Where Everybody Knows Your Name....

There's an odd energy in the air this morning, and I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, all I know is that something is in the works. If you can, hit play on the video and listen to the theme music while you read today.....

After an entire weekend, sick, stuck in the house, I was getting stir crazy, I had to get out of there, but alas, at 9PM on a Monday night and real football still a ways off there isn't much to do out there. That's life as you get older and most of the people you know are married with kids. Which got me to thinking about all those days when they weren't, or still hung around if they were.

"Is the rain ever going to stop?" I heard from a friend. No, it isn't, Climate Change, baby!
"The economy sucks! When are things going to get better?" Not any time soon, so buckle in. Like I was saying yesterday Inside Why We're... the system is rigged like a Vegas Casino and the house always wins.
"Why can't I find anybody? dating sucks" Yes it does Brett, yes is does. And they're looking for someone to fill their holes, not to fill yours, so accept you might be stuck in that cycle for a while.....

And then it hit me like a Pimp on his bottom whoe
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name....

I'm never so good as I am when I have that place that I can always go and be surrounded by friends, knock down a few, and laugh about whatever daily nonsense is going on. In high school it was the basement of a couple of friends, you never had to call, just show up. If they weren't home their mom would throw down the keys.

At Oklahoma State it was the house. My buddies moved in during my 2nd semester and we would have parties where a thousand kids would walk through the door by 10:30 and picked up by cops stumbling around, drunk, 3 miles away by the end of the night. It was right across the street from the dorms and though I didn't live there I might as well have; I had my own key.

McCann's in Astoria was good to me for a long time. I think I was in there literally every night for about a year until the party moved somewhere else. You never do so well (and I mean with the ladies) as you do on your home turf, and it's comforting to know you can just show up and someone you can chill with will be there.

And in Vegas, there was Larry's Villa, the strip club with pregnant dancers and meth addicts that I called my bar, and the Garage. All hail the Garage! (Pronounced Gah - Ridge).

Larry's Villa

No matter how old you get you're still always that kid in the tree house, your home made fort, where all the members of the club gather and find sanctuary from the outside world. Once there, even for just a few hours, everything is ok, the world is right again.

We all need our sanctuary's. But where does one go when you no longer have that place? The real beauty the show "Cheers" is that it captured all of that perfectly. It's why we fall in love with things like Seinfeld, Night Court and Married with Children. Its why we fall in love with the bar down the block, even though its a dump and half the customers are passed out with three green teeth. For some of us, the lucky ones of us, that place is our job, and the rest of the world is a cake walk from there. I've been lucky enough to have a few of those. You always look back on them as something that just can't be replaced.

And looking back, at these places, at the people who filled them, and filled us, it isn't something out of a Bruce Springsteen song trying to re-live our glory days... no, it's more akin to your old favorite room, to where the heart is; Home.

I never had that room in my parents house, I always moved around too much to set roots to a place that way, at one point we up and left about every 8 months. It's difficult to find that place in the world where you know exactly who you are and where you fit in like that, which I guess is why my passion has always been for those people in my life. Why once I call you friend, in my heart, you'll always be just as if we were transported back to that place again, that basement, that house, that bar, that gah-ridge.

So where do you go where everybody knows your name? Where is it that they're always glad you came?

Huh huh, he said came!

It's times like this that we need that the most. So grab me a beer and save me a seat. I'll be right there.

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!!

Much like Amy Crackhouse and Steve Guttenberg's career, very unexpectedly I walked out of the house this morning to find my car battery dead, which has cut my time, and thus today's installment, short. Complacency is a problem only the comfortable suffer, and you only realize this when the shit hits the fan and disrupts your every day flow, which is why, as The Man would tell you, sometimes you need this. Fucked up things shake you out of the mundane daily exercise.

Mahoney almost never comes to mind unless I've been out doing way too much shit that no one is ever supposed to do and I start seeing Johnny 5 rolling around the streets. Short Circuit... HEH, you couldn't have picked a more perfect title; who'd have thought the same flik could take out Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy both? But this morning I find myself mourning the loss of the great Bubba Smith.

Who can forget this classic scene from Police Academy when Hightower tears the seat out of a small hatchback because it's the only way he can fit inside of it. It amazes me to no end how much attention people give when addicts, whores and scumbags in general are found in pools of their own puke, yet a man of this, uh, stature, is quickly dismissed with a simple, "huh!"

Bubba was a great college and pro football player before making a decent career acting, but the small roles he played had a huge impact. At least the first two Police Academy fliks were great, and impossible to imagine without Smith manning the Hightower!

But my best memory of Bubba Smith will always be the timeless classic Spare Tire Dixon from one of the greatest episodes of one of the greatest television shows of all time. Watch it right here.

YOU DIDN'T CROSS THE LINE BUNDY!!!

Ironically, this comes on the same day that it really hit me how much of an influence Married with Children had on my life. The writers of the show joked that they ran for 11 seasons on the same 5 jokes, but they deserve so much more credit for what an incredible job they did. I often tell people that I'm not really into much of anything, but whenever I happen across old re-runs it doesn't take long before I remember exactly which episode it is. You know every punchline that's coming and still manage to laugh you balls off every single time, no matter how often you see it.

Speaking of those that bought the farm recently, former NY Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu offed himself about a week ago. George Steinbrenner called him a Fat Toad for being lazy, so of course I have to show a picture of Scott Brosius grabbing his tits, but everyone forgets that in 1998 and 1999 he put up two very solid seasons for World Championship teams, and if they had the chance today, the Yanks would gladly swap A.J. Burnett for him in a heartneat.

This this now the second Yankee that's died in my lifetime, but the reason this one in particular hurts is because before Irabu I had never in my life seen a pitcher bean a batter and then CHARGE THE PLATE! That shit was fuckin GREAT! I've been looking for video of that but so far have been unlucky. Once I get it though I'll be sure to give you a treat, and I don't mean the one in my pants.

For today, I'll cut it short here. It's sort of a sad note, not the haha funny I usually post, but one I felt I had to discuss. But I will leave you with another clip. The night I was born, while my mother was screaming in labor shittin me out, my old man sat in a movie theatre watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It became my favorite movie until I was about 16 and probably the biggest reason why I always wanted to write skit comedy. It probably also goes a long way of explaining why I'm so fucked in the head!

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!!

I'm not quite dead yet. I think I'll got for a walk.

Later People.