Category: Funny Business

Hear the term “date night” and you might think of couples – probably with children – finally stealing away some time to enjoy an evening on the town.

Perhaps it involves dressing up, having dinner at a fine restaurant, seeing a play like “Hamilton, or going to a movie (there was an actual movie called “Date Night” released in 2010, so you could’ve spent date night watching “Date Night”).

It might even include romance, although you probably want to dial that down a bit – especially if you’re still at Denny’s when the mood strikes.

(Speaking of which, I enjoy role playing games. Sometimes I dress as an agent selling car insurance and Mary pretends to be a customer with a $500 deductible. One time she wore a Geico Gecko costume, but things got weird and I’m not comfortable talking about it).

Anyway, Mary and I do not have traditional date nights. Instead, we have date days.

Sometimes we even have date mornings.

Basically, it consists of brunch and a movie, or a movie and lunch. Either way, it’s extremely casual and fits in much better with our be-in-the-house-before-dark lifestyle.

Now, the main reason we like to go to morning/early afternoon movies is because there are far less people in the theater. It’s not that we don’t like people … it’s really more that we don’t like being around people.

And before you think we’re antisocial we really aren’t – some of our best friends are members of the human race. But neither of us like crowds, especially when you’re packed in tight at the ol’ multiplex.

If we go to the cinema in the morning, we can find a nice spot where we don’t have people near us.

Go at night, and you might wind up with a teenage boy soaked in Axe Body Spray on one side of you and an old woman who smells of mothballs and has an annoying nose whistle on the other.

The only time we do go to a movie at night is if said movie involves Batman. I’m a Grand Gordon in the Dark Knight Temple, so premiere evenings count as holy days of obligation.

As for dressing up on our dates, we don’t do that.

I mean we wear clothes – obviously – just not particularly good ones.

Mary has an impressive rotation of T-shirts. One celebrates the band “Folk Uke” and features a unicorn barfing a rainbow; one has a cat with horns; and another says “Think While It’s Still Legal.”

My shirts are generally of the sportsball or comic book variety and I try to always dress for the occasion.

If we’re at a Marvel movie, I’ll usually wear my Avengers or Captain America tee.

When at a DC film, I always sport a Caped Crusader or Superman shirt.

And you’ll never catch me wearing a DC shirt to a Marvel film or vice versa. That’s a slap in the face to nerds and nerdkind.

The mere thought of someone walking into “Avengers: Endgame” while wearing a “Shazam” tank top makes my blood boil.

As for dining out, we don’t do fancy … never have and probably never will.

Our rotation involves a Mexican restaurant, a hipster-type joint that serves everything from black bean burgers to hummus, and a veggie-style diner.

That’s basically it – rarely do we venture beyond our grub trilogy.

We don’t go to high end places that serve things like wildebeest soufflé and warthog kabobs and feature a member of the wait staff bringing over a bottle of wine and asking me to sniff a cork.

Frankly, I’ve always felt that cork sniffing should be done behind closed doors (but under close supervision).

And plays and concerts just don’t do it for us anymore, mainly because of that whole people issue.

I mentioned “Hamilton” earlier and I have no doubt it’s extraordinarily entertaining, but unless Lin-Manuel Miranda and Phillipa Soo are willing to do a private performance for us – preferably before lunch and in our backyard – we’re probably going to wait until it’s made into a movie and comes to Netflix.

I realize our version of “date night” might not sound very exciting to a lot of people, but it works out just fine for us.

And really, as nice as an early movie and burrito might be, there’s nothing we like more than simply piling up on the futon at home with our two dogs and two cats and binging on “Stranger Things.”

Thing is, if you’re lucky enough to find the person you want to be with, every night can be date night – even if it’s morning.

According to dictionaries, Wikipedia, other tionaries and alternate pedias, a repressed memory is, “… a condition where a memory has been unconsciously blocked by an individual due to the high level of stress or trauma contained in that memory. Even though the individual cannot recall the memory, it may still be affecting them consciously.”

If that’s the case, that’s not what I have because the memory I’m about to share is one I do remember, but wish I could repress.

You see, the first album I ever purchased with my own money was “Close To You” by the Carpenters.

Five decades later, I still have no clue why on earth I would lose my LP virginity to Karen and Richard Carpenter and an album named after a song that – when I hear it – makes me want to take hostages and then barf on those hostages.

The album was released in August, 1970, so assuming I bought it when it first came out, I was 9 years old. And, we can also assume that since I bought it, I must’ve also listened to it.

I distinctly remember walking into the W.T. Grant store at Roebuck Shopping City in Birmingham, Alabama, selecting the album, paying for the album, and exiting the premises with the album.

Things get a little fuzzy from there.

Now, the age factor can be a legitimate excuse for my actions given that 9-year-olds aren’t necessarily known for their decision-making skills. It’s why you don’t see kids that young operating heavy machinery or removing gallbladders.

But, I was already into music by then, and none of that music was anything like what the Carpenters put out.

When my brother went off to college he left behind albums by the likes of Jim Hendrix (I absolutely wore out “Are You Experienced”), the Animals (I used to sing “House of the Rising Sun” to my dog, Ringo), and the Monks (kind of a 1960s version of punk).

I was rock and roll through and through at a very young age.

That being the case, it would stand to reason that in 1970 I would spend my hard-earned allowance on something cool like, say, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” by Derek and the Dominos or “Led Zeppelin III.”

