All Is Vanity

I keep a running list of vanity plates that strike me as clever, weird, or just plain odd.  They always cause me to make assumptions about the drivers. 

BAH HUM on a VW Bug (a real Scrooge)

RAINSUX on a convertible (brilliant)

NOMOBUS (upwardly mobile)

SNUGASA on a VW Bug (just adorable)

YW84NE1  (speed demon)

ILND747 (a pilot, I hope)

WEBIRIE (mellow and munchy)

SOL MAN (sun-loving musician)

BADJUJU (voodoo priest)

FROMGOD (televangelist)

PLNAHED (insurance salesman)

BUGEATR (Survivor contestant)

G8R B8T (timid wildlife wrangler)

OBLADA (Beatles fan)

OKMOM (obedient student)

CPETEGO (Pete, naturally)

MEAGAIN (stalker)

OTRLMTS (sci-fi fan)

TIE FTR (casually dressed Star Wars fan)

NERD (Trekkie fan of Pharrell)

JFKII (not a convertible, I hope)

PETRPAN (child at heart)

SMYSOSA (home run fan)

GREYMAN (aging alien lover)

1BUSYB (a real honey)

BRM BRM (Harry Potter fan)

GUDRUN (marathoner)

BGENKI (happy Japanese)

OBENTO (hungry Japanese)

OTCHTLR (over the counter Hitler?!)

GHOST 43

EMAIL

MESSAGE

I welcome any suggestions about the last four!

Paranormal Wear and Tear

A couple years ago, I went out of town with a friend for his college reunion.  The event spanned a whole weekend, so we got a hotel room. For two nights, we crawled into our beds happily exhausted from the day's sightseeing. And for two nights, we spent a couple hours pre-slumber watching a marathon of a ghost-hunting show on TV.

It was your standard "reality" program, filled with EVP static, plenty of green night vision, and manufactured "Ohmygoddidyouhearthat!?" jumpiness. So we laughed and laughed. And then we nodded off.

But it turns out that sometimes, stuff that you think is hilarious bullshit when you're with someone else is decidedly less amusing when you're back in your own house alone.  For several nights after that trip, I couldn't get images of floating bricks and infrared apparitions and demonic whispers out of my head. 

When I got together with my friend a couple weeks later, I mentioned that I'd been having trouble sleeping because of the stupid show.

"I've actually . . . had to leave my light on a few times," I admitted.  I waited for him to  scold me for being ridiculous, but he suddenly looked equally sheepish.

"Me, too."

I slept a little better that night.

Cheeky Monkey

I'm not sure if I should admit this, because I think it may not speak well of my character, but what the hell. I love graffiti.  Not artsy stuff, like the occasional spray-paint masterpieces you'll see on the sides of train cars, and not simple tagging.  But give me a random ridiculous phrase or declaration scrawled haphazardly somewhere, and you've made my day.  Some real-life examples:

"BACON" inside a bathroom stall

"Bake These Nuts" on a bus shelter

"Go for the gusto!" on a bathroom door

"Hot Apple Cider!" on an electric box

"Crack rock steady!" on a wall

"Share the Toad" road sign

"Hot Tub Tony" on a bush shelter

"SLUR" on a bus seat

I'm sometimes torn.  Half of me thinks, "What a dick!"  But the other half of me thinks, "Well, they had something they felt they needed to say." And a small fraction of me usually wonders a) why they were carrying a bold marker, b) why they took the time to carve something into a wall, and c) how they managed to do it without anyone busting them.

And don't even get me started on posters featuring people's faces that end up with mustaches, blacked-out teeth, glasses and, in the best cases, devil horns.  While I'd be super pissed if my pricey advertisement were thusly defaced (pun intended), I am utterly delighted that the inclination to uglify people's pictures is such a universal thing.

