Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
I'm invited to join a bunch of people from work Thursday night "for
a few drinks," some sort of informal Christmas party in lieu of,
you know, an actual company-sanctioned event. We're supposed to meet at
a bar in a town I've never heard of, at five o'clock. The ending time,
according to the email, is a wink-wink nudge-nudge question mark.
I automatically accepted the invitation, but now I'm hearing talk in the
halls that concerns me. Apparently everybody, everybody, is
planning to get bed-shitting drunk. I'm not sensing even a hint of
restraint among the participants. There's discussions of kamikaze
pitchers and shot slamming and toasting the sunrise with tequila. One
guy, in regular conversational tones, said, "I'm going to drink
myself straight into a coma."
An older lady, who is, I think, a member of that Red Hat gang of
shrieking senior citizens you see at malls and whatnot, has vowed to
"get crazy."
What am I getting myself into? I don't even know what a kamikaze is, and
have no intentions of finding out. I don't want to get trapped with a
bunch of pukin' assholes inside a musty wood-paneled "banquet"
room in the rear of a neighborhood tavern, all of 'em slurring, "Oh
come on Jeff, you California faggot, drink like you're from
Pennsylvania!" If I'm here for fifty years, I'll still be from
California to these people.....
And the thought of Red Hatters Gone Wild is not exactly my idea of a
pleasant evening. Ya know? She'd better just keep her hands to herself,
that's all I'm sayin'.
Have you been to any of these so-called parties this year? How did it
go? I know it's important to be semi-social, but I've got a bad feeling
about this thing. Visions of paramedics are dancing in my head. There's
a palpable and still-gathering dark energy surrounding the event, a lot
of pent-up aggression, or some such.
I'll probably end up on the Smoking Gun.
-- On Saturday I went to church. No, that's not a typo, it actually
happened. Several years ago we decided the Secrets should have at least
a casual exposure to religion, and Toney started taking them to the
local Catholic church. She was raised a Catholic, and went to Catholic
school, and all that stuff, so it was a natural thing to do. The bulk of
my religious background is confined largely to the half-season of Seventh
Heaven I watched a few years back.
This weekend our youngest boy had to
apologize for the first time. Is that what they call it, apologizing?
I'm not sure, but it's a big deal. I got myself all trussed-up in dress
clothes, and the four of us went to the church. Our Lady of the Perogies,
I think.
Our names were posted at the end of a certain row of pews, and we took a
seat there. A woman was up in the balcony playing an organ, something
slow and mournful. Once she got all cranked up, and I could've sworn she
was about to break out with "Crocodile Rock." But she got hold
of herself, and quickly backed it off.
It's all very ceremonial, isn't it? I found myself feeling intimidated.
When the priest arrived the whole crowd began standing and sitting in
unison, and there was some sort of mysterious call-and-response going
on. At one point everybody in the place yelled out, "Lord have
mercy!" Where I come from, that's what you say when the chili's too
hot.
I was completely confused, and thought the crowd was about to start
doing The Wave. I felt like I was the only person in the house who
didn't know what he was doing, and that everybody else knew it.
Finally they had all the kids line up, and there were four
priests there to expedite the process. Each child waited their turn,
then approached a priest to confess their sins. I'm not sure what an
eight year old has to confess, probably some cookie-based crime in most
instances, but that's what they were doing.
The youngest Secret went into it without any obvious traces of fear. I
would've been a basket-case, needless to say, so I was proud of him.
After the apologizing was over, we made a beeline for home. I stripped
out of my sausage-casing dress slacks, then it was time for the
all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. There I committed the sin of gluttony
with cashew chicken, followed by an afternoon of blatant bald-faced
sloth.
And I plan to do it again.
-- Speaking of religion, the Pastor McPurvis sends along this photo of
himself sporting the Surf Report colors during a recent hospital stay
with his daughter. He reports that she's now doing well, and the shirt
easily withstood the stresses of the event. Good deal, all around!
-- Surf Reporter Brian has contributed two new extra-cool Smoking Fish
sightings, right here. This land is your land, this land is my
land/From the Pink Pony, to the grassy knoll, man.... Thanks, Brian!
-- Here's a Christmas tree infinitely cooler than ours -- dryer lint or
no dryer lint. Next year I might try that out with the golden elixir. It
would make everyone so proud!
-- And finally, the video for one of the greatest Christmas songs of
them all: " Fairytale of New York." Oh yeah.
--
I'm invited to join a bunch of people from work Thursday night "for
a few drinks," some sort of informal Christmas party in lieu of,
you know, an actual company-sanctioned event. We're supposed to meet at
a bar in a town I've never heard of, at five o'clock. The ending time,
according to the email, is a wink-wink nudge-nudge question mark.