F-I-R-E-T-R-U-C-K-S = Funny!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Okay, gotta get this out while it’s still fresh.

So, Tucson and I were meandering woefully home in the rain tonight, after what might possibly could be considered the worst day yet at the Academy of Tits-on-a-Bull & Red Tape Policy.
I had to gather my cat, Chase, who had the great misfortune to be seen as a therapy animal, rather than a service animal by the Powers (by which I mean of course, the Nazgûl and the Dark Lord of Môrdor, herself) and was first confiscated by campus security (thank Allah! we have a security team here well-equipped to deal with such acts of wanton rebelliousness and potential sedition!) and then given 72 hours—no wait, she recanted—48 hours before the feline terrorist would be handed over to the NSA for waterboarding and other such refinements.
Thus, it was with great alacrity and even a bit of haste that I woke early, sped down the street to the cafetorium, ate my Cheerios™, discussed strategy with Tucson over a Krispy Kreme™ and our morning café au lait, and then raced through the ubiquitous drizzle for which San Francisco is beloved and renown the world over to the basement security pen—I mean, office—to forcibly remove Chase from the security personnel (who by this time had fallen prey to his willy charms and were reluctant to let him go) and then walk-jog upstairs and down the street to meet the Golden Gate Transit Authority™ Bus No. 80, via which I had pre-meditated a plan of extradition to parts far from the Unblinking Eye called San Rafael, whither a friend of mine and his mother operate a sort of retreat for the yoga-and-crystals inspired. (Chase of course, is a master of the Arching-Cat yoga stance, among others.)
Anyway, I was striving to call the family to meet us at the bus station at a certain time, and after the call I put my mobile phone atop the crate within which Chase paced and growled as Growly-Cats are wont to do.
Nonetheless, before you could say “Son of a Witch” some ill-mannered passerby snatched my near-to-new mobile phone (on which I had affixed my Rainbow Graduation tassel from UCLA as a wrist strap) and made off with it (back to Isengard, no doubt) and thus, I was left wet, whimpering, and without means to neither confirm nor deny the time and place for Chase’s transferral.
I will admit to some utterly spontaneous vulgarities amidst the growing crowd of fellow travelers, which I’ll not repeat, but consisted of some (but not all) of the same letters used in Scrabble™ to spell F-I-R-E-T-R-U-C-K, and that made me feel passingly better, although that moment of peaceful, yet vociferous reflection soon faded.
Being as well-travelled and worldly an individual as myself oft times bears fruition in real-time moments of crises such as these, and so it was that I recalled there was a T-Mobile™ store some six or seven blocks away, although the saliency of those estimates may have been slightly exaggerated by the unrelenting downpour and the necessity of having to juggle Tucson on leash with one hand, while toting the massive Rubbermaid™ crate in which our hero had been imprisoned.
Moving along, I eventually secured another mobile phone, downloaded the contacts from T-mobile’s customer service website (I trust you are paying attention, underclassmen—there is a synchronize button on nearly all mobile devices nowadays. Use it, and be glad!)
I then contacted Markus and made arrangements for the hopefully-temporary transferral later in the day, and then scrambled back to the Dark Tower, surreptitiously tucking the enormous Tupperware™ crate behind the security desk when the guard wasn’t looking (hey, if I could pilfer the occasional leftover corsage from one of the ubiquitous weddings at the Hotel Bel-Air, without getting sniped by one of the Mossad agents staffed by the Bel-Air as their security team, I hardly think any one or more of the Urûk-Hai was a match for me {Jason Bourne, eat your heart out!}) and met with Shelob, the Director of Classroom Services, who (that’s right, kiddies! you guessed it!) assaulted me with yet more forms, documents, waivers, living-wills, and generally, a ginormous stack of useless papers, comparable in size to Chase’s mobile prison (if this was Humboldt, they’d kick her tree-munching ass!) and needing to be signed in triplicate and have less than nothing to do with my course of study.
Anywho, after this test of patience, (Holy Mary, Mother of God, give me strength!) I marched me-self back downstairs, snagged the above mentioned plastic prison and darted down the street to await yet another shining coach to carry us across the bridge into Rivende-- I mean, Marin County.
Things seemed to be looking up, yet, when I did, in fact, look up to meet the gaze of the bus driver, he actually shouted, “I hope you don’t think you’re going to bring that f---ing thing onboard!” which made me sigh, but after 8 years, you get used to it, so I started to explain Tucson was a service dog, but he cut me off with a sneer that would make the Grinch flinch and indicated that he was referring to the mountainous Tupperware™ crate.
