BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued from: You Want My What?

Let’s see, now where were we?

Oh yeah… When last we left off, I had been drained of the majority of my blood by Hildegard Renfield at the behest of Vampirella, the evil Red Cross shill who had been sent to prowl through a Science Fiction convention looking for an unsuspecting author who had been working so hard that he wouldn’t be able to resist her offer of OJ and cookies. Oh, and I’d also been told to stay out of bright lights, make sure to not get myself wet, and whatever I do,  definitely don’t feed myself after midnight, correct? No, wait… those are Mogwai…

Oh, oh, wait, I know… I was told not to drink any booze!

Right?

Good, then we are all on the same page.

So, there I was, booted out the back of the Blood Mobile by Vampirella’s evil henchwoman, with only an Amazing Spiderman band-aid, some stale cookie crumbs, and an eyedropper full of OJ for my trouble. And, on top of that, I was a pint low. I still say it was really more than a pint, because I caught Hildegard chanting, “Two for the boss, one for me… One for the boss, one for me… One for the boss, two for me…”

However, if that wasn’t bad enough, Chunkee – remember Chunkee? – was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because he was armed with wooden stakes as he prepared to storm the rolling exsanguination station in order to rescue me. Nope, it was because Hildegard had spent so much time bleeding me (apparently she didn’t have an adequate vacuuming system <– gratuitous Firefly reference) that we had no time to spare. He already had the ChunkMobile warmed up and sitting nearby so that we could race downtown to Union Station and have a confab with the show hosts before going on air.

So, that’s what we did. The Chunkster drove like a madman, taking out old ladies with the door, honking his horn, and generally driving on the sidewalk when necessary. And, with a bit of time to spare, we arrived. We apologized profusely for the obvious rush and disorientation we were displaying, and explained the situation. It was no problem. Terry and John were all good and understood perfectly. In fact, they even said, “Hey, we have this sponsor who dropped off a bunch of energy drinks for us. Want one?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

So, one of them ran out and then came back with an armload of these little silver cans with red, blue and yellow logos printed on them.

Now, while this particular “energy drink” had been around in the United States for about 5 years, it hadn’t really been on my radar. To be honest, I’d never even heard of it. But, what the hell. I was game.

I looked at the can and said, “No alcohol, right? This is just an energy drink?”

I mean, after all, Hildegard told me I couldn’t have alcoholic beverages, right? She never said anything about energy drinks.

“Yep, just energy drink,” they told me. “No booze at all.”

“Okay,” I said, then popped open the can and downed it.

A few minutes later they led us into an empty studio they were using as a “green room” so that I could wait until it was my turn to be on the air. Upon depositing us there, they left an armload of the silver cans too, saying, “Here. Have some more.”

So, I did.

Now, I need to point something out to you folks. If you have read my blogs you know I’ve spent plenty of time behind a microphone. Just a couple of blogs back I talked about my days at my High School student run station. I did the college station thing too. In later years I  even did guest spots on local stations to answer technical questions for callers. So, I had plenty of experience behind a microphone AND in front of crowds. Hell, this wasn’t even my first rodeo as an author being interviewed. I’d done that plenty of times as well. This was no big deal. It was old hat. I could do it in my sleep…

But, for some odd reason, I simply couldn’t sit still. I was pacing, fidgeting, and doing everything but bouncing off the walls. Actually, that’s not entirely true. There is a good possibility that I did, in fact, bounce off the walls once or twice… At any rate, Chunkee sat watching me in wide-eyed amazement for several minutes before finally asking me what was wrong.

“I dunno,” I told him.

“Are you nervous or something?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I can’t imagine why I would be. It’s just a radio talk show. I’ve done more of these than I can count.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “So what gives?”

“I really don’t know,” I said, giving my head a shake as I paced from wall to wall 14 more times in the span of 5 seconds. “Gimme another one of those drinks.”

And, he did. And, I drank it.

Before long, Terry and John retrieved me and brought me into the studio where the magic was happening. It was reminiscent of some of my old, late-evening talk shows back in high school – the lights were off, everything was laid back and just plain cool. We did our sound checks, came in from a break, they introduced me, and BAZZINGA! It’s off to the races we went.

