Oh...Yeah, I Forgot About That...

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--Have you ever been so completely happy about something that you plumb forgot to tell other people about it? Was walking home from Walgreen's tonight (one of the few East Coast staples of California), this entry already in mind, when I discovered I forgot to tell my readers (all three of you) the good news: my brother Kyle, Air Force Soldier Man Extraordinaire, has returned home from a six month Tour of Duty in the Middle East.

Last month.

When I try to be serious I tend to get sappy, and when I get sappy I tend to ramble, and when I ramble people tend to get annoyed, so I'll just say "Welcome home, little brother." If my vote has anything to do with it, you won't be going back.

--This last week has been pretty ordinary, save for a sweet Crazed Homeless Altercation (TM) I nearly witnessed outside Subway on Friday. I didn't have much to write about, thought the world might be lacking for real news. And then I saw this.

I mean...are you f*cking kidding me? Man, Major Christian organizations are the LAST conglomerates I'd expect to bilk their members out of money. The final bastion of hope in the wonderland of Fab Dieting has crumbled! Get Skinny With God! I can just hear the Umpteenth Annual Baptist Convention Board Meeting (held in the Bahamas or Aruba, I'm sure) discussion when this came up on the docket:

"Well, Mr. Falwell, we've been discussing this and...true, we all live in mansions and belong to exclusive country clubs and, well, I myself drive a Bentley while my cousin Rupert suffers in a ramshackle home for retards with Down's...but the boys and I, we don't think we're exploiting our cranially-liquidated congregations enough. We tried that crack-cocaine, but they don't have the constant income. We tried them Beanie Babies, but then, well, them TeleTubbies came along and pissed you off, so that was out the window. So we're trying to think of an angle to squeeze every last half cent out of 'em, and it came to us like Miller Lite...CHRISTIAN DIETING! That Atkins thing went froggy, so we figured what the hell. Not only do we get $15 a pop for each book, but then when they get sick from fermented milk and malnourishment we tell them to pray to God HARDER! It's brilliant!"

Strong.

I curse every idiot that buys one of these books to an eternal hell of Joan Rivers red carpet shows.

--Link #1 today to Owain at Jessica Asche, Will You Marry Me? I've linked this before, but, he's Welsh, you know...

I've encouraged Owain to write screenplays because he's a great storyteller. I encourage you, again, to find the story about the thermos.

And Owain, nothing personal, chap, but I'm reasonably sure that Welsh was created by a small sect of afflicted Druids that constantly vomited phlegm. Wheel of Fortune would be absolute feast or famine - there are either 14 unnecessary vowels in each word or a string of seven paragraphs without a single one. And I've never considered that b*stard letter "Y" a true f*cking vowel. Insidious vermin Y.

--Link #2 - If you like any kind of retro clothing, especially highly desirable Vintage t-shirts, you must take your sorry ass to Vintage Vantage. As I'm sure you're familiar, I here at GooseTown will not offer my endorsement to anything that I am not personally satisfied with (that Double Action Whopper Dildo notwithstanding, and I apologize to everyone for any inconvenience this might have caused, I had no idea there were flammability issues). That said, I am highly excited about this little venture. I recently ordered three vintage Ts and was delighted with the results. The shirts are the soft stuff that I remember from the 80's and the designs are going to result in people asking me a lot of questions...especially from angry feminists, who are sure to love the shirt that says "WOMEN - You can't beat 'em!". One of my shirts even happened to be a bit smaller than I thought and James was right quick in offering me an exchange. The good people there didn't even unlawfully make bogus charges on my Debit Card!

Trust me, it's good stuff. In fact, if you're a fan of The O.C., you've even seen one of their shirts worn by the affable and worldly Seth Cohen. So visit the website, g*ddamnit.

--If you are a member of my family and happen to be reading this, it does appear that I in fact will be attending Cousin Mark's Funer...er, wedding this August.

--T-shirt of the week: one I saw eight years ago in Ocean City, MD during Senior (not my) Senior Week. It had a picture of our now Dearly Departed Ronald Reagan, holding a glass of milk and featuring the requisite Milk Moustache. The caption read "Forgot Milk?" Tasteless? Yes. Accurate? Perhaps. Comical? I dare say so.

THE CHRONICLES OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE SANCHEZ MAXTON (HE'S VERY EXCITING)

Chapter I, Epic IV

In light of the Triple Crown Letdown (oooh...that HAS to be used as the title to an upcoming Wrestlemania, doesn't it?) of this past weekend, I'd like to recount for you my very own favorite story from The Track.

When I was but an underappreciated Senior at Cedar Cliff High School in Camp Hill, PA, some fellows and I used to attend a once or twice monthly meeting at Penn National Racecourse. The ponies brought out a bit of delight in all of us, though some of us for a portion of the year were unable to place a wager on the equines, as we had yet to attain the age of 18 years. I was not part of this unlucky group, nor was my mate Jeff.

Jeff never had much luck at The Track, and the countless weeks of failed attempts to pick the requisite Exacta or Trifecta had left him somewhat chagrined and melancholy. He invariably stood parallel with the large window that protected him from falling out of the viewing box, gambling receipts clutched tightly in his right hand, pining desperately from one small taste of glory, feigning joviality, staring out at the Great Dirt Oval. That was a lot of commas and a compound sentence that I'm sure violated several of the accepted MLA Grammatical Standards. I apologize. Where the hell was I?

