The Rants, page 9
You know ... this really is a great country. Remind yourself of it once in a while. Take the family on Route 66, shop at the Galleria, buy a gun, have your breasts enlarged, have your penis lengthened, sue your neighbor, eat three Big Macs, drive 120 and pay the ticket, visit the White House—or better yet, jump the fence and go meet the Prez in person. He likes that. He really really likes that. It's America, goddamn it!!
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
teen pregnancy
ISN'T IT IRONIC THAT SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE TO adopt children while teenagers who have no right being in the baby-making business are spewing out toddlers faster than a candy conveyor belt operated by Lucy Ricardo on methamphetamine?
A new survey in Wednesday's USA Today says that half of all teenagers have engaged in some sort of sexual activity. High school newspapers are now printing birth announcements. Our kids are having sex at younger and younger ages. Pretty soon, prophylactic companies will be selling condoms with a secret prize in every box. You know, when I was a kid, the closest I ever got to sex was getting a woody from holding my books on my lap during a bumpy school bus ride. Sure, there were always a couple of guys and a couple of girls in each class who were on the hormonal Concorde, but we treated their exploits like we treated NASA space shots—with respectful awe, yet a total ignorance of the physics involved. Nowadays, that has all changed. When it comes to reproduction, our country has become a giant all-night Kinko's.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the youth of America is screwing like there's no tomorrow, probably because to them it looks like there's no tomorrow.
Too often these days, a teenage girl's "inner child" is literally that. Our kids are having kids faster than Republicans can cut their school lunches. Our teen birthrate is twice that of England's, three times as high as Sweden's. It's the highest adolescent birthrate in the developed world. And it's spawned a generation of fatherless children who wind up joining gangs, or even worse, improv groups.
How did it come to pass that America's teenagers have gone from overcrowding phone booths to overcrowding the planet?
Well, a lot of these teenagers who are having kids themselves are doing so because they want to become pregnant, they want the attention, they want to feel loved. And that's a major tragedy right there. Parenting is the toughest job in the world. Ironically, it's the easiest job to get—you just have to screw up once and it's yours. Thir- teen-year-olds having babies so that they can feel grownup. What happened to trying on Mom's heels and makeup? Christ, I still do that.
How do we begin to rectify this problem? Well, we can start by teaching sex education. A young boy shouldn't have to file forms under the Freedom of Information Act just to get the approximate shape and location of a girl's vagina. This type of useless mystery surrounding sex only adds to the desire.
And while we're at it, let's teach a follow-up class to sex education. Call it Reality 101—the right thing to do if you bring a bambino into this world. Hammering home to a sixteen-year-old teen that he or she is going to have to quit school, quit video games, quit "hangin' out," quit boogie-boardin,' and instead work a fifty-hour week dropping frozen chicken tenders into hot oil just so you can keep little "Scooter Junior" in Similac, well, trust me, that's a bigger deterrent to teenage sex than the backseat of a fuckin' Yugo.
Now, sure, some of these teens are so experienced they could be teaching sex education, but it's up to us to teach them the consequences of their postpubescent grope-fests.
It's sadly ironic that the breakdown of the nuclear family has actually resulted in the increase of family members. Wouldn't you rather go with your kid to a sex education class now, than a Lamaze class seven months from now?
And let me also speak to you semi-Joey Lawrence/Bobby Brown/Rico Suave wanna-bes out there—if you get a girl pregnant, marry her. I'm a firm believer in the "teenage shotgun wedding." One, because it's the right thing to do, and two, because, hey, nowadays, most teenagers have shotguns anyway.
As for our esteemed leadership in Washington? Sometimes it would appear that these demagogues furtively crave teen pregnancies because they need the scapegoats.
Well, we need to get the Religious Right to take off their official Ralph Reed blinders and wake up. I know they'd rather have kids learn about sex the same way they did— from disgraced TV evangelists. But look, we all need morality in our lives. But abstinence isn't working for priests these days, so I doubt it's going to work for teenagers cranked up on Nine Inch Nails and fruit coolers. So to all of you "Bu-Caynan-ites" out there—just calm down. Nobody's passing out condoms to increase the sexual activity of kids. Condoms don't make babies—people do.
Listen, our kids have a void inside them—they're kids, for chrissakes—and if we don't fill that void with love, they'll fill the void with sex.
They're bombarded with imagery and attitudes every day that say it's okay to do just that. Let's stop making silicone boobs and pumped-up abs the only logo our kids ever see for "The Good Life." Then maybe we'll see a day when the only ovens our kids have buns in say "E-Z Bake" on the side. America, let's grow up about sex. Let's realize that a Surgeon General who speaks her mind about sex education, teen pregnancy, and preventative health care doesn't deserve to be Surgeon General ... she deserves to be the fucking President of the United States.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
the presidency
Y'KNOW, BILL CLINTON CAN WALK SOLEMNLY through the Rose Garden with Nelson Mandela every day of the year and we'll still see a ruddy- faced frat-rat who's probably wondering what the presidential seal would look like on the ass of that blond reporter in the second row.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what has happened to the presidency?
