas wreath are enough to convince a group of people that the world is against Christmas and that we'd better nip this resistance in the bud before the 95% becomes 90% and so on. Hell, if that keeps up, we'll be out of Christmas by the year 2065!

Apparently, the REAL evidence that such a war exists is the use of such panaceaic terms as "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings." Such ideas, you see, don't give Jesus his due. The irony is that frontline soldiers in the "War on Christmas" declare their freedom by boycotting stores that don't include the word "Christmas" in their advertising. Many of these same people once protested going overboard with shopping for Christmas in the first place since "Jesus was the reason for the season." So it seems somewhat contradictory that they would suddenly turn to commerce to make their Christian point. Then again, the Ruskies were on our side in World War II, so what do I know?"

Trying to deny the "War on Christmas" is not necessarily that big of a deal for some of you as it may even be news that such a war exists. However, to these "soldiers," you might as well be denying the Holocaust. Of course, the Holocaust was documented with goverment papers, film, photos, graves and mass testimonials. The "War Against Christmas" is documented by a handful of parents who are miffed that they lost the chance to take a picture of their children doing a Christmas play their children probably would have given up for a rousing game of floor hockey. You can see how endless the parallels are.

Now, saying hello during the holiday seas...er, Christmas season has become a verbal landmine. If you tell someone "Merry Christmas," you run the risk of offending the people who certain people are telling you will be offended even though such people I have yet to see. However, they certainly must exist because the soldiers against the "War Against Christmas" tell me they exist. They wouldn't lie, would they? They're soldiers, for crying out loud!

If you tell someone "Happy Holidays," well then you're not supporting the troops, you're making baby Jesus cry and four puppies just died. Just like when you masturbate. You're also *gasp* including the other approximate 5% of the population in your greeting and that's like inviting the nerds to the high school prom. No one wants to do that, they take the worst pictures and overtake the grand march with their pythagorean marching formations.

When it comes to what I accept as a greeting: I have adopted a Swedenesque policy of neutrality in this great war. If someone gives me a "Happy Holidays," I'll take it. If someone gives me a "Merry Christmas," I'll take it. I'll also take "Happy Hannukah," "Happy Kwanzaa," "Solid Solstice," "Excellent Eid ul-Adha," or "Festivus for the rest of us." I am the Lando Calrissian of December: I'll take the best offer that's in front of me.

My neutral stance on being the "greetee" sometimes leads to a likely unjust sense of paranoia as the greeter. If I cheerfully wish a "Merry Christmas" to a frontliner, I may have inadvertently identified myself as a soldier to their cause. It's somewhat like knowing a few Beatles songs, then offhandedly saying you're a fan to someone who has a hanky that Paul McCartney used during the 1965 Shea Stadium concert encased in lucite.

Before you know it, you're being asked your opinion on "the Hamburg years" and which Beatle ex-wife was most responsible for the band's demise. It's all you can do to clench your teeth and say "listen, I really just like the bassline on 'Get Back.' Back off!!" I don't need to wish "Merry Christmas" to someone and then be patted on the back for "fighting the man" for ten minutes. "It's so wonderful that you say 'Merry Christmas,' that's how it should be blah blah blah..." On it goes until the person's voice becomes an adult from the Charlie Brown cartoons. If that's where this "war" is headed, I want no part of it.

It funnily makes me want to abandon giving any indication that there's ANY holiday going on. I think I stuck to "have a nice night" during my last shopping expedition. It went surprisingly smoothly. Of course, in ten years, some critic might take this greeting away from me too. The explanation will go something like this:

"The traditional understanding of "the night" has been hijacked for too long by those Liberal wackos espousing 'Take Back the Night' rallies. By saying 'have a nice night,' you are furthering the idea that the night is not already nice that these nutjobs are putting forth. Stand up for your rights as a non-secular and refuse to say 'have a nice night.' Only say 'goodbye!' You, my friend, won't just be giving a greeting, you'll be DOING something."

And that, I suppose, was the point all along. Saying "Merry Christmas" is no longer an effortless greeting. It is evidently a validation of your sense of self and your ability to struggle. Take pride in yourself as a Canadian/American/Westerner/ etc.: if you say "Merry Christmas," your effort will not be in vain. If I ever resurrect my imaginary friend, Jason, I'll carve him in the image of the ultimate movie villain. He'll be the guy who takes my cookies away from me when I'm not looking. That way, whenever anyone sees me eat a cookie, they'll applaud me for standing up for myself in the "War Against Jason."

After all, it's high time someone gave me a cookie for eating a cookie!

BMN

Every so often a news item will make you do a double-take, raise your eyebrows or flat-out go “say WHHHHAAATTTTTT??” (Note: that will earn you a slap from most sensible folk if you stretch it out like that). Such was the case when I read that a man convicted of a sex offense in Nebraska was given probation over prison after the judge determined his 5’1 frame would endanger him in the mixed martial arts arena you and I more commonly call “jail.”

Most were (quite rightly) upset that someone could receive such a light sentence for such a serious crime. I was mostly surprised that being shorter than average actually benefited a man for once. Add that to the recent story of a 5’7, 140 pound man who lived to 112 despite essentially gorging on sausage and waffles his entire life. The doctors attributed it to his genetics. All in all, it was a great week to be short, enough to inspire 5’6, 145 pound man like myself to engage in a fast-food laden crime spree. They’d never catch me and if they did, they’d let me off on probation and I’d run a Waffle House knockoff chain until I was 118 or became the Pope, whichever came first.

In actuality, I felt like the world didn’t really need another reason to pick on us shorter-statured gents. Now, I’m liable to hear the “you short people and your perverted sex crimes because you know you can get away with it.....” Well, OK, I admit that’s unlikely to happen. Nevertheless, the association could be troublesome.

Spend enough time thinking about the subject and for men like myself, it’s a pretty dire world out there. Every study under our sun indicates that if you want greater health, reach for the sky…..or at least reach beyond average height as better cardio seems to be linked to height so long as you are not grossly above the median. Want to get paid? Max out every credit card on earth for the reasonably expected maximum of 3 inches you’ll get for leg lengthening because four inches evidently equals a 10% increase in pay. Want to get laid? If you’re under the average of the world, time to start investing in elevator shoes or little obscured wooden planks because that’s the best way to max out your chances. One recently published study goes so far as to suggest that height— for both genders— is a reliable predictor of smarts. If so, that makes the odds strong that I am three to four inches dumber than the average man in North America.