The best version of this I've ever seen involved a bench along my bus route with a photo of a guy selling houses.  One morning, feeling tired and generally kind of depressed, I happened to look out the window at this particular stop.  Some genius had taken a poster from one of the recent Planet of the Apes movies, cut out just the section featuring the glaring stare of an evil chimpanzee, and pasted it over the realtor's eyes.  The effect was seamless and unsettling and easily the funniest thing I'd seen in ages.

I laughed the whole rest of the way to work, and life seemed a little less serious.  So to this petty criminal with a sassy sense of humor, I must say thank you, wherever you are. You saved me from going bananas.

Flatmating

I attended a friend's wedding not long ago, and it was beautiful. Nice ceremony, fun reception, plenty of delicious food and even more drinks. It ran so late that I decided to crash at a friend's apartment nearby instead of driving home. He set me up in his bedroom and retired to the couch, and we were both quickly snoring.

Until about 4 a.m., when I woke to his upstairs neighbor having the loudest sex I've ever had the misfortune of hearing through a wall. I'm talking banging and grunting and moaning and screaming, to a degree that would likely rival any bit of pornography out there on the interwebs. This couple clearly had two tickets to pound town and were not wasting them.

But it lasted so long that I eventually went from being annoyed to almost impressed. I honestly kind of wanted to give the guy a slow clap.

Suddenly there was a buzz from my cell phone on the nightstand next to me. I picked it up, wondering who in the hell could be contacting me in the middle of the night, and saw a text. It was from my friend in the next room.  It read: 

I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THIS.

We could hear each other laughing across the apartment by then. I wish I could say that, in retaliation, we made an equal amount of obnoxious fake-sex noises by banging on the ceiling and groaning, but we were exhausted and lazy. Plus, the couple was already thundering down the stairs for a well-deserved cigarette.

Here's Lookin' at You

I recently moved into a new apartment, which I love for several reasons.  First and foremost, I get to sleep through the night without being repeatedly jarred awake by an insane upstairs neighbor, which has greatly improved my general outlook on life.  

Second, I've had hot water consistently for three months now, and that's a real treat after the crapshoot at my last place.

Third, my fixtures and appliances don't date back to the Carter administration.

Plus, I realized the other day that I can watch TV from the bathroom, which is just a bonus.

Another bonus is that a large tree shields my bedroom window from the condos across the street, leaving me free to wander about in varying states of undress without too much worry. If someone were intent on catching a glimpse of me in my bra, I think they could probably manage it, but they'd really have to be looking.  And I figure if they're that committed, they might just deserve what they see.

My living room does not have the benefit of all those leaves, and luckily for me nobody facing my direction draws their curtains at night.  So I can gaze across the parking lot at about six separate televisions and whatever other shenanigans my neighbors are willing to display.  I haven't witnessed anything blog-worthy yet, but rest assured I'm Rear Windowing the shit out of them.

Shortly before I moved, I re-watched that Hitchcock gem with some friends, a husband and wife, and we found it as suspenseful as anything else in recent memory. It was late when we finished the movie, and the wife offered to help me haul some cardboard boxes out to my car before I left for home.

We had just loaded everything in and closed the trunk when I looked up above their tuck-under garage. There, silhouetted between the curtains, was her husband, who had grabbed their large professional camera and was striking a Stewart-esque voyeur pose in the picture window.

Well played, sir.  Well played.

Whole Lotta Shakin'

When I was in college, I took a weekend road trip with three friends to visit one of their families. It was an old house in a small town, and her parents split us up for sleeping arrangements among a few different bedrooms. I ended up in a tiny room off the dining area by myself, but two of my friends had to bunk together.

We were all sitting in the kitchen enjoying a nice breakfast the first morning when someone asked how we had slept.  One of my friends suddenly looked very concerned. She turned to her bunkmate and said, "I hate to tell you this, but I think you had a seizure this morning."

"What?!" said the roommate, who had no history of medical issues.

"Yeah.  When I woke up, I looked over, and you were lying there asleep, but you were just kind of shaking."

