my friend joe

     I have a friend Joe.  To keep his annonynimity we will call him that because his name is Joeseph.  Joe and his partner have been together for years.  They have been together so long they call good dinner conversation seperate vacations.  I don't know why they call eachother partners.  Neither one of them is in business together.  Anyway has a way of putting things that I just don't understand.  I get to his house, we watch T.V., kill a bottle of vino and just shoot the shit like normal.  As I am about to leave he offers me tomato sauce he made.  "I made it too garlicy and it makes me gassy.  You're single, you can bloat." I let the coment slide, laugh and leave.

     Next time I hang with Joe he tells me about some dinner party he's planning.  He tells me about the food and who's coming.  I then ask why I have not recieved an invitation.  He says, "Yuri, it's going to be all couples.  Each couple brings a bottle of wine.  You don't want to look like an alchy drinking a whole bottle."What?  Who says that.

    A few months later I am in a few months into a relationship.  I hang with Joe again.  He asks me how my love life is going.  I tell him it's great getting to know someone in this way.  He asks, "Yuri, how does it feel not knowing if he will be there tomorrow and constantly knowing will this last?  I remember that feeling."

     After years of being in the same relationship.  You know, years after the arguments over who sleeps on what side of the bed, Joe starts getting all competive.  "So, still doing it all the time?  After a while you won't need that reassurance and your relationship will feel stable if it makes it like ours."...

(rant to be continued... Any suggestions for direction?)

Hooters and Booze revisited

     A buddy of mine decides he wants to take the punge and get married so we take him to my favorite pleace in the whole world, Hooters.  My other buddy is with us.  For the sake of this story we shall call him Mike, because that's his name.  Mike walks up to a waitress.  He pinches her ass.  She smacks his face.  He walks away and says, "fucking Lesbian!"

When he gets back to the table I say, "Mike, you can't do that."

He says, "I'm a little drunk."

Me, "A little drunk?  You've has a drink..."

I hate people who once they have had even a drop of booze they blame every wrong move they make for the rest of the night on booze.  It doesn't make sense.  I wouldnt blame Sake for Pearl Harbor, tequilla for stealing American jobs or gin for Ann Coulter.  I woud do the last one.  Not sure why.  That's besides the point.  you can't blame booze and take liability off of yourself.  I wish that's how life worked. If it did I think filling out a birth certificate would go like this.

A nurse asks, "Excuse me ma'am can you spell out the father's name for the birthcertificate?"

Mom, "Um.... V-O-D-K-A?"

Nurse spells the name back to himself, "Is that a Scandanavian name?"

What's new?

   It has been a while since I have posted.  The question one may ask is why it has been so long since my last post?  I have been working like crazy to get ahead.  I will be following up in a few days with comedy videos to show as a result.  I recently found out some good news.  I will be performing in San Francisco's 2014 Sketchfest comedy festival for 2 shows.  More news soon to come...

Dating and Drinking

DONT BLAME BOOZE!

     I am tired of people blaming booze for their problems cause it doesn't make sense.  Last night I go out with some friends to a bar.  Then there is that friend.  You know the one.  Once they have a drink they blame every wrong move for the rest of the night on booze.  That's not fair.  I wouldn't blame Sake for Pearl Harbor or Tequilla for stealing American Jobs or Gin for Ann Coulter.  In the end, people need to stop blaming booze for their problems and take responsibility for their lives!  Blaming booze does not take liability off of you.  If it did, you would see more birth certificates with Vodka listed as the father.

friends

I have this friend.  I have known him for years.  Him and his husband have been together so long that technology has invented new ways for other people to get laid that didn't exist before like Grindr...  Anyway, I love this friend to death but sometimes he says stuff that just confuses me.  I am at his house watching crap TV, talking about life, then he says some shit. "Hey Yuri, I have some dish I made last night, put too much garlic in it.  You're single, go ahead and stink. Take it with you!"  What?  Who says that?  

I ignore the awkwardness in the conversation and move on.  Another 10 minutes come by and he tells me about some big party him and his partner had the night before.  I ask why I wasn't invited.  He says, "Yuri, it was all couples... A bottle of wine a couple, you know... You would look like an alcoholic with an entire bottle to yourself."  What?  I'm thinking to myself no I wouldn't.  

Everyone has a friend like this.  He gets oddly competitive about anything that may possibly challenge his relationship.  "Yuri, how's that dating going?  Never getting that intimacy that me and my man get?"  Me, "Yeah its awful, jumping from bed to bed and being able to sleep with a different person whenever I want instead of getting that shitty day ja vu feeling every time I get up...

(more to come)

This one Gay Couple....

If you're wondering how I am doing, I am just working away.  Since stand up surprisingly doesn't provide benefits (big surprise) I still bartend.  I work at a restaurant in San Francisco.  It was just another night like many other nights when a guy like many other guys before him sits at my bar and orders himself dinner.  He is in his late 20s with the most perfect eye brows I have ever seen.  He tells me he was waiting for his boyfriend but would like the fettuccine Alfredo.  He sits there waiting for his guy for the next 20 minutes.  He is one of those that has to mention that he is waiting for his boyfriend a bunch of times to remind you he has one.  Every 2 minutes, "my boyfriend" this and that.  I get it, you know how to settle!  Eventually his boyfriend gets there.  He looks like a man in his mid 40s who looks like he hasn't found booze he didn't like (just judging by his face).  So crater face sits down and starts mumbling to fettuccine.

After 2 minutes of conversation they started to fight. Threw their dinners off of the bar and go at it fighting. This offends me. Not because they are fighting but because they were doing wrong! It looks like an "In Living Color" sketch, literally slapping hands. No fists. No black eyes. Lots of calling each other names like, "bitch." Just cause you gay doesn't mean you can't fight like a man!

Catholic Guilt revisited freewrite

I am Jewish.  Don't pretend to be surprised.  People often lie and pretend to be surprised, like they have cateracts or something.  The most common question people ask me is, "Where in New York are you from?"  To which I respond, "The part that's in Los Angeles.  Go fuck yourself, we aren't all from there."  If I had a dollar for every time I was offered a Kosher meal on a flight, I wouldn't have to do standup.  I get it though, I look like what would have resulted if Woody Allen fucked Jewish.  I understand it.

I was raised Jewish.  We weren't the New York Diamond District/"Stranger Lives Among Us" staring Melanie Griffith type.  We were the type that ate bacon for breakfast, complained at every single restaurant but god forbid you went to school on a Jewish holiday because that was when we went to Indian Casinos.  What I am saying is we were Jewish for the holidays.

