Mother’s Day-A Sub-Zero Catastrophe

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m a guy. Despite that, someone sent me a “Happy Mother’s Day” e-mail. I thought it might be some kind of joke, but I wasn’t certain, because it seemed legit. It was an e-card, and had a link to the actual greeting. Before I clicked on the link, I called my wife in to see what she thought. She cut through all the red tape.

“Maybe it’s for me.”

Of course, that had to be it. One of our cousins or someone sent her an e-greeting. Since all our e-mail came to my e-mail address, whoever sent it had simply addressed it to me, but it was for her. She clicked the link. Four minutes later, my computer was stone, cold dead.

It’d been nailed by a computer virus…a worm. By chance, I’d run a complete system backup the night before. So the whole thing was an inconvenience, not a disaster. But the implications of what had happened were far more serious. The virus was a harbinger of what was to come. It was Mother’s Day, and I was in for it!

The day had started off innocuously enough. I awoke very early and went out to get my lovely wife and mother to my children a bouquet of roses. I brought the flowers home, set them out in a vase and signed the card I’d found earlier in the week. Then I called my grandsons into the room and had them sign the card I’d found for them. Sending them off to surf the cartoon network games, I made a pot of coffee and waited for my queen to awaken.

It didn’t happen very quickly. About two hours and a second pot of java later, she emerged, bleary-eyed-but-beautiful from our bed-chamber and shuffled into the kitchen, yawning and radiant. I poured her a cup of coffee, made her put her feet up and gave her the Sunday paper. She loved the flowers, adored the card and gave me the kiss I live for. Then I took my leave and retired to the bathroom to return the first pot of coffee to the environment.

When I finished up, I went to check my e-mail on the way back out to the family room, and that’s when the day began to go downhill. But you know that part already. I asked Char what she’d like to do for her special day. I already knew that our son was coming out in a couple of hours to spend the day with us.

Before she had much time to consider the question, the phone rang. It was our daughter calling to wish mom a happy Mother’s Day. I knew this would be a protracted call, so I sat down to read the paper and perhaps find something that might interest her. But on Mother’s Day, not much happens that isn’t a brunch…and it was going on noon and I knew she wouldn’t want to eat brunch anyway. So, I retired to my office and restored my computer. About halfway through, the phone call ended, Char came into the room and spoke the words that would send a chill up and down my spine.

“You know, I’d like to just be by the ocean.”

“Honey, it’s going to be a high of about 60 degrees today. And that’s like in Palm Springs.”

“Oh it won’t be so bad. We can relax and the boys can run off some steam.”

“It’s your day. I’ll get the parkas.”

“You just get shaved.”

So, I retired to the bathroom, took my electric shaver from the cabinet and began to shave. I was about halfway through my beard, when the battery on the shaver died, pinching my whiskers. I stood there in pain, trying to figure out how to get my shaver off my face. It just dangled there, painfully yanking on my chin. So I had to disassemble it, get it off and re-assemble it. I finished the shave with my regular razor. And before you ask, yes, I nicked myself…twice.

When I emerged from the bathroom, pieces of toilet paper stuck to little spots of blood, my grandson asked my why I’d painted my face. I sent him to his room to pick up his toys so I wouldn’t have to explain to a five year old how I’d carved myself up. That always works because he never puts them away without being asked. When Char saw me, she asked a similar question. I couldn’t send her to her room, so I just crabbed about old razor blades and scurried away.
Eventually, the blood clotted and the bits of paper could be removed. I did so promptly. My wife asked me to get dressed, and I wondered aloud whether I should wear jeans or just stand in the freezer. She said that I could do what I wanted, but that shorts would probably be all I’d need. So, I took the longest pair of cargo shorts I had and stuffed the pockets with tissues to insulate myself…and my camera. Meanwhile, Char was pressing off a pair of long pants for herself. It was her day, so I chose not to ask her why she wanted me to die from hypothermia of the lower extremities. When she wasn’t looking, I slipped a sweatshirt into the car.

Our son arrived, dressed kind of like me and we all piled into the car for the trip across the tundra, to the beach. Char had packed sand toys, cold drinks and some large towels. The outside thermometer on the car read eleven degrees. Or maybe it was seventy seven, but as we headed toward the coast, the numbers declined steadily.

Soon, we were trapped in a line of cars, while a snow plow cleared a path to the water. I think it was a snow plow. Maybe it was a skip loader. But either way, we sat in heavy traffic while the outside temperature plummeted. Along the way, Char decided we should get some lunch before we got sandy at the beach. We found a delightful Mexican restaurant. They were busy, so we accepted patio seating. There were heaters all over the patio. Ours didn’t work. Thank God the salsa was hot. It was all we had to warm ourselves. I was surprised they didn’t serve the guacamole in sugar cones, eating as we were, outside the igloo.

We arrived at the beach. It was pretty much deserted. Those who had braved the blizzard were already retreating to the warmth of their cars and snow cats. The cloud cover was so thick that the sun looked like the moon…only dimmer. Opening the car doors against the hurricane force winds, we all bundled up with any and all clothing we could find. For Char, it was a denim jacket; for Dave and me, sweatshirts. The boys were madder than the March hare and were happy in shorts and surfing shirts. I think they had anti-freeze in their pouch drinks. There’s no other explanation.

We hauled out the sand chairs and looked for a spot where the snow was packed down so we wouldn’t sink in. The boys ran directly to the water and splashed in, just dodging a passing iceberg.

We just sat there, shivering under brightly colored beach towels, soaking up the cloud cover. I complained about the cold, a lot. But I was justified. The chill was making the blood in my extremities rush to my body's core. I was beginning to hallucinate. David said I should pull the towel up over my mouth. Char said I should pull it up over my entire head. I countered that I can’t see how that would make me any warmer. She said that it wouldn’t, but that it would muffle my crabbing. Touché!

The boys, insane as ever seemed oblivious to the weather conditions. Then, a seagull flew past, flapping furiously into the wind, beak chattering. As icicles began to extend from our ears, and ocean spray ice crystals formed on our sunglasses, even my hardy companions began to admit that we were in a weather pattern usually reserved for the arctic. My wife said we'd give the boys a few minutes more to play and then head for home. Shortly, a Penguin waddled by. I figured that we might have to dig the car out of a snow drift and it was a shame that we'd left the sand toys inside it.

Then, through the hypothermia-induced near coma, my eyes could just barely make out the form of a Polar Bear. It stood semi-erect on an elongated ice floe. It was drifting towards shore. No! It was surfing towards shore on a breaker. It was heading directly at the boys! They were the closest things to seals for miles around and that bear looked hungry. They were in mortal danger! Just as the wave was about to break ashore, a downdraft measured at, at least, minus 100 degrees, froze the wave solid, trapping the bear. We scooped the boys out of the water and packed up to leave. By then the lifeguards, wearing the familiar white cross of the ski patrol were closing down the beach.

When we reached the parking lot, the car was, thankfully, not buried in snow. I was so happy to see it, I kissed it. Bad idea. My lips froze to the windshield. It took five minutes of idling engine and defroster to warm it up enough to set me free.

We rode home in silence, broken only by the chattering of teeth. As we departed the coast and headed inland to warmer climes, Char observed that the moon was out. David pointed out that it wasn't the moon, but the sun, as seen through thunderheads.

Since it was still Mother’s Day when we arrived at home, I filled the tub for my beloved and let her soak away the chill while I showered the boys in the other bathroom.

Today, I dropped the boys at school and realized that, the car is full of sand. I’ll have to vacuum it later. Maybe I’ll do it a lot later. I still don’t have much feeling in my extremities. I need some time for the frostbite to heal.

La Noche de los Nachos

I was working the evening shift at Taco Bell last week when a weird thing happened. A succession of more than a dozen customers came in. Each and every one of them carried Chihuahuas in their arms. Ever since the successful ad campaign a few years back though, this happened a lot.

Some of them were of Asian descent, each in the outfit of his or her chosen trade. One was a nurse…another carried a feather duster in a back pocket and her dog in a bucket suspended from a mop. Still a third had a laptop and a ledger. A young Jewish data analyst in the line wore a Yarmulke and was being nudged along by an evil woman, clearly from New Zealand. There was a Sikh, sporting a turban, and a cowboy in a ten gallon hat, chaps and spurs. There was a priest, clerical collar and all, followed by a clown, followed by a Native American in full headdress. Next was a red-headed construction worker, lugging not only his dog, but a jackhammer. An African American lawyer with his dog in a custom briefcase, a combat pilot in his pressure suit and a stereotypical bimbo starlet stretched the line all the way to the door, where a mime, whose dog was painted silver, anchored the crowd. Not a single one of the customers appeared to be ethnically of Mexican or South American descent.

Again, I was not particularly surprised, since this is a country with a hugely diverse ethnic spread. We have historically welcomed peoples from all across the world. The words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty embody what all freedom-loving peoples strive for. And while it felt like I was watching the Village People…(I expected the strains of “Y.M.C.A.” to flow forth from the radio.)…that still wasn’t what made it so strange.

Each and every one of them ordered Nachos. They all asked for exactly the same item and all ordered with thick Latino accents. There was no variation, no doubt due in large part to the same cute advertising campaign of a few years ago. And ordering Nachos on a Tuesday wasn’t unusual. Our manager had made Tuesdays a “Special Day” for them. But you had to pay extra for the peppers, so usually; few people ordered them that way. Today, everyone did. Wasn’t that odd?

The Latest Last Straw

As a general rule, I’m not a purist about most things. I have my preferences to be certain, but not many things push enough of my buttons to put me into full-on outrage mode. Still, it does happen on occasion, and generally it is politics that turns me into a raging fanatic. The wasteful ways our elected representatives deflate our lives and fortunes with self-serving decisions is so outrageous, it makes my blood boil. But this isn’t about politics. This is much closer to my heart.

When my wife came home last night from the supermarket, she had lox and cream cheese and bagels for me. Lox and cream cheese are a real treat. Growing up in the Bronx, with my grandfather as my mentor, I developed a real appreciation for Smoked Salmon…belly lox, sliced fresh from the neighborhood fish store and cream cheese right from the dairy store’s churn. Of course, it doesn’t come that way anymore. It’s sliced and packaged Nova lox from the market and whipped Philly in a tub. But I can live with that. The hand-filleted stuff is pretty much only available at delicatessens nowadays and costs more than a luxury car by the pound.