There was a long moment of silence while we processed this information.  Then the friend whose house it was asked a very pertinent question.

"Did you happen to hear a high-pitched whistle at about the same time?"

She considered it.  "Yes!"

"OK, so that was a train passing by, not a seizure."

Epilepsy averted, we went back to our bacon and eggs. And somewhere amid all the laughter, I'm sure there was a sigh of relief.

Tripping Out

Last year, one of my coworkers took a trip down to South America that included a cruise on the Amazon. He told me that they were drifting down the river in small boats when he reached out to lightly touch something sticking out of the water.  Whatever this plant was, it sliced his hand wide open, and he was reminded by their guide that everything in the jungle was pretty much designed to kill them.

When I told this story to a friend, he said that he pictures the jungle as a completely living thing, where everything around and above and under you is constantly moving. I commented that I wondered what that would feel like, and he said the closest he'd ever been to that sensation was when he was on mushrooms.

Now, I have never done psychedelic drugs in my life, but I think that's largely due to lack of opportunity rather than general opposition. Although I'd never want to end up like another friend's college roommate, who got super high at a party and was suddenly screaming from the bathroom that he couldn't get out because he couldn't stop staring at the wallpaper. Or another friend who half passed out in a room with a poster of the Eiffel Tower and could not stop repeating the phrase "Paris is a penis."

But this friend who heard the Amazon story claims that his mind-expanding trip on mushrooms was one of the best experiences of his life; so much so that he never did them again because he feared he could never match it. He talks about going into the woods with his friends and lying under a tree, and feeling like the entire earth was alive beneath him in an awe-inspiring way.

My absolute favorite part of this story is his laid-back yet honest description of his trek to the forest that night: "So we walked across this field, and the stars were out.  And yeah.  At one point I saw a pile of rocks that I thought was a castle.  But whatever."

Definitely not the worst thing you could witness on the path to enlightenment.

Song Sung True

When I was in high school, one of my friends gave me a book about commonly misheard song lyrics, and ever since then, I've been on the lookout for hilarious examples in daily life.  Keep in mind that for most of my adolescence, there was no such thing as the internet, so if you didn't get the lyrics in the cassette or CD jacket, you were SOL.

My sister's misunderstanding of Hall & Oates is a classic. For several years, she listened under the impression that the name was a verb, and that Daryl and John were physically Haulin' Oats.

She will reluctantly cop to this mistake, and likely point out that my biggest musical confusions result from not actually listening to the lyrics rather than misinterpreting them. I was 35 before I paid any attention to the words to Reba McEntire's "Fancy." My sister laughed her ass off when I called her up, shocked, and said, "Oh my God she made her daughter become a prostitute?!?"

Some of the best examples came from my job a few years ago, when I spent most of the day in a workroom with several other people and a vinyl sign-making machine. It wasn't hard work, but it was tedious, so we broke the boredom by listening to (and singing along with) lots of music. 

One day we started talking about The Beach Boys for some reason, and my coworker mentioned that he liked their song about the biscuit.

"The ... what?" I asked.

"You know. 'She's my little biscuit. You don't know what I got'."

I had to inform him that the song was about a little deuce coupe and not snack food. 

There was also an instance where Carly Simon sang this line: "You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht/Your hat strategically dipped below one eye/Your scarf it was apricot."

Someone said, "What's a scarfat?"

But my favorite comment on song lyrics is just that -- a comment -- rather than a misreading.  We had a contractor on our team for a few weeks in that workroom, and one day "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" came on the radio.  It seemed that this young guy was hearing it for the first time, and Jim Croce was really getting his point across.

He listened to the line: "He got a custom Continental/He got an Eldorado, too/He got a 32 gun in his pocket for fun/He got a razor in his shoe."

And my new coworker just shouted, "Oooooowheeee! That Leroy Brown sound like a BAD dude!"

Yes indeed, sir.  That is the general gist, and you've understood it perfectly.