Monthly Archives: July 2012

The Key to America

Seriously, I should be the mayor. It just seems like so much work, putting together a campaign team, forming an inner circle amongst the campaign team, ejecting a few members of my inner circle for insubordination, and then eventually firing my whole staff and starting from scratch with a brand new campaign team. But I should totally do it. I’m born to lead. People have told me that. They’ve said, “Rob, you’re born to lead, bro.”

Mayor is perfect. It’s just enough responsibility where everyone in the city will know who I am, but at the end of the day, cities kind of run themselves, and so if anything goes terribly wrong, I can just throw up my hands in shock, claim ignorance, and step aside to let someone else take a crack at it. Why would anyone want to be President when they could just as easily be mayor? If the President starts acting all corrupt, the news media is always right there to point the finger and investigate. But the mayor is almost expected to be corrupt. Just say “City Hall” out loud to yourself and I’ll bet you’re automatically just a little bit queasier than you were before you said it.

Mayor is the one job that I feel like I’m naturally perfect for. I’m already the best at everything that the mayor does. Whenever there is an injustice that’s really nobody’s fault, like if somebody trips and falls, or if somebody sees a rat run past a restaurant, I’m usually the first person on the scene getting in everyone’s faces and pointing out the injustice and bringing a lot of attention to what just happened. And if there is ever an injustice that’s clearly somebody’s fault, I’m an expert at making up a million reasons why it’s actually nobody’s fault. Plus, you’ve never seen somebody christen a dry-cleaning place by cutting a giant ribbon with an oversized pair of scissors until you’ve seen me do it.

One of the job’s most alluring aspects, to me, is the ability to bestow upon anybody the Key to the City. Every knows about the Key to the City, but the process of making it, of figuring out how to get it to unlock every door in town, and actually picking somebody worthy of receiving it is a closely-guarded municipal secret. Try calling up any public official and asking him or her about how you might go about earning a Key to the City and you’ll find yourself brushed off. After repeated calls, you’ll find your phone being automatically transferred to a seemingly indefinite hold, without anybody even asking what you’re calling for in the first place. So then you’ll head over to City Hall and try to talk to somebody face-to-face, but when you ask who’s in charge of the Keys to the City, you’re told repeatedly to go away. Go ahead, bang your fists down on as many government desks as you want. I’m telling you it’s a dead end.

As mayor, I would promise to make the Key to the City award system much more transparent. That would be the sole issue that my campaign would be built upon. I’d hand out novelty replica Keys at all of my campaign rallies. During my debate with the incumbent mayor, I’d throw in all sort of cool key-related catch phrases, like, “Mr. Mayor, we’re all really keyed up about this issue!” to huge rounds of applause. At my inauguration as mayor, I’d make a grand speech, telling everyone how, “now we’ve got someone in charge who understand the key problems facing this city!”

That’s what I would tell everyone. But I’d secretly use my power over the Keys to the City for my own personal advantage. After I made such a big deal about the Key to the City during my campaign, people might get a little confused when I stop awarding the Keys all together. If people protest, I’ll just tell them that the system was so corrupt, that I’ve had to scrap the entire program, to be rebuilt entirely from scratch, from the ground up. And I think that might satisfy the minds of most voters.

But I wouldn’t have scrapped anything. Not really. The Keys to the City will still be made, but I’ll award them all to myself, in secret yet still elaborate Key ceremonies. Once I’ve collected enough Keys, I’ll start touring other cities, pointing my finger at all of the other mayors, claiming that their Key to the City systems are some of the most corrupt in the country. But I won’t actually do it, I’ll just threaten to do it. I’ll meet all of the other mayors and I’ll show them all of my Keys and they’ll know that I mean business. If they don’t want to get run out of office, they had better award me a Key to their city also.

And they’ll back down immediately. So week after week, some other loser mayor from some other rinky-dink town will fly me in to receive their Key. They’ll say, “We’re awarding this Key to the mayor who ushered in the reforms necessary to keep the Key ceremony alive in the 21st century!” And I’ll act all humble and grateful, but while I’m collecting one Key, I’ll have my political cronies already strong-arming the next mayor.

Finally, I’ll have all of the Keys to every city in America. And I’ll take them all and put them on a giant Key ring and I’ll bring them to the White House, where I’ll demand that the President give me the Key to America. “You have to!” I’ll say, “I’ve collected every Key to every city!” and the President will respond, “How could you have? How did you know about the Key to America? Nobody knows about that!” and I’ll say, “Aha! I knew it! I didn’t actually know about the Key to America, I had just imagined it. But I said it to you like I knew what I was talking about, and you just confirmed it! So hand it over!”