Bagels are a whole other animal. I remember my grandmother trudging six blocks each way, early on Sunday mornings, to the bakery, where she would get a dozen assorted egg, salt and onion bagels. They were hot, fresh and had this baked-on shiny crust that most resembled the fender of a new car. That was then. This…is now.

I don’t blame my wife. She’s a San Fernando Valley girl, born and raised. She didn’t mature in the bagel Garden of Eden. This is not to say she can’t tell a good bagel from a bad one.
Her family did indulge in the best that L.A. has to offer, “Western Bagel.” These are every bit as good as my childhood memories. But they are a tad harder to come by in our little hamlet of Simi Valley. It’s a nine mile commute to the nearest outlet. Even Grandma would have drawn the line well before nine miles.

So, we are forced for the most part to live with the supermarket variety. These can range from acceptable to shameful. There are lots of bagel brands out there, and I’m not partial to some of them, but I will begrudgingly eat many of them. I’ve devoured salt bagels, rye bagels, sesame bagels, egg bagels and onion bagels…though the latter leaves my breath deadly. I’ve even been known to shmear some peanut butter on a blueberry bagel, though I don’t really consider it a bagel…too sweet. And I’ve invented all manner of post-modern deli sandwiches, using that little boiled and baked ring of dough. But what happened yesterday broke the camel’s back.

When I withdrew the pre-packaged, plastic sleeved, Sara Goyisha Lee bagels from the bag, they were whole wheat! That is not a bagel. It’s a…a health donut! WHOLE FREAKING WHEAT!

Okay, breathe. Calm down Burton. That’s better.

For God’s sake, doesn’t the Sara Lee Bakery have any conscience? What are they, tree hugging health food freaks? The thing is too soft. It’s like a slice of bread with a hole in it. There are little flakes of stone-ground-something particles sprinkled on it and to make matters worse, the damned thing comes pre-sliced. What must they think of their buying public? Are we all senior citizens with dentures who have lost the ability to handle a knife?

Even my wife offered the opinion that they seemed like bread in a different shape. She justified her purchase by saying that there wasn’t a whole lot of choice. The “Lenders,” the other Sara Lee varieties, which we would have accepted, and even the Johnny-Come-Lately, “Thomas’ Bagels” simply weren’t on the shelf. There seemed to be a run on the better bagels, and she has a major distrust of house brands. Though after this experience, I suspect she will happily sample the Vons bagels before ever venturing into the world of whole wheat again.

So, what this all comes down to is really quite simple. If faced with ever eating a whole wheat bagel again or searching for an alternative platform for my lox and cream cheese, I’d rather use a Pop-Tart.

Taken By Aliens

It all began innocently enough but the bitter taste in my mouth will never fade and I'm not sure who I can trust anymore. Witness my tale and decide for yourself.

Out of the blue, I received an e-mail from an old friend. His memory had long since faded into the background of my thoughts. But here he was, alive and kicking as they say. We exchanged several e-mails in the ensuing weeks. We talked about what we've been doing for the last 15 years. He gave up acting to become a real estate professional in a rural area of Wyoming. I studied philosophy and have been a Chinese herbalist in Los Angeles for the better part of a decade. We talked about the movies we'd seen, the books we'd read. (I've read far more than he had, though many were herb or health-related.)

We had been good friends since high school, roommates in college, confidants and each other's excuse during a time when students always needed some sort of alibi. Then came graduation and the barges that ferried our lives drifted in different directions. But our e-mails revealed that neither one of us ever felt the other had dropped the friendship. This is just the way life works. People simply grow apart.

It was great to relive some of the high points of our youth and it had been good to catch up. I'm certain that I am not alone in the need for some connection to my past. It rounds out ones' life. Still, as we continued e-mailing back and forth, I came to realize that he was holding something back...something intangible...something he wanted to say but I think, was moved to avoid. Initially, I didn't press him on certain missing details out of a concern that he might unilaterally end the communication. And I was truly enjoying his e-mails. But something was definitely being glossed over on his side of our exchanges.

When I asked him how he came to be in Wyoming, he danced around the question, blathering loosely about aimlessly drifting and ending up in this desolate but beautiful area. He claimed that the breathtaking beauty of the locale saved his very soul. It was all very poetic. And it was all a carefully contrived camouflage. Then he abruptly changed the subject. He was also clearly reluctant to be specific about a certain three year period, instead bending the timeline so that the years around it sort of filled it up, like water pouring in from all sides of a hole in the sand, seeking its own level. From my point of view, it was in fact, a gaping hole in his life. I tried to get him to open up about it, but he was resistant. The more he resisted, the harder I tried to pry it out of him. The harder I tried, the stronger was his resolve to remain tight-lipped, until I finally gave up and decided not to press him for more detail. But I determined to solve the mystery of the three year gap on my own.

I began by Googling him and found that there were lots of references to him, 843,678, if you counted all the other people with his name. As I got better at it, narrowing the search parameters, I found several dozen web-sites that talked about him. And every one of those web sites was concerned in one manner or another, with alien abductions. The other thing that I didn't know until I Googled him, and which he took great pains not to mention to me, is that he had been reported missing by his family, some 12 years ago.

When I contacted them, (being cautious to only inquire as to his whereabouts as an old friend) I learned from his sister that his mother and father had passed on some years back and that she didn't know where he was or even if he was alive. She told me that he had disappeared under a cloud of suspicion about his involvement in an embezzlement scam. In the interim, he had been cleared. She had heard the theories about him being abducted by aliens because of the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance, but she had discounted them. She thought that he had dropped out of sight to avoid prosecution. So now I had all the pieces...and they fit. My friend, wrongly accused, had taken the line of least resistance and simply disappeared to begin a new life in a new state. I decided to e-mail him and tell him that I knew it all. His response floored me.

He said he hadn't run out on the embezzlement case. He actually claimed that he had been kidnapped by aliens, and that he feared that they would be coming back for him if he left Wyoming. So, he decided to stay there. But why Wyoming? His extremely curious answer was that the area, in which he now resided, had been the site of numerous cattle mutilations in the 1980's. The place was crawling with government agents and Ufologists. Because of that, he said, the aliens had shifted their operations elsewhere. Then he told me something that would have frightened me had I believed a word of what I was hearing. He said that he feared for me.

He believed that the aliens had hacked his e-mail and had my e-mail address and could easily find me. He said I could be in danger now that I knew his story. He suggested that I come up to Wyoming where I'd be safe. Stalling for time, I told him I'd think about it. But when I shut down my e-mail that night, I had pretty much decided that my old friend was a wacko. And I decided that I wasn't going to e-mail him anymore. What happened later that night made me change my mind.

I was sound asleep when around midnight, when a sound...a hum, that I can only describe as a low-pitched ringing in my ears, awakened me. It reminded me of the time I was struck in the side of my head with a softball and suffered tinnitus for a week. I sat up in bed, groggy. There was a light glowing in the center of my room. It seemed to have no source, and while it was fairly intense, it didn't hurt my eyes and faded to inky blackness at its edges.

I thought I was having a nightmare, but soon realized that I was wide awake...and further realized that if I was awake, I was also terrified. Mercifully, the glow faded, as did the hum and I seemed none the worse for the experience except I'd peed in my pajamas.
The very next day, I boarded a flight for Wyoming, not knowing what I might be facing. When my flight landed at the South Bighorn County Airport, outside of Greybull, I was greeted at the gate by my old friend and a limo driver named Gabor. We collected my bags and I was ushered to a Town Car with the name "Safe Harbor Realty" printed on a magnetic sign on the door. We headed north, away from the town. As we drove along in silence, I observed that the car's headliner was made of what appeared to be aluminum foil. My friend informed me it blocked the alien mind probes. This was getting crazier and crazier. And yet, I could not get the terrifying hum and light of the previous night, out of my head.


Presently, we arrived at the middle of a desolate nowhere. And there, plunked down on thousands of acres of nothing was a sign that read: "Safe Harbor Estates." We drove past an unattended guard shack and down a black-topped entry street to a small neighborhood of one-story homes with aluminum foil-skinned roofs.

Then came what would have under other circumstances seemed like a high-pressure sales pitch. My friend asserted that for my own safety I had to move here. He told me to pick from any of the fifteen unoccupied units that remained among the twenty or so houses in the neighborhood. I was in such a daze throughout that I went along with everything, no questions asked. My friend handled everything and assured me that he was feeling extremely guilty about getting me involved in the mess to begin with. He removed his commission from the sale and convinced the developer to include upgraded carpets, landscaping, new appliances and tile floors in the purchase price. And he arranged for me to live, rent-free, in the new house until escrow closed. Over the next couple of weeks, with my friend's help, I sold my home and business back in Los Angeles, and closed escrow on the house in Wyoming. If this was L.A., I'd have felt it was all a scam. But here...here my life was being saved.

On the day escrow closed, my friend came to visit me, final papers in hand. It was then, as I sat, initialing the final page in my new kitchen, that I learned the horrible truth. My friend morphed into a hideous and unearthly creature. He was himself, an alien. He then told me that my friend, the real one, had been abducted several years back and his mind had been probed for what he knew. But he had died, regrettably, in the process. This alien and his pals saw this as an opportunity to replace my friend with an otherworldly doppelganger and make some money at the same time.

I had just closed escrow on a worthless piece of dirt in Wyoming that would never appreciate because no one in their right mind would want a tin foil house, 50 miles from civilization.

The alien's laugh still reverberates in my memory as I recall the moment he scooped up the papers and vanished in the same light I had seen in my bedroom all those weeks before. What a fool I had been. My savings were gone. I now lived, a Chinese herbalist, in the absolute middle of cowboy nowhere with no prospects and no recourse. I had been taken...taken by aliens!

Hell's Closet

I've crabbed about my redecorating misadventures before. But nothing I have experienced in my summer career as a Home and Garden Network novitiate, could ever have prepared me for my "Bedroom Closet" adventure.

Our home was built in 1970 and had a spacious master bedroom, but it came saddled with the Rhode Island of closets, The White Castle Hamburger of dressing suites, the M&M of walk-ins.

