The Goodtime Aspen Road Tests, Part 3: Jeep Wrangler Rubicon

I’ve driven all sorts of vehicles in my time— station wagons, go karts, dump trucks, eight-person bicycles, tractors— but never a Jeep. And by Jeep, I mean the Wrangler, the direct descendant of the Willys and Kaiser CJs of yore. I figure that a true American motorhead would be remiss if they haven’t driven a Jeep, it being on the short list of enduring American icons of motoring. Naturally, when my sister came up to me and said, “would you rather drive the Yukon or the Jeep?,” the choice was easy.

My sister is the property manager for a man with more money than Liberace had rhinestones. We’ll call this man DB. His armada of vehicles, all of which are at my sister’s disposal, include sophisticated German steel such as multiple Audis and Porsches, and more plebeian rigs such as GMCs and the Rubicon. Apparently, the Jeep is DB’s daily driver. My sister and I had to drop it off at the airport, as DB was returning from a business jaunt in his Dassault Falcon 7X. So it was now my job to drive the Wrangler and follow big sis driving the Yukon.

The Rubicon edition of the Wrangler is the ne plus ultra of serious factory-fettled offroad vehicles. With a torquey six-cylinder engine, six on the floor, tires that wouldn’t be out of place on a Farmall, Dana 44 axles front and back with locking diffs, a 4:1 low range, and enough ground clearance to double as a cabana, there is not much stopping this rig save for a gas crisis.

We took off down the ranch road. The clutch engagement was smooth and predictable, abetted by the engine’s hearty torque off idle and a nice progressive throttle. When you’re out mixing it up in Moab, you don’t want to be worrying about your declutching skills, and the Wrangler does you right. The ride is not as flouncy-trouncy as the Jeeps of old— mind you, I’ve ridden in plenty— though this is still not the boulevard cruiser the Dave Matthews and popped collar set wants it to be. Descending the dangerously steep and off-camber gravel curves of the access road, I felt the floaty low-presssure BFGoodriches sashay and slide about under hard steering or overzealous throttle. A rally car it ain’t, but this thing will clearly get you into (and out of) places four wheels were never meant to.

Turning onto the highway and nailing the throttle, I felt the deep well of low-end torque run out once the revs climbed, and the shifter was slightly balky; downshifts to fifth had me hitting third by mistake. This is strictly a straight-ahead four-wheeling setup. In addition, the tires and chassis make for an, how you say, imprecise on-road driving experience. The wheel tends to wander unless you pay diligent mind. Though I suppose paying attention while at the wheel is less a burden than a sound idea. It’s nice that there are still vehicles made that require you to possess some kind of grey matter in order to operate them effectively.

In the end, I’m glad to see that Jeep hasn’t watered down the Wrangler into yet another gentrified suburban family truckster. You won’t be cross-shopping this with a Toyota RAV4. With the future of Chrysler uncertain, we can only hope that if the pentastar should fall from the sky, that another patron will keep the great tradition of passing along the storied Jeep name alive. Surely, it is an American institution too big to fail.

The Goodtime Aspen Road Tests, Part 2: LOOK 566 Origin

Bicycling is a way of life for old Bunny. I’m too poor to own a car, and owning a car while living and working in Boston is like owning a TEC-9 while living in Stockholm; it doesn’t make much sense. Hence, I’ve committed myself to a two-wheeled lifestyle. My bicycle, Katie, is a very utilitarian rig. A cyclocross racer-turned-touring commuter, she has full fenders, fat tires, seven lights, mudflaps, a rack, and a hitch for my flatbed trailer with which I tow laundry, groceries, keyboards, Chunky Dog, etc. She’s everything to me: my car, my truck, my recreation, my well-being. However, every now and then I get the hankering for something pure and singular in purpose. Luckily, Aspen has the medicine.

My brother-in-law, Kevin, is a former racing cyclist and avid road and mountain rider to this day. He promised he’d rent me a flash steed while I was in town and we’d do some serious banzai road riding. Now, normally, you’d never mistake me for one of those Lance Armstrong wannabes. It’s just not my style. I’m generally in plain clothes or high-vis neon colors and I’m riding the bicycle equivalent of a Subaru Outback (even though I’m faster than most other riders I see), so I knew I’d be in for what middle-management Nazi douchebags call a “paradigm shift.” Kevin and I went down to his favorite shop, Ute City Cycles, and we picked out a mount: The handbuilt-in-France LOOK 566 Origin.

