You Have No Idea

Tags

awkward photos, cats, internet, media, pet photos

You have no idea how demeaning this is for both of us.

How, after 12 years, our companionship is now winnowed
down to one ill-advised portrait for all the World Wide Web to ridicule.

We have both seen better days.

Your eyes bear the toll of three failed marriages, two home foreclosures,
and countless hours of screeching at The Real Housewives of Orange County.
My girth betrays Fancy Feasts, Friskies, and full days sunning myself
beneath the bay window of our townhouse apartment.

“C’mon, Winston!” you bellowed, gathering me in your arms to pose before the camera carefully placed atop the liquor cabinet. “Don’t you want to get famous?”

I didn’t, but now I am, in a perverse kind of way.

At least smile, dammit, if you’re going to expose us like this.

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The Story Behind the Photo (Maybe)

Tags

1990s, 1991, friendship, high school, hormones, lolapalooza, love, lust, r.e.m., summer, teens

This picture was taken sometime during the summer before senior year. We called ourselves “The Group” that summer, and we did everything together. Or maybe it’s better to say we went everywhere together: Six Flags, Lolapalooza, baseball games, the beach at Hightower Lake, the big July 4th fireworks show. Jeremy was a ticket-taker at the Omni 6 multiplex, and he let us in for free if it wasn’t too busy. The Group saw a lot of great movies that way: Terminator 2, Thelma and Louise, Bill & Ted Go to Hell, The Naked Gun 2. Okay, so maybe they weren’t all great movies.

We were smart kids, but we weren’t nerds. We had friends who were popular and accepted us, but we were never in the cool crowd. We were ambitious. We talked a lot that summer about SATs and college applications, about how great it would be to go somewhere like Stanford or Duke or NYU, anyplace far away from Cantering Hills and its suburban ranch-house sameness. We shared a few of our secrets and insecurities with each other, but there was little talk about The Group enduring past senior year. We were all headed in different directions to realize different dreams.

Things started getting weird in late August. That was around the time of the infamous Saturday night sleepover at Shawn’s house. Someone brought a case of Keystone, and I think it was Jennifer who scored a 2-liter of Purple Passion. Most of us crashed on the king-size bed in the master bedroom and, at some point during the night, Shawn and Lexie hooked up. Shawn claimed he unsnapped Lexie’s bra, but Lexie swore that wasn’t true–it was just a lot of making out and maybe a little dry humping. Nobody took their clothes off, she said. At any rate, The Group was never quite the same after that.

That was followed by Jeremy’s Big Crush on Jennifer, an obsession that lasted six weeks and one that Jennifer did not reciprocate. At one point Jeremy made her a mixed tape titled “Shiny/Happy,” which contained the usual dreary alternative songs about heartbreak and rejection. That tape sat in Jen’s Mazda for a whole year but I don’t think she ever listened to it. Everything came to a head after the Fort Mill football game. Jeremy got into a fifth of Wild Turkey and decided to T-P the big oak tree in Jen’s front yard. Unfortunately, her father woke up before Jeremy could unleash all his rolls, and he chased Jeremy down the street while brandishing a 5-iron.

The Group still hung out that fall, usually Saturday nights at the Flowery Branch access on the lake. But the gatherings were less frequent and more awkward. The end came on a chilly November night in the high school parking lot. I had just finished band practice and was heading back to my car with French horn in hand when Jeremy stopped me.

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” he said.

I felt a tightness in my throat. I knew what this was about.

“What are you talking about?” I asked anyway.

“The way you treated Todd,” he said. “That was cold. I talked to Shawn about it and he agrees. We don’t want to hang out with you anymore.”

Jeremy was referring to Todd Baker, the sixth member of The Group. I knew Todd had a crush on me. I had known it since the beginning of the summer when we went swimming in the lake and he kept running his hands through my wet, tangled hair. At the movies, Todd would always find a way to sit next to me and sometimes he would thread his popcorn buttered fingers into mine. I finally let him kiss me on the bus ride back from an Honor Society rally we all attended. He had thin lips and was a delicate, almost cautious kisser. We never did anything after that, but now he was pissed off because I was seeing Darren Barnhorse.

“You led him on,” Jeremy said. “You shouldn’t treat Todd like that. He’s your friend.”

“Exactly,” I said, striding toward my Volkswagen Rabbit. “We’re friends, and that’s it.”

I made it to my car and reached for the door handle, but Jeremy blocked me. He leaned in, his breath smelling faintly like a bean burrito. It was 5:30, and the sky had a purplish tint. It felt like it could rain at any moment.