As a Jew I must say I am proud of our accomplishments.  Levi Strauss invented jeans, Edwin Herbert Land invented inexpensive filters which made photography affordable and too many other things to mention.  Another thing we can agree on is that guilt had to be invented by a Jewish person, cause it's free and lasts for generations.  There we were for THOUSANDS of years.  We had the branding and PR where everyone knew guilt was our thing!  Then there was a PR glitch that got people to think we had horns which was embarrassing, then Catholics come up with Guilt the Remix.  Catholics are like the Puff Daddies of guilt.  There is a difference between Catholic and Jewish Guilt.  One is real, the other isn't.  Second you can't say Hale Marys to get out of Jewish shit, you can write a check though.

A great example of Jewish guilt:  When Catholic kids get pregnant, what happens?  The poor girl gets kicked on to the street.  When Jewish girls get knocked up, what happens?  They keep 'em in the house to remind when what they did wrong for their entire life.  Then the bastard grows up with, "you know what your mother did?  She could have had a doctor, now we'd settle for a mortician."

Another great example of Jewish guilt is Bar Mitzvahs.  Jews are the only people that force their 13-year old boys to perform for their entire family, friends and anyone who will listen.  This, while their wiener and voice control everything.  

... More to come...

No insurance in life.

Man, being broke sucks.  Trust me.  I know.  I am the only person who was ever actually fired for stealing toilet paper from work.  Correction, getting caught stealing toilet paper from work.  Imagine me with toilet paper all over the place, in my shirt, pants and stuff I looked like one of the Clumps in an Eddie Murphy film.  I was told it just "wasn't a good fit."

In this economy it's hard.  Shit gets real when you find yourself bargaining in Chinese restaurants!

I know it may be hard to believe but this job, standup, doesn't offer benefits.  There isn't a 401K or insurance.  This makes going to the doctor like the a game of "Price is Right."  Shit gets real when you have to pick between dinner for the next month or your health.

About a week ago I was stuffing my face with a gallon of my favorite cookie dough ice cream, like you do...  when the spoon hit the cardboard of the carton.  I was more depressed than I was watching Shindler's list...  Then my filling just fell out.  I wasn't chewing.  That shit just plopped out of my mouth.  Even though I'm broke, I went to the dentist and asked if she could replace it.  Yes, my dentist is a she and wears stilettos!  Suck on that. I am a man of the 21st century.  She tells me that I should get a crown instead of simply re-filling the tooth.

Knowing that I don't have insurance she says, "normally it's $1,500 but for you $1,000."  What the fuck?  Now she's bargaining with me?

I respond say, "I'll stick with the filling."

She says, "It's just a bandaid to a larger problem, the cap would help."

I tell her, " I'll stick with the bandaid."

She says, "a good smile is priceless."

I say, "At this point I'll settle for replacing my teeth with chicklets.  While we are talking about things I would like but can't afford, I would like a mouth full of the whitest veneers money can buy.  Not the cheap shit but the crap the Real Housewives get.  I them so white and big that my smile burns viewer's corneas.  Until that happens, I'll settle for a fucking bandaid."

I LOVE TO EAT rant

I was the chubby kid that sat in the back of the class.  I was so fat I was what was eating Gilbert Grape!

I had to shop in the husky section.  Why not just call it the you won’t be able to find your penis until you turn 25 section?

It was awful.  I would get teased.  Urine-bitch-tits Kagan is what they called me.

Then eventually I lost the weight, gained a vendictive side.  The thing is you can’t get rid of the fat kid inside.

I am the only person who when they lost their virginity said “does this condom make me look fat?”  My partner in action said “yes!”

You know you have a problem when you find yourself lying to the clerk at 7-11 about who your buying all 5-ice ceam bars for.  “Yeah the kids are all gonna love these.  Such a sweet tooth!”  Then you compulsively eat them in 5 minutes flat.  Now that is Jewish Guilt in action.

I am a compulsive eater.  I would be bulemic but as a Jew I could never throw money down the drain literally.  I could though eat something out of the trash.  Don’t pretend you haven’t done it!.... This rant will eventually go somewhere.

For a period of time I was a Personal Trainer.  I like to help others feel just as bad about themselves as I do.

Catholic Guilt is BS

    Let me start off by saying that I was raised Jewish.  We weren't the New York Diamond district, "Stranger Lives Among Us" with Melanie Griffith type.  We ate bacon on Saturday morning, shrimp for lunch but God forbid you went to school on a Jewish holiday.  That's when we went to Indian Casinos.  So what I am saying is we were Jewish for the holidays.

    I am tired of Catholics complaining about guilt.  See  Jewish guilt is of a different ilk.  You can't say Hale Marys to get out of it.  If anything we invented it!  You can't come around what a 1000 years later and claim it.  What's the point in being Jewish if you can't complain or put guilt on someone.  That's our thing.  Look we think Hasidic Jews are crazy too.  But normal Jews don't kick their kids out for getting pregnant.  NO!  They keep them around to remind them what they did wrong until the end of time.  "You know what your mother did with you father the bum?"

      You think Catholic Guilt is worse?  All Jews have a relative who has said the following, what my grandmother would say, "I hope to live to see the day that I can dance at your wedding.... But I'll be dead!"  Then when you get to my age the bitch is still around.  It's like die already!  Jews will make you feel guilty for what you've done, what you will do and what you're even thinking.

            Average Jews don't care about gay either.  If anything they indirectly welcome it.  Jews don't directly welcome gays but they they don't tell them they are going to hell.  If anything they still guilt them into having Jewish children.  Ever meet a Jewish lesbian?   Tell a good anti-semetic joke around them then cry as your face meets their fist.  They are the power Jews.  Organizing Jewish minglers cause of guilt! They get with a goysha (gentile) and somehow they still raise their kids Jewish.  THAT is Jewish guilt in action.  Eventually this bit will lead somewhere.
______

     I am sick of people acting surprised when I say I am Jewish.  They say, "wow? Really?"  Shut up with the really shit.  Before I opened my mouth you offered me bagels, lox and asked where in New York I was from.  When I said the part that's in LA you got pissed.  Really?  They say Judaism is just a religion.  If that's true, why is it that every flight I go on they offer me a Kosher meal before I open my mouth?  Look I get it.  I look like what would have resulted if Woody Allen fucked a Jewish woman (working on a better one but you get the point).
________

     Still on the Jewish topic.  The best part of being Jewish is that no one ever asks for me to help them move.
_________

grandma

    As a kid it was hard growing up with an entire family straight from the Soviet Union.  I could never complain about lines!  Nothing was okay to complain about, whatever I had bad, they had worse.

