I received this email from a reader in San Diego. It’s in response to a column I had written about losing my bartending job:

“Dear Ed, [I read] about this job in Norway or Iceland… where people hire drinking buddies for the night. Man, if you couldn’t swing this, no one could.”—William H.

The company to which William refers is called the Kind Fairy Agency out of the Ukraine. For about $18, they will hook you up with a drinking pal for the evening.

I do love this concept, but judging from the tone of the company’s press release, I’m not sure Kind Fairy is right for the job: “We are not trying to get people drunk deliberately,” says director Yulia Peeva. “Our main mission is [to provide] good, fruitful conversation.”

“… [W]hen I see that a client is relaxed,” says professional drinking buddy Gennady Maksimov, “I urge him to talk rather than drink more.”

Well, what the hell kind of drinking buddy company is this?! A true drinking partner doesn’t “urge” his buddy to drink less—unless, of course, he’s on the verge of talking shit to a table-full of soldiers of The Mongols motorcycle and murderers club.

And the “main mission” of any true drinking excursion isn’t “conversation.” The main mission is drinking. All that other stuff—talking about problems, exploring philosophical concepts, arm wrestling, picking up hotties, telling jokes, starting bar fights, closing business deals—whatever it is any two drinking buddies decide to do while they drink together—will vary from buddy to buddy. However, the one constant—the raison d’etre—of a having and being a drinking companion is drinking.

Oh well, you get what you pay for, I guess. Eighteen bucks does seem rather inexpensive. Not to be snooty, but I’ll be charging a helluva lot more than that to be a professional drinking buddy. But then, that’s because I’m a pro.

My credentials are impeccable: For one, I like boozing with other boozers, so you won’t be hearing any of this “urge him to talk” talk from me.

Also, as a veteran bartender, I have had plenty of experience breaking up fights, which means there’s a decent chance I can talk Mongols’ Nation out of pulverizing your spine into a fine powdery substance and snorting it. However, if I fail, and a bar brawl with these felonious behemoths is imminent, well, don’t worry, because I have your back… gammon board. It’s at my house, where I’ll be hiding with the blinds drawn.

And what is a bartender but a paid drinking buddy, anyway? For years I’ve listened to the go-nowhere stories of the mumbling masses. I listened as they cried into the pints of their broken marriages, crumbling careers and devastated self-esteem. I’ve listened to them rant about their political ideology, religious convictions and conspiracy theories. I have heard so many brain-butchering tales of exaggerated conquest and valor that I actually grew an extra ear canal to receive all the crap I don’t care about.

The secondary canal runs from the outer ear, to the inner ear, toward the brain, but then dips—bypassing the brain entirely— down the spine, into the intestines, and, finally, into the rectum goes whatever turd of a story (also known as a “mono-log”) that had just been shat into my ear.

So, how does that benefit the client? Well, having a secondary ear canal means you can talk incessantly without worrying about my going into a coma.

Finally, not only am I a talented and efficient drinking comrade in the field; I’m also a scholar of drinking-buddy philosophy.

I know everything about the subject, including: Shot Rotation Theory, The Psychology of Barstool Selection, Quantum Waitress Seduction Mechanics, Beer Goggle Defogging and proper back-patting methods for when your drinking buddy is pitching dinner in the bushes.

I’m also well-versed on the history of drinking buddies. For instance, did you know the concept didn’t even exist until the 9th century? Apparently, two males boozing together was seen as being totally gay, so they only drank alone or in groups. It wasn’t until 865 AD, when Viking warrior Godfrid “Drippy-Beard” Ragnarsson drank side-by-side with Ivar the Boneless—the infamous berserker King of Scandinavia.

Legend has it that Boneless, so named for his difficulties with impotency, was distraught over the sudden death of his queen. And though it was Boneless himself who murdered her in a rage for failing to arouse him, he was still stricken with grief. Not wanting to be alone, he invited Drippy-Beard to join him at the pub.

By all accounts, the meeting was a success:

The two drank long into the night, guzzling mead and devouring cow legs until Boneless had forgotten his despair and nearly split his belly open from all the riotous, blow-hardy Viking hilarity.

The night did end in tragedy, however, when Drippy-Beard made a pass at Boneless during the walk home. It was then that Boneless discovered, as evidenced by the bulge in his tunic, that he was not impotent at all. Turns out Ivar the Boneless was gay as a glory hole in a Gomorrah bathhouse. So, he did what any closeted Viking king would do in this situation—he beheaded Drippy-Beard on the spot.

So there you have it: my drinking-buddy résumé. The cost is $25 an hour, plus you pick up the tab and the cab. Oh, and don’t worry: If you get a bit boozy and decide to make a pass, I won’t lop off your head. I will charge extra, though.

So, this week’s column is about the fatwa-like death threat against David Letterman for sayi—waaait a minute! What the hell is that!? Right there to the left? Is that my picture!?

Holy Kee-rist, what an abomination! It looks like the Harmony.com profile of a bovine-semen collector who inappropriately enjoys his job too much. And what is that extra fold of skin just beneath my left eyebrow? Is that eyelid fat!? Kee-rist in Heaven, where did that come from?

There are so many reasons why I can’t stand having my picture above my column, some of which have nothing to do with the fact that I am ugly and old. Here are the top five:

• No More Identity-Denying: Every now and then, a stranger will approach and ask, “Are you Ed Decker?” Sometimes I say “Yes” in spite of the possibility that the asker will stab me in the face for writing an unflattering missive about his sister’s vagina. Other times, I deny my identity—not necessarily because I fear the wrath of Sir Sister-Vagina-Avenger, but because there is a likelihood—especially if it’s a drunken bar encounter—that I will be subjected to an hour-long reprobation of my writing skills, and/or an impassioned sermon about all the things that are wrong with my political opinions, and/or a screed about why I should stop bashing religion, all of which will be followed by a request that I write about his “totally awesome band,” The Attention Whores. So, um, yeah, CityBeat, thanks for that.

• No More Fly on the Walling: One of my favorite life-moments is the rare occasion when I stumble upon somebody who is in the process of reading my column. I love that! The last time it happened was in a Mexican-food joint. A couple in their early 60s were sitting at a neighboring table, reading it together. They were taking turns pointing out certain parts and laughing. When finished, I embarked on my usual undercover ego-recon mission: “Pardon the interruption,” I said, “but what are you reading that’s so funny?”

“It’s a column called Sordid Tales,” the man said, lifting the paper to show me the cover. “It’s in CityBeat magazine.”

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“It’s about the writer getting fired from his bartender job,” the woman responded. “It’s pretty funny.”

Well hot damn! I thought. They like me. They really like me! It’s a feeling that never gets old. But now that my goddamn face is up there—complete with quinquagenarian wrinkles and disgusting eyelidulite—I can kiss any future undercover ego-recon missions goodbye. Thanks CB.

• No More Man of Mystery: I used to receive a certain amount of flirtatious emails from enthusiastic and, let’s say, libidinous ladies. Well those days are over, too. See, when my picture was not on the column, an enthusiastic, libidinous lady was free to imagine me as whatever knight-on-a-white-horse, movie-star, hero, hunk, lifeguard and Marlboro-Man-of-her-dreams man she always dreamed about. It is for her that I grieve.

Even my wife loves the columnist-me better than the actual me. When she reads it, she fantasizes that it’s written by a totally yoked, college-age pool boy who comes over to clean the Jacuzzi we don’t have. Thanks a lot, CityBeat, for crushing what few little moments of joy W. had in her life.

• Parent Killing: Until now, I’ve been able to confound my mother and father into believing that the Ed Decker of Sordid Tales fame—the booze-slurping, drug-sopped porn-monger with the sense of humor of a high-school freshman that got left behind a time or two—is not the same Ed Decker as the one they raised. When they realize it was me all this time, their brains will likely burst, so, thanks for killing my parents, CityBeat.

• Ideological: I’ve always felt that columns which contained an image of the author diluted or distorted the effect of the words within. It’s the same way I felt when MTV debuted in 1981. I remember seeing Mark Knopfler’s goofy face and scrawny body for the first time and saying, “Huh? That’s him!?” The guy responsible for some of the most smoldering guitar pizazz of all time is wearing a Miami Vice patio jacket, neon-pink headband and glowing orange leather pants as if he were Sonny Crocket’s bi-curious lover and street informant from the theater district.

And I damn near dropped the bong the first time I saw Def Leppard in—oh, Kee-rist, say-it-ain’t-so—leotards! Now, it’s important to note that those early Def Leppard albums were respected, hard-rocking recordings, released long before big-hair glam had even been identified as a genre (largely because, without MTV, nobody knew they wore makeup and big hair in the first place). When I finally saw the video of them wearing leotards, eyeliner and an osprey’s nest of twigs and straw held together by a quart of Aqua Net on their heads—well, let’s just say I wasn’t able to masturbate to my Olivia Newton John poster for three months.

I never listened to those bands in quite the same way again. And now, I fear, you’ll never read these words in quite the same way, either. Although, admittedly—from a reader’s perspective—I do prefer seeing the face of the author. There’s something organically appealing about that, and I fully understand why the CityBeat overlords want to include our photos. I just can’t stand looking at mine, not in the least.

Vice President Joe Biden collected some trouble recently when he seemingly endorsed China’s controversial population-control policy during his visit there.

“Your [one-child-per-family] policy has been one which I fully understand,” he told the crowd. “I’m not second-guessing.”

It didn’t take long for his enemies to pile on, including House Speaker John Boehner, who said he was “deeply troubled” by Biden’s statement.

Doesn’t Boehner’s hyperbole make you wretch? He wasn’t just troubled by Biden’s remarks, see; he was deeply troubled—as if Boehner was pacing in his office all week, brooding about the apocalyptic effect the VP’s speech will have on our nation.

“The result being,” Biden continued, “that [China is] in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. [It’s] not sustainable.”

Well, whaddaya know? Biden wasn’t endorsing it after all. Rather, he was making an economic argument over a moral one. Because, as Biden knows, when you attack someone’s morals, they become defensive and all progress comes to a halt. It’s called diplomacy.

Of course, I got a laugh out of the whole thing because, while everyone else was demanding that Biden publicly denounce China’s family planning policy (which he did), all I could think was, Denounce it!? Are you nuts? Denouncing a one-child-only policy in China is like denouncing a one-mosquito maximum at your campsite. Why would anyone denounce the greatest government moratorium  since the Trojans banned giant, rolling, wooden horses from entering their city gates?

To hell with the Great Wall—the one-child policy is the shit that belongs on all their tourism posters:

“Visit China—what few kids we have are muzzled.”

Or,

“Beijing! Where the brothels outnumber the brats!”

Oh, sweet Republic of China—how long is thy immigration line? For I would gladly tolerate the traffic jams, pollution, rampant public spitting, government-controlled media, bizarre alphabet, squat toilets, avian influenza, aggressive pro-panda propaganda (propandaganda?) and, worst of all, the 24-hour All Lucy Liu channel, to live in a country that isn’t inundated with chil—OK, OK. I’ll stop. Sorry. I honestly didn’t intend to run the joke so far into the ground. You know I was joking, right? You know I know that the Chinese family-planning policy is barbaric. I would never support a law that limits our right to reproduce; however—isn’t it time our government stops promoting reproduction?