This wasn't a small closet. It was more of a minuscule, vertical coffin. Back in the days when college students packed phone booths, it would've held maybe one kid. The shoe rack accommodated a pair, one shoe at a time. There was a shelf above the rod on the far wall. The term far wall is a bit inaccurate. After all, there can't even be a "far" wall in a two dimensional space. This closet had height, width (a barely measurable amount of each) and nearly as much depth as a vapid, Hollywood starlet. If you stepped inside, the tips of your shoes would protrude into the family room beyond that mythical far wall. If you had a pot-belly, fully entering was impossible. It was abundantly clear that the very souls of all those that had ventured into the near reaches of this closet screamed for a remodel.

On a bright, disarmingly sunny morning, I emptied the clothes from the closet. Oddly, this took a couple of hours. And the clothes and shoes and purses and what-not that filled the inches by inches closet space, consumed nearly an entire ten by ten room when finally exposed to air.

I don't think that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt had that much stuff crammed into their pyramids. I firmly believe that some items might have lasted for thousands of years with the air squeezed out of them. For, as I laid out some of my wife's older skirts and blouses they spontaneously turned to dust.

Brushing off my hands, I faced the demolition phase with the determination of a beaver, eager to build his lodge. This was where the fun started...and quickly drew to a close.

It is strong testimony to the craftsmanship of the men who built this home, that nearly every nail I pulled from the closet took with it a jagged chunk of wallboard. When I finally got the shelf and rods out, it looked as though I had taken the thing apart with a shotgun. There were holes at nearly every height and on every wall. There were even holes on walls that never had a shelf or rod, from the occasional errant back swing.

In addition, the t.v. cable for two rooms was routed through this closet. Loops of cable were stapled to the wall everywhere, because the cable installer made all the lines too long. "In case you want to move your set." That's cable-speak for "I'm too lazy to measure how much I need."

When I pried those staples from the wall, I found I had nearly enough extra cable to make a rope for hanging and a sturdy noose. I toyed with inviting the guy back. But eventually decided that fun would have to wait.

Finally, everything was out of the closet, and I found I could actually move in there...if turning in place can be called moving. I had carefully drawn out plans for putting new, vinyl-coated wire rods and shelving in the closet in the most efficient manner possible. I had purchased and assembled all the materials and lined them up like little vinyl-coated soldiers along the wall of the bedroom.

I'd done the math. With the help of a little quantum mechanics, I might actually be able to open a worm-hole to the closet dimension, and there hang twice as much as before...and still have room to turn in place. But first, I had to patch the drywall and paint the place.

I considered removing the drywall entirely, since most of it was gone already, but decided it was better that the corners of the closet meet than there be places for evil spirits to take up residence. Three gallons of wall-joint compound and 687 feet of paper tape later, the closet looked like what a mummy's wrappings must have looked like...to the mummy.

It was time for a break. My body was telling me it was time to hire someone, but I only have the time for these projects when I'm off work and therefore reluctant to spend money that isn't being replenished. I dined with my lovely wife, who prepared our ceremonial ham and swiss cheese remodeling lunch, while the plaster dried. As I sat, my joints got stiffer and I was reminded of the meaning of pain. And more was yet to come.

Thus began the sanding. When it was done, where there had been carpet, was a wall-to-wall, plaster dune. I could imagine someone cresting the top of it on a quad. Then there was me. My hair, usually salt and pepper, was white. In fact, I was white everywhere. I looked like an Italian Renaissance sculpture; Michelangelo's "Fat Jewish Kid." I got my trusty shop vac and forty tankfuls later, had a dust-free closet. It was at that point that the sun set and my body broke into a million painful pieces.

There are several over-the-counter remedies for the kind of discomfort I was feeling. Chief among them is Scotch. And it's not necessary to spend an inordinate amount of money on the name brands, like Pinch or Johnnie Walker Black. You're just paying for their advertising budgets. For the purpose of killing pain, even the cheapest house-brand of rot-gut on the shelf will alleviate one's symptoms by the third or fourth tumbler. And in therapy is how I spent that night.

By the next day, my vision was fuzzy. My head was pounding and I could barely keep Pepto Bismol down. But I'd made it through the night and after a long, hot shower, I re-entered the urban jungle that called itself my closet.

This time, I was armed with a paint brush and a gallon of white primer. I've often felt that the use of a white primer, when the final coat was also to be white was a waste of time. But as I've tackled these projects over the years, I've found that at cocktail parties, the mere mention that one has primered a wall garners oohs and aahs of admiration. It's sort of like a cute dog being a chick magnet...except that this draws attention from other do-it-yourselfers. The adulation makes the six bucks a gallon and the time spent more than worthwhile.

I spread a drop-cloth on what was left of the carpet, and began to paint with careful strokes. It's important to cover the area as completely as possible, so that you will be unable to tell where you have painted and where you haven't when you go to apply the same color of the final coat later. That way, you will likely have to return and buy a second gallon of the expensive paint to make sure you have covered everything.

No one ever buys both gallons at once. The revelation that you can't see where it's painted and where it's not, always comes as a surprise. I think it's a species-specific thing. We are genetically unsuited to predict that we will run out of paint. The plumbers among us can relate to this. All plumbing projects require at least one extra trip to the hardware store. Even professional plumbers face this. Though for them, they simply charge for the extra time and mileage.

For the rest of us, we have to clean up as best we can and head to the home improvement center, usually smeared in whatever paint or gunk we were using. In the process, we naturally consume extra time and gasoline. The employees at the store giggle and point at the fool who didn't plan. It's kind of like treating the Home Depot to dinner and a show.

So, I washed out the paint brush, scrubbed the drips from my glasses, dragged a comb through my hair to separate the clumps and went off to buy another gallon. Of course, when I bought the first can, it was on sale. This time it cost me six dollars more. This was quickly becoming more than a closet remodel. It's scope was approaching a government contract.

For some reason I couldn't explain, the rest of the painting went without incident. And when I was done, I had a beautiful white closet. Of course, it was an empty shell with no shelves nor rods to hang anything.

Then I figured out why the last of the painting had been such a smooth affair. I was being saved for the slaughter. The vinyl-coated wire shelves and other hardware which I had so carefully planned for, would be useless without CUSTOM MODIFICATIONS. I had to cut, trim, bend, twist, drill, hack, cajole and pray for each and every fitting that went into that horrific, white, black hole.

At the close of day two, when my planned project was to have been completed, I had one half of one shelf installed. My hands were bloodied and scraped. My knuckles ached in places I didn't know I had. My body was contorted from working upside down more than half the time, and I lay on the paint-covered drop cloth on the floor of the closet, screaming in agony for my wife to bring me a scotch.

She was outside, lounging by the pool. When she finally heard me and came in, merciful scotch in hand, she reminded me that when I was finished in here, the pool needed vacuuming. All I could do was whimper until I fell asleep where I lay. That night, I dreamed I had gone to Hell. I don't recall all the details, except to say that it definitely resembled a closet. When I awoke the next morning, I discovered I was right.

Day Three - Without food or water, with no hope of rescue, I trudged on through the vinyl-coated forest canopy, praying for the release of a quick death. Section after section of wire-rack jungle grasses fell to the buzz of my Sawzall as I feverishly worked my way towards salvation. Hole after hole drilled and filled with plastic wall anchors. Finally, as the sun was setting in the west, I caught a glimpse of it at the edge of the vinyl-coated underbrush. Civilization was in sight. I would survive! My wife met me at the clearing, ham and swiss reward in one hand and a chaser over ice in the other. She spoke five words to me that made me well up with tears.

"That closet is the bomb!"

Then she had a few more that made those tears flow.

"Eat, then you can put the clothes back. I've gotta meet the girls at Pilates."

Even as I write these words, I can't help but bawl.

The Lighter Side Of My Root Canal

Admittedly, in this imperfect world, there is no lighter side to a root canal. But in order to survive mine, I feel a need to excuse myself from the reality of it all.

A few fellow cowards of my acquaintance prefer to be completely removed from reality and use nitrous oxide...laughing gas. A very stoic, very few others, meditate and work through the pain. This class of patient would never be counted among the cowards. I call this group the idiots. Me? Knowing full well the wonders of modern dentistry, I take the chicken way, seemingly the scariest way out...Novocaine. Novocaine, a long-since proven local anesthetic, itself isn't too scary...no, not at all. But that damned needle is terrifying. Still, the bottom line is, overall, it's far and away the least horrific.

In truth, both the excruciating pain and the terror are short lived. With Novocaine, one soon feels nothing. My dentist could go in through the cheek and I wouldn't feel it. (And for all I know, he has.) But a root canal. The very phrase will strike fear deep in the soul of even the most heroic Navy Seal.

In my case, the root canal wasn't the problem. I'd already suffered through it eight months ago. After a time that long, spent in therapy to erase the memory, I finally felt that I had put the horror behind me. Then I got a toothache. Worse. It seemed to be the dead one.

As it happened, the arrival of the toothache more-or-less coincided with my thrice yearly cleaning. I mentioned it to the dentist when he came in to check his hygienist's work. It was as though I had had a coronary right there in the chair. He instantly ordered a full set of x-rays and jacked my mouth open with something that resembled the jaws of life. I wanted to protest, but all that came out was "Ghach!"

It was over in minutes. The verdict? My dead tooth had become infected. He was going to have to go back in. But first, I needed to go on an antibiotic for ten days.

The assistant raised the chair. I was directed to rinse in the sink, handed a plastic bag of tooth cleaning samples and sent on my way with an unreadable prescription and an appointment for ten days hence.

I took the prescription to my local pharmacy and was a bit shaken when the pharmacist said"

"An antibiotic?"

I didn't know if he was just curious about why, or if he was asking because he couldn't read it either.

"You tell me!"

"Oh no," he replied. "I can read it. It's Clindamypimicyniminicenen."