I was scheduled to be on for 20 minutes that evening, and I came on at the bottom of the first hour of a 3 hour show. When it was time to say farewell, they didn’t. Instead they went to a commercial break, turned to me and said, “Holy crap, you’re the liveliest guest we’ve had in months. Want to stay on for the rest of the show?”

I thought about it for a second, then looked at them and said, “Got any more of those little silver cans?”

“Oh hell yeah,” they said. “The sponsor dropped off a friggin’ truckload. Want some more?”

“Line ’em up,” I said. “We got some dead air to fill.”

And so, the moral of this story is – Don’t listen to Hildegard Renfield. She doesn’t tell you the whole story when it comes to this exsanguination thing. Oh, and yeah, Red Bull is kinda like crack if you drink it right after giving blood…

More to come…

Murv

Continued from: Enhanced Husband Torture Techniques…

Part 2 of 2…

Return with us now to the thrilling days of a Christmas past – When last we left our intrepid blogger, he had asked his wife – the evilest of all evil redheads, Queen Eebil Kat – what manner of offering she demanded be left beneath the sacred scratching post tree on Eebil Katsmas Eve. Her  demand was, of course, for nothing less than “Cool Socks”. Unbeknown to our lovable curmudgeon, Queen Eebil Kat was hatching a sinister plan which would place him in serious peril – a peril she would use for her personal amusement while she laughed and filed her nails…

Okay… Everyone all caught up? Good. Let’s get on with this, because it’s painful for me to even think about.

So, I was feeling pretty good with this. “Cool Socks”. Definitely couldn’t be that hard. I’d been in the sock room before, so I knew what generally constituted cool in her eyes. I also knew her shoe size, so if the socks were for some reason classified by actual sizes, I could cross reference it somewhere.

I was all good. I’d already ordered up another gift she had made noises about throughout the year, so the socks were going to be the perfect distraction. Truth is, I was more than good. I was flat out golden.

Then, as they say, the hangin’ day came round… (Who is they? Mason Proffit, of course…)

At any rate, I cleared a bit of my schedule one day so that I could run to the store. Now, I didn’t imagine it would take long for me to obtain the sacred socks, but just to be on the safe side, since it WAS the Christmas (aka Katsmas) season after all, I scheduled myself the whole late morning and early afternoon to accomplish said task.

Now, something you need to understand about me is this: I absolutely hate shopping. Despise it. Seriously. I am one of those folks who knows exactly what he is after, goes to get it at the least busy time of day he can find, then zips in and right back out of the store, avoiding all unnecessary contact with insane shoppers that he can. The only – and I mean ONLY time I enjoy shopping is when I take E K to a nice store and do the whole “Pretty Woman” thing with her.

1. Because she is, in point of fact, pretty. EXTREMELY pretty. (Wayyyyyy prettier than Julia Roberts if you ask me.)
2. Because I get to sit in one place and watch. Not much crowd dodging involved. Life is good. E K gets new pretty clothes, I get to relax and watch a hottie trying on said clothes. The only thing that would make it better is a cooler full of beer.

Unfortunately this particular spree did not fall into the “E K / Pretty Woman” category. It did, however, fall into the “must obtain offering for the Eebil Queen” category. And, I’m all about making sure The Evil One is placated, lest I end up whimpering in the back of a closet with a variety of size 7 woman’s shoe prints all up and down my torso.

So, with my schedule cleared, off to the mall I went.

Not being a regular shopper for women’s wear, I wandered aimlessly through a couple of the stores at Northwest Plaza. Up the escalator I went. Down the escalator I went. Wander, wander, wander… Dodge, dodge, dodge… Up, down… Down, up… Wander some more.

Then I frowned really hard. Why? Because I found no cool socks. In fact, the only socks I managed to find were mens tube socks, six in a bag, your choice, black or white.

Definitely not cool.

So, with my shoulders starting to slump, I started again through the mall and decided to bite the bullet. I would go into one of the high dollar department stores. I don’t want to name it here, but let’s just say the first half of the name is a kind of pickle and the second half rhymes with “cards”.

