Colorado Springs is a city of about half a million people. This week I found the one guy (well, I’m hoping he was the only one) who wanted to sell us his religion.

My three travel mates and I were running late, due to the delayed arrival of our transportation. Relieved when a cab pulled up, we quickly piled in, three in back and me and my fat rear end and long legs in front. As we rolled away from the hotel, our driver autolocked the doors, and our visit to Satan’s den began.
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Either Geekman really does only have four readers and he asked all of us to guest post, or we’ve completely scared off The Mighty Geek’s regular readership. Either way, unless people start commenting, he’s gonna be one sad puppy when he comes back.

Wait. Maybe this is a nefarious plot to show us how much we suck and he rules… That’s it! Curse you, Geekman. I hope you get eaten by dust bunnies!!

If you are a sub for the real author of a blog, and you need to go away on a business trip, are you then obligated to find a sub to sub for you? And if the answer is yes, should the sub be someone that the real author of the blog would approve of, or are you now free to request help from someone who knows you but has no familiarity with said blog author? Such a dilemma. However, it’s one I won’t be able to answer until I return this Friday from the above referenced business trip.

In the meantime, think of GeekMan, butt deep in the dust bunnies that were exposed when he went to move his bed to the new house.

What is it about me that attracts people without a firm grasp on reality? I’m not aware of doing anything to solicit this, yet I am never without a “special friend”.

A couple of jobs ago, while working for an organization serving the lesbian and gay community, I had an elderly woman, a Chinese immigrant, who came by the office once or twice a week seeking my assistance. She spoke few words of English, and her dialect of Chinese was spoken by no one in my office nor by any of the Chinese community organizations that I tried to pull in. We communicated by a combination of sign language (hers) and badly misspelled handwritten notes (mine). There were a few phrases she had that I could always identify, “Bad man, bad man!” being one, and “Call policee Miss Jill, call policee” being another. She had two essential complaints, one about the merchant running the store next to hers (he was the “bad man”), and the other about the large urban high school half a block from her (she wanted me to call the police about the kids who, when they left campus, often came into her laundromat and tormented her blind husband). I spoke to the police on her behalf many dozens of times, and even called the school principal more than once. But I knew we had both crossed the line when she offered me $2,000 to close the school. While it was flattering to realize that she thought such a thing was within my power, I had a tough time picturing me, Ms. Lesbian/Gay Community, calling for the closing of the campus. (Plus, if I could pull off such a thing, wouldn’t it be worth a whole lot more than two thousand bucks?)

This week I was out of town leading trainings for staff and teachers of a school district. At the end of a session a meek gray woman, barely 5 feet tall, approached me and asked for my phone number. I imagined that she was hoping that I might come and make a presentation to her classroom. As I wrote my digits on a slip of paper, she asked me how much I charged for an hour of consultation. I told her that would really depend on what she needed.

Her emotional floodgates opened, she launched into a story about her son, who she alleged was sexually molested by his father. She said that her son’s lawyer was now accusing her of being a religious fanatic and she needed advice on what to do. This wasn’t a normal sized flood, her problems were Noah and his Ark in size.

Let’s review: I have no expertise in the area of sexual molestation. I possess no legal background. I am scared of religious fanatics of all stripes and colors. I just facilitated a training in ABSOLUTELY NO WAY related to her question. Why are we having this conversation, and why can’t I tell her to never call my phone number? I pointed at my fellow trainer, who had entered the room while we spoke. I said, “That’s probably the woman you want to speak with, she’s really the one in charge.”

I left the training in search of a special friend who has a problem I can actually help with. What d’ya got?

Get it? Lettuce….let us….ah, nevermind.

It’s a dark and stormy day over in my little corner of Long Island. A perfect day for a story. A salad story. Yes, I am going to blog about a salad.

I don’t venture to Burger King too often. No, I’m not a fast food snob, I just prefer the myriad of other drive-throughs along Hempstead Turnpike to Burger King’s rubbery meat and cardboard fries. However, last night BK was participating in a fundraiser for my son’s school, so off we went. I would suffer so that the fifth grade can have their class picnic.

Have you noticed the proliferation of salads among fast food places these days? It’s like they all got together in a show of unity to figure out ways to combat the Atkins diet. Lettuce! Tomatoes! One for all and all for one! And then the CEOs went their separate ways and ordered their product and development teams to come up with a better salad than their competitors.

So McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and whatever other franchises are floating around out there all came out with tasty, fresh and exciting salads at the same time. Not Your Mother’s Salad! Taste the mandarin oranges, the cranberries and sesame seeds and apples! It’s a fruit! It’s a salad! It’s a dessert topping!

Anyhow. I went for the salad at BK last night even though, in my heightened state of starvation, those Angus burgers looked tasty (turns out, according to my husband, that they – surprise! – taste like rubber).

I had a bad feeling about ordering the salad, but that had more to do with the cashier’s reluctance to speak or understand English than with the food itself. Once we got it clear that I wanted the Fire Grilled Salad (r) and I wasn’t trying to tell her that her hat was on fire, and once I got past the fact that the odor wafting from her armpits was what one would imagine Michael Moore might smell like if he had just chased the ice cream man for ten blocks on the hottest day of the year, we proceeded.

You get a choice with the Fire Grilled Salad (r); chicken or shrimp. I have this thing against ordering anything that comes from the sea in a fast food place, but I was feeling daring so I stared the cashier right in the eyes, slapped my palm on the counter and whispered in a low, John Wayne-as-gunslinger voice, Shrimp. I’ll try the shrimp.

We get our food and move over to the nearest table that could accommodate all of us, which turned out to be the table right under the air conditioner vent. This has nothing to do with the salad, but everything to do with creating the proper dining atmosphere. Granted, you’re not going to get a quality dining experience when there are kids in the partly padded cell to the left of you throwing brightly colored balls at the plastic window in an effort to interrupt your conversation and ruin your dinner all at once. But let me tell you, it takes only one time for an adult to press their face against the window and mouth the words “I will eat you and your little sister for dinner if you don’t stop throwing those balls right now” for a kid to really get it. The balls stopped coming at us and we made the attempt to get comfortable in the frigid air, though I had to keep putting my arms across my chest because apparently the town workers that were standing on line thought they could determine the temperature in the room by staring at my boobs.

So, the salad.

We didn’t get off to a good start. I could see as soon as I opened the plastic bowl that there was mostly Iceberg lettuce packed in there. Caesar = romaine. Caesar does not equal Iceberg. The sooner all restaurants figure this out, the better off we will all be. Upon further examination of the bowl, I saw that there was more than a handful of Romaine, and the Iceberg was mostly of the chunky variety (I hate wilty lettuce leaves), so I decided to suffer in silence.

Mixed in with the lettuce were a few cherry tomatoes, a fistful of shredded carrot and a couple of cucumber slices. I examined each vegetable carefully, noting the texture and quality of each. The tomatoes were the right consistency of hard, the carrots were the correct shade of orange and the cucumbers did not have the feel of hardened jello. Good start! However, the topping that pushed the salad over the “I’m going to dread this” line to “this just might be good” line was the Parmesan cheese. I expected a few sprinkles of some no-frills Parmesan that smelled like a cow’s butt, but was instead pleasantly surprised with actual chunky shavings of real, doesn’t-smell-like-cow’s-ass cheese. The lettuce/topping portion of the salad judging over, I thought we just might be onto something more than mediocre here.

Next up was the shrimp. At Burger King, they don’t just toss a bunch of shrimp onto your salad. No, it comes separately. You know those bags you get from a Chinese restaurant when you order beef sticks (what? you never ordered beef sticks before?), the kind with the foil on the inside? Yes, a bag-o-shrimp. Said shrimp were swimming in some kind of murky brown mixture that upon first glance looked like sludge, but ended up having a much lighter appearance than first thought once the shrimp were removed from their keep-it-warm container. Now came the important part: the smell test.

I don’t like my shrimp to smell too…shrimpy. Or fishy. There is no bigger food turnoff than trying to eat something that smells like Christina Agueleria’s crotch. Not that I’ve smelled it. I just heard. From Fred Durst.

I decided to use my assistant for this one. I picked one of the shrimp up with my forefingers and held it to my daughter’s nose. She recoiled immediately. Ewww, I’m a vegetarian, get that shrimp out of here. Gross. Ewww! Gawd, mom, you’re so rude! Relax, I told her. I don’t want you to eat the thing, I just want you to smell it. Does it smell….dead? She put her nose right next to the little creature, took a whiff, pronounced it ok smelling and then I gave her a little slap on the back of her head so that her head sprang forward and the shrimp ended up in her nose. No, not really. But I thought about it.