The 566 is a full-on carbon-fiber road racing bicycle. Not a “sport tourer,” not a “comfort road commuter,” not any other compromised wishywashy marketing ploy. Its tubing has all sorts of wild geometric kinks and swoops in the name of stiffness and efficiency. Most people should not own this bicycle, since it’s capable of much more than they could ever get out of it. However, like a Ferrari or a supermodel thirty years your junior, that’s not the point. The lust for these things is not borne out of sensibility.

Our first day out, Kevin and I took our machines (he was on his newly-purchased LOOK 585) for an evening spin up Old Snowmass. I was done up in some of Kev’s B-list lycra, including bib shorts with a big old hole in the ass so my leopard-print boxers were visible. After clicking into the Shimano clipless pedals, we set off up the undulating rural route. The razor-sharp responses of the machine were immediately evident. Steering can almost be done solely with the mind, yet it is not twitchy or temperamental. The narrow tires do not forgo any irregularities in the road, but the carbon frame deftly smoothes harsh vibrations while making for a superbly stiff climbing and sprinting beast. Just a tickle of the throttle— I mean, pedals— elicits a surge forward that seems almost as if the bike is hitched to a hot-footed teenager’s V6 Accord.

The long grind up was deceptive; though the road did not appear to be inclined, the going was much slower than one would expect of two fit gentlemen on feather-light racers. I initially chalked this up to altitude and the roughness of the asphalt, but once we reached our turnaround point, it was clear we’d been climbing an insidious grade. My posterior was a bit numb from the rock-hard Selle Italia saddle, but such is often the price of performance. It was the run back down, though, where this performance really shone through. We turned around, and the speed became biblical in short order. Kevin assumed the full racing crouch, while I simply went into the drops. The tires howled over the stony asphalt. The LOOK was as sharp and composed as ever, if not more; it was in its element now. There were no high-speed jitters, no sense of going beyond design parameters. I felt like that guy in the old Maxell ads, my face and hair stretched backwards by a powerful airstream. I was in top gear, but soon spun it out beyond a comfortable cadence and simply coasted. This was real fighter jet stuff—well, a fighter jet with its canopy off. Your senses are dialed all the way up, your heart not dangerously racing but roaring along just fast enough to keep you in top killing form. According to Kevin’s GPS, we reached 41 miles per hour on that hill. 41 MPH in a car on that road is fast enough; on a velocipede, it’s bordering on the daft. It is splendid.

On the second ride, we drove out to the Ruedi Reservoir area and rode along the Fryingpan River. This is where the LOOK’s sustained high-speed cruise-missile capabilities came into light. Most of this ride was along a gently rolling but generally flat road following the river, with a stiff tailwind on the way out. Though ass pain was still a bit of a factor, I quickly settled into a comfortable transonic cruising speed. I’d never ridden so fast for so long. The 566 ate up the road like the proper racer that it is, ever eager to heel over and surgically carve the blind curves and crest the hillocks like they were mere molehills. There were a good many other seemingly serious road cyclists out that day, which Kevin and I dispatched one by one in short order. “Passed by a guy with his knickers hanging out,” I’m sure they said to themselves, “time to find another hobby.”

As befitting a well-engineered machine, the 566 didn’t draw much unnecessary attention to itself in its operation, save for getting used to the SRAM drivetrain. I was witness to the breathtaking beauty of the Wild West; the roiling river, the verdant mountains reaching into the crystalline sky. Everything was near as dammit to perfect. There was a long, steep, first-gear slog up around the reservoir for the last mile, which, though we were sucking air and cursing the name of lactic acid, the LOOK handled with as much ease and grace as one could want short of having an engine. The bomb back down the mountain pass was longer than the first day’s downhill, and the run back along the river was even more gratifying than the first go round. At that point the LOOK and I had settled into a symbiosis, a man-machine meld that felt like your classic holiday love affair; oh so short, but ever so right. It was a forbidden pleasure that I’d never felt. I could have ridden back to Boston.

