my bodega buddy

the neighbors are moving out.

did you hear me, people? THE NEIGHBORS ARE MOVING OUT. as i type this. they are gone. history. outta here. the new ones are coming and here's something we learned about them: because this is my life and nothing is allowed to go well, the new neighbors are going to build an extension that will cover up one of our few windows. we can kiss a good chunk of light goodbye. we can forget about ever looking outside from that particular point in our previously unobstructed hallway. we are being hemmed in. fuck the new neighbors! i miss the old neighbors.

no, actually, i don't. and, perhaps unsurprisingly, i am not alone. check this out: i was talking to the nice bodega owner man on our corner. it turns out he hates my neighbor too! he whispers to me "what do you think of him?" i stammer, "i, well, i don't know him really. he's, um, er." and the bodega guy says "HE IS A SON OF A BITCH." awesome. this bodega dude is a little syrian guy, about 5'5" or so. he told me that he had banned our neighbor, who is 6'4", from his store for life a couple years ago. i was impressed. he told me the story:

he comes into my store and he's obviously high on something. he wants a sandwich, so my guy starts making him a sandwich. when he doesn't get it fast enough he starts screaming at the guy, going crazy. i never liked the son-of-a-bitch, so i told him: 'don't talk to him like that. in fact, you know what? you are not allowed in here anymore. i never want to see your face in my store again.' and he says to me: 'why? because i'm black?' now my middle eastern blood is starting to boil. this is a big guy, but i say to him 'go fuck yourself. 80 percent of my customers are black. get your ass out of my store and never come back OR DO YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME MOTHERFUCKER!?'

he was telling me this story in his store, getting all pissed off about it all over again--and even though i have nearly a foot on him, i was intimidated. he was all "i don't care that he's so big; he has no heart. i'll tear him to pieces." i love it. the dude pulls no punches. he tells me that i have a nice house, "but it needs some work, some paint. no offense." none taken. every time i buy a big bottle of chimay he gives me a shmancy chimay glass. score! today he carried my beer and ice cream home because i am on crutches, even though i can usually manage on my own. plus, he gives me all the gossip. he tells me tells me what everyone on the street paid for their houses--that the new neighbors put $600 grand down in cash! he knows all and sees all. i must never cross him.





so ... what, village vanguard gets no love from you people? why do i bother showing up?

softly, as in a morning sunrise

behold the beauty of the village vanguard cover gallery of albums recorded at the club. i must own them all.

what you've been missing around chez nice guy

there is a reason that the last post wherein i said anything of substance was on april 9, eons and light years ago: my in-laws arrived. they starting building us a kitchen. they are gods who walk among mortals and i must devote much time praising them--sacrificing small woodland creatures, ululating, writing epic poems about them to be recited only in the accompaniment of a golden lute.

being crippled only makes explicit the invisible impotence of my core being. here it has been made painfully plain for all to see how ineffectual i am, as i gimp about and whine, in direct contrast to my father-in-law, who, not a young man, is doing the work of a contractor, an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter and a saint. all the payment he has so far demanded is beer and ice cream at the end of the day--the consumption of which he is also my better. the man will live to bury me.

people have all kinds of kitchen renovation horror stories. i have none: twice i have had to wash the dishes in the bathtub, uncomfortable because of my knee, but that's been the worst of it. my mother-in-law has been working hard at her husband's side AND improvising epic one-pot meals, tiny epicurian miracles, on the 30-year-old electric wok she brought from home. mrs nice guy has been overseeing the enterprise with a keen eye for the intersection of form and function, ensuring the timely delivery of appliances, floors and cabinetry--even when she was called into jury duty for three days. having extra eyes and ears on the scene to help with the kid hasn't hurt either and i have been able to reach levels of productivity nearly unparalleled in my own personal history (which, i'll be honest, is saying very little).

a couple things, though. you may have heard about a week back that new york city received it's second worst rain storm on record. well at 1 pm the day of the tempest, a screech emerged from the basement "it's flooding!" water was trickling in from the west side of the house. mrs nice guy and her mother ran downstairs to do triage as my father in law skipped off to lowes to buy a wet vac and a shallow water pump (we have no sump, only pump--note to self: have sump installed before next biggest rainstorm on record). thank god he did because after they got everything under control and the basement dried .... it flooded again at 11 pm. and by flooded i mean it looked like the boiler room of the titanic. all hands were instantly needed on deck--my crippled-ass was set to mopping as best as i could. i felt like some aquarian sisyphus, bailing water at half the rate it was coming in. the 16 gallon wet vac was filling up in about 80 seconds. water was creeping up to our ankles. my knee ballooned with sympathetic fluid intake of its own.

