Category: Funny Business

With many of us under quarantine and spending more time at home than we could ever imagine, undertaking household projects is at an all-time high.

Instead of hearing the sound of cars whooshing down the road or the dull roar of planes flying overhead, my neighborhood cacophony is the result of chainsaws and hammers.

And with plenty of time on my hands, there are many things I should be doing with my hands to spruce up our domicile.

The patio is overdue for some pressure-washing, and the steps leading up to the porch are begging for a weatherproofing treatment.

My fan cave is in need of a fresh coat of paint, and the door knob leading into it ought to be replaced. Really, I could go into any room in our house and find something to repair.

However, I’m not gonna do any of that stuff because I have not now nor have I ever been what you might call “handy.” In fact, when it comes to that sort of thing, I’m what you might call “stupid.”

I was never mechanically inclined, and never had any inclination to want to be mechanically inclined.

I remember when I was a kid, Pop (my dad) would be down in the driveway working on his car and he’d ask me if I wanted to peer under the hood and watch what he was doing.

I did not.

I viewed cars then as I view cars now – vessels used to get me from one place to another. I didn’t care what they looked like on the inside, didn’t care how they worked – as long as a vehicle transported me, I had all the information I needed.

Once, our old-style television (the kind encased in luxurious wood) stopped working and Pop decided to open it up from the back and see if he could figure out what the problem was. He asked me if I wanted to “help” as he fiddled with the ol’ cathode-ray tubes.

I did not.

Again, all I wanted from the TV was the ability to see “Batman” and “Honey West.” I certainly didn’t want to get all up in its business.

As the years went by my interests started to vary, of course. I went from liking girls to liking women; playing and watching sports to watching and writing about sports; and being obsessed with reading comic books to being obsessed watching movies based on comic books.

At no point, however, have I ever looked at a broken appliance and said, “You know what – I’m gonna grab some tools and fix that bastard.”

Oh, there were times when I felt the need to make an effort. Once I was gifted a gas grill which came completely unassembled. There were nuts and bolts and levers and knobs, and I was only about three pages into the instruction manual when I started gently weeping.

I spent an entire Saturday morning, afternoon and early evening piecing together this monstrosity and once it was finished it looked like a broken Transformers toy.

I named it “Optimus What The Hell” and never even bothered to hook it to a propane tank because that would’ve ended quite horribly.

Years ago I thought I would impress Mary by putting up door blinds. This seemed like a simple enough task, requiring just some screws and brackets.

It took me several hours to get it done but when I was finished the blinds were nice and straight – although I was a little surprised that they didn’t seem to be the right length.

It was only later when Mary came home, opened the door and crashed through the blinds that I discovered they needed to be attached to the door itself, and not to the trim above the door.

My bad.

Oddly, I do have a savant-like talent for toilets. Give me a toilet ball cock and I’ll have it installed in no time. (First I’ll giggle, though, because “toilet ball cock” is hilarious).

For reasons I’ll never be able to explain, I can take the lid off the tank of a toilet, survey the situation, figure out the problem, and quickly resolve it. I guess you could call me the “Shitter Whisperer.”

Otherwise, if you need a Mr. Fix-It you’ll have to get your fix from another mister, because I ain’t him.

It’s not that I’m too stupid to learn, it’s that I’m too stupid and too uninterested to learn.

 

I’m a person who tends to forget names quickly, especially when I’m first introduced to someone. I think I’m so concerned with getting my name right I simply lose focus, and this issue has plagued me for much of my life.

What I can remember, however, are nicknames – especially those I give some of the neighbors I frequently encounter during my morning walks.

For the most part these are not folks that I actually know in the sense that we’re close friends and hang out. Basically I just wave at them and say things like, “Looks like it’s gonna be a warm one today with highs in the mid-80s and light winds blowing east-southeast at five miles per hour,” “Man, I wish Batman was real,” or “I can’t wait for Halloween because I’m dressing as a werewolf again this year.”

Our conversations are neither long nor deep, which is just the way I like them.

But as a point of reference I’ve decided to assign many of them a sobriquet. Here are a few that stand out:

CHURCH LADY

I see this woman almost every day. Her nickname stems from the hairstyle she sports, which is reminiscent of  Dana Carvey’s Church Lady from “Saturday Night Live.”