If I had the money, I would certainly put a true racing bike in my collection. The LOOK, but for its somewhat avant-garde looks, would certainly do. For those of us living a bicycle-based urban life, it could never be your only ride. I’d never give up Katie for something like this. And for those of us who are merely casual riders, it is too uncomfortable and expensive for what you’d get out of it. But those are not its domains. It’s a device of pure indulgence, of hedonism, for someone who appreciates a precision instrument and knows that its capabilities surpass their own; that it will do whatever one may ask of it, and egg you on to push your limits ever further. It makes you quiver with excitement just to sit on it. It’s a symphonic synergy of muscles and metal. If that’s not a noble pursuit, then call me a snob.

The Goodtime Aspen Road Tests, Part 1: de Havilland DHC-8-200 Dash 8

As the three of you are probably aware, I’ve been hobnobbing with snobs in Aspen, Colo., for the past week. Well, my sister, brother-in-law, and two-and-a-half-year-old niece whom I’m visiting aren’t exactly what you’d call snobs, but they’re employed by snobs, and the town teems with them on an almost comical level. I’m within spitting distance of Tommy Mottola and the house where Ken Lay had his bodacious coronary and conveniently beefed it three months before his sentencing.

However, despite and as a result of being amongst some of the bluest blood this side of the Yangtze, there are some grand ways to have fun and get from one place to the next in this town. This little review series, entitled the Goodtime Aspen Road Tests, will document the spectacular, nifty, and decadent forms of transportation I’ve used in my time out here. In a world where so much is fake and contrived, they are an ode to all that is good, right and honest in the classic American pursuit of the great beyond.

We begin with the legendary Dash 8. First built by de Havilland Canada in 1983 and now produced by Bombardier, this high-winged turboprop can take off and land on a runway the length of Dr. Wally Hayes’s mustache. In the industry, they refer to this as STOL—Short Take-Off and Landing, or Slutty Tricks Open Legs, depending on whom you ask.

I was to fly a Dash 8 from Denver to Aspen, which had me bukkakeing myself with excitement as it is one of my favorite aircraft, but the last time I’d ridden one was around the time Chernobyl exploded and I was still potty training. Would it live up to my expectations, or would it be another case of never meet your heroes? I was bound to find out. However, my sister called me and said that they’d be in Denver that weekend and they’d pick me up, so I wouldn’t need to take that leg of the flight. I was instantly despondent. The Boston-Denver leg was to be on an Airbus A320, which is like the Airbus A320 of planes, so I really needed something to perk up the trip. However, we then found out it would be $1500 to change the flight, so the Dash 8 it was. Bonus.

With a plane this size, you board it from the ground, real Humphrey Bogart style. Except your dame probably isn’t as hot as Ingrid Bergman, and she’s not allowed past security. The cabin is roughly the size of a toothpaste tube, and the lavatory is up front by the pilots. I’m sure they appreciate that design element.

Boarding flight 7098, I immediately ran into trouble when I slammed my ankle into one of the seat legs. Great, I thought, the flight is now cursed. However, my worries were allayed when they spooled up those Pratt & Whitney PW123 turbines and old Mildred began to give the sermon. I don’t remember the stewardess’s real name, but she looked like a Mildred. This old bird had been at this a while. Her caustic, deadpan taxiway safety speech made me think Groucho Marx and Lily Tomlin had had a tryst many moons ago. Do not attempt to enter the cockpit, or I will attempt to break your legs. We all guffawed. This was my kind of flight.

We were cleared to take off. The power from the turboprops comes on gradually, like your grandmother taking off from a stoplight in her Delta 88, like a well-done handjob or the spread of communism. Whoosh, and there you go. And it’s loud. You see, feel, and hear the experience in equal shares. It’s the last vestige of the glory days of air travel, à la the Lockheed Constellations and 707s of old, when flying was part of the whole adventure. There was more than a passing thought that you wouldn’t make it.

