Lords of the Flies

My wife let the word "bullshit" loose at the dinner table at my parent's house last night, and my mother was hysterical with laughter.

"She's really one of us now," I said, and my mother laughed even harder.

"What?" Mrs. Apron asked, the picture of innocence.

"I've never heard you talk like that before!" my mother exclaimed, laughing still, in her gray sweatsuit-- her Sunday evening, don't-care-a-damn outfit.

"Oh, please," I said, "her mouth is as filthy as any of ours."

(It's thanks to me, of course.)

Mrs. Apron was born to a family where swearing was not tolerated. It is not tolerated by her mother. I recall a visit to her parent's house several years ago and her father made the mistake of telling his wife that he was going in the backyard, "to pick up dog shit."

"THE WORD IS 'POOPIE!'" Mrs. Apron's mother shouted with strained vocals.

The word, my friends, is poopie.

At my parent's dining room table, the swears fly like, well, flies.

"What the fuck is with all these goddamned flies?" I asked my mother, swatting the air in front of me, brushing aside yet another savage little black bastard.

"They're coming from the sink," my father said, "the plumber asshole is finally coming over on Tuesday."

"Does he have to come on Tuesday, for Christ's sake?" my mother yelled, "the baby's here on Tuesday!"

"Uggh, please! The baby is here-- who give a shit if the baby is here? We have to get rid of these fucking flies! The plumber is not going to be banging on pipes! FUCK!"

"I DO NOT WANT HIM HERE WHEN THE BABY IS HERE TRYING TO SLEEP!" my mother shouted. It worked.

"Okay, I will tell him to come Wednesday. Jesus Christ."

Coming home can be entertaining at times, and, at times, it was entertaining even last night, but even I have to admit that it was kind of gross sitting around the dining room table, trying to enjoy sugar cookies and coffee, with flies in the air. You try to ignore them, or pretend that you didn't just see one on the wall by the door to the porch, or on the table, or on the floor, or on the fake plant in the corner. My mother poured my father a glass of orange juice and nonchalantly placed her hand over the top of the glass and held it there.

"Are you fucking serious?" I asked her.

"What?"

"If you don't do that, is a fly going to kamikaze itself down there?"

"Well, would you want to find out if that were your orange juice?"

She then placed a paper plate on top of my coffee mug.

It was kind of gross. I mean, my parents aren't poor people. Last night, there were two Volvos and two BMWs parked outside. Admittedly, the BMWs are bottom-of-the-line, and leased, at that, but still, we do okay. We're not driving Oldsmobuicks anymore. And yet, last night, I felt like I was sitting around a table in Ethiopia. All of a sudden, my parents' dining room felt like a Sally Struthers commercial. I feel dirty even as I sit here, in my own home, devoid of all discernable vermin and pestilence. Filthy, in fact. I'm scratching my hair periodically, eyeballs scanning the air in front of me for any sign of a fleeting little bugger.

It's easy to picture us-- sitting around, cursing like pornography-peddlers or homeless troglodytes with big, steaming piles of doo-doo surrounding us as we scoop heaping spoonfuls of beans or fingernails into our hot, steaming swear-wielding gullets.

But that's not us. Swear to fuck.

Second Clementine

We spend a lot of time in our lives trying to tame paper tigers, fighting windmills and chasing dragons.

We're pretty stupid that way, I guess.

They say that part of the biggest clusterfuck about drugs is that, the first time you try a lot of the hard shit, the high is so unfuckingbelievable that the track-marked motherdrugger spends the remainder of his or her natural life using to try to replicate the intensity of that first line, or that first hit. And that's the problem: it's never going to be that good again.

Ever have a car that was as awesomsauce as your first car? No. Neither have I. And, for two years, I drove around in Herbie, the Love Bug.


Um, yeah. Seriously, that's a picture of my car. And even that wasn't as cool (at least, in my head) as my first car. Which is just another example of there being serious issues with my brain.

Anyway, we're dreamers. We're thrill-seekers, and we're obsessed with replicating those first thrills of our lives. Remember your first kiss? Um, I do. Frequently. Sometimes my trousers are around my ankles when I'm remembering it. Sometimes not. You know-- depends.

Though I never really thought of myself as someone who chased dragons-- because I've never done drugs or consumed alcohol other than Shabbat wine or a sip of champagne-- I've recently realized that I do chase my own particular dragons, in my own particular way. Maybe this is why I've owned 10 cars in the space of approximately sixteen years. Here we go, in chronological order:

1966 Volkswagen Beetle
1990 Ford Crown Victoria, late of the Delaware State Police
1988 Volvo 240-DL
1994 Ford Taurus
1997 Ford Crown Victoria
2001 Chevrolet Impala
2001 Volkswagen New Beetle Turbo (Herbie replica pictured above)
2005 Ford Focus
2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser
2002 Volvo S-40 Turbo

Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed by that, but I also think it's fucking awesome. And, I can promise you that there will be a lot, lot more, and some of them will be pretty fucking crazy.