There are many tax benefits that incentivize procreation, not the least of which is the child tax credit, which gives families $1,000 for every dependent under 17. That is udder bovine excrement! Given our overpopulation problems, people should be incentivized toward not having kids. We should give a $1,000 tax credit to every child a taxpayer does not have. If you don’t have two kids, you get a $2,000 credit. Not having four kids gets you $4,000. As for me, I plan on not having 15 children. I know, I know, 15 is a lot of kids to not have, but the way I see it, I’ve got a lot of love not to give.

Another problem with the child tax credit is that it goes to the wrong people. Currently, only families earning less than $110,000 are eligible. That means we are subsidizing lower income-people to breed, which is utterly whackbasswards.

Lower-income families usually have to work three or four jobs and can rarely afford quality childcare, so their unsupervised golem are free to loot convenience stores and drop bricks from overpasses all day. The last thing we want is for them to have more children. Better to incentivize upper-income people because they have money: They can afford a team of tyrant-nannies to crush their children’s spirits. They can afford to build a sound-proofed dungeon in which to shackle and torture the little murderers-in-the-making. They can afford to seal all their offspring’s orifices with expensive cosmetic surgery.

And while I do oppose the Chinese concept of levying fines or prison sentences for violating one-child law, I am down with taxing parents extra. For instance, we should institute a “Screaming Hellion on the Plane” tax. I’d also like to see a “Too Much Pee in the Public Pool” tax; a “Mommy, Why is that Man so Fat and Other Insults” tax; an “Everything on TV Sucks Because We Can’t Let Kids Hear Bad Words or Encounter Adult Concepts” tax; and, of course, a “No Fun Family Values Asshole” tax for all those a-hole parents who think they can dictate adult behavior—such as when we have to stop drinking beer at the ballpark, how much porn we can view in the public library, who can’t marry whom and how many feet away from the middle school we have to be when selling or buying our drugs—all in the name of protecting “the children.”

What’s that you say? Families are the backbone of America and we need to make it easier on parents to raise smart, healthy and productive members of society?

Are you crazy? Did you not see Children of the Corn? Scary, right? Well, turns out Children of the Corn wasn’t a horror movie after all. It was a documentary.

Thursday, September 8, 2011 – The Great Southern California Power Outage.

Black Thursday

I was home when the lights went out, lost a little bit of work, but not a big deal. W. and I hung out by candlelight and listened to the transistor radio. It was pleasant and peaceful. Turns out we were fairly prepared. Lots of candles, lots of water, lots of batteries and flashlights and alternate sources of lighting. We even had internet. I have battery powered modem so, when W. went to bed, I watched Netflix on my iPhone. It was a thriller called House of 9 which I watched all the way up to the last 15 minutes of the dramatic conclusion, when the internet finally died.

So, there I was, awake and amped from the climax of a horror-thriller at about 10:30pm with nothing to do. So, I decided to take a walk down Newport Avenue just to see what was going on and maybe, with any luck, find a bar that was open.

It was an interesting stroll–fun and weird and dark and spooky. Lots of people hanging outside around fire rings, people throwing glow sticks around, some fireworks going off. People with flashlights going to and fro.

When I got to Newport I was delighted to see that the liquor store was open (those guys stay open no matter what). So I went in and bought myself a tall boy of Becks, and walked down to the end of Newport to sit on the seawall and watch the waves.

After about 15 minutes of blissful, Becks-fueled serenity, a drunk guy walked over and sat beside me, legs hanging on the sand-side.

I knew instantly this guy was trouble, mostly by his posture and the way he was dressed, which was kind of a faux-gangster style. He sat on the seawall, about five feet away, on my left, legs hanging over the sand, and slurred, “I’m sorry” to me. I told him he had nothing to apologize for and then, without a pause, he proceeded to go on a furious rant about some girl who had cheated on his friend, with another friend – in his apartment!

That was the part that really agitated him – he kept saying, “She fucked him in my apartment!”

Then he said, “sorry” again, and again I said, “No reason to apologize,” and then he slid over a bit closer. I thought, “Oh boy, this is not going to end well,” and proceeded to continue on his rant about the girl.

Now, here’s where it gets good.

He apologized again, and said, “I’m so mad, I think I’m going to have to punch you in the stomach!” He said it matter-of-factly, as though he were telling me he was going to get a donut. Then . . . he slid even closer! At that point we were side-by-side, so close we were almost touching shoulders.

I said, “You really don’t want to hit me, dude; I haven’t done anything to you.”

I said it calmly, but was fairly scared. Yeah, he was inebriated, which was advantage-Decker. But, you never know about what weapons these seawall kooks are carrying these days and if he was carrying a weapon, he was certainly drunk enough to not care about the repercussions of using it.

When I told my wife this story she asked why I didn’t just get up and walk away. The answer, I told her, is because I’m attracted and fascinated by bizarre people in bizarre situations. I can’t help but want to stick around – just to see where it all will lead. I guess that’s the journalist in me. A trait that has gotten me into, and out of, a lot of jams.

Anyway, he continued on the rant about the girl and, again, announced he is going to hit me in the gut, and this time, he actually delivered on his promise. In a near slow-motion attack, he hooked his left fist across his body, and toward my stomach.

Being that it was telegraphed, and not exactly at Sugar-Ray velocity, I easily deflected it.

But, I knew at that point he was capable and willing to make physical contact and that it was time to make an exit. A lot of guys would’ve knocked him out at that point, but I REALLY didn’t want to risk it, so I told him, “Don’t touch me again,” took a pull from my Becks, and pondered an exit strategy. I supposed I could have walked away, but was almost certain he was going to follow me, and, while pondering my next move, he again hollered something about that “Evil fucking bitch” and hauled off and punched me hard me on the arm.

It didn’t hurt much cuz it was just the arm, but it startled me and, in reflex, I shove-punched him with both hands so hard, it knocked him off the seawall and onto his back on the sand. Then I quickly stood up and started hoofing down the street.

The seawall was pretty high, he was very drunk, and I shoved him so hard that I doubt he was ever able to pull it together quickly enough to get up and follow me. But I did watch my back the whole way home as I huffed down Abbott, up the alley, and basically zigzagged back to my warm, dark house.

Crazy huh?

“I don’t know of any society that has embraced sodomy and survived.”
Pat Robertson

Day 1 (Monday, March 27, 2018 ):

I noticed it the moment I awoke; a peculiar feeling that somehow the very fabric of our existence had been altered in some terrible, irreversible manner.

I dragged myself out of bed, walked to the front room, looked out the window, and couldn’t believe what I saw. The sky was black and orange, emergency vehicles whizzed by, a dozen or so stalks of smoke and flame billowed from upturned automobiles, and a dog was trotting down the street with a charred human leg between his foaming jaws.

I retrieved the newspaper and read the headline: Supreme Court Decision Allows Gays to Marry: Very fabric of society torn.”

“Wow,” I thought. “The Henny-Pennies were right after all.”

I remember when it all began – back in July of 2003, when the Supreme Court overturned an archaic Texas sodomy law, thus making it legal for homosexuals to have sex. Naturally, that decision enraged and terrified certain people. They believed that this sodomy decision was the first step toward allowing gays to legally marry, and that would be the end of society as we knew it.

“This is one giant leap down the slippery slope toward Armageddon!” wrote columnist Harry Hardwick.

“This decision will have terrible consequences for our nation,” said Scott Lively, director of Pro Family Law Center.

“If we allow homosexuals to marry,” argued Sandy Rios, president of Families for the Protection of Marriage, “it will result in the disintegration of the fabric of marital sanctity. It will destroy the very fabric of society.”

The list goes on.

I remember thinking what a bunch of stupid, ugly, asshole bigoted, backward, frightened, callous, homophobic jerks they were. Oh how wrong I was – for today, all the dire predictions came true. The Supreme Court has made it legal for gays to marry – and the Apocalypse of Queer is upon us.

Day 2: It’s only been two days since the fall of straight marriage and already the electricity is out. I put batteries in the radio and listened to the Emergency Broadcast System. Reports were coming in that homosexuals were getting married in droves and roaming the streets attacking heterosexuals. City Hall had been sacked and the grocery and department stores were looted bare. I nailed down doors, boarded windows, loaded my 20-gauge Remington single barrel shotgun, and leaned it against the wall.

Day 3: Attacked by a gang of roving, married queers today. I was rummaging the alley dumpsters for food and became encircled by a small gang of leather queens. They were shoving me between them like a medicine ball and kept calling me Hechro (as in heterosexual). Then they shoved me onto the ground and kicked me repeatedly.

“No no no,” I pleaded, crawling to my knees. “I’m gay, I’m gay! Gay is great!”

They stopped kicking then, a look of curious indecision and empathy on their faces. Their leader – a hairy, leather daddy with “Judas Priest” tattooed on his neck – stepped forward and unzipped his fly. “Prove it Hechro,” he said.

I stood there frozen, unable to move. “I… I… I can’t,” I stammered.

“Hechro!” someone shouted. “Let’s get him!” blurted another.

The rest is a blur.

Day 15: Listened to the Emergency Broadcast again, but all they played was Cher, Liza and Barbara – 24 hours straight: All Day Diva Radio they called it.

I used to think homosexuals were just like regular people, but after listening to Diva Radio all day I’ve come to understand how truly twisted they are. I realized then – I must never let them turn me gay.

Day 43: I’m the last heterosexual alive. The rest are dead or cruising gay bars. A shanty town of queers has developed outside my house and they take shifts throughout the night singing the “We are the Champions,” and slipping gay porn through the mail slot. I am sleep deprived, malnourished, dehydrated – but staunchly convicted: Must. Never. Go. Gay.

Day 71: All Day Diva driving me to dementia. Cher keeps asking if I believe in love after love and I periodically catch myself staring longingly at the shotgun.

Day101: Nothing left to read but gay porn (found the articles to be well-written and informative). Also, discovered I prefer late-era Cher over early Cher. Clutch rifle tightly to breast. I am the last straight thread in the very fabric of society. Must. Never. Be. Gay.

Day 138: Can’t. Go. On. No food, but for insects. No water, but for tears. No TV but for the MANSEX channel. I reach for the shotgun, “Oh how I love you shotgun rifle,” I say, holding the stock to my chest. “Oh how your barrel is so long and firm against my breastplate. A perfect fit,” I think as I push the barrel shaft to the back of my throat. “Too perfect,” I think, wrapping finger around trigger and gently squeezing off a buckshot orgasm . . . .

EJD
07/09/03

From the Letters Department:

“Hey Ed, seems like you’re writing an awful lot about gay rights these days? People are starting to talk. Are you a queer?” –Jon

Not that it’s any of your business, Jon, but if I were gay you’d know it. I’d be proud of it. And I’d be good at it. I’d be the best damn gay in America. I’d bartend in all the hippest fem bars, wear all the crazy fem colors, say “You go, girl!” to all my fem friends and give these legendary blowjobs that’d make you go blind. Oh yes, Jon, if I were gay, you would know all about it.

I remember the day I discovered I was heterosexual.

Of course, I was always heterosexual. I just didn’t know it had a name until I started hearing the kids in school talking about this other breed of human beings called homosexuals. I learned that homosexuals were filthy, awful, rotten people who did rotten, rotten, awful, filthy things to each other and the best way to deal with them was to banish them from your clique, expose them as freaks and drive them to the brink of suicide.