The Dash 8 rocked and roared its way into the high thin air. There are but millimeters of aluminum between you and Kingdom Come. As we careened our way around the mountains (rather than over them, due to running particularly heavy that day) and towards Aspen’s treacherous Sardy Field, all of Mother Nature’s efforts to rid this unnatural beast from the sky were evident. All manner of thermals, shifty winds, clouds, and intergalactic fusion death rays pelted the fuselage. Yet the stubborn Dash 8 refused to give in, and we gently touched down in Aspen like a prizefighter doing his cool-down exercises.

In retrospect, the de Havilland is a real product of its parentage. You can tell Canucks screwed this thing together. It’s a Saskatchewan draft mule, a friendly old lumberjack. The Canadians, you see, are an elemental type of people. Good, honest. They’re rough-and-tumble, yet they’re as sophisticated as any of Old Europe. They don’t want any insulation between them and the world. Obviously not if they choose to live in Canada. The Dash 8 is a reflection of that. Regional jets be damned, give me two whirling props and a salty old stewardess.

Thank You for Choosing United

Good morning United Airlines customers, and welcome to Flight 339 with service to North Toadstool. We here at United continually strive to provide you with the finest mediocre and profit-starved service possible. At this time we would like to begin the pre-boarding process, for our customers with medical needs, our exceptionally fat and/or lazy customers, C-list celebrities, assholes who wish to board ahead of everyone else even though they’ll still get the same seat, or those of you with very small and/or poorly-raised children.

Good morning United Airlines customers, at this time we would like to begin boarding our Star Alliance Preferred Gold members, our Executive Premier Autocrat Class customers, and our Grand Anointed Dark Wizard Twenty Billion Mile Club members. We will then proceed with the ante-boarding process, followed by the auxiliary boarding process, followed by the hysterical boarding process, followed by the post-boarding dénouement. Thank you for choosing United because that’s what Travelocity found for you.

Good morning United Airlines customers, and welcome aboard Flight 339 with service to North Toadstool with connecting service to Islamabad. At this time I invite you to ignore me and continue sending text messages to your lumpy, drunken spouse watching Gossip Girls On Demand back home. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the safety features of our Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia aircraft. This aircraft was made in Brazil, but please remain calm, as the parts are mostly made in America, albeit by Mexicans. Today’s food choice will be our Famine Level 3 Nut ‘n’ Nut Blast. Please remain seated when the seat belt sign is illuminated, but there is likely no reason for you to be out of your seat since this frisbee doesn’t have a bathroom, unless you are one of our Most Honorable Tungsten Supreme Vagabond Howard Hughes Globe-Jammer™ members, in which case please consult your decoder ring and handbook for directions to the secret toilet. Enjoy your in-flight entertainment of colicky infants and the sound of your dreams slowly withering. In the event of an emergency, get bent.

Once again, thank you for choosing United.

News Digest: Dean Cometh (and Goeth), Chunky Dog Breaks Keyboard

The following is a compendium of happenings in the lives of The Reverend and Chunky Dog over the past few months. Tally ho.

•The infamous Dean got back in touch with Bunny. They resumed communication, and one night after an hours-long Instant-Messenger-based conversation in which Bunny found himself falling for Dean once again, Dean told Bunny he was seeing someone else.

•No matter, because another bodaciously hot/cool guy Bunny had a thing for got back in touch with Bunny as well. Eat that shit.

•The song “Anyday” by Derek and the Dominoes is now no longer required to be skipped over when it pops up on Bunny’s iPod, as the association it has with Bunny’s ex-boyfriend has been reduced to tolerable levels. It’s about time.

•Bunny was named May Employee of the Month and Sales Support Staff Of The Year at work. It garnered him a total of $150 and his own parking space at the corporate headquarters. However, he neither works at the corporate headquarters nor even has a car, so the company president used it instead.

•Chunky Dog purchased a German solidbody electric ukulele. Through an overdrive pedal and an envelope follower it sounds like Gene Simmons had unholy butt coitus with a mechanical bull painted with the blood of the infidels.

•Bunny is in a Rod Stewart tribute band. The week after they tore the roof off the Twin River casino in Lincoln, RI, said casino went bankrupt to the tune of nearly $1 billion.