Trust me.

Fortunately, I'm not this way with women. My wife has often opined how lucky she is, and how lucky I am, that I am not as fickle.

But I don't think it's about being fickle, automotively speaking. I think it's about thrill-seeking. About dragon chasing. I'm always trying to replicate the excitement of getting into a "new" car for the first time. Because, really, there is no feeling in the world like it. And it doesn't have anything to do with "New Car Smell," because I've only owned a "brand new car" two times out of the ten.

I also chase the clementine dragon. If you eat clementines, you know what I'm talking about. You can't eat just one of those pert little orange bastards. They're just so fucking good. You eat one and you go, "Oh! Oh, that was so sweet and succulent and wet and refreshing, and..... small. How the hell can I not have another one?" And you have a second one.

And the second one tastes like shit.

This happened to me on Sunday. And, because I learn from my mistakes like a lobotomized housecat, it happened to me again last night. I brought a second clementine upstairs as I was thinking about a blog topic. I bit into it lustily, my oral cavity wet with the sensory memory of the first, glorious clementine I consumed about three minutes prior.

"Auuughghh!" I whined. "Fucking dis-gus-ting! Why is it that every time I go to have a second clementine, it inevitably tastes like a monkey's dick?" I asked, rhetorically and hypothetically, of course. I was about to put another piece of it in my mouth when Mrs. Apron, at her sewing machine, exclaimed,

"Don't eat more of it! Throw it in the disposal."

"But that's all the way downstairs!" I bitched.

"Then throw it in the trashcan here."

"But it'll rot in here!" I moaned. Jesus, can you imagine being married to me for even ten minutes?

I ended up going (all the way) downstairs and throwing it angrily into the disposal. The aftertaste is still befouling my mouth, even as I type. What I need, of course, are cookies.

The question is: how can I eat just seven?

Say "Cheese," Motherfuckers!

I realize that coming to this blog is a little like waking up next to someone with bipolar disorder: you never really know what you're going to get once your eyes adjust to the light.

I mean, on Monday, I could be all sentimental and schmoopie, Tuesday it could be some obscene, profanity-laced tirade extolling the virtues of shampoo-masturbation, Wednesday there's always a possibility that it will be an emotional paean to a fallen police officer, Thursday we could be serving up some guilt-laden monologue about how I don't connect with my family anymore-- and then, if you're lucky, to celebrate the glory of God and the goodness of Shabbat, on Friday you might just get donkey-punched by another fine, upstanding edition of....

DEAR APRON!

No, sorry. This isn't a Dear Apron. But, you know-- maybe tomorrow! Depends on how Jupiter's aligned with Pluto's hot cock.

So, I just wanted you to know that I appreciate that you keep coming back here, even though you never really know if you're going to encounter Jekyll or Hyde, or some bastard lovechild of Maurice Sendak and Barbara Bush. Because, let's face it, that's a possibility, too. Some folks have said that the unpredictable nature of this blog is one of the reasons why they keep coming back. Regrettably, that unpredictability and resistance to pigeonholing is probably one of the reasons why I'll never get a book out of this shit. Well, that and because I refuse to eat celery every day for a year and write about it.

I thought I'd let you know that you're going to get Angry Apron today. Now, the trouble with Angry Apron is that, when diatribing and ripping mercilessly into society's asshole, he may say something that will hurt your feelings. Just know that he doesn't mean it. He's on his period, and his fucking office chair is positively soaked that that schmenck.

Nasty.

So, Mrs. Apron took me to see "Peter and the Wolf" yesterday at the Kimmel Center. It was an anniversary gift, and I was very excited, as "Peter and the Wolf" was an important fixture of my wife's childhood, a special experience she shared with her father. Mrs. Apron and I got gussied up as we are wont to do when going "downtown." Now, seeing a children's concert at 11:30am, you have to prepare yourself for, well, shenanigans, because children, oftentimes very small ones, are involved. Not only are they involved, the entire thing is created solely for them. I mean, if Prokofiev was the type of guy who'd have a shit-fit if a five-year-old wiggle-worm squealed or shrieked during his music, he's probably not the kind of guy who'd have written "Peter and the Wolf" in the first place.

I have to believe he was cool. He and Korsakov-- they're my main motherfuckers.

Anyway, what's funny about attending events for and with children, you spend so much time preparing yourself for inappropriate behavior by children that you forget altogether to prepare yourself for inappropriate behavior by adults. Like most any teacher will tell you-- it's not the kids that drive you batshit, it's the parents.

After the concert had started (there were several mini "acts" prior to "Peter and the Wolf") in walked a husband and wife team, and their two daughters, one was three and the other was an infant. Dad handled the three-year-old, and mom had the infant on her lap.