With the shrimp pronounced good-smelling by a certified vegetarian, we could move forward. I shook the rest of the shrimp out of the bag and they poured out like a rain shower of baby crustaceans right into my salad bowl. My sister broke out into a chorus of “It’s Raining Shrimp” and my daughter crawled under the table.

I have to say, I was surprised at the amount of shrimp that came out of that bag. I expected seven or eight at the most, including the one up Natalie’s nose, but were twenty-two, that’s right 22 shrimp swimming in that pouch. I still don’t know what the glaze/sauce was that they were covered in, but that doesn’t matter because it tasted good.

Now, for the last moment of preparation. The dressing. Sweet Onion Vinaigrette, as it were. Ok, so points off for no actual Caesar dressing, but in a way I didn’t mind because you just can’t get a good Caesar dressing anywhere but a true Long Island Greek diner. As it turns out, they did have a Caesar dressing but, for some unknown reason, Miss I Smell Like Michael Moore decided I would prefer onions.

I opened the dressing packet with my teeth, because there really is no other way to open it properly and squeezed every last drop over the salad, wondering how this onion goop was going to taste when mixed with the brown, murky goop that the shrimp came in.

Croutons. You cannot have a Caesar salad without croutons! I searched the mess of BK food and foodstuffs on our table but alas, there were no croutons. I sent my daughter to the counter to ask Michael Moore for croutons. She reported back that they did not have any. I was incredulous. Many style points taken off. Many.

All the ingredients secured in one place, I put the cover back on the salad, made sure it was properly secured, grabbed the bowl in a frisbee grip and tossed it to my sister across the table. She threw it back. Don’t ever think those high school days spent playing Frisbee instead of studying Trig won’t come in handy, because they will. As I just showed you.

My salad was now tossed. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you make your juvenile sexual innuendos. Done? Good, because they were lame. Surely you can do better than that.

I took one last glance at my wallet to make sure my insurance card was there. Then, in a style reminiscent of Babe Ruth, I slowly raised my arm and pointed to the hospital across the street. I uncovered the salad, grabbed a plastic fork, and dug in.

It was a caesar salad and it was good. Very good. At times, while I was shoveling forkfulls of shrimp, tomato and lettuce in my mouth, I would feel somewhat cheapened that I was enjoying a fast food salad so much, but then I would stab a cucumber, wipe it in the dressing that spilled onto the table, stuff it in my mouth and proclaim I love Burger King salad and I don’t care who knows it!

In fact, I loved it so much that I decided to take one home for my husband, just in case he didn’t approve of his New! Fresh! Angus Burger! Which he didn’t. And damn if when I got home and watched with envious eyes as Justin unpacked his salad that there was not one, but two packages of croutons in the bag. Only, they weren’t called croutons, but Parmesan toast. Personally, I would have called them ParmesanToast Chips, but that’s just me. So I stole a bag from my husband’s stash and ate them just on principle.

Overall my BK salad experience was a pleasurable one, if you are judging on taste alone. On the service end, they fail miserably. I mean, I’m not expecting white glove service, but I do expect that the people taking my order will be able to converse with me and won’t smell like dead people.

The atmosphere gets an ok rating. Though my children have long passed the age of jumping into ball pits, and even though I find children who like to bang on windows in an effort to disturb me to be annoying little pissants, the presence of those play areas help me learn to appreciate that I no longer have to chase my kids through human-sized hamster tunnels when it’s time to go home. I could have done without the sub zero temps, though.

Final say? Let Burger King toss your salad.

Here at Nerd Central there are a few things that we do very well. Then there are those that we avoid like the plague. (We don’t really avoid the plague. It’s just that it never has nice things to say when it visits, so we don’t call it over for dinner like we used to.)

Anyway, one of those things is yard work. Yes, it’s true. I suck at yard work. I suck so bad that the kids in the neighborhood are calling me Sucky McYardsuck. I just don’t appreciate the finer points of ripping plant life out of its nice warm bed just so another one can take its spot. The lawn mower is too loud and gives me a headache. The pool stays green no matter how many thousands of dollars of toxic chemicals I put into it. And did I mention that there are vicious animals like ants and mosquitoes and frogs out there? *shudder*

Well, thanks to the mess our good friend Charley made, we have no choice. God smote our fence so the neighbors could see our crappy yard. God’s like my mother sitting up there going, “You can’t let your neighbors see this mess! What’s next? A ’64 Chevy up on blocks? I’ve let you get away with this for too long. Get out there and clean things up this instant, young man, or I’ll turn off your cable modem for good!”