“You think you’re so cool, don’t you?” he said. Then he pressed his lips against mine, hard. It was an angry kiss, but I more than held my own. I pulled away after a few seconds, or maybe it was a few minutes. Jeremy stepped aside and I got into my car and cranked the ignition. He offered a tiny wave as I backed out–not the kind of gesture someone gives you when they don’t want to be friends anymore.

I drove off with two thoughts in my brain: 1.) I had left my French horn somewhere on the asphalt parking lot and, 2.) The Group was seriously fucked.

 

 

The Story Behind the Photo…Maybe

Tags

1990s, gangsta, high school, player, purple passion, sex, suburbia

When you a player, it don’t matter who you ask to the Park Hill High School Christmas Ball. It’s who you end up with that matters.

When you a player, you gotta look the part: cuffs on your pleated pants rolled up ’90s-style, button-down collar, red power tie. Lookin’ sharp, G.

When you a player, wrapping your arms around two fine young ladies is just another day in a player’s life. So what if you sneak a peak down a lady’s dress just to see what kind of engine’s under the hood? Players ain’t perfect, yo.

When you a player, it don’t mean nothin’ if you got an E.T. alarm clock and you sleep on Star Wars bed sheets. It don’t matter if you got your jean jacket from your big brother when he left to go to KU.

When you a player, you got a network of brothers who can hook a player up with a 12-pack of Keystone Light and maybe, on special occasions, a bottle of Purple Passion.

When you a player, the back seat of a 1982 Buick Regal after the Christmas Ball can be exactly that. Regal.

Merry Christmas, y’all.
Player, out!

The Story Behind the Photo…Maybe

Tags

1970s, andy griffith, dick van patten, distractify.com, family photos, fiction, humor, leonard nimoy, photo, sears, star trek, Stephen Roth, story behind the photo

When it came to being a husband and dad, you might say that Mike Schaefer was a bit of a traditionalist.

It was Mike who sat at the head of the table each evening and said grace before the family dug into dinner, and it was Mike who roused everyone out of bed at six o’clock each morning, before heading to his job as an IBM engineer, so that he could from Psalms or Proverbs and get everyone’s day off to a good start. On family outings, Mike was always at the wheel of the Schaefers’ Town & Country station wagon, and he insisted on controlling the tape deck, usually opting for something by The Carpenters or Andy Williams.

Last fall, Mike was the one who decided it was time to invest in a Video Cassette Recorder, and he took pride in knowing how to time it to tape episodes of his two favorite shows in syndication, Star Trek and The Andy Griffith Show. And, of course it was Mike, appalled at all the acid rock infesting the radio, who decided that the Schaefers would form their own “family-friendly” band, which he named, appropriately, “The Mike Schaefer Singers.” They would perform their first gig in July at the V.F.W. Hall, and Mike could hardly wait for his war buddies to hear the group’s exciting but completely wholesome new sound.

Yes, Mike called the shots in the Schaefer family, unlike some of those other families you might see on television, where the dad was usually kind of a clueless, Dick Van Patten-style dolt. Lisa Schaefer was good at doing what she did – keeping things clean, cooking great meals, and making sure that Mike Jr. and Michelle dressed stylishly. Lisa was a good hausfrau, as Mike’s Austrian grandfather might have put it. But Mike was the king of his castle, the master of his domain.

When it came time to take the annual Schaefer family picture, and the guy at Sears explained that there was a new, high-tech method of blending one photographic image into another, making it appear that one family member was hovering over everyone else, as if watching over them like some sort of deity, the family instinctively knew what to do.

“That should be you, Dad,” Mike Jr. suggested.

“Who me?” said Mike. “Oh, no. That sounds silly.”

“You really should, dear,” Lisa said. “You’re the rock in our family, our spiritual guide. It would be perfect.”

“You think so, huh?” Mike said, quietly pleased that he didn’t have to be the one to mention the idea. “Well, okay.”

Years later, as the nation and its values continued to tumble to new lows on an almost daily basis, it remained Mike Schaefer’s favorite family photo. And he kept it in a sacred place atop his mantelpiece, right next to the autographed picture of Leonard Nimoy.

Photo borrowed from distractify.com.

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe

Tags

bear, fiction, fitness, grizzly, humor, jackson hole, personal trainers, television, weight loss, wilderness

Amanda Armstrong
Fitness Trainer
Hollywood, CA

Dear Miss Armstrong,

Let me just start by saying that I’ve been a huge fan of yours since Season One of Ultimate Hardcore Weight Loss Challenge. What you accomplished with that 460-pound woman from Little Rock convinced me that there was someone out there who was strong, passionate and caring enough to help me with my own weight problem. I’m writing to ask you to consider working with me on your show, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this may be the very last chance for me to change my destructive eating habits.

