The Rants, page 10
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what is it with America's "Can't fit into my Calvin Klein's Like Obsession'' with fitness? Isn't our slow but sure descent into a Hitchcockian silhouette just evolution in its purest form? And quite frankly, isn't all this fitness crap a feeble attempt to defy Darwin's relentless glacier? In short, isn't our species meant to look like Fat Albert?
When I think about it, the only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise.
Running? I keep hearing about this "runner's high," but I must have gotten ahold of some bad shit, because I uhh I tried it once, and six blocks in, I was on all fours vomiting in the gutter like George Bush at a Benihana.
Walking? Walking? If it's so good for you, how come my mailman looks like Jabba the Hut with a quirky thyroid?
The treadmill? You take your eyes off the thing for one second and you end up like Gary Busey on ... well, let's say, any weekend. You know, my wife doesn't mind my running on the treadmill but she gets a little miffed when I squeal at her to refill my hanging water bottle while I pee in the wood shavings that I've spread out on the floor. Then there's the StairMaster. As in walking up the stairs for a half an hour. If I want to do that I'll move back to my first shit-hole apartment in New York.
Aerobics? The only reason I like watching "Sweatin' to the Oldies" is because Richard Simmons is working his ass off and he's still not in any better shape than me. Hey, Richard, if I need low impact aerobics, I'll masturbate, all right? If I need high impact, I'll masturbate again.
Or of course you can take the ultimate easy way out— steroids. With steroids, you just keep getting older and older and bigger and bigger until you eventually have to retire to a game preserve and have kids throw pennies at your snout.
Hellooo, guys, the crotchal irony is that steroids only make one thing smaller and get this—it's your penis. And if you remember correctly, the paucity of a dick in your life is what got you into steroids in the first place, okay"?
And as for private health clubs, they are just getting too damn complicated. You know, there's nothing quite as humiliating as finishing a thirty-minute workout on a piece of gym equipment only to have the instructor tell you you've been sitting on it backward.
And while we're at it, someone explain to me why anyone would want to go to a place called a "family" fitness center?
Why should your family burn off their pent-up energies at a gym when you can all accomplish the same thing for free at home with a series of ugly, confrontational shouting matches?
And then there's the stretch class at the health club. My wife suggested we take a stretch class. And I said, don't expect me to do any of that Jean-Claude Van Damme kitchen counter shit. My groin muscles are as intractable as Wayne La Pierre at the NRA's annual Skeetapalooza Show.
Hey, I have only one fitness goal. Like most of you, I'd like to be able to run a few down and outs with my sons at the family picnic without having to dial up Randy Mantooth and the boys to sprint over carrying an IV with ringers.
I think any aspirations beyond that can be placed under I he heading of narcissistic overkill. Folks, the bottom line is this—the last animals that let their heads get really small while their bodies got really big ... ended up in our gas tanks, okay? So the next time you look in the mirror and see more pork than a congressional subcommittee, do something about it. Go to the garage, pick up your old dumbbells, walk back inside the house, and smash the fuck out of that mirror.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
marriage
A SURVEY OUT THIS WEEK CLAIMS THE AVERAGE married couple has sex on average only twice a month. Guys, I guess that's the reason they call it "tying the knot."
You know, when I hear the phrase "wedding ceremony," I think of a big church service, a huge three-tiered cake, and elated friends and family throwing rice at the happy newlyweds.
But nowadays the reality of the wedding has become pre- nuptial agreements longer than transcripts of the O.J. trial, lesbian rabbis with pierced eyebrows performing the ceremony, and wedding vows written by the bride and groom that are so sickeningly schmaltzy they make The Bridges of Madison County look like Milton's Paradise Lost.
But the changes in the wedding ceremony are superficial and harmless when compared to the deeper underlying changes taking place in the institution of marriage itself.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the institution of marriage is coming undone faster than Liza Minnelli on a Barbara Walters special. Couples are breaking up like a four-thousand-year-old Peruvian vase shipped UPS. And that's too bad, because I think marriage can be one of the most rewarding experiences you will have on this planet—if you meet the right person.
If you don't, I'll bet you it can be as tedious, ugly, and soul-crushing as driving on the 5 Freeway to Knott's Berry Farm with the windows up and no air-conditioning on Labor Day weekend with Kathie Lee and Regis in the car after they've had bean burritos for lunch. Sorry, Kathie Lee, but it's getting too thick lately, don't you think?
Hell, the vows are scary enough. I mean, "We are gathered here to witness the joining of two people ... " Joining. Could we come up with a slightly more industrial term, huh? How about, "soldering"? Yeah, have a couple of guys from the machinists' union swing by, drop the welder's masks, and handle this part of the ceremony. You know, it seems like the only two times they pronounce you anything in life is when they pronounce you "man and wife" or "dead on arrival."
Just elope. Spare yourselves the sadistic ritual known as "the wedding plans," where, guys, quite frankly, your opinion is about as important as the foreword in a Jackie Collins novel.