and then, suddenly, after about 2 hours of throwing down towels and spinning them in the washing machine to get them dry enough to throw them down again, vacuuming water, mopping and sobbing, it stopped raining and we regained control of the basement. we won. we went to bed at 1:45 in the morning.

the toddler started howling at 3.

and so it goes. lots of tot-wailing at 3 these days. nobody is sleeping. she cries. because my kitchen-building in-laws are in the room next to her--and they clearly need their sleep more than we do--we are stressed out over every peep. she starts crying and usually it's mrs nice guy who goes to solace her (occasionally i'll struggle down there on my CLUNK-CHUNK crutches). we are all so very tired. too tired even to argue as a group of incredibly stubborn people on very little sleep is wont to do. plus i am a little worried for the child: i am begining to think the first meal we cook in the new kitchen will be Tot a l'Orange.

and yet for all of our stress about waking up our live-contractors, whenever one of us goes to see why the kid is crying, invariably my mother in law is already in there soothing the her. she must be some rare breed of nocturnal omi, this woman. the other morning i went in at 3:30 to beg, bribe or beat the child out of a screaming fit. although i couldn't see anything in the pitch blackness, i swear i heard my mother-in-law, already in there, hiss at me as she rocked the child. i think i caught the distinct glint of bared teeth. so, a bit guiltily and a bit relieved, i slinked back to bed.

which might explain why my daughter no longer calls me "daddy." every time she sees me on my crutches, she points and shouts, "GIMPY DADDY!" i do not like this very much. she also has taken to strongly rebuking my paternal overtures. "NO KISS, GIMPY DADDY!" i did not teach this word to her. nor did my wife. and the rejection heaped atop insult is starting to get to me down. i suspect i know who has been coaching her though, in the dark at 3 am, taking sweet revenge for three solid weeks of kitchen-building and interrupted nights without a single day off. oh, i have a rough idea.

breaking glass

hi. sorry, been a bit crazed. all i have today is more links ... more bacon, less something-meatier. but! i promise you that, for the two of you who care, i will have updates on my fascinating personal life soon enough -- updates on my flooding basement, my superhuman kitchen-building in-laws, my one-crutch gimp-pimp style. i will have these personal-life updates as soon as my fucking professional life chills the fuck out for five minutes. but fear not. i will have many humorous episodes to relate to you in my wry, dry tenor in due time.

meanwhile, let me show you two things that i have recently read about honky hipsterdom's favorite radio programme (no, that's not a typo!), hosted by a certain sincere mumbly-stumbly not-for-profit hugh grant.

• first, earnestly, there was this, which managed to pinpoint the exact source of my vague discomfort with the show.
• then, hilariously, there was this, which made me feel thoroughly douchetastic for worrying about pinpointing the source of my discomfort with the show.

take them together and you know what this means, right? THE BACKLASH BEGINS. the national public gloves are OFF, bitches! target listeners are sending in pledges of DOOM!

and, interestingly, even as a fan of le programme, i can't tell you how oddly satisfying this all is.

the great feist heist of ought-seven ...

... first it was pearl, now it's feist who steals the show.



unless i am mistaken that was all one continuous shot.

and for those whose boats aren't floated by leslie feist ... there's always this:

and one more for the road

will ferrell may be unstoppable. but "pearl" steals the show this time.

manage to go to the toilet-pants man!

so the kid has peed in her potty every day for about a week! even better: she has asked to use her potty! no poopage yet, however there is plentiful potty peeing happening. of course, she requires that either i or my wife take off our pants and sit on the toilet alongside her. she likes the company, you see.

anyway, seriously mad props to janisfan for proving the link to this super-genius video in comments to yesterday's post. i only wish baby nice guy could read subtitles:



i showed this video to a colleague and he said this: "i love the look on the poop's face. he's so happy to be fulfilling his destiny."

do you know why my father left me? ... bueno!

