Is This Normal (The Bumpasaurus Edition)

My little brother, the Bumpasaurus,used to have a terrible lisp. I recall that my friend’s little brother had a condition where he blinked 5-6x more than the normal person. People used to call him blinky. No one ever called Bump Lispy, or Blinky for that matter,with the possible exception of my mother.

Bump’s lisp was bad enough to make him go to a trailer, adjacent to the school, to work on this condition. What was the deal with those trailers anyway? It seemed like if anyone was behind on anything they had to go to a trailer and sit there. Is there a worse punishment for being dumb/emotionally unstable/have a speech impediment than being lumped together for a few hours in the back of a trailer parked in front of the school. So weird...

Anyway, the used to give Bump little poems to read aloud to help him pronounce the words. I recall leaving the room whenever little Bump would pull out his red folder full of poems to practice. I like to think it was because I wanted Bump to practice in a risk free environment where no one would judge, snicker, laugh, point, or even cry. But, really I think I just wanted to watch TV in silence.

One afternoon, I spied my mom in the kitchen, standing in the door facing where Bump was studying. She was quiet but working hard to contain laughter. I came upon her to see what all the fun was about.

She had been standing there quietly, listening to my 6 year old brother, baby Bump if you will, practice his stupid limericks. She could barely contain her laughter. I wanted to say something, lecture her on what a bad mother she was or possibly how she was undermining her son’s confidence and eventual development. Instead I just laughed out loud and went to another room to watch TV in silence.

To this day when the Bump gets out of line or a little stubborn, my mom knows what to do, what buttons to push….her face lights up, and she exposes her teeth like she’s going on a hunt

“Thwan, Theweet, thwan…how thweet…”

That’s the quickest way to get Bump to shut about anything. If you do it long enough, he might even cry.

Asking her Number

I had a few friends come into town this weekend to hang out with me. It was great. Heather and her husband came into town, as did Darren and his wife. My friend, Anne and I put together a rather rigorous itinerary and we went about executing.

On Saturday, Heather brought out a friend to the Barney’s Warehouse Sale with us. Since Heather is somewhat slinky and blonde and her friend fits that description too, we’ll have to call her Slinky Blonde #2 for the purposes of this discussion. I purchased a suit btw, It was great. So happy. While at Starbucks, I took proper stock of the woman that my good friend heather brought out. Normally, I don’t notice blondes. It’s the contrarian in me. I make it a point to look right past, tall, skinny blondes with huge racks. Its just what I do. All loyal readers understand I’m limited. This is just another sign of my limitations

I was in a bad mood the night before and having given up boozing for lent, I decided to mope. The suit had really gotten me back in the game though. I was pumped and feeling like a new man. Also, this girl's rack got me cranking too...

I immediately started flirting. Flirting is a unique art and I’m terrible at it. Here’s what an xTian flirt sounds like

“everyone in my building is like really good looking, so be on the look out. They’re all done up too. I was sitting in the lobby one day and felt like I was violating the social contract or something/”

But I delivered it looking at her the whole way, like “this one is for you, baby”
As I was delivering it she noted me looking at her and looked up and was smiling back the whole way, like “I like it, I like where you’re going with that…direct hit”

Ok, OK, I’m overstating it but not really, I might just be overstating my interpretation

Moving on….Later at my place we were all hanging out watching Napolean Dynamite. She mentions something about her Valentine’s Day implying that she planned it. She confirmed she did.

K, don’t ask for her number

Later she asked if I had any single roommates. Curious. Also, I am the most decidedly single person in my apt. What’s the right answer. I just said “all those guys are involved in something”

K, definitely ask for her number.

The next morning at breakfast, she starts telling a story about her boyfriend and never calls him her ex.

K, don’t ask for her number

Later that day, she follows me when I break off into Kate’s Paperie to buy high end notebooks. She hangs out there with me for some time and we goof off for a good bit.

K, ask for her number

SideNote: My Haas friend Anne, took a page out of my mother’s book upon inspecting my high end notebooks and suggested that I should have purchased a different, even more high end notebooks. Thanks for the undermining holmes!

At Ted Baker, I buy a shirt, slinky blonde #2, asked my opinion as she bought one for her earstwhile, not quite boyfriend.

K, definitely let the dead dogs lie. No phone numbers here

After dinner I went for a drink with Heather and Dan. I asked for clarity on this earstwhile slinky blonde.

The explanation was long winded and sorta private. The one part I will share is the one that hit like a baseball bat to a car window...

“he said something like “I have enough love for the both of us””

I got choked up, it sounded weak, like something I’ve mocked in the past, like something I might actually try to say.

“you should totally call her. She would never date you, but she has a ton of female friends”

K, definitely ask her number

Question regarding the teacher

Evil, why does the teacher hate me?

Smile Like you mean it...

I went to the movies on Friday afternoon with my spunky sidekick from work. Each part of the nickname she has earned separately. The reasoning is defined below:
(1) She’s fantastically sassy at all appropriate and occasionally inappropriate times. She’s genuinely good at making sure I stay in my place, not too high on myself and not to low, this modulation is quite appreciated.
(2)She’s part of my conspiracy to rapidly rise up the corporate ladder by doing as little work as humanly possible. Watching movies at 3pm is part of this strategy.