Now, I personally am a very lucky man. My wife Ali is a wonderful, intelligent, beautiful, sexy, funny woman whom I adore, and she returns the favor. As a matter of fact, my wife walks on the ground I worship. I continue to feel deeply passionate toward her. In fact, the other night I was making love to my wife and she said, "Deeper . . . deeper ... " So I started whispering Nietzsche quotes into her ear. "Man is a rope stretched over the abyss ..." She said, "Whoa. Not that fuckin' deep. I'm trying to get off over here."
Incidentally, Nietzsche, of course, for the unintiated is number sixty-six for the Green Bay Packers. Incidentally, if and when your mate ever asks you about your sexual history when you were single, it's best to bear in mind Jack Nicholson's line from A Few Good Men—"You want to know the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
After seven years of marriage, I'm sure of two things- first, never wallpaper together, and second, you'll need two bathrooms ... both for her. The rest is a mystery, but a mystery I love to be involved in. You know what's disheartening? A lot of men don't want to get married. They say things like, "I don't want to compromise." Oh yeah, like you're not compromising now. Living alone, holes in your undies, jacking off to "The Price is Right" models so many times your hand is translucent.
Yeah. Why would you ever want to compromise, Mr. Cimino?
The rule is simple for marriage. It's the journey, not the destination that makes it work. Now I know a lot of us are the product of a union so Gothic in its dysfunction it makes the couples in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf look like Steve and Eydie. But we cannot let that deter us.
Sure, marriage is scary. It's like sky diving—you can practice all you want on the ground but it's not until you jump from ten thousand feet that you'll know if you're fucked or not.
That's why I have a special marriage proposal for you—a bill to create a mandatory waiting period for marriage licenses.
Like buying firearms, marriage is a highly volatile situation with potentially tragic results. We've already got the Brady Bill, which mandates a waiting period for buying a gun— it's time to have a waiting period for getting married and starting a family. We could call it the Brady Bunch Bill. Because remember—marriages don't destroy relationships, people do.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I'm not married to it.
equality of the sexes
NOW I DON'T WANT TO GET OFF ON A RANT HERE, but we trivialize women's issues in this country by fixating on the insignificant and ignoring the consequential. It's unbelievable to me. With all the serious inequities heaped on womanhood: the fact that they don't get paid equally; the fact that they're often brutalized by incomplete male monsters. What do we focus on? We focus on the bullshit, the freak show, the pubic hair on the Coke. The warnings from the strident feminist groups about anything male including telling women to beware of the Heimlich come-on. All this sort of bullshit.
And then we worry about the New England Patriots locker room situation—this is Lindbergh-like headlines in this country, for months. Some female reporter goes into the locker room, a couple of second-stringers dangle their Johnsons in front of her. She's so freaked out now she's got to move out of the country.
There's that Margaret Bourke-White spirit for ya, huh?
Evidently she's in some "I brushed up against it" clinic in Lugano, Switzerland. But you know something? Let me advance the radical theory that she shouldn't have been in the locker room. And the reason she shouldn't have been in the locker room is because she shouldn't have wanted to be in the locker room. Women in this country will make their greatest strides when they begin to realize that there are certain bullshit male rituals that they shouldn't want to have a fuckin' thing to do with.
Don't you see? You're better than that! You're 52 percent of the electorate for Christ's sake ... take the reins, we fucked up, we can't do it. Don't you see the cosmic tip- off? You are the life givers, you must be the ones who save us. Aim your sights a little higher and go for the big pinata. Fuck the locker room, vote the Arlen Specters out of office. I don't want to turn this into Susan Faludi's deb ball ... but if you really want to break the back of the male domination in this country, get together and collectively cut us off.
Because you see ... you love to fuck, but we need to fuck, all right? And you should just get together and deny us sex en masse. The great American Poke Out. I guarantee you within two weeks you rule the country. If you thought Renfield was blindly allegiant to Dracula, we will be the Stepford penises.
And you know, you can start by taking back control of your bodies. And I hope you all saw the flare go off two weeks ago, it finally happened ... someone in the right to life movement killed a doctor. To really point out the heinous nature of this crime let's use their terminology ... The right to life movement aborted a child ... in the two-hundredth trimester.
Now I don't believe in abortion, but more importantly, I don't believe in the right to a life without any rights. And I think that some of the people in the right to life movement should get a fucking life before they begin to tell other people what to do with theirs.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
air travel
NOW I DON'T WANT TO GET OFF ON A RANT HERE, but flying in this country has turned into an amazingly arduous process, especially boarding the plane, which has now become this tedious Bataan death march with American Tourister overnight bags. I get stuck behind this one guy, who takes forever to get situated. He's clogging the aisle like a piece of human cholesterol jammed in the passengerial artery. You just want to get that soft drink cart and flush his ass out the back door. He's folding that sport jacket like he's in the color guard at Arlington National Cemetery.
Or else I get stuck behind a wizard who wants to beat the system by gaffer-taping a twine handle onto a refrigerator- freezer box and calling it "carry on." Wedging it into the overhead with hydraulic jacks. It's like trying to get Pava- rotti into a wet suit, for Christ's sake.
