The Tick vs…

I was coming home the other night and a little sports car shot by. The plate read MIND DOC. Now, I know you may have jumped to the conclusion that this was a Psychiatrist, right? But let’s think for a minute. Would you, as a sensible, literate, American individual trust your mental health to a Board-Certified quack with the plate MIND DOC. A joke? Not acceptable. Mental health is no joking matter. And mental health professionals should be distinctly bland and particularly serious. You know, like Peter Bogdanovich on the Sopranos. Uptight. Wussy. The kind of guy who likes how he looks in an ascot.

No, this was no head shrinker. It was clear to me that MIND DOC could only be one thing. A super villain. Don’t laugh (be a humorless shrink for a minute and consider). This was a flamboyant plate for a flamboyant person. This was a plate for the kind of person who would use his enormous intellect (probably enhanced by some sort of complicated encounter with radioactive space debris) to develop a sinister plot that would put all humankind in fearful jeopardy. This was some serious shit. A brush with MIND DOC.

 You can laugh at me now, but in a few weeks, when there’s a doomsday ray pointed at the White House, and MIND DOC is demanding a billion dollars or he’ll vaporize the president…ok, bad example. Maybe the ray is pointed at the United Nations, or a box full of newborn kittens. The point is, when that doomsday ray is pointed at something we actually want to save, you remember you read it here first.

Is Your Baby Gay?

I’ve been silent for a while. No reason, just been a little busy. And no really good license plates lately. Though DEBS TRK (a Ford F350 supersized pickup) had a funny sticker, words surrounding a giant Ford logo: Bad ass ladies don’t drive Mercedes. She had another sticker of a cowboy on a horse (maybe a cowgirl with mannish hair) next to a bull. No lie, it kind of looked like the horse was mounting the bull. I think it was an optical illusion, but it did kind of look like Deb was riding a horse trying to ride a bull. Hee hee. Go Deb.

Which brings me to my next point. Is your baby gay? If this concerns you (which it should, right?) then you can drop everything and for only $19.99, get the definitive answer from Is My Baby Gay .com. I’m not linking to it because I spent a minute and a half on the site and these donkey fuckers do not appear to be kidding. See, you make your kid lick a piece of paper (not just any paper, you have to print a page from their site and press your infant’s tongue to a circle – don’t salivate outside the circle), mail the paper to these bags of shit and they will somehow use the magic of science (or perhaps some sort of Divine Communication – they don’t really say) to tell you if your kid is gay or not. Even better, there’s a 150% refund if they’re wrong!

Somebody shoot me in the head. This is worse than prime time Bingo – and that’s saying a hell of a lot. How sick is this. First, who is the warped ass who came up with this idea. Second, who are the completely fucked parents who are mailing this crap in with their $20. And don’t scoff, you know people are doing it. This kind of nonsense really does make me ill, though. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think it’s a joke. I mean, at first I thought it was really funny. Then I realized they’re not kidding. At least I don’t think they’re kidding. Oh man, please let them be kidding.

Here’s what we need to do. We need to all send in saliva samples, maybe a few blank sheets just to test their system too. Or better yet, get your dog to lick it – but don’t let him or her lick outside the circle. You may end up with an inconclusive result. Then, everyone who gets a negative needs to file a claim in a few weeks.

Dear shitbags! You sed my kid was not gay but you were rong. He refuses to particimpat in jim class and only wants to dance ballay. He sings and has expersed sirius intrest in crochet. Your test was shit and I am very disastified. I want my money back. I sent 20 bucks and I want my 150% back. I will expext 25 bucks in the mail very soon or you will be hereing from my brother who is also a attorney.

Or maybe your daughter expresses too much interest in Tonka trucks and dodgeball. Whatever. We need to take these fuckers out!

Oh please let this be a joke…

[sigh]

Mega-Surgeon in da Hizzouse!

Just saw an awesome license plate…but that’s not the good part. The plate was SCALPEL. Heh, I wonder what he (or she, though I imagine it to be a he) does for a living. It was a new silver Lexus, looking somewhat valuable. The funny thing is there was this bumper guard thing hanging out of the trunk. Maybe I’m out of it, but this is something I’ve never seen before. It was about 30 inches long, 4 inches high, and maybe 2 or three inches deep. Looked like a hunk of two by four wrapped in dirty white vinyl, though I assume it was made of  some sort of cushiony, foam rubber material, not pine.