But then came the day when I found myself asking a terrifying question, “What if I am gay?” I was about 16 years old and sitting in my room, on my bed, thinking about my pal, Jeff. People were starting to talk about Jeff and the long, ugly process of his exile was beginning. So I was sitting there trying to come up with tactful ways to terminate our friendship without hurting his feelings (how humane of me) and got to thinking how terrible it must be for him–how terrible to be losing your friends, and what if his parents ever found out, and oh man I could never tell my parents–thank Christ I’m not gay. Wait a minute. How do I know I’m not gay? I never tried it before. How do I know I wouldn’t like it? And if I did like it, would that automatically make me gay? Could I be gay? Holy Jesus Mother of Christ, what if I’m gay!?

I had to find out.

So I scrunched my face with anxiety and began the agonizing process of envisioning myself in some horrifying homosexual entanglement–hoping with all my hope that I would not find even the smallest part of it appealing. At first I imagined that it was with a friend, but that vision was too revolting to even consider. So I quickly replaced him with some unknown imaginary male, which was only slightly less revolting, and imagined myself on my knees, preparing to unzip this unknown imaginary male’s fly, and–and just before his phallus could flop out before me, my eyeballs started sparking and my ears started smoking and my brain short-circuited and the whole torrid anti-fantasy shut down.
Whoop-ee! I thought. I’m straight, I’m straight! What a relief. I felt like jumping and dancing and singing the “I’m not gay” song. The one that goes, “I’m not gay/ I’m not gay/ Hooray for me/ I’m so not gay.”

Today I was watching that MTV reality show, True Life. The episode was titled, “I’m Coming Out.” It documented four or five closeted homosexuals, mostly young, who were about to reveal themselves to their loved ones. They all went through one familial wringer or another, but the parent who enraged me the most was this one woman who told her freshly outed son that being gay was contagious, like a disease, and that he could be cured and all this other ridiculous dark-ages bullshit, and I just thought, Wow, what a pathetic witch you are. That’s your son!

You know, being childless, I am certainly no expert on child rearing. But I know one thing–if I had a son and he told me he was gay, I’d say, “You go, girl!”

I’d say, “Atta way to have the moxie to be different and the courage to declare it.” Then I’d take him on a shopping spree. We’d come home with bags and bags-full of all the great gay clothes with all the great gay colors; a stack of CDs from all the great new gay bands, like Rave Against the Machine or Lollipop 6, a dozen or so homo how-to books and manuals; and subscriptions to gay magazines with articles like, “Going Gay in 10 Easy Steps” or “What to Do When Your Fag-Hag Becomes Unruly.” Then, when he was ready, I’d nudge him toward the front door and say, “Now go on out there and be the best damn queer you can be!”

Not in my wildest dreams would I make him to feel a freak as that troll on True Life did. To reject your son now, when he needs you most, will do more damage to his psyche than every gay-bashing baboon he will encounter for the rest of his life.

This is why I write about gay rights, Jon, because of women like that, because of guys like you, because it’s the right thing to do and because at this very moment there is a huge group of our fellow Americans being discriminated against right under our noses. So I will write about how totally and utterly fucked that is for as long and as often as I like.

EJD
12/15/04

I was zip, zip, zipping through Ocean Beach on my little, black and silver, 150-cc Lance Milan putt-putt motor scooter when I pulled alongside a real biker, dressed in full-blown biker-gang-guy regalia, leaning on his Harley waiting for the light to turn green.

We glanced at each other simultaneously. I nodded hello, and he—get this—laughed in my face. He looked at me, looked down at my bike—making a quick assessment about my manhood (which he identified as Level-7 Pussy)—looked back at me and laughed, out loud, real nasty-like. Then he turned away in disgust, as if a glob of bird shit had landed on my head and was dripping down my cheek.

It wasn’t a big deal, really. I know the score. Harley riders deplore scooter riders the way stand-up comedians deplore mimes. And pretty much everyone else older than 12 thinks scooters are a joke, too. Well, everyone older than 12 can suck on my skid marks! My ride is a beast. It goes zero to 60 in—well, actually, it doesn’t ever get to 60. But it can do 35, no problem—only takes a few minutes to get there. Then it’s zip-zip, putt-putt all over the place!

Seriously, though, for me, a scooter makes crazy-good sense: For one, it’s a huge money saver. The gas, insurance, registration— even the cost of the vehicle itself—combined, are only a little more expensive than renting a couple of Pauly Shore impersonators for a party. Second, I work from home, which means no long freeway commutes. Lastly, I live at the beach, where parking is scarce and traffic is fierce, making a scooter ideal because it parks anywhere and splits the lane to get to the front of the line at traffic lights—which is exactly what I was doing when I came upon the biker.

Now, for the record, I didn’t nod to him as though I thought we were badass biker brethren of the road—as if we had something in common the way, say, a Corvette owner would nod at another ’Vette owner, or the way black men in Alpine nod on the oft chance they cross paths. No. I nodded to him because we were standing right next to each other, looking at each other. It was a human-to-human nod for crissake, not biker-to-biker. I would never consider my little putt-putt job to be in his hog’s league. However, I’m also not going to feel inferior because my chosen mode of transportation doesn’t meet the approval of a man who cuts off the arms of a leather jacket with a hacksaw and thinks that’s punk rock.

When the light turned green, he revved up and peeled out, leaving me in a poisonous cloud of noise pollution, hate pollution and pollution pollution. And what I thought as I stared at the back of his motorcycle jacket, with the motorcycle-club iron-on patch was, He thinks I’m the pussy!? The guy who irons decorative patches onto the back of a sawed-off leather jacket because he thinks that’s punk? The guy who replaced the stock tailpipes on his ride with ones that are twice as loud, for no other reason than to be noticed and/or annoying? The guy who belongs to some juvenile social club with handshakes, passwords, parliamentary-style bylaws and arbitrary officer rankings? You know how those first meetings always go: “OK, so I’ll be the President, and Bear will be V.P., and Vulgor is the Road Captain, and Sammy “the Hammer” will be Sergeant at Arms”—and then you have the “prospects,” who are basically college-fraternity pledges, which is really what these biker gangs are, rolling fraternities, the only difference being that biker gangs have goofier names. Here are just a few nuggets of comedy I found on MotorcycleClubIndex.com:

• Organized Kaos (stifling my laughter).

• The Wastelanders (as if they were a gang of rolling marauders, scanning a post-apocalyptic hinterland for scantily clad, mute chicks and gasoline).

• Gospel Riders (who are, their website says, “Motorcycling for Jesus”).

• The Centurions (actually, I wanted to name my first rock band The Centurions—when I was 15!)

• The Star of David Bikers (blood enemies of The Gospel Riders).

• A Few Good Men (which is not what you think; though, you have to wonder how it was possible not to notice the gayness dripping off that name).

Speaking of homosexual bikers, I absolutely had to Google “gay motorcycle clubs” when researching this column. Alas, all that came up were totally inoffensive, non-hilarious monikers like The LGBT Motorcycle Club, The Golden Gate Guards and The Spartan Motorcycle Club. What a disappointment! I was hoping for some totally awesome, totally faggy, gay-biker-gang names, like The Sodomites, or The Truck Stop Cruisers, or the queer chapter of the Mongols Motorcycle Club—The Mangols. Or how about The Fag Hags, for a motorcycle gang composed of meth-addled straight chicks who follow The Mangols. Or, my all-time favorite gay-biker-gang name I just made up: Hell’s Anals.

I swear to God, I am seriously thinking about going gay just so I can wear that patch on the back of my sawed-off leather jacket. At least then, when I encounter one of these holier-than-thou Harley enthusiasts on my little zip-zip, putt-putt motor scooter, he’d have a reason to object to my presence: Because my iron-on biker-gang patch isn’t making fun of gay people; it’s making fun of him and his amusing fraternity, preposterous costume and obnoxiously loud tail pipes that he intentionally modified for no other reason than to be obnoxious and loud.

Well, hoe-lee crap did my last column thwack a hornets nest or what?! The angry responses are still swarming in.

The column was called, “Sons of Lame-Archy.” In it, I razzed the concept of biker clubs and gangs. The part that caused the brouhaha was a digression in which I lamented that none of the gay biker-gang names I saw online had any of that queer flair I love so much, like—and I don’t mean to re-inflame—“Hell’s Anals, The Sodomites and The Mangols.”

I meant no offense. They were just the kind of flamboyant biker-club names that I thought celebrated homosexuality, the kind of gay-biker-gang names that said, “In your face, homophobe! We are no longer going to ride in the closet!” The kind of biker gangs I would join if I happened to be gay or even entice my hypothetical gay biker son to join when if he was old enough.Among the swarm of angry emails, tweets, Face-pastes and blog-floggings were several responses from staffers of San Diego Gay and Lesbian News (SDGLN), including publisher Johnathan Hale, who reported my column to GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and assistant editor Morgan Hurley, who tweeted that “There is NO appropriate context for those types of words,” and wrote a column in which she criticized me for, among other things, not apologizing. That’s when the bees really started buzzing.

And while I received a lot of support from members of the LGBT community, a lot more sent very angry, accusatory missives, all of which boiled down to one or all of the following questions 1. Is Ed Decker a homophobe? 2. Is it ever permissible to use bigoted epithets? 3. Does Ed Decker owe an apology?

1. Is Ed Decker a homophobe? Not even close. My queer-friendly street cred is airtight. For starters, I have written dozens of columns in which I ferociously argued in favor of gay rights and viciously attacked its enemies.

Second, I, too, have been a victim of homophobia—in the workplace. True story: The company for which I worked at the time had transferred me to a new store. For reasons that don’t matter here, I was favored by the supervisor (who was thought to be gay), and an assumption spread that I, too, was queer. It didn’t take long before I was uniformly outcasted, ridiculed, sabotaged and—get this—poisoned.

Last on my list of pro-gay cred is the fact that—wait for it—some of my best friends are gay. Yup. I said it. Some of my best friends are gay. Why shouldn’t I say that? If I hang out with gay people, it sort of defeats the whole homophobe concept, no? Cases in point are two of my closest friends in the world, Danielle LoPresti and Alicia Champion (founders of San Diego IndieFest), who have appointed me as godfather to their newborn son, Xander Lucian, and have asked me to be a bridesmaid in their upcoming wedding. I haven’t decided whether I should go in drag; regardless, if a man agrees to be a bridesmaid in lesbian wedding, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be long before he gets kicked off the Fallbrook Annual Aryan Homophobic Apple Bob and Barbecue Planning Committee.

The LoPresti-Champion family

2. Is there ever a time when it’s permissible to use bigoted epithets? Great question. Answer: Yes.

Ms. Hurley likened the FGGT-word to the N-word, which is a reasonable comparison. She also said that it was “never, ever” OK to use these words, which means I need only one example to prove her wrong. Of course, I have many (such as Louis CK’s hilarious and obviously non-hateful bit about the FGGT-word), Lenny Bruce’s various uses of the F- and N-words, but my favorite happened about a year ago, in the live-music bar where I worked.

