I went to Home Depot this morning and felt an instant sense of accomplishment upon entering the store. That’s right, upon entering the store. I don’t have to buy anything or even stroll down the aisles to feel like I’ve really done something special when I enter the Home Depot. I just have to get up the gumption to pass through those big sliding doors and enter into the land of ceiling fans, weed killers and a whole lotta shit that I have no clue about.

I had to go because the toilet flushy thing on my commode went out last night. Went out? It’s not electrical, so it didn’t really go out. It broke, okay? My toilet flushy thing broke and I had to replace it. If you want a more proper term for the toilet flushy thing, you are talking to the wrong guy. You push down on it and the toilet flushes. Last night, I pushed down and the toilet did not flush. As a result, I knew that my toilet flushy thing was broken and I had to cross into the manliest of stores and act like I knew exactly what I was looking for.

Three people asked me this morning if they could help me find what I was looking for. Of course you can help me, I thought. But I’m a guy living in the manliest city in the United States! I’m not going to reveal my mangina by saying to you, “My toilet flushy thing went out last night. Can you help me, please, Ms. Lady. And could you help me find my testicles while you’re at it?” Instead, I am going to traverse down one aisle after another until I find what I am looking for. Even if it takes half of my Sunday morning, I would never admit to not knowing exactly what I am looking for. I’m a man, dammit!

Truth be told, though, I should probably be excommunicated from this town because of my lack of manliness. It’s not that I don’t consider myself a man. I do. I’m all man, baby *wink*. But when it comes to Nashville, just having testicles and peeing standing up doesn’t cut it. We are the manliest city for a reason. Men here love their beer and their big trucks and their Nascar and their camouflage and their sports bars and pissing without washing their hands (cause that’s what real men do, right?) And their assault rifles. Let’s not forget those. We’re real men, so we need real guns. Screw a handgun. I need something powerful enough to mow down a rain forest. Forget Dirty Harry. I want that gun Jesse Ventura had in Predator. Now, THAT’S a real gun. And that’s why we voted for McCain down here. Obama wants to take our guns away! He wants to piss on our Constitution — and probably wash his hands afterward, that sissy boy! Here in Nashville, we want to be able to carry our guns into restaurants, cause manly men like to feel cold steel pressed against their meaty flesh as they tear into a butt steak and talk with their mouths full.

I am slightly jealous, though. A lot of men here in Nashville are like modern-day MacGyvers. Give them an Allen wrench and two twisty ties, come back in an hour and you have a completely remodeled bathroom. And cars — they love their cars down here, men and women. That is where I feel completely inferior. You get a bunch of men in a huddle, talking about cars then glance over at me. I’m the guy sipping a Capri Sun, looking totally baffled. Conversations between me and real men over cars generally go like this:

“What kind of engine you got in her?”
“Umm, the kind that goes Vrrooommm when I turn the key.”
“What about horsepower?”
“Horse, uhh…wait. I thought we were talking about cars. When did horses enter into the mix? You can’t go switching subjects all quick like that on me, Buford.”

These same guys walk into the Home Depot and when asked what they are looking for, they say something like, “I need a two by four quarter inch phalanges with a miter saw attachment and a combustible diesel backup to ratchet my wife’s petunias.” And you expect me to say, “I need a new toilet flushy thingy?” Not on your life.

I’m not really sure where I was going with this whole blog entry. Guess I just wanted to vent a little on my inferiority complex and how much of a burden it is to live in the most testosterone saturated city in America. Of course, there are drawbacks ladies, when it comes to dating or marrying a manly man. Sure, they can fix your Chevy or build you a brand new deck out of toothpicks and Elmer’s glue. But when it comes to the artsy fartsy things (their term, not mine), most of ‘em will leave you wanting more.
“Honey, Pagliacci is going to be at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center next weekend. Can we go?”
“Pagliacci? What the hell is that?”
“An opera.”
“An opera? You want me to go to an opera?”
“Yeah, it will be fun. We’ll get dressed up and have a nice dinner and see the show.”
“Uh huh. Right. Yeah, why not?”
“Really??”
“Sure. Then we can get our nails done and talk about our menstrual cycles while we do each other’s hair. I ain’t going to no opera. I’m a man, dammit!”