Oh yes, Jeff...in other words, the poor chap was down on his luck, as it were. So as it was we attended the track one night, Jeff steaming internally, knowing the chances of his luck taking a turn for the better were shamefully minimal. Nonetheless, we proceeded to the Great Glass Skybox, hopes high, dollars soon to fade from our wallets. For the most part, the night went to schedule: some of us bet, some of us won, most of us lost. Including Jeff; poor Jeff. He had yet to come even close on a single race the entire night. As the last jaunt was upon us, many considered the evening yet another wasted venture. I chose to bet a meager amount on a Superfecta I knew I had no chance of winning, as I knew little to nothing about either the jockeys or the horses themselves. One or two others followed suit. Jeff sulked. And sulked.

And then he exploded.

With a sudden rush (and $80 that seemed to come from absolute ether), Jeff crashed his way up to the betting window, and in a sensational fit of idiotic insanity, proceeded with the following exchange:

JEFF: "Eighty dollars. (Pointing to program) This horse. This race."
ATTENDANT: "Sir, I think you should..."
JEFF: (Voice cracking under severe emotional tension) "EIghtYYYY dollars. ThEEEs horse. This rAYYYEEEce."

Reluctantly, sensing another fool on his way to the poisoned well, she stamped his ticket, and the fun began.

The horses lined up. There was a general buzz alight in the crisp, er...Track Skybox...air. Not only among our group of fellows, but also among the scant few who had stayed, brave souls, for the night's last call. There was palpable apprehension in the air, but as the horses strode magnificently to their gate positions, no one said a word. Then, with the sharp whipcrack of the starter's pistol and the dull clang of metal, the ponies were off once again.

No one knew which beast Jeff had picked, as we were wary to get too close to him at the window. But we could tell from his immediate reaction that it was the red horse, out to a blazing lead on the front straightaway. Number 6; good day to you, old Number 6! He strode like a Man on Fire, like a Bat out of Hell, like a Horse...on a...or, that is to say, on the...in a Race. As the gaggle of diminutive pilots atop brown inhuman warriors strode through the second turn, Our Number 6 had shot out to a five-length lead. We cheered wildly for our new best friend. But in the back of our minds, we all harbored the same malcontentededed - and logical - prognostication: Our Number 6 would inevitably tire and falter down the final stretch.

And yet Old Boy continued to gain steam. Down the backstretch he careened, distancing himself from the pack. As he entered the third/fourth turn combo, Jeff made a rather gay (read: joyous) announcement: "Sausages are on me! SAUSAGES ARE ON ME!!!!!!' This brought about a wild, cacophonously ebullient outcry from the fellows, and we began to pull for Our Number 6 ever harder. As he rounded out the fourth turn, we knew victory was in our grasp - to the tune of, post-sausage, over $600 for Jeff. We exchanged high-fives. Heterosexual hugs of pure happiness were shared. Strangers may have cried. We were all so emotionally sparkling that I don't believe a single one of us was actually watching the track when we heard what has become known in our circle as the Penn National Death Knell (TM):

SNAP! GDunk...gDunk....gDunk....ffffffffffsssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: For those of you not aurally inclined, that is the sound of the horse's front left leg breaking, followed by somersaults one, two, and three, ending with a twenty foot skid atop the dirt.

Caught up? Good. Moving on then.)

I'd like to tell you we raced down to the track, forgetting all cares of lawful authority and personal safety, desperately attempting to give care to the injured animal as the race flew right past us. I'd like to tell you we faced danger head-on, giving f*ck-all for the consequences. I'd like to tell you there was a tear shed, a candle lighted, a moment of silence held. Yet there was none of this.

What there was was an irate Jeff running to the Great Glass Window, the Translucent Divider of the Skybox, pounding on it with all his might, yelling, as I recall, "GET THE F*CK UP YOU MOTHER F*CKING PIECE OF C*MGUZZLING SH*T! GET THE F*CK UP YOU B*STARD!"

Jeff eventually calmed himself. We watched as the race ended, Our Number 6 expressed on the freshly-pounded soil, defeated. Injured. Seeming to bray. Seizuring just slightly. We watched sorrowfully as the track attendants approached the fearless strider and its humorless jockey. We wept internally as they laid it (Old Number 6, not the jockey) to rest humanely with euthenizing fluid in a hypodermic needle the size of Florida. We left as, simultaneously, an Elmer's Glue Truck loaded Our Number 6 into its back bed and an elderly janitor wanted that we should "get the f*ck out" as his the details of his employment required him to "mop the sticky sh*t up".

And so it is. So it was. We were happy to see the fine steed collapse into a tumbling ball of death? Surely no. Did we learn a lesson? Such is up for debate. Was there really an Elmer's Glue Truck? Let's not quibble upon details. Suffice to say that this weekend's Belmont Stakes brought forth a plethora of memories for me of fellows with whom I've now lost communication, phantom sausages never consumed, the unbridled enthusiasm of youth who know not the value of a dollar, misty ale-haze the likes of which has yet to be notarized, vestiges of cherry-flavored audacity from the depths of a misappropriated, lyrical harlot whose sole desire is to engender the very...

Wait a minute...where are my pants?