Me: "Grandma my teacher is mean to me!"
Grandma: "My teacher turned in my best friend to KGB, get over it."

I was afraid of of everything.  My grandma always had a way to make me feel better.  She would say, "Yuri, there is nothing to fear but EVERYTHING."

As a kid I loved swimming.  I would spend morning, noon in the pool.  I would only swim in the shallow end.  My grandma asked why, I explained "there are monsters in the deepend, they scare me."
Grandma says, "Yura no monsters in this country only people who make you get creditcards at young age so you covered in so much debt you cant swim out, then one day when family need burry you they have to sell on black market to pay for funeral."... Needless to say I had no problem swimming in the deep end.

New Bits About Your Mom.

Bit I'm working on:

My mom created a Jdate profile for me.  It's like Match.com with larger hair, bigger noses and lowered expectations.  She sends me profiles for people she thinks are appropriate for me.  It's like, "mom, 55 and in jail?  How did you know what I wanted?"

Often when I tell people that my mom made a Jdate profile for me they think I'm saying she's trying to fix me up with a woman and she isn't.  Here is the difference between a Gentile and a Jewish mother.  Come out to a gentile mother, you get tears.  Come out to a Jewish mother and get, "HE BETTER BE JEWISH!"  That's it.

My mom is funny.  To paint the picture, she's the original Aunt Jackie.  She was single most of my life. She was also the worst cook ever.  Her cooking was the type that made one think, well anorexia has merit.  The type that made me thankful as a kid for domino's.  Her cooking was so bad that.....(one day that will have a punchline...   In the 80s cause everyone was doing it she would microwave everything.  There as microwaved chicken.  Why not just feed me rubber?  I started cooking at the age of 7 mostly because I was hungry.

My mom had her 4 good dishes: scrambled eggs, boiled potatoes, french fries and chili with hot dogs.  As Jews we could never be accepted as white trash, but we sure tried.

About a week ago she sends me a photo on my phone of reads, "Chicken Masala I made."  It was like finding out Santa Made his own toys.  I asked her and said, Mom, how come you never cooked like that when i was a kid?  She says, "I'm happily married now!  I feel like cooking now."  I was like who wants to be happy?  No one wants you to be happy.  Not to sound like a 90s lesbian but look at Alanis Morissett, her first major album Jagged Pill.  It was huge.  Name one happy song that she has out.  Hard to do because we hate happy.  Besides marriage necessarily isn't happiness.  I think that planning a wedding is like planning a car accident.

I don't get the stuff they tell you about to keep you from having pre-marital sex.  "Why would you buy the cow if you could get the cow for free?"  Why the fuck would I buy a cow?  What happens if you save it till marriage just to find you're lactose intolerant?  Then you'll have to switch to a goat... Just goes to prove that pre-marital sex is a choice, being lactose intolerant isn't.

Friday Night Bull...

FRIDAY NIGHT LAMENESS

It’s the normal Friday hustle and bustle routine, song and prance that we get accustomed to working at the Labyrinth.  It’s in between rushes, during the usual Friday night 9-10pm lull.  The time, in between, where the happy hour crowd leaves the bar for a short intermission.  This is the time often used to go ride the “white-tiger” or whatever the kids call it these days.  For squares who may be reading this, and unfamiliar with the lingo, the “white tiger” is when people snort their evening’s hungers away, talk shit about their bosses, forget what ails them, maybe grab a quick low-carb bite or bowl of “American Fries,” then come back out to the bars and proceed to drink their way to love, getting plastered out of their fucking goards.  It’s the American way.  Some call it Alcoholism. Here we call it Friday…,Tuesday…,Wednesday, pick a day of the week, they all run together here.  There is no concept of time really here.  Like Vegas casinos, there are no clocks here.  I don’t need a watch.  I can tell time by observing the crowd.  Here people get wasted enough to not feel embarrassed (dancing alone like little deaf-white-girls to any Madonna tune) on a dance floor full of men who are all dancing to different beats and sweating profusely with moth-ball breath.  Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?  A gay bar’s dance floor has a certain stench that I can only describe as furniture show room meets a yoga mat, with a hint of Axe body spray.  It’s one of those smells that initially made me feel like puking on first contact, but eventually, I stopped noticing.

Customers leave and chase the “ski-lopes” with their dollar bills that they later spend on booze or put down a go-go dancer’s jock strap.  Your hands can go numb from these bills.  First there are the fat cokeheads, which is essentially putting your hands in the air and admitting failure in life.  What’s the point of doing lots of blow if you can’t look skinny while doing it, right?   (Insert sarcasm here.)  Then there are the cokeheads looking to hook up.  They are the “Larrys” from Three’s Company of the bar, if Larry liked the poppers and had a deviated septum.  They come to the bar almost every day and weekend cruising for ass.  Hours later these saps are forced to explain why they can’t get hard and are grinding their teeth.  (That’s what they forget to mention in the “this is your brain on drugs” commercial.  Now that’s a selling point!  Tell teenage boys about issues with their wieners, then they will listen!  It’s everything they told you in every after-school movie/driver’s Ed video, minus the hip 80’s haircuts.)  Unfortunately, in this world, in this place, cocaine is the social lubricant, if you will; what many people use to have fun and numb their feelings, nose, and face, much the way Botox does.  Who needs feelings when you can numb them?  The “key-train”/coke-parties are both assumption and observation based on the fact, that many of the weekend customers can often be found grinding their teeth, while their noses run into their and mouth to create that “mothball breath” with a whiff of regret that is only too common in these parts.