The last half dozen presidents have been bunko artists who make Melvin Dumar look like he was Edward R. Murrow. Let's dust for prints. You had LBJ, the jug-eared sage of the South, whose Vietnam policy tore the country apart like a silk blouse marked down to $2.99 at a Target Assistant Manager's Day Sale.
You had Nixon: a fleshy homunculus with a paranoid psyche lodged in his whirring tin brain like a radioactive walnut. Nixon, with his preternatural sweaty brow and a beard so thick he had to shave while he was shaving.
And then there was Gerald Ford, whom I hold personally responsible for Chevy's talk show.
Enter Jimmy Carter, lusting in his heart and driving a VW Rabbit to the airport himself to pick up the Russian premier.
Which led us to Ronald Reagan, the aging spendthrift with the black enamel Bob's Big Boy hairdo who told the country that we could have our pie and eat it too. And we'd never get fat while we lay in bed, stupefied by potato chip grease and bourbon, a hand in our underpants, watching "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," and hoping we wouldn't have to wait until next week to win the lottery.
And Reagan, Reagan begot Bush, the thin-lipped C student from Yale who spent more time out of the country than Roman Polanski. George Bush, a President who looked all the more like a king for the fool he kept with him—the freckle-faced muffin head from the great state of Indiana, Dan Quayle.
And it tells me a lot about how far the presidency has fallen that a guy like Quayle can actually throw his jughead crown into the ring, in public, in print, and not be hounded from the room in a hail of desk staplers, dictionaries, small trash barrels, and half-eaten boxes of vegetable fried rice. I am appalled that this Chuzzlewit can actually aspire to the presidency outside the walls of a mental institution and people don't tie him down and scrape his frontal lobes with a trowel like some demented Clockwork Orange Droogie who's due to be rewired.
No, our expectations have shriveled to the point where people just nod and write him a check. "Yeah, okay. President Quayle. Beautiful. Where's the bathtub with the Kool-Aid?"
And that dumps us out at the Clinton presidency—Faust meets L'il Abner. Bill Clinton ... Cute kid, but I'm not exactly getting the "Ghandi-ji" vibe off him at this point. Not a bad man, but not a good man either. Not a man of character, solid and sure, principled and even-handed, but an average Joe, tugged all around the game board of life by his need to be liked, his desire to press his flesh against the flesh of pretty girls, his love of fatty foods, rail drinks, and sappy Fleetwood Mac songs, peddling gimcrack philosophies to a simple beat any clunk can dance to.
Sure, Bill has a few good ideas, and he seems to genuinely want what's best for the country, but so what? Does that make him a President of consequence like Jefferson, Lincoln, or Truman? No, it doesn't. He's only the President because every four years, we have to pick one. That's all. He took a ticket, waited awhile, got his order, and pretty soon he'll leave the restaurant. We'll clean his table and get ready for the next shmo with aspirations beyond his capabilities.
Well, I'll be honest with you, folks, what I'm looking for is somebody to just swipe the table clean in a frustrated Five Easy Pieces rage because the service in this place is really starting to suck. I mean what happened? What do we see these days when we look at a President? A schemer, a poll-taking self-aggrandizer who knows how—when he is caught red-handed cheating on his taxes, humping a campaign volunteer, or squelching the common good for PAC contributions—to run down to Kmart and wade into a bunch of hamburger-addler wage slaves, snatch up one of their wally-eyed babies stunned into placidity by mother's milk mixed liberally with diet Coke and Nuprin, kiss it for the cameras, then zip back to the Oval Office while the photo-op is developed and mainlined into the homes of good folks who will see a man who's done wrong, surely, but loves babies. And that's America: dulled by mindless entertainment to the hard facts, and hopeful that the Big Lie is really the big truth.
Well, the Big Lie just isn't going to work anymore. And I think that if this President and future Presidents really want to be taken to the bosom of the American people, they're gonna have to come clean with us. They're going to have to drop the obfuscation, drop the smoke and mirrors, and the pretense and denial, drop the weapons-grade bullshit, look America squarely in the eye and say, "Yeah, I inhaled it. Then I drank the fuckin' bong water."
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
what men want from women
CHRIST, MOST MEN DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT they want from Ben & Jerry's much less from women.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what do I want from a woman? Well, nothing. I personally am happily married to a beautiful, sexy, intelligent woman, and therefore am completely satisfied physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
But I do remember what it was like to be one of you, one of the walking dead staggering from seedy singles bar to seedy singles bar using your unrequited, and might I add diminutive, excuse for a hard-on as a sexual divining rod in a pathetic, fruitless effort to find a woman, or at least somebody who has a few of the body parts, who might actually fake nominal interest in that dog-eared, hackneyed, nightmarish story that you have the nerve to call your life.