While some of these ideas seem laughable upon first glance, they are mostly in keeping with my upbringing. From my youth to today, tall athletic peers were/are often referred to as “assertive,” those smaller than myself (and some slightly bigger) were/are often “pushy.” If you get too big (metaphorically, of course) for your britches, you might get the dreaded “N” word— Napoleonic. This might be hurtful it wasn’t somewhat misguided. Though he stood as tall as I in the literal sense, he was of average height among Frenchmen at the time. So take me back to the late 18th century, my friends, and I’ll invade Italy! Except I’ll be less interested in military concerns and more interested in looting palaces for fine pasta and cordially thanking Italians for passing down my quality of frequent hand gestures.

My mother didn’t tell me I was going to grow “small and short” although she couldn’t have expected much different if she looked across the kitchen to her husband. Whenever I took principled positions, I don’t recall anyone congratulating me on “standing short.” If a male beanstalk contemporary was inhibited or bashful, he was given the assignment of “shy” or “mysterious.” Conversely, I was only sometimes able to dodge being called a “wuss,” though others shorter than I usually had a lower batting average on that front. Even supposed compliments were really often poorly disguised hedges, such as “not bad for a short guy”, which is kind of like hearing “this is pretty good for a Postum cappucino.”

Finally, I don’t remember any female friends of mine lusting after someone “short, pale and handsome.” Come to think of it, I don’t recall a lot of female friends.....so I’m not sure if that proves or disproves my point. Hell, 1980s classic Big taught us that the only way to impress women— and get on the carnival ride of your choice— was to pray to the vending machine of Zoltar for advanced height. Wacky wonderful Hanks hijinx ensued, with the girl and the money in tow.

It’s been said that the preference for taller men and shorter women comes from our evolution where the idea was that a) the man was the provider, the woman the nurturer and b) the man had to be as able as possible to whup ass in the jungle so that there’d be buffalo ribs for dinner this evening and that some other dude wouldn’t steal it. Logic would then dictate that the tallest cultures would be pretty battle-ready so watch out America, your status as a superpower is seriously endangered by…..the Netherlands. That’s right, you heard me: the Netherlands. Apparently, this nation has undergone a L.A. Clippers-esque resurgence in height where they’ve gone from lowly 19th century stature to a 5’11-6’ male average. When they get so ravenous that their food supply is depleted— and when they have no more Heineken to bribe you with for your eats— they will come and kick your sorry ass from here to the Dinaric Alps. Then things might get sketchy.

It is actually a well-taken point since North America and particularly the U.S. is actually falling behind the curve for height increase. Indeed the biggest factor for women seeking out taller men may be they are trying to un-stem the tide. This is borne out as extensively as women consistently seeking out taller-than-average sperm donors. So yes, short fellows, if you were relying on massive sperm donation as a get-rich-quick-scheme, you have yet again been discriminated against!

While my father proved an able exemplar, popular culture certainly failed to hold up its end of the bargain in producing an admired role model of similar physique. Those who did exist often seemed to provide more lament than triumph, much as Dustin Hoffman did when his breakthrough role only came because Robert Redford wouldn’t look as convincing as someone who was sweaty and nervous around women.

In fact, many others seem to go to great detailed lengths to mask the fact that I might be able to look them in the eye. Just recently I turned on the television to see Antonio Banderas with heels so tall, I was waiting for RuPaul to join him for an impromptu catwalk. (Mind you, on top of everything else, our culture tends to discourage heel-wearing in straight men, so forgive my impulse.) Sylvester Stallone has been accused many times of fudging his height since the manifest anguish of a 5’8 man going the distance with Apollo Creed would be too much for cinema buffs to bear. Prince goes to such detail to exaggerate his height that if his heels get any taller and his dancers any shorter, they may reinact “Jack and the Beanstalk” and he will tumble off his platform perch like a beanstalkly-oak.

Even the proud and few longtime success stories are now being threatened. For over two decades, Tom Cruise was a good flag-bearer for those of us wanting to be a financially successful heartbreaking man that didn’t quite cast the John Wayne mold. That was until he decided to forgo his image of normality and re-cast his lot as fighter of glib, jumper of couches and accused Katie Holmes kidnapper. Thanks Tom, remind me never again to use you as a public relations device. At least Jon Stewart hasn’t gone off the deep end yet. Not today at least. Furthermore, he hasn’t gone to the trouble of being filmed to look taller than people he really does not dwarf, much like Cruise purportedly has for much of his career.

The rather long-winded moral of the popular culture story seems to be that one is supposed to be ashamed of being under 5’10 and the only acceptable thing to do about it is lie profusely about it. This is a pretty disheartening moral in the long run. Certainly at some point these celebrities have had to reveal their true stature and find their fans shocked to discover that their idol or hero did not in fact stand 6’5 or some other mythical proportion. I’ve often received that “you’re shorter than I expected” look from people who only heard about me that were then meeting me. Based on these looks, you’d think my failure to measure up (not metaphorically, of course) was a crime equal to assassinating Bono (though he’s alleged to be a few mere cm taller than I).

Dirty looks are no fun. Plus: looking on the dour side of things is usually only good for a few minutes (or 1,500 words) of chuckling, after which it just becomes irritatingly depressing. So I feel that I owe to myself and to my fellow pint-sized brethren to try to isolate some of the finer points of being compact. Sure, you won’t get paid as much, you’ll be bullied in your youth and prospective daters will often turn a blind eye to you. But think of how much you’ll have to look forward to. Advantages such as:

— being able to save money by purchasing youth-sized everything. Only now in my late-20s do I realize that I’ve been going about clothes-buying the wrong way. Sports jerseys may be too expensive for you, but at a youth extra-large, I’ll happy make the investment. Heck, if it wasn’t for the fact that my flagrant facial hair and just-as-flagrant balding disguised it, I’d still be trying to pose as 15 to get into movies cheaper. Some of you may think that pretending to be half one’s age for the sake of saving $15 on a jersey and $5 on the movies should be beneath any dignified adult. I just so happen to disagree. By blending seniors’ discounts with youth-sized savings, I’ll be the king of my retirement complex

— being able to actually breathe on an airplane. Well, actually, you probably won’t be able to do that. You’ll stand a better chance than most others, though. Given that economy seating on most airline services accords only just enough room for an army of ants to sleep comfortably, you’ll be grateful for every foot you don’t have. So that extra money that our tall compatriots make will have to go towards first class if they want to sit as “comfortably” as we do. (Addendum: you probably also have a greater chance of passing yourself of as luggage and getting on the flight even cheaper!)

— being able to consume less to sustain one self. Go ahead, Lurch, buy some extra potatoes to fill your genetically overdone frame and some bigger bars of soap to rid you of your extra bacteria. I can go further than you can on a 77 cent can of ravoli and a 19 cent mini-bath bar!

