Bulletin Board of Bad Behavior

tommy yes! write it.

come on, what are you waiting for? i understand, i'm impatient, but this place used to be fun -- do it do it.
while we wait, here's another essay.

In Praise of the Designated Driver

The designated driver has an underrated soul. I realized this recently when mine took me out for the evening. I was drinking my beer, and he was trying to talk to me. I became irritated that he did not understand the opportunity that he was wasting as I really, really wanted to be getting drunk to the tune of “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down.â€￾

I wanted to bond with the song because it expressed exactly how I was feeling; it was my soul mate tonight, not him.

He was sober though and really trying to tell me about Russ Potts who he'd seen on the news the night before discussing what's wrong with bipartisan politics.

My response, and he forgave me for some reason, but my response was, “Did you vote for Russ Potts? No. I did. I told you this months ago. I'm trying to listen to:

All my rowdy friends have settled down and it seems to be more in the laid back songs.
Nobody wants to get drunk and get loud. Everybody just wants to go back home.
I myself have seen my wilder days and I have seen my name at the top of the page,
but I need to find a friend just to run around. But no one wants to get high on the town
and all my rowdy friends have settled down.

And I think I know what my father meant when he sang about a lost highway and old George Jones I'm glad to see he's finally getting straight,
and Waylon staying home and loving Jesse more these days,
and nobody wants to get drunk and get loud and all my rowdy friends have settled down.

and the hang overs hurt more then they used to and corn bread and ice tea took the place of pills and ninety-proof,
and it seems like none of us do things quite like we used to do
and nobody wants to get high on the town and all my rowdy friends have settled down.

Yeah I think I know what my father meant when he sang about his lost highway and Johnny Cash don't act like he did back in '68
and Kriss he is a movie star and he's moved off to L.A.
and nobody wants to get drunk and get loud and all my rowdy friends have settled down

yeah me and my rowdy friends have rowdied on down.â€￾

I did try to sing this to him. Although, like Hank Williams, Junior, I've found that it does help to be sober when trying to perform before an audience, even if it's just an audience of one.

So for whatever reason, and I think I know it, my designated driver put up with me.

Which brings me to all the designated drivers who've put up with me over the years, and why I love them.

The first great designated driver in my life was a guy named Ben Royal. Ben Royal is actually such a cool name that I'm not making it up. It's his real name, Ben Royal.

Ben Royal was a linebacker in high school. He looked like a linebacker, dressed like a linebacker, and acted like a linebacker. Until I got to know him, and then I thought, I know absolutely nothing about linebackers.

The first issue with Ben Royal that gave me pause was his obsession with The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

One would think that a linebacker would have no interest in a movie about a transvestite, but Ben Royal did, he was so interested that in high school, when the rest of us were talking about A Clockwork Orange, he was going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The second issue with Ben Royal that gave me pause was his obsession with my friend Shannon. Shannon was obnoxious. All of my brother's friends hated her. She was always so hell bent on having fun that she over-anticipated it and nothing ever quite ranked up.

But Ben Royal loved her and because of this love for Shannon, Ben Royal would take us all out in his car every weekend, and in the summer, every night. He actually missed several Rocky Horror Picture Shows just to take care of us.

Most would assume an eighteen year old line backer with three or four drunken fourteen year olds in his car would try to take advantage of them, but one would be wrong. Ben Royal, in fact, tried to take care of us.

The third issue with Ben Royal that destroyed any image of the linebacker that I ever had was something he said to us in the park one night. He and his friend Brian were playing tennis. We were smoking and watching them, and he came over to take the cigarette out of my mouth and smoke it. Standing beside me in a red sweat-stained tee shirt, smelling a bit sour because he didn't live with his mom-- and no man really knows how to do the laundry like a woman -- so standing beside me smoking and stinking in a man - boy kind of way, Ben Royal said, “I worry about you girls.â€￾

Which made me crinkle up my nose and go, “What?â€￾

He said, “I know you don't hang out with Connie, but she is my sister and she is your age. And I just think you are trying to do too much too soon. You're going to have done it all by the time you're twenty-two.â€￾

Then he walked off, still smoking, to finish his match.