So, this was week two of Project Love Canal, and I am happy to report that things are shaping up nicely. We’ll soon be able to go into the back yard with the kind of confidence reserved for those who don’t have giant, mutant vine monsters, ready to wrap their spiney tentacles around their throats, constantly lurking just outside their door and waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting victim who just wanted to see why the busty cheerleader chick and the football captain hadn’t come back inside after we told them we should all stick together when we found out the fricking phone lines were cut!

It’s not so bad, really. Since I had the good fortune to marry into brains, my spouse suggested that we do it in small chunks, just an hour or two every Saturday morning. In no time at all, we shall have a yard that makes all the girls come over with milkshakes. Or something like that.

I believe that GMan asked me to be one of his guest writers so that I could deliver some gay content to his readers. Naturally this content will be rated “G”, but I’m here to please. Here’s some gay content:

I’m very happy. Happy, happy, happy. Life is happy and gay. Gay, gay, gay. Happy, happy, happy. Gay, gay, gay.

Okay, back to the non-gay content. You know, when GeekMan passed along his blog keys to me I was under the impression he was letting me have HoBiscuit as well. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that Geeky was planning to give me a dry old Bisquick Biscuit, not HoBiscuit.

Actually, maybe he invited me to guestpost here in order to deliver some Jewish content to his readers. Oy, oy, oy. Gay, Gay, Gay. Goya, Goya, Goya. Happy, happy, happy.

While Michelle and Solonor breeze in and deliver their bits as if they’ve been doing this forever, Jules huddles in the doorway, besieged with doubts:

I’ve never guest-hosted. What if I sit in the wrong chair or spill coffee on someone’s dress? What if I make a bad joke and no one laughs, or even worse, they give me a pity laugh? What if Bread backs me into a corner and pinches me? What if I accidentally introduce Ho-Biscuit as Ho-Wafer and she takes it as an excuse to brawl? What if…wait a minute. I’ve met Ho-Biscuit. We hung out and chatted extensively. She was kind and funny and engaging…by George, I think could take her in a brawl! I can’t sit in the wrong chair because he took the only chair with him, and as for spilling coffee on someone’s dress, well I’ll just insist that the audience arrive naked and drink only room-temperature liquids. Oh, and Bread? I don’t have to say it, do I? I mean you know I’d toast him.

Yep, there’s that pity laugh. Keep ‘em coming. They’re all I’ve got.

Hello? Can anyone hear me? Hello?

Dang it! He planned it this way, so that all three of his readers would be out of town at the same time. Curses!

Oh well, for posterity’s sake, I’ll relate how I got stuck inside this fricking blog. Someday when they dig through the remains of the internet, the alien invaders that will have taken over the planet by then will know of my fate. (And care about as much as you do, I suppose. *sigh*)

It all started on November 7, 2002. That’s when Geekman left the following comment on my blog:

Bread is upset about not being designated Overlord of an Evil Minion Master Day. When I patiently explained to him that in order to become one he would have to overthrow the current Overlord, he issued the following statement;

‘I challenge Michele and Bill to a no-holds barred Bikini wrestling match in my personal Honey Filled Cage of Rage for Minion Master rights on their designated days. Winner rules all. Call Ticketmaster for tickets and showtimes.’

Needless to say, neither one of them took Bread up on his offer. He blamed me, of course. And ever since that day, his rage has burned deep in the pit of his dark, yeast-filled heart. He vowed never to rest until I was toast.

He finally found his opportunity this week. Pretending to be my friend Geekman, he asked me to come over and blogsit for him. I thought it odd that he’d need someone to keep this sorry place warm. But I really should have known something was wrong when he asked me to bring a roll of duct tape and an 8×10 color glossy of David Gates…

Instead, I blithely wandered into his clutches. And now I sit here typing meaningless words into a useless blog, hoping against hope that someone out there will read them. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s no different than any other day, but that’s not the point! The point is that Bread won’t let me go until a pair of beautiful volunteers agree to a no-holds barred Bikini wrestling match in my his personal Honey Filled Cage of Rage.

Anyone?

Rats.

Hi Geek fans! TMG has paid asked a few of his stalking victims friends to fill in while he’s undergoing shock therapy moving.

My name is Michele and my home on the internet is here. It’s a pleasure to spend time with you (except for Bread).