— being able to weasel your way out of doing heavy chores. Often when friends ask you to lift something, you can reply with “I dunno.....that looks kinda heavy for a guy like me, are you really sure you want me to give myself a hernia?” When someone needs their couches moved or their desks re-arranged, they’ll flip through the rolodex to find the basketball player most convenient to them. Meanwhile, you’ll be sitting at home popping a cool one, watching the game and letting the A/C wash over you. Plus, if someone walks into the room demanding that any other unpleasant task be completed, your chances of sneaking out the back door undetected are at least 25% greater than Captain Longlegs, whose movements will be as understated as a grindcore Christmas album.

— being able to crowd surf, ride carts and generally do all the childish but undeniably fun things that people give up by age 30 because it’s now become physically awkward. Have you ever watched a 6’4 person try to crowd surf? It’s like watching Shaquille O’Neal try to win the Kentucky Derby. So enjoy your seats to the Yanni concert in 2017, I’ll be busy soaring over people at the 17th Pixies Reunion Tour and hijacking kids’ crazy carpets and Slip N’ Slides.

— if nothing else, you will own everyone’s ass at hide-and-go-seek.

So best as I figure, I’ve got it made, at least so long as airplanes don’t double in sizes, youth prices stay as they are and IKEA keeps making those extra wide carts to transfer furniture complete with extra wide parking lot for me to soar through. And Tom, though I may never understand your dissection of glibness or agree with your means of recruiting girlfriends, I won’t bear any resentment towards you for being portable enough to jump the couch without breaking it. In the meantime, I’ll settle down with some waffles and Postum and keep an eye out for that tricky little sex offender on a street near me: because he may be blessed to be small enough to elude many other men’s field of vision, but I can keep the bastard square in my sight lines.

BMN

UPDATE!: Apparently, I'm shrinking. Upon having my 5'6 figure challenged, a new 2006 measurement now has me at 5'5 1/2! Out of Fonzie/James Brown territory and into Scott Ian territory. By the year 2015, I'm willing to bet carnival rides will be out of the question......

If moving out has taught me anything, it's that I should never again be allowed to drive a moving van or truck. Aside from that, it's taught me that some exits are all about timing. When a cockroach a day begins to appear in your apartment and you're just about to move out, you have good timing. There's nothing like a cockroach crawling onto your neck at three in the morning to convince you that to reschedule the moving van from a month's advance to tomorrow.

Most humans don't like bugs, this is a given. Yet we reserve a certain amount of contempt for cockroaches. This could be due to the fact that— amongst a taxonomical unit of creatures noted for their ugliness— they are among the grossest things to look at. It is probably even more likely due to the fact that you have to stop short of hiring a brigade of tanks to kill them off. Strangely enough, however, these traits can also be attributed to a man that we hold so near and dear, Keith Richards.

It's been said time and again, even by the man himself, that the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust are the cockroaches and Keith Richards. Granted, those buggers are difficult to get rid of but personally, I think we're giving the cockroaches too much credit. None of them have would have survived 62 years, then fallen 15 feet off of a coconut tree and lived. Especially if you got them loaded on tequila first. In fact, cockroaches don't even have the constitution to withstand a centipede attack. Keith would make them scatter with the volume of “Gimme Shelter.” Either that or with the tackiness of the “Harlem Shuffle.”

I often have to remind myself Keith Richards is a year older than my father. This is because a) my dad cannot play the guitar solo to "Tumbling Dice” and b) my dad looks about 30 years younger even when he DOES he looks his age. This means that Keith could have been my father. I'm relatively certain that he isn't as my mother is a faithful woman and I do not drink. I also have eyes that are relatively unsallow. My life, was I his son, would probably have been quite interesting. Instead of receiving the traditional lecture on the dangers of drugs, I would have been scolded for not developing immunity to them by age 16. Family reunions would be marked by the ceremonial practice of drawing a roadmap with the lines on daddy's face. Not to mention the annual cop raids.

It's funny when I revisit the footage of the Altamont concert of 1969 where bands played on a stage not fit for your local tavern in front of approximately a bazillion people and the Hell's Angels mistook their pool cues as billy clubs. People talk about the concert (where 3 died) as a tragic "close call" for the Rolling Stones, as a gunman could have taken one of them out "at any time." HA! Keith Richards, dead in 1969? Are you kidding me? There wasn't enough room amongst that crowd to fit the AK-47 that it would have taken to accomplish such a feat. There is a brief moment in the footage in which you see him cross his heart. Actually, I think he was selling his soul and whatever semblance of good looks he had to the devil for an eternal life force.

Given that Richards has forged his bad boy reputation into 40 years of ungodly hard living (and survived the scorn of untrustworthy biker security), it is a worthy proposal that he replace the cockroach as the number one household pest. I make this proposition based on two lines of argumentation: 1) Keith is tougher than your average cockroach and 2) life would be way cooler if he snuck into your house every week or so.

To prove the first premise, let’s consider situations of crisis and how these two unique and prosperous species might handle them:

SITUATION ONE: The species causes itself to be jolted with electrical volts by way of colliding electric guitars with microphones. The cockroach, being 3cm/1.1in of average length, would die in a nanosecond. Keith Richards wears rubber soles in his sneakers and lives to play for another 40+ years.

SITUATION TWO: The prime minister’s wife disappears into the clutches of the species. Enforcement is called in to handle the matter. The cockroach would be wiped out by a massive security brigade that would probably evacuate the entire motel where the family carried the lady. Keith Richards escapes charges for possessing an ounce of smack because a blind lady helps him out in court.

SITUATION THREE: The species is injected with every illegal substance known to humanity. The cockroaches put up a tough fight to the exterminator and but say “Uncle!” after the fifteenth visit. Keith Richards muses “I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.”

SITUATION FOUR: The species is fought off with a vacuum cleaner. Cockroaches are unable to fight the suction and even if they escape, a less dirty floor is less enticing to them. Keith Richards comes to on the floor of many motels and hotels— clean or dirty— and trudges on to the next gig. If a vacuum cleaner hits him at any point, he thanks the perpetrator for straightening out the wrinkles on his face.

SITUATION FIVE: The species is mocked continuously for its grotesqueness in popular culture and common conversation. The cockroaches become the go-to villain in any “creepy crawly” episode of a sci-fi show. Keith Richards has a gorgeous wife and two beautiful children.

Sorry bugs, you lose!

Moving forward to the second half of my statement: if Keith Richards became the new number one household pest, life would be about ten thousand times cooler. Based on the same five-prong test, let’s go over how simple, ordinary encounters with persistent insects would improve if those insects were all guitar players for the Rolling Stones.

COMPARISON ONE: If a man takes his date home and there are cockroaches all over the floor, she will recoil in disgust. She will then leave, rip up his phone number and address book, relocate to another city if need be and obliterate all other pertinent means of contact. If a man takes his date home and Keith Richards is crawling around…..either the man loses his date but gains a house of groupies or the woman sleeps with Keith Richards…..or both.