"I need my Blackberry," Mom hissed to Dad not two minutes after they were seated, squarely in front of us. Awesome. So, Dad handed the Blackberry over to Mom. Silly Apron thought Mom asked for the device so urgently because she had forgotten to silence it. Oh, no. She started taking pictures. Pictures of her husband holding the older daughter, and pictures of herself holding the bewildered, pink-hued infant. I mean, hey-- how could I blame her-- they arrived after the "taking of photographs during the performance is strictly prohibited" warning.

I have to admit to getting a little steamed after she turned the flash on to take pictures of herself holding the baby, temporarily blinding me. Fortunately, I regained my sight long enough to watch over her shoulder in astonishment as she used the Mobile Update function on Facebook to upload the pictures so all her friends could see how chic her family was-- at the Philadelphia Orchestra at 11:30.

Wouldn't you know that, once the pictures were uploaded, they left the auditorium? Strangely enough, the woman's pocket book was still there on the floor so, after the concert, while we were all applauding the conductor and the narrator, they came back to retrieve the bag, unfortunately before I had time to defecate in it.

Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but it seemed an awful lot to me like these people came to this concert for the express purpose of demonstrating to their Facebook pals just how fucking awesome and metro and cultured they are, and how well they're bringing up their daughters, exposing them to the finer things in life. Of course, their daughters didn't even get to see or hear "Peter and the Wolf," didn't get to experience the absolute charm with which the animals were portrayed onstage (the wolf was a huge gray suitcase with fur ears and a tail glued on) and the infant's brain is basically a Jell-O Jiggler, so what would have been the difference to her anyway?

Look, I know all about the age in which we live. I know. And I know that I've certainly been guilty of the "OOh, let's take a picture of XYZ situation, it'll look great on Facebook" instinct, and I've followed through on that instinct on numerous occasions, but I don't do it without worrying about what it says about me, about us, about it all. Have we become a people who cannot just... be in any one given place, situation, or circumstance without recording it for Facebookville and earnestly awaiting validation, that coveted Thumbs Up, that snark-laden, clever comment that starts a chain of one-upmanship until the next status update?

I'm sure I'm not the first schmegeggie to opine about this, and I don't know what the answer is, or, if there is an answer, or if there is even a question. I just get mad sometimes. And this is Angry Apron, signing off.

See you on Facebook, Friend.

And Now for a Public Relations Gappe

In case you missed it, or weren't amongst the outraged, cybertorch-wielding throng, your throat not quite ragged as you screamed for blood-- there was a wee little bit of a problem when the GAP (or is it just "GAP"?) tried to change its logo.

A week later, they changed it back. Because people were taking to the streets, beheading each other and burning shit in effigy.

Here's the obligatory picture, so you know what the hell I'm talking about, in case you don't already:



Crazy shit, yeah?

I know, take a deep breath-- it's okay. They changed it back. I swear. After exhausting thousands of underage Chinese prostitutes, working feverishly for thirty-seven hours a day to manufacture labels and bags with the new logo on it-- they changed it back, because tons of white people wearing tennis bracelets and frilly underpants got a little excited. And not in the good way.

In case you didn't know, GAP is a big fucking deal. I mean, 750,273 people "Like" it on Facebook, so it must be, you know, totes the shit. I mean, one of my 318 Facebook friends "Likes" it, so it's just got to be significant in some way. I mean, I went to elementary school with this chick.

But what's more the shit than GAP is GAP's fans. Rabid and insensible though they may appear, they are clearly the ones in the driver's seat, turning the wheel, pulling the pubes of this major, international conglorporation. And, when international conglorporations run afoul these days, it's not stakeholders or shareholders or CEOs who get upset-- its folks like you and me, and woe betide the company or entity who pisses off its fans, or Fans. We might not Like you anymore. Feel our wrath. Tug, tug!

Ow! That hurts GAP's pubey-pubes!

Well, get used to it, bitches, because the entitled, engorged-though-still-miraculously-able-to-fit-into-your-boot-cut-skinny-jeans generation is all fired up and ready to Un-Fan you.

We get our TV whenever we want it. We get our email virtually streamed into our veins. We can have a Starbucks drink prepared for us inside the supermarket. We've got our phones in sync with our cars which are in sync with our bluetooth which are in sync with our ears which are in sync to our iPods, and, motherfucker, we'll tell you when it's okay to change your logo and when it's not and, while we're on the subject, how DARE you attempt to change it without even TELLING us first?

I mean, really. Haven't you ever heard of the biggest focus-group of them all? It's called Generation-Y, you inconsiderate bastards. And if you try any of that shit again, I'm going to actually rip out a clump of those pubes and mail them to your fucking mother.

N'yah mean? That's right. We have Masters degrees and we're just starting to discover gray hairs on our heads and

WE.

ARE.

PISSED!

Thank you.