Nope.

It was “Close to You” – an album so syrupy you couldn’t listen to it without a short stack and pat of butter.

I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out what possessed me to buy it.

I guess it could’ve been to impress a girl, but the only girl I wanted to impress at the time was Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl on TV. Ours was a May-December romance that I still don’t like to talk about because it was unrequited.

I will, however, talk about it long enough to say she could buy her own albums due to the sweet “Batman” residuals she raked in.

Could it be that maybe there was a song on the album that, for whatever reason, I liked?

No … it could not be that.

At all.

Karen Carpenter had a wonderful voice, Richard Carpenter was a great composer, and they were brilliant at their craft. But their kind of music was not “my” kind of music.

No, this will likely remain a mystery for the rest of my days – one that can’t be solved or resolved.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of money on music yet – except for that one time – I stayed true to my roots.

I bought all the early KISS stuff and was even a member of the KISS Army (I never saw any action, though, because I was stationed stateside).

As time went on I stocked up on albums and 45s by the Ramones, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, the Clash and the New York Dolls – just about every band you can think of that didn’t sound anything remotely like the Carpenters.

But I’ll have to live with the fact that – as I lay on my death-bed, surrounded by morbid people who want to see me die – one of my last thoughts as I take the Big Sleep will be that my first music money was spent on “Close To You.”

I’ll probably be given a posthumous dishonorable discharge from the KISS Army.

And I’ll deserve it.

 

My name is Scott, and I’m a 58-year-old goob.

And I’m absolutely fine with that.

Now, I’m sure there are some people (especially those of you who have me in your Death Pool) who think that because I’m a 58-year-old I’m supposed to do “age appropriate” things.

Perhaps I should be hardened by life and spend much of my time being angry as I pull my pants up to my teats and/or wear shorts with dress shoes.

Yeah, I don’t do that.

I mean, sure, I’m disgusted by all the stupid in the world and there are a number of people I’d like to hit upside the head with a shovel.

But I don’t do it because we goobs – regardless of age – are not violent.

When did my goobiness start?

Good question.

I remember watching the “Batman” TV series before I ever bought a comic book, and the colorful, campy world of the Caped Crusader was a world I very much wanted to be a part of.

And my parents let me do it, even when I insisted on sitting cross-legged on the floor, bathed in the light of the bat signal while wearing a towel I fashioned into a cape.

They knew I was a kid, and I’m sure they both figured at some point I’d put away childish things.

They figured wrong, for – to date – I have not.

As I grew slightly older I graduated from campy TV to more “serious” comics, and by the age of 12 I learned that the TV Batman was not the “original” Batman at all.

Proto Batman was a master detective and grim vigilante, and nothing like the “Bright Knight” portrayed by Adam West.

But while I continued to support the work and legacy of Gotham’s greatest hero, I also developed a deep appreciation for the likes of Spider-Man, Superman, the Fantastic Four and Wonder Woman.

The world might’ve known me as a mild-mannered honor student and soccer player, but in reality I was an Uber Goober.

When “Superman: The Movie” came out in 1978, I was a junior in high school.

I saw the film with a date on the Friday it opened, with a friend on the following Saturday, by myself on Sunday, convinced my girlfriend to watch it again with me the next Friday, and screened it for a fifth time on Saturday.

“Good grief, son,” I remember my dad saying, “How many times are you going to see that movie?”

I don’t remember my answer, but I planned on seeing it as many times as it took to grasp the magnificence of Superman plucking both a free-falling Lois Lane and a plunging helicopter out of the air.

But the real game-changer came with 1989’s “Batman.”

Yes, I was a grown-ass man long out of college and working as a sportsball writer, but real life paled in comparison to Batman’s reel life. Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, and Jack Nicholson delivered a masterpiece, and I don’t even want to think about how much money I spent seeing that one over and over again. After the movie came out on video (remember when that was a thing?), I rented a VCR (remember when those things were a thing?) and took it to Mom and Pop’s house so that they, too, could experience the thrill.

Mom spent the movie doing needlework and trying to figure out where she’d seen Nicholson before, and Pop fell asleep – dozing off before Batman had a chance to save Vicki Vale at the museum.

It took me a while, but I eventually forgave my father for that incredible display of disrespect.

Anyway, Hollywood has churned out a buttload of superhero flicks over the years, most that I’ve seen and many that I have completely swooned over.

There were 21 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe leading up to “Avengers: Endgame,” and I saw each one multiple times.

There were some that made me emotional because I became so invested in the story and characters.

If you’re uncomfortable with the fact that there were three scenes in “Endgame” that made me cry, you can smooch my patooty.

Of course “Batman Begins,” The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises” are beyond compare, although it should be noted that I’ll see any movie with Batman in it because I feel I have a moral obligation to do so.

He is, after all, Batman.

And by the time Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” comes out, I might be 60 years old.

But you know what?

I’ll still go to the theater to see it multiple times, and I’ll still wear a Batman T-shirt to show my devotion.

Shoot, I’ll even pretend from time to time that I am Batman.

Years from now when I’m in the assisted living facility, I might even believe it.

Yet whether I’m 58, 68, 78, 88 or the age when I falsely accuse nurses of stealing my Pop-Tarts while they parade around my room wearing hamster costumes, I have no intention of being anyone other than myself.

An Uber Goober’s gotta goob out – even when his time is running out.