COMPARISON TWO: Some bizarre individuals keep the most odourless, least hideous or otherwise inoffensive cockroaches as pets, thereby containing them in a case even though pretty much no one wants to look at them. If you had Keith Richards in a case, you’d have a half-decent jukebox.

COMPARISON THREE: Eliminating cockroaches involves going to your local department store and spending hours on end contemplating whether you want to bait the little buggers or drown them out with chemicals. Buy a two-four at the liquor store and put it at the end of your driveway and Keith Richards will leave your house to go get it. That oh-so-reliable source Wikipedia claims that “homemade roachtraps” are also “reported to be successful.” A homemade bong would likely also be successful in luring Richards away.

COMPARISON FIVE: People will commemorate the presence of cockroaches with “La Cucaracha,” a folk song with thousands of lyrical variants that can be repeated ad nausea. The guitar riffs to “Jumping Jack Flash” and “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” start out somewhat similar but really they are two different songs. Albeit hearing “Start Me Up” at every second sporting event sure gets annoying before long.

COMPARISON FIVE: One cockroach can produce hundreds of offspring, littering your house for days, weeks, possibly years. Keith Richards doesn’t have as many children as Mick Jagger.

So take that, humble cockroach! Your reign of terror as the pest of choice in this society is over. I can’t wait for Keith Richards to officially begin his duties as the new prevalent vermin of households across North America. Granted, it will be actually far more alarming and disturbing when he crawls onto my neck at 3AM. But when I move out the next day, there will be rock and roll music, a bitchin’ party and maybe the Rolling Stones will bring a moving van for me. Not a bad alternative to the exterminator. Best of all, Keith will probably bring the coconuts.

BMN

There’s something remarkably delightful about letting your facial hair off on its own tangent.

Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t grow an equivalent amount of the top of my head and the hair on my sides doesn’t grow out much to boot. It could be the follicle version of compensation. In order to forget that the Mohican or even an Art Garunkelesque Chia Pet-do is but a distant dream, I allow the hair on my face to serve as consolation. It’s like the needless Porsche acquisition of hair growing.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a lazy bastard. Think of the women’s liberation of the 1970s when an increase in unshaven legs was afoot. Hell, given how annoying and aggravating shaving my face is, I’m completely in sympathy with these people! Gloria Steinem was more than just an inspirational cultural radical; she was a pragmatist.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m sparing myself a tremendous amount of irritation and bloodshed. At five blades and counting, there’s no telling how much further razor companies will allow me to gouge my face—and allow themselves to gouge my pocketbook—as they continue the relentless pursuit to create a razor bigger than my head.

Maybe it’s because beards supposedly command a certain amount of respect. The evil Spock on Star Trek wore a goatee, no one would have wanted to mess with him. Grizzly Adams wore a big-ass beard and he was able to talk to bears, wrestle wolves and snort cocaine at an impressive pace (well, I only made some of those up….). Upon lopping off a long-standing goatee, a colleague informed me that he’d always wanted to talk to me more but that with my beard, I “kind of scared him a little.” The fact that he stood near a foot taller and probably 60 pounds heavier seemed a bit lost on him. I’m not sure if he thought I had a machete hiding under there.

Whatever the case, there has to be a logical reason why so many of us males have chosen at some point in our lives— some of us more significant portions of times than others— to live the face-hair life. It certainly isn’t because women (or gay men for that matter) prefer it on the average; in fact, some studies suggest that a beard might be a cost-effective alternative to a chastity belt. That’s a long path from the declarations of Roman Era author Lactantius, who decreed beards contributed “to the beauty of manliness and strength.” He had not the foresight to imagine bearded yuppies or me in a weight room.

It’s not as if there isn’t also early historic precedent for the hate-on towards beards either. Apparently during ancient Egyptian time, not only were they considered unattractive but also signified a person in mourning. Come to think of it, if people didn’t find me appealing, I guess that I’d perpetually mourn too. Maybe the people with the beards that didn’t suffer the loss of a loved one were just genuinely unaware of the connotations they were implying. Conversations for these people must have been quite circular: “Excuse me, but why won’t you come talk to me?” “I’m sorry sir, but it seems as though you are in mourning, I found it awkward to come talk to you.” “Well I am mourning!” Oh, what are you mourning, sir?” “The fact that everything thinks I’m grieving! I just want to talk about the chariot races!”

One thing of which I can assure you, thesis #2 (the laziness-maintenance principle) actually falls apart when you’ve lived long enough to consider all the options. Oh sure, if you decide to grow your beard at age 13 and never ever shave again, that thesis might hold weight. Let me be the first to tell you, though: the moment you shave that sucker, prepare for aggravation like you’ve never known before.

First of all, the longer you have had the beard, the more shocked you will feel when you look in the mirror. The last time I shaved my beard off, I suddenly felt as though I looked like I had ten days to live. I wanted to know who had replaced my body with that of a heroin-injecting haemophiliac. This impression was clearly lost on all of my friends and acquaintances that, though taken aback, did not immediately contact the closest medical practitioner to address my malnutrition. I guess the beard had given me a false impression of what passes for a “healthy face.”

You’d think the problems would end with the initial shock but you’d be wrong. If you’ve ever tried to drive a vehicle after such a radical alteration, you’re lucky not to be killed when you become diverted by the COMPLETE AND UTTER STRANGER staring at you in the rearview mirror. Who the hell is that and how did he commandeer the vehicle without my knowledge? Once you survive this incident and subsequent conversations with the officer about your shaky driving, the most constant irritation persists.

There’s itching. Lots of it. Why? Well, one becomes so used to the beard being there and he’s reached up to stroke it in that fake intelligentsia pose one too many times that he returns there as a force of habit. But there’s nothing there. So in lieu of that, the scratching begins. Quickly thereafter, the realization that daily shaving is the only thing that makes this thing stay away. The itching remains and suddenly growing the beard back doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Then the beard grows back and the horrible realization sets in that the beard is now itchy too. We cannot return to Camelot.

The hairless option is seen as the lesser of two evils for a couple of reasons. First, it is often argued that the most unappealing thing about a beard is the discomfort of the pour soul kissing a man bearing it. Yet for all of this complaining, some of the most commonly appealing beards seem to be the ones that you would think would hurt the most: stubble beards. They have the consistency of your average piece of slightly-used sandpaper but still only half the creepiness and none of the sleaziness of the dreaded pornstache. 80s music star George Michael was often suspected of shooting his videos on a “one-day-after-the-shave-but-dear-God-not-a-moment-later” schedule in order to preserve this swarthy appeal. It also seems to be the look for those men in shaving commercials that are supposed to appear as cleanly shaven as possible but look instead as though they used a trimmer instead. The women in these ads have no trouble snuggling up to these stubbly men as long as it’s a one day effect, not two. It’s almost as if stubble bearers have tricked women into believing that their five o’clock shadow is really not hair at all. Instead it literally is a shadow; a magic, majestic, manly shadow that provides him with his magnificent prominence.