•Bunny blew the opportunity to have a three-way with a half-Chinese half-Basque Allston chick who builds effects pedals for a living and another broad who loves it in the butt-piece. Further explanation upon request.

•Chunky Dog was carrying Emily, Bunny’s large, heavy and expensive Yamaha S-90 ES keyboard, into the venue for a gig the other night. The strap on the gig bag broke and the board hit the ground, popping several keys out of the keybed. Upon seeing this, Bunny promptly went ballistic, as he thought he was looking at several hundred dollars’ worth of repair. However, he was able to pop the problem keys back in…all but one. So instead of wanting to kill Chunky Dog, he merely wants to pee on his things.

•Every time Bunny goes to use the bathroom in the morning, one of the retarded bougie roommates— usually the chick— is in there preening for like half an hour. I got shit to do, woman. I may not be paying stupid money to go to Emerson in order to take classes on how to be creative in order to fast track my atrociously mediocre career in advertising and cement my place in the horrid, scarred landscape of modern suburbia and contribute to the gaudy and undignified death of American culture, but unlike you, I have a damn job and need to brush my damn teeth and take a doody dump and get to work before the damn delivery truck gets there. Get the fuck out of the bathroom, this isn’t the fuckin day spa with the fuckin cucumbers and shit. No amount of makeup will change the fact that you have a fat ass and no talent.

¡Viva la Revdogolución! Or: Chunk E. Shows His True Colors (those colors being red)

I know that I haven’t done one of these in a while. Life’s been good to old Chunk and I haven’t had much reason to complain, which is the source of all works in (or is it on?) the blogosphere. I’ve had no rants, no beef, no tangents to grace upon you, my three loyal readers and the long line of people who will accidentally find this post on a Google search as the result of the next sentence:

 

Titty, tit, boob, mouth, panther, cock, vagina, pussy, clitoris, fire marshal, bukkake, midget, big ol’, on my face.

 

I know it was a poorly constructed sentence, but our numbers are down and my boss, Bunny, thinks that I’ve been resting on my laurels (I don’t blame you, you have big old comfy laurels —Ed.). It’s strange that one day you can be totally tranquil and then the next day a small thing like, oh, I don’t know, your girlfriend leaving you and moving to California puts you right back in a mood to rant. So here we go, readineros, it’s time to let this long-dormant volcano of annoyance erupt.

 

Last night on TV I watched a Republican member of Congress condemn abortion. He claimed that every life was precious and had intrinsic value. This is a nice notion, but I don’t see how someone could have this point of view and belong to a group so vehemently against socialism. What other system allows for common respect of every member of the group? Social conservatives would love to see every baby born, but if they grow up poor then they’ll be sure to tell the youngster, “FUCK OFF AND GET A JOB.” Am I wrong for thinking that there’s a logical missed step here? No? Conservatives, put that in your pipe and smoke it…and I’ll charge you for the carbon emissions.

 

I do not believe that America would work as a socialist state. It’s too big and overpopulated to make it sustainable. However, limited social programs like those our wiser friends in Canada and the UK have, such as national healthcare, would greatly enhance the lives of every American man, woman, and child. For some reason those on the right think that national healthcare is the first sign of the end of days. Every baby has the right to live, but if the birth happens in some third rate clinic, well that’s her own fault, she should get a better job, is that what you’re telling me? Call me a dirty pinko but at least I look good in pink. The communist boogie man is long dead. Let’s do an autopsy of the corpse and see what worked and didn’t work. Keep the good and leave the rest for the vultures.

 

All I ask is that we be consistent in our thinking. If every life is valuable, shouldn’t we strive to make people’s lives better while they are alive and with us? My personal feelings about the abortion issue aside, hypocrisy for the sake of appealing to your base is not a platform a policy, or anything other than a heaping pile of poo. If you believe that every life is important, then you had better help the poor off of the streets and send aid to countries that need medicine and food, and not just to ready the place for a Nike factory but to raise the quality of life for everyone everywhere. To do otherwise certainly puts a big gap in your “values”-based standing as leaders of America.

