Manolo Gives You A Pearl Necklace

WHOO-HAH! I couldn't sleep last night and for some reason, my brain would not shut up even after stabbing it with a Q-Tip.

Anyways, after shouting "I'm in the dark, here!" my brain started shutting down but not before giving some last minute pearls of wisdom. Here they are for your emotional and mental growth.

* Laughter is the best medicine, Vicodin is a close second (reminiscing about the time I broke my back while trying out the Kama Sutra and was on pain medication for 2 years).

*Foreplay’s for sissies!!! You show her your ceiling right away or you show her the door.

*Sympathy sex...it ain’t pretty but it works.

*Your hand...think about it!!!

*Lesbians pouring liquid latex on themselves..(i fell asleep)...

Beisbol

Baseball season is upon us and rather than hanging in Florida, throwing some balls around, all the big stars are running for cover.

Owners are thinking back nostalgically for the days when their biggest problem in February, would be covering the dead hooker that David Cone would wake up to in his hotel room.

But now, the original 40/40 Man himself, Jose Canseco is broke, bitter and insanely jealous of Mark McGwire and has decided to make some money off of Paul Bunyon's shine.

You know what I say? GOOD FOR HIM! You have no idea how exhausting it was to watch McGwire get a free pass from the media. Everybody loves Mark, MARK, MARK. They caught him with the Andro, "oh its no big deal", his body suddenly fails on him "oh, he just got old"...

I don't care much about the controversy overall, steriods won't help you hit a 90mph fastball, in fact bulking up might inhibit your ability to do so, but when you do connect WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW...watch it fly. I'm just very tired of everybody running out there defending freaking Mark McGwire...

Manolo Goes To The Zoo

My mother has 11 brothers and sisters, and with each of them having 3-4 kids, it means that I have 40 cousins or so.

Every now and then, it falls on me to grab a handful and take them to the movies of take them to the park.

Anyways, this past Saturday a couple of my younger cousins were at my parents house playing Xbox and chatting online. I decided that this was not the proper way for kids to spend a lovely Saturday afternoon.

I told them to put on some pants (it runs in the family…shout out to Xtian) and for them to get in the car. We get to the zoo and after standing behind some kids from the yellow short bus and giving the zoo $10 per kid and having $70 electronically magically disappear from my bank account, we get in.

Anyway, we see all sorts of animals…we see the giant tortoise and the chimpanzees…we see lions, tigers, bears, oh mine!! We eventually get to the elephants and lo and behold, there is a male elephant.

My seven year old cousin Erica grabs my arm and pulls it until I am bent to the point where she can whisper in my ear. Mind you, the volume of this particular whisper can be compared to the level found on somebody who talks while listening to really loud hard rock on their walkman.

Erica: “MANOLO, WHAT's THAT? THAT THING HANGING THERE?”

Me: “What thing?”

E: That thing hanging from the elephant, the purple thing with the gray spots”

Given the fact that he has no pants, I am very certain it wasn’t a roll of quarters in his pocket. That elephant had a fifth leg, the size of a small man. It was probably 4-5 feet long just hanging in the cool South Florida winds.

Me: (laughter) I don't know honey...I think he is just a sick....a very sick elephant...(i am of course secretly hoping of being struck down with said disease)

I start laughing…the young couple next to me starts laughing. My sister joins me plus the other cousins in the group. After a minute of everyone laughing and pointing at each other (no, you tell her, no you tell her), my little cousin, who had joined the laughing, stops and asks:

E: “What are we laughing at?”

Of course, there is another laughing episode between us, the aforementioned young couple, and the other 7-8 people who had joined the festivities.

Deep down, I am prolonging this laughing fit in order to formulate a proper response. She is seven years old…she is not my kid. I don’t know how she is being raised on a daily basis. I don’t want to be the one responsible for introducing the word penis into her vocabulary…I am secretly hoping she just gets interested in something else and she forgets. I am hoping that one of my siblings or cousins is smart enough to see in what dire straits I am and will rescue me…but alas, they are my family and are totally useless…

But oh wait… It’s the most amazing coincidence…a stroke of luck…she tells me she needs to go to the bathroom...