god bless my wife, or give her the will to live

as you may have garnered from the last few posts, i have an awesome wife. here you have a beautiful, brilliant, funny, classy, successful woman. and what does her husband do? he whines about his knee, pops pills and begs her to change his socks. when he's feeling better he goes to strip clubs and drinks enough vodka to kill a brontosaurus with eight livers. he dabbles in elaborate facial patterning (in addition to being likened to a member of Boston, he's recently been told that he looks like he's been sealed off in his log cabin, mailing letter bombs). when he hits his stride, he showers once a week. clearly this is not the life she envisioned for herself.

april first marked the 10 year anniversary that we've been living together. we started as platonic roommates (which lasted for nearly two years) before the magic happened. but still, my then-future wife should have intimated that there was a reason i was moving in on april fool's day.

tomorrow it will be another anniversary: four weeks since my knee surgery. at last count, i could bend my knee 50 degrees and haven't put any weight on my left foot in a month. i am not looking for sympathy here -- my point is that i am (even more) worthless (than usual) around the house. i can't really stand up to cook a meal and the one time i tried, it was nearly impossible to take stuff out of the fridge and carry it about. by the time dinner was ready, my knee was extra swollen and sore and i was exhausted. so, cooking is out. i can't carry my daughter anywhere -- i can just barely hop with her in my arms from the crib to the changing table. so, i can 't cook. i can't take care of my kid. you realize what this means, right?

for the past month my wife has been a single working mother of two infants.

it gets worse (for her). a key member of her department has left and she has been doing the work of two management-level people at her firm. so, she has been putting a ridiculous amount of effort into work, but then she has to come home to do laundry, change the cat box, feed her two whiny children and change my socks. she has been doing every single morning shift with the daughter and putting her to bed every single night. she has also been coordinating with home depot and sears and various other folks who are delivering stuff to our house for the kitchen that her parents are going to be here for the next two-to-three weeks installing for us (more on that later).

on saturday, for example, our floors arrived. we are putting bamboo floors into the kitchen. we bought them at home depot. they will be coming to do the actual installation at a later time, but first the floors had to get here. they arrived at 8:30 in the morning on saturday. they arrived on a huge flatbed truck in nine 50-pound boxes, three 60-pound boxes and about 20 giant planks of plywood, plus tape, "liquid nails" and the like. the guy required two trips with a forklift to get them to our front door from the truck.

then he put them on our sidewalk and proceeded to leave. "we don't take them in," he says. "policy."

so picture mrs nice guy, holding our squirmy daughter, and me, on crutches staring back at this guy who required TWO TRIPS WITH A FORKLIFT to get our floors to the front door. we ask him: "how are we supposed to get that inside?" he shrugs. "people do it all the time." then he leaves.

oh, how i wanted to pump him full of liquid nails.

mrs nice guy stares at this mount everest of bamboo flooring on our sidewalk. sighs. puts the toddler down and says "i'll do it. i do everything."

and then she lugged nine 50-pound boxes and three 60-pound boxes into the house all by herself. the neighbors, who were awoken by the deliveryman's forklift, were peering out of windows and outright gawking from their stoops. then mrs nice guy wrestled with a giant slab of plywood on our stoop. and fell down. i didn't see this because i was watching dora the explorer with my daughter.

a benevolent neighbor came over and offered his help, which she almost declined in her true steely new englander fashion. but ultimately she folded and accepted his aide. they got all the flooring and attendant materiel inside. the neighbor left. i congratulated and thanked her.

then she emptied our kitchen cabinets, which are coming down this week, and put their contents in boxes.

i think i had moved on to sesame street by this point. or maybe we were playing with choo-choos. i forget. i do recall that when my daughter pooped i called to my wife and said: "can you take a break from doing everything and take her upstairs to change her. i would, but i can't carry her."

you know what i can do, though? i can carry a beer while i crutch around! taught myself that trick this week--you just hook your index finger around the bottleneck and pinch it with your thumb while the rest of your hand grips the crutch. for some reason, mrs nice guy wasn't impressed when i showed this to her as she was taking the garbage out.

steak and the city

readers. innocent lambs. given the fragile psyches that you all possess, i am reluctant to tell you this story. it is a story that needs telling, oh verily, but i am a tad loathe. here, sit down. take my hand. inhale generously.

