Bindsay Bohan: the Motion Picture

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“LOBO Productions,” I says coolly into the phone.The line is a bit loud with white noise, and the connection is terrible.

”Hello,” a female voice replies politely. “I’m calling to inquire about a film you have in production. It’s called “Linday Lohan: Fighting the Fears.”

“Ah yes,” I reply. “It’s kind of a biography of Lindsay Lohan.”

”Can I speak to whoever is in charge of that film?”

“You’re speaking to him” I says, twirling the telephone cord in my finger. Shiftless, my son, enters the kitchen, and I immediately put my finger to my lips, giving him the universal ‘Shhhhh!’ kata.

“LOBO Productions has their receptionist working on films?”

“Scorcese has the switchboard next week,” I explain. Shiftless, who is now making a sandwich, is rudely pushed aside as I dig into the junk drawer. “It’s a work study thing. Sorta so we can ‘keep it real.’”

“Hey,” says Shiftless, annoyed.

-Shhh!

“Thank you Mister Spielberg,” I says at Shiftless dismissively. From the drawer, I withdraw some napkins with notes scribbled on them. “Linday Lohan: Fighting the Fears. Yes. I have the script right here.”

”Well I’m Lindsay Lohan.”

“Who?” I says absently, trying to decipher the napkin scrawl.

“Lindsay Lohan. I never heard anything from my agent about this project. Am I expected to be in it?”

“We would love to have you in this movie,” I says truthfully. “How soon can you audition?”

[a brief pause]

”You want me to audition? For the role portraying myself?"

“I’m sorry if I mislead you Miss, eh-"

"Lohan."

"But-“ I spin the napkins back and forth. Some of the smudges even require me to read the sloppy jotting from the reversed side. “It appears this is our big Oscar push, and we wanted to cast the roll as early as possible -with a crushing heavyweight lead, the like of Tom Hanks or Robert De Niro.”

”Who did you get?”

“Chris Tucker.”

”Who is she?”

“I do have a cocktail waitress roll I think you would be perfect for,” I offer.

”You want me to be in a movie about me, where someone else plays me-“

“Not just anybody plays you, Miss Lohan. Chris Tucker plays you.”

”Wait. Is this that ‘LOBO’ guy that I have all those Temporary Restraining Orders against?”

“No it’s not,” I says. “But while we’re on the subject, is the TRO in Tulsa really necessary? You never go there unless it’s a flight connection.”

“If you go through with this movie, I’ll sue you down to the contents of your colon before I have you killed.”

“Fine,” I sigh. “I’m abandoning the project.”

”Good,” she says with finality.

Click!

“How did it go?” asks Shiftless, pulling his sandwich plate to the table.

“Pretty good,” I says. On the napkin I change ‘Lindsay Lohan: Fighting the Fears’ title to ‘Bindsay Bohan: Biting the Bears.’

Putting the notes back in the junk drawer, I shrug. “We got a lot of boring legalese out of the way.”

The Showtunes Must Go On

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Slightly bleary, President Barack Obama pads to the breakfast table in his bathrobe, a series of newspapers -with stories already highlighted for his attention- crooked under his arm. The rest of the family out of town, the large empty table only seems to underline the eerie quiet.

Obama presses a discrete button built into his chair, an aide allows himself in.

“Good morning sir,” says the aide.

“I guess that depends on what you have to say,” Obama smiles, eyes still skimming his newspapers. “What’s on my agenda today?”

The aide flips through his clipboard. “Well there’s the war, the economy, taxes, gays in the military, the other war-“

Obama groans. “Jesus. You people might as well have those pre-printed on your stationary.”

“There has been some movement in the Middle East Peace Process.”

“Yeah," Obama guffaws. "Whatever.”

“Kim Jong Il is here requesting an audience.”

“I don’t understand a word that guy says. He’s, like, French or something.” Obama yawns deeply. “What would you do?”

“As President?”

“Yes.”

“With my wife and kids out of town?  I would probably just surf porn I suppose.”

“Can’t,” says Obama. “My wife found the line item in the budget I pay for it out of.”

"Ouch,” the aide winces.

“Let’s back up. What about that ‘gays in the military’ thing?

“People of,” the aide coughs, “’alternate lifestyles’ are feeling persecuted out of serving in the armed forces.”