In general, I have never understood the mindset of the cokehead.  Sure, I’ve tried it several times, just to make sure it wasn’t my thing.  I’ve never been a coke person, though.  I just don’t get the appeal really.  It’s not a feeling I enjoy enough to pay that much money for, only to feel lousy the next day, be snappy and have to lie to those around saying, “I’m getting over a cold.”  Upon observing the cokehead in their natural habitat (a bar, bathroom stall or bus), as a non-participating observer, I have noticed a few things.  One line is never enough.  It’s something no one wants to share.  With other things like pot, food, booze it’s more like a buffet.  The more the merrier!  With coke, however, normal, descent people become greedier than Wendy Williams at a wig sale  (Side note, I love her almost as much as I love ice cream and peanut butter). I realize now how prevalent and stupidly obvious cokeheads often are at the Labyrinth.  Within a 5-minute period here, one can observe three customers in a row order a drink while they have boogies run down their face and into their numbed noses, into their mouths and over their lips, that undoubtedly are covered in the latest lip-gloss Claire’s offers.  This guy walks past me at the bar with a face like I just described.  I point out the mess on his face, and similar to the way one treats a toddler, I offer him a napkin and wiggle my nose like I have the sniffles.  I’m trying to be coy and not embarrass the guy, because I can be a nice person.  Then the asshole customer smiles, tells me to “fuck off” and tells the bartender he is recovering from a “cold.”  Everyone knows that nothing compliments a cold like a night of coke and booze.  I’m thinking if you were recovering from a cold, why are you at a bar?  Then I remember the mantra I have learned: Gay men aren’t quitters.  If drinking were a sport, we’d Gold-Metal in it.  A second later, as he is walking away, the Bi-Polar Bitch leans into my personal space, like the way one does when they talk to an old-person and tells me that I am “adorable,” with a big insane smile showing off his veneers.  Getting a compliment from an asshole like this guy is like bumping into someone you’ve slept with but don’t remember their name, but do remember their breath smelled like a rotten egg.  It’s awkward and generally not worth getting that worked up about.   (Not everyone has had that experience?)  Being that I am adorable as this asshole puts it, the compliment is always lackluster from these cokeheads, since it’s usually said in a sarcastic tone, where you cannot tell if they are complimenting or putting you down, like when it’s in in a text message.  If you are going to be a dick and try to insult someone, do it correctly, to their face and in a way they can understand.  It’s at this very moment that these gay men use every mean trick they learned from when they were teased by the popular kids growing up, and use it now as material on people like me, who call them out on it.

My self-esteem is really low these days.  It’s lower than my SAT score, which was awful, since instead of completing the math section, I just drew a picture of Kurt Cobain because I didn’t expect I would do well and didn’t.  I had worked the night before at Carl’s Junior.  My co-workers were wasting time with that age old argument of “Who Killed Kurt?,” which segued into an argument on which Nirvana song was better.  Needless to say I was exhausted.  In times like this, when I am down I think about other times in my life where I felt just this way and it got better.  When I was a chubby 12-year old and Monica Gambini would yell at me across the playground, “Hey, ever heard of a thigh-master?”  If this had happened now, I would have had some choice words for that bitch!  I would tell her that she would be lucky to have an ass as big as mine, and furthermore to go fuck herself.  In those days, all I had to do to handle that situation was an eye-roll.  This was during the day of both the Thighmaster and that infomercial where Cher would yap on and on about hair. I would pretend not to listen to that bitch Monica, who I always hoped to hear did something classy with her life, like turning into a stripper with 5 kids who ends up becoming fatter than the lady from Donald Trump’s wallet.  It’s not that I’m bitter.  After Monica’s bullshit, I would then walk to my best friend’s (a janitor), and eat three of those Carnation ice creams, which of course they sold at my school.  This made for easy feelings eating.  Then follow with a healthy bag of flaming hot Cheetos, just to compliment my white-trashiness.  It was moments like this that made me wish I could be Bulimic.  I’m too Jewish, though.  I would hate to see good food go to waste.  Presently, I do not know where Monica is.  I guess I shouldn’t have used her real name for the story.  Please don’t tell her she doesn’t read.  I hope she is just graduating from ITT Tech and realizing that karma’s bitchier than even her. 

The second the guy finally walks away for good, and all I can smell is hospital scent: That of mothballs and regret.   This is, of course, after he purposely spills some of his drink on the floor and makes eye contact with me to remind me that, after all, I am merely “the help.”  It makes me want a sedative or at least a magical brownie to tide me over and keep me from slicing up the overly manicured faces of the lovely patrons around me.  Not that I would really do that, especially if my mother is reading.  Being that my job at this point is bar-backing, which is to clean everything up here, I am not into making more of a mess than necessary.  As I come behind the bar, James is cleaning his bottles and chatting with Johnny about how he’s seen Johnny’s trick of the week out earlier with another guy.  Johnny is the first guy who ever called me “Stud” when I first started here.  He popped my cherry in that regard.  Conversations like these make makes me call the bar “Castro-High” or “9021-uh-oh”.  Then Johnny tells James that his guy is like every San Francisco gay man and in an “open relationship.”  Come to think of it, in my infantile experience, this seems to be true.  In San Francisco, for some reason, most long-term Gay man relationships are actually open ones.  Being a young, inexperienced Gay who is still optimistic and still clinging to the idea that love exists, this concept makes no sense to me.  This was in a world that was different, before we knew that Ricky Martin was in fact a Mary, queer, sissy-lala too.  These couples are committed to each other, but also openly have some things going on side.  Why this is acceptable, I will never truly grasp.  I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  Actually, you can, and it is delicious.