And the President will be honor bound by to hand it over. And I’ll be able to unlock every single door in America. What’s that you hear? Is someone in the house? Yeah, it’s me. And yeah, I know perfectly well what time it is. Don’t worry, I’m just making myself a roast beef sandwich. Chill out, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just be lucky that I’m not a huge dick looking to rob this place blind, because I could. That’s how this works.

Boxing

I think that I would be a great boxer. One of the best, probably. It’s too bad that boxing isn’t as popular as it was like seventy years ago, because, if it were, high schools would probably have boxing teams and I would have been able to learn the ropes in high school. My arms are so much longer than everyone else’s, so I wouldn’t need too much in terms of actual training. I’d just naturally be able to stay further away from any opponents while at the same time beating them senseless. You ever watch cartoons where one of the smaller, shrimpier characters gets really angry and then lunges at a bigger character in a fury of berserk rage? And the little guy is punching and going crazy and doling out the beating of a lifetime, but then the camera zooms out and the bigger character is just holding out his hand, totally blocking the smaller character, preventing him from even getting close? And the little guy is just punching the air? That would be me, in real life, in a real life boxing match. I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any rules against this move; it’s just rarely, if ever executed in real life.

I’d be the best boxer. After I fought my way through high school, I’d box for my college team. But I’d only spend maybe a semester or two taking classes before I’d get recruited by some pro boxers. It wouldn’t even be fair after a while. My domination of the sport would be so complete that it wouldn’t be long before the boxing authorities would have to change the sport completely just to keep it interesting. They’d introduce team boxing. It would be like regular boxing, but you’d have to do it with a teammate. And I’m not talking about tag-team, like wrestling, but actually teaming up, like two on two at the same time.

But I’d still be completely untouchable. I’d take my teammate and hold him out horizontally by the legs while I swung him around in a circle, making him punch out both members of the opposing team. With this technique, my opponents would be even further away from me than if I were boxing solo, even less likely to get close enough to land a punch. I’d only have been boxing professionally for a couple of years, but I would be the undisputed best boxer in history. And it wouldn’t be a matter of opinion. I’d just direct everyone to take a look at my record: the only boxer to have gone his whole career without ever having been punched, not even once. No other boxer has ever come close to that type of professional success. Sorry Pacquiao.

I’d get so good at boxing that it would eventually be totally boring. Like even more boring than regular boxing is right now. Nobody would want to come and see me fight, because it would be the same routine every time. Me entering the ring. Me throwing really long punches. Knockout. And I’d raise my hands in victory but the stadium would be empty, because, let’s face it, how many times are you going to pay for a ticket to see something like that? Twenty-five? Twenty-six times, max?

The promoters would kick me out of major league boxing. Nobody would set up any fights for me. No other boxers would agree to a fight. But I’d insist on battling it out. So I’d just show up at every fight and just walk in the ring and start throwing punches. And I’d keep punching until I’d have knocked everyone else out. Ding ding mothafucka.

So the league would do everything they could to get rid of me. They’d hire a bunch of goons to team up with me, but these goons would do everything they could to sabotage my chances. But even that wouldn’t work. So then they’d start setting up these fights where it’s me versus three guys, four guys, thirty-five guys. But they could pack the ring with as many clowns as they wanted. I’d just stand in the middle and extend my really long arms and spin around in a circle, clobbering anyone who dared to come close. And nobody would come close. The whole match would be me spinning in a circle in the middle of the ring with everyone else, terrified, standing against the ropes, trying not to get hit. And each round would be the same, nobody brave enough to get close, and the clock eventually running out. And it would be round after round until the match was over. And the judges would have to make a decision. And they’d look for statistics, like the number of punches thrown, to try to help them determine a winner. And they’d be forced to count every rotation that I made in the center of the ring as a punch. And it would be an unquestionable victory for me.

And eventually nobody would be paying me anything. I’d have completely dried up the sport of any fun, any interest, and any potential profit. But I’d still be the king. Undisputed. Much later in life, I’d still have my reputation of being the best boxer in history, never once getting punched, but I’d be a much older man, and like every human being who gets old, I’d lose a lot of my fight. And some knucklehead might wait outside of my house one day and, when I’m not looking, he’d sock me one right in the jaw. And his buddies would be there watching it, throwing around high-fives, filming it, and getting ready to put it up on whatever type of Youtube is popular in the future. But the punch would be too much for an old washed up boxer like me to take, and I’d die. And all of the sudden this