last night a good friend of mine took me out to dinner. he runs the money side of a startup vodka company called p.i.n.k. -- a beverage that i'd be willing to wager none of my readership is likely to have sampled. p.i.n.k. is an, ahem, upscale answer to the red-bull-and-vodka craze among panty-less beaver-flashing west-coast socialites. it is caffeinated vodka. it is very tasty vodka. and it is very caffeinated. it will confuse your body and sully your soul.

anyway, part of my friend's job -- i will call him Dirk -- is to go out to clubs and drink all night, buy people p.i.n.k. vodka, and drink. also, it's his job to drink. oh sure, he deals with shady distributors and sketchy club owners. but did i mention that it's his job to drink? and to get other people to drink?

that's the interesting part. for his get-others-to-drink evenings, he tends to invite backup. he tends to invite other enthusiastic imbibers. he tends to invite me. i, having a 23-month-old, tend not to go. on the rare occasion, i will be able to make it for a quick p.i.n.k. martini at some TAG body-spray-reeking joint before heading home to the fam. but rarely do i make it out for the full monty.

ladies and gentlemen, last night i made it out for the full monty.

dirk sent me a text early in the week asking if i wanted to go to dinner on thursday night. as it happens, my charming spouse has booked FOUR nights this week. so i said "hell yes, i have officially earned a hall pass." and then i groveled to my wife for a night out. she granted it and i was stoked -- free steak dinner, free drinks, one string attached: drink vodka as enthusiastically as possible. i ask you: does awesome get any more awesome than this?

i answer you: YES IT DOES. on thursday dirk tells me where we will be dining. it's at a restaurant that is a big purveyor of p.i.n.k. vodka. it's at a steakhouse. it's at robert's steakhouse. robert's is a critically raved-about steakhouse that was recently given the full-frontal bruni in the new york times. aaaand it happens to be inside the Penthouse magazine strip club on manhattan's far west side.

i was officially terrified by the awesome.

mr nice guy, sophisticated cad that he is, is not a big strip club connoisseur. i have been to one or two in my life and i completely fail to get the appeal. grim, bleak, unsexy and depressing. strip steak, yes, toally on board. strip club, no. naturally, i agreed to go, certain that this would be a singular flesh-infused experience.

i took a cab to the club and when the guy pulled up in front of the giant lurid PENTHOUSE EXECUTIVE CLUB sign he giggled. "when i give you change, do you want lots of singles?" he asked. "dude!" i responded. "i am going to a very respectable restaurant upstairs. highly regarded in culinary circles." he winked. "have fun."

i crutched in, they ushered me upstairs where the p.i.n.k. account was waiting. dirk was standing at the bar, talking to a seven-foot tall pneumatically aggressive (fully clothed, at the moment) brunette employee named "natalie." he introduced me to her. she asked me why i was on crutches with an acceptable amount of sexy-pity. i told the truth: "i was rescuing a small child from a burning orphanage when a crossbeam fell on my leg." she said "i don't like liars." then, i kid you not, she grabbed my left nipple and twisted it. hard.

mercifully, our table was ready shortly thereafter. dirk and i headed over with our caffeinated cosmos (manly, right?) and sat down. i looked around. average customer: 43-year-old banking lizard sporting a very expensive suit (complete with chunky cufflinks) and greasy receding hair. by way of contrast, let me describe myself: i am unbathed, wearing a 30-year-old courduroy sportcoat and chuck taylors. my hair is curly and Sideshow Bob-ish. i have a beard and crutches. i look fantastically like a guy who got into a car accident on his way to audition as the newest member of Boston.

anyway, dirk and i sit down. as we peruse the menu a petite blonde meanders over and says. "hello. my name inga. would you like dance?" as appealing as fake stranger-tits in my placesetting sounds, i say ... "nnnnnnhhhhhhhuuuuguuh?" dirk intervenes with "no thanks, inga. maybe after dinner. can i interest you in a p.i.n.k. vodka?" she accepts a drink. he's good.

at this point i look around and notice that every third Gordon Gecko in the room has a woman grinding herself into his lap, like some human mortar-and-pestle. less interesting than the women is the look on these couch-slouching dudes' faces: slimy little smiles. my stomach turns a little.

then! the food arrives. oh my stars. my stomach unturns. the shrimp cocktail is scrumptious. the grilled lamb chops--each one bigger than my swollen knee, we're talking double D lambchops--are dripping with juicy goodness. i sample dirk's melt-in-your-mouth bone-in steak, resisting every urge to make an easy joke about his delicious meaty bone. i roll my eyes in ecstacy.