She’s stands about 5-2 and weighs 75 pounds and I’m guessing she’s between the age of 130 and 165. But she can move – she doesn’t so much walk as she glides.

One thing I’ve noticed is she’s always carrying what looks to be a hurley (hurling stick), which makes me wonder if perhaps she’s from Ireland and once played the game.

Probably, though, it’s just a stick she uses to ward off suitors, coyotes and the kinds of people you see in Gatlinburg who try to get you to listen to a seminar about condos.

THE LONE RANGER

OK, this is the one neighbor’s name I can remember because when he introduced himself it immediately rang a bell. It’s John Reid. John Reid, as you know, was the Lone Ranger’s true identity, and he teamed up with Tonto to fight outlaws in the Old West.

This John Reid, however, doesn’t fight outlaws – at least as far as I know. I’m pretty sure he works construction.

Due to the  COVID-19 global pandemic he does wear a mask, though, so that’s pretty cool.

Sadly, his dog is not named Silver, which is bitterly disappointing to me.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE AND NAPOLEON DYNAMATE

This couple lives around the corner. The guy not only has hair and eyeglasses identical to Jon Heder’s “Napoleon Dynamite” character, but he also walks like him and often has a vacant expression. So many times I’ve wanted to yell, “Vote for Pedro!” but I don’t because I’m sure he gets that a lot.

As for his wife/girlfriend/partner/roommate, she looks normal. I just call her Napoleon Dynamate because I think it’s funny.

BUTT PATTER

There is a friendly woman on our street who pats her boyfriend on the butt whenever he comes out of their house. Sometimes they’ll walk together toward the street, turn around and look back at their house, and she’ll pat his butt then.

Once she was cutting grass and he was putting down mulch, and she patted his butt while his butt was aimed skyward.

Point being, if the dude is outside and his butt is within reach, Butt Patter is gonna pat it.

I can only imagine what the man’s butt endures inside the house.

ON GOLDEN POND DOG WALKER

This woman looks like Henry Fonda in his “On Golden Pond” role, right down to the fishing bucket hat and wire-rimmed glasses. Each time she sees me walking Charlie, our Sheltie, she screams, “Is your dog friendly?”

I always tell her that Charlie is old and nervous – much like myself – and would rather keep his distance (also much like myself). So naturally, she trots over with her dog, who tries to lick Charlie’s bits and pieces.

Needless to say, these encounters are awkward.

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN

This dude is gigantic – tall, heavy – just mountainous. I imagine him eating entire herds of cattle, drinking from a water tank and then when he’s done, stomping his way through the city Godzilla-style.

Of course when I see him out walking I don’t call him the Amazing Colossal Man. I address him as “sir” and try to make as little eye contact as possible.

MANLEY STUD AND PRECIOUS MUFFIN

This young couple can often be seen jogging down our street. Manley strikes me as someone who works out at the gym seven days a week, holds an important job in high finance, drinks nothing but microbrews and calls other males “Bro.”

Precious wears designer outfits while running, never sweats, has blinding white Britney Spears teeth and has probably played Elle in a community theater production of “Legally Blonde.”

Based on our brief interactions they’re nice people but I hate them both.

THAT ASSHOLE

It’s just what I call this one guy because, well, he’s that asshole.

I’m a weird dude, and my weirdness (if not my dudeness) can probably be traced back to my mother.

Mom, rest her soul, liked to think outside the box, especially when it came to recipes. Her idea was to take simple ingredients and transform them into fancy dishes (applying her own odd definition of fancy).

Sometimes she’d take a good idea and experiment too much, though. Her Rice Krispies Treats were incredible when she first started making them, but then in later batches she’d add other bizarre ingredients like applesauce and syrup.

Had she been Dr. Frankenstein, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with merely bringing the creature to life – she’d have added donkey ears and dressed him in a leisure suit.

One time – many, many years ago – I brought a date home to meet mom and even though I told her we weren’t coming for dinner, she insisted on providing a “snack.”

The snack consisted of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, with upright cocktail weenies forming a crown around the inside of the bowl. Adding a flourish of class was paprika liberally sprinkled over the dish.