The bumper bar hung from two adjustable straps, kind of askew. It looked like SCALPEL just popped the truck when he parked, pulled it out, and (probably self-conscious) didn’t take the time to straighten it out. I’m not knocking the idea. My cars, especially newer ones, have suffered at the hands of other drivers. Scraped bumpers, dinged doors. It sucks. This was in an on-street space, with cars in front and behind… double clear and present danger. The funny thing about it was that there were several grommets in the vinyl where the straps attached to the two by four. White painted metal grommets. Just the kind of thing that would ding, scratch, or otherwise mar the surface of a nice, new silver Lexus.

But what REALLY made me laugh is when I imagined the driver. I thought of Eriq La Salle, the driven, and somewhat unsympathetic surgeon from ER, back when it was sort of palatable…maybe even engaging once in a while. I didn’t see him as Dr. Peter Benton, however. I imagined him as Darryl Jenks, in Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and pre-whoop whoop Arsenio Hall. He had that crazy, curly, Soul-Glo hair. I imagined him, dripping with ersatz Jheri-curl activator, scooting to his trunk and flipping out the bumper guard before rushing into the barber shop for a greasy touch-up.

Frenchy almost sideswiped me…

I dropped the boys off at Grandma’s house the other night and was heading home for 24 hours of time with my honey. Things were looking good until I hit a full-on traffic standstill on the good old Taconic. I didn’t move for about 10 minutes. Then it was a slow crawl. Then there was a cop with flashers in the left lane forcing everybody in the left lane over to the right, and everybody in the right lane onto the shoulder. This was especially annoying because there was a line of cars hugging the cop’s butt, so as he passed, about 12 jerkoffs took advantage. I blame the cop. Why didn’t he just drive in the shoulder? It would have been a hell of a lot faster than waiting for two lanes of traffic to push over. And there would have been a lot less angry glaring.

In the end there was no sign of an accident. No twisted metal, no tow trucks. Things just started clearing up at one point and then we were all doing 60 again. Now, I’m not saying I want to see anyone hurt, but isn’t that just so frustrating? After a half hour of stop and go anxiousness, you kind of expect a reason for it all, right?

But let me get to the point. I couldn’t help noticing the vanity plate FRENCHY on a big, black Cadillac. When I came up alongside the car for a moment I got a look at the driver. I can’t be sure, but the woman driving, her age, her general carriage…it could have been Didi Conn. (That would be the actress who played Frenchy in the film version of Grease.) Hey, if the height of your career was playing Frenchy on-screen in 1978, and now you’re reduced to infrequent voiceover work and an appearance on Where Are They Now on VH1…well, let’s just say I think it would be an ok license plate.

Here’s the thing, though – Frenchy totally cut me off when traffic started moving. She almost clipped me with her frickin’ Sedan Deville. Come on, Frenchy! You made pink hair famous. You got to hang out with Stockard Channing and Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta and Jeff Conaway (he’s the guy from Taxi, remember?) Frankie freaking Avalon serenaded you in a Diner. That wasn’t enough? You’ve got to cut me off when all I’m trying to do is get home?

It’s alright, Frenchy. I’m not one to hold a grudge. Though I do have to ask, what the hell were you doing on the Taconic Tuesday night?

LUGGY

I’m very tired. Last night Noah started calling for Mommy and Daddy around 11pm. He didn’t stop until about 3am. He would call for Mommy nonstop for an extended period. Finally, Carol would go up and soothe him. He would ‘agree’ to go to sleep. Five minutes after she got back in bed he’d start calling Daddy. The cycle went on for way too long, and we are both exhausted.

Still, I haven’t written in a few days. I guess I’m still winded from the speeding ticket epic. I did see a good vanity plate yesterday, though, so that’s a place to start. On the back of a Honda CRV that was a couple years old: LUGGY. What does that mean? Is it, like, a car that can ‘lug’ a bunch of stuff around? Maybe the guy/gal who owned Luggy used to drive something really small, like Vespa Scooter.

Reminds me of the time when we wanted to put some insulation in the attic of our first house. I was used to driving the Ford Escort hatchback I had at the time, and forgot we were in Carol’s Neon. The Neon had, um, limited trunk space. I can’t believe we crammed four bags of pink unfaced bats into that thing. I think only one fit in the truck and the rest got crammed in the backseat. I almost left Carol at Home Depot so I could drive home with one of the packs in the passenger seat. But it didn’t come to that. I can be quite stubborn.

Still, not as funny as the time we drove home on the highway with a couple of sheets of plywood on the roof of the Jeep. It’s when we were putting new sheet vinyl flooring in the kitchen of that same house. Carol was very pregnant and we both had to have a hand out the window, holding onto the plywood. See, once you hit about 35 miles per hour, the sheets would bow up like a big plywood sail. It was an aerodynamics thing, I guess. A very challenging drive.

I remember we both got home with our window arms aching and very cold. I looked at my big-with-baby wife and apologized for putting her through another hardship. You know, I do that a lot. Maybe I’m too Luggy. Oh well. Sorry Carol.

Return of the Judgie: I Fought The Law Part…

The final chapter in this ridiculous epic. Significant background and much funnier stuff in Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV , and Part V.

I passed through the metal detectors without incident. I made my way into Courtroom B and found a seat on one of the pew-like benches in the back, all the way to the side. Within 5 minutes it got kind of crowded, and I had to watch my elbows to keep from jabbing the guy next to me, but it was still better than flying coach.

Most people in the Courtroom were nervous, which I remember from that Connecticut ticket I fought way back when (see Part I for details). But in Connecticut, we all sat around in the Courtroom waiting to be called to speak with the Prosecutor. Speaking to the Prosecutor either (a) got you a reduction and you just went to pay the clerk or (b) got you a trial because you thought you were smarter than the Prosecutor and Judge and tried to get off scott-free. For example, there was a young guy next to me who wouldn’t shut up about how his van was a piece of crap that “couldn’t possibly go 50 miles an hour so how the hell did the cop clock me at 80” and “he must have radared another car and thought it was me.” I tried to ignore him, reading my book, but he went on and on. He was called before me, and I could see that the Prosecutor didn’t believe the story either. He ended up with a trial, and I’m sure the judge was pissed off.

In White Plains, however, we’d made our deal with the cop, so we already knew our fate. I was a little apprehensive about pleading guilty to anything in front of a Judge with a DVD burner (the Stenographer was already gone – see Part IV), especially considering the Patriot Act and all the Freedom of Information stuff, but I figured I’d take my chances. I calmly read my Avengers Graphic Novel and eavesdropped on the nearby preaching of the attorney that the little Daddy’s girl had hired (also in Part IV).

I only waited about 15 minutes. It was 10 minutes before the Judge got started (and that included the technical difficulties with the DVD recorder that required the temporary stenographer). Then another 5 minutes to get through the 8 or 10 people before me. Yes, it was that quick. Almost all of the cases were the same as mine with the same plea. One or two involved some other detail, or the speed and fine was different, but the exchange was similar. The only difference between mine and the ones before me was that I spoke loud and clear (did not mumble), and I said thank you at the end, which only about half of the others did.

Judge: Mr. Bancroft, you have agreed to plead guilty to a speeding violation of 40 miles per hour  in a 30. Is that correct.
Mr. Bancroft: Yes, sir.
J: You are hereby instructed to pay a fine of $100 plus a surcharge of $50. You can pay the clerk outside.
Mr. B: Thank you.

That’s about it, though I have to bring up the same important detail I first wrote about in Part IV. When I said, “Thank you,” the Judge looked down at me. It was a good, solid, somewhat professorial look. An over-the-glasses look. As I said before, it was what I imagine to be a grandfatherly look. And I swear, I’m not making this up, I’m not embellishing, this is the honest to goodness truth: he smiled at me. Listen, I was watching. Though he was nice and friendly to everyone, he didn’t give anybody else that smile. Just me. And it wasn’t a weird or inappropriate smile. It wasn’t suggestive. Pull your mind out of the gutter. It was just a cool “we’re a couple of cool guys hangin’ in Courtroom B” smile. I smiled back.

I used to have this Police Synchronicity poster with them all in their torn-up, primary color, post-apocalyptic video clothes. No matter where you went in the room, Sting was looking at you. And it was a creepy, Don’t Stand So Close to Me look. Maybe this thing with the Judge was, like, a reverse optical illusion. Instead of having eyes that follow you around the room, Judgie had a smile that is only visible in a narrow-focused area directly in front of the bench.

Hey, you never know.

By the way, after paying cash for my fine, calling Carol on the cell to let her know the outcome, and walking back to the municipal lot at a calmer pace than I’d left it, I still had an hour and 20 minutes left on the meter. Of course, considering the more or less favorable outcome of my day in court (and still floating a little from that Judgie smile), I was not upset about my adventure finding change earlier that morning (that’s in Part II). Hell, I figured I’d share the love, so I waved over a woman in a minivan who was cruising the 3 hour part of the lot looking for a meter with some time left on it. I pulled out, accepted her little wave with a gracious nod, and went on my way. I bet she was psyched when she saw how much free time I’d left her.

Rock on, Minivan lady. And if you had business in Courtroom B, I hope you were polite, spoke clearly, and got your own Judgie smile.