Bunny Parties Like It’s 1999, Falls In Love with Dark Wave

This past weekend was a maelstrom of scary noises, gyrating hips, and out-of-tune basses. Oh bejesus. So Friday night, we all go down to hear my esteemed boss, Old McSullivan, perform with an experimental ambient/noise group over in Central Square. The show is in the basement of an Elks Lodge, and the band consists of two theremins, a cello, a hammer dulcimer, a synthesizer controlled by a MIDI wind controller, and Sully playing guitar through his cornucopia of effects pedals that cost more than his ‘05 Mustang GT.

We get to the joint, and walk in to the faintly creepy Lodge basement to the sound of chattering and chiming Underwoods and IBM Selectrics. The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is performing. The idea of typewriters used as musical instruments is a novel and interesting concept…for about ten minutes, then it’s like, okay, check please. Sully and his troupe take the stage, and between the roar and squeal of his guitar, the baleful howl of the theremins, the clang of the dulcimer, the bleat of the synthesizer, the moan of the cello, and the onslaught of the acid-flashback visuals being projected on the ceiling above the band all the while, I felt like I knew what 1969 was like for L.B. Then we went and got pizza.

Saturday night, Timmy Boit and I decide to head on over to Heroes at TT the Bear’s Place. For those unaware, Heroes is TT’s semi-regular ’80s dance night. Normally, this would not be my bag. But so begins a new era. After a hearty dinner of Redbones’ delicious Memphis-style ribs, we set out for the club. I somewhat knew what to expect, as T. Boit had elaborately described to us what Heroes is like many a time previous. We enter around 11, and things are just starting to pick up. Just about every man in the room is either gay, or at the very least has sucked a penis just to know what it was like. There are 300-pound goth chicks, men wearing high-heeled boots jacked up higher than Grave Digger, and me, wearing blue jeans and a Heil Sound t-shirt. They probably thought I was the cops.

The music is bumping fiercely, and the stage is already sprinkled with a few queens getting their proverbial groove on. I myself begin to feel the jam. The music is a heady mixture of mostly ’80s New/Dark Wave classics and some modern dance favorites to keep the fags randy. Lots of Depeche Mode. As time goes on, I find myself enthralled by the music; I begin to realize what Timmy Boit was on about all this time regarding Wave. It’s the shit. Synthesizers like you read about. Straight-on rhythms. Epic melodies. Rock-solid hooks but with a certain mysterious edge, as if to suggest that Martin Gore knows something you don’t, and maybe you don’t want to know. I’m a total convert.

Then, he takes the stage. No, not Timmy Boit. He. Adonis. A beautiful young man with moves like a god damn panther. He bends and weaves his clearly-cocaine-influenced physique (I’m a sucker for the skinny boys) around the stage with more poise and confidence than anyone else. Definitely of the persuasion. I’m transfixed. He dances flirtatiously with the other boys, and I contemplate taking the stage. I think better of it, as doing that would surely see me eaten alive. Then he takes his shirt off, and I realize, I have to have sex with this man. I need him to have my phone number. So I dig out an old T pass from my wallet and scrawl “MAX: 508 xxx-xxxx” on it. The next step is the hard one. Unfortunately, for the rest of the night he’s either too far back on the stage, or when he passes by, I’m too much of a pussy, and I don’t give it to him. But according to Tim Boit, he’s there every Heroes night. So I will be back. With plenty of cocaine on my wiener for the taking.

Sunday night, Chunk E. Dog plays with his other band over at the All Asia. The group on before them is a rather depressing hip-hop act, the kind where the main dude said something like, “I wanna thank my parents for coming up from Connecticut, this one goes out to them. It’s called ‘Sit Dat Ass On Mah Junk.’” Chunk’s band takes the stage, and from the first song, his bass is woefully out of tune. They get about 30 seconds into the song before it sputters and dies like a lawnmower running too rich, and C. Dog retunes. And retunes. And retunes. It’s a nightmare. This continues for half the set, Chunky Dog clearly cursing the patron saint of electric basses. Poor kid. It’s obvious the tuning machines on his Epiphone Ibañez Peavey Squier are shot to shit. But they get through it quite admirably, and they even pulled off a cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” Unreal.

