Category Archives: Humbug!

Today I’m going to whine about wine.

Early in my adult life, around the discovery of the New World, I developed an appreciation for good wine.  Like most curmudgeons, I have champagne tastes on a beer budget.   Along with my appreciation for wine, I also developed an appreciation for wine humor.  In either Esquire, The New Yorker or Playboy magazine I saw a cartoon of two bums sitting beside each other in the gutter.  One of the bums was holding up a brown paper bag that held a bottle of wine and proclaimed to his friend: “It’s a good wine, but not a great wine.”  I know how he feels.

Shortly after I came to Washington, DC in search of my first job, I started to frequent the city’s wine shops.  At the time, the District of Columbia was one of the few places where a retail shop could also be a direct distributor and, as a result, the District became known for its excellent selection of good and great wines at the lowest available prices.  On one of these visits I stopped at the venerable wine shop  Plain Old Pearson’s on Connecticut Avenue.  As I browsed through the shelves, my eyes grew large when I spotted a bottle of 1973 vintage Chateau Petrus.  For wine aficionados, Chateau Petrus is The Holy Grail of wine, a great French Bordeaux from the Pomerol region and one of the most sought after and exclusive bottles of wine in the world.  Not only was it there in front of my eyes, it was there for the astounding price of $11 (USD)!

I was both shocked and crestfallen.  I was shocked because the price was so low it had to be a mistake and crestfallen because, freshly minted job-seeker that I was, I didn’t have eleven dollars to my name.  My shoulders slumped as I shuffled my way back to my dingy apartment to weep over the missed opportunity to buy a bottle of one of the great wines of the world.

Moving ahead to the present day, many of the wine shops in the District are gone – victims to mergers, changing liquor laws and real estate development.  Plain Old Pearson’s is still there however at the same spot on Connecticut Avenue.  Even though I had not been there in decades, I decided to make a visit when happenstance brought me past its door.  Shopping the shelves, I got to the section dedicated to Bordeaux and what should face me but a newer vintage of the self-same Chateau Petrus, now at the healthy price tag of $2,299 a bottle!  One again, I was shocked and crestfallen.  I still couldn’t afford to buy it.

Oh well, Two Buck Chuck isn’t that bad.

Just like this story, it’s a good whine but not a great whine.

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Tagged as Chateau Petrus, complaints, daily life, humor, humour, musings, New Yorker magazine, whine, wine, wine humor, wine humour, winos

What is the fascination that people have for old folks having sex?  Group sex at retirement communities was a recent highlight (or lowlight, depending upon your view) but sex among seniors seems to be a hot topic in general.  Thus, thanks to Jen and Tonic’s hilarious post, we have Metamucil moments, diapered booty calls and new uses for Polygrip.  Speaker7′s funny post added the delightful image of the elderly and genital warts.

A television station in Florida reported a number of years ago that sexually transmitted diseases among seniors were widespread at a Central Florida retirement community called The Villages.  The outbreak was blamed on Viagra, a lack of sex education, and no pregnancy risk.  It also led to jokes about “wrinkle swapping, overnight golf cart key-trade parties, and that perennial favorite spin the pill bottle and see who you go home with. (bring your glasses.)”

Since everyone has tons of chuckles thinking about grandpa and grandma getting it on, it’s only a matter of time before the vapid minds behind the motion picture industry get involved and decide to update some X rated pornographic classics with a more mature cast and some unintended consequences.  Your humble author suggests a few updates to the raunchy geriatric screen:

We may also see the remake of modern classics with an elderly theme:

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**Thirty years after playing Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 65, has agreed to return in a sequel called “Conan, the Legend.”  Art imitates life.

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Would you expect a curmudgeon to wish you a Happy New Year with resolutions of love, well-being, harmony and peace?

Naw, where’s the fun in that?

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One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift.
The next year, I didn’t buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied,
“Well, you still haven’t used the gift I bought you last year!”
…and that’s when the fight started.