That night, we had a touring band consisting of members of different lineages—two Africans, two Mexicans, an Arab, an Asian and a couple of crackers for good measure. When the night was over, the band and some of their friends drank at the bar while we bartenders stocked beer and closed shop.

Once we were all sufficiently intoxicated, one of the band-friends pulled out a camera-phone and announced that it was time to play the “Shout the Most Offensive Racist Slur You Can Think Of” game. Apparently, this is something they did after every show on the tour. It was an easy-enough game. Everyone took turns shouting the most outrageous racial aspersion they could think of, followed by a round of uproarious laughter, hugs and backslapping.

I don’t think I’d ever laughed that hard. There was something so freeing about it—especially the shouting part—as if the slurs were ostrich eggs we cracked against the wall and watched all the hate and anger—the yolk—of those words harmlessly dribble onto the floor.

When the camera pointed at me, I stopped what I was doing and shouted, “Niggers don’t tip!” The two bruthas leaped up from their stools and high-fived and hugged and complimented me for such exquisitely hateful hate speech—all of which felt so good I wanted to leap over the bar and make out with them both.

3. Should Ed Decker apologize? No, he should not. Because it would be the most bigoted thing he could do.

After having spent the last 17 years razzing Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists, Africans, Asians, Arabs, Latinos, Caucasians, Republicans, Democrats, athletes, musicians, sports fans, pot snobs, beer snobs, snob-snobs, women, men, cats, dogs, bikers, bar customers, bartenders, waitresses, MYSELF, my writing, my looks, my family, my friends, flight attendants, cartoonists,  parents, children, cheerleaders and guys named “Chaz” without a single “sorry” to share between them, wouldn’t it be patronizing to apologize now? Wouldn’t that assume gays and lesbians need coddling or special treatment? I mean, yes, absolutely, I am “sorry” that my words have been hurtful to some, but I do not apologize, because I did nothing wrong.

That said, I don’t want any apologies, either. For those who called me a “homophobe,” “bigot,” “hater,” “enemy to civil rights,” “ignorant” and “filth peddler,” warned me to  “watch my back” and spread my column around the country to stoke a response—no apologies necessary. In fact, I’m stoked by the ferocity of your response. I’m stoked that you mobilized against what you perceived to be a hateful voice, stoked that your  days of taking shit and cowering in shadows are over, that you’re increasingly more willing and able to shout, “In your face, homophobe!” Honestly, I’m so happy about that it makes me want to leap over the bar make out with each and every one of you.

Ed Decker
09.05.11

Epilogue: The letter from GLAAD

After I’d written the first draft of this column, I received a cordial, non-reactionary letter from GLAAD’s senior media strategist, Adam Bass:

At GLAAD we believe that a couple of your fictional gay biker group names used terms that were unnecessarily offensive.  The satire of the column was not lost on us, but we believe the jokes could have used different words to get the same point across.

The letter went on to ask that I not use words like “faggy,” “sodomite” and—this one took me by complete surprise—“homosexual.”

Because of the clinical history of the word ‘homosexual,’ it is aggressively used by anti-gay extremists to suggest that gay people are somehow diseased or psychologically / emotionally disordered…. Please avoid using ‘homosexual’ except in direct quotes.

Here is my unabridged response to him:

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your fair and reasonable letter. As a life-long hater of homophobia, I understand why so many in the LGBT community took offense to some of the language I used. However, I must respectfully decline your request as I am a firm believer that what really matters in these situations is context.

A good example is the revelation (to me) that the word “homosexual” is now on the list of words I am not permitted to use.

First of all—and again, I say this with utmost respect and with no desire to offend—I do not recognize GLAAD’s authority over my vocabulary. My opinion is that there is absolutely nothing offensive about “homosexual.” It is—by its etymology—exactly what it defines, with zero innuendo. Homo means “same” and homosexuals are people who are sexually attracted to members of the same gender. It just couldn’t get any less offensive than that.

I mean, if we’re going to start indiscriminately banning words, I can think of one that is far more offensive than “homosexual,” yet is embraced by the gay community.  The word is “homophobe” and here’s why.

I think you would agree that the word “homo”, as a noun (not a prefix), is currently considered as one of the more offensive anti-gay slurs. Well the word homophobe takes the word “homo” puts it in front of “phobe,” creating a word that means “fear and/or loathing of homos.”

Whoever coined the word “homophobia” didn’t know what they were doing because an etymological breakdown of the word shows that the word is actually made up of a prefix (homo as in “same”) and a suffix (“phobia” as in fear) without a root word.

Technically, homophobia means “fear of the same” which doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless, you know, it is applied to someone with an irrational fear of cloning.

But that’s not what the coiners were doing. Whoever coined it was using homo as a root word – as in, “that guy is a homo” – and attached it to phobia, making homophobia more of a slur than homosexual. However, it doesn’t have any anti-gay baggage so it remains acceptable – proving that context is what matters.

I also took issue with the reason GLAAD says “homosexual” is off the table, that it was “aggressively used by anti-gay extremists.”

Well, sure , any word can be aggressively used by extremists, even polite ones, or, in this case, clinical ones. That’s the point. It’s not the word; it’s the context. And the reason that “homosexual” is the next word on the chopping block is not because there is something wrong with it; rather, it’s that there is something wrong with the way some people use it.

If we ban “homosexual” and make “gay” the appropriate term, bigots will eventually start saying “gay” with contempt, and in 10 years we’re back to the same place, banning “gay” this time in favor of the next acceptable word, and the next—killing word after word without understanding that no matter how many words we kill, the bigots live forever.

Thank you so much for your letter and the cordial tone with which it was written. I have great respect for GLAAD and its endeavors. Let me know if you need the gratis services of a spunky writer—I’d like to chip in.

Ed Decker,
San Diego CityBeat

Gallup recently reported that 50 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana, while 46 percent remain opposed.

Well, doesn’t that just bubble my bongwater! For the first time, we can actually say that there are more rational, logical, free-thinkers in our society than idiot bovine who mindlessly devour the propaganda of the anti-fun fuddy-duddies who have lorded over our country for way too long.

Naturally, after Gallup released the report, all the anti-fun fuddy-duddies appeared on the cable news shows, rehashing their tired B.S. that marijuana is not a virtuous blossom grown from the mineral-rich soil of God’s green Earth, but that it’s a heinous pistillate fertilized in the hothouses of Hell with the blood and bone-bits of deflowered Girl Scouts.

OK, nobody quite put it that way, but there was an awful lot of fear-mongering, such as when David Evans of the Drug Free America Foundation told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing that “Marijuana use is going to double or triple” if made legal.

Don’t you hate when people make declarative, predictive statements about things that might happen when everybody knows that nobody knows what the future holds. Evans said that marijuana use is going to double or triple, not “I think it will” or “I believe it will” or “My gut feeling is that it will”– with “gut feeling” being an appropriate way to say it since double or triple is a statistic he clearly pulled from his anus. Actually, to retrieve such a ludicrous stat, he had to reach his arm beyond his anus—deep into the ravaged hinterland of his rectum, past the cold, crusty crevasse of his dying colon, up the snaky ravine of the intestines, where his fist waged an epic battle at the gates of the ileocecal valve (fiercely guarded by the Owls of Ga’Hole) and drilled into the slimy folds of the lumen, where poop and other poop-like matter (such as bogus statistics) are formed.

Double or triple? Please! There is no way of foretelling such complex matters of human behavior—especially when no one knows if legalization will cause the price of marijuana to rise or drop; or how much it would be taxed; or how much government regulation would be implemented; or how much, and what kind of, marketing will be permitted— which is why not a single, legitimate, scientific study has attempted to predict how much consumption will increase, if at all, and why Evans had no choice to but to retrieve that number from the recesses of his bowels.

Whatever. The job is to frighten the herd into submission. So, the fuddy-duddy cattle farmers spew their propaganda on cable news shows like CNN (Cattle News Network), HLN (Heifers Late Night) and, of course, FOX (For Oxen Only) News, and all the livestock on Mooing Moron Farms believe it—unquestionably—just as they believe that the slaughterhouse is where well-behaved cows go for a spa and massage.

My gut feeling is there would be a slight increase in usage if pot were made legal (about 10 to 15 percent), which would occur over the course of a dozen-or-so years, and my reasoning is:

1. Pot is already as easy to acquire as any legal drug and damn near as easy as buying groceries.

2. According to a 2009 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, roughly 102 million Americans (41 percent) have admitted to using marijuana during their lifetimes, while 15 million (6 percent) admitting to using regularly.

Put another way, of the 102 million Americans who have tried marijuana, 85 percent of them did not become regular smokers, which suggests that there is a whole shitload of people out there who tried it and realized, at some point, it wasn’t for them. This suggests that it wasn’t a law that kept those 87 million people from smoking dope (or they wouldn’t have tried it in the first place); rather, it was their own disinterest.

There is something Evans said that did make sense. He said that when cannabis consumption doubles or triples, “all the costs to society will double or triple, as well.”

That seems reasonable. Whatever the increase in consumption—10 percent, 50 percent, double, triple, centuple—the cost to society will likely increase, respectively. Of course, the question then becomes, what are the societal costs of marijuana consumption and legalization? Is it the cost of manufacturing more cardboard Pringle’s tubes ? Is it the cost of pressing all those extra String Cheese Incident concert tickets? Is it the cost of providing emergency-room health care to uninsured reefer smokers who burn their fingers trying to light the last millimeter of roach? Or, is it the cost of hiring more IRS agents to collect and oversee the estimated $6 billion in extra tax revenue should pot become legal?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Didn’t Decker just attempt to predict the future by saying we will reap $6 billion in taxes? Perhaps. But at least I didn’t pull the number from my ass. I pulled $6 billion from a study conducted by economics professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University. Of course, he could be wrong, too. It is—study or no study—just an opinion. However, it’s an educated opinion, which is only my opinion about his opinion, but I’m right about my opinion—in my opinion.

Rep. Randy Redundant (R-Va.)

On Nov. 1, Congress passed a non-binding resolution to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto.

There are two problems with this. The first, and most glaring, is that “In God We Trust” is a terrible motto. A proper national motto is something that’s agreeable to all citizens—a unifier—something like the Bahamas’ motto (Forward, Upward, Onward Together), or Equatorial Guinea’s (Unity, Peace, Justice), or Germany’s (Trying Real Hard Not to be Dicks Anymore).

The second, more problematic problem has nothing to do with the motto itself; rather, it’s the measure to affirm the motto. The resolution, sponsored by Rep J. Randy Forbes (R.Va), is “non-binding”—which means it can’t be passed into law or enforced in any way. It’s a purely symbolic, wildly pointless waste of resources at a time when the country is going to Purgatory on a pogo stick.

When I become king of the United States, the second thing I will do (right after chaining all the Wall Street canker-suckers to the dungeon floor and sprinkling rat-nip on their genitals) is pass a binding resolution that prohibits Congress from sponsoring non-binding resolutions.

Not only is working on this resolution a ludicrous waste of time on its own merit, but this non-binding resolution has actually been not-bound before—twice! It’s true. In God We Trust is already the official motto of the U.S. It was affirmed by Congress in 1956. Then it was reaffirmed in 2006 and re-reaffirmed three weeks ago, which raises two questions: How many times must something be affirmed before the affirmation sticks? And, why did Congress suddenly decide the motto needed re-reaffirming in the first place?