Btw, I’m not so secretly completely infatuated with her.

She walks into the theater spies me in the corner messing with my iPod and gives me the weakest wave ever and stalks off. There is something off with her. When I got up to where she was buying the tickets I came up from behind seeking a hug

“Don’t- I’m cranky.” She said rather coldly.

“Why”

“No reason, I’m tired, it’s cold, and people were walking 5 across in fr-..”

I’m sure she kept talking, but I tuned out. I got the gist and it’s a gist I think I effectively communicated to you so let’s just leave it at that. She’s in a bad mood.

My typical reaction is crap like this is to jump in a cab and leave. Who needs shit like this right? Of course, I’m f***ed here. I’m not in full control of my reactions when it comes to her. Also, I', pretty sure i could stare at her all day (see what i mean)

So anyway, I toughed it out, it’s a movie after all, the possibility of pissing off an already pissed of person when you’re not talking is pretty low, so long as you avoid talking.

I started reeling off jokes like there was no tomorrow. I started by joking that being in a bad mood makes it ok to be borderline rude, she moved up a few steps in the escalator subconsciously signaling her displeasure.

I persisted. It’s what I do, persist. I pushed more random jokes, all of them falling flat. Fuck her! She’s going to smile even if I have to start juggling on a unicycle.

Finally I hit-

“Do you need anything from the concession stand?”
“No, do you?”
“No, I just wanted to make sure you were not too distracted by your stalking to remember that you wanted a soda or something..”

She smiled. I won!

Sorta,

What did I win? Why did this fucking matter so much to me? What does this victory really represent?

Would it have kept us from having the eventual fight that’s starts the second I confuse my life for an episode of Dawson’s Creek?

Well, it didn’t…

The Gates

I went to see the gates two Sundays ago. It was a date, facilitated by our friends at Match.com. My roommate, the Marlboro Man, got winked at by a woman recently. He showed me her picture and asked me my opinion. I was non-committal in that way that says, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.".

I, of course, followed these thoughts up by rushing to my room and winking at her on match.com. Our emails were great, back and forth witty banter, incredibly long. The last email I left I offered my phone number and encouraged her to call. I spent the ensuing Saturday, high as a kite at my boy’s apartment uptown and missed her call, her somewhat spontaneous call was to invite me to see the gates. I returned her call the next day and we agreed to meet that afternoon.

She was incredibly tall, and very thin. I am also incredibly tall but shaped like an apple, at least we were at eye level. Our conversation was far reaching and last six hours. Ever go from zero to dating? I might have, of course I’m an idiot I can ruin anything, I can ruin everything and not even notice it and sit there and lie to myself about it.. I’m sure I will soon. Like in the next story…

F-Bomb

I dropped the f-bomb on a conference call at work the other day. It was Ash Wednesday. I went to church. It was great. I spent the whole daying trying my darndest not to touch my head. Towards the end of the day at the most inopportune moment, while on the phone with a client I rubbed my forehead. Of course, I had done such a good job not touching my forehead up to that point, that it was packed with ash. Most of which was just begging for a reason to go for a ride on nature’s roller coaster, gravity.

As soon as I did it, I paid the price. Ash was all over my eyes and I was in seering pain.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK”

After the first fuck, I put the phone on mute. Somewhere between the first and second fuck (the second being a reaction to the first) I banged my toe against a wall and I dealt with that pain by swinging my arm wildly knocking a water bottle over. I leave it the reader to allot f-bombs to embarrassing actions.

Within seconds my screen was populated with IM messages asking why I’m cursing.
I had no good answer and was trying not to cry from the seering pain in my eyes.

I stayed on mute the rest of the call and debated how to punish myself.

Things Fall apart

What’s been going on with this blog? No one is posting stuff anymore. What are the members of Team Hose up to?

Evil- Somewhere in the throws of depression on the Upper East Side. I can say with some certainty that Evil has watched over 35 movies in the last month and spent more time interacting with his HD TV than with real people, either virtually of physically. Post a movie review already you freak…

KenTak3- Has moved to Brooklyn (virtually) and is too good for either me or Evil at this point. In my mind’s, I see him walking around with his half, gay, dog thru the street of Ft. Greene like he owns the place

Sleeve- Sleeve has not been seen since Superbowl Sunday, where he and his dad held each other as Donovan McNabb had an emotional breakdown. He is also posting on a competing blog; I try not to hold it against him.

Manolo- Manolo is still out there failing fabulously. His promise to post more and more was of course empty.

Where have I been? I’ve been failing fabulous at life, work and love - same as always. Right this second though, I have a backlog of stories to share. Tragic stories, funny stories, tragically funny stories; Stories about moment of extreme honest, stories about arguments in the back of cabs, stories about extremely honest arguments in the back of cabs; moments of sheer confusion; self defeating stories and finally tragically funny self defeating stories about extremely honest arguments that happen in the back of cabs.

I’ve got something to say and its time I got back to saying it.

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!