Jul. 15, 2004 - 5:17 a.m.

Cheeky

.

Not that I'm still obsessing about the Silver Loaf thing, but I want you to know that I redeemed myself yesterday. So there.

It was NewWifey(tm)s turn to host the bi-monthly meeting of her Sew Group last night, and the old hens were due to show up at Dangerhouse to start needling each other by 7pm.

I still can't fathom NewWifey(tm)'s interest in something so domestic as sewing. This is a woman who for all intents and purposes has a penis. She races motorcycles. She asks for and gets powertools for Valentine's Day, which she uses to build things like ship's boilers, and roofs. She tosses out words like "Positronic" and "cunt", and both in proper context. She drinks beer. (Fuck you, other ladies, you don't drink beer. You drink Miller Lite. SHE drinks Celebrator Dopplebock, Sierra Nevada IPA, and Maisel's Weisse. REAL beer. You're drinking tinted water.) She knows how to BBQ, for god's sake! She buys Playboy for the tits.

And she does needlepoint.

Not only does she do needlepoint, she does needlepoint of girly shit like flowers in a basket with fat bumblebees and baby rabbits and teddybears and angels all cavorting together in peace and pink and blues.

On top of which, these other broads are all some years beyond what most rational people regard as a safe age for driving.

It just doesn't add up.

But I'm her husband, so I put up with the bad as well as the good. As long as she whips off her shirt when the new Playboy arrives, points to the centerfold and says "C'mon - who's got the better rack, huh?" every month, I suppose I can allow her a few embarrassing anomolies.

As I was saying, this merry band of wrinkled warp-and-wefters planned to descend upon Dangerhouse and compare gingham swatches, or whatever, at 7pm last night.

Oh, and eat.

Last time they congregated here they demolished the White Chocolate Cheesecake I made, raided the pantry for NewWifey(tm)'s Nutri-Grain bars, drained my cooking cannister of pignoli nuts, and stole all our packets of Sweet-n-Low. Old habits die hard, I guess. Anyway, this time we were ready for the two legged locust swarm. NewWifey(tm) came from the Price Club with bulk burlap bags of Chex Mix, chocolate covered almonds, various cheeses and a case of cheap wine (which we then added sugar to). These would be the "finger foods" they daintily snack on while stitching and backstabbing the members who hadn't shown up.

After that comes dessert and coffee, which is where I came in. Like I said, last time I made my famous White Chololate Cheesecake (on a gingered shortbread crust) which they went old-lady nuts over. But I've made it so often now - at their request - that I felt a change was in order. Remembering the fiasco with the Silver Loaves I decided to return to my roots. Which for me means French food.

Nothing could be easier, really, than whipping up a batch of pastry cream. I simmered a lemon peel and some almond extract in the milk this time for a Summer lilt, which came out great. You can pipe that stuff into a toilet paper tube and people will scarf it down, it's so good. But we didn't have enough toilet paper rolls, so I made cream puffs (Pate au Choux)and tart bottoms instead. It was a snap to fill each, and the tarts were also topped with either berries or toasted pignoli nuts. Arranged on a large platter with mint sprigs from our garden, you'd swear I actually cared about them.

Of course I stayed up too late, basking in accolades and fending off the advances of geriatrics who somehow thought NewWifey(tm) would never suspect a thing. (They're right, but I still can't stand the taste of Depends, so I declined).

And that is why I got into trouble this morning.

I don't normally drink coffee, which makes me somewhat of an oddity in the frenetic world of Morning Drive radio. But I never developed a taste for it, and as a result when I do down a cup, the unaccustomed caffein jolt keeps me wired for hours.

It also makes me pee pretty much uncontrollably.

Well ok, not "uncontrollably", but I swear I can feel my bladder filling and straining its seams as I walk back, right from the Mens' Room. And with my packed schedule I only manage one break an hour - two if I sprint - so I always feel like I'm about to do a Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

This morning...well, this morning I was so tired from had TWO cups of coffee. Black, no sugar.

I have typed all of what you've read so far in the space of one commercial break. If I weren't typing I'd be wearing holes in the control board with my drumming fingers.

And I have to pee constantly. Fortunately, sprinting is no problem at this point. In fact, I probably would have made it to work faster if I'd left the car home this morning and just hoofed it those 50 miles. So I've actually managed to make a record number of bathroom breaks without missing a single report.

But get this: on my VERY FIRST pee break - 7 minutes after I arrived - my zipper jammed!!

I own three pair of corduroy slacks that I bought seven or eight years ago at the insistance of an old girlfriend. They still look pretty new despite their age, being a particularly heavy weave from Eddy Bauer. One pair is dove grey, another is olive green (looks better than it sounds) and the third pair is basic black.

Mr. Black, while holding up just as well in the fabric department as his lighter hued brothers, has been having problems lately in the zipper realm. For some reason, ever since getting married really, my pants have been getting a bit tighter. I guess marriage shrinks cloth - one of those phenomena that scientists have yet to explain. Anyway, the zipper has been requiring more and more force the past few years in order to make a complete closure. Finally it was too much. The teeth at the top of the zipper popped off one day after a frantic tug, and I haven't seen them since. This means now that if I'm not careful, and absentmindedly yank the zipper completely northward, it stays there, jammed.

Which is exactly what I did at 1:30 in the morning, last night: Just grabbed the pants, zipped up and staggered out to the Mighty WRX for the drive to work.

The drive to work which takes almost exactly an hour.

Which was 58 minutes of kidney pumping agony.