Second, the hairless option has its roots, like so many things, in status practices of the past. When the safety razor was first invented, the best way to show off that you had money to all the ladies you were trying to impress with affluence was to plunk down for it and continually pay for the overpriced refills. Come to think of it, that’s actually exactly the same as today. Except in 2006, shaving isn’t a matter of looking affluent, it’s simply a matter of not looking homeless. I suppose if I was six more months into the beard I sported weeks ago, I’d be all-too-close to resembling starving, possibly drunk philosopher.

There are some “happy mediums” that men have arrived at during the course of history to try to negotiate this tension. Novelist Stephen King has often stated that the best way to look at it is be clean-shaven during the warm spring and summer months and let the blanket of your beard warm you during the fall and winter. I kind of like it; it’s sort of like a “two lives” storyline. I could devise a weird and wacky bearded Bryce who’s a bit of a loose cannon and tell off every second person I know, only to pave the way for the spring/summer onset of level-headed Bryce, the calm, reasonable man that will apologize for all of his wrongdoings and hosts power lunches on Wednesdays. The duality of it all already has me expecting to see Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari on my daily adventures explaining their latest attempts to keep up their cross-dressing ruse before their landlords.

My current compromise is the feather-duster, flavour-savour, beard-but-not-quite-a-beard and slightly bohemian-implying tuft of hair known as the “soul patch.” It’s kind of a brilliant ploy because you can almost get away with not shaving a little longer as the patch offsets the effect of the stubble; tricking the viewer into believing you shaved yesterday. The look in my case draws inexplicable endless comparisons to Anthrax’s Scott Ian. How wearing facial hair that doesn’t even measure an inch suddenly brings out my resemblance to a man with a goatee that at times rivals ZZ Top’s for audaciousness, I’ll never know.

I find “soul patch” to be the most ironic preservation of a title of all time. OK, I admit: I have a “soul patch.” I think I look good with a “soul patch.” But I do not have “soul.” Sure, I have a soul (at least I hope I do…), but if you’re waiting for me to join up with a runaway beatnik group playing a bongo drum and quoting Kerouac, be prepared to wait a while. I don’t think anyone with “soul” under the age of 30 has worn a “soul patch” since December 7, 1979, when Tom Waits celebrated his 30^th birthday. Mostly, it’s me, a bunch of coffee-drinking poets lamenting the loss of a Beat Generation their parents aren’t even old enough to remember and maybe a small group of IKEA bargain-hunters. Nonetheless, the patch provides a small amount of “yes, yes, yes, I’ll stroke this faux beard in a fain attempt to pretend I’m paying attention” without the major irritation of walking around with your face covered with the equivalent of a used-up human brillo-pad.

Alas, the awkward and terrible title may transform my beloved clump of hair from a subtle fashion choice into the 2000s zeitgeist equivalent of the mullet. The last thing I need to do is look back at pictures of myself in my late-20s, early-30s and compare it to Billy Ray Cyrus videos. It’s enough to make me consider clipping it off. However, I’d just be left with the same old dilemma again and again. Scratch my babyface red and try to convince myself that I command enough respect without the beard or scratch my bearded face into oblivion, having people try to tug at my face and try to compensate for messiness with a comb.

On second thought, maybe I can afford to be the 2006 zeitgeist of tackiness. Being compared to Scott Ian never really hurt anybody. If I had to overthink it any further, I’d tolerate the itching, let it grow out and stuff that machete into my big-ass beard. That beats a Porsche for compensation any day.

BMN

I once heard a wistful standup remark that she really wasn’t so much envious of her married friends as she was envious of their wedding. Her exasperating conclusion was “I don’t want to be married, I just want lots of gifts, attention and a big party!”

You may be thinking that this standup grew up to be Elizabeth Taylor, who’s thrown enough wedding parties in her time to cover for many of us, but such is not the case. Rather, this is expression of a larger-held malaise amongst people who find themselves single on a day when they’d rather not be and have to fight every bit of their instinct not to do something incredibly stupid based on this feeling. They made the movie “Wedding Crashers” for a reason you know.

Now, before you think that I’m about to go off on a rant against married people and other happy couples…..well, OK, maybe you’re half-right and that’s what I’m about to do. However, I’m really more upset with the perpetual insistence of celebrations designed moreso to make people feel bad or guilty than to make people feel good. I’m talking of course about Valentine’s Day.

The supposed roots of Valentine’s Day go back to ancient times. In fact, in Rome, the day after what we know as Valentine’s Day was known for the festival of Lupercus. Women believed that getting slapped with goatskin would make them more fertile. So if you ever receive a home pregnancy kit for Valentine’s Day and think it’s inappropriate, think of how much worse off you could have it. However, the more modern convention of V-Day can be blamed on the English and the French, who titled it such in the 1300s. They concocted some hooey about birds mating to justify it which seems oddly ironic when I think of how many couples will likely commemorate their special day by going to the fanciest restaurant they can find to have some bird laid out before them on a plate. In that sense, it’s just a tad more relevant than having goat for dinner.

These historical underpinnings are referenced as a way for sentimentalists to point out how Valentine’s Day is a legitimate holiday designed to celebrate the uplifting feeling of a committed relationship. Well, pardon me if the eggnog from December has gone sour in my stomach, but I don’t buy it. First of all, if this alleged “holiday” had so many roots, we’d get a genuine day off for our troubles and in case you didn’t notice, we could use that day off in February (well, OK, given that if we live in the Northeast, we might be buried in snow for half of the month, maybe we don’t need a day off). Second, if Valentine’s Day is supposed to be so uplifting, how come I never see anyone anticipate it? The only things I see are:

1) singles bitching and complaining.
2) singles wishing that they could approach the boy/girl of their dreams but haven’t figured out a non-cheesy way to do so on Valentine’s Day that won’t come across as laborious and platonic.
3) some people nervously hoping that they’ve bought/done enough to placate their partner.
4) cranky people who appear incapable of being satisfied by whatever gesture their partner offers, no matter how magnanimous.
5) people that have been in relationships long enough to know they’re supposed to do SOMETHING for Valentine’s Day but not long enough to know just how grand that exact gesture is supposed to be
6) people ignorant Valentine’s Day is coming that have no idea of the firestorm they are about to incur when their partner discovers their ignorance.

