Not To Be Confused With...

I was out getting my "groove thang" on and I went up to the disc jockey and requested My Boo but there was some confusion as to who sings the damn song. It's Ghost Town Djs...

Which isn't the same as Quad City Djs...

and not to be confused with Hamster Village DJs...
and certainly not Donna Jo a.k.a. DJ Tanner

Momma Said...

My mom is known for her sage phrases and tantrums, at least, amongst her children. Mary-isms as we call them. Here are just a few such classics:

Damn you kids, every time I take one step forward, you push me two steps back.

Can't you see I'm on the PHONE?

Can never have anything nice with you kids!

Great, my 15 year old's pregnant! [just kidding. Sorry Reyna!]

But my all time favorite is:

The older, the dumber!

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I found out from a friend today that someone he use to date is now a stripper. Ain't nothing worse than a male stripper, gay or straight. Of course, my friend is a perturbed by this hilarious revelation. There's a fine line between retail and the strip club. It's a gateway job. You're usually one folded shirt away from pounding your genitals on the stage while an old man/lady tosses a $2 bill at you all the while thinking, Am I pretty now daddy? So, in an attempt to channel my mother, I passed on some helpful words to him that someone should have told his old flame around the time he got the birds and the bees talk.

you Fuck a stripper, you don't BE a stripper!

That Ain'tcha Hooker!

So the first time I was confused for a prostitute I was 15 years old and illegally working in Los Angeles. I had landed a job at a nursery (plants not pampers) at La Brea and Santa Monica Boulevard doing menial labor. I must have made a lasting impression because only after one week they let me go. As I waited on the street corner adjacent to the nursery in broad daylight for my brother to come pick me I noticed a gentleman flashing his lights. I found it odd since it was daylight but then much to my surprise realized that I was standing next to some graffiti on the wall that read: SEX $75. After the shock of learning that some whore was making $75 for, at the very most, an hour of fun/crying had passed while I had made a mere $185 for a week's worth of hell, I realized that this "Joe" thought I was this genius prostitute entrepreneur. I hadn't even had sex yet but I was so smart at the age of 15 to know when someone wanted to pay me for it.

Twincest

Now that the Olympics are over I felt that I needed to touch on a subject that Vancouver brought to my attention. While sitting at the bar enjoying the Olympic figure skating I noticed that Scott Hamilton, America's Straight Ice Sweetheart from the 80's, has taken up as an FSJ (Figure Skating Jockey) for NBC. At first. I thought Scott Hamilton looked like Uncle Fester but then I heard his voice. Yikes! He sounds like he's been castrated. Then as if a lightbulb lit above my head it dawned on me, this guy is just like Marshall Applewhite, the Heaven's Gate cult leader. So here's to you brother's from another mother! Too bad the one that wasn't castrated is the one that sounds like he was.

Drunk Poetry

So after some stumbles and then a rumble in the streets of Charleston I penned a modern classic a few months ago.

Possum Cat

I walk into the kitchen much later than I should be.

Table center.

Pantry bureau to the south.

Home to the kitchen's most intriguing ingredients.

Rod, full of PB & J.

Bitters bottle looks like people.

Three shelves high make it so.

Sitting here crazy when he makes himself crazy, for a PB & J fool.

That's love.

Broken hand #3.

Anger or Passion?

Either way recovery ain't free.

Hurts my bones and my wallet.

In Honor of Black History Month....

I don't have an exact age of when this happened but I'm thinking somewhere around the age of 3 or 4. It happened one hot day just outside of the Headstart building with my mom and a large passerby. As we walked towards the entrance I was compelled by my shock and amazement to stop my mom dead in her tracks for what was in front of us. I pulled her arm and proclaimed, "Oh my god mom! Look at the big fat chocolate lady!" To my knowledge that was my first memory of differentiating black from white. Here I found myself in yet another situation where I wasn't sure if my mom was going to strangle me or laugh her ass off. Looking back, it's nice to think that I was once able to only recognize people for being fat and thin and not the color of their skin.

YOU BUY!

Growing up, there were two Asian families in Coolidge, AZ worth mentioning, the Dongs and the Ongs. Hand to God no shit, the Dongs and the Ongs

The Ongs owned a Chinese buffet. I mean how cliche. They might as well have opened a nail parlor or some other sort of Asiany thing like a Filipino Prison Dance Camp. see below

Unlike most rural Chinese restaurant owners, the Ongs played a small role in my childhood development. Sure, their daughter Rita taught me how to stuff hamburger meat into wonton wrappers during Mrs. Frasier's comprehensive lesson plan of China but it was only a matter of time before I mastered wontonery on my own. My most memorable moment involving the Ong Clan came when Gregory Reese a.k.a "Fat Man" approached Rita with some legitimate requests outside of her father's restaurant. First he asked her to "speak some Spanish to me" and when she made it quite clear that she didn't any he threw potato chips at her. Her dad ran him off with a broom. I don't know why I was there but I was. Oh, to be in 5th grade again. I never knew what became of "Fat Man" but then again I don't read the Wall Street Journal as frequently as I should.

The Dongs owned Coolidge Market which of course was on Coolidge Avenue. They lived one street over in a green two-story mini mansion that sat on a larger than average parcel of land on Lincoln Avenue. When I was younger we seemed to go their store much more often than in my teen years. It must have been their everyday low prices on various Mexican foods and what-have-yous that kept us coming. I really did hate going into that place. It just reminded me of being poor and I surely didn't need that kind of reality check as a little kid. That dose of reality would come much later when I realized I shouldn't own a credit card or let alone an Abercrombie & Fitch card with a $500 balance.

Anywho, back to being poor. I really wanted some strawberry wafers and like most chubby children, I decided not to take "No" for an answer when it came to food. Momma Mary wasn't going to let me have them. So then I had this genius idea of putting them up my shirt. I witnessed my first successful shoplifting only a week prior when my little brother stuffed a World Wrestling Federation magazine up his shirt at Safeway. No one would ever think to look up there. Well, normally they wouldn't unless you were wearing a skin tight t-shirt with a noticeable brick planted underneath. Plus, the oldest Dong daughter saw me do it through the cleverly placed high tech convex security mirrors. You better believe I was thrown out of that place so fast the wafers hadn't even hit the ground. see wafer ears
My mom didn't spank me; however i was sure that something would ensue. It never happened. I just remember her marveling in my stupidity and my downright lack of cunning and her deriding glare as if to say what the hell was that kid thinking? when she ultimately just laughed it off. I didn't step foot in that place again until I was 16 and ready to buy cheap beer and liquor from those crafty Chinamen. Little did they know, that the little boy, who, only ten years prior, had attempted to swipe strawberry wafers was now illegally buying a few bottles of strawberry Cisco. The sad thing is that I am more ashamed of drinking Cisco than I am of shoplifting strawberry wafers and getting caught. What does that tell you of my value system?