Me: Sure honey, let’s go everybody…double time!

We are swiftly moving past all the other animal exhibits just giving them a cursory glance…and then my luck runs out…we ran past the cutest pigmy hippos which of course my little cousin has to stop and see…

Lo and behold, there is a pigmy hippo with a similar problem as the elephant…only thing is this pigmy hippo is relieving his bladder…

My little cousin starts giving me the most quizzical look, then at the little tiny hippo, then at me, then at the tiny little hippo, then at me, then at the little tiny hippo, then at me, then at the tiny little hippo…then she just walks away…

I then patted myself in the back for a job well done…

I don't sleep well

i'm not sure there's much else to say on the subject. But clearly I'm not sleeping well and I'm sort of going nuts over it.

The thing about not sleeping is that you spend a ton of time thinking and really no one, not even me, needs to spend that much time listening to me ramble.

It's becoming a problem...

Where have I been?

There are a number of possibilities

(1) I've been really busy with work.
(2) I've been trying to convince a teacher that didn't like what I stood for to like me as a person. I failed there.
(3) I've been picking fights with minor celebrities in the Phoenix Airport
(4) I've been getting drunk in the Woodland Hills, Ca Hilton and trying to get receptions to meet me in my suite.
(5) I've been flying to LA to take people to lunch
(6) I've generally been going insane
(7) I've been trying to coax Evil out of what was clearly a year long funk!

The point is I'm back. This year promises to be huge. Trips to Miami with Manolo and Jon-El, A retreat in Thailand to get a colonic, more client conversations than I can shake a stick at and all the while, nurturing my favorite hobby...being self defeating...

Emotional and Dietary Yo-Yo

Evil

What I had for dinner today:

* A plate of fried calamari
* A bowl of beef noodle soup
* Pad Thai
* Roasted Duck Curry with a bowl of rice

WTF? What happened?

Eat me, cont'd

Evil

For dinner tonight, I had:

* 3 beers

And when I got home, I sprinkled a few grains of table salt on my tongue because even though I was craving food, I knew I didn't absolutely need to eat. My body just wanted a little taste of salt.

Eat me

I had the strangest dinner tonight:

* 4 carrots, followed by
* some leftover italian sausage in my fridge, followed by
* 6 little pieces of white chocolate
* 2 glasses of milk

Stories for 2005

Please, loyal readers of The Hose, do not despair...Even though Manolo realized that blogging its sooo 2004 and he seriously thought of putting the keyboard down, he can't let his loyal readers down.

He understands that he has created something bigger than himself and cannot allow "THE HOSE" to fail like so many other companies from the Dot.Com era ( Scient, TellMe) where Evil and Xtian played a part...As a result, Manolo is coming back soon with the vengeance of the second cousin of the brother of a Puerto Rican catholic schoolgirl abducted by her 40 year-old English as a Second Language teacher.

Some of the life stories he is working on (not in any specific order)...

1) Charity work with troubled koalas
2) Shopping at the Supermarket
3) Being able to put his pants one leg at a time
4) Looking at the back of Paris Hilton's head
5) I just wanted to say I was on Cialis the other day
6) Tutoring sessions with retarded dolphins
7) And many more...

And Evil, next time you’re feeling blue, next time you "feel like this guy or that guy", pamper yourself! You are worth it!

Where is XTIAN?

Yo, where is XTIAN?

Did he disappear into bolivion?

Was he arrested for domestic abuse?

