Being in the know

Hello and good morning once again, my non-marshmallow peeps. I hope this year has continued treating you well since we last e-saw each other. I'm doing alright myself, thanks for asking.

Something popped into my head earlier this week, and I couldn't believe that I hadn't written about it yet in my 2+ years of UOPTAness. (Wait a second; that ended in "anus," didn't it? Note to self: stop using that made-up word immediately.) I was pretty sure it had to be in here somewhere, so I did some searching through my posts but came up empty. I asked my lovely wife if I'd written about it, and she wasn't sure. It's tough for her, because she's heard all of these stories orally several times over, so the delivery methods occasionally blur. I asked my favorite brother, and he had no idea what I was talking about. That was all I needed to push forward.

Back in college, there was a great - nay, fantastic - place called the Isla Vista Brewing Company (IVBC for short). It was big, had several pool tables, one hundred beers on tap, with inexpensive but tasty food, and within walking distance so no one had to be the designated driver. In short, it was heaven. (In the coming years, it would close its doors, get purchased by the university, and get turned into a lecture hall. It was wrong on so many levels.) One evening, my whole group of guy friends went to IVBC, pulled some benches up to a long wooden table, and got a couple of pitchers of cheap beer. We took turns playing 9-ball at the closest table and shared some food. I repeat: heaven.

After a little while, I turned to my friend Greg. "Hey, you know who's cool?" I asked. Normally, the response would be a simple, "Who?" Instead though, he replied with, "Hold on, hold on, let me guess. Is it a guy?" "No." "A girl?" "Yes." "Famous?" "No." This went on for about ten minutes until he finally got to someone we knew at school who I had recently run into between classes. "That was fun!" I said. Greg agreed, and then he smiled a little and asked me, "You know who's cool?"

That went on all night, and the range of answers got wider and wider. The first question stopped being about the gender of the person. Instead, it became, "Real?" That's because we got on a string of fictional characters in the middle of it all. What started with UCSB professors and famous actors turned into characters from songs and World's Strongest Man competitors. And it didn't stop after that night. For the next couple of years, one of us would approach the other and say, "When you have time later, I've got a good Know Who's Cool for you." I remember Greg choosing a peripheral character from "Can't Hardly Wait" named Trip McNeely, and that Know Who's Cool session lasting a long ass time.

Some more years passed, and then the game reared its beautiful head twice more within the past couple of months. We had some tricky ones in there both times, because we're getting good at finding very random categories. For example, in the first of these guessing sessions (at bowling), I chose "The Most Interesting Man in the World" from the Dos Equis beer commercials. He's the one that says, "Stay thirsty, my friends," amongst other nuggets of wisdom. It took Greg a long time, and I can't blame him. He got that the guy was famous from television (and not real), but then was stumped for a while. Not a comedy, not a drama, not a sports program or a news program...finally he got to commercials. It was fairly easy from there though.

"Know who's cool?" I asked Greg during the second and most recent time we played. He guessed and guessed, finally narrowing it down to one of three fictional basketball video game characters that Dusty and I had created on our Sega Dreamcast. The answer ended up being the 7 foot 6 inch, 500 pound guy with the afro and twenty sweatbands that we'd ingeniously named Deez Muthafuckin. What can I say - we're modern geniuses. "Know who's cool?" Greg asked me next. So I started guessing. I got that he was a he, he was real, and he was someone we knew or had met. Then it got tricky, because we met him while at college but he wasn't a student, professor, or administrator. Somehow I asked if he was an athlete. Greg started laughing hysterically and said yes. I got it, and here's that story:

Being young and invincible, Greg, my homey Rockabye, and I played intramural basketball games that didn't start until 10 or even 11pm sometimes. After playing for an hour, we were always hungry and so we'd stop at the Burger King in Isla Vista before heading back to our residence halls. One late evening/early morning, there was a homeless man outside the door to the fine dining establishment. That wasn't uncommon, as IV always had more than its fair share of people on the street. This one was different though. He greeted us, and we said hello back. Right then was normally the time that we would be asked for spare change, food, etc. Instead, this guy wanted to tell us a story.

He started with a low mumble of, "I'm a simple kickboxer." That was unexpected. The next line was, "I was training for the '84 Olympics." It was right about then that I noticed his 'shirt' was actually an American flag draped over his shoulders. "But I'm bleeding," he said. We looked down, and true to his word, his feet were indeed bleeding. Not a lot, but whether from cracking or an injury, there was some blood on the soles of his feet that stained the sidewalk. "I'm just a simple kickboxer," he said again, and then he repeated the next two lines again. We tried engaging him in some more conversation since we were very curious about the Olympic training part, but those three sentences seemed to be all he wanted to (or could) utter. "But I'm bleeding," he'd say again, and gesture toward his feet. In my memory banks, I can clearly picture us getting an extra Whopper and giving it to him on our way out, but I don't know for sure if that happened or if I just want my present self to think good things about my younger self.

Regardless, I hadn't thought of the Simple Kickboxer (as he was known thereafter) for quite some time. But when Greg laughed and said that his Know Who's Cool subject was an athlete, it all came back to me. We'd all assumed that we'd see him again, because we saw the IV homeless staples of Rope Guy, Shithead, and Angry Guy almost daily. But that was the first and last time I met the Simple Kickboxer, so I never got any more of his story. I just hope he enjoyed the theoretical burger we gave him, found somewhere warm to sleep, and quickly stopped bleeding.

And on that super-cheery note, let's coagulate and gently shuffle on down to the Car Watch.

First off, my good friend Lisa is sweet and excellent at many things, but her Car Watch skills still register in the novice levels. For example, she saw a plate that started with "NRGY" but couldn't figure it out. When I suggested what it certainly must be, she replied, "AAAAHHH, energy! I would never have gotten that. Is that bad?" I'm not here to pass judgment on anyone or do anything to discourage people from sending in Car Watch items, but yes, that's bad. I mean, come on, Lisa. I must say though, her suggestion of "No orgy" is more inspired than mine.

She totally redeemed herself with this one though: "License plate 'PAIN NDS.' First I thought, 'Pain ends.' A pain doctor perhaps? Or someone happy to have made it through the darkness? Then I figured, ah, must be 'pain in de ass.' Thoughts??" Not only do I agree that it's saying, "Pain in the ass," but I'm thoroughly pleased that someone sent me an email with "happy to have made it through the darkness" in it. Hats off to you, Lisa.

My homey Rockabye sent me this plate: "TOESHOO." I'm confused by this. My first read of it was a purposely mis-spelled "Two shoe" for some reason. I was hoping it was in reference to "The Blues Song" by The Dead Milkmen. In it, they say:

A blues man needs a nickname
And everybody calls me Two Shoes
'Cause I always wear two shoes.
I know it's not much of a nickname
But by the time I got around to getting my nickname
All the good ones were taken.

That's solid songwriting right there, and it never failed to get a laugh from whoever was hearing it for the first time. (That same "All the good ones were taken" rationale was used in an SNL commercial for a law firm that ended up getting www.clownpenis.fart as their website. Damn that's funny.) Back to this plate though: by spelling the first part "toe," well that changes the word completely. It works better with "shoo" that way though, even though I can't picture what a "toe shoe" would look like. Now that I look at "toe shoe" being spelled alike but pronounced differently, it's messing with my head and I need to move on. Sorry for the lack of closure.

Last but not least, I saw this plate: "ID KLEIN." Spelled right and everything! How often to people see their last names on license plates in fully thought-out puns? It's not everyday, friends, let me assure you, so it totally deserves the lofty "last but not least" slot in the Car Watch.

That's it for me, homepeople. Enjoy your Friday, the upcoming weekend, and the subsequent week. Monday is my friends Ozzie and Jory's son Cameron's 4th birthday, so mentally wish him a happy one. If you think of anything, see anything for Car Watch, or just want to say hi, you can always email me at ptklein@gmail.com. Be happy and healthy, everyone. Shaloha.

Nickname knack

Hello, good morning, bienvenidos, and elcomeway on this glorious Wednesday. Why is this day glorious? Funny you should ask: today's month and day are as close to binary code as we'll see for the remainder of the year, unless you count tomorrow. And if that fact's not exciting enough for you, then you...really aren't as big a nerd as I. Mazel tov.

I'll stop with the bowling stories in an effort to gain favor with the staunch anti-bowling population. Still keeping with one of the themes of the week though, I shall continue writing about names. Ever since I can remember, I've always liked to have nicknames for people. I know that doesn't make me rare or anything, but I think I actually was a little different. I liked to have cool nicknames for people that no one else called them. This was a challenge, because it was either obscure enough that no one knew who I was talking about and looked at me like I was even weirder than I really was, or it was a good name and others adopted it quickly.

For example, I was friends with a young lady named Ariel near the end of my illustrious high school career. I started calling her Azrael, who was Gargamel's cat in The Smurfs. I thought it was a good name, but I was pleased to find that I was the only one calling her that. About six months went by when one day in drama class, I called her over to me. "Did you just call her Azrael?" someone asked. "Yeah," I said, "Like Gargamel's cat." "Of course, like Gargamel's cat. That's great!" Uh oh. 24 hours later, the whole class was calling her Azaiel. I don't know why they hadn't heard it until that point, but I was no longer special in calling her that. Therefore, I felt like I needed a new name for her. I tried "Venariel" for a little while, but it never took. I still haven't figured out why. Eventually, I went back to just calling her by her real name, which happily put me back in the minority.

Upon getting to college, I was pleased to find that my friend Greg was with me in coming up with names for people. This was different though, because it was more along the lines of codenames for people when we wanted to more secretly refer to them. Let me preface this by saying that these names weren't the most original, but we enjoyed them nonetheless. First off, there was a cute young lady who was made even cuter by the fact that she was watching a Laker game in the rec room with us. Of course we didn't speak to her or anything. From that day on though, she was simply "Laker," as in, "Guess who I saw at the library. Lakerrrr." No, not terribly original, but a code that could not easily be interpreted. After all, you can't spell interpret without Peter.

Much more indecipherable was a blonde student who we saw around my building quite often. She was fairly attractive, but I couldn't help but point out to my friends how incredibly round her face was. It was almost a perfect circle, and it stood out like...like a circular face would. Using a nickname ascribed to Charles Barkley for being chunky, I once referred to her as the "Round Mound of Rebound." I know that's not nice, but she very quickly became Round Mound to us. More accurately, Greg and I usually called her "RouMou" as a nickname for the nickname.

A guy with a streak down the middle of his hair was quickly pegged as Skunk. I realize that's not very creative, but Skunk's friend who was always with him became Skunk's Friend as well. "Know who's in my Milton section? Skunk's Friend. RouMou's in the lecture, but she must have another discussion." This didn't sound even remotely strange to us after just a few short weeks.

More followed. A guy who liked quoting Jim Carrey became Much, because he ended a few sentences with that word in Jim Carrey's voice. Greg played pool with Much once, and it was excruciating. There was a young lady we called Goofy, solely because she once hooked up with a friend of ours who unfortunately resembled that cartoon dog of that name. Yes, Goofy was a dog.

The transient population of Isla Vista, California was not spared. One man, whose faculties were not completely in his possession, once screamed at me from across the street for no reason. He was very angry, and thus, Angry Guy was born. I avoided him at all cost after that. Shithead was pretty cool though. He had a nasty, dark ponytail that looked like one giant dreadlock...or a piece of poop on his head. Ta-dah, and Shithead was born! He always seemed nice enough; I just couldn't get past his choice of hair style. Before you accuse me of being mean and cold-hearted in the face of the plight of the homeless, his hair was definitely a choice and not just the outcome of neglect. He worked to make his hair look literally like crap, and I'll never understand his motivation.

Lastly in that sub-category, we had Rope Guy. This one wasn't a secret, and other people usually called him Rope Man, The Homeless Guy with the Rope, or some variation thereof. As you might expect, he had a rope. More specifically though, he stood on Pardall Rd. every day with his rope, swinging it around near the ground like he was trying to do some lasso trick. "Ya know," Dusty once told me, "I don't mean to be rude, but I'd kind of expect him to be better at that after all the practice." He was right; after hours and hours each day of twirling the rope around, I would've thought he'd have made big leaps in ability as well. Nope, he just twirled the rope. There are far worse ways to spend one's days, but I'm not sure how many more boring ways there are.

Oh no, do you know what I'm feeling? Yes, your darkest fears are confirmed: it's another "To Be Continued" post in the same week as another. I think this is unprecedented. A three-parter happened once a little while ago, so that's already precedented. This, though, is something special (or laziness and a dwindling supply of ideas - you be the judge). Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday, and I'll catch you on the flipside. "The flipside" is my new name for Thursday apparently.