perhaps mistaking herself as the source of my occularly-conveyed pleasure, "lana" saunters over and asks "would you like massage from lana?" i am not kidding: russian stripper massage at dinner. does stranger-dinnertable-rubdown sound appealing to you? it probably does, you sick freak. somehow, i manage to turn her down. "no thanks, lana! i do try to keep unsanctioned lubricants away from my meat. maybe after dinner." dirk: "can i interest you in a p.i.n.k. vodka?"

i should note that the restaurant is upstairs. if you are advantageously seated, you can see the floor below. i could not. i saw it on my way upstairs, though, and there were a fair number of guys sitting on divans, awaiting private dances (*shudder*). from where i sat at dinner, i had only a view of the men's room -- a place i am certain contains some of the most horrifying DNA samples on earth. dirk had a view of the opposite wall: bedecked with large blown-up photographs from penthouse magazine's salad days of the late-80s. we agree that the best one is of a farmer's daughter in the middle of a field at sunset, wearing only her cowboy boots. clearly she is bending over for some very important agricultural reasons.

so that's about it. dinner was freaking fabulous. the location was just freaky. the clientele was horrifying. the ladies, perhaps unsurprisingly, were quite charming and even funny. it's their job, after all, to make you think "hey. she really likes me. no, for real -- she's into me. it'd be perfectly rational to pay her $20 to show me her breasts." thank god my relationship with the food wasn't as complicated.

this morning i told mrs nice guy where we ate. she rolled her eyes. then she said "all those strippers were once our daughter's age." oof. talk about hitting below the belt. may she remain two forever. look. scout's honor: i think i saw like one matching set of exposed silicone-pumped breasts set all night. maybe two. or sixteen. and the ladies by and large seemed happy, untormented--perfectly content in their own visible skin. and yet. suddenly i feel slimy. i feel complicit in the whole pathetic fallacy of "gentlemen's" entertainment. ugh. i was a tourist there, yes, but i'd be lying if i said it wasn't a little fun.

oh, lana, where is your comforting lotion and soothing touch now? i thought you really liked me!

confessions of a gimp

hi. i still can't walk. you know what's going to be awesome? it's going to be awesome when, three weeks from now, i STILL can't walk. no end of crutches are in sight. even my physical therapist was all "you're really not supposed to be moving that knee. there's not much we can do." perhaps surprisingly, the not-walking is not the awesome part, though (i may be a cripple, but i ain't crazy. yet). the awesomeness pertains to how three weeks from now, when i am still on crutches, i'll be A GREEK GOD CHISELED FROM FINE ITALIAN MARBLE. i'll have a rippling torso -- an adonis build, a frighteningly powerful physique, the house that crutches built. i haven't been inside a gym for about a year, but i will have giant pectorals and blazing deltoids; formidable abs and fiery altoids.

(and a withered, dessicated, unutilized, sickly, dangly, weak left chicken-leg.)

i have mastered the crutches, boy, let me tell you. two weeks ago i couldn't go two blocks without quitting. yesterday i did a thorough borough tour. in high school and college i had a combined 238 knee surgeries, so i know my way around some crutches. old habits die hard. muscle memory is as strong as an elephant's. so, lately i have been joking that being on crutches feels like being a kid again. all too familiar.

that doesn't mean the simple things don't suck. allow me to break it down for you. life with a toddler and only one leg:

1) 6:30 am. baby wakes up. she doesn't wake me up because i haven't slept in three weeks. i lie there on my back, too tender still to confidently roll onto my side or stomach. i nudge my wife awake. "she's up," i say. "go get her." because i can't carry the child to the changing table or downstairs to feed her breakfast, i have the sublime luxury of remaining in bed ... without the luxury of being able to sleep. i believe this was sartre's second definition of hell.

2) 7 am. after mrs nice guy has tended to the child and made coffee i call to her. "babyducks, i need ice on my boo-boo knee." she dutifully trundles up the stairs with my surgeon-sanctioned knee-icing machine (no joke) and hooks me up in between half-muttered oaths that she will commit adulterous feats with olympian agility.

3) 7:01 am. i say "as long as you're icing my knee, could you pour me some coffee? just one sugar, please. no milk. and do remember to stir it this time."