Is is too busy at work to blog? (HAHAHA)

Did he find true love? (Cue ominous music here... *dumdumDUM*)

Hello 2005, It's Nice To Meet You

Evil

I know I'm a little late in posting these New Year's Resolutions, but hey, I've pretty been late with everything all my life. I mean, just ask my mom. I was so late in popping out of her that by month #10, she was pretty much doing jumping jacks in hopes that I would just slip out somehow. Have you ever seen a 10 month-pregnant woman do jumping jacks? It's a sight! (Or so I hear from my dad.)

Anyway, without further adoo, here are my resolutions for 2005:

One. No longer ask girls to marry me if odds are less than 0.5%.

I've tried this several *coughmanycough* times in the past and things have just not panned out. (As if THAT needed to be said.)

Two. No longer become emotionally attached to any girl who so much as gives me a hug.

No further commentary needed. This post is already becoming more embarrassing than I had originally intended.

Three. Meet a nice girl; avoid the really horrible girls.

Actually, this one is probably the most do-able...

Why Hello Ladies!

Evil

It has recently come to my attention that guys are sometimes able to impress gals by sporting certain possessions. Usually, said possessions indicate wealth or eliteness of some sort.

Being ahead on the technology curve does both, don't you think? I mean, those gadgets easily run a few bills (wealth!) and by definition, being a tech early adopter is soooo EL33T.

I've decided: first thing tomorrow, I am going to get myself one of these babys!!!

I'm trying to convince XTIAN to throw a Super Bowl Party. Anyone who agrees that this is a kick ass idea, let XTIAN know! 

We're Related!

Evil



This is my nephew. He's almost 2. His parents thought it would be festive for the holidays to stick a red nose on his face. You know, like Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. Apparently, the kid wasn't amused. He looks more like a sad clown! OH NO! I guess it runs in the family...

Me. the Big Man, and more Waffle Houses than you can shake a stick at

There we were, at a Waffle House somewhere between Atlanta and Birmingham. As we gorged ourselves over All Star breakfasts, I knew I had found my role model. He had hired me but I always thought he gave me more credit than he should and maybe I gave him les sthan deserved. We sat there and the conversations turned to our fathers and their immigrant experience. The conversation got heavy and after a while he just sorta looked up and said "this is great country, ain't it" breathed for a minute and then started talking. We were kindred spirits he and I. We were guys who kept trying to piss in the tall grass till everyone got too tired of chasing us away, he and I are the type of guys that don't understand no, guys that don't so much ask for things as much as encouraging people to give it over willingly. Failing that we're the type of guys that will just fucking take it, shit all over whoever tried to fuck us and turn it into a great story, where our antagonist is left somewhere eating shit. That's him, and that me and that's what brought us to this point right here, this waffle house in the middle of fucking nowhere.

I got a little nervous, because right there, there was some concern that he might grab my hand, slice my palm, slice his, slap our hands together, and declare us true blood brothers.

He brought me along to drive the car and keep him on schedule. He brought me along to pretend to be his EA, in anticipation of the day, 3-5 years from now, where he'll call on me to do it for real, and not just a few for a few weeks. I had done a piss poor job up till this point. I had nearly gotten us run over by a speeding tractor trailor as a I cut across a 8 lane highway. I had nearly put us under another tractor trailor and of course there was that episode with the off ramp where the laptop, and the cell phone flew across the car during his conference call and he cussed a storm to everyone he could find and asked openly on the call (after recovering)

"anyone remember driving their third line manager around and not knowing where to drive and not know where he was going and actively trying to get him and yourself killed?"

A chorus of folks, all of whom actively try to curry his favor regularly, shared a hearty laugh at my expense, haha, the most favored son has some chinks in his armor after all. I hated them all, just for that one moment. When the anger passed, I took note of who the assholes were that laughed the loudest or maybe tried to be witty. I quickly added the to the mental list of "people I need to fuck over the second I get a chance".