“Wait.  These people want to enlist? They’re aware of the dress code, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well what’s the problem? Don’t we have enemies that need a good smacking around?"

“Not really.”

“How about one that should be patronized condescendingly during an ambush makeover?

“Kim Jong Il maybe?”

“Word," laughs Obama.  Fist-bumping ensues. "He wouldn’t understand a damn thing they said. It would be hilarious.  But in all seriousness, we can’t, under any circumstances, allow homosexuals to get killed in war.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“Too valuable.  You know what happens to an America without gays?”

“No.”

“Pittsburgh.”

“Really?”

“I’m serious. We had a whole Top Secret study done.  We would have full saturation in six months if we're lucky.  And anyone alive a year later better damn well like Coors Light, playing pool, and NASCAR.”

The aide shuddered visibly.

“No, homosexuals can’t be allowed to get in the military, period.  They're a national resource.” Obama scratched his chin, pondering aloud. “And we can’t ask them about their sexuality directly anymore-"

“Wait. Can I ask you some questions about that ‘Pittsburgh’ thing-?"

Obama snaps his fingers. “I got it,” he says with authority. “During boot camp, there’s a mandatory twenty-four hour David Hasselhoff marathon.  And all the recruits get nothing but water and Cheetos."

“I’m not following you,” the aide squirmed.

“Then discharge everyone with glowing orange genitals.”

“Ah. Medical reasons.”

“And this 'condition'" Obama makes quote marks in the air, "-no, diagnosis- makes it impossible to serve in the military as the occasional strobe effect could inavertently give away their location to the enemy."

"So to keep gays out of the military, you want to make up a disease -'Penile Bioluminescent-Affected Mammallian Disorder'-"

"Uh-huh.  'BLAMD.' Perfect."

"That has no other symptoms or cure?"

"Excellent."

"-To save America from becoming Pittsburg."

"It's genius," Obama smiled. “Now get me Rick Astley on the phone! Stat.”

Zeus

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“Of course you don’t feel clean and fresh down there sometimes,” I remark.

The way Terri and Complainy -my wife and teenage daughter respectively- are sitting, holding hands across the table, I immediately have the sense I’m interrupting.

Moving quickly for the fridge, I try to make my ‘snack attack’ quick and precise: the sooner I let them continue in privacy, the better.

“And who could feel clean and fresh down there?” I offer hopefully. “Jesus I doubt that place has been cleaned in ten years. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was bat fecal matter all over the place. Plus must and mildew, mold, and other unidentifiable horrible smells … cobwebs maybe.” I shudder visibly as I select a carrot and shut the refrigerator door. “Oh my god … can you imagine the spiders?”

I turn to see Complainy shriek as she flees for the door, and Terri, elbows still on the table, rest her own shaking head in her hands.

“What?” I says, munching. “Why is she so freaked out about the basement all of the sudden?”

"Baby,” says Terri, exasperated. “Can’t you try and be a little more sensitive when it comes to our children?”

“We tried that,” I says. I spin Complainy's former chair, already askew, backwards to sit. “Remember? It just reminds me how much I don’t like them.”

Suddenly –in mid-chew- I freeze. “Oh my God,” I says, dropping the carrot and grabbing Terri’s hands forcefully.

“Honey,” I whisper, looking around fearfully. “Is the basement haunted?”

'Hoarders' Episode Scrubbed Due to 'American Pickers' Visit

Predator Press

[LOBO]

This is going to be an entry in a 607,004.3-part series of things I don't understand about the human race.

Along with being tri-polar, I've further been diagnosed with pyromania, hypocondria, claustrophobia, necrophobia, xylophobia, spectrophobia, bolshephobia, agateophobia, phthiriophobia, syngenesophobia, coimetrophobia, sophophobia, virginitiphobia, agrophobia, russophobia, spacephobia, myrmecophobia, and phasmophobia.

But what might finally tip my handicapped parking placcard in is that I'm the world's only sufferer of cryohydrotachophobia: the fear of rogue icebergs. thus, it has become my sworn and sacred duty to protect myself from you assholes at all costs; the second I lower my guard, I just know you'll be sailing one of those evil glaciers -just dripping malaise and polar bears- right up the fucking Mississippi.