When you total it all up, I think roughly 3% of the adult population derives satisfaction from the damn day. Half of those individuals work for the greeting card industry. All just days after the freakin’ groundhog sees his shadow and gives us the business about how much more winter we’re getting. I actually think the furry guy just crawls back into his hole to tell us “THIS is exactly how much I’m looking forward to Valentine’s Day. Males leave the litter after about 30 days when you’re a groundhog. I don’t want to see my wife to find me!”

The prior presumption towards those like myself that snipe yearly at the onset of this rouge-tinted February day was that we are/were miserable loners who are either upset at lack of love, lack of laid-dom or are just flat out jealous of other’s happiness. To them, I say “pshaw!” Since when has anybody ever needed a so-called holiday as an excuse to snipe at their romantic inadequacies? That’s like suggesting that Americans only get bitter that they don’t get to run the ship on President’s Day. I can picture the water cooler conversation. “Damn it Bill! I was perfectly content with my lower level management job until it was fuckin’ President’s Day! Now all I can think about is how I would try to propose tax cuts and how cool it would be to be referred to as the ‘veto’ in the Schoolhouse Rock video! Damn President’s Day, I was perfectly happy until now!”

No, you see, the problem with Valentine’s Day is the seeming JOY that is taken in your singles misery. And if you are in fact NOT miserable single, websites, magazines, newspapers, pushy mothers and any other source you can think of will try to convince you that you are crazy to NOT be miserable in such a state. If they realize that doesn’t work, they will then claim that you’re in denial to the point of aggravation:

Jill: “Look at this extravagantly, unnecessarily expensive box of chocolates Jack gave me, Jane!”
Jane: “That’s nice, Jill. Listen, I have class but let’s talk afte…..”
Jill: “Jack’s buying me roses and taking me to Chateau Où Nous Faisons Plus D'argent Que Vous for some caviar and goatskins. How about you, do you have a valentine, Jane?”
Jane: “Haha, no, but we can talk about your big plans after I have cl….”
Jill: “Someone sounds jealous!”
Jane: “Well no, I was just saying that…”
Jill: “You’re jealous!”
Jane: “Um, OK, if you say so...”
Jill: “I knew it”

This goes on for a bit until Jane is late for class and tells Jill to go up the damn proverbial hill with Jack to fetch some V-Day water. All the better if he trips and Jill comes tumbling after.

Indeed, the denominational wars over the “Happy Holidays” seem like a minor squabble compared to the warring between the single and the coupled. Much as some claim that the celebration of Christmas (and subsequent recognition of it as the biggest holiday of the year) only makes them feel left out, Valentine’s Day is almost like a big fat finger to all of the loners of the world, even those by choice. “Hey, you not taking part in our multifarious card-buying, flower-buying scheme? Well then nuts to you, we’re flooding Netscape with endless articles entitled ‘Still Single? Here’s What’s Wrong’ until you admit fault in your life! Until a dollar can be had at your maudlin expense, we won’t let you rest!”

It’s almost like celebrating “Water Day” right in front of a dehydrated child. It’s bad enough that they are about to die of thirst, but when you splash about in a kiddie pool filled with filtered spring water right in front of the poor child, that’s just revelling in the poor person’s misfortune. Furthermore, if you’re really “lucky”, you’ll be the recipient of some token Valentine’s gesture from someone who feels as though they can alleviate your annoyance with a “just friends” Valentine’s gesture. Usually these either come from someone you want to be more than just friends with or, if not, contain just enough candy to make the irritating point that you’re not experiencing the ‘real’ Valentine’s Day and NOT enough candy to create a sugar high to surge past it.

This would all be well and good if it were for the cause of creating a happy day for all you lovers out there. And believe it or not, there is a soft side to this sarcastic, gruffy bastard. I can appreciate the warm sentiments exchanged between lovers, spouses and swingers all across the world and truth be told (and don’t let it get around), I’m probably just a sweetie at heart. Nonetheless, aside from the 3 or 4 Jills of the world, are those in relationships really better off? Those who aren’t caught in a one-ups(wo/)manship battle with their friends over whose significant others are spoiling them more are caught in a constant struggle with trying to figure out just what level of affection Valentine’s Day warrants. Relationships don’t come with contracts, but if they did, there would simply have to be a Valentine’s Day tax bracket included. Rather than finding a spot on the scale by listing your yearly income, you find your spot on the scale by listing the months/years you’ve dated said person. Of course, the longer the relationship, the higher the tax. This inevitable inflation, of course, leads some couples to forgo V-Day. Before you know it, you’ve gone from a $150 day of flowers, fancy restaurants and luxurious hotel rooms to a cheap tapestry of daisies, a box of discount caramels and a night on the apartment bed watching a bad VHS copy of “Annie Hall” and passing it off as romance.

Come to think of it, that doesn’t sound so bad.

It is a little better than being on the “too early” end of the scale. What do you get the dating partner that you kinda-haven’t-quite-put-a-label-on-it-yet of two months for a day that was designed to celebrate l’amour? One card and one box of chocolates. One card, chocolates and a gift? Just a gift? No gift and no card, but chocolates? Or is the person going to repel in horror if you give them ANYTHING and say “what the heck are you doing, we’re not at the Valentine’s stage yet!!”

You see, Valentine’s Day is no more designed for happy couples than most straight guys genuinely enjoy “date flicks.” Anniversaries are designed for the couple that is keenly aware of where their relationship is and how long it’s taken to get there. V-Day is just a day thrown in randomly to potentially throw the whole works off the tracks.

I’m sure that the aforementioned 3% take great pleasure in the 97%’s misery on this day because it makes them feel all the more special about THEIR day. It’s kind of sad, really, that one needs a single day of lavish gifts to remind them of their self-worth. It’s like the person who cherishes the tape of that lavish wedding even five years after the divorce. (For the record, I’m aware many people celebrate their divorces, but why not formally? “You are cordially invited to the divorce proceedings of Jack and Jill. Formal wear expected, not demanded. At the law offices of So On and So Forth. Light meal and refreshments will be served.” The mere thought of it makes me want to throw the divorce ceremony without even getting married. If anyone is interested in becoming my ex-wife without ever even dating me, let me know. We could probably net at least at $500 of bank out of the proceedings.)

The only REAL benefits to Valentine’s Day can easily be achieved independent of the day itself. The primary benefit is candy and lots of it. Here’s my question: why spend countless amounts of money on candy your partner may or may not like and then watch them give you candy you probably hate and then bitch and complain about it the next day? I propose that we merely create a holiday in February called “Halloween 2.” We’ll all go hog wild and storm the stores at midnight, raiding them for every bit of junk food we can find. We’ll all experience sugar headaches by 7 a.m. and you don’t have worry about being single or married to participate.