But this guy, man, what a sight to see. The guy was a human fucking dynamo...We hit 5 clients in 3 days. Always be Closing is the motto, and he always was. Me, I was driving, I got the driving straight, I got the time straight, I did a good job making sure everyone had everything they needed. We had a system, everytime he waved his hands incessantly, I knew to stop at a waffle house. Everytime he smacked me in the back of the head, I knew I had just done something inappropriate, like use the word "brain fart" with a southern lady.

Every once in a while, I wondered if I had gotten an MBA just so I could do this, So I could watch someone else drive all the action while I drove the friggin car...maybe...then I wondered "is there anywhere else I'd rather be?"

I'm Baack!!

After QUIETLY serving my suspension from this blog, I have been reinstated and ready to do some damage. But before I do, I would like to share with you my New Year's Resolution with all five of you.

1. I promise to write blogs on current and relevant issues. Not like those(who shall remain nameless) who talk about how often they can't get laid. (What am I talking about? That's just about everyone reading this)

2. I promise to keep my quarrel with Evil to a maximum of 4 blogs per week. ( I thought maybe two, but I just don't like him.)

3. I promise not to insult people of all races, religions, and gender. ( That's hard because I'm not a fan of anyone's, including my own.)

4. I promise to objectively hear any complaints to the issues I post and to respond in a respectful and professional manner.( That's bullshit because you all suck!)

And finally to my BIG HEAD. I promise not to stick Holly on the same train back to NY with you. I know it was an unfortunate circumstance, but I hope you didn't suffer much. HA! HA!
I'm Sorry! Did that come out of me?

Well, to the handfull of you who read this crap, I wish you a Happy New Year. Drink, Be Merry, Spend a quiet time with yourself and manola, while I pop a Prozac and down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Peace!!!

Getting Less Ass Than Someone With No Arms Or Legs

Evil

Is this Normal (Part 3 of Many...The Christmas Edition)

I never believed in Santa Claus. Our family tradition, one I loved really made believing in Santa Claus, structurally impossible. Our tradition was simple. At 9pm on Christmas Eve. My mother, her 8 brothers and sisters (the ones that live in the US), all my cousins, and other assorted Ecuadorian friends and well wishers would gather together and ring in Christmas Day by eating excessive amounts of pork and then sharing gifts at around 12:05am on Christmas Day. No room for Santa Claus there. Also, I went to catholic school and the Sister Mildreds of the world would not allow us to turn the birth of our lord and savior into such a pagan and commercial holiday by encouraging us to write Santa Claus a letter.

So really, I never minded. Except for one year my godmother joined us for Christmas. I was about ten and her son, my cousin was about 8, more importantly her little daughter was 3 and very much still believed in Santa Claus. This was an easy trick for them to pull off because they always lived far away from the family and were not usually part of the Christmas festivities, or on the off chance they were, it was very easy to convince little Tina that Santa was in fact at all our respective houses leaving us our appropriate gifts. As the oldest cousin in sight and a petulant little snot, I took umbrage with having to maintain a facade for the benefits of others. Who was out there, making up elaborate stories for my benefit? Who was getting creative and making sure we always had a gift from Santa, I even rationalized it, maybe it was too late for me, I was bordering on being a Christmas cynic, but what about the Lil Bumpasaurus/Pacey Witter, he was 5.

That's right. YEAH! Who's got Pacey's back?

What? Would it kill my parents to contrive a scenario where they run back in the house on Christmas eve break out a stash of secret gifts and maybe have my dad eat some Christmas cookies we might leave out for Santa. He was eating them all anyway, would it kill him NOT to do it in our faces, joking and spilling crumbs all over his sweater?

That was it, I'd had enough. It was Christmas Eve, and I went up to my mother and pled my case. Next year, I would do my part. I would write a letter to Santa, I would also promise to not throw lil Bump in the trash for the next year. To the contrary, maybe I'd even help him compose his own letter to Santa. Then with a few knowing winks and nods my parents would step up and get us an extra gift, from Santa, and maybe we could save the pagan joy of Santa for Baby Bump. Meybe we'd save him right then and there. It was at this critical juncture that we could have set him on the path to well adjusted adulthood. Plus, I would have an extra gift. Everyone wins!