So I can sympathize.
But I can't really speak for the entire male collective, which is so diverse it makes the bar scene in Star Wars look like an IBM management seminar.
I will say that one constant theme in man's interaction with women is the Madonna/whore complex, and believe me that's just the tip of the Oedipal iceberg. Quite frankly, I think when you get a guy alone he'll readily confess he not only has a Madonna/whore complex, he's got a Mother, Au Pair, Catholic Nun, Hullabaloo Dancer, Julie Newmar-Cat Woman, Asian Cigarette girl, Pamela Anderson in a Plexiglas House, Miss Hathaway with a Riding Crop-complex. And you should also understand this about men. Men aren't designed to be introspective. We don't always know how we're feeling. We don't even know how we're feeling. Your vagina goes inward, you introspect. Our penises point outward—we want to knock things over with it, all right.
I know the myth is that men want—Traci Lords in the bedroom, Julia Child in the kitchen, Hazel around the house, Lesley Visser during a game, Mary Poppins for the children, Cha Cha Muldowney in traffic, Dr. Quinn medicine chick when we're sick, Mary Richards at work, Mother Teresa when we come home with leprosy, Gertrude Stein in conversation, the body of Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin combined with the voice of Sade, and to top it all off the IQ of Anna Nicole Smith, because, of course, we don't want to feel too threatened.
So, that's the myth of what we want, what's the reality? Well, first off put that Cosmo article down right now and back slowly away from the magazine!
Now go to the window and take a deep breath. You must clear your head of bullshit articles like "How to Trick Your Man into Cooking Tex-Mex." Trick me? How's about asking me? And then I'll be able to tell you I don't have a fucking clue what Tex-Mex is, okay?!
But what I look for in a woman is what most guys look for in a woman, and what most women look for in a guy: somebody I want to be with. Somebody who's fun, intelligent, attractive. Somebody it won't be hard to spend time with. All that other stuff is just details.
What else do men want? How about being treated like a lady once in a while?
All right, I'm not supposed to do this. I'm not supposed to reveal the master list to all you non tri-pods, but what the hell. Here goes. Here's what men want from women. One through ten:
ONE—We want you to understand that we don't give a shit about clothes. All right. Yours or ours. All we need is one pair of tennies and one pair of church shoes. That's it.
TWO—Don't talk to us while the television is on. All right. Very simple. Television is off, we talk. Television is on, we don't talk.
THREE—When you're behind the wheel of a car, if you want to get aggressive, that's fine, but don't give somebody the finger and expect me to defend your honor when Steroid Lad comes over swinging a pair of nun-chucks, all right?
FOUR—Would it kill you to watch The Godfather with me for the fifty-seventh time?
FIVE—Hey, I'm sorry, but some of us see a beautiful sunset and think, "You know I'll betcha my accountant is boning me up the ass."
SIX—You go see Nell by yourself, all right? I met enough chicks like that at Helena's when I was single.
SEVEN—Have a sense of humor. Without a sense of humor a relationship lasts about as long as William Burroughs in the Boston Marathon.
EIGHT—Work out your job-related anger before we have sex. Just because Helmut, the office boy, brought you the cup of lima bean consomme instead of the bowl of lima bean consomme from Soup Plantation, I don't want to end up in the friction burn groin ward at Cedars-Sinai. All right?
NINE—Don't ask us to cry. As much as you say you want us to cry, you don't really want us to cry. You hate it when we cry. I've tried crying in front of my wife. She enjoyed it for about thirty seconds and then started thinking, "Why in the fuck did I marry this hamster?"
AND TEN, be patient. Hold us. Love us unconditionally. Help us out of this testosterone-induced fog we dwell in and lead us into the light. Or if that's asking too much, how's about a big sloppy blow job once in a while.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
exercise
YOU KNOW, BILL CLINTON IS LIVING PROOF THAT physical exercise can be a complete waste of time, isn't he? I mean the more he jogs, the bigger he gets. You realize that if this guy is reelected, the leader of the free world will be Bib the Michelin Man.
Thank you. Did we go Pavlov there with the sign?! Not that I'm one to talk. The other day, I noticed my wife had hung a picture on the wall of her with another man.
A man whose chin and cheekbones had definition, a man who didn't need to suck in his gut like Hasselhoff in a public sauna just to get through the monologue on his own highly acclaimed HBO show. And as I continued to gaze at the photo I realized the svelte stranger was in fact me. I used to be in shape. What the hell happened?
Well, what happened to me has happened to a lot of us. One night you and your wife finish off a large sausage pizza with extra sausage, and you notice she didn't have any. You think uhh, you think, "Boy, I should work this meal off," then you lay down on the couch for a little fifteen-year nap.