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My wife and I were watching reruns of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” while we were in bed.
I turned to her and said, “Do you want to have sex?”
“No,” she answered.
I then said, “Is that your final answer?”
She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, “Yes.”
So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”
…and that’s when the fight started.

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I took my wife to a restaurant.
The waiter, for some reason, took my order first.
“I’ll have the rump steak, rare, please.”
He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?”
“Nah, she can order for herself.”
…and that’s when the fight started.

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My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swilling his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked her, “Do you know him?”
“Yes”, she sighed, “He’s my old boyfriend.  I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn’t been sober since.”
“My God!” I said, “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”
…and that’s when the fight started.

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When our lawn mower broke and wouldn’t run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But, somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat, making beer.  There was always something more important to me.  Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point.

When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors.  I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house.  I was gone only a minute, and when I came out again, I handed her a toothbrush.  I said, “When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the driveway.”

…and that’s when the fight started.

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My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels.
She asked, “What’s on TV?”
I said, “Dust.”
…and that’s when the fight started.

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Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and slipped quietly into the garage.  I hooked up the boat up to the van and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour.  The wind was blowing 50mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed.  I cuddled up to my wife’s back; now with a different anticipation, and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.”

My loving wife of 5 years replied, “And can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”

…and that’s when the fight started.

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My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.
She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.”
I bought her a bathroom scale.
…and that’s when the fight started.

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After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security.  The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s license to verify my age.  I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home.  I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.

The woman said, “Unbutton your shirt.”  So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair.  She said, “That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me” and she processed my Social Security application.

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office. She said, “You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability too.”

…and that’s when the fight started.

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My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw and said to me,
“I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly I really need you to pay me a compliment.’
I replied, “Your eyesight’s damn near perfect.”

…and that’s when the fight started.

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I rear-ended a car this morning…the start of a really bad day.
The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!
He looked up at me and said “I am NOT Happy!”
So I said, “Well, which one ARE you then?”

…and that’s when the fight started.

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My buddy Dave and I were driving out from our home town to pick out a live Christmas tree for his family.

Dave was my best friend.  He and I had known each other since eighth grade and now, both home from college Christmas break, we were driving through the scenic and very snowy northeastern countryside in search of that perfect tree.  Dave had this on his “to do” list every year.  His dad had died when Dave was very young so he was the man of the family and he had promised his mom and younger sister that he, along with his good buddy (that’s me), would go out into the hinterland in search of a fresh, nicely shaped pine tree.  We would stalk the tree, capture it, tie it to the top of Dave’s mom’s car and bring it back for decorating.

The upstate regions of the northeast have a bountiful supply of woodlands with plenty of “cut your own Xmas tree” signs on farmers’ properties so finding the tree was not a problem.  Capturing it and bringing it back?  Well, as you’ll see, that was not so simple.

It was a typical December in the northeast BGW (that’s Before Global Warming) so, on December 22nd, there was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground and the back roads, though cleared, still had packed snow on them.  It was about 20° F (or -6° C) and the air was crisp with a steady breeze, just enough to make you wish that you had stayed inside.  Still in our late teens, we retained the air of invincibility and so we dressed warmly but not warmly enough as it turns out.

It never takes long, even today, to move from the town – technically, a village – to the rural countryside, maybe ten minutes tops.  After driving through a few back roads, we came across a sign that said “Xmas trees, cut your own $2.00.”  There was an entire hillside filled with dark green pine trees so this seemed straightforward enough and we stopped.  We had found our tree’s lair; we just needed to stalk and capture our prey.

The owner gave us the rules.  Give him two bucks, climb up the hill with your saw, cut down the tree of your choice, haul it back down the hill, strap it to your car and be on your way.  The farmer even offered to straighten the cut-off trunk of the tree with his brush saw.