As you can see from the above photo, I’m a bear. There I am, tipping the scale at more than 700 pounds shortly after an unfortunate eating binge in which I devoured four campers and their Labradoodle. This was just outside Jackson Hole in the summer of 2012 and, as the picture illustrates, I’m not feeling too good about myself. There was a time not long ago when I was a trim cub of under 350 pounds, splashing around, scoring fish, and mixing it up with my buddies in the river. As I packed on more weight over the years, however, my metabolism took a real hit and I had to feed on slower, more docile prey. Like tourists, for instance.

I don’t want to live this kind of life. I’ve tried all sorts of diets and other weight loss programs over the years. Some were successful, but I always ended up gaining back the pounds I lost, and then some. Now, I’m pretty close to just giving up. Some days it’s all I can do to drag myself out of the cave and dig through the trash of a nearby campground. Other days I’m too depressed to even do that. I just veg out in front of the TV, counting the weeks until hibernation.

Miss Armstrong, I know you’re a busy woman, and that you get letters like this all the time. I also know that having a man-eating grizzly on your show might be considered a risk. All I can say is, if selected to participate in Season Two of U.H.W.L.C., I promise that I will do everything you ask of me, and then some. I know my health and happiness depend on it.

Best Regards,

Hungry Bear

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe (Version 5.0)

Tags

betting, family, football, humor, NFL, parenthood, photo fiction, tosh.o

Jeff felt his left eye twitch rhythmically, as it always did when he’d had more than three cups of coffee or was under intense, pounding pressure. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why Kathy had scheduled a family photo shoot at 4 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon.

Right now, posing with his wife and six-month-old daughter for an 8 x 11 glossy that would sit on their mantle for the rest of their lives was the last thing on Jeff’s mind. What was on his mind was football, specifically the fourth quarter of the Dallas-Cleveland game. As they parked their car at Portrait Expressions, Tony Romo and the Cowboys were on the Browns’ 24 yard line, threatening to score again.

“Get him! Get him!” Jeff screamed at his iPhone as the screen showed Romo scrambling out of the pocket with two Browns in pursuit.

“Jeff, you’re gonna scare Madison,” Kathy scolded. “Put the phone away.”

He did for the moment. But he tuned in again as they waited in the lobby for the photographer. The Cowboys had settled for a field goal and now the Browns had possession.

“Hold on to the damn ball,” he implored.

“Jeff, stop it!” his wife whispered.

Jeff had never been much of a betting man, but Madison’s arrival and his modest salary as an apprentice landscaper for The Grass Hut encouraged him to a little coin down on some NFL games. When he picked up the Plain Dealer on Monday and saw that the Cowboys were favored to beat Cleveland by 14 points – a betting line of absurd proportions for a professional football game – he couldn’t help but put $500 on the Browns to beat the spread. After all, the game was in Cleveland and it was late November. Anything could happen in those conditions, he thought.

The game was back-and-forth for three quarters, then Dallas pulled away. The field goal had put the Cowboys up 31-21. Now, Jeff pulled the phone from his pants pocket and saw Dallas had the ball again, and was driving. There were four minutes to go.

“Bring him down!” he growled.

“Okay, honey.” With Madison perched on her hip, Kathy grabbed the phone from Jeff’s hand and dumped it into her oversized purse. “No more Fantasy Football today.”

Jeff winced. Kathy had no idea about the bet, of course. She couldn’t imagine how much he had put on the line for his wife and daughter. But he knew he had to do it. Two years ago, as a high school senior, he played Billy Bigelow in the school production of Carousel. At the time, taking a role in the play was just another way to meet girls. But now those words from Billy’s “Soliloquy” seared him with meaning: I’ll go out and make it or steal it or taaaaake it… or die!

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the photographer appeared and ushered them to a stool in front of a brownish backdrop. Kathy sat on the stool with Madison in her lap, and Jeff kind of crouched up against them, knees bent, like he had just taken a shot to the gut.

“Get in a little closer,” the photographer told Jeff. “Pretend you like ’em.”

Jeff complied. He noticed the guy was wearing a Browns ball cap. That gave him an idea.

“Hey, man,” he said. “You catch the final score of the game? Last I saw, they were down by ten.”

The photographer looked into his lens and chuckled. “Oh, it got worse. Dallas scored two more touchdowns. What are you gonna do? Maybe we’ll get a good draft pick.”

Jeff felt the sensation of what seemed like three golf balls working their way slowly down his throat.