Better yet, I propose that us single folk make a day of our own to make those Valentine-mongers jealous. Something that doesn’t involve stuffing money into the floral and card economy that tries to rake us in every winter. We’ll call it “Selfish Single Day”: we make ourselves our own cards out of lined paper with appropriately self-congratulatory sentiments such as “You rock!” and “Hell yeah, no one’s better looking than you!” Then we go out and buy ourselves as much booze and/or caffeine as we want for ourselves and just show up completely inappropriate for work. Instead of buying a sexy clothing item for a significant other, we plunk down $10 for a pair of really comfy, sloppy track pants. When you show up for work burned out and/or hungover and your co-worker says you look terrible, you reply “yeah, but what the hell, I’m single and I answer to nobody but ME! Yeah, you get to be with your girlfriend tonight but I’m gonna eat potato chips, belch as loud as I want and play Hungry Hungry Hippos with the dog. I kick his ass every time but he comes back for more.”

Added benefits to this proposed holiday: romantic music is totally optional. Therefore, your chances of being blindsided by your partner with Michael Bolton or John Tesh on this day are approximately 4000% less than on Valentine’s Day. That’s already a good start. (For those of you that do celebrate V-Day that are reading this, I just hope and pray that if a Barry is in your musical plans, that it’s the right Barry…) Second, you can buy yourself REAL junkfood and not indigestion tablets with little heart message stamped onto them passing for candy. Third, we won’t discriminate: coupled people can celebrate “Selfish Single Day” by telling their partner to take a hike; but I do recommend that you either take out a hotel room for yourself, crash at your buddy’s or negotiate some sort of leasing arrangement on your shared space. As with many other good times, “Selfish Single Day” can get messy, y’know.

When will we celebrate it? Who cares? The day is nominal, just don’t pick Feb. 14. I’m not sharing our day with those glory hogging sap lovers. At the end of the day, I guess I’m saying that there’s no reason to be anything more than arbitrary when it comes to celebrating your independence. Just the same, if you’re an enamoured lover ready to smother your partner with some Valentine’s Day affection, do yourself a favour and avoid the massive expense and save up for a random “we really love each other” and/or “we really lust for each other” and/or “we just started dating and that’s pretty cool” day that you can celebrate at your own leisure down the road.

After all, we all deserve our big party. Let’s just tell the V-Day lovers that we’ll take care of deciding that day ourselves.

BMN

As a heterosexual human male, I freely admit that I admire the human female form. Surely I could play the “sensitive liberal” card and pretend the sight of a scantily clad voluptuous vixen is offensive to mine eyes but this would be a flagrant misstatement. Just as I’m sure that some of you reading this have an equal amount of admiration for the male human form and a select number of you for both.

It’s also no mystery to any of us that advertisers have been seeking to capitalize on this for however long that capitalism has existed. Everyone has heard the mantra “sex sells” at some point in their life and no one has any evidence to dispute it. Yet as sure as the Doublemint Twins had absolutely nothing to do with the pleasant flavourful effects of chewing gum, much of the advertising of the past and today creates no logical connection between the sex appeal of its endorsers and the product itself. I have found that the effects on myself have altered as time moves on. To wit,

Young adolescent: About as horny as all get out and without cable, just grateful for the opportunity to observe the beautiful visages normally reserved for Cinemax.

High school student: As the brain actually matures and develops, becoming increasingly angry at the fact that ads trying to mislead me into believing that said products will give me a chance of even speaking with the girls who are in point of fact either ignoring or mocking me on a daily basis. My paranoid “everything in life sucks” Gen-X high school state of mind tells me that these ads are part of the mockery.

Undergraduate student: It becomes my job to be hip and cynical about everything so essentially I make a sarcastic remark about each and every advertisement I see, sex appeal or no. (Mind you, I also inexplicably become giddy at the slogan “The Foam Goes Straight to Your Brain” and decide to actually purchase a Mug root beer based solely on this adage. Cynical isn’t always smarter.)

In 2006, part of me is just flat out bored but another part of me wonders if we as a collective are getting stupider and stupider and stupider with our tolerance of tangential use of sexual imagery. Perhaps it is because we have accepted that all commercials operate on a certain level of Pavlovian behaviour on behalf of its subjects. This is why fast food restaurants devote entire days to the preparation of a burger for their TV spots: so you will associate the logo of the company with it, only to yet again receive a patty that looks like it was left in the sun for a week and a bun that doesn’t even seem fit to throw to the ducks at the park. The Pavlov principle suggests that even though we are cognizant of the fact that we won’t get what we see in the ad, that subconscious association with the positive imagery will be pull us through to the cash register.

At some point, however, there must be a time where we just become so distrustful of advertisements that we make a conscious effort to write letters to companies that distribute products: “Dear Sir or Madam, your recent commercial for (insert product name here) insinuating that your line of (insert whatever it is these people sell) is somehow imbued with the ability to either attract or invoke qualities of the women from the Playboy mansion is flagrantly false.” In many of these letters, we would add “Further to that, I would not consider (said product) for such purposes and in fact would rather hear about its more practical or immediate qualities.” Unfortunately, I am not currently participating in such a campaign, as it would involve writing somewhere between 50-75 letters a day. Outside of that, there’s also the chance that I might be associated with some fringe lunatic group trying to restrict prime-time programming to home decorating shows and re-runs of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

Nonetheless, I would appreciate the effort on someone’s behalf. A consumer like myself really feels as though some items don’t really need to be— in fact ought NOT to be— “sexy.” Let’s say, for instance, I’m buying a hammer. I want to know how long this hammer will last, not have some inevitable and sleazy pun about “nailing” attached to a cheesecake model. As mentioned in a prior rambling, hardware companies thankfully tend to take the practical road on pushing their manufactured goods and this is not a problem. Remarkably, people still buy hammers.

It therefore seems unnecessary to attach sexual imagery to something like greasy food. OK: attaching chocolate to eroticism, that’s a given. However, why on earth would you put a twenty-something glamour girl or husky bodybuilder in a fast food ad (especially when the former would only regurgitate what she ate and the latter wouldn’t be caught dead in said establishment if he were anywhere but more than 30 days away from a competition)? Did I miss the memo where fried foods became “hot” (in the sexual way, of course)?

This comes to mind because several months ago, I visited an establishment that I shall decline to name lest I become one of their shills. However, you can easily deduce what it is when I tell that they boast having a certain fried wing-like item that is apparently famous across the globe. This is despite the mounting evidence that said institution is more famous for cramming top-heavy females into tank tops that don’t comfortably fit a 12 year old and hideous shorts that Richard Simmons would be embarrassed to claim as his own. Before you jump to conclusions, I did in fact have recommendations from both male and female colleagues that previously mentioned wings were in fact quite sumptuous. The shapely waitress, I figured, was nothing more than a bonus to what would be a delicious serving of unhealthy fried items that perfectly accompanied my football viewing.