Explains Forbes on his website, “As our nation faces challenging times, it is appropriate for Members of Congress… to firmly declare our trust in God….”

Translation: At a time when the country is going to Stepford in a Studebaker, it’s appropriate for Congress to ignore impending doom and focus on redundant, token affirmations of our primitive devotion to an invisible man who lives in the sky with the hope that he’ll fix the economy.

Do you see why I can’t stand it when religious fanatics get control of our government—or worse, when government panders to patrio-religious, feelgood symbolism junkies? I mean, why stop at the motto? Why not re-reaffirm baseball as the official national pastime, or apple pie as the official pastry, or Mom as the official parental unit of America?:

As our nation faces challenging times, it is appropriate that Congress firmly declares our trust in Mom—that Mom be re-reaffirmed as the official parent of America—and that Dad can eat a bag of dicks because all he does is guzzle beer and devour Mom’s pie before anyone else can have a slice.

Another reason to re-re-affirm In God We Trust, Forbes claims, is because of a misunderstanding of the phrase “separation of church and state.”

“The words ‘separation of church and state’ do not appear in the U.S. Constitution” he writes, suggesting that the founders did not favor the concept. To support this theory, Forbes provides the following quote from a 1952 Supreme Court ruling, delivered by Justice William Orville Douglas: “The First Amendment does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State.”

Wow! It’s bad enough the congressman had to go all the way back to 1952 to find a quote that supports this non-separation theory; but the quote doesn’t even support it. Not the whole, real, true quote. Forbes wildly (and probably willfully) misrepresented Justice Douglas’ intent. Yes, it’s true that in his written opinion, Douglas conceded that the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution (they don’t), but he also said, “There cannot be the slightest doubt that the First Amendment reflects the philosophy that Church and State should be separated.”

Just breathe that in for a moment. A sitting member of Congress willfully mischaracterized the written opinion of a deceased Supreme Court Justice (I say “willfully” because the quote was excised with surgical precision) to support his unconstitutional theories.

Here’s another Douglas quote to which Forbes pointed as proof of a Supreme Court opposition to the church-state-separation concept.

“We find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion.”

Well, no freaking duh, Dough-for-Brains. Of course there’s no constitutional requirement to be hostile to religion. The exact opposite is true. The U.S. Constitution respects, embraces and is highly protective of religion. That’s the reason it aspires to separate church and state. The Constitution loves religion so much—all religions—that it refuses to favor any.

And, goddamn, doesn’t it get tiring having to keep explaining that most basic constitutional concept to people in high political offices? When I become king, the fourth thing I am going to do (right after dumping the neutered corpses of the Wall Street blister-lickers into my hyena cage) is make a binding resolution that states that if you’re a member of the U.S. freaking Congress, and you don’t know how the First Amendment works, then we get to chain you up in the dungeon and have Keanu Reeves read the Constitution to you, over and over, until you start begging for the rat-nip treatment.
Ed Decker
11.17.11

A few months ago, I bought an iPad for my wife. W had been hinting for a while that she wanted one, and when I say “hinting,” I mean telling me every day to buy her an iPad or she was going to staple my lips as I slept.

And boy was she happy when I presented it to her. For one short moment in time, I was the guy on the white horse in the Old Spice commercials who could do no wrong. Immediately after opening the package, she logged on to Facebook and boasted, “My honey just bought me an iPad! Isn’t he the most wonderful, greatest, bla bla bla and best husband ever?”

Naturally, this did not go over well with any of the men in our inner circle of family and friends— The Brotherhood, as I like to call them. In fact, it was my brother-in-law, Sage, who promptly Faceblasted me for going rogue.

What is going rogue, you ask? Going rogue is buying or doing something so wonderful, thoughtful, bla bla bla for your wife, that it causes all the women of the inner circle to blurt to their husbands, “How come you don’t buy me no iPad!?”

Indeed, in the few short minutes after W’s Faceboast, all the other wives of the inner circle—The Sisterhood—began posting about what lazy, rotten, cheapo bastards their husbands were for not doing the same.

Not that any of the members of our Brotherhood deserved it. They’ve all purchased excellent, spontaneous gifts in the past. In fact, it was shortly after the iPad debacle that Sage himself went horribly rogue. The little bastard—for no reason other than to express his devotion and bla bla blappreciation—brought his wife, Jessica, a bouquet of flowers accompanied by the following note, which she promptly posted on Facebrag:

“Dearest Buttercup, you are my sun, and moon, and gag, vomit, hurl. For you, I would climb to the top of the highest retch, sail the roughest bile, because I love you from the bottom of my barf.”

Make no mistake. This was a far more serious transgression against The Brotherhood because his gift came from a place of adoration, whereas mine was merely an effort to muzzle my wife so I could play Call of Duty in peace.

What followed was as hilarious as it was tragic. W was in the living room, scrolling through Facegloat on her iPad, when she saw Jessica’s post.

“How come you never do anything nice like that for me,” she snorted, holding the still-shimmering iPad in her greedy fingers!

Oh, well, that’s how it is with wives, I guess. You and she can be on the terrace of an Italian villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and still she’ll figure out a way to say “You never take me anywhere” with a straight face.

It’s just what married men must deal with and, since we can’t change women, the best we can do is stop throwing each other under the bus, because, up to now, the concept of going rogue has been unclear and discombobulated. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to clarify and, um, combobulate, the rules and definitions of rogueism.

There are three basic ways to go rogue.

The first, and most common, is buying your significant other a spontaneous gift—for no other reason than to express your love and undying bla bla blavotion—and, sure as Herman Cain was dropped on his head as an infant, it’s an abomination unto The Brotherhood.

The second example is buying a non-spontaneous gift, you know, during those gift-expectant holidays (birthday, Christmas, etc.), but spending far more money than anyone else in The Brotherhood is spending. For example, if you buy the missus a two-karat diamond for Valentine’s Day and the rest are doing chocolate and flowers, you have gone senselessly rogue.

Last, any of those creative and priceless-type gifts—like writing love poems, or having “Happy anniversary, darling,” plastered across the stadium JumboTron, or building a red carpet made of rose petals that lead from the front door to the bedroom, where you’ll be waiting in silk boxers and grasping a bottle of baby oil—are especially disagreeable to The Brotherhood, as they require planning, effort and—shoot me now should I ever go the silk-boxers route—passion.

Of course, in a perfect world, no man would ever go rogue against his boys. But we live in the real world, with real women—women with hormones that rage like barbarian marauders across the continent of your marriage—making it sometimes necessary to wander from the herd in order to prevent your lips from being stapled together.

In these instances, just be sure to notify The Brotherhood of your intention to stray. This way, it gives them the opportunity to buy something of equal value, or begin the quarantining process— which is done by dropping their wives’ cell phones in the garbage disposal, hacking their social pages and infecting them with some sort of influenza bug that will keep them from leaving the house all week.

So, men, are we all on the same page? Excellent! Now let’s all take the Oath of The Brotherhood. Please put your hand on our bible—1001 Fart Jokes— and repeat after me: “We, the proud, brave—yet war-weary—married men of The Brotherhood, do solemnly swear to go rogue only when necessary, to alert The Brotherhood when deviation is unavoidable and to reject Satan—The Old Spice Guy—for it is he who will lead us into the shadow of the valley of the doghouse, so help me Hemingway, amen.

Well, 2012 is almost upon us. On Dec. 21 of that year—according to an interpretation of an ancient Maya calendar—the world is supposed to end. To that I respond, “Thank Christ Quetzalcoatl! It’s about frickin time!”

One of my greater pleasures in life is observing the hilarious backpedalings of certain crackpot prophets when the horrifying doomsday scenarios they champion don’t arrive. A recent example is radio minister Harold Camping, whose explanation for his incorrect rapture prediction was to claim that God was still collecting data. Then he predicted a new, modified rapture date, which came and went without so much as a single frog falling from the sky.

This is why I can’t wait for Dec. 22, 2012. Because there will be not one, but thousands of kooky soothsayers who will have to backpedal like hell once Mayageddon is proven to be horse shit. And I know it’s horse shit for three reasons:

The first is because I’m not an idiot. I realize, as a person with a full-functioning brain, that human beings are unable to predict what’s going to happen when they step out the door tomorrow morning, much less what will happen 5,126 years in the future.

The second is because the Mayas made no such prediction. This is a common misconception. There are no ancient hieroglyphs, no tomes, nor scrolls, nor scriptures that say, “Homies-of-the-future, beware! The world ends in 2012. Sucks for you, yo.”

“There are no Maya prophesies that seem to claim the world is going to end,” said Dr. Mark Van Stone, an expert in Maya hieroglyphs and author of Science & Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, in a KPBS interview. Stone said that 2012 is mentioned only once in any known Maya inscription, and all it says about what will happen on that date is that a minor god, named Bolon Yokte, will float down to Earth and “dress up.”

Yup, that’s what they believed. He was going to dress up, probably in some sort of ritualistic beak-and-feather costume, and prance around like a bird in flight.

Bolon Yokte: God of silly costumes

The Mayas never predicted an apocalypse. That was our own idiotic, superstitious interpretation of the fact that a Maya calendar “ends” in 2012. And I put “ends” in quotation marks because it’s not quite the right word. “Reverts” is the better word. There are no endings in the Maya calendar. In fact, the Maya calendar is not a single calendar at all; rather, it’s a series of 17 calendars, all of which have different cycles. For instance, the trecena calendar was on a 13-day cycle, the veintena calendar denoted a 20-day phase, the calendar round (a combination of other calendars) was roughly a 52-year cycle, containing the most common calendar, the tzolkin, which used 260-day intervals.

It’s all quite confusing and I barely scratch the surface of understanding any of it; however, for the purposes of this discussion, all we need to know is that the calendar that “ends” on Dec. 21, 2012 (called the long count calendar), is on a 5,126-year loop, after which a new cycle (or b’ak’tun) begins. So, saying the world will end in 2012 because that’s when the cycle reverts is like saying it will end on Saturday, because that’s the last day of the week.

The third reason I know that Mayageddon will not happen is because the Mayas were morons. Now, before I get a bunch of angry letters from MAAD (Maya Alliance Against Defamation), let me clarify: What I mean is, they were primitives—maybe not when compared with other civilizations of their time, but compared with more modern cultures of, say, the last 1,000 years, the Mayas were dumb as thumbtacks.

Of all the civilizations and religions in history that predicted different doomsday scenarios, we’re supposed to believe it’s these guys who had it right? The same geniuses who believed people are made of corn? The Einsteins who sliced open their penises with stingray spines to facilitate communication with deceased ancestors? The Darwins who drowned pre-pubescent children in order to satisfy a cranky rain god? The rocket scientists who divined the future by talking to birds. We’re talking about the Maya, who hung beads in front of their babies’ faces in order to cross their eyes permanently—these are your go-to guys for credible predictions? I wouldn’t let a Maya pick my next football parlay, let alone when I can safely start maxing out my Visa for an Armageddon credit blowout.