“Smiles, everyone!” the photographer said.

Photo pulled from tosh.comedycentral.com.

Bible Stories for Our Times, Part 1

Tags

applebee's, baseball, bible, disciples, jesus, miracles, satire, sports

And from there they walked to Applebee’s, and the disciples said, “We only have enough to order one 2 for $20 meal.” And Jesus said, “Don’t worry about it.” And the disciples ate and were satisfied. And when the restaurant manager saw what Jesus had done, he treated all of them to free Blue Ribbon Brownies.

Jesus left there and crossed the four-lane expressway to a baseball park, where a very small boy stood at the plate awaiting a pitch. The boy, seeing Jesus, cried out, “Lord, help me!” The disciples, knowing the boy had only been on base twice that year–both times being walks–begged Jesus not to get involved. “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. He walked up to the boy and said, “You have great faith! Your request is granted.” And he told the boy that, to begin with, his bat was too big, and that he needed to choke up and shorten his swing. The tiny boy did this, and hit a sharp grounder through the second baseman’s legs, driving in a run to tie the game. The people were amazed and asked, “Who is this man?” Jesus left the ballpark, and large crowds followed him. Word spread about him quickly throughout the metropolitan area.

Image courtesy of a Facebook friend.

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe

Tags

1980s, fiction, flash fiction, graduation, high school, humor, myrtle beach, senior, university of alabama

Holy crap, this is really happening, Karen thought as she folded her hands neatly across the front of her laurel green cable-knit sweater.  Three damn years of Drama Club, Anchor Club, Tennis Team, National Honor Society, Drill Team and Latin Club. Three damn years of smiling at everyone I pass in the hallways, staying up past midnight primping the homecoming float, showing up to school 20 minutes early every single morning to prepare the intercom announcements. Three damn years of designated driving, “passing on grass,” and never letting any boy get his hands past second base (not even during those epic make-out sessions with Danny Cruse over the summer at Myrtle Beach). Three years, and I have finally made it. I am one of 20 promising young men and women chosen for Senior Spotlight in the 1989 edition of the Platte Springs High School Lancer yearbook.

It had been hard work but, as she told her best friend Cami over the phone the night before, it was totally worth it. Karen knew she wanted to be in the Senior Spotlight since she was an 11-year-old sneaking into her big sister Beth’s room and leafing through her 1982 volume of the Lancer. These guys, Karen thought as she stared at the glossy grins of 20 good-looking, well-scrubbed high schoolers, really are the best.

Beth had been Spotlighted. So had Karen’s other two sisters, Jennifer and Amy. Now it was her turn. Being part of Senior Spotlight wasn’t just an honor for Karen Cupperman. It was sort of a birthright.

She clasped her hands in front of her, tilted her head and smiled wide for the photographer. This really is happening, Karen told herself. She wanted to be excited. She was excited. But not the way she expected. She expected a wave of ecstasy to wash over and perhaps carry her a few feet above the soggy practice field where they’d decided to take these photos. Instead, she felt little more than a dull pride, then nervousness. Is this all there is to it? she thought. Nobody’s going to give a crap about Senior Spotlight next year at the University of Alabama. What am I going to do then?

Her smile faded a bit. Her mother would describe Karen’s look as “winsome,” when the two of them flipped through the yearbook several months later. Her mom was always dropping these little words and phrases that seemed to come straight out of a Jane Austen novel.

“What exactly does winsome mean?” Karen asked.

“Oh, you know. Fetching,” her mom said. “Winning.”

Karen looked down at the picture and clucked her tongue. Winning? No, that wasn’t it.

 

The Story Behind the Photo (Maybe)

Tags

fiction, guns 'n roses, humor, metallica, olan mills, rock music, rush, styx

Gregg had a dream. That dream was to become the best-known Irish hard rock singer/guitarist since Phil Lynott OD’ed on heroin in 1986. But, unlike Phil, Gregg didn’t have a band. And he lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. And he wasn’t Irish.

“But so what, right?” he said one night over beers with a friend at The Lonely Pin, a popular Erie bar and bowling alley. “I mean, whoever said you have to have a four-piece band to make rock ‘n’ roll music? If you got the chops, who needs a goddamned rhythm section?”

Gregg had the chops. Everyone agreed on that. He could pick up somebody’s six-string and crank out the solo of “Why My Guitar Gently Weeps” in such a heart-rending way that you could swear Clapton was in the room. By all rights, musicians from around the city should have been lining up to jam with Gregg. It hadn’t worked out that way, though. Gregg, it had been noted time and again since he was in preschool, did not play particularly well with others.