As I walk past the rambling bar gossip, I go back to my Friday routine.  I stock pint glasses at every station.   Even though I try to be working in my own cocoon of thought, insecurity and cleaning products, I can’t help but notice that everyone around me is gossiping.  If it isn’t about their boyfriends of the moment, it’s yesterday’s tricks and tomorrow’s Ex’s.  It’s like an episode of 90210 sometimes, but with more sex and less plaid.  It is kind of making me sick just listening to everyone’s boring drama and makes me less engaged in being here.  All I can think about is how I want to somehow end up at a better job than this.  Somewhere I can make a difference.  I am getting to the point where, while at work, it’s hard to be productive.  While I look like I am working, mentally I am 2,000 miles away.  In my mind, beneath the little afro of hair on my head, I am on a faraway island watching the tide.  I am getting fed grapes by bronzed cabana men, ‘cause why settle for boys in fantasies when you can have chiseled men?  While my physical being is at the bar, working this bullshit job, my metaphysical self is working through that bronzed daydream.  Then, Gina quickly snaps me out of it.  She comes up from her station to yell at me.  At this point, I am already in a bad mood and want to tell the bitch to relax and that I’ll get there when I get there, but actually say nothing.  She points out that she is in dire need of cold pint glasses right away.  She then adds in her Gina way, “You need to wake up and start paying attention for god sakes!”  In my head, I am thinking, “Bitch, get your own fucking pint glass and stop being rude!  I have some day dreaming to get back to!”  In my head I am also imagining Julio and Avi arguing over who gets to wash my clothes.  They, of course, are in Israeli Military uniform that is all tailored, because that’s hot.  The world knows that Israeli men are utterly gorgeous, so I always have at least one on hand in my dreams.  Word to the wise: Israeli men are much like Latin men of the Middle East, without the Catholic-guilt bullshit, and less likely to live with their mothers.  Gina likes being the resident “belabusta”, which is Yiddish for bossy person who thinks they’re in charge, even, and especially, when they aren’t.  That person who always has to be the leader of the group or whatever they take part in, because that’s just how they roll.  What I probably am not considering or caring about at the time is that she really is trying to get her job done so she could make both of us money.  She is simply calling me out for not focusing on my job, which today happens to be true.  She’s like that teacher that interrupts you to answer a math question while you’re busy playing MASH.  Gina gives me honest constructive criticism, and like most people in that situation, I write her off as being a bitch.  I also find out later, that Gina, herself, is stepping on eggshells because she had just been reprimanded for apparently over pouring a drink a day or two earlier by one second.   Our bar’s shot pour standard was four seconds then.  The cameras apparently caught her going over that by a second, which equals one ounce in theory.  One extra second on your “pour” here is the difference between having a job and filling out unemployment paperwork.  Now, apparently, somebody is out to get her.  She just wants to keep her job, because it allows her a good standard of living.  The over-pouring slip/moment in question is, of course, caught on the surveillance camera of our elusive bar owner who is always watching us.  Shit, he is probably watching from home right now.  I imagine one screen with “the Bachelor,” “Matlock” or whatever he watches, and another screen with us working.  I rush over to Gina’s station to stock her precious pint glasses.  As I reach into the drop down of her station, Nick the one in Medical School /bartender is performing for some customers right behind me.  Being the show-off that he is, he bounces his big ass around while shaking some drink.  He’s one of those black guys, much like Wayne Brady.  He acts stereotypically black only when he needs to, but generally acts like a typical white guy raised in the burbs.  When he works, he often is not aware of his surroundings.  It’s like working with Bigfoot.  You never know what he will do.  He’s usually too busy looking for “hot” Jewish Doctors and Lawyers” in the bar.  Essentially what I’m saying is that he has the same taste in men as my mother.  The rest of us have developed a third eye on the back of our heads that help us maneuver our way around the Labyrinth bar.    Nick has no idea about this third-eye business, nor does he care about those around him when he is working.  He is very into making his money and calls himself a “Self-Elected Jew of the Bar” (even though he was raised Baptist); and as an actual Jew, I’ll speak for all of us when I say the following:

1.             No one wants to be Jewish, it just happens. 

2.             No one goes to a plastic surgeon and says, “Can I get a little ski-slope nose no, no, no I want the Barbara Streisand Beak.” 

We don’t want Nick; the rest of the world can have him.  Like a whore in a red-light district, Nick always focuses his attention on the person with the money in their hands that is within his hand’s reach.   He is almost as good at guilt trips as my mother; and that’s saying a lot!  He can guilt anyone to investing in anything he does, from cocktails to a date.  The Goy has the skills of an old Jewish woman and the money sense of a Donald Trump.  Nick is hitting on some customer and putting a bottle back in place which belongs behind him, near his register.  He did this without looking.  In this course, he also accidentally pushes me into the pint glasses I am putting away.  This causes a domino effect of problems.  This is when the nightmare begins.  This action, in turn makes one of the pint glasses shatter into a beautiful glittery rain that looks like an explosion around my hand of glass dismemberment, which drizzles everywhere.  Then a huge shard of glass is then pushed into the skin about three inches above my inner left wrist.  I am so in shock that, I almost don’t believe that this happening. As I pull my arm out of the drop down cooler, I could see a piece of my flesh just dangling.  I can’t see how deep the cut is, but all I can see is blood.  I drop everything and run into the back room.  Nick is still chatting with the customer oblivious to what just happened.  On the way to the back room, I leave trails of blood.  In a fluster flurry, I open the first-aid kit that the bar had.  Like a cruel joke, it’s of course empty, full of just a pile of napkins, three tiny Band-Aids, and one tampon.  I have a double-take moment.  Being that this is a men’s gay bar, a tampon is highly unusual in our first aid kits.  I would more likely expect to find lube or even glitter before a fucking tampon.  I start laughing hysterically, in that awkward way the way I do when someone tells me a joke that I already know they think is funny and I get why they think it’s funny, but it’s not.  Then they inevitably try to explain it to you, like you missed the point and then you laugh louder to make it sound like you care. Meanwhile, I’m still unsure as to why I am laughing during a horrible moment like this.  I am a person who tends to always laugh at exactly the wrong moments.  I am the guy who laughs at funerals, any religious ceremony, any of life’s generally awkward ceremonial moments.  Like when I look at any full-length mirror and during romantic moments in movies when most people cry.  I laugh at the sight of bad news, and most people find it revolting.  Sorry.  Get over it.  I pick up the napkins I find to soak up all the blood, James walks by and asks if I am okay, while he stares at my arm from a distance.  His face looks horrified.  James asks me if I will be able to work the rest of my shift, and whether I have insurance.  Right after the words leave his mouth he sees my face instantly turn red.  This is the point where, if I was a cartoon, steam comes out of my ears.  I start laughing uncontrollably.  It’s the type of laugh that is more scary than cute.  I am getting even more upset by this point.  I am starting to simmer with James’s question and the evening’s predicaments.  The fact that he has the gall to ask me such a bizarre question as I have a piece of my own flesh dangling from my arm is ridiculous.  I switch from laughing like a crazy person to complete silence, giving James an evil stare and telling him, “Yeah, I’ll work.  We can turn this place into a fucking making Bloody Mary bar tonight!” As I stare at my mangled arm I begin to feel a subtle sharp, throbbing.  It is getting worse with every second that I stare at the blood-infused napkin covering up the glass battle wound.  I catch a glance of my face in the Hello Kitty mirror of the back room.  My own expression freaks me out.  It’s like a weird Mona Lisa expression and my face looks even more pale than hers.  I have a look of “What the Fuck Should I Do/I Want my Mother” sort of face.