Of course, I found such not to be the case. Don’t get me wrong: the bonus was in fact quite lovely and I’m sure such would be the only time in my life I would interact with her (and that’s not just self-deprecation, I just don’t envision such people turning up at the cheapskate venues I frequent. Maybe I’m just stereotyping...). The whole reason for going into the damn place to begin with, on the other hand, was really mediocre at best. I hereby dub thee “World Famously Mediocre and Overly-Breaded Wings.”

Suffice to say I haven’t returned. Some may actually have found a food item they enjoy there yet I’m sure that some naïve individuals turn up because they have somehow psychologically convinced themselves that they are “there for the food.” They aren’t. It’s a bit galling because if you just want to go somewhere to ogle the women, there is already an institution for that purpose. We call them strip clubs. If you want good wings or any other good food item, then for crying out loud: it will not hurt you to visit other establishments where the waitresses dress like normal people and, gasp, there are actually waiters too. You might be shocked to discover that you can and will have a better taste experience. If you really need the visual stimulation that badly while you eat, I’m sure your laptop or some other form of media you take inside can handle the problem.

Although I’m not sure why that would be necessary. I’ve never had my hands and napkins drenched in sour cream and a variety of sauces and thought “Well, this WOULD have been a great meal but my server didn’t cram her breasts into my eyesight once! Upon second thought, these mozza sticks are too crusty and I never cared for sour cream anyway.” I guess I’m weird like that.

There are other products that we accept are in fact for the purposes of arousal. However, some companies have taken the accepted maxim for their product and gone into overkill with its qualities. Take for instance, deodorant. The mere invention of this product was made possible by the keen instincts of a marketer who was able to convince a disproportionate amount of the population that they would never be attractive to anyone smelling the way they smelled. The idea that a deodorant or cologne/perfume will make us appealing to someone is not only plausible but it is pretty much a given that we wear it at least partially in the hopes that someone will be drawn to our alluring musk. So it hasn’t been uncommon to see advertisements operating on the before-and-after principle of some poor sap whose chance encounter on an elevator with the man of their dreams goes awry when body odour gets in the way. The “after” scenario shows that when the party smells of this wonderful product, all is well, the digits are collected and a steamy dinner date ensues. Not necessarily the most likely scenario, but certainly in the realm of probabilities.

Most body spray, cologne and deodorant ads I see these days compel me to laugh at their sheer implausibility, especially those targeted at the straight male population. (Note to advertisers: when your product isn’t related to comedy, this isn’t the best way to get me to buy it). Some body sprays, we are to believe, are SO powerful in their overwhelming capacity to break women’s resistance that they cause women on all floors of your apartment complex to begin stripping, women at restaurants to open buttons on their blouses and flat out start catfights in the musk-wearer’s honour.

Consumer beware! None of these effects may be a positive thing. It could just mean that the body spray raises not only the room temperature by approximately 30 degrees Celsius thereby causing people to need to open or remove clothing. If that doesn’t work, it just gets so hot they get flat out aggressive and revert to “code of the jungle” modes of survival as a coping mechanism.

This of course is still not necessarily all that absurd compared to the perfume ads that people such as Calvin Klein and other not-legally-or-otherwise-proven-though-everyone-is-suspicious-they-are-pedophilic fashion designers have been foisting upon women for decades. Apparently some perfumes double as weight loss aids as the only people seen sponsoring the item weigh in the area of 80 pounds or less. There are other side effects: such perfumes will cause all colour to drain from your life forcing you and everyone around to live in a black-and-white world, you will be compelled to walk down sidealleys in your underwear and crude cloths passing as shirts and you instantly become incapable of talking in anything higher than a whisper. You will pay $100 per bottle for this privilege. Best of luck to you.

For all of the exaggeration that these ads possess, beer commercials remain the forerunner for convincing people that product purchase is a one-way ticket to unbridled physical appeal. This is actually based on a number of scientifically proven formulas. First of all, beer makes people look better. The models in these ads? This is what the people around YOU will look like, they promise, if you get enough of these brewskis down ya. Second, when you purchase beer for these people, you will look better to them. Hence, you too are one of these fine looking people and you qualify for any reality dating show. Who wouldn’t be happy with that? Third, beer makes your dumbest and most incoherent statements such as “you, you, you…..it’s just that…it’s like you’re six feet off the ceiling!” sound like profoundly intellectual commentaries on world affairs. Ergo, people will think you’re clever and if you run into the right person, you might find yourself in a tenured position at your local university.

Of course, these advertisements are now (perhaps only because of insistent pressure from government-types) tempered with a decidedly sober caveat: “Please drink responsibly.”

Riiiiiight. As if they WANT you to do this. There would be no DVDs of brain-cell deprived (at the moment, anyhow) lifting their shirts in repeated intervals for men’s amusement and everyone would actually know the people they woke up beside. This would be quite horrifying for many men who discovered the high school teacher they hated and women who discover that guy who was “kinda cute” the night before played Oliver on “The Brady Bunch.” For all the popularity-craving youth, testosterone-driven fratboys and equally estrogen-driven sorority girls, this would never do. Truth be told, if all consumers of the product drank responsibly, many would probably say to themselves “why the hell did I bother purchasing this barley-ridden piss-tasting cesspool when I could have purchased the more expensive but far more savoury wine?” (Note: The author is well aware that there is wine equally cheap and terrible to any bad beer. Just in case you were thinking of disputing that point.)

“Please drink responsibly” is just a catchy way of saying “We at said beer company fully endorse sketchy hookups, humorous incidents of cars going into ditches and bizarre case of mistaken identity. But please, no date rape, drunken driving deaths or finding out that you legally changed your name to Adolf Benito Hussein. We don’t need the bad publicity.” You see, they really do care about us.

There’s always channel flipping during the mind-numbing TV spots, ripping ads out of magazines and just blocking out that use of Photoshop-edited cleavage hawking dating websites. There’s also just avoiding all of these media put together. I suppose putting blinders on to ignore the insipid billboard ads while driving is a decidedly bad idea and flagrant vandalism of those boards would certainly lead to an arrest and would probably only encourage the companies’ embellished and digressing uses of finely tanned pecs further. There are certain unintelligent forms of expression in life that you just have to accept.

I can only recall my experience with the gorgeously busted waitress those many months ago. I don’t remember her name but I do remember that the food wasn’t very good and my favourite team lost that night. I think I’m correct in my interpretation that I lost money unwisely that night. In the meantime, I’ll go look up travel options certain that such beautiful-people-wielding purveyors of substandard fast food and other such items would never try to sell me overpriced airline tickets.

Hey, wait a minute…..

BMN