Still not convinced, crackpot prophets? OK, how about a bet? If the Mayapocalypse doesn’t arrive on schedule, you have to dress in a ceremonial beak-and-feather costume and walk around Horton Plaza with a sign that says “Bird brain.” And if the prophecy does come true, I have to give you my spot in the bunker I built when Y2K was upon us. Yeah, I know—silly me. But I was afraid I would get hit by one of those planes that were supposed to drop out of the sky.

Ed Decker
12.12.11

Well, Jay-Z and Beyoncé finally had their baby, which can only mean one thing: Here comes another baby song!

You know what I’m talking about, right? One of those intolerable, “Oh-my-precious-little-angel-it’s-a-miracle-that-you-were-born-unto-me” tunes that a songwriter is compelled to write every time he or she pops out another squirmer.

Whether you believe newborn babies are miraculous gifts from God or subterranean alien vampire-rats bent on draining your life force, can we at least agree that songs about babies tend to suck rusty buckets of contaminated amniotic fluid?

And this new tune by Jay-Z is especially abominable.

“You’re a child of destiny / You’re the child of my destiny / You’re my child with the child from Destiny’s Child / That’s a hell of recipe.”

OK. I want you to pause for a moment and marvel at the pure hideosity of that line: “You’re my child with the child from Destiny’s Child.” I want you to bask in the rays of its badness like a pale-skinned woman on an overpowered tanning bed; absorb the radiation of it on your face and neck—mind not the blisters and the hair loss— for a lyric as bad as this is a thing to behold.

Britney Spears’ “My Baby” is no less irradiated: “With no words at all / So tiny and small / In love I fall / My precious love / Sent from above / My baby boo / God I thank you.”

I want you to imagine that you’re Britney’s baby being spoon-fed in the kitchen, when suddenly mommy starts singing that song to you. Wouldn’t you eject the strained carrots onto her shirt and blurt, “Bitch, you better get your ass back in the rehearsal studio!”?

In Brit’s defense, “My Baby” sounds like a John Prine political ditty compared with Creed’s criminally negligent baby ballad, “With Arms Wide Open.” The worst part about that afterbirth is the video, which features singer Scott Stapp posing on a mountain top, his “arms wide open” toward the sky, his long, gorgeous Jesus-locks blowing in the wind and the fetor of a thousand soiled diapers blustering from his howl-hole.

Speaking of mucky diapers, Lauryn Hill’s baby song, “To Zion,” is a rash on the ass of all that is right and good. Lord knows Hill is full of herself, but how much of a messiah complex must you have in order to name your kid Zion?

And, look, I dig Stevie Wonder as much as the next guy, but “Isn’t She Lovely” isn’t. The melody is as mesmeric as a busted mobile, and all Stevie does is sing “Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she wonderful, isn’t she special” over and over again like a drill burrowing into the part of the brain that represses the urge to take sniper shots at random pedestrians.

I will concede that John Lennon’s song for Sean, “Beautiful Boy,” is lovely. But I often wonder how messed up it must be for Julian whenever he hears his dad gushing on the radio or jukebox, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful… darling, darling, darling Sean”—given that Lennon neglected Julian as a child, which makes Lennon something of a parental dickweed, nullifying any fatherhood songs written by him.

The list goes on. The Dixie Chicks’ baby anthem “Godspeed” is in dire need of a spanking. “Prayer for You” by Usher should have been terminated in the first trimester. “Just the Two of Us” by Will Smith needs a circumcision—at the base. And it’s utterly impossible to keep your formula down should you happen to hear “In my Daughter’s Eyes” by Martina McBride.

And, yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Oh, Ed, you hate baby songs because you don’t have any children and don’t understand the miracle of new life.

Wrong!

You needn’t be a parent to understand the miracle of new life. Nor do you need to understand the miracle of life to scrutinize a song about the miracle of life, just as I don’t need to live in South Central L.A. to know “Straight Outta Compton” is a badass song about living in South Central L.A.

No, these baby songs suck for two simple reasons:

1. Childbirth is such an enormous, sentimental event in most of our lives that our emotions can be easily manipulated. You could write the lamest piece of cliché-addled garbage and everyone will blubber over it, leaving songwriters no incentive to compose something truly original and profound.

2. Baby songs never tell the whole story about parenting—no tunes about sleepless nights and bedraggled days; no odes about giving up your dreams, your friends, your drugs and your porn collection; no power ballads about how you’ll age an average of five years for every day you cohabitate with a toddler. There are no verses that mention that the only movies you’ll be permitted to watch for the next dozen years will feature talking cartoon animals and worse, a moral to the story, nor are there any refrains about how your sacrifices will go unappreciated—because they think it’s  invisible elves who stock the refrigerator and replace the toilet paper—and the day will come when not only will they not appreciate you; in fact, they will hate you. Sure as the babysitter will raid the liquor cabinet and blow her boyfriend on your couch, your children are going to hate your guts.

This is the thanks you’ll get for giving them life, because they are cold, cruel tyrants, and you are but a peasant who mollycoddles them. Hmm, I like that: “Cold Cruel Tyrant.” Now, see, that’s a baby song that needs to be written!

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine

It has been two weeks since my beloved New York Giants took Super Bowl XLVI, and still the pernicious missives from my Giants-Hating Chargers-fan friends keep rolling in.

“F__k the Giants and that cry baby Eli Manning,” writes A., via email.

“Eli is still the Devil,” says B., on my Facebook wall.

“Eli and the Giants are the only team that can make me root for the Patriots,” blurts C., from a neighboring stool at The Tilted Stick.

The anti-Manning vitriol really snowballed in the weeks leading to the Super Bowl, but I’ve pretty much been hearing this stuff from Chargers-Loving Anti-Manning Malcontents (CLAMMs) since 2004. For those who don’t remember, the Chargers were planning to select Manning in the first round of the 2004 draft. However, in a rare (though precedented) move, Manning refused to sign with the Chargers, instantly turning every Charger fan into a Manning-despising, Giants-hating activist and utterly complicated my life as a native New Yorker living in San Diego.

See, I’m a Giants fan by birthright. However, being that I’ve lived in San Diego for most of my adult life and absolutely love this town, I also root for the Bolts. And ever since the Manning / Chargers hubbub, I’ve come to feel like a child watching his parents go through an ugly divorce. So, I write this column to ask all my CLAMMy pals: Now that the dust has settled on Super Bowl 46, isn’t it time to let go of your grudge against the Giants? Not only because we’ve twice crushed your arch-enemy Patriots—left them so badly mangled and twitching on their own 49-yard line that they’ll never be able hurt you or your Chargers again—but also because Manning got a bum rap. It’s true. The only thing he did wrong in 2004 was make a brilliant career move.

With a record of 4-12, the 2003 Chargers were one of the worst teams in the universe. Even the Tralfamadore Swampworms of ’82 were better than the ’03 Chargers, who, if you remember, had an offensive line that couldn’t stop The Dixie Chicks, receivers who couldn’t catch a shoplifter in a refrigerator store and a defense that formed a human pyramid every time coach said they needed a “goal-line stand.” Worst of all was that Manning knew the Spanos-addled front office—as we all know now—could never win a Super Bowl.

If you don’t think that was enough motivation to keep him from signing, then just imagine what holiday dinners at the Manning house would have been like if he had? Picture father Archie Manning—the QB legend—at the head of the table, boasting, “Did y’all see Peyton throw that winning touchdown in the fourth quarter last night? Outstanding!” And his mother, Olivia—the former Homecoming Queen—cooing, “Oh, yes, Arch, our son the superstar threw for 350 yards and six touchdowns!” And Cooper, the other brother, saying, “Hey, Peyton, can I touch your ring again?” Meanwhile, Eli toys with his food and silently mopes.

“So, Eli,” Archie says, finally aware of his youngest son’s existence, “how’s it going down there in, um, in—what’s the name of that town again? San D’onofre? San Da Cruz? San Dancisco? Olivia, help me out here.”

“San Diego, honey,” Olivia says.

“Yeah, that’s it. How’s it going with the San Diego Churros, Eli?”

“Great dad—only got sacked 15 times on Sunday. Oh, and I would have completed my first TD pass of the season if Osgood hadn’t ducked from the ball!”

“Why did he do that?”

“He thought a fan was throwing feces at him again.”

I know what you’re thinking, CLAMMs. You’re thinking, OK, maybe, the 2003 Chargers stunk, but Manning cheated. He didn’t abide by the rules of the draft.

Wrong.

You do not have to play for the team that drafts you. The rules state that if a player refuses to sign, then he’s not allowed to play in the upcoming season, but he can re-enter the draft the following year, which was a risk Manning was willing to take. And the risk paid off—for everyone. The Chargers drafted Manning and traded him to the Giants for (ultimately) Philip Rivers, Shawne Merriman and Nate Kaeding.

Regardless, San Diegans raved with contempt and have been calling Manning a “cry baby” ever since. But I never understood this. Why begrudge a person for wanting to improve his station in life? How does that make him a “cry baby”? If you think about it, it’s actually the opposite. When you take hold of the reins of your life—when you change something about it that you don’t like—that’s not crying, that’s doing.

Crying is when you complain about something you can’t change—like, say, when a coveted football player snubs your team. “Waah, waah, wah, Eli doesn’t like us, waah, waah” is what it sounds like to me. As for Manning, he’s no baby. Manning’s the Man, man! He never complains or talks shit in the media. He doesn’t get rattled in the pocket or point fingers when he’s knocked down. Dude’s a badass.

So, c’mon San Diego, don’t be sore. He just wasn’t that into you is all. Time to kiss and make up, you know, for the sake of the children. That’d be me—for the sake of me. I can’t stand it when the two of you fight.

Ed Decker
02.22.12

Sirens' Crush

~Originally published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine

When I moved to San Diego, I fell instantly in love. . . with the local original-music scene. See, back in small-town Monroe, N.Y., in the early ’80s, there was only one bar that hosted bands, and it was always cheesy cover music. In contrast, the ’80s were a great time for original talent in San Diego. Thanks to artists like The Beat Farmers, Mojo Nixon, Dread Zeppelin, The Rugburns, The Paladins, The Jacks and Donkey Punch, I quickly turned into a gluttonous devotee of originals and, at the same time, a despiser of cover bands.

It pains me to say it, but for a good 20 years, I was a bona fide, card-carrying, dues-paying Original Music Snob (OMS). My hometown experiences had led me to believe that all cover music was cheesy, not realizing that A) that wasn’t true and B) cheesy music can be a crap-load of fun if you allow it to be.

It wasn’t until five years ago that I changed my mind. I was asked to judge an annual cover-music contest that Viejas produces. It’s called the Ultimate Music Challenge, and over a span of 11 weeks, 40 cover bands compete for a purse of 40,000 cash-money-liquid-wampum dollars. While judging this competition, something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I loved it! The event totally reversed my opinion of cover music.

Cash'd Out wins first prize at UMC 1

So, while this issue of CityBeat is devoted to all the excellent original bands of San Diego (CityBeat staffers are notorious OMSs), I tip my hat to the red-headed stepchildren of the scene, and will hopefully change some minds to boot.

Ever since doing the Ultimate Music Challenge, my OMS friends have declined my invitations to witness the spectacle. When asked why, they typically responded the way I’d always responded: “Cover music is not art” and/or “There’s no talent involved.”