             I am almost in a trance staring at my arm as Gina storms in to the back room, which seems to just be adding to my angst.  My heart starts beating faster and there now is a vein on my forehead popping up that I have never seen before.  Gina asks me if I am okay.  She then picks up the injured arm and looks at the dangling piece of flesh and inspects it like she knows what to do.  She is inspecting my arm like a mother does.  It’s like she instantly turned into the professor from Gilligan’s Island.  Maybe she will turn my arm into a radio, but we don’t have coconuts.  Gina then goes to tells James, who is freaking-out at the other end of the backroom, to get us more napkins and to “chill the fuck out.”  I am truly loving her style at this point.  She looks into my horrified eyes, which are now more upset and worried about losing my job, than the actual injury.  She reads me very quickly, even though I try to conceal my emotions from her.  She tells me that I will be employed next week and have nothing to worry about.  She says that I need to relax.  (Which is like telling Rush Limbaugh to make sense, not happening right now.)  She then shows me a scar in the same spot as my dangling flesh, on her right wrist.  I start to think, “Great, she is trying to fucking bond right now and turn this into an episode of Oprah.” Apparently, she cut her self similarly five-years prior. I get pissed for a millisecond and all of a sudden, I calm down.  She speaks calmly, petting my shoulder in a way that only a woman can and tells me that I will be fine.  She says that I like her, am “tough as nails.”  I don’t know how true this is, but for the moment she makes me feel like a tough lesbian, which is way better than I felt before this conversation and tougher than any man I know.  Gina hands me $20 dollars and tells me to go take a cab to the hospital for stitches, to call her later and let me know how it all turns out.  She makes it seem like it was just another normal day.  She has this way about her that makes me calm down.  From that moment on, the pain is gone and I have adrenaline which is getting me through this.   I have been waiting for four hours, alone in the emergency room to get seven stitches. It’s now 5a.m.; I arrived at this sanitized, odd-smelling hospital ER at 11:30 pm the day before.  I find a Vicodin that I guess someone slipped into my pocket before leaving the bar.  I don’t know who the magical fairy is that left this treat.  I don’t think about it, though do consider where it came from.  I assume it’s a gift from the Gay Gods.  I, of course, take it instantly and start to choke in the emergency room.  Needless to say, no one notices, until I come up to the receptionist and show her my throat and stomp on the ground.  She hits me hard on the back, which causes me to swallow the pill.  I wait another hour.  The odd thing is that, if it wasn’t for Gina I could see myself freaking out in that cold sterile place that is the ER.  But, because of her, I don’t feel alone in the waiting room and know that good will prevail.  I’m like a little kid; excited to see what kind of scar this adventure will leave me.

You should be a minister.

As a kid my great grandma Clara didn't speak any English.  While Russian was my first language there were some things lost in translation since I grew up in the US.  She would always tell me in Russian, "Yuri, remember one thing you can be a minister here."  I would smile as she handed me a rotten apple she had stollen from the "home," give me a kiss on the cheek and walk away to clean her dentures.

 I would as my mother the following questions, "We're Jewish right?"

Mom, "yeah."

Me, "Why send me to Hebrew school if grandma wants me to be a minister?"

Mom, "She means Prime-Minister."

My great grandma Alla

     My great Grandmother Alla was born in the late 1800s.  When I was born she was already in her mid-80s.  She never learned English really.  She grew up in a small Ukrainian village, similar to the one in Fiddler on the Roof.  Much of the village spoke Yiddish and had common Jewish names like Moishe, Reevkah and Motle.  She came to the US with my father and his parents in 1980.  Like most Russian immigrants of that time they came to the US as refugees from persecution for being Jewish. 

When leaving LAX to go to their new home, grandma Alla is looking out her window and starts crying compulsively.  My dad asks what's wrong. 

She says, "Every where I look I see Motle, Motle, Motle! My god! Only in America a Jewish man with so many businesses!"

 My dad interrupts, "No grandma M-O-T-E-L."

Questions about how my family got here

   People constantly ask me the dumbest questions.  They ask things like, "Yuri, why did your parents move to the US from the Soviet Union?"  I never know how to respond.  They really liked baseball?  They liked running water that didn't turning brown?  They got sick of the lines? Or my other favorite is, "How did you family come to the US?" Running.  Well they weren't really running.  It's hard to run while carrying all of your things....

Comedy Shmomedy

            I have been working at the Lab for some time now.  I’ve been laid off several times and the only thing that stays consistent is the bar.  It’s like a mother to me.  The blog thing has taken on a life of it’s own.  It pays me no money but makes me so happy to have this outlet.  I recently was asked to write a column for this gay-lifestyle site with hangover tips.  It’s a trip.  The editors of this site found me somehow from reading the blog and offer me $25 dollars for the article I send them.  The way I feel as a result of this must be how the Green Lantern felt when he got his power.  Before I get too excited, I head to the lab for the night shift.

            Lately, every night all I can think about is what else I could do with this blog, the love of creating.  As I am leaving work at 3 in the morning I hop into a cab as I have done thousands of times prior and give the cabbie my home intersection.  As I shut the door to the cab, I notice a newspaper on the floor of the back seat of the cab.  There is an add for comedy classes that says, “learn from professional comedians how it’s done.”  I take the paper with me as I leave the cab.  That night/morning I enroll via their fancy brick-walled website.  I then proceed to tell all my friends, and family, excluding the bar co-workers that I am trying standup comedy that way I can’t back out of it.

            The first few weeks of classes go over the structure of a joke and how everyone has a story.  I learn the different ideas of what makes a joke, how things are supposedly funnier in threes and how new standup comedians often like to talk about their genitalia.  I look as stand up as bartending without the tips.  Like at the bar, I create a persona, keep a captive audience and try to keep them wanting more.  After 6 weeks I sign up for my first open-mic.  This is where comedians try out new material.  I have to fill an entire 3 minutes.  I feel the type of nervous one feels possibly before a rollercoaster, getting wisdom teeth pulled or an interview.  For this reason I talk for 3 minutes about how when I get nervous at interviews.  I always feel like I have to pee and am constantly checking my pants for a wet spot and the people I encounter treat me like a pervert.  Surprisingly after 10 seconds I get my first laugh.  It’s like lightening running through my body.  I think I kill it in those 3 minutes because honestly all I can remember is the laugh and not even my material.

            When I tell Dr. John about the open mic he smiles and asks, “what do you think of being a comedian now?”