“I play what I wanna play,” he told his buddy at the bar. “I bring on some guys, and the next thing you know, we gotta do ‘Just What I Needed,’ because that’s Jim’s girlfriend’s favorite Cars song. Or we have to do eight minutes of ‘By-Tor & the Snowman’ because Jason’s a huge Rush fan. No way. I’m not doing it.”

“I think it’s called ‘By-Tor & the Snow Dog,'” his friend said.

“Well, whatever,” Gregg said, and he finished his Miller High Life. “Rush is dumb, anyway. Their songs make no sense.”

That night, Gregg decided once and for all to go it alone. He took his BC Rich Warlock (the guitar’s distinct, jagged body just screamed heavy metal), a mic stand and a portable amp and started playing the streets of downtown Erie. He spent most of his time outside the Olive Garden, where he could pull in as much as $20 an hour from the high-rollers who were out to impress their dates on a Saturday night. A natural entertainer, Gregg kept his playlist accessible: a little Guns & Roses, some Alice In Chains, a few of Metallica’s more popular stuff. Nothing too hard, nothing too obscure. He wasn’t trying to win someone’s coolness contest. He was trying to make payments on his $200-a-month studio apartment, as well as finance some voice lessons.

Eventually, he made enough scratch to start thinking about a tour. To do a tour, Gregg reasoned, you needed some advance publicity or, at the very least, an 8 x 11 glossy of yourself. So he walked into an Olan Mills studio with his favorite guitar one Tuesday afternoon for a photo shoot. It was September 22, 1992, according to the police report.

“You a musician?” asked the photographer, a pallid, middle-aged man with an unconvincing comb-over.

“Yeah,” said Gregg, thinking that was pretty obvious, what with the guitar and all.

“What kind of music do you play?”

With a bit of a sigh, Gregg listed a few bands that he thought the guy might know. The photographer nodded and kept snapping away.

“So,” he said after a moment, “where are your pals?”

“Excuse me?” Gregg asked.

“Where’s your band?”

Gregg shifted the guitar to his left hand and struck what he hoped was an intimidating pose. “It’s just me. I’m the band.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

The photographer stepped away from his tripod and pushed his comb-over back with a grand sweep of his hand. “There is no way you could do the music of Styx any justice as one guy with a guitar.”

“Wanna bet?” Gregg said with a forced smile. “Besides, I only do one Styx song, and it’s mostly because jack-offs like you ask for it.”

“Which song?”

“‘Come Sail Away.'”

“Of course,” the photographer said, returning his lens. “Of course. And the next thing you’ll tell me is you’ve got the nimble fingers of Tommy Shaw and the angelic voice of Dennis DeYoung.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Blasphemy.”

Gregg was starting to get a little hot. “What is your deal, man? You treat all your customers like this?”

“Only the ones with over-sized egos. I’ve seen you play before. The Olive Garden, right?

“You know what I think?” the photographer continued, still snapping away. “I think you’re not good enough to have your own band.”

The last thing Gregg remembers was gritting his teeth, lifting the white guitar over his shoulder and rushing the middle-aged man and his camera. The rest, he would tell police, was a blur.

The Story Behind the Photo (Maybe)

Tags

beer, dick cheney, fiction, humor, iraq, politics, raccoon, vice president, war, washington, wyoming

“You’re going to love this one, Roscoe,” Dick said as he popped open another longneck. “It’s from a microbrew called Freedom Rings in Jasper. They have a really good pale ale.”

He brought the bottle to Roscoe’s lips, then tipped it back slowly. Raccoons can do a lot of things, Dick thought, but their paws weren’t very adept at handling a cool beverage.

Dick smiled as he watched the sun dip over the trees that lined his Wilson, Wyoming, home. There was a time when he was the most powerful, influential man in the world, when he might stroll into the Situation Room after breakfast to watch the shock and awe rain down on Baghdad and think to himself, “This is my war.” Those were heady days, and it was hard to remember everything about them. Did he abuse his authority? Maybe. Did he overreach himself? Sure. The great ones often do.

That was a few years ago. Now it was just Roscoe and him, sitting on the back porch, sharing a few brews and watching the summer light fade. Lynne was out of town, so it was just the boys. In a little while, he and Roscoe might pile into the F-250, drive into town and stir up some trouble. For now, Dick wanted to relax and enjoy the stillness.

“You know, I didn’t really give a damn whether we found weapons of mass destruction or not,” he said. “We had to go in there. Some people will never understand that.”

“Shut up, Dick,” Roscoe growled, “and hand me another beer.”

Image pulled from DudeLOL.com.