We had played pretty woman here before, so surely they, of all stores, would have “cool socks” befitting of Queen Eebil Kat.

I did the up, down, wander around thing a bit more. Then, like the point of a shovel striking a buried chest, I rounded a corner and found, yes, you guessed it, socks. But, that wasn’t all. As I made a beeline toward this treasure trove of offerings for my Evil Queen, I met what you might call resistance. You see, just as pirates buried dead dudes with their treasure chests, apparently big, fancy stores bury dead, angry salesladies with their socks. Before I had made it two steps into the department, the departed souls of one of them popped right up in my face. With the path to my prize blocked, I immediately took evasive action and tried to sidestep her. Well, apparently the angry spirits of dead old salesladies are pretty nimble, because I didn’t make it an inch before she was right there barring my way. I tried feinting to one side and then shifting to the other, but it was like she could read my mind. I simply wasn’t getting in.

I stopped and stood there for a moment, while the sales zombie looked me over, then she opened her mouth. I started to back up, fearing that she was going to try to eat my brain, but instead she simply barked with unmistakable disdain, “Can I help you?!”

You could just tell by the way she said it that she had to have been a redhead before all the color drained out of her.

“Socks,” I said. “I need to by some socks.”

“Mens apparel is downstairs,” she growled.

“They aren’t for me,” I replied.

She eyed me with suspicion then demanded, “Who are they for?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife?” She didn’t sound as though she believed me.

I couldn’t help myself. I was starting to get a bit impatient so I blurted, “Did I stutter?”

“Don’t be a smartass or I’ll eat your face!” she hissed in return.

“Yes ma’am.”

Continuing with her interrogation she spat, “Why are you buying socks for your wife?”

“A Katsma… I mean Christmas present.”

“Present? Socks?” There was absolutely no mistaking the fact that she didn’t believe me at all this time.

“Yeah, she said she wanted some cool socks.”

“Cool socks? What do you mean, cool socks?”

“You know. Socks with interesting patterns. Argyle. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, right,” she mumbled, standing there working her jaw and smacking her lips. I imagine she was trying to get an errant bit of brains from the last poor schmuck dislodged from her false teeth. She looked me over in silence twice more, then stepped aside. “These are all the socks we have.”

“Thank you,” I said, slipping past her to inspect the rows of polka dotted, striped, argyled, fuzzy, and otherwise “cool” feminine foot coverings.

Now, not having an absolute inventory of the sock room floating around in my head, it took me a bit to make a decision on a few pairs of the sacred socks. Obviously I wanted my offering to the Evil Queen to be perfect, especially with it being Katsmas and all. My task, however, was not made any easier by the fact that the Zombie Sales Lady Jackal didn’t stray from my side. She just kept following me up and down the aisles, never less than a half dozen inches away as she shuffled along, grunting and wheezing. I have to admit, not only was it psychologically disconcerting, but I almost succumbed to the Ben Gay and Polygrip fumes that were wafting around me in thick clouds.

Finally, I chose some especially cool socks for my dear and lovely. Before I could even start toward the register, Zombie lady snatched them out of my hands and demanded, “Cash or charge?”

“Visa…” I mumbled, extracting the plastic money from my wallet.

“You want these gift wrapped?” she spat, wobbling off to the register stand.

“No. I can handle that,” I replied.

“Uh-huh,” she grunted. “I thought so, you pervert.”

By the time I arrived at my truck, mall security, the local police, and a SWAT team had surrounded it. I was taken into to custody and spent several grueling hours trying to answer questions about sock fetishism.

But, that wasn’t the scary part. When they finally turned on the overhead lights in the interview room, who do you think I saw? Yeah… E K sitting in the corner, giggling to herself in a very satisfied way, all the while painting her nails.

I’m no longer allowed within 100 feet of the women’s sock aisle in any department store in the United States. I can hang out in the lingerie all I want, but if I go near the socks I end up getting tackled by security. These days I have to shop for my offerings to Queen Eebil Kat online. Even so, my guess is all those sites are tracking my IP address just to be sure I don’t do anything perverted.

More to come…

Murv