            “It sounds great but I have a job that pays me well.  Me becoming a professional comedian is as much of a long shot as seeing a short Jewish man in the NBA.”

            “Are you saying it’s not possible?”

            “I’m saying lets get back to reality.  I am a bartender, not sure what else I could do.”

            “Are you going to keep working at the comedy?”

            “Once I figure out my if I could have a legit act or story, I’ll go from there.  For now lets stay grounded in reality so no one is disappointed.  For now comedy is just a fun fantasy.”

The Night it All Happened

Working at the Lab is fun but not what it looks like.  That’s what I explain in my last blog entry.  My mom reads it and instantly calls me.  She wants me to stop talking about pot in my entries because then people will think I do drugs.  I tell her, “If you call pot a drug then yes I do.  If you live in San Francisco, it’s considered fresh air.”            

            After the lovely pot argument with my mother, dad calls me.  He is clearly smoking a cigarette and starts choking on his own cough before I get the chance to say hello.  This makes me want to roll a joint but I don’t because I’m out.  Dad asks me when I’m coming to visit.  He hasn’t had a job in several years at this point.  I have no idea how he gets by.  I ask him why he can’t drive up to visit me.  He tells me it’s too far for him to drive.  I offer to pay for Amtrak and he then says he’ll get sick on there.  I get annoyed and he changes the topic and asks me if I have seen the latest Pay-Per-View fight.  I say know and even though it’s on the phone I can hear him shaking his head.

            Something that has always bothered me is that I have lived in San Francisco for around six years.  My father has never tried to come and visit me.  On occasion I have made pilgrimages to visit him by driving the six hours to Northridge and hanging out with him.  This act consists of watching a twenty-year old Tyson/Forman fight on a loop for at least an hour, stuffing our faces with enough Chinese food /MSG to bloat and awkwardness.  There are a lot of weird silences that we cover up with the sound of the television.  After the fights, we switch an old Columbo rerun for my grandmother.  She lives with dad then comes by with bowl of grapes to make sure we are fully nourished.  She makes light conversation about her daily struggles, current ailments and then my dad goes to the bathroom to suck down 1-3 cigarettes.  

            My dad makes it very clear to me that he loves me but not that he’s dependable.  I remember as a kid my father was supposed to visit San Diego, and take me to the zoo while introducing me to his girlfriend at the time.  He never came.  This was the third or fourth time this happened.  That night I found out that it was because of the Northridge earthquake.  He lived around the corner from the apartment building that fell over. 

            From fifteen year-old and on I always worked.  I would take time off of work to meet up with my dad in San Clemente, our agreed upon halfway point between his home in Northridge and mine in San Diego.  Two out of five times he would have to cancel the day of which would anger me.  After a while I stopped making those plans with him.

            I tell Dr. John about how it upsets me that dad hasn’t ever made an effort to visit me.  Dr. John asks me to measure my stress-level.  Right now I am at an 8.  This is on a scale from 1-10.  I don’t really have a reason for this.  I just know it’s there.   He then tells me to just focus on myself for a while.  Write out my feelings maybe on the blog and keep my dad at bay for a little bit while I compose myself.  I hear what he says but of course don’t listen.  That night, while working on a new blog story I purchase tickets from my dad to fly up to see me.  I call to tell him about this and he is super excited.  The tickets are for the following weekend.  It’s a Friday-Monday sort of thing.  That Thursday my dad calls to tell me that he isn’t feeling very good and can’t come.  It’s like being 14 all over again.

YOU DO PORN????

Dr. John asks me about work.  I tell him about this week’s shit.  I get to work at the lab and there are a whole bunch of short muscle dudes there.  Nothing unusual.  Then one of the guys, a tall blonde guy that from far away looks hot and up close looks like he’s had some work done comes up to me.  I think he wants a drink so I start to fill a glass up with ice and ask him what his poison is.  He then asks if he knows me.  I say no but then get cocky thinking he may be reading the blog and saw me on there.  I ask if he read the blog, smile and talk out of my ass saying that it seems to be getting some buzz.  He says that he doesn’t read.  The guy walks away drinkless.  After about twenty minutes he comes back to me.  This time he is shirtless and has this waxed chest shining in my face.  I think he is shirtless to keep people from noticing how much Botox and fillers he’s had put into his face to fight his natural aging face.  He then leans in and ask if we had sex together.  I say no.  This guy doesn’t give up though.  He asks if we’ve filmed any scenes together and says, “You know the one with the latex, rope and honey?”  I then say unless there was someone crying in the corner of that scene I was not in any porn.  I got out of TV stuff at 19 so I don’t think so.  When he walks away I find out that he is a big porn-star.  That term is such a joke.  Why is it that everyone that does porn calls themselves a “porn star” and not a porn character actor or porn background actor?  That’s beside the point.  Only after he leaves I realize that he thinks I did porn with him because I am that slow.  How many people do you have to sleep with not to even remember if you have or have not done them?

            Dr. John says hmmm but I bet is suppressing a huge laugh.  I bet the second I leave after this story he will laugh so loud that people will hear it in space.

            I can’t believe he confused me for a porno person.  It happens a lot.  I don’t care about that.  I do though hate that people often assume that I as a bartender at the type of bar that I work am in that category.  It’s almost like they are saying, you must be too dumb for anything else.  I hate when my intelligence is underestimated.

            Dr. John says hmmm and then tells me that my time is up.  As I’m leaving the office my mom calls me asking if I am doing anything for Shabbat, which is interesting.  She is the same mother who sent me to Hebrew school but also took me to Indian Casinos on Yom Kippur and has never met a shrimp she didn’t like.  Needless to say we weren’t very religious and I liked that.  She also asks if I’m going to hang with my Jewish neighbor from across the hall that is “nice, Jewish and single!”

            My neighbor Nick he is a nice enough guy but I feel like it’s often a battle of who is a better Jew.  He won’t use electricity on Shabbat, which is a bullshit thing I can’t stand right off the bat.  This one Shabbat, Friday evening he invited me over to light candles and I was off so figured why not?  After the candles are lit he then asks me to light the bong he has on the floor for him because he can’t since its Shabbat.  I get annoyed; smoke the rest of his weed and leave.

           

From my lips to Dr. John’s ears.