At least that's what it sounded like. All I really got from that conversation was that it was strong stuff. What I later picked up was 30 gigantic caplets of the generic version, squeezed into what seemed like a 5 gallon Sparklett's bottle. The phrase, "Choke a horse," kept running through my mind. And the name. It could've tongue tied a Giraffe. I think it read Claptimindrolongicin. It was a bit hard to see because there were so many words squeezed into the bottom two lines of the label that most of the letters printed over each other. The important line was clear however. It read:

"Take one by mouth, three times daily." Thank God. They could've been suppositories. The instructions also said to take the pills with lots of water. Well boy howdy! Those suckers were not going to go down with just a little sip.

Now usually, these broad-spectrum antibiotics tend to mess with my system in ways I feel need no discussion here. And sadly, this batch was no exception. Let's just say I spent the next nine days in close proximity to men's rooms. I was forced to make as many as five trips a day. I considered this a blessing...better than usual.

At the end of the ten days, I had made an early appointment for the re-opening of my dead tooth's final resting place. It was so early, that the dentist's assistant, delayed in heavy traffic hadn't even made it to the office.

I entered the darkened lobby, and peered down the labyrinthine halls. All the rooms were dark, save one at the end, from which horrible moans and screams emanated to the strains of "Satisfaction." As the screams died away, a hulking figure in a surgical mask emerged from the room. It spoke in a distinctly Carpathian dialect, it's voice resonating menacingly down the hall in my direction.

"Ah. Meester Weinstein. Velcome. Pardon the darkness of the hallvays. The rest of mein shtaff haff not arrived as yet and I don't know vere all the svitches are. Please, come this vay. I shall put you in room two."

Okay. Maybe my imagination was getting the better of me there. The man was from Thousand Oaks. But I swear it was spooky.

He settled me into room two, a foreboding cavern filled with machines straight out of the 1931 version of Frankenstein. He instructed...no, commanded me to relax while he finished up with the patient in room one. No more sounds came from the other room until I heard a loud thump, like the sound of a side of beef hitting the floor. Then, there was this scraping noise...as though someone was dragging something, maybe as big as a body. I laughed at myself. I knew it was my imagination. But the noise got the better of my curiosity and turning to see what was behind me, I glimpsed what looked suspiciously like the last few inches of a lawn and leaf bag disappearing along he floor, past the doorway.

Presently, the dentist re-entered in the room, wiping something red from his hands with a golf towel. He told me that first he wanted to get another x-ray to see how much of the infection I still might have. He then jammed this gadget into my mouth, telling me it was to hold the x-ray film. It looked like it was designed to pinch off the circulation in a dog's groin. It felt worse than that.

Walking over to the console that controlled the x-ray machine, he began twiddling dials in a seemingly random fashion. I began to ask him why the controls weren't preset at the factory, but the groin-grabber hurt when I tried to move my mouth. So, being a pragmatic sort, I decided he was the doctor and he knew what he was doing and I had better calm down and let him do his job.

Then he turned to a box, from which protruded a cone-shaped tube. This particular torture device was mounted on a menacing-looking scissors arm, attached to a metal beam on the wall. It looked like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe novel...with a cannon on the end.

He lifted the thing from its berth on the wall and aimed the cone squarely at my cheek. Then he picked up a lead-lined, leather chest protector and put it on himself. I wanted to say:

"Shouldn't I be wearing that?"

But the x-ray film digging into the side of my tongue made it come out like: "Hounher?"

He clipped a napkin around my neck with an alligator clip chain and stepped from the room. I heard a click and a benign buzz. I wanted to feel re-assured, but glancing left, I could swear that my entire jaw was momentarily projected on the far wall of the room. Then, it was over. He came back in, hung up the chest-protector and with a little maneuver that is best described as inhumane, removed the film from my mouth. Then he disappeared into the bowels of the office as silently as the Tooth Fairy...the bad one. Minutes later, he returned and triumphantly announced that he had cured the infection. I don't know what he meant by that. I was the one who had to valiantly shove pills the size of mangoes down my throat thrice daily. Still, the upshot was that I was healthy enough to be drilled out. But first I had to be numbed.

"But isn't my tooth already dead? Isn't the root gone? Why do I need to be numbed."

"I expect to go deeper than man has ever gone before. I just want to save you the discomfort, if I...shall we say...strike a nerve?"

Then he cackled a most unnerving cackle. I was very afraid, but weighing the pain of the needle against the hellfire of deep exploration, I chose the former.

First, he did something unexpected. he soaked a cotton swab in some tasty fluid and stuck it into my mouth next to the infected area.

"Tastes like licorice doc. What is it?"

"Oh it's just some Aniset...to numb your gums so the needle won't hurt much. We'll give it a minute or two." Then he left the room.

Much. The word cut like a machete through over-ripe sugar cane. And Aniset? No doubt some kind of slow-acting poison. I'd probably be the next lawn and leaf bag dragged away.

A minute or two later, I realized I had no tongue. The fiend had removed it while I wasn't looking. I'd have given him a severe tongue lashing about it, but, well you know.

It must have been a side-effect of the Aniset. It made me complacent. He had me open my mouth, and I complied with no argument. Of course, any arguments would have sounded like: "Grouhungh."

I felt a sharp pain that ran from my ankles to my ear-lobes. Then after a moment, another. But this one stretched only from my knees to my carotid artery. Then I discovered that I no longer had a face. I felt nothing...nothing at all. It was as though I had died and gone to anesthesia heaven. And my heart filled with the warm afterglow of having survived the shots. I would never, ever feel pain again. I just knew it. But I would know fear!

In my mellowed out state, I didn't even care that he had picked up a tool designed for tree root removal from four inch drain lines. It was a slow-moving device that made a sound inside my head like nails scraping on a chalkboard from within.

Oddly, between the rounds of drilling, I discovered that I had regained the power of speech. Though just as the pharmacist was the only one who could read the prescription, only the dentist could understand me. I couldn't even understand me. I just knew what I was going to say. It all came out like. "Fluhingterumblip."

At one point, I guess to show that he could be regular guy, the dentist began to tell me about an old Carol Burnett show skit, in which Tim Conway was a hysterical apprentice dentist who kept accidentally injecting himself with Novocaine. I remembered it, and politely asked that he not drill until he stopped laughing. His laugh was infectious, despite the antibiotic and I soon found myself chortling and drooling all over the napkin on my chest.

Soon, all laughed out, he began drilling again in earnest. He kept stopping to see if he'd gotten all the old filling out, but it was being stubborn. He kept switching to increasingly wider drill bits. Finally, he got one that could've dug the Chunnel. He said: "I just need to make it a bit wider."

I replied in my dentally challenged way: "Any wider and ships could pass through it."

A bit more drilling. Then, a probe was dispatched down into the tooth, along a main artery and finally, with a mighty tug, the last plug of filling was popped from somewhere near my heel.

All that remained was for some medicine, a temporary filling and I could go home.

I asked him what the medicine was and he told me it was formaldehyde.

"Isn't that what they preserve dead bodies with?"

"Your tooth is dead."

"But..."

"It won't kill you. It'll just kill any lingering infection."

"Are you sure? Because as I see it, killing me will also kill the infection."

"True. But killing you won't pay the patient portion of my bill."

For some reason, I felt much better. He squirted enough formaldehyde into my tooth to preserve my entire torso. Then, he mixed up a batch of this rubbery goo to fill the tooth.

By now, Igor, his assistant and Brunhilda, the receptionist had arrived and the lights came on all over the office. He took the napkin away and told me to go to the sink and rinse. I still couldn't feel anything, and kept looking in the mirror to see if I actually had a mouth.

Satisfied that all the obvious parts were intact, I rinsed and drooled, rinsed and drooled and pretty soon felt much better. A tiny bit of feeling was beginning to return to my face. Unfortunately, the feeling was a phantom itch. In the next half hour, I nearly clawed off my chin trying to get at an itch that couldn't be scratched.

As I re-entered the hallway, I saw the streaks lining his decorator wall-coverings. I couldn't detect a pattern repeat so indicative of wallpaper. And it was blood red! I thought of that poor soul who had the appointment before me. There but for the grace of God...

I left the office quickly and went straight to Starbucks for a double cap. It felt good going down, that which made it past the dead pieces of chicken liver posing as my lips. When I got to work, I had drooled away more than half a vente. I guess I just had a single cap in all. But now, the feeling in my face had pretty much returned. My jaw hurt again and my chin was nearly bloody and raw.

I walked into the office. Our receptionist took one look at me and said: "How'd the dental appointment go?"

I was about to ask her how she knew. But I quickly realized that I had drooled half a cup of coffee on my shirt and my face looked like it had been etched with acid.

"Pretty well."

"Well. Do you have another one? I can put it in the book and remind you about it like I did this one. Oh. And did you know you spilled coffee on your shirt?"

I mumbled something like a yes and handed her my appointment card. I had a week to prepare.
That night, I examined my mouth in the bathroom mirror. When I was satisfied that I had survived the procedure for now. I flicked off the bathroom light. My head glowed.

The Witch's Hat

Jock Prattle was slumped over in his chair, snoozing face-down on the desk, when a witch walked into his office.

“Jock! Jocko! Tie one on over lunch again?”

Jock stirred, struggling to sit up in the chair. As he did so, his elbow bumped an empty bottle which formerly held a fifth of scotch. The bottle tipped and teetered on the edge of the desk before diving headlong, to be greeted by the linoleum floor and oblivion.

The crash did the trick. Jock was awake...unhappy and hung over, but awake. As his vision cleared, he saw his tormentor. She was pretty typical as witches go; black hat that resembled a traffic cone with a hair lip, covering long scraggly black hair with a couple shocks of gray woven in. A wart the size and shape of a black olive protruded from the side of her corpse-green nose and tattered brown robes draped loosely from her shoulders to her knees. One non-traditional anomaly, was that the horizontally striped socks emerging from beneath the robes rooted in a pair of pink Reeboks. Also, stuck to her robes was a greeting tag. It read: “Hi. I'm Hilda.”

“Fletcher's out for blood. You missed the conference call with Toronto.”

“I told you to call me when it happened,” groaned Jock.”

“I called you. I shook you. A nuclear blast wouldn't have awakened you.”

“Where's Fletcher now?”

“Meeting. I'm taking off early...going to a Halloween party.”

“I'd never have guessed.”

“What are you going to do about Fletcher?”

“Take off early. Got a Halloween party.”

Hilda shook her head with a mixture of pity and disgust, turned and left the room.