To the latter, I now say “Pfft!” It takes an enormous amount of talent and hard work to re-create the nuances and capture the essence of other bands. I know because I’ve seen hundreds fail trying. However the great ones, what they do—it’s a goddamn miracle.

In fact, I can make the argument that it’s more difficult to be in a cover band, because a cover band has to sound like—nay, become—another band, whereas original artists merely have to be themselves.

Is it art? Well, that depends on your definition. But here’s the thing: Why must it be art? Why can’t it just be, you know, entertaining? Must a hamburger be art in order for it to be enjoyed? This is what snobbery does to a person: It puts up a wall of superiority between us and the things we might otherwise fancy.

Ultimate Music Challenge obliterated my Great Wall of Snobbery almost instantly. I remember the first night. Of the five bands that played, three were spectacular. However, when I realized I was actually enjoying myself, the little OMS on my shoulder told me, “This is lame, dude! Get out now before you blow your street cred!” Then another little guy appeared on my other shoulder. It was OMG (Open-minded Music Guy), and OMG stuffed a rag in OMS’s mouth and said, “It don’t need to be art, ya old crank! It just needs to be great.”

Indeed, many of these bands are great (disclosure: some are friends)—bands like The Ultimate Stones, who look, sound and seem so much like the real thing that the original Stones are wondering how anybody snuck past their burglar alarms to pinch their DNA in the middle of the night.

Mick "Jagged" of The Ultimate Stones

Like Siren’s Crush—a fun-loving, talk-boxing, dance-party-pop group with some of the tightest, virtuosic musicians in the area and three sumptuous concubines taking turns on vocals, synchro-dancing their asses off, and changing in and out of a beguiling array of costumes.

Like Monsters of Rock, who play a variety of metal tunes by Maiden, Sabbath, Queensryche and others; form a wall of guitars that sound like two trains passing each other in the tunnel between here and Hades; and feature an ensorcelled singer whose high-pitched howls regularly shatter the windows in that Hell-bound train.

Monsters of Rock tear up UMC 5

Like Alice and the Cooper Gang, complete with 11-foot albino python, functioning guillotine, bizarre stage props and quasi-violent stage antics such as beheading random audience members.

Like Geezer, who perform Weezer mash-ups in the character of old men. They hobble on stage with walkers, take occasional naps and gripe about their grandchildren.

Like AC/DC tribute Back 2 Black, featuring a Brian Johnson look- and sound-alike and a guitarist who channels Angus. Like Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!, who have a classically trained vocalist who sang for the San Diego and Lyric Operas yet rocks the Ramone voice at will. Like the Beatles tribute Help!, whose primary frontman is a ringer for John Lennon. Like Cash’d Out, a sickeningly masterful Johnny Cash replica.

Alice and the Cooper Gang

Like Three Chord Justice, who do a cover of “Jolene” that will make you weep. Like Electric Waste Band, who’ve been summoning the ghosts of the Grateful Dead since before Jerry died. Like Dazed and Confused, Clay Colton, Skynyrd’s Innyrds, Funk’s Most Wanted, Phil Diiorio, Stellita’s Groove, The Tighten ups, Firefly and 6one9.

All of these bands are still active, so I implore you, OMSs: Give cheese a chance. And when the guy on your shoulder starts talking shit, just shove a rag in his mouth and say, “Shut up, ya old crab! I’m trying to hear this.

Ed Decker
03.07.12

The Ultimate Stones win UMC 3

Poetry & Art Series 2012 :

On Weds., May 2, UCSD’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout and San Diego Citybeat’s Edwin Decker will read in the Museum of the Living Artist, 1439 El Prado, Balboa Park.  Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7:00 p.m. Members free, $5 at the door or bring a snack/wine to share.

Rae Armantrout’s book of poetry Versed, published by the Wesleyan University Press, earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Versed.  Her work has been honored by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.  Her most recent collection, Money Shot, was published in February 2011.

Edwin Decker is a freelance journalist and columnist whose work has appeared in The San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego Reader, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Seattle Stranger, Tucson Weekly, Cleveland Scene and other magazines and newspapers across the country. His satiric and sometimes controversial column, “Sordid Tales,” runs every other week in San Diego CityBeat.

Decker’s book Barzilla and Other Psalms, published by Puna Press, was nominated for a 2007 San Diego Book Award and his performance piece, “Questioning Innocence is Questionable,” won the grand prize for the San Diego Visual Arts Performance Slam.  Website: EdwinDecker.com.

Following the reading, there will be open mic for writers or painters who would like to share a few pieces of their work.

Please contact host, Michael Klam, with any questions:  619-957-3264 (cell) or 619-236-0011 (museum).  Writers/artists would like to read on the open mic, can sign up ahead of time at mkklam@gmail.com or sign in on the night of the show.

More info about Rae Armantrout can be found here and for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Versed,” see versedreader.site.wesleyan.edu.  Edwin Decker articles and poetry can be found at edwindecker.com and punapress.com.

I was zip, zip, zipping through Ocean Beach on my little, black and silver, 150-cc Lance Milan putt-putt motor scooter when I pulled alongside a real biker, dressed in full-blown biker-gang-guy regalia, leaning on his obnoxiously loud Harley waiting for the light to turn green.

Simultaneously, we glanced at each other. I nodded hello, and he—get this—laughed in my face. He looked at me, looked downward at my bike—made a quick assessment about the level of my manhood (which he identified as a Level-7 Pussy)—looked back at me, and laughed, out loud, real nasty-like, right into my innocent face. Then he turned away in disgust, as if a glob of birds shit had landed on my head and was dripping down my cheek.

It wasn’t a big deal, really. I know the score. Harley riders deplore scooter riders the way stand-up comedians deplore mimes. And pretty much everyone else older than 12 thinks scooters are a joke, too. Well everyone older than 12 can suck on my skid marks! My ride is a beast. It goes zero to 60 in—well, actually, it doesn’t ever get to 60. But it can do 35, no problem. Only takes a few minutes to get there. Then it’s zip-zip, putt-putt all over the place!

Seriously, though, for me—a scooter makes crazy-good sense: For one reason, it’s a huge money saver. The gas, insurance, registration—even the cost of the vehicle itself— combined, is only a little more expensive than renting a couple of Pauly Shore impersonators for a party. Second, I work from home, which means no long freeway commutes. And, lastly, I live at the beach, where parking is scarce and the traffic is fierce, making a scooter an ideal vehicle because: a scooter parks anywhere; a scooter effortlessly darts in and out of alleys and backstreets; and a scooter splits the lane to get to the front of the line at traffic lights—which is exactly what I was doing when I came upon the biker.

Now, for the record, I didn’t nod to him as though I thought we were badass biker brethren of the road—as if we had something in common the way, say, a Corvette owner would nod at another Vette owner, or the way black men in Alpine nod on the oft chance they cross paths. No. I nodded to him because we were standing right next to each other, looking at each other. It was a human-to-human nod for crissake, not biker-to-biker. I would never consider my little 150-cc, Lance Milan, zip-zip, putt-putt motor scooter to be in his hog’s league. However, I’m also not going to feel inferior because my chosen mode of transportation doesn’t meet the approval of a man who cuts off the arms of a leather jacket with a hacksaw and thinks that’s punk rock.

When the light turned green, he revved up and peeled out, leaving me in a poisonous cloud of noise pollution, hate pollution and pollution pollution. And what I thought, as I stared at the back of his motorcycle jacket, with the motorcycle-club iron-on patch was, He thinks I’m the pussy!? The guy who irons decorative patches onto the back of a sawed-off leather jacket because he thinks that’s punk? The guy who replaced the stock tailpipes on his ride with ones that are twice as loud—for no other reason than to be noticed and/or annoying? The guy and belongs to some juvenile social club with handshakes, passwords, parliamentary-style bylaws and arbitrary officer rankings? Because you know how those first meetings always go: “OK, so I’ll be the President, and Bear will be V.P., and Vulgor is the Road Captain, and Sammy “the Hammer” will be Sergeant at Arms”—and then you have the “prospects,” who are basically college-fraternity pledges, which is really what these biker gangs are, rolling fraternities, the only difference being that biker gangs have goofier names. Here are just a few nuggets of comedy I found on MotorcycleClubIndex.com:

• Organized Kaos (stifling my laughter).

• The Wastelanders (as if they were a gang of rolling marauders, scanning a post-apocalyptic hinterland for scantily clad, mute chicks and gasoline).

• Gospel Riders (who are, according to their website, “Motorcycling for Jesus”).

• The Freemasons Motorcycle Club (I wonder if their helmets resemble fezzes).

• The Centurions (actually, I wanted to name my first rock band The Centurions—when I was 15!)

• The Star of David Bikers (blood enemies of The Gospel Riders).

• A Few Good Men (which is not what you think; though, you have to wonder how it was possible not to notice the gayness dripping off that name.

Speaking of homosexual bikers, I absolutely had to Google “gay motorcycle clubs,” when researching this column. Alas, all that came up were totally inoffensive, non-hilarious monikers like The LGBT Motorcycle Club, The Golden Gate Guards, and The Spartan Motorcycle Club. What a disappointment! I was hoping for some totally awesome, totally faggy, gay-biker-gang names, like The Sodomites, or The Truck Stop Cruisers, or the queer chapter of the Mongols Motorcycle Club, The Mangols, or how about The Fag Hags, for a motorcycle gang comprised of meth-addled, straight chicks who follow the Mangols, or, my all-time favorite gay-biker-gang name I just made up—Hell’s Anal’s.

I swear to God, I am seriously thinking about going gay just so I can wear that patch on the back of my sawed off leather jacket. At least then, when I encounter one of these holier-than-thou Harley enthusiasts on my little zip-zip, putt-putt motor scooter, he’d have a reason to object to my presence: because my iron-on biker-gang patch isn’t making fun of gay people. It’s making fun of him, and his amusing fraternity, preposterous costume and obnoxiously loud tail pipes which he intentionally modifed for no other reason than to be obnoxious and loud.

….and faster than America can overreact to something Rush Limbaugh said, my life was changed by a 99-cent iPhone application. Holla-freaking-Looya!

The app is called Code Red, and what it is, what it does—well it has saved my sanity, and quite likely, my life.

Code Red is an ingenious little tool that warns you when your wife or girlfriend—or any cohabitating female for that matter—is about to have her period. How it works is simple. You open the calendar, enter the date of the beginning of your lady’s last menstrual cycle, and Code Red does the rest.

Code Red has four basic alerts: Smooth Sailing, Ovulation, PMS and, naturally, Code Red! At the start of each of her, um, tidal phases, a pop-up banner alerts you to the situation. The Smooth Sailing pop-up informs you in cool blue text that “the seas are calm and the coast is clear,” followed by a series of tips about how to capitalize on this phase such as, “Now is the time to tell her about the Vegas trip you are about to book with the boys.”

After Smooth Sailing comes the Ovulation alert, in light orange text that says, “She is fertile . . . and extra horny,” and provides a series of helpful tips to prevent you from spoiling your opportunity to get laid. Including:

“Time to rediscover Sade.”

“Light a candle (yes, it really is that easy).”

“Wear good underwear. Save the ripped ones for period weeks.”