Now, I know this next bit is probably going to make y’all roll your eyes, but I swear to Krishna, I was dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and rendered speechless! (Scary, but true…)
Knowing he had won this round, he departed sans The Three Amigos and decanted a final curse, “The next bus driver who comes along is gonna tell you the same (expletive deleted) thing! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
Among my rollercoaster of emotional states already enumerated, I was also a tad nonplussed.
What to do with the paddy wagon?
Flustered as I was, you’ll remember I am an International Man of Mystery™ with more than a few tricks up my sopping wet sleeves, so, I rearranged the useable space within my backpack in such a way as to make Martha Stewart proud, and I, uh, “let the kitty into the bag!” Heh, heh…
I’ll not bemoan the loss of the Sterilite™ camper—surely some homeless person will make good use of its gaping size and weatherproofing, and so, without a hitch, the next carriage to come round, granted us passage across that most Golden-Gate-ly of Bridges.
Tears were shed when I passed Chase into the gentle arms of Sir Markus, but temporary or permanent I knew he was in good, strong hands not unlike the Rockbiter’s.
Now, I’ll admit to a bit of petulancy and was determined that I had had a Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day, and nothing was going to lift my spirits.
However, it was spirits, themselves which lifted mine, by which I mean Pineapple-infused vodka doled liberally from an iced tea jug and a cheap, but unpretentious Pinot Grigio, both availed by the timely passing by of an art gallery just up the street from my dorm.
As is my norm, I floated in on Tucson’s coattails, an inauspicious part of his celebrity entourage; a queer (sic) sight among these gentrified and dog-less streets.
I realized a couple of things at that point: one, I still have a knack for artsy-fartsy small talk, a skill polished by my innumerable “assignments” for the A & E section of MSU’s Exponent™; and two, I still have the sort of nimble dexterity with a wine key that would put Houdini to shame.
Merriment ensued.
Eventually the bottles ran dry, and together, Tucson and I wobbled down the street to the dorm like old chums (sic) across from which is a fabulous café/nightclub sparingly called Sugar, and though I have yet to actually enter the establishment, the designers have erected two mirroring, extra-wide screens on which a variety of scenes are projected.
Perhaps sound accompanies the scenes inside, but out on the street any soundtrack or dialogue is eclipsed by the general hubbub of the City.
Nonetheless, tonight they were broadcasting music videos from the early ‘80’s, and believe it or not, I realized the quintessential rebellious & rouged rock band Twisted Sister had mastered the art of exaggerating their vocals such that if you couldn’t read lips before, you could now, as they silently mouthed the lyrics to their one-hit-wonder “We’re Not Gonna Take It (Anymore)”
I observed with glee, whilst Tucson peed, and together we watched this silent sort of me-dia until the next video came on.
I think I may well have been the only person within a fifty-mile radius who could have appreciated the subtle hilariousnessicity of the following video, “I Can Dream About You”—a tune written, and sung by my man, Dan Hartman, probably best known for his timeless lyrical wizardry on the early 1970’s anthem “Free Ride” (although, personally, my favorite Hartman tune is the disco staple “Re-light My Fire.”)
(Okay, Mr. Smarty-pants, get to the punchline!)
Well, here it goes: the video for “I Can Dream About You” depicts a quartet of black and ostensibly straight men alá The Four Tops pandering to a concert hall filled with women.
The Joke, is, Gentle Readers, Hartman was white and gay, and whoever the four black crooners were, they were simply mouthing the words to his song, much like how C & C Music Factory replaced divine, disco, diva, Martha Wash, in their early 1990s’ video for the hit single “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” with a more camera-worthy songstress (read: Martha could sing like nobody’s bizness but she was deemed too fat for the Music Factory’s image.)
Hmm, now that I come to think of it, the lyposuctioned, lypsyncing replacement had suspiciously familiar features to über-bitch and tabloid favorite, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the femme fatale star of Donald Trump’s exercise in flaunting his asswholery The Apprentice back in 2004—2005.
Things that make you go, “Hmm,” indeed!
So, anyway, if you didn’t know the E! True Hollywood Story about Hartman, who sadly remained closeted until his death from AIDS in 1994, you’d still think the four black dudes Milli-Vanilli-ing his song were actually the real singers, especially since you couldn’t actually hear them singing, capice?

Wow! That was a loooong one, and perhaps it’s the sort of humor that only appeals to a certain sort of humor, namely mine, but I hope somewhere out there in Blogsville, there may be at least one other person who digs my torrid, self-congratulatory tale.
If not, as they say, “Go F-I-R-E-T-R-U-C-K yourself!”

12:03 AM