Ex-Boyfriend Watch #1: No Need to be Coy, Roy

To paraphrase Chunky Dog’s old man when we were at his house late one night shooting a film re-enactment of Elvis’s last moments and awoke him from his bear-like slumber with our multiple takes of falling off the toilet, I DON’T WANNA HEAR THIS SHIT. And by this shit, I mean my first kinda-sorta boyfriend from a couple years back (who dumped me) who decided to email me the other day.

So I was cruising the slag heap of wayward souls known as OKCupid.com, looking at what their electric robots decided were my best matches. And I see that he, let’s call him Dean, has a profile! And we’re an 83% match! Jesus. For a little back story, Dean and I met on craigslist back in the halcyon days of 2007, when I worked for Tweeter (R.I.P.) and lived in the verdant hills of Brighton. He answered an ad I’d placed looking for some sort of serious relationship. Dean seemed like the perfect guy for me: very intelligent (a Harvard type), musical, not too gay, quirky, cute, blond, could quote Homestar Runner and Steely Dan, the whole bit. I found it hard to believe someone like that would be looking on craigslist, but there we were. We really clicked. Yet as we got closer, he seemed less and less interested— breaking dates, et cetera— eventually, he said that school was consuming his life, and broke it off. Over email. Jesus.

It would be a while before I got another boyfriend. In that intervening time, I wondered if I would ever find someone like him again. Though time went on, I found someone else, and Dean faded into the cobwebs of my mind. Until this.

So I click on Dean’s profile. He’s still using the picture he sent me two years ago when he answered my ad. I read some of his profile BS, and remember some of the things I liked about him. I even briefly consider sending him a message, but figure that would be way out of line. Yet lo and behold, I wake up the next morning and there in my inbox is a message from Dean. See, on OKStupid, you can see when someone views your profile. He saw that I’d looked at his. Jesus.

In a nutshell, he felt the need to apologize to me again for his “flakiness,” and said that he’d like to talk about it. I was more than a little surprised, to say the least. Okay, I thought, I’ll throw him a bone. Who knows, maybe we’ll re-connect? So I let it simmer for the day until I got home from work, and wrote him back. I was very magnanimous about the whole thing. Said I’d like to talk. Gave him my email and IM. This was on Monday the 30th. As of this writing it is Thursday the 2nd. Not a word.

This reminds me of the time I was fired from The Boston Pedal Party for pretending I was stuck in Woods Hole. The manager shit-canned me over text message, then called me back the next morning groveling for my return. It’s like, if you’re gonna do it, do it. Don’t play games. Make a commitment. Don’t say something if you don’t mean it. Just hop on the bus, Gus…don’t need to discuss much. Jesus.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Why You Should Really Buy the Extended Warranty

Times are shitty. There’s no two ways about that. The purse strings are tight, the wallets thin, the pickings slim. Chrysler’s among the walking dead, jobs are dropping like flies. Frivolous spending is looked upon with scorn nowadays. Yet televisions still break, computers crash, hell, you might even want to pick up the guitar again now that you’ve got 40 more hours a week of free time. However, when you walk into Best Buy, the Apple Store, or Guitar Center and find that gee-whiz new toy you’re going to finance the shit out of/put on layaway, you’re faced with man’s oldest and most dreaded adversary: The Extended Warranty.

The Extended Warranty is the biggest god damn rip-off since Charles Ponzi took Boston by storm. I won’t go into every minute detail, but basically, most items that can be had with The Extended Warranty experience warranty-covered failures either within most manufacturers’ warranties, or well after any Extended Warranty would expire. Some plans cover shipping costs to/from the manufacturer or repair center; a savings offset by the cost of the plan, unless of course it happens multiple times, but then it’s clear you’ve wasted your money on something bigger: a shitty product to begin with. A lot of people are smart enough to realize the above. However, they don’t know that now more than ever, you need to buy the warranty.