4) 7:01:23 am. i grab yesterday's t-shirt off the floor and dry the boiling coffee that my enraged wife dumped all over my rippling torso. "honey," i whimper apologetically. "before you go, don't forget to put my socks on." (i can't bend my knee, you see, so i am a little dependent on her for certain things. like socks.)

5) 8 am. mrs nice guy has left for work and i have an hour to negotiate on crutches with an iron-willed 23-month old who has a very clear vision of life that entails more mommy and less daddy. especially less daddy-on-giant-metal-scary-sticks.

6) 8:06 am. convince her to read a book with daddy. this lasts for about 3 minutes of "what color is elmo?" "blue!" "no, sweetie. he's red. what color is elmo? is he the same color as your red choo-choo?" "yes! pink!"

7) 8:13 am. baby and i are downstairs. i need to go upstairs to change so i can go to work (in a work-supplied towncar. score!). i tell the child "i have an idea! let's go upstairs and watch daddy get dressed!" since i can't carry her upstairs, this has suddenly become an elective exercise -- one from which she chooses to abstain, preferring rather to throw herself on the floor and scream "NO UPSTAIRS! MOMMY-YOGURT! ELMO! BYE-BYE, DADDY!"

8) 8:28. i give up and get dressed upstairs while she does an uncanny imitation of a child having a screaming-kicking-on-the-floor-toddler-meltdown. i am impressed by how much she resembles every bad caricature of a toddler having a screaming-kicking-on-the-floor-meltdown i have ever seen in movies and television shows. i make a mental note to commend her on her tantrum skills. i continue getting dressed secure in the knowledge that as long as she is screaming she is probably not killing herself. putting my shoes on is extremely difficult -- i must remember to have my wife do this from now on before she leaves.

9) 9:38. the sitter has arrived on time, allowing me to brush my teeth. of course, the toddler shows daddy cavity-sweet affection just as he's attempting to leave for work. ("daddy, hug!") i hop in the car where i spend 40 minutes listening to the driver complain about how much he hates driving people around.

10) 10:31. first meeting of the day. i crutch towards it and am hailed by a spectrum of greetings: everything from "we can hear you coming a mile away, gimpy!" to the earnest, lip-biting-and-head-nodding "how you holding up?" i give everyone a percocet and tell them to stop talking to me.

11) 12 pm. i start strategically seducing my lunch partners. if my next meal is to be eaten in the company cafeteria (23 violations from the city health board -- no joke), i must find someone willing to carry my tray. if lunch is to be eaten out somewhere with a wait-staff who will bring me food, i must find someone with oodles of free lunch-time willing to go somewhere within crutching distance. some days i don't eat till 3, when i am reduced to grabbing some trail mix from the vending machine. cry for me.

12) 2:34 pm. i start bribing people to get me coffee. after a few failed attempts, i remind myself to be more charitable about their good-natured morning gimp-ribbing and earnest-inquiries. anything for a simple cup of coffee ... eventually, i start chanting: all i wanted was a coffee, just one coffee! and they wouldn't give it to me! just one coffee!

13) 3:13 pm. some gentle soul has procured me coffee. starbucks, but who am i to complain?

14) 4:01 pm. decide it's time to start doing work. i put my left leg up on my desk, piteously, courting well-wishing passersby to stop and talk about how much pain i am in and, with a little luck, offer to do me favors.

15) 6:42. time to call the car service to take me home. it is difficult to resist the urge to show colleagues that the swelling has migrated from my knee, which has not been elevated all day, to my ankle. from the left shin down i look like roseanne barr with elephantitis after being beaten by tonya harding with a crowbar. when the lincoln town car finally arrives, i pile in and, just under my breath, say: HOME, JAMES!

16) 7:24. i arrive at the house just as the munchkin is being readied for bed. she is slightly more pleased to see me than she was in the morning. she shouts "daddy!" and she also shouts another, newer word: "money!" then she reaches into my pockets in search of loose change. she refuses to learn her colors, but she has already grasped that coinage is good--be it silver, gold or copper. makes as much difference to her as red, green or blue. the irony that i earn 32 times less than her mother is lost on her.

17) 7:32. mrs nice guy puts the baby to bed. i remind her that i haven't had my knee iced since the morning. "oh," i say. "and before you whip up some dinner, how about a glass of scotch? just one ice cube this time."

just foolin' around

happy april first everyone. i pity the fool who doesn't watch that clip. in fact i punish the fool with THIS clip: