Pee Papparazzo

After skateboarding to work on this beautiful Friday afternoon, I decided a trip to the men's room was in order. The KGO restrooms are the standard fare; the men's is a urine-soaked purgatory covered in plaque-colored tiling, while the lady's is a richly carpeted Xanadu, scented with a potpourri of extinct flowers and attended by towel-and-mint-wielding attendants.

I opted for the bathroom on the main floor, as it is located near the worker's lounge where I could warm up a bowl of my latest crock pot stew ("I Can't Believe It's Not Poison") whilst I was hosing the porcelain. So as I was tending to my business, somebody took up residence at the adjoining urinal.
As per the time-honored Code of Men, I did the standard half glance over and half nod, which is a gesture meant to convey "Hey there... I hope you have an enjoyable time pissing next to me for the next 15 seconds but don't get any ideas" through one manly bit of body language.

This is what I saw.

I have to stop using this restroom. There are far too many strange guests of our afternoon show running happily about. Two weeks ago I peed next to Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps I could author a coffee table book consisting solely of close-ups of the sides of celebrities' faces, all of whom are taking a leak and trying to ignore me. "Pissing Greatness: My Career In Television"

Did The Airbag Go Off Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

Whilst watching the first of 8 consecutive hours of the NCAA tournament, I took an opportunity during a commercial break to grab a healthful snack in the form of a 3-day old fish burrito.

Upon reentering the living/loving room, mine eyes fell upon the television at the following, rather unfortunate, moment... I'm going to suggest that the new Chevy Traverse advertisement could stand to lose this portion of the sales pitch:

"Hey! Aren't you Howie Long?"

I could not eat the burrito.

What Dreams May Come or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Giant Penguin

Presently it is 5:45 in the ante meridiem and, mere moments ago, I was hiding out from the mob in a clothing/aquarium store that featured a six-foot-tall free-roaming penguin, some scattered electronics, and hundreds upon hundreds of thick, long-sleeve shirts (only available color: dark red).

Were one to consult a dream dictionary, a cursory interpretation of my nightly meanderings through the netherworld would tout an unprecedented window into my repressed fears, desires, and unholy marriages of the two. But such theorizing can only go so far methinks; if you dream of getting an epic blowjob from a woman named Burrito, you went to bed horny and hungry... you are not wrestling with some sort of important career decision. Unless you're currently boning your day-shift manager at Señor Sancho's.

But this morning, as I awoke startled and smelly, I made a stunning revelation regarding my most recent dream; I could trace even my most fanciful hallucinations to the events of the previous day, a day spent in and around Berkeley with the Fair Briana as we awaited her car windows being fixed. Long story.

So I present to you a laundry list of a few of the dream's more prominent characters and props along with what sparked them.

1) Who/What/WTF: Towards the beginning of the dream, Gary Oldman (dressed as Commisioner Gordon) was shot in the chest for being an informant. That's how all good dreams start out. What planted the seed: Briana and I went to see a matinee of "Coraline" and three of the thater's five screens were showing "Watchmen," which sent me on a diatribe about how ridiculous it is when people say things like "Finally, a serious comic book movie." The new Batman flicks are no exception, nerd.

2) Who/What/WTF: Vincent Pastore, a.k.a. Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, was the guy doing the shooting. What planted the seed: after deciding that we are no longer into "Tell Me You Love Me," the better half and I thought it's time to check back in with Tony and Carmella, season four. Alternatively, I'm terrified of pussies.

3) Who/What/WTF: Gary Oldman's body falling onto an enormous cutting board. What planted the seed: cutting up carrots for Briana's tofu Thai feast, which stood as my only contribution apart from moral support.

4) Who/What/WTF: A vaguely Scandinavian family, all wearing dark Ray Ban sunglasses. What planted the seed: the family was an obvious amalgam of the many inconspicuous tourists that were roaming the streets, but the glasses were spurred by my astute observation that there was "some sort of blind person convention in town or something."

5) Who/What/WTF: A 20-feet-tall woman wearing rain boots. What planted the seed: Mr. Bobinsky, from "Coraline."

6) Who/What/WTF: The afore-mentioned giant penguin, who was looking at an aquarium and, in a comedic moment I can not hope to do justice in writing, gave a passing female shopper a condescending look. What planted the seed: I walked by a credit union on Shattuck Avenue and took a few seconds to figure out what their logo was supposed to be.

7) Who/What/WTF: The store I was hiding out in (Gary Oldman had survived the attempt on his life) had a huge display of eggs for sale. They were labeled Mackerel, Herring, "Fish", and Baby Penguin [?!]. What planted the seed: this one's a two-fer. The eggs themselves were a conversation point over brunch at La Note, where we took great pleasure in ordering, and subsequently consuming, our "oeufs." The contents of the dream oeufs were courtesy our pre-dinner run to the the local soon-to-be-its-own-zip-code Safeway, where I inexplicably felt compelled to buy fish sauce despite reading the list of ingredients.

Okay that's enough of that.

But while on the subject, a party who wishes to remain nameless is offering a handsome reward for anyone who can get her significant other to stop snoring. Handguns are to be considered a last resort, unless you know a guy.

Frippery

As my daily interweb regimen has been devoted almost exclusively to a potent time-wasting cocktail of Scrabble, exhaustive fantasy baseball research, and laughing at this guy's before/after photo, BumperSmashing has proven to be a low priority.

However, a desultory instant message from one Nicholas Desbiens, a dear pal from the Marshy Fields of central Wisconsin*, has rekindled my blogging fire via a fond reminiscence of a particularly miraculous card trick we performed one sweltering summer's day at a Minneapolis journalism camp.**

But I'm not going to write about that yet.

To bide the time, I'll share with you an entirely infantile chestnut from the vault courtesy the online yearbook I somehow stumbled upon, most likely whilst google-stalking ex-girlfriends.***

In yon high school days, the acme of hilarity was the fact that Chris D. and Sean B. were, for lack of a better term, inseparable.

There you have it.

SIDE NOTE: Our assistant principal was named Harley Davison.

*Please note that Marshfield is home
to both the world's largest round barn
and the world's largest urinal.
Suck on that, Europe.

**Holy fuck I was dorky.

***Only kidding, honey.

Of Tubed Wasabi and Other Goings On

Given that the only newsworthy event of the previous week[s] was The Fair Briana's Triumphant Return, the editing staff here at BumperSmash have had a galling time forging a post worthy of our collective approval, and, moreover, one that adheres to the unique blend of journalistic integrity and entertainment you the reader expects but rarely deserves.

I am now, however, happy to report that contemporaneous with Briana's return were a series of minor happenings that, en masse, are mildly entertaining.

(1 : 100,000 Scale)

1. "So, Round Eyes Thinks He Can Make Sushi"
High on my list of Least Well-Thought-Out Gifts was my lavishing upon Briana a pseudo-gourmet sushi set. Taking into account the fact that I bestowed said gift while she was still living in Wisconsin, where access to sushi-grade ahi is not exactly the point of fishing, I suspect that by this holiday season I'll streamline the process by doling out Glenn Beck Studio Store gift certificates to loved ones and explaining where hamburgers come from to random children I pass on the street.

Sensitivity in the field of gift-giving notwithstanding, Briana and I decided to try out the new set by treating Krumbo and Celeste to a delightful evening of authentic Japanese cooking and/or traditional food poisoning. After preparing just the right amount of rice, we took our neatly portioned ingredients over to Chateau Celeste and soon set up a dedicated spilling-shit station. The floor and counter space newly rich in nutritional content, we eventually put together what could technically be called sushi in that it contained raw fish and was cut into roughly bite-sized pieces.

Unfortunately for all those involved, Chez Gallant was in charge of the nigiri, for which the ingredient list included delicately sliced ahi tuna, a shoebox-sized brick of gluey rice, and just a scintilla of scarily-labeled tubed wasabi, henceforth known as the bottled hellfire of a million lost souls.

I can safely say that the only reason Mike and Celeste are still on speaking terms with yours truly is because I sampled the nigiri first. Upon placing the roll in my mouth, I almost immediately noticed a mild sensation of heat. My next ten minutes were spent with lips upon the refrigerator's water dispenser as the other dinner guests expressed amusement at the lingering effects of my spice miscalculation.

2. "Your Wii BMI Rating Is: Whale Shark"
Another exciting [see: spirit-crushing] development since Briana's return was our unveiling of the Wii Fit, which was designed to help the American gaming public gain the same healthy body image of Nintendo's Japanese programmers.

As you have no doubt guessed, I was absolutely thrilled with Wii's assessment of my athletic prowess. Upon taking the preliminary Body Mass Index test, my meticulously-crafted "Mii" morphed from a cartoon likeness of myself to a cartoon likeness of a flesh-colored 6'5" bowling pin and I was promptly given a week to live. Then, grainy footage of Pearl Harbor newly crisp in my mind's eye, I was told that I am not only morbidly obese but also have the body of a 51-year-old.

3. "Honey, In This Economy, We Can't Afford Not To Buy These 3-Pound Bags Of Imitation Cinnamon Toast Crunch"
At the risk of being crass, I'm just going to come right out and say it: I want to get in Target's pants. It's not that I love Target; it's that I want to get it into the back seat of my old car and get it pregnant.

Probably Not The High Point Of Tony Bennett's Career

And thanks to Briana (and, more to the point, her car) I was recently able to get to my local Target location and do some shopping with just me, my best gal, and a bargain-induced bulge in my trousers. Bless her heart, Briana still makes a shopping list, but luckily I was able to do some solo exploring (two floors worth of big big savings) and came away with an industrial strength crock pot, six pairs of tiny tiny boxer briefs, a very haute shower curtain rod, enough sugary cereal to reanimate the recently dead, and, in a daring bit of last second mid-checkout-line bravado, a junior-sized box of Junior Mints.

The purchase that got away, I'm sad to report, was a cheap braided area rug that I was talked out of after a series of "We can find something better"s despite, admittedly, some tearful begging on my part. Truth be told, it wasn't the perfect fit for the look we're going for in our apartment ("Fuck, is everything we fucking own from fucking Ikea" chic), but when I'm on a roll at Le Targét, almost any rug will do.