Today I offer for your reading pleasure (your mileage may vary on that) a story from my vault. It is the tale of one blond model/actress/weight loss supplement spokesperson/psychopath with whom I’ve had the “pleasure” of spending some time with. We’ll keep her name out of it so Mr. Geek doesn’t end up a Google statistic.

celebrity true stories: she who shall not be named

1995. Or 96. I was still married then, and it was fall, but still felt like summer. The summer had been odd, to say the least. We spent a week or two of August with a blonde psuedo-actress/celebrity who shall remain nameless here, but who is easily identifiable by the stature of her breasts and her hips and by the fortunes of her now dead, but then elderly and frail, husband and whom we shall call “A” so as not to place me in the path of people searching google for naked pictures of this model/B-movie actress/celebrity. And no, I have none.

I was, through marriage, related to the person who directed A in several of her stellar theatrical endeavors. This person also “kept the company” of A, if you know what I mean, and when he came to visit his family this summer, he brought the starlet along with him.

There are several stories I could tell you about the week or so that the wannabe-diva was here, but I won’t. Not now. But I will tell you about when she returned for a visit in the fall. You should keep in mind that during the August week she was here, her hosts and their family had gone from star struck to scornful in one fell swoop.

It was September, maybe two weeks after school started. My then husband’s grandfather had gone missing and the next week his body turned up in a dumpster in the Bronx. It was, obviously, a difficult time for the family. We set about the business of planning a funeral and everything that entails. The relative in California, A’s director, was called. He was told to come for the funeral of his father. But not to bring A with him. This wasn’t the time nor the place for her histrionics.

The next day he arrives, with A in tow. She wouldn’t miss this for the world, she says, as if it were a premiere of a movie. After all, he was like a father to her, too. Yes, right. Because she knew him all of one month. And spent about 20 hours total in person with him during that time. He was so like a father to her.

So the day of the wake comes. Italian wakes are dramatic and overwrought enough without half-witted celebrities in attendance. Especially half-witted celebrities who seem to have taken a little too much of their medication. She struts into the funeral home, dressed for the Oscars but apparently naked in the class department. She’s carrying on about something and my ex’s parents ask her to please wait in the sitting area while the wake is going on. They do not want her inside the room where the service is being held. She sullenly plops herself in a chair out in the hallway, pouting and petulant and waiting for the people strolling in to recognize her.

Later, I come out of the ladies room and I notice that A, still sitting and pouting in the chair, seems to be talking to herself in a soothing tone. And she’s stroking her coat. I stare at her quizzically for a moment and then go back into the room where the wake is being held. I casually mention A’s odd behavior to some family members and someone remarks that at least she’s being a good sport by staying out there.

And with that comment, the doors to the room swing open and A walks in with a sweeping gesture and stands there, waiting to be noticed and admired. When no one stands up to applaud her entrance, she saunters her way towards the coffin, flipping her hair as she walks. She gets to the coffin, looks down at the man she barely knew yet whom was apparently a father figure to her, turns her head to make sure she has our rapt attention, and begins to wail. She’s incoherent, crying, sobbing, and there is not a person in the room who doesn’t know that it is all an act. We’ve seen her movies. We know bad acting when we see it. Suddenly she puts the back of her hand up to her forehead, 50’s movie star style, and falls to the floor in a faint. No one moves to help her. She lays there, hand still on forehead, skirt hiked up, a spectacle on display. Finally, the director/relative comes over, picks her up and walks her out to the chair in the hallway.

The service continues. We sit there quietly, talking in hushed tones to people who come to offer their condolences. Every once in a while, when it becomes very, very quiet, we hear a squeaking sound. At first, I think it’s a child crying. Someone else thinks it’s a person with new, squeaky shoes. Maybe a mouse? We can’t figure it out, but it stops and starts until it gets irritating enough for us to go investigate. We follow the sound of the squeak out of the wake room, into the hallway, right to the …..chair. The chair where A is sitting. And she’s sitting there, talking to herself again and petting herself, and I realize it’s not a squeak we were hearing at all, but a yip. Rising out of A’s coat like a beast coming from her breasts is the head of a poodle. A tiny, toy poodle yipping away at us.

She brought her dog to a funeral. No one says anything, no one bothers to explain to her why we are mad, because just the fact that she doesn’t understand our anger or bewilderment speaks volumes.

I haven’t seen her since. By the end of that year I was separated from my husband, and his family, and I never had to deal with her again. Once in a while, a movie of hers will show up on cable at 3am and I’ll get a good chuckle out of her acting, because I’ve seen her best piece of work and it’s not on film.