So, ladies, if you want a nice night on the town or breakfast in bed or an afternoon at a museum followed by a tasty brunch at a local bistro, give me call. If you want to live in a home where the toilet flushy thing works, doors open and close properly and your car actually starts in the morning, call Cletus.

No wonder my phone never rings.

Turtle’s got a shit life anyway. He walks too slow. He’s got those stubby little legs that make the female turtles (I call them furtles) cringe. He’s inextricably stuck, forever existing in a dank little house that could probably use a few lamps, a bath mat and a shot of Febreeze. When he has sex, he’s constantly banging his shell against her’s and there’s no possibility of spooning afterward. He’s got no good representation in the media except for those two dunces on the Comcast commercials. And now this…

The increasing demand for turtle meat in southeast Asia has lead to a huge surge in turtle harvesting not only on that continent but in the states as well. This AP article states that in Iowa alone “harvests have increased from 29,000 pounds in 1987 to 235,000 pounds in 2007″. Apparently, turtles are a delicacy in Asia.

Here is my question — why is it always the odd items that are delicacies? I looked up delicacy on dictionary.com and it is defined as “something considered choice to eat”. There is no mention of the fact that is has to be a rare or seemingly disgusting item. But it always seems like stuff such as monkey brains and turtle meat are considered delicacies somewhere. Who are these people? And why can’t they just eat chips and dip? Or Oreos? Why do we as human beings always seek out the oddest shit to cram down our throats? When God created man, did he really steer him away from the tree of knowledge so that he could go and chow down on bull testicles? I’m sure bull balls have no other function other than to help in the creation of more bull balls and udders. And yet, we have to batter and fry them. Why?

What if it were kittens? Not cats, but little, furry, helpless kittens. What if they were a delicacy in Asia instead of turtles, and the good people of Iowa were harvesting 235,000 pounds of fresh, delicious, pink kitty meat. THEN there would be an uproar! Just because turtles don’t meow or make biscuits on your sweaty, hair-matted pot-belly, they gotta get whacked?

I think this will be my new campaign. I want to save the turtle and make kittens the new worldwide delicacy. We could even put them in big, empty glass aquariums so that you could pick out which one you want flamed broiled or deep fried — maybe they come with a wedge of lemon and catsup.

Who will join me?!

Don’t these little wide-eyed critters look cute? And tasty?

I was very much prepared to go into a long, rambling rant about how Yahoo’s NCAA basketball bracket picker malfunctioned today, the eve of a grown man’s Christmas. Yahoo doesn’t know how close it came to losing me forever.

For a few hours, no one could make their picks for the upcoming tournament (the games start tomorrow morning), and I was incensed. I could barely concentrate on work because I was so busy hitting the refresh button on my browser, praying that the problem was just a momentary glitch. When I discovered that people across the nation were having the same problem, I damn near went into panic mode. I was cursing Yahoo up and down and swore that if they ruined this year’s tournament for me by not allowing me to get my picks in on time, I would never use their search engine again.

Fortunately, the problem lasted but a few hours. Still, it was more time that it should have been. You have an entire year to prepare for this, Yahoo. How in the hell do you let something so major go glitchy when the start of the holiest of holies is just one day away? Completely unacceptable.

I’m sure there are many people who think I am overreacting. “It’s just a game,” they are probably saying to themselves. This is the same phrase my mom uttered during the 1981 NFC Championship game when Joe Montana connected a pass with Dwight Clark in the end zone and killed the Dallas Cowboys’ chances of going to the Super Bowl. There I sat on my den floor, crying my eyes out, and my dear mother says, “It’s just a game.” My response? “It’s NOT JUST A GAME!!”

And that is what I say to you, Yahoo. I’m a grown man now. I don’t get giddy over Christmas Eves or Easter Bunnies or amusement parks anymore. All I have is a few weeks in March when time ceases and I indulge incessantly in the greatest of all sporting events — the NCAA tournament. Where else do you put sixty five teams in a funnel and watch each and every game to see which ONE team drips victoriously from the bottom? You don’t hold your breath for just one game on just one day. You hold your breath for every game, several times a day for weeks. The euphoric feeling it brings is almost as good as sex. Better even, because rarely do you feel guilty afterwards.

You fixed the problem, Yahoo, and I give a weak nod of appreciation for that. But don’t let it happen again. Grown man’s Christmas. Remember that. What you did today was the equivalent of a little boy’s father getting drunk on Christmas day, kicking the dog, pissing on the tree and pushing his wife down a flight of stairs.