After Ovulation, is more Smooth Sailing, followed by the PMS Alert—in a foreboding dark orange text that blares, “INCOMING!” It’s rather startling the first few times you encounter it—like a tornado siren in a trailer park—and takes some getting used to. “It is time to prepare for the storm ahead,” followed by a dozen-or-so tips including:

“Compliment her hair. Remember, it doesn’t look cute, it looks sexy.”

“Give her the remote. Learn to love Lifetime.”

 “Send a random ‘I love you text.’ Don’t abbreviate with a ‘U.’”

“Happily agree to go to (annoying place) even though castration sounds more appealing.”

Then comes the alert you’ve been dreading, foretelling the arrival of the scarlet tsunami: Code Red!

“If she complains about cramps, bloating, depression [etc.], shake your head sympathetically and say, ‘I have no idea how you deal with this month after month. You’re amazing.’”

“If you have plans, say you’d rather stay home. Chances are she’ll want you to leave and then it will seem like her idea.”

“Don’t touch her breasts. They ache, but not for you.”

Code Red was created by Lisi and Kevin Harrison, a husband and wife team who have been together for “180 menstrual cycles.”

“It’s good for everyone,” says Lisi, “a giant step towards world peace.”

Now, I will grant you, most of the tips seem obvious but, as a brain-dead married man, I often miss the tell-tale signs for when Mars Attacks my homestead. And I often (read: always) forget to do the things they suggest. It’s great to have organized reminders so I can implement such strategies without thinking too much about it. After all, what do married men want most but to not think about all this marital maintenance minutia.

Oh Code Red, where have you been all my life?

My one complaint about the application is that it only accounts for normal women with normal menses. There are no tips for men who are living with that certain, special menstrual case—like my wife for example, whose merlot mongoose is so vicious, it will rip the entrails out of your wife’s mongoose then walk off cackling and licking blood from its claws.

Where most women have periods, my wife has exclamation points. Three of them!!!

True story: we once hired a team of professional hit men to assassinate my wife’s menstrual cycle but they were found dead in the gutter with sharpened tampons shoved into their eyes.

The point is, for guys in my extraordinary situation, Code Red should include a more advanced, more preventative section of tips—the kind of tips a fella really needs when the ship hits the glands—tips like:

Retrieve plate mail armor from attic.
Remove knives from kitchen drawer.
Cancel life insurance plan (no need to provide her further incentive to murder you in the heart).
Remove “Goodbye Earl,” and “Janie’s Got a gun,” from her iPod.
Fake own death.
Buy puppy she’s been wanting (it’ll give her something to kill other than you).

And for Smooth Sailing tips I would add:

Repair windows and walls. Replace broken dishes.
Email friends and family: “Still alive, thanks for your concerns.”
Bury puppy and give eulogy: “You took one for the team, Job. You shan’t be forgotten.”
Rekindle romance—with your Xbox!

By the way, Code Red tells me that it will be “Smooth Sailing” when this article runs. That’s no accident. I would never have gotten away with it otherwise. Thank you Code Red!

I was at the bar, arguing with an ultra-right-wing, flag-lapel-pin-wearing idiot automaton about the lack of separation between church and state when he blurted, “If you don’t like this country as it was created, then leave!”

Ah, yes, the classic “America, love it or leave it” retort. I actually hadn’t heard this one in a while, thinking it was finally discarded in favor of, you know, intelligent discourse. However, a quick Google search when I got home revealed that the Love-it-or-Leaviters are alive and well and still espousing Love It or Leave It theory (LILI) as if it were a golden gem of genius and not what it really is—an angry response for when you have no response to the brilliant point I just made.

I don’t know why I was surprised. “Love It or Leave It!” definitely belongs on the Greatest Hits album of the ultra-right, along with such other charttoppers as “Hit the Road Black (Ode to Obama),” “Global Warming’s a Joke,” “Fuck the Environmental Police” and the wildly popular anti-marijuana ballad, “Stairway to Heroin.”

“There’s a dealer who knows / pot smoking leads to harder drugs / and he’s plying a stairway to heroin” 

The phrase “America, love it or leave it” is what’s known as a false dilemma because it supposes only two options when actually they are bottomless. For instance, it’s entirely reasonable to “Love it and leave it.” You can also be mildly fond of it and stay. You can hate it, die and be buried here—the toxicity of your America-hating corpse seeping into the soil and contaminating it for eternity. And let’s not forget, “America: I don’t love it; I don’t hate it; I honestly don’t care one way or the other, but I ain’t leaving because ignorant, unsophisticated flag-sycophants don’t tell me where I get to live.”

There are just so many problems with LILI theory that it’s difficult to know where to begin. For one, anybody who wasn’t born with a ratty wad of used McCain / Palin campaign stickers for a brain knows that just because someone disagrees with his country doesn’t mean he doesn’t love it.

Secondly, why do you care what I think about America? Are you so insecure about the character of this nation that you must oversee how other people feel about it? Isn’t America best when it earns our love and respect, without having to demand it? Isn’t that the true test of a great country—when it has the confidence in itself to let its citizens feel however they want to feel about it?

Part of this nation’s greatness is its embrace of dissent. We’ll always have people who openly hate this country, because America was designed to let them openly hate it, which means, you LILIlivered liberty-lickers, if you don’t like that some Americans don’t like America, then you don’t like America as it was “created” and it is you who should leave! So, either stop complaining or go the fuck back to Waahfrica.

Don’t worry, you’ll love it there. Because in Waahfrica, everyone must wear flag lapel pins, everyone must recite the Pledge of Allegiance and everyone must become a member of at least one of the country’s countless waahctivist groups, such as Families for People Having to Leave Waahfrica if They Don’t Love Waahfrica or Veterans Against Deceased Waahfrica-Haters Being Buried on Waahfrican Soil.

But of all the things that drive me crazy about you LILIputians, it’s your brazen hypocrisy that tips the hippo: When there’s something I don’t like about America, I’m anti-American and I have to go, but when it’s something you don’t like, that’s perfectly acceptable. And, oh yes, there’s plenty that you don’t like about America: You don’t like our abortion laws, our immigration laws, our meddlesome gun laws, our tax laws, our medical-marijuana laws, our labor laws and our environmental laws. Add to that the president, our process-heavy legal system, ACLU, NEA, PBS, IRS, Medicare, welfare and the greatest of all American staples—hot, steamy sex just for the sport of it.

The list of things that the Loveit-or-Leaviters can’t stand about America is as deep and wide as Michelle Duggar’s wasted babyhole, yet nobody ever says “Love it or leave it” to them. And that’s because those of us who don’t have a bag of rusty flag pins where our brains used to be know that the world is more complex than a single, infantile cliché.

We know that if everyone had to leave America because there was something they didn’t love about it, the only people left would be infants, the comatose and Persian nightclub owners.

We know there’s a huge difference between loving America and understanding that it’s not perfect—even if we disagree on how to improve it.

We know the whole point of a democracy is that we get to at least try to change what we don’t like. How can anyone other than a hypocritical LILIdouchian flagophant not know that?

“Git up git git git down / Global warming is a joke in yo town.” —“Global Warming is a Hoax” by Public Hegemony

Isn’t Ted Nugent just the most despicable assbooger in all the world? I’m honestly amazed by the amount of caca that spews out of his big, fat maw.

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again,” the Motor City Bragman told a mooing herd of NRA bovine, “I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

I love watching him rant because, when he does, you can actually see the insides of his mouth, see past the tongue, past the uvula, all the way down his throat and into his warm wet guts, which I suspect to be the womb where Stupid was born.

“See, I’m a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally, and there are some power-abusing corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me,” he later said in an attempt to justify his NRA comments.

Oh, yes, I’m amused by Ted Nugent—The Noodge, as I like to call him—for having saltpeter in his pecker and gunpowder where his brain should be, but not nearly as amused as I am by the professional overreactionistas who vocalize outrage over comments that offend or frighten them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time, nor the interest, nor the extra room in my rectum to store any bitterness toward anything a man with gunpowder brains and saltpeter jism has to say.

“The comment is disrespectful to blacks and Jews,” wrote James Johnson of Inquisitr.com.

Oh, for crying out Christ. It’s a frickin’ metaphor! If I say, “I’m a kitten at a coyote convention,” would that be disrespectful to felines? Yes, of course, his characterization of his perceived outsider status is excessive, but that’s how you have fun with analogies—by taking them to the absurd extreme, such as when I write, “If ignorance is a disease, Ted Nugent is HIV (Hateful, Idiotic and Vapid).”

In a group conversation about the subject, my friend Eber said, “The major problem [with Nugent’s analogy] is that the black Jew at the Nazi- Klan rally would likely be the least psychotic attendee, not one of the most.”

“Good point, Eber,” I replied. “So, he’s not a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally; he’s a Nazi-Klansman at an African-Jewmerican rally.” Works for me. Although, it would have been even more accurate if Nugent had said, “I’m like HIV at a white-blood-cell rally,” because, yeah, the white blood cells will gang up on him—but that’s a good thing.

In defense of Wango Derange-o’s right to make obtuse remarks, another friend said, “Whatever happened to free speech?” “It’s not a free-speech issue,” I responded. “People have a First Amendment right to say what they think about what other people say, so it’s more of a Don’t-be-Such-an-Overreactionary-Pussy-All-the- Time issue.”

This goes both ways, by the way. People tend to think liberals have a monopoly on being offended by the politically incorrect, but conservatives are just as militantly offended about stuff. Take the controversy over Hillary Rosen’s comment that Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, “never worked a day in her life.”

And, oh, did the overreactionistas overreact. In their minds, Rosen had attacked stay-at-home mothering. They claimed that her remarks were insulting and hurtful because (duh) parenting is hard work, while utterly ignoring Rosen’s context, which was this: “You have Mitt Romney running around the country, saying, ‘My wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues.’ … Well guess what? His wife has never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.”

Now, I happen to disagree that you must have a job to have a valid opinion about the economy, but it’s clear that Rosen wasn’t disparaging a woman’s choice to stay at home; nor did she claim that parenting isn’t hard work. She simply failed to distinguish between the meaning of the word “work,” as in toil, and the word “employment.”

What she should have said was, “What does Ann Romney know about the economy? She’s never been employed!” And that’s exactly how the Dems should have defended her. Instead, they threw her under the bus.

“Hilary Rosen’s comments were inappropriate and offensive,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said.

“Every mother works hard, and every mother deserves respect,” Michelle Obama tweeted.

“There’s no tougher job than being a mom,” the president said.

Oh, for crying out Christmastime! I despise this kind of pandering, feel-good safety-speak. Here we have the leader of the goddamn free world saying his job is easier than a homemaker’s? If he believes that, then maybe he isn’t the right man for the job. Because every mother does not work hard, and not all mothers deserve respect, and to say so is insulting to the moms out there who do work hard and deserve respect.

Ah, but whaddya gonna do? In a world full of overreactionistas just waiting to pounce on anyone who dares speak dangerously, we’ve all become fluent in safety-speak—the language of the mediocre.

’Tis true, that when God was giving out smarts, Ted Nugent thought he said “farts” and asked for a dense one, but that’s exactly why you shouldn’t let his ideas set you into a tizzy. The proper response to this sort of oral flatulence is to laugh. Just laugh—from deep in the warm wet womb where funny was born— at the gun-toting clown with saltpeter in his pecker and gunpowder where his brain should be.