And exactly when did stewardesses in this country get so fucking cranky? I know it's a tough job. There's got to be a thousand different ways to tie that neckerchief but why piss on me, huh? You know the worst thing about it is they don't even come clean with you and tell you how much they hate you. They treat you with that highly contrived air of mock civility, that tight, pursed-lip grin where they nod agreement with everything you say. You know right behind that face plate they barely tolerate your very existence. I'd rather they just come out in the open and say, "Hey, listen, asshole. When I was eighteen years old, I made a horrible vocational error, all right? I turned my entire adult life in for cheap airfare to Barbados. Now I've got hair with the tensile strength of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein. I haven't met Mr. Right. I'm a waitress in a bad restaurant at thirty thousand feet. Jam your Diet Slice up your ass, all right?" At least show me something. Come down the aisle like the old broad in From Russia with Love with the knife point coming out of her shoe. "Peanuts, Mr. Bond?"
What about when you leave the plane and they've got them propped by the front door in that complete android catatonic stupor where they look like the Yul Brynner robot from Westworld when he blew a headpipe and iced Marcus Welby's assistant. "Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye." It's like your stockbroker on Thorazine or something.
And am I the only one who likes to get on a plane and unwind with a good book? Sit there in a little peace and quiet. I'm constantly in conversation with complete strangers—always being approached by these overly ebullient Jonathan Livingston Human types. This eighteen- year-old kid who's on his way back from Aruba and wants to show me this skull bong he purchased there that's carved out of volcanic rock. You know he's always got a dream he wants me to interpret for him. What am I, Queequeg? And you're afraid to not talk to him. You never know who the fucking terrorist is on the plane. I'd hate to alienate anybody who's looking for a prom date to Valhalla.
There's a lot of terrorism in the air, but you know when you walk through the air terminal and see the crack security people manning the perimeter, I think we all sleep the sleep of angels. Came into Phoenix the other day, the woman working the X-ray machine had the attention span of Boo Radley. She's sitting there like Captain Pike from "Star Trek." She had a channel flicker. She's watching baggage from other airports, for Christ's sake.
You think pilots make fun of those guys who bring them the last ten feet into the terminal with those cone flashlights? "Well, thank you, Vasco da Gama. I kited in from Malaysia, you're going to take me the last furlong, Captain Eveready. I hope you don't blow a D-cell. I'd hate to be stuck out here in the Bermuda Tarmac for the rest of my life."
What about those masks that drop down in the event of decompression? That's a pretty flimsy-looking apparatus, isn't it? Doesn't this look remarkably like a Parkay margarine cup on the end of an enema bag or something? They always have these bizarre instructions to start the flow of oxygen. "Tug down lightly on the cord." Yeah, you know when I'm shoulder-rolling at seven hundred miles per hour, "lightly" just isn't in my fucking vocabulary, all right? You know people are going to be Conaning those things right off the bulkhead. Something intrinsically cruel having the last forty seconds of your life turn into a "Lucy" skit.
I think instead of oxygen, they ought to pump in nitrous oxide. This way, if the plane does wreck—that first rescue team comes onto the scene—you're up in a tree still strapped in your seat just laughing your ass off. Guys say, "Bobby, get over here. Look how hip this guy is. I mean, he's naked, he's blue, he's howling. This cat is centered, huh?"
You know what I hate is when you're sitting in coach class and they pull that curtain on first class. Oh, I see, they paid an extra forty dollars and I'm a fucking leper. I always get the feeling that if the plane's about to wreck, the front compartment breaks off into a little Goldfinger mini- plane. They're on their way to Rio and I'm a charcoal briquet on the ground.
You know who I feel sorry for in the whole air-travel scenario? It's the poor bastard who has to drive the jetway. You know that little accordion tentacle that weaves its way out to meet the plane? Everybody else is Waldo Pepperin' around in their Bobby Lansing leather bomber jackets, the right stuff coursing through their veins as they push the outside of the envelope. Your job is to drive the building.
A lot of qualifications to sit next to that exit door, huh? When did that happen? I've been a physical klutz for years. I'm like Clouseau. Nobody's ever said a word. All of a sudden they want me to be a fucking Navy SEAL. I guess they want to be sure the person sitting there doesn't panic in the event that the plane goes down in water. Item number 8 on the qualification list was "You must not be Ted Kennedy."
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
america the touchy
NOW I DON'T WANT TO GET OFF ON A RANT HERE, but that's the problem with America. You can't tease anybody. I read now that gay people don't even want to be called gay anymore. They now wish to be referred to as Asian.
"Hey, what's Dennis saying there, man? Is Dennis saying all Asians are gay? Is Dennis saying all gays are Asian?" You know what I'm saying ... all Asians are gay.
Now somewhere out there, there's an Asian person taking pen to paper in protest. And I want you to hear me out ... put the pen down, it was a joke. Walk away from it. Let it go. It never happened. It was a comment on how pathetically neurotic we've all become over our own little piece of turf. Obviously, you know I don't believe that all Asians are gay. For Christ's sake there's a billion of you, I know somebody's fucking out there, okay?