The sentiment wasn't entirely lost on the still foggy Jock, who managed a retort...albeit weak and unworthy of an ad agency creative director..

“Love you in green!”

His legs still wobbly, Jock struggled to his feet and managed crossing to the office door where his rumpled jacket dangled. Reaching for the jacket, he stumbled, grabbed a sleeve and tore the hapless garment off the coat hook, ripping the hook from the door in the process. His head pounding, he looked at his jacket, saw that he had torn the collar and tossed it aside. Holding onto the door handle for stability, he peered out furtively, saw no sign of Fletcher and skulked out of the office.

For the next few hours, Jock enjoyed the company of the like-minded, at the aptly-named “Wild Things” bar, where Halloween skeletons and spider webs adorned the walls and peanut shells littered the floor. Music blared a bit too loudly and people shouted to be heard. Demons and sirens mingled with vampires and super-heroes. A grim reaper busily chatted up a French maid. A headsman showed off his double-bladed ax to a buxom visitor from another star. A coven of witches at one end of the bar downed mugs of witches' brew from the well and scanned the scene for hot guys dressed as, well...anything. The whole place was happily engaged in the age-old search for a piece of non-demonic tail.

Jock occupied a small booth, with a kitty and some sort of slug, holding court for passers-by who knew him as a regular. And through it all, he just got drunker. But even several sheets to the wind, Jock knew that he had to get home to make sure the house was dark. The last thing he wanted was to be overrun with trick-or-treaters. He didn't have any candy and he didn't want a bunch of kids asking for it.

Jock headed for the parking lot. Plastered as he was, driving home shouldn't have even been on the table, but universally, drunks have little sense. As he passed the entrance to the lot, a temporary sign caught his eye. It read: “Parking For Witches Only...Violators Will Be Toads” He grinned. The sign was his idea and it got him free drinks for a week. He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out his car's remote. Pressing it, he saw lights flash a few rows down and heard the familiar honk of his Boxster. As he arrived at the car, suddenly the whole world went awry. Jock spun around and collapsed face-up on the hood.

When he woke up again, Jock was staring in the face of evil. It was Lucifer himself, except that this particular Lucifer seemed genuinely concerned with Jock's welfare.

“You okay pal? I saw you kinda twist around and faint.”

“I didn't...Why am I lying on my car?”

“Like I said...”

“Uh thanks. I'm much better now. Jeez. Hope I didn't scratch the paint.”

“Nah. Paint looks okay. Sure you are?”

“Um. Guess I tripped. Yeah. I'm sure. Uh. Happy Halloween.”

“Okay. Happy Halloween.”

And the Devil sprinted off after his companions...Mary Poppins and a Bag of M&M's. Jock climbed into the Boxster, started it, gunned the engine and with little thought as to who or what might be around the next bend, drove off at high speed, bottoming out as he left the driveway. Making matters worse, he had a flask in the glove compartment and no clue that he had a drinking problem.

Jock was within a half mile of home when he had drained the flask. It was only then that he noticed the small evil things...and the heroes and ballerinas. They were scampering all over the place, accompanied by vigilant parents. There was this year, an abundance of ogres and rats, but that little statistic went unnoticed by Jock. All he cared about was avoiding the little monsters. Rather than slowing and being cautious, Jock took to swerving around the kids as parents yelled at him and gestured in some most un-parently ways. Jock swung a left into an alley. Thankfully, for everyone involved, there were no kids in sight. He would just head the rest of the way home along here.

The Boxster shot down the alley, playing chicken with the groups of garbage cans dotting one side, then the other. As Jock closed to within a block of his house, something swooped down in front of the car. It was a Crow. Crows were a problem in the neighborhood because of the Walnut trees. They cracked open the walnuts by dropping them on driveways and the cars parked on them. And that was by far, the more benign of the stuff that they dropped on the cars. They were fearless and taunted drivers by hopping in front of cars and always escaping at the last second. Jock hated them. And the flask of old No. 7 just stoked the fire. He began chasing this one. It was a big sucker. And it zoomed ahead of him weaving back and forth like a Formula One car. But he was in a Boxster. Zero to Sixty in 5.7 seconds. He down-shifted, wound it up to six K, popped the clutch and in a few seconds, heard the satisfying thump of Crow to bumper. He didn't even care if he scratched the paint.

Jock stopped the car and walked back to see his kill. What he found shook him to his very core. There wasn't any crow. Instead, there was a tall black, conical hat, bent in the middle, a black robe, and a broom! Jock's first thought was that he had killed someone in a Halloween costume. But there was no body and no blood, just a witch's outfit! He'd killed a costume! But that didn't make any sense, not even drunk He had to be the victim of an elaborate prank and it frightened Jock considerably...at least at first. He begrudgingly admitted to himself, some slight admiration for the prankster. The joke had style.

He picked up the costume, tossed it in the car and climbed back in. As he started to pull away, the broom levitated. Jock was so startled, he slammed on the brakes and nearly flew through the windshield since he hadn't bothered to belt himself in. As though it had a mind of its own, the broom tested first one window with a hard tap, then spun and repeated the action on another and yet another. Finally, with a mighty thrust, it tore a hole in the car's convertible top and flew up into the air. Jock watched in awe as the broom, illuminated by the full moon, flew a hundred feet above him, in a tightening spiral, eventually twirling in place. Suddenly, it vanished in a flash of unearthly light.

Jock knew that he'd had enough. It was time to hit the hay. But as sobering a sight as a broom flying from his car had to be, he remained pretty impaired. As he turned into his driveway, he hit the mailbox. It fell off it's post, landing upside down on the lawn. His address, 1999, now read 666, the number one, having flown off entirely from the impact. Jock didn't care. He slammed the car door and headed inside. He never made it. A pumpkin, stolen from a neighbor's porch, was smashed on Jock's driveway. Jock stepped on it and slipped on the melted wax inside. His leg flew up and he fell, hitting his head on a sprinkler. His final thought as he went down was: “Not again!”

Jock's vision cleared to a bizarre sight...torches. He was lying flat on his back and all he could see was torches and dirt...dirt with roots protruding from it. He sat up, realizing that wherever he was, it wasn't home. Looking around, he could see that he was in an earthen chamber with a dirt floor. It seemed to be hollowed out from within and had no apparent openings. Jock had no idea how he got in or how he'd get out. So far, he wasn't worried. And that worried him. Another thing...he wasn't the least hung over. That seemed wrong. Off in the distance, he could hear what seemed to be muffled moans and screams...but from where? Then he noticed the stench. It was every awful smell he'd ever smelled or imagined. And it was seeping into the chamber. As awful as they were, they also didn't seem to bother him. And that seemed wrong too. What was going on? Was this another elaborate prank? It wouldn't be long before he regretted the questions.

After a time, a section of the chamber wall vanished. It was very subtle. There was no rumbling, no dirt falling. The wall was there, then it wasn't. Where the wall had stood, a coiled serpent lay. It seemed to be an unholy cross between a snake and a crocodile. Also, it spoke, calling Jock's name. For some reason, that didn't surprise Jock at all. What he fixed on was the sound of it's voice.

“Lousy stereotype,” Jock thought derisively. “I'd fire the guy who came up
with the hissing voice if I was the boss here.”

“Well you're not,” replied the serpent, as though he'd read Jock's thoughts.

“I didn't say anything, he replied.”

“You didn't have to. There are no secrets in Hell, save the Master's own.”

“Oh God is this the lamest nightmare ever?”

Without warning, the serpent let out a gigantic exhale of searing flame which surrounded Jock and burned off most of his clothes. His skin was charred like barbecued chicken. It hurt terribly, but again, for some reason, though he knew it, he didn't actually feel it. Then the serpent bent down nose-to-nose with Jock.

“Don't ever utter that word again!”

“Word?”

The serpent hesitantly rolled its eyes heavenward, its expression scarcely masking a terrible fear of something. Jock saw it, but had no idea what to make of it. Certain he was in a lucid nightmare, Jock assumed a cocky posture, strolling behind the coils of the monster. The sight that next met Jock's eyes momentarily took his breath away. Writhing in boiling pools of indescribable sludge were people, or what used to be people. There were untold millions of them...billions! The scene stretched as far as Jock could see, and he presumed, many times farther. Plumes of fire randomly burst forth from the muck.

“Are you ready to take your place amongst the damned?”

Quickly regaining his swagger, Jock replied in his usual manner.

“I was kinda hoping for something with an ocean view.”

Before Jock could gauge the serpent's reaction, he found himself under water, caught in a tangle of kelp, with sharks ripping off chunks of his burned flesh. He couldn't hold his breath very long and just as his lungs were about to burst, he was back in the chamber and whole again. The boiling sea of souls was gone, as was the serpent.

A point of light appeared in the distance. The light grew in size and took on form. It was The Master, an enormous demon, dozens of meters tall and with a body that continually morphed from one hideous monstrosity into another.

“Do you run this place?”

“I run everything!”

“Oh no! I know who runs everything,” said Jock, glancing Heavenward.

“And you think HE has dominion here? No! HE runs Heaven. Hell is my territory,” said the Master, suddenly morphing into a gooey parody of a 1920's mob boss.

“But I gotta admit, you kinda remind me of me. I like arrogant.”

The sea of boiling souls appeared from nowhere behind the Master.

“I can't stand those wimps,” it said, gesturing over its shoulder at the soul soup.

Randomly several souls exploded in fireballs across the Hellscape..

Blobs of seared flesh and sinewy bone fragments landed around the Master and all over Jock. Creatures whose description no sane mortal could comprehend and whose visages defied classification, congregated at the hooves of the Master. All were covered in the vilest goo, and all smelled awful beyond compare. At a nod from the Master, they began to gorge themselves on the rotting flesh lying about. A few picked off the remnants that were stuck to Jock. He recoiled at their touches. They devoured the seared flesh with such relish that nothing could have stopped their feeding frenzy. Nothing, that is, save any sound from the Master. It cleared it's throat and the beasts froze, mid-chew.

“An error has been made,” the Master said. “This soul should not yet be here.”

The assembled monsters and demons all appeared confused in their own ways.

“No one dies from clonking their head on a sprinkler!”

The beasts groveled their assent. The Master turned back and addressed Jock.”