Of course, this is my mother we're dealing with so everything went wrong, horribly wrong. The next year, the day after Thanksgiving my mom takes us to Toys-R-Us and just lets us run around. We weren't so much there to buy anything (because we didn't) we were just there to give my mom an impression of what we wanted. We left empty handed, but me, ever observant, noticed how much my mom paid attention to everything we showed here, as in she paid attention at all, which is not what she typically did normally. Normally, she'd just plead with us to leave her alone and use her hands to construct a defensive posture. This time there were no hands up, the boxing clinic was closed. We got home and set to write our Santa letters which my mother gladly collected.

A few days later, I noticed she walked in with a bag from Toys-R-Us, not only that but I noticed some GI Joe stuff in the bag. The plan was coming together, maybe everything would work out! Bump was oblivious, he probably in another room, peeing himself. I dunno, he falls out of this memory pretty quick.

Under the tree on December 5th (or thereabouts) I took stock of the gifts. There were gifts for me, gifts for bump, gifts for my cousin Jay and cousin Vic and any number of gifts for other people. There were also extra gifts for me and bump and they were unsigned.

On Christmas Eve, as we packed the gifts, I asked my mother what do with the gifts we had received from someone who could not be bothered to sign their own name. She told me to leave them home. We could deal with them later.

That night I saw my cousin Jay open his gift from us, and it was item #3 on my freaking wishlist. The hell? Also, I got socks and some underwear from my parents. I had no idea what to do....But I didn't internalize it, till the next day when I saw my cousin Vic open his Christmas gift and it was item #1 on MY WISHLIST! What is this lady doing? HOLY CRAP! I was besides myself.

When we got home that Christmas night my mother turns to me and Bump and disingenuously says "Wow, Santa must have come by...look at these gifts he left you?"

The hell? Even Bump didn't buy this line. "Mommy that gift was there tomorrow, Santa didn't bring it, daddy put it here last month I saw". (Bump was still getting past and future tense confused)

I don't know what the hell point she was trying to prove, but she proved it, that might be why my favorite Christmas memory is about giving rather than receiving gifts.

Is that normal?

The Best Christmas Ever!

I remember the best Christmas ever. My first year after college was the first year I ever had a dollar to my name. The only logical response of course was to blow it all on overly elaborate, and occasionally ostentatious Christmas gifts.

The biggest winner in this march towards self-defeat was my godson, who at the time was 1. I stepped up and bought him the biggest friggin stuffed dog I could find (pictured above). The thing weighed was over 3 feet in length and a number of innocent Christmas shoppers were injured as Sparkes and I transported it from FAO Schwartz to our apt on e89th St.

I remember sparkes' girlfriend completely melting and I also recall a female friend of mine being completely unmoved by my preposterously sized gift.

I recall asking my father to come pick me up and him wondering why I just couldn't show up on NJ Transit. His face when seeing me step out of my apt with an oversized bag was a rather dramatic "oh noooo!". Thankfully his response was offset by the boy's.

When I arrived at my grandmother's house that Christmas eve, my little cousin, who was also the mother of my godson asked genuinely (and possibly hopefully)
"Is that for us?"

HAH...Great moment! A few years later I noted that the boy still slept on the dog and he kept for a quite a long time. I dunno why, but that's one of my fondest Christmas memories.

(flipside next)

How to Raise the Roof

(Editor's Note: Diagrams left out. Our graphics department (Sleeve) was not able to meet our publication deadline.)

1) Bend your elbows at 45-degree angles, and expose your palms to the heavens.
2) Extend your arms over your head while saying nothing
3) Return arms to start position
4) Repeat for desired effect
5) Look around to see if anyone is impressed enough to mimic you.
6) Upon realizing that no one is, curl up in the fetal position, gently weep and once again return to your lonely rotten life.