Which brings me to designated driver number two. Randy, this guy from Kentucky I met the next summer. He was twenty-one and I was fifteen. He drove across three states to drive me around, and he never got any. I'll never forget agonizing, after dating him for six months, over how I was going to tell him that I was not eighteen, but fifteen. That was a long night. Needless to say, he did buy me beer and come see me when I was in college. And he was a good looking guy.

Now I just spent the evening with designated driver number I can't count that high, and I've realized after all these years, designated drivers aren't just good guys, they're great men.

i hope you do make it to 35. and i hope i do to which is why i ended up with a designated driver, not drinking the wine, but beer on the way. i love to drink at night in cars -- i think it's just related to when i was a kid and that's what we had to do. so i drank in the car, then went to a bookstor...

can i tell you how much i've missed your posts again, and how glad i am you're back, and getting drunk tonight. whatcha drinking? me i think it's going to be . . . wine. they make this god awful sweet stuff up the road from me. i've got several bottles from my last trip up there, either that or tequ...

well, i went by the library, they don't have anything by jeff noon. this is not shocking to me pixie, have you any suggestions? what does a semi-lesbian feminist women's specialist nurse read when she's not dj'ing and taking classes? this could be fun -- i'm going to guess, and it will be something ...

i've had the bruschetta with cheese, i'm not a fan. i like it old fashioned. tomato, garlic, french bread, and olive oil. . . if i'm really feeling like going for it, i break out the capers. me too on cooking, i hate cleaning though, it's a bitch, worse than america. i'm thumbing through runny babbi...

this was a long time ago. i see. i don't think i've ever been so drunk that i've posted in all caps. but i'm so anti-caps that i post in lower case, and planning on getting very very drunk tomorrow. it's been one of those weeks. i'm like jesus christ if it gets any longer and it's a long weekend hal...

pixie, your threads are always interesting. do you mind me asking, how old are you? i think it's funny -- you're growning over having to write papers, i'm growning over having to read them. i'm sure this has come up somewhere before, but i feel like i'm three hundred years older than you. it's stran...

thanks. you should have read america, you smoking bitch though. it made me laugh then say, kick ass!

can i enjoy him with bruschetta? that's what i'm about to eat.

i like you . . . you're interesting. stick around.

http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/corporateHRviolators.html A Who's Who Guide to Where to Go to Fight, for Mark and E.E. and anyone else who's interested. Who's working on it: • Corpwatch • Center for Corporate Policy • Halliburton Watch • Houston Global Awareness • Wal-Mart Watch ...

e.e. here's the poem. it's really bad, in no way reflects that ee cummings ever exsisted as it has a very bad rhyme scheme, but it was fun to write, which i think is the point of writing -- it was actually written in response to another person's much better poem entitled, america, you smoking bitch:...

"Sometimes it is true that santa is a democrat and god is a republican" i think it is more true that the united states is an oligarchy composed of the bipartisan union of satan and company. (a capitalistic oligarchy -- mark is right, the government here in this country, not the country, bu...

"Str, you just seem too optimistic and believing in organizations of people driven more likely by greed and power"

that's had me wondering, where are the organizations of people driven by goodwill and citizenship?

"Winds of change are blowing into the west. Competition in manufacturing has long since made it's race to the bottom. I assume that the majority of items in this house have "made in China" stamped on them. If inroads in the service sector continue to be made by non western nations, th...

oh, you said vurt not kurt, i'm speed reading and not doing a good job.

recommend away.

pixie, how's that ankle?

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. i wrote a poem about him, johnny cash, and a sculptor named hc westermann. i'll find it and post it sometime and thanks, i've read it, my brother's a history teacher. thanks i've read cummings, i love cummings, i'm an english teacher i love your...