Unfortunately there was no relief when I pulled up at work. I had actually woken up a bit late and had to hustle it as fast as I could from the parking lot to my studio, do the minimum ammount of Show Prep allowable by law, and go right on the air. What was fortunate for me was that after my first two reports, I get a 7 minute break - unbridled luxury compared to the rest of my schedule.

I took full advantage of it.

Whipping off my headphones I bolted from the studio even as I was doing my outcue. Run down the hall, make a right and kick open the door to the bathroom, undoing my zipper simultaneously. I took the shortest route, which meant aiming for the kid's urinal, the one closest to the door.

U-oh. Wait a minute....

The zipper...it...it...it wasn't budging! Oh no!!

Goddam it, of all days to absentmindedly grab THAT pair of pants! Coffee coursing through my system was rapidly being processed by my renal system into a non-stop torrent filling my entire abdominal cavity. Something had to give, and soon! I stood in front of the low little boy's urinal frantically pumping my fist up and down in an effort to free the stubborn YKK. If anybody had walked in just then they would have beaten the shit out of me.

No luck, and the seconds were ticking away. Only 4 minutes now til I had to be back on the nation's largest all-news radio megalopoly. If I missed a report, even at that hour, I risked being fired. But if I left that urinal without leaving at least a quart of liquid behind, I risked peritonitis!

Not thinking about any potential consequence, I wadded up a layer of pant leg in each fist and just YANKED LIKE HELL for all I was worth. There was a scary moment where it seemed like I didn't have enough strength to force that tough, unyielding corduroy around my protruding girly butt. But a panicky burst of madman strength, a few tears of frustration and pain, and then....fwwwwwip! FREE!

The cords and my Tazmanian Devil boxers draped around my ankles and Little Elvis was letting go with enough back pressure that it felt like I was getting a 3" wide catheter inserted. Or having a baby through my dick. I didn't care. The relief was so great that I just stood there, my head resting on my forearm on the wall in front of me, naked from navel to shoe top.

Which is when, of course, the cleaning woman opened the door to scrub the sinks.

Yes, the cleaning WOMAN.

The cleaning company rightly assumes that MOST of the building (12 story, multi-company complex) is deserted at 3:15 am, and so male janitors clean the Ladies' Rooms on their floors as well as the Mens' Rooms, and likewise for the female crew. This certainly makes sense.

Until that ONE TIME where the young Hispanic woman who just started two weeks ago walks in on a 220 pound Italian guy standing in front of the kiddy urinal with his dick in his hands, his pants around his ankles, and a look of beatific joy on his face. And an hairy ass, I might add.

Her gasp startled me, and she said something I didn't understand before backing out. I caught her eye and it was an animal's stare of pure panic, like a rabbit gets before bolting from a wolf, in an ashen-white face.

Oh my god. NOW what was I in for? Would she go right to Security downstairs and gesticulate wildly about the pervert in the 9th floor "Leetle Boyz Room"? Would she quit on the spot, running home to Mamacita and sobbing about crazy Gringos? Will I get a letter later this week from some inner-urban shark of a lawyer, seeking unspecified damages for mental anguish and sexual harassment because she saw crack hair?

Well I couldn't worry about it. I had to be back on the air in under two minutes! I grabbed the pants, pulled up...and couldn't get them past my knees!

SHIT!!

There wasn't even time for emergency measures. I just hiked the boxers up and left the coduroys where they were around my socks. Thank god for the bracing effects of coffee - I hopped all the way back down the hall, into our suite, and right to my studio.

Passing by the same poor Hispanic girl, who just kind of shivvered and fixed her gaze on the mop bucket in front of her.

I didn't - couldn't - care at that point. I popped my headphones back on just as I was getting my in-cue on 1010WINS, and without missing a beat or sounding like someone who'd just hopped 30 yards after committing what was arguably a sexual assault, flipped my mic on and said in measured tones, "Thanks Paul. I see we have some problems on the FDR Drive this morning....."

Grace under pressure, I tell ya.

Of course I didn't feel very graceful when I finished my report and looked up to see the reporters from adjacent studios, and all the producers, crowded around my studio window watching me do my shift in my underwear. I had a lot of explaining to do.

I also had a repair job to do. So after finally shutting them up (or out, anyway) I grabbed a pair of engineering pliers and just ripped the fucking zipper off my pants, in its entirety. That allowed me to pull my pants back up, and some heavy duty safety pins have kept them there ever since.

And now my shift is over. So far so good, in that a Security detail did not come barging into my studio with stun guns drawn and a copy of the Patriot Act to cover me with in case they indeed found me exposing too much skin. But you never know - they may be waiting by the WRX so they can have Rutherford police back them up. And even if THAT doesn't happen I'll be biting my nails every time I open my mailbox for the next month. Damn shark lawyers!

Oh well, I'll let you know if any of that happens. But right now I've gotta get going.

I really have to pee....

.

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BTW, for those of you who thought I was an idiot for baking Silver Loaves instead of steaming them, go check out sarkasmo today. She baked a ham inside the cellophane wrapper! She also managed to somehow think that boiling was the proper way to cook a boxed cake. It didn't work.

Not that I would think to lob stones from the parapets of my glass castle, mind you.

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Plug #2:

dancingbrave, along with near-equal genius Jessica aka UltraTart, has started a new venture!! If you enjoy tearing apart ugly and/or misguided celebrities who have so much money that they won't mind even if they DO notice the pebbles hurled at them, then go check out the riotous Go Fug Yourself and smugly reassure yourself that you really ARE better than A-List phonies. Enjoy!