So when Mike Wolfe, Frank Fritz, and a cadre of History Channel producers and cameramen circled my dumpster, I was immediately upset.

Mike Wolfe: Hello, I’m Mike Wolfe.

Frank Fritz: And I’m Frank Fritz.

Mike Wolfe: And we are …

Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz in unison: American Pickers!

LOBO: You guys looking for aluminum cans or something?

Mike Wolfe: I see you have a Blackburn TPS-2

Frank Fritz: bicycle floor pump in your garbage.

LOBO: That’s actually not my garbage.

Mike Wolfe: First introduced in 2008, The Blackburn TPS-2 Bicycle Floor Pump is constructed with a burly steel barrel for maximum durability. This bicycle floor pump features a precision brass pressure gauge for reliability, as well as a new Presta/Schrader double-barrel head for added convenience. Blackburn's TPS-2 pump achieves a maximum pressure of 140psi, weighs 3.8 pounds, and comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

Frank Fritz: Would you consider selling it?

LOBO: That isn’t my garbage.

Mike Wolfe: I’ve gotta have it.

Frank Fritz: Would you take six dollars for it?

LOBO: But that isn’t my-

Mike Wolfe: Okay. How about eight dollars? It probably doesn’t even work.

LOBO: Sure. Whatever.

Mike Wolfe: Alright, eight dollars. [offers handshake]

LOBO: Eh, you guys were just digging through garbage.

Mike Wolfe: But it’s in garbage we find Americana such as this!

Frank Fritz: We’ll let you have it for $220.

LOBO: What? I don’t even own a bicycle.

[my cellophone rings]

LOBO: Hello?

Mike Wolfe: Hello LOBO? We just scored a farm-fresh Blackburn TPS-2 Bicycle Floor Pump, and knew you were, you know, into that sort of thing …

I Ate WHAT?

 Predator Press

[LOBO]

A ‘meat and potatoes’ guy myself, not a lot of foreign cuisine sneaks across my rather discriminating palette. But every once in a while there is a lapse in my security -otherwise airtight, I assure- and I feel I owe it to you O loyal reader, to complain about it in great, anguished, and excruciating detail.

While how we got the Grape Nuts cereal remains a mystery, I strongly suspect Terri: we’ve been married two years now, and I’m virtually positive it isn’t the first time poisoning me would have crossed her mind.

It has the texture you would guess human brains mixed with tiny bone fragments might feel like. And how do Grape Nuts taste?  For a toxic gash in the fabric of culinary history, it's surprisingly not very subtle or apologetic: imagine eating pulverized mulch, soil and tree bark dogs have peed on for years.  Mix that with a generous sprinkling of rabbit turds, and eating it out of a corrugated box with only a spade and a rake. Okay, are you picturing that?  Now imagine eating only the box.  Grape Nuts -utterly bereft of grapes or nuts, I should add- should be called ‘Rape Guts.’

Worse, it makes your poop unsinkable, unflushable battleship girders that circle around the whirlpool defiantly, bending the laws of physics and thermodynamics at will -some are so brazen, they swim against the Coreolis Effect! The larger ones exert a gravitational pull over the smaller ones, and they are drawn together -often into skirmishes for control of the tiny blue sea; the clanging and shrieking metal-on-metal sounds become extremely audible as armadas collide in angry, bobbing counter-orbits, and people are soon banging on the bathroom door. “LOBO are you okay?” and ”Where the hell are all those sparks coming from?”

-I would warn them to run for their lives, but I’m far too embarrassed.  In fact I'm sorry but if my weeds start growing out of my ass, we’re all going to die and that’s that.

Grape Nuts scores impressively, however, in practical secondary applications. It makes a great spackle for instance. The stucco patterns one can achieve are fantastic. Has a tree in your neighborhood recently been felled by a storm? A box of Grape Nuts, some water and fertilizer, and you can just stick that sucker right back on the stump.

Another high-scoring secondary feature is how it elevates the art of farting: it’s analogous to going from mere garden-variety ma an pa sticks of dynamite to military shaped charges.  Terri had some friends over from work, and I didn’t even have to enter the room: from the top of the stairs, I cut a SBD that felt like I passed a hot light bulb.