            It’s interesting how Dr. John’s idea of starting a blog really is giving me a voice I didn’t know I had.  I have been blogging the past few months about different things.  In the past few weeks I’ve started to write about my experiences at the Lab.  I answer questions people ask me about bartending, the lifestyle and all that comes with it.  I’ve had a few co-workers at the day job get wind my stories posted on my blog.   By co-workers I mean one girl that loves reading romance novels and Okay magazine.  She comments on every blog post.  There are a few people from the Lab who have also been reading apparently.  Mind you, all of these stories I’m writing just as a release not really thinking anybody is reading.  Why would they?  Today Gina texts me a cryptic message, “love the blog, liked working with you.”  I don’t understand what she means and ask her what she’s getting at.  She says, “Charlie won’t like it.”  I’m thinking, Charlie isn’t spending his day browsing my blog; he has more important things to do like spy on his employees while they do their jobs and work on his alcoholism.

            I’ve put up a total of like three stories about the bartending based on my experience at the Lab in the past 3 weeks on the blog.  I don’t think much of it until I get a random comment on one post saying, “You’ve always been my favorite bartender, what are the real names of the people in these stories? “  I can’t tell if it’s a real reader or someone from the bar just trying to get into my head.

            I tell Dr. John about how people at the Lab are starting to get wind of my blog and that I am worried it may hurt me.  He frankly doesn’t seem concerned about this concept as long as he’s getting paid.  He just says, “hmmm and getting your voice isn’t priceless?”

            I don’t really understand what Dr. John is getting at but I do have this unusual sense of urgency with the blog.  These are stories I feel I must write because I don’t know who will.  The questions I ask myself every moment of my life at the Lab is, what am I doing here?  I just got a job at the Lab to pay rent literally with no plans of becoming a lifetime bartender but can understand why one wouldn’t leave.  Right now I am making $2,000 a week in cash and another grand or 2 a week from various contract day jobs, why should I leave the bar?  The next question is what will these experiences add up to?  Will I just end up another lifetime bartender as my youth fades into the sunset? 

            My mom is upset with me because she too apparently reads the blog.  She says she read that I smoked pot and doesn’t like me joking about that in a public forum because then people will think I smoke, which I do.  She says, “stop with the jokes!  I’m going to create a Jdate profile for you, how tall are you?  Are you more the man in the relationship?”

            “Mom, we’re both men, that’s why we’re gay.  I don’t like dating Jewish guys generally, it’s not my jam!”

            “That’s what you think.  That will change.”

            Dr. John is concerned because he says my mother and I are too much of friends and don’t have a healthy mother-son relationship.  When I was a kid we told each other everything.  It was hard to hide stuff from her or rebel because I liked her.  At one point we shared a room.  In high school there was a point where I helped pay our mortgage because I could even though she had never asked.  Dr. John seemed to make that sound like burden.  He says I need to create boundaries.  This is how I know he’s a gentile because he thinks that’s possible.

            Dr. John then asks me about my dad whom I rarely mention.  I tell him how most of my friends have never met my father.  He is a bit of a loner.  As a child there were a lot of times where he wasn’t there.  It’s a story that I’m sure a lot of other kids raised by single-mothers have.  Often he would say he was coming to visit me in San Diego from LA and at the last minute not come.  Even as an adult, I take time off of work to meet him at a halfway point in San Clemente and he would have an “emergency.”  In the 5 years I have lived in San Francisco he has not once come to visit.  Don’t get it twisted; I talk to him every day.  I know my father loves the older and me I get, the more I understand he is a grown teenager who did what he could.  I still hold a grudge for certain things that can’t be changed.  From a young age I learned of my father’s drinking problem mostly by his voice when he calls me.  He starts to apologize for stuff which tells me that he doesn’t get me he gets the situation.   You can learn a lot about a man by the way they handle their booze.  I have never had a problem saying no to drinks, drugs or anything else.  My dad goes for months and years sober and then will fall off the wagon just for a weekend and call me nearly in tears.  There is nothing worse than hearing your father cry.  There is one thing worse seeing yourself in the mirror when you’ve been crying.  My main issue is I don’t know how to handle my dad.  I simply don’t engage sometimes because I don’t want to deal with him.

            Dr. John listens to this and jots notes rapidly.  He asks me what my father has taught me.  It takes me a long time to answer.  I can’t figure out what he has showed me.  I learned to shave from my the only grandfather I’ve ever known who showed me love but then started to yell mid-way through the shave because I took too long putting the foam on my face.  He is a Holocaust survivor, after 6 concentration camps you’d be ape-shit crazy too.  My dad taught me that if anyone tries to hit me, I should hit him or her back fifty times harder.  He always would ask if I was in any fights.  I would always say no.  I had never seen him happier then the one time I told him I was in a fight.  I was eleven.  A counselor at camp asked me to tell another kid, D.J. that it was time to take his riddalen.  He got angry stabbed me in the leg with a pen.  I responded by pushing him onto the cement and running away and crying behind a bush because of the pain.  In the version I told my dad, I punched him in the face and walked away unscathed.

            Dr. John asks why I care what my father thinks of me? The truth is I don’t think I do.  I do though have compassion for him but knew from a young age I wanted to do more, be responsible and come through on my responsibilities.  This is probably why most people call me intense.  I just have always thought I could do better than what people expected of me.

            Dr. John asks if I could imagine having kids now.  I tell him that babies don’t come out of there.  I then realized that I am the age my mom was when she had me and that if I had kids now I don’t know I could handle it.

            I have these weird dreams sometimes that my dad will call me really drunk the way he has in the past and I’ll just be out of compassion for him and he’ll do something drastic.  I’ll never forgive myself.  In the dream I am serving a regular who is so drunk I have to cut them off and eventually kick them out.  Because I am the only bartender working, I have to kick the guy out.  As I am moving the guy out of the bar he takes a swing at me.  He misses.  Then I take a swing at him and he falls to the ground.  He stays down for a few seconds and as he gets up, brushes himself off he smiles.  As the light hits his face he looks an awful lot like my dad and says, “that’s my boy.  Hitting like a fucking man.”  Then the guy walks outside to fall on is ass.  Those dreams always happen on the few nights (once ever few months) that I get drunken phone calls.  I always wake up to his drunken call after these dreams.  What could that mean though?

            Dr. John asks me why I would hit someone like my dad?  I tell him about how my dad would make me spar with him.  Most kids dads played catch.  Mine would have a cigarette in one hand and the other hand out and yell “spar.”  He would always tell me to work on that left-hook.  We then would complete that quality time with ice cream or a burger.  I don’t know the answer to Dr. John’s question.