It’s not just a game, guys. It’s NOT just a game.

During my freshman year in college, my girlfriend at the time gave me a three disc box set called Giants in Jazz. I remember the day she gave it to me. I remember it for many reasons. It was at that moment that I knew she really loved me. People gave me jazz related stuff all the time, but it wasn’t specific to me, you know? It was just jazz. The gift was appreciated but I could always tell that they saw familiar names on the back of the cd and decided to purchase it based on what they thought I may like. But Amy, my girlfriend, she listened to me. She knew I loved Charlie Parker. She knew I loved Dinah Washington and Dave Brubeck and John Coltrane. She knew this and went out and purchased with her hard-earned, part-time-job-while-in-college money this cd set complete with all of my beloved musicians. It meant so much to me at the time, and still does.

Another reason why I remember that day is because when I played the cd, it was the first time I ever heard Louis Armstrong’s version of Stardust. Now, just so you understand, Stardust is my absolute favorite when it comes to standards. Hoagy Carmichael was an f’ing genius musically. Think about it — Georgia on My Mind, Lazy River, The Nearness of You, Skylark….where would jazz be, where would MUSIC be without Hoagy Carmichael. Truly, he was a heavyweight. And Stardust, oh what a heavenly tune. And for such music to be paired with the absolutely most endearing and beautiful lyrics written by Mitchell Parish — Parish’s lyrics paired with Carmichael’s music is like a rainy Sunday afternoon with nowhere to go and the love of your life by your side. Perfect.

Now, you throw Louis Armstrong into the mix with his own, purely individualistic contribution, and you find yourself blithely waltzing through a musical utopia. Hearing that song at the ripe age of eighteen was one of the most enlightening moments of my life and not only caused me to lust for more of Louis Armstrong’s music, but it made me respect Mr. Armstrong as a trumpet/cornet player. Until then, all I really knew was What a Wonderful World and Hello Dolly. I knew Louis the showman. After hearing Stardust, I was instantly confronted with Louis the father. I realized that the singer, as great as he was, was only half of what made the man a legend. That golden sound that came forth from his horn knocked me on my ass completely, and to this day, I haven’t been able to stand back up again.

A few years after hearing Armstrong’s version of Stardust, I became a Woody Allen fiend. I saw “Annie Hall” when I was about 19 or 20 and discovered a soul mate of sorts. He was a man who wrote the way I wished I could write and said what I wished I had the moxie and intelligence to say. I gobbled up every movie he had made at the time. One of those films was Stardust Memories, one of my favorites. There’s a scene in that movie that Allen frames with Armstrong’s version of Stardust. I love that scene. If you’ve ever had a perfect moment, and especially a perfect moment with someone you love, you would dig this scene. When everything comes together and you are able to cement the memory of the beauty of it all with a great tune, well, there is no room for improvement. And years later, whenever you hear that song again, you will be instantly transported back to that moment. Because of that song, you are able to embrace that memory forever.

Now, whenever I hear Louis sing that song or see that scene from Woody, I feel an instant surge of gratitude. I feel thankful for that memory of my girlfriend handing me the discs that would change my life more profoundly than the two of us would ever know. I feel thankful for geniuses like Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish, Louis Armstrong and Woody Allen. And I am thankful for the fact that this stardust memory will, til the end of my days, haunt my reverie.

To be collapsed by a song - ain’t it grand?

Two things I learned while spending a little time with some high school classmates of mine last night.

1) The last place you want to catch up with people you haven’t seen in (at least) ten years is a very nice but very LOUD nightclub. “I haven’t seen you in forever! You look great! I said you look great! No, you’re not late. GREAT! Grapes? No, I — nevermind.”

2) When three of your old classmates (two men and one woman) surround you and tell you pretty emphatically to never, ever, ever get married, I think it would be in your best interest to listen to them. They didn’t appear upset or bitter — just very, very sure of the fact that marriage was a one-way ticket to the land of cash poor and melancholy. These are people I met when we were all kids, fresh and full of vigor and ideals. Then, what happened? Reality gave us all a firm kick in the nads, I guess.

And when THE WOMAN says to me, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” well — you tell me how I’m supposed to take that.