“Jock Prattle! You shall be returned to the world of the living until it is your time. But we are keeping our eye on you.”

Jock awakened, weak and groggy, on the ground outside his house in a small pool of dried blood. He got to his feet and shuffled to his front porch. The Jack O' Lantern over which he'd tripped was whole and on the porch rail, a candle burning within.

“What a nightmare! I gotta lay off the booze!”

As Jock unlocked the door and went inside. the pumpkin's eyes followed him. He flipped up the light switch...only darkness. He spun around, talking to the room itself.

“Great! What now?”

“Surprise,” howled out an unearthly chorus.

The room...his very world, had vanished. He again stood in the earthen chamber, before the Master of Hell and the creatures that did his bidding.

“Oh God. I'm still in the nightmare.”

“Don't EVER say HIS name. And you're not in any nightmare. You are stone-cold dead...and on my turf. So bow before me puny mortal and receive my judgment!”

Jock began to tremble. But he gained control of his emotions, even as the power of the Master's command drove him to his knees.

“But I thought you were returning me to the world of the living. You said a mistake had been made. You said it wasn't my time!”

“I was messing with you. I can do that.”

“What?”

“I lied.”

“But...”

The Master raised a foreclaw and clenched it into a fist. Simultaneously, Jock's mouth sealed itself tightly.

“I weary of the game, Jock Prattle. You are accused of a crime. And while your transgression has no actual significance here since I can patch up the witch with a mere gesture, it is none-the-less a violation of the laws of Hell. And if it is not, I hereby make it so.”

As though with one voice, the demons and monsters growled their enthusiastic assent.

“Therefore, since I just love to make the punishment fit the crime...well, not the severity, but the irony. I have decided that for deliberately killing a witch...Yeah yeah. You thought it was a Crow! Look big fella. Lots of Crows work for me too. You lose either way. So for killing a witch, my judgment...oh this is juicy...is that for all eternity, you shall be a Witch's Hat. And no. It's not what you think.”

As Jock's eyes widened in a mixture of fear and utter confusion, the Master curled its lip and it was all over. Everything and everyone vanished, including Jock.

A few weeks later, the full impact of the Master's pronouncement finally struck home with Jock. And it did so in the form of a very heavy SUV driven, ironically, by a drunk. It dragged him, screaming and shredding his body for half a mile. Of course, no one could hear the scream except Jock. After all, who really listens to the sounds made by a traffic cone under the axle of a car? Who among mere mortals is even aware that a bright orange Witch's Hat may house a damned soul?

Results Of A Study Of The Migratory Pattern Of The North American Male Hair Follicle

It has long been assumed that a significant percentage of the male population in North America suffers a condition described as male-pattern baldness. Conventional wisdom and generally unscientific observation bears this out.

However, conclusions reached after a 23 year study by the Western Hair Institute for Protein Development, (WHIPD) which analyzed the percentage of body weight in hair by men, has arrived at a surprisingly different result. As men age, the hair atop their heads only "seemingly" recedes. Men do not go bald! Their follicles migrate...in a southward direction...relative to the cranium, to be precise.

In actuality, the mechanism by which follicles relocate to other parts of the body, is driven by gravity. Simply put, this is due in large part to those parts being closer to the ground and therefore more affected by gravitational forces. Just as the skin of males and females alike tends to stretch with aging, so too, after a fashion, does hair. Though for hair, the "Sag" is actually relocation on the host body.

With women, the effect is less pronounced. The hair on their heads tends to thin slightly and a small amount of it is displaced to the upper lip. The skin sag is more noticeable however, particularly in the chest area, under the eyes and on those areas identified as being cellulite prone.


For men, the skin sag is most noticeable in the abdominal area and while there is speculation about a connection to male E.D., this is thus far, just that. Clinical studies are underway and may yield results of a connection in a few years. Lest this discourse wander too far afield from point, back to follicles.

For the North American male Homo Sapiens, (The study may apply across all regions and ethnic groups, but the study was confined to the North American sub-continent only.) Hair migration begins at different ages for virtually everyone involved. This would be the genetic component.

The less significant environmental component has more to do with how much hair goes, and to where. In the northern portions of the sub-continent, the migration southward of cranial hair is more significant and is even accelerated during the colder. winter months. This is roughly analogous to other species growing winter coats. It has been documented that in these regions, during the winter, a greater amount of hair migrates to the groin area. It has been theorized that this is an environmentally actuated effect dating back to prehistoric times when snowball fights invariably led to large quantities of frozen water in the caveman's animal-skin loin cloth. Cave paintings in northern Minnesota, like those in the Pyrenees provide pictographic evidence of these battles. The natural human response to snow down the pants is to cry out. Thus, this admittedly controversial point of view, has been deemed the "Ooohmagooolees Theorem."

The farther to the South the study tracks, the less significant the relocation of the lower follicles. However, in this region, nasal, ear and even facial hair is viewed as generally thicker. In the past, this was called the "Hillbilly Effect." Although for the purposes of the study, and to satisfy federal requirements concerning political correctness, it has been renamed "Hog-Holler Syndrome."

One anomaly that has cropped up in the analysis of the study reflects an out sized statistic. Within the Hog-Holler group, the amount of hair that migrates Earthward is significantly greater than that which disappears from the top of the head.

There is no shortage of theories to explain the differential. These range from a scientifically un-provable corollary to Einstein's theory of general relativity to several that run a gamut from preposterous to plausible. The one that is most widely accepted, though less elegant and profound than some of the others is the "Hair grows in dirt like a plant," theory. This grew out of an old wives' tale told by mothers to recalcitrant children who wouldn't wash their ears. As the tale goes: "If you don't wash out your ears, potatoes will grow in them." The theory is that hair will grow in dirty ears and nostrils. And while the evidence mounts supporting the validity of this concept, no full scientific study has, as of this writing, been undertaken to substantiate the assumptions.

One thing that has been substantiated is that the older the study participant, the further south the body hair travels. A man who was officially 107 years old at the close of the study presented a significant amount of grey hair growing out of his feet, some even between the toes. (Although, anecdotally, this has been discounted because the researchers involved were not certain if the hair was actually hair or merely sock lint.)

Further this decrepit example of manhood had virtually no hair above the knees. Photographs showing his calves and feet looked as though he wore muck-lucks. Yet, it is documented that he was barefoot. Computer extrapolations of the trends supported by the data draw to a disturbing conclusion. That conclusion states that as medical science extends the human life-span, all male hair will eventually settle around the foot by the age of 132.

New devices for the trimming and shaving of pedal extremity hair will have to be devised. A joint task force, supported by the Schick, Gillette, Norelco and Remington companies are studying the engineering challenges involved in such a technical advance.

Also, medical remedies involving topical exfoliates in combination with cranial follicle transplantation and/or stimulation are being explored.

The scientific community awaits the results eagerly.

A Friend Of The Family

I have found my true calling. And I'm raking it in, hand over fist. I always knew I was a pretty good public speaker. At one time I was touring the lecture circuit, collecting honorariums equal in a week to what many earn in a year.

But the constant travel, the living out of suitcases, the dining in expensive restaurants and the entertaining (heads of state, celebrities...university faculty) was beginning to wear on me. Also, my family was clamoring for more attention. Never mind that my children were enrolled in the finest schools...that my wife had nearly a servant for every room in the house, and she could spend hours daily on the charities I founded to occupy her free time. My family wanted more of ME. And being the kind of person I know myself to be, I could understand why.

I decided to downsize. No, not the house or any of our hard-earned creature comforts. I downsized the speaking engagements. It all happened in what I would describe as an evolutionary manner. Some several years back, I was called upon by the bereaved widow of an old and dear friend, to deliver the eulogy at her husband's funeral.

I told the widow I was honored to be asked, and of course, accepted. After all, I knew that my presence on the dais would lend an emphatic underscore to this dear old friend's life. I was going to tell the stories of how he and I (at my urging of course) used to volunteer to feed the homeless. I would recount how we went into the Red Cross during a blood shortage and gave multiple pints each. (He gave two...I, the more robust of the pair, gave four.) I would speak, in tears, of how he took a bullet trying to save a dying soldier in Viet Nam and how I then had to pull him to safety, taking one myself in the process. These were the vivid, life-affirming stories I would tell about my old friend. I knew hearing these stories about her husband would make my old friend's loving widow happy. And I was happy for her.

But then the old biddy threw me a curve. She wanted me to tell funny stories about him. She didn't want his funeral to lament of a wonderful life, lost. She wanted a tacky celebration of the quirkiness that made her dear departed funny...and in her demented old mind, special. Being the soul of diplomacy, I smiled warmly and of course, accepted the challenge.

But deep down, I seethed. How dare she request I demean my old friend? The things that were funniest about him would also make him out to be, dare I say it, a fool. I had to be careful to avoid that path. I undertook to craft a speech that would be both funny and uplifting. It was a difficult task, for if truth be known, my old friend was a bit of a dimwit. Still, as I stressed over each and every syllable, I began warming to the idea. Not because the old coot was all that funny, but because with the proper turn of a phrase, I could make him seem so. I actually began giggling as I read my speech into the mirror. This was funny stuff!

I wouldn't tell the assembled mourners that he couldn't cook. I'd tell them of the time he boiled water to make hard boiled eggs and neglected to add the eggs. And then, while they were laughing at that, I would tell them how in a fit of pique, he tossed out the boiled water and began heating another pot to make coffee. I'd relate how when I questioned what he was doing, he replied that the first pot was "Egg water." He was now making "Coffee water." Before too long, I had constructed a eulogy that would have them rolling in the aisles. And you know, it did.

One gentleman at the funeral came up to me afterward and told me he'd like me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. I pointed out to him in the gentlest way possible that he was still alive. When he told me he was suffering a terminal illness, what could I do? I humbly accepted. Over the next few months, he sent me various snippets about his life that were...unfunny.

But I didn't hold 4 honorary chairs in literature for nothing. In my hands, his Christmas eve picketing of a union busting ex-employer became a warm and cherished memory of he and his pals burning paper doll effigies of their ex-boss over an oil-drum and waiting for Santa. His battle with a landlord became a hysterical anecdote about pancakes covering the lawn of the man's home, neatly tooth-picked into the earth. And his brush with death in an airline crash landing, morphed into an entertaining anecdote about what not to do when the plane comes down with no landing gear.

