Category: Funny Business

I try not to feel old, but I’ve reached a point in my life where I can’t help it anymore.

I’m 57 and a half, which is a really high number (especially when you add the fraction).

And having lived this long, I now have to make a choice about how I want to spend my remaining years.

Do I exercise and watch what I eat, or do I cease to give a rat’s arse and simply enjoy myself?

Four years ago I went for my annual physical and was told that my cholesterol levels were too high. If I couldn’t bring them down naturally, I’d need to take medication.

I wasn’t crazy about that plan.

I’m not much of a pill-popper, and I’d forget to take them, anyway.

So, the option was to “eat healthier,” and I was starting to think I needed to do that anyway because I had put on a lot of excess weight.

The weight gain bothered my not because of the spare tire around my stomach; I’m not a body snob. People come in all shapes and sizes and if you’re happy with how you look, that’s all that should matter.

However, my face couldn’t handle the expanded flesh. It’s cartoonishly round, and any extra weight alters my appearance dramatically.

In the early stages of weight gain I resemble a squirrel storing nuts, which is kinda cute in a Hanna-Barbera way.

But I knew I had to make a change when Mary and I went to a Yankees-Braves game and were accosted by one of those ambush photographers who takes your photo the minute to walk into the stadium.

When I saw my face in the picture, I looked like Elvis Presley.

And I’m not talking about the young, cool, handsome Elvis who took Natalie Wood on motorcycle rides and wowed her with his quivering lip, but the old, sweaty Elvis sitting on the Jungle Room john at Graceland.

Thus, I was inspired.

Not only did I start walking several miles each day, I ate the “right” foods. There was no bread, no cheese, no chocolate and no sweets, and since I was a vegetarian, meats were already out of the rotation.

By the time I went for my physical a year later, I had dropped nearly 40 pounds and my cholesterol was at a healthy level.

But …

I had taken things too far.

True, I didn’t look like “Last Call Elvis” anymore, but instead I looked like an underfed Steve Buscemi, with slightly better teeth.

I was painfully thin, which caused my neck to wrinkle and make me appear much older than I actually was.

So, I decided maybe it was time to relax my diet a bit.

I started eating biscuits again and, damn, I had forgotten how good biscuits were.

And then instead of steering clear of the bakery at the local supermarket, I started spending some quality time there – at first, just sniffing.

But then I noticed that strawberry cake slices were there for the taking, as was sourdough bread.

And cinnamon rolls?

Yep … I dove into them like Jabba The Hut (assuming Jabba The Hut ate cinnamon rolls. If he didn’t, he was a dumbass).

I also discovered something called lemon squares. Other than lemons and graham crackers, I’m not entirely sure what they’re made of, but whatever it is, it’s sexy good.

Next thing you know I’ve put 20 pounds back on, and I like it because my face is somewhere between Elvis Presley and Steve Buscemi. I call it the Elvis Buscemi face, and I’m damn proud of it.

Sadly, though, my cholesterol has once again started to rise, which means if I want to avoid pills I have to start controlling my diet again.

And that leads me back to the beginning of this column.

At 57 and a half and happily married, I no longer have to go on dates or seek out mates, so perhaps I shouldn’t be overly concerned with my appearance.

And as for staying in tip-top shape, is there any real point anymore?

I’m pretty sure if a professional soccer team was interested in signing me, they’d have done so by now.

Hell, if I choose to sit on the futon all day and snack on Twinkies dipped in pure grain alcohol, I should get a pass, right?

On the other hand I do want to have quality of life in my “golden years,” so hopefully there’s a way I can make this Elvis Buscemi thing work.

To that end, I’ll now sign off, put on my walking shoes and try to put in at least three miles this morning.

But I’m not going to promise that later on I won’t eat a biscuit.

Or a cinnamon roll.

Or a lemon square.

Maybe just the lemon square.

 

For years, I’ve tried to figure out why I have such a crippling fear of snakes.

Now I think I know, and I blame it on George Pal, Tony Randall, and Arthur O’Connell.

Pal directed the 1964 movie “7 Faces of Dr. Lao,” Randall starred in the title role (and as several other characters, as well) and O’Connell – well, that bastard was the face of “The Serpent,” a stop-motion creation which scared the hell out of me then and scares the hell out of me now.

The snake was huge, it talked in Randall’s voice, and it gave me nightmares for years.

Check it out on YouTube. In the search box type in, “Dr. Lao snake,” and feel the terror.

Before I delve deeper into my phobia and why it has been triggered again, though, it should be noted that Randall showed a lot of range in this very clever motion picture.

And Pal, of course, gave us such cool films as “When Worlds Collide,”  “The War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine.”

(And when I reference “War of the Worlds” I’m talking about the original starring the guy who played Bat Masterson, and not the remake with Mr. Scientology and that pale kid.)

And I feel bad calling O’ Connell a bastard. He was a two-time Oscar nominee, played in some good Westerns and seemed like a likeable fellow … right up to the point where his face appeared on a snake.