As you can guess, hilarity ensues.  I think they heard the palpable thump as it detonated on the living room floor below ... and what followed was ten seconds of erie silence, four minutes or so of shrill mayhem (choking, weeping, and the opening of windows and doors and such), and then five minutes of watery-eyed fingerpointing.

The next time Terri makes me go to church, I’m gonna choke down a whole box of this crap.

***

There is some good news on the foreign food front. We ate at a place called “Panda Express” the other day. Who knew panda was so delicious?  Judging from the number of customers, I'll bet they were serving up four of five pandas a day!  This is Entrepreneurialism at it's finest. And what better way to raise awareness of the plight of the mighty panda, nearly extinct, than to remind Americans how mouth-wateringly good they are when nuggettized and in a honey glaze -just like you would get them in Nature?

And they're only extinct because they won't have sex, right?  How nappy must those panda bitches and hos be if a male panda -born in a zoo and never had no sex before- don't want to toss 'em good an proper on top of the plastic habitat that looks like a rock?  Maybe the male panda is looking for something a little more upscale and refined, sensitive to his needs -like a panda in a cheerleader outfit.  Would it kill her to wear a cheerleader outfit every once in a while?

Maybe he’s a gay panda.  Or what if he's got, like a racist sex-fetish and wants a grizzly -or a polar- bear?  Hm?  Are the female pandas, like, real fat, or otherwise stricken with infirmities? Try not reminding him of Oreo cookies or Loa Tzu; maybe this bear is just such a hard-core fucking nihilist, he’s trying to end the species. This planet is a dump if you think about it.

Anyway, I can’t say enough about Panda Express, nor their fine work and noble commitment to save the lazy and otherwise worthless panda.

-And maybe they have a card I can get stamped for a free panda in the future!

Ask LOBO: Parenting Teenagers

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“Is Complainy up for school?” asks Terri.

“Yes,” I says, breathlessly removing my helmet.

“We have to figure out what kind of tampons she wants.”

“Blech.”

“Seriously,” adds Terri.

“Well don’t let her do the thing with the hangy stringy-thingy.”

“Why?”

“It's a widely-known fact if it’s accidentally pulled during a routine exam, she’ll rapidly inflate.”

Randy Moss Arrives in Tennessee

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Cletis, perplexed, scratched his head with the sight on his revolver. This tipped his hat forward, giving him a thoughtful and determined look he figgered.

“Do ya see her, Paw?” cried Skeeter.

“No son,” says Cletis. “Miss Moss?” he called into the train car. “Miss Randi Moss?”

“I’m Randy Moss,” said the 6’4” wide receiver. Despite the staggering size and weight of his duffel bag, he leaned forward and down to shake the tiny sheriff’s hand.

“Jesus Christ!” Cletis shrieked. “You’re Randi Moss?”

“It’s ‘Randy,’” Moss explained. “With a ‘Y.’”

“Dammit,” says Cletis. “We thought you was a porn star.”

“Nope,” says Randy.

“Do ya see her, Paw?” called Skeeter.

“Uh,” said Cletis, scratching his head again. “Well sort of-“

Suddenly, the approaching sound of Skeeter’s hard shoes, running. “Did you invite her to the ceremony where we give here the Key to the City?” Skeeter skidded clumsily around the corner, and locked eyes on Randy.

“Paw, this man is black,” he breathed, drawing his gun.

“I know that,” said Cletis. “This here is Randy Moss. With a ‘Y’. Now Skeeter Rommel McCoy, put that gun away affer ya does somethin stupid.”

“No can do, Paw.” As he cocked the hammer, a bead of sweat ran down Skeeter's forehead. “I seen a black man once. This man is ten times blacker.” He circles Moss, "What say you, Randy with a 'Y?' 'Habla Espanol? Konichiwa?"

Cletis sighed. Returning his attention to Randy, he began to recite the words he prepared –although in a slightly rehearsed, inanimate manner. “We, on behalf of our fine city, welcome you Randy -with a ‘Y’- Moss, to our fair city of Tennessee-” He paused abruptly, whispering. “What is it you’re here to do again?”

“I’m joining the Titans,” Randy explained to blank stares. “You know, your football team?”

“Hot damn,” says Skeeter, holstering his weapon.

“We got us a football team?"