He was thrilled, and insisted I take a small payment for all my work. I refused of course. A couple of months later, I was called by the man's nephew. His uncle had passed on. Would I come a deliver the eulogy I had authored. How could I refuse? I did so, on an dreary afternoon. But inside the chapel, it might as well have been warm and sunny. The assemblage had tears streaming down their cheeks. They were not tears of anguish,but tears of joy. When it was all over, several mourners left complaining of severe aches in their sides from laughing.

I began to get more calls. I had to refuse many, because I was still travelling to lecture. But as I was getting off the plane in Sandusky, Ohio, for a lecture to a group of lobbyists, my cell phone rang.

I am not easily startled. But this call took me by surprise. I was actually speechless for a brief moment. The old man's attorney...You will recall, I declined remuneration from him...was infoming me that I had been named in his will. In fact, I was named as his sole beneficiary. I had inherited 23 million dollars.

But there was, the lawyer continued, a complication. The old man's family (all nieces and nephews) were challenging the will. I infomed the lawyer that, of course, I happened to agree to a large extent with the family's point-of-view. After all, it is not in my generally altruistic nature to be a predator, else I too would have become an attorney. I told the lawyer to negotiate an equitable five way split for the four plaintiffs and myself. I made the old man's family happy...and after all, that's what I am really about. After legal fees, inheritance taxes and various and sundry items I won't go into, I made nearly three million dollars. And all because I did what came naturally to me. I performed a selfless act for a fellow human being.

It was at this point that I cancelled my lecture tour and decided that the time was at hand to go into a new line of work. I became a Eulogizer. For a small honorarium, I would travel (locally only) and deliver stirring, usually hilarious, speeches about the dear departeds. Sometimes I might do four in a day.

I held my captive audiences spellbound. Each and every eulogy led to inquiries for perhaps dozens more. I would simply hand my card to whomsoever inquired and they would contact me later. I called myself simply, "A Family Friend ." My phone rang off the hook. You'd be surprised how many people might cash in their chips within 50 miles of my home every week.

But as fine a writer as I am, (and the large wall dedicated to my numerous awards silently attests to that) I found that my, you should pardon the expression, "Deadlines," grew more and more tightly spaced as the business expanded. I began to take shortcuts. I recycled some of the older material...going to the trunk, so to speak. No one seemed to notice. As long as I peppered the speech with a few truths about the departed, I could say just about anything I wanted and the audiences would laugh. After all, it was all in good, clean fun.

Then one day, I left the speech on my desk at home. I was too far along to go back. I would have been late for the funeral and the deceased is the only one allowed to be "late" at a funeral. I had to recall what the man's life was about as I drove to the cemetery. And when I stepped to the podium, I spoke extemporaneously. I winged it.

I knew he had himself been widowed four times. His fifth wife was left a widow. So, I strongly intimated...in fact, all but accused him of being a womanizer! The audience burst into raucous laughter. He owned a restaurant. So I made up a story about how one day the Health Department shut him down for unsanitary conditions, and how he fought back by sending a meal to that same department, made from day-old food. They howled. I even recycled some Catskills resort humor by paraphrasing an old Henny Youngman joke. I said that on my last visit to the hospital, I found my friend...(They are always my friend.)...kneeling beside his bed praying to the Almighty. I told them I overheard him saying: "Dear Lord...Take my wife...Please!" His widow was so grateful to me for "getting" the essence of her husband, that she doubled my fee.

It began to sink in that no one speaks ill of the dead. And that's the whole point. If they know you're going to say something funny, they'll laugh at the punchline, no matter what it is. At the next funeral, I delivered the occasional phrase in Spanish. They laughed anyway. Why? Because they were supposed to.

The very next day, I observed that the woman being laid to rest in a graveside service had been a prostitute during the Korean conflict and that her two sons were illegitimate. They loved the story. None of it was true. But neither boy actually knew their father. He had died a soldier's death in that very war, and they just naturally assumed from my eulogy that their mother had always protected them from the truth.

So, now I have a staff of writers who flesh out the information that families provide me with. My chauffeur drives me from cemetery to cemetery on a daily basis and I edit and memorize my speeches en route. But, of late, I've grown a bit weary of the grind. And I have all these filing cabinets chock full of great material.

I'm thinking of going to an open mike night at a comedy club and trying out my material on the living. Who knows? Maybe I'll be the next big thing in standup.

Robot Parts?

Gentlemen and Ladies:

It has been predicted that over the next decade or perhaps two, robots in the home and at the workplace will become commonplace, even ubiquitous. It will require enormous amounts of resources to build and maintain these labor-saving devices.

The irony should not go unnoticed, that it will take humans to service the robots, so that they in turn, can take a load off humans. Of course, we could build service-specific robots whose sole function it would be to repair robots in need of fixing. But who or what would fix them? It could be vicious cycle.

When a robot finally clanks its last clank, it will be recycled into a new, more efficient version of itself. That is, unless we, idiotic humans make it from materials that are difficult to recycle or design obsolescence into the things like we do with cars.


But these aren't insurmountable issues. The big one...the one over which I mull constantly, is what do we do with robotic waste? We are already designing organically-based light emitting diodes for televisions and organically based processors for computers.

As this trend continues and inevitably expands, we are likely to see computers and their mobile counter-parts, robots, commencing rudimentary metabolic processes akin to those of lower life forms. As robots "Evolve," so too will their metabolic processes. Even a robotic sensor can see where this will lead. We may have to design entirely new septic systems to accommodate robotic organic waste unless we are willing to share our commodes with the electric help. Will their shiny metal behinds scratch the paint on our toilet seats? The future approaches, riddled with questions for which there are not as yet answers.


I have to proposed to the National Science Foundation that a study be undertaken to determine what form the disposal of robot waste products shall take. But the government is typically unwilling at this point to address the issue. Privately, more than a few of those who would not take a public stance have expressed their opinions that this is a serious issue. However, the current administration has, ostensibly for now, tabled any discussion. I suspect that this is because those automatons in the administration would rather spend their dollars for pork than to plan for the future.


Therefore, it falls to private industry to puzzle out a solution to this problem before it becomes a reality. Which is why I am appealing to you, the American Society of Plumbing Manufacturers and Contractors to privately fund a research project on the proper way to dispose of robot refuse. Given the various toxic and non-toxic power sources robots will use and use up, we must be prepared to dispose of them all in a safe, economically feasible and environmentally sound fashion. I await your response.

Klaatu Barado Nikto,

Gort

To See And Be Seen

The concept of invisibility. A familiar theme in both science fiction and fantasy has long been something of a holy grail. "The Invisible Man" caused his body to become transparent by means of the injection of a secret formula. He was unable to reverse the condition and was made mad in the process. The Romulans of "Star Trek" unnerved the galaxy with their cloaked ships. "Rocky Jones Space Ranger," back in the in 1950's, used the novel, "Cold Light" to make his ship, the Silver Moon unseen. Harry Potter used a magic cloak to achieve a similar end. And in an intuitive take on what science is actually attempting today, the 1980's film, "Predator," introduced an alien camouflage suit.

Modern-day optical and materials scientists are experimenting with what they call "Metamaterials." These exotic and largely theoretical compounds will capture and bend light around the shapes they envelop so that the viewer effectively sees right through them. So far, success has been achieved only on the microwave level. The cloaking paints on the stealth fighter have reduced it's radar signature to the size of a pigeon. But you can still see both the pigeon and the plane if you look up.

All this is a large-scale waste of science and money. Here, I present a solution that is both far less complex and creates a shield of invisibility so powerful, so foolproof, that one can gain entry with impunity nearly anywhere.

I call it "Celebritinvisibleness," a bit of a mouthful to be sure, but the process is quite simple. To take advantage of it's properties, one must be a nobody, which most of my readers are, and one must be in the company of a celebrity as he or she goes someplace public. You need do nothing more. You will find yourself completely invisible. Further, the harder you try to be seen, the less you will be seen.

The effect can be expressed as the following formula, wherein A List = Any Celebrity and Big Zero = You. A List+Big Zero =1. In this mathematical expression, it is clear that regardless of the number of Big Zeroes computed within the formula, the end result is always one. The math can easily be validated with empirical proof. Multiples of Big Zero are referred to as either the "Posse" or "Entourage" corollary. In layman's terms, if you are with a celebrity, you don't exist for the rest of the world. Therefore, you are without substance...light passes directly through anything without substance...hence, you are invisible.

The effect first came to my attention when I was interviewing an undeservedly famous Hollywood actress on the set of her latest movie. Being a well-known, celebrity author, I was of course, given the star treatment...champagne, director's chair with my name stencilled on...the whole shmearcase, though the caviar was not entirely up to par. (I wasn't asked my opinion on the subject, but I remember thinking that a little more in the craft-services budget would have served the production well.) Not everyone is treated as well as I am, but not everyone is so fortunate as I, nor so deserving.

This diva, who shall remain nameless due to the legal complexities involved with the mention of her name, had been married to her high school sweetheart for nine years. It was one of those "Hollywood" secrets, since she made a career of seducing young men on the screen and teens, from the screen. She decided that since this was...as she put it...a "Breakout" role, she wanted to share with the world that she was married and had three children, whom her husband had brought by to visit.

She turned and gestured to her right. There was no one there. At first, I thought she was insane. And though, based on the subsequent reviews of her movie, that may have been an accurate guess, it was in this case, not the case.

Her mousy house-husband had been raising the kids for six years and living off the fruits of her acting. And he and the kids were right there, but I could not see them. I also couldn't hear them, though she insisted that the kids were acting up.

I was ready to call the film's bond company to inform them of the risk they were taking when the most extraordinary thing occurred. She picked up a glass of milk and handed it to no one. It hung, suspended in space for a long moment and then tilted over and began to empty into thin air. It was being consumed by an invisible kid. I am told my mouth hung open to below my knees. I suspect this is an exaggeration.

A moment later, the assistant director came up to his star and told her she was wanted on the set for rehearsal. She excused herself and walked off. I turned and caught a few shots of her leaving. As she departed, a terrible din arose gradually, from where she had been sitting. I turned back and saw to my surprise, that the kids and their father were slowly becoming visible and audible. Out of her presence, they were eventually entirely as opaque as anyone.