Because the livelihoods of so many minimum-wage, commission-earning salespeople depend on you doing so. I see it every day. It’s horrifying. Retailers force their sales staff to pitch the warranty as if the customers were their drunk aunt and the warranty were detox, because oh how sweet that 100% gross profit margin is. However, people don’t buy it, because it’s straight snake oil and people don’t like being bullshitted. It goes right up the chain and back down again; the salespeople get in deep bukkake from their managers for not selling enough plans, and the managers get it from the corporate office for not training their staff on how to bludgeon customers over the head with sell the warranty. So the managers crack down even more on their staff, who then bludgeon sell it even more aggressively, which turns the customers off even more, and the vicious cycle feeds itself on and on until someone gets fired for “unsatisfactory performance.”

The buck stops with you, O Consumer! Buy the warranty, and inject some sorely-needed money into the working class. Be their bailout. Make that mopey sales oaf’s paycheck a little fatter that week so he can buy chicken wings/pay last month’s utilities/keep his Big Black Butts subscription current. By doing your part, you can pull us out of these economic irons. Then you can feel better about yourself as you watch Kim Kardashian on your 90-inch Indonesian-made plasma screen for thirty-nine straight hours wallowing in a pit of self-doubt and Cheeto dust.

Bunny’s Sense Of Humor Will Be the Death of Him

I’m a man of many and sundry skills and gifts. I can make the honeys orgasm by playing merely a single note of a Hammond organ. I can rev-match on a manual transmission like there’s no next week. And I serve up a bodacious grilled cheese.

However, the gift that is both my greatest blessing and most odious curse is my sense of humor. I can find humor in the most mundane/strange/depressing shit you’ve ever seen, often at inappropriate times. When I was but a lad, and as you’ll see even to this day, it put me under the bus more than once. I fear that one day, it may do me in.

I once received a severely embarrassing, extremely loud, in-front-of-the-whole-cafeteria chastisement and a written conduct referral in 6th grade for calling a fellow student’s mama a llama. I didn’t have the cojones to bring up the fact that said student had been pulling the old open-your-mouth-with-food-in-it bit, which had elicited my anti-maternal response. O, if only I could go back.

Then there was the time my mother and I went downtown to take in a high-class chamber music concert. Before they had even finished tuning up, my ten-year-old mind had somehow conjured up an image of Ernie (of Bert & Ernie) tilting his head from side to side and making a sound that can only be described as, “oowee oowee oowee oowee oowee.” Don’t ask me how I managed to get this in my brain. Naturally, I became very antsy and giggly in my seat. My mother did not take too kindly to this, and scolded me repeatedly to quit it. However, soon the bug bit her, and we both found ourselves laughing uncontrollably like fools. We had to leave the show halfway through.

As anyone who’s ever spent the night with me knows, I laugh in bed. This doesn’t often happen when I’m by myself, but when someone’s there with me, I can’t help it. I think of funny shit. Most of my bedmates have found it cute, except one. My first long-term significant other, the brutal C2, was on Martha’s Vineyard after my high school graduation. Sure as saltpeter, I got a case of the chuckles one night, probably thinking about the time Haboob beefed it in the supermarket parking lot while carrying a box of popsicles, and she kicked me out of bed. Disallowed me from being in the bed. I had to sleep on the other side of the room. What a dragon-whore. She probably made me gay. Or perhaps it was portending things to come.

So there I was, last weekend, on the conjugal bed, about to give the business to a certain gentleman. I was on the approach, the landing lights were on, gear down, call the ball. And I start thinking about Jimmy O. Jesus Christ. For those who are unaware, Jimmy O is the lovable, loudmouthed repair tech at my place of employment. He’s done a station ID for the show before. He’s a fat little rough-and-tumble old stack of flapjacks from Revere, with a mouth as dirty as the Charles River and the kind of mullet that came free with every 1987 IROC-Z. What I was really thinking about was the song that the band is currently writing, entitled “Jimmy O,” about a man who shoots his own adult films, based on the true story. He’s done some fucked-up shit, son; shit you’d get arrested for back in the ’50s. For some reason, this is all I could think about as I was about to consummate this tender moment. Perhaps I envisioned myself as Jimmy O, about to do the dirty deed. Except I probably wouldn’t include a dog or an eggbeater. Who knows. But the image of his Ron Jeremy-esque physique would not leave my head. I quickly went limper than overcooked pasta, but golly Moses it was funny. There would be no sex that night.