Off Dave and I marched up the hill and realized, within minutes, that we had failed to estimate the depth of the snow.  Dressed in moderately warm jackets, gloves and ankle length boots, we were no match for a northeastern hillside with snow drifts feet deep.  Snow crept into our boots, gloves and jackets as we staggered up the hill in search of our Christmas tree.  After fifteen minutes, the sweat we generated turned to frosty ice crystals and froze us even more.  We finally picked out a tree, about as tall as us, and cut it down with relative ease.  Now we had to get back down the hill.

If it had been a clear summer day, two young guys carrying a six-foot tree down a moderately sloped hill would have been a cinch but add a foot and a half of snow and drop the temperature by sixty degrees and that posed a slightly harder problem.  We struggled with this tree as though we were attempting to move a minivan.  More sweat, more snow up our gloves and feet and more frost around our ears and nose just added to the discomfort as, eventually, we reached the bottom of the hill and Dave’s car.  We looked much like two sad frozen rags as we emerged from the side of the hill. The farmer, as promised, trimmed the bottom of the tree squarely and helped us tie it to the top of the car.

As we were leaving, we both noticed the sign again.  Beneath the “Xmas trees, cut your own $2.00,” it read “freshly pre-cut trees $3.00.”  The fifteen-watt bulbs dimly lit over our heads as Dave turned to me and said “Why didn’t I just buy a pre-cut tree?  How would my mom and sis even know where the tree came from?”

You can send a kid to college but you can’t make him learn.

Bah! Humbug!

Happy Holidays.

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Why do people always want to help you when you don’t ask for their help?  Is it some deep-seated desire to ruin you day?  Or just the unquenchable need to show superiority?  Or, best of all, the requisite necessity to aggravate you when you are not asking for assistance?

I have two close friends – Dave and Kevin – who between them provide me all the technical assistance I could ever need.  These two are the supreme handymen.  If you read or watched Apollo 13, you remember that there is a set of scenes where the NASA technicians have to devise a way for the Apollo astronauts to mend their broken space capsule with an assortment of mismatched items from the capsule and the technicians find a way to do it.  Dave or Kevin could do it and still have time left over to repair any fixture in your house.  In fact, I am convinced that they could create a nuclear device from everyday utensils found in your kitchen or perform any automobile repair equipped with only a ball of yarn and a BIC pen.

To everyone else, no assistance is requested.

On several occasions in my very checkered career, I had to pick up and drive colleagues from the airport or train station to a meeting.  Not only did I get unwanted advice about my car, I got piss-me-off advice.  On one occasion, the colleague noticed the make and model of my car and started to explain, for the next forty-five minutes as I was driving him to his destination, how this particular model was the most overrated and worthless car imaginable.  Hey buddy, I’m right next to you driving that worthless model!  What a butt-plug, aggravating fish-brain.  It was all I could do not to stop the car, make him get out and tell him that he should wait for a more fairly valued and worthwhile vehicle to drive him to his destination.

On another occasion, I had just gotten a newly leased car with which I was not overly pleased but which served its purpose.  While driving a colleague to a sales call, he started to fiddle with one of the air vents.  He wasn’t adjusting it; he was trying to find out why it was making a small vibrating noise.  I asked him repeatedly to stop but not before he managed to break the vent entirely.  Damn knuckle-dragging moron.  It did seem to quell his interest and he at least broke nothing else on our trip.

This “help” isn’t limited to automobiles.  Computers, tablets, cell phones and all other electrical equipment are fair game.  If you have the slightest issue with any of these, there is someone – same type of useless but meddling colleague – who has all the answers.  When your electrical device responds to the colleague’s unwanted commands by signaling that it is terminally ill and moving on to Electronics Heaven, your colleague says something like “Gee, it never did that for me before” and rapidly disappears down the hall, leaving you with the metaphoric middle finger of life – thank you for that phrase, LameAdventures – and the funeral arrangements for your now-deceased apparatus.

So, unless you are my buddies Dave or Kevin, please, you are NOT here to help!

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