The husband and I chatted for a bit, me, gathering background for my story (in which I would, of course, make no mention of him or his trio of screeching, pre-adolescent banshees) and he, attempting to secure a position in a Hollywood hierarchy that would never so much as acknowledge his existence. As we concluded our chat, his wife returned and he and the kids vanished, though I knew they were still around somewhere.

I actually felt sorry for the guy. He seemed nice enough, but he was an insurance underwriter. Not only would no one want to know he existed, no one would ever want to know what an insurance underwriter does. But their marriage endured, and some years later, one of the kids followed his mother into acting. He is today, nearly semi-transparent.

But all this is anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon. I spoke to agencies of the federal government and various branches of the military about the effect, and after some initial skepticism, they opted to fund a study.

In a test of the system, a famous supermodel was strapped to the hood of a heavily armed Hummer and sent into an unruly urban crowd. The guns and clubs were dropped in favor of pens and pads of paper. Later interviews confirmed that not one in the crowd even noticed the 50 caliber machine gun or its operator on the roof. For that matter, the Hummer was invisible as well. Not so much as one member of the crowd even knew how the supermodel came to be in their midst.

In a subsequent test, a famous blond celebrity walked into a police station, her assistant accompanying her. The assistant wore a dummy bomb belt, with a clearly visible countdown time flashing across her mid-section. She was not noticed at all, except by her celebrity companion who mistook the countdown timer for a clock and asked her what time it was.

The final test was when the Air Force allowed both women to overfly the Rose Parade in a stealth bomber. You may remember the supermarket tabloid headline the next day.

"Stars Fly Over New Years Day Parade-Stealth Bomber A No-Show"

I have developed an algorithm that takes into account the celebrity's age, sex, TVQ, (if he or she is a television star) and a variety of other factors which gives us a number that translates into a celebrity's cloaking factor. The gist of it is, the more famous the celebrity you accompany, the more transparent you become.

Yes, there are degrees of invisibility. For instance, if you are in the company of Nicole Kidman, anywhere, you will not exist. And if you are in the company of Tiger Woods, no matter how you dress, you will be mistaken for a caddie. That is, unless you are with him on a golf course, in which case, you will be perceived as a bunker. In a tournament, you will simply not be there.

The system works predictably and consistently. And there is another interesting side to it as well, which I have named the "Paparazzeffect." It is loosely based on the law of physics which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is possible to become so completely visible that you cannot be made invisible. Once celebrity is achieved. You will be visible and it will stay with you for many years as long as your notoriety endures . As your star eclipses, due to advancing age or generational indifference, you will eventually, again become invisible. When you die, you will need to cross over in the company of nobodies like yourself or the undertaker will not be able to find your corpse.

Therefore, having been advised of the potential pitfalls, should you still clamor for fame and the visibility that comes with it, your goal can be reached. The simplest way to achieve it is to be part of a very minor celebrity's entourage for a time. Then do something splashy out of his or her presence...something so outrageous, that you are noticed on your own. If that celebrity's star continues to rise, you will be forever linked to that rise and will remain visible while the rest of entourage is ignored into transparency at the velvet rope.

If that celebrity's star begins to dim, you need only distance yourself from him or her and your own rise will continue unabated. However, you must work to firmly establish your own level of renown or you will fade into obscurity and the transparency that comes with it.

I can personally attest to this, because for a time, I ignored my duty to my image and effectively disappeared off the face of the Earth. It wasn't until the publication of my most widely read and prize-winning novel that I regained my rightful place among the famous. Of course, today I am sort of a celebrity Emeritus...a term of my own devising...and am therefore wholly immune to the side effects of fading stardom. I stand as the only exception to my own rule. And really, isn't that how things should be?

Why Do Foods Fall In Love?

Over time, I've had countless occasions to utilize the skills I acquired in a small Shaolin culinary temple in China, apprenticed as I was, to a Kung-Fu Master Chef. His name was Kang Wu, and he was an inscrutably steel-eyed seventy five year old when, protesting, he took a brash young American under his wing.

It is not generally known, but Kung Fu Cheffery is actually a martial art. It involves the use of kitchen implements to prepare a gourmet meal while warding off hordes of hungry invaders. At least that was the historical use of the art.

Today, Kung Fu Cheffery has only a very few remaining practitioners in the world. Sadly, the time of the hero-chef has passed in most of the civilized world. I am the oldest and most skilled of the remaining few, and even my prodigious talents are seldom called upon anymore. For the dwindling faithful, dedication to the art means giving up all else to follow the way of the serrated blade. My story traces an especially difficult path.

The Master considered me unworthy of his tutelage. I was simply a spoiled American kid who he believed, lacked the passion and the commitment to become a Kung Fu Master Chef . Just to prove I could be humble, I washed pots and pans in the temple for fully seven years. My reward for such dedication was to be unfairly labelled as having so overblown an ego that I felt it necessary to prove I was good enough to wash dishes. In showing I had worth, I had demonstrated in the old man's eyes an utter lack of it.

But I was not to be denied. I was eventually stuffed down the gullet of the culinary goose and my acceptance forced upon the master. It was through the efforts of my maternal great grand-father, the second cousin twice removed, by marriage, of the high priest at the temple. He sent a letter that eventually got me considered for apprenticeship. And then I still had to overcome centuries of Chinese food-centric bigotry. I couldn't possibly have either the discipline or the moral fiber to become a Kung Fu Chef.

I didn't speak the language aside from being able to passably name a few side dishes, so I don't know what great grandpa put in his letter. But he and the priest had been together on a United States gunboat sailing the Yangtze around the turn of the twentieth century. My great grandfather was an American sailor and the high-priest-to-be was the cook. They weren't exactly friends, but great grandpa was known to be a lavish tipper. Evidently, the High-Priest never forgot the sailor with the tattoo of an anchor on his forearm.

Master Chef Wu turned beet red when he was told of the letter and the High Priest's decision. He stormed off, stomping on a walnut as he departed and commanding me to gather up the nut meat. I stood defiantly in place. Actually, it wasn't defiance, though being a teenager, I looked kind of defiant. He was speaking Chinese. I had not the slightest idea what he was saying. When he returned, he scowled at me and gathered up the nut meats himself, then told me to clean up the shell. Again I was clueless and consequently, motionless.

The old man picked up a wooden staff and struck me on my head. Finally speaking in a kind of broken English, he said: "The student never questions the master." I answered: "Why?", and got whacked a second time. He made it clear that he was not happy with my presence and that at best, I might one day aspire to putting together a simple dessert...but more likely, only serving green tea. I learned much later that Wu had a touch of arthritis and didn't like cracking walnuts.

It took many years, but measure by excruciating measure, we came to understand each other. I might even say we became friends, this master and his pupil, though he never gave me any real indication that he actually liked me, only that he accepted my presence. I, in turn, came to embrace the recipes behind this man's martial arts cooking regimen and have applied it throughout my life since.

In time, we might have eventually bonded, but for the fateful night he tossed a tomato in the air to demonstrate slicing it in 13 perfect segments as it fell to the plate. Unfortunately, he'd sampled a little too much of the sake in which he was marinating the tomato. His first thrust missed and so threw off his timing that all his subsequent strikes as well, found only air.

Furious, he screamed at the top of his lungs something that, though in his native tongue, would have been an unprintable vulgarity in any language. The tomato meanwhile, came down upon a carving fork on the cutting board on which a meat muscle trimming lay. The trimming flipped into the air, came down into the master's open mouth and lodged there, deep in his windpipe. The Heimlich maneuver had not yet reached the shores of China. To the horror of all present, he choked and died a gristly death.

This kind of tragedy had never happened in the temple's 1800 year history. We had no menus...no guidelines...no way to deal with the sadness of the Master's passing. We wandered the kitchens flipping our spatulas and playing mumbledy-peg in the hanging carcasses of beef going to waste in the freezer.

Finally, the High Priest announced that to honor the memory of the Master Chef, each day at dawn, we would rise and make a 'mourning' meal. We would prepare and eat this instead of breakfast. That it consisted in its entirety of the same items as in our regular morning meal, was both convenient and a testament to the aged high priest's failing mental abilities. Out of respect and hunger, the students complied and we threw ourselves whole-heartedly into the endeavour every day.

Eventually, the Master was replaced with a young Chinese master from the Sorbonne. His style was different. And now, I had to learn yet another language. But at least the playing field had been levelled. No one knew what the Master was saying.

And then there was the Chen girl. I followed her about day and night like a lame puppy. She had the most beautiful cleaver I had ever seen or have ever seen since. And the beautifully sculpted cleavage in which she carried her cleaver made me tremble. I was horribly torn, not knowing for certain which I desired more, the cleaver or the sheath in which it as so lovingly cradled.


So long as I can still identify an aroma, I will never forget that night. We had been preparing an appetizer of braised Koi with a ginger Parmesan glaze and we just got a little too...close. My fillet knife, dripping with ginger, brushed her sleeve. Her cheese grater full of Parmesan slid languidly into my breast pocket. We fell into each other's arms, fillet knife and grater doing things to each other best left to the imagination. It was a culinary harmony fit for the gods. Even today, I can't prepare Koi without tears streaming from my eyes. And onions are not even in the mix.

That was all many years ago, and I have had more than my share of adventures. I have cooked for countesses and kings. I have saved many a monarchy from falling to a hungry horde. I have taught at the finest cooking schools...headed up the kitchens at the finest hotels from Dubai to Las Vegas and have passed on the magic to at least a few gifted apprentices. It is my hope that they will carry on the traditions and stand ready to take up their cheese slicers and rolling pins in defense of their homelands. For such is the path of the Kung Fu Chef. Such is the way of the serrated blade.

But for now...for me...the path has come to an end. And it has ended, it seems, at the fry cooker of McDonalds. The world has moved on to fast food. Trans-fats heated and soaked into anything remotely edible. There is no longer need for one with my abilities. Perhaps one day, but not likely in what remains of my lifetime.

I am sorry, but I have little time left. My lunch break is nearly over and I need to finish my Whopper. Would you like to share my fries?