But considering the movie came out in 1964 and I saw it on TV as a kid – most likely in the late 60s – that’s probably why snakes scare me so much.

I bring this up now because last week I was cutting grass (which is something I usually enjoy) and as I was making the turn and heading back toward the house, I saw Mr. No Shoulders slithering across the yard and exiting through a gap in the wooden gate. He was anywhere from 12 inches to 32-feet long and black or brown or magenta. I didn’t get too close because, you know, it was a snake.

I basically just froze for a few seconds before I resumed mowing, and then the rest of the day I was jittery and fearful that some reptile of the suborder Serpentes with the face of a character actor would attack me.

I told Mary about it and she said it was probably just a rat snake. That didn’t make me feel any better because I’m not overly fond of rats and I don’t even want to think about a rodent/serpent hybrid. That would be absolutely horrible.

Silly?

Maybe.

That doesn’t make the fear any less real.

And don’t tell me the snake being more scared of me than I am of it.

That’s bullshit.

I’m quite sure that if looked down and saw a snake touching me, I’d simultaneously pee, crap and puke – which would serve as the undercard to my massive heart attack.

And if a snake saw me touching it … ah, that’s ridiculous. You can’t touch something when you’re running away from it – and why on earth would I want to touch a snake?

I truly hate that I feel this way.

No snake has ever harmed me in any way and I’ve really, really tried to accept the fact that they do more good than harm. They help keep our ecosystems working through their own version of pest control, which means you might occasionally find them spraying your basement with chemicals and/or checking wood for termite damage.

Still, I’m horribly creeped out by them and yesterday when I cut grass my head was on a swivel because I expected to see another snake.

I didn’t, but I will … maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow.

However, it’s bound to happen.

And I swear, if it has the face of Arthur O’Connell, you can bury me right there.

Just bring some clean shorts so I can go out with a little dignity.

 

Every once in a while, Mary and I crave cereal.

We don’t want it for breakfast and we don’t keep it in the cupboard – we just occasionally have the desire to pig out on it while watching the ID Channel.

Last week, she decided she wanted Life while I always choose Cap’n Crunch. She has several different cereals in her rotation but not me; as far as I’m concerned, Cap’n Crunch is the only cereal.

There has never been a better blend of corn flour, sugar, oat flour, brown sugar, palm and/or coconut oil, salt, reduced iron, yellow 5, niacinamide, zinc oxide, yellow 6, thiamin mononitrate, BHT, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, and folic acid.

I started eating it as a kid to get a sugar-jolt start to my day, and immediately fell in love with its golden crunchiness. Plus, Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch always seemed quite friendly and accessible.

(Yes, that’s his full name and the ship under his command in the S.S. Guppy. Many people confuse it with the S.S. Minnow, but that was the ship carrying Gilligan, the skipper, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann and which is a crown on the shore of an uncharted desert isle. To the best of my knowledge, the S.S. Guppy was always incident-free and is currently docked where the rich Quaker Oats people keep their yachts).

Anyway, I decided to hop in the car head to the local supermarket so we would have something to gnosh on while watching another life-affirming episode of “Evil Lives Here.”

Once I arrived at the store I went straight to the cereal aisle and had no trouble finding a box of Life.

What I had did have trouble finding, however, was Cap’n Crunch.

Let me clarify this.

What I had trouble finding was original Cap’n Crunch.

You know why?

Because apparently the Cap’n has expanded his fleet.

There is Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, and Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

What the hell?

I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find just plain ol’ Cap’n Crunch.

There were what seemed like 500 boxes of Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, but that’s not what I wanted. I like peanut butter, but I don’t want it to crunch under any circumstances.

Something with “butter” in its name should never crunch.

Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries looks like some Fruit Loops escaped and joined the Federal Breakfast Food Protection Program in hopes of blending in with regular Cap’n Crunch.

It didn’t work.

Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries? Nope.

It’s just all berries with no Cap’n Crunch in sight. It’s kinda like when you see a famous band playing at a state fair but the band doesn’t have any of the original members anymore.

Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, frankly, just seems ridiculous.

If I want a doughnut, I’m going to Krispy Kreme.

And finally, there’s Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

Again, pancakes are sacred and should be treated as such.

As for original Cap’n Crunch, why on earth would you mess with perfection?

All it needs is milk (in my case, soy milk). Actually, it doesn’t even need that. You can rip open the box and eat it like a savage and I won’t judge you. I’ve done it before and I might do it again.

As far as you know, I’m doing it right now.

But being the flagship franchise, it should always be front and center. Instead, I had to root around all the other “specialty” Cap’n Crunch cereals before I finally found a box of the good stuff, where the man himself is saluting in one hand and holding out a cereal-filled spoon in the other – a spoon full of sugary joy.

In summation, I have nothing against those of you who buy and consume Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, and Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

That is your right.

However, you’re wrong.

There is no substitute for Cap’n Crunch which – to me – is the one and only.