To the untrained eye it looked as though the mac and cheese – bleeding after sustaining a grave injury – had been surrounded by cocktail weenies.

It probably also looked that way to the trained eye.

The good news is that it wasn’t bad – as long as you like mac and cheese and cocktail weenies. And paprika has no flavor anyway, so it was just added for dramatic effect.

As for my date, she didn’t try it. She must’ve been spooked by the food’s appearance because after looking at it briefly she ran out of the house and I don’t recall ever seeing her again.

Anyway, that tale is just a sidebar to the main story, and the main story involves quarantine food. Since we aren’t going to restaurants right now and are trying to eat the food we already have due to the global pandemic, I decided to take a cue from mom and spice things up.

In other words, we can keep eating the same things but we don’t have to eat them the same way.

For example, we have a can of vegetarian baked beans in the cabinet. They’re good, but there’s nothing particularly special about them.

Well, there WAS nothing special about them.

Now they’re “Fonzie Beans.”

What are “Fonzie Beans,” you ask?

In December, 1974, there was a Christmas-themed episode of “Happy Days” where Fonzie was bragging about the big plans he had for the holiday.

But Richie spotted Fonzie alone in his garage, eating a can of beans by the light of a small, sparse Christmas Tree.

Oh, I cried like a Baby Boomer. To this day, I get weepy when I see someone eating beans near trees.

But In Quarantine Life, you, too, can eat Fonzie Beans. All you have to do is pretend to be Fonzie and eat beans.

To enhance the experience I like to put on a leather jacket and style my hair in a ducktail. I also say, “Ayyyyy!” and give the thumb’s up sign, but that’s an individual character choice on my part.

We make a lot of soup at our house and the base we use is something called “Imagine Soup.” It comes in a variety of flavors (organic garden tomato is our go-to) and it’s quite good.

But just think of the name. It’s Imagine Soup, so we can imagine it to be whatever we want. I ate a bowl yesterday and imagined it was a frosted cherry Pop-Tart.

It didn’t really taste like it, but as the quarantine drags on there could come a time I forget what a frosted cherry Pop-Tart tastes like so it won’t matter.

I might have some this weekend and call it chicken. I don’t eat meat, but a chicken pissed me off once, so this is a way to be passive-aggressive.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to fun with food.

Have any potato chips around the house?

Pour them into a bowl, hit them with your fist, and suddenly you have “mini-chips.” Or, you can take a bag, pulverize it before opening it, and when you dump it out you can enjoy a bowl of “Tater dust.”

Canned Pringles are also fun because you can take two of them and situate them in such a way on your lips that it looks like you have a duck bill.

Here’s another great idea – since Cap’n Crunch is already nautical by nature, serve it while in the swimming pool, bathtub or when you’re still wet after getting out of the shower.

And if you want to entertain your kids (or your evolved chimps – I have no idea who or what you’re living with) you can change Cap’n Crunch’s rank every time you serve a bowl.

Tuesday he can be Rear Admiral Crunch, Wednesday he’s Vice Admiral Crunch, by Thursday he’s Admiral Chief of Naval Operations Crunch and heading into the weekend he’s been promoted to Fleet Admiral Crunch.

This morning I’ll be enjoying a heaping helping of Secretary of the Navy Crunch and Sunday I’ll have some Retired Crunch.

As for me, perhaps the one quarantine dish that comes closest to being “mom-inspired” is one I make using vegan link sausage and canned crescent rolls.

Really, this is just another version of “pig in a blanket.” You roll out a triangle of dough, wrap it around a sausage, and bake it.

However, since this is vegetarian fare I call it “friend in a quilt.”

I put a pair of toothpicks in one of them and placed green olives at the end of each toothpick. Thus “friend in a quilt” became “monster in a bedspread,” but then I realized maybe I had overdone it because the olives really didn’t have a major role to play.

In summation, my advice as our social isolation continues is to make your own fun with your own food. How you do it is entirely up to you and, obviously, there’s no right way or wrong way.

The key is to eat what you have and have fun while you eat.

And if you have a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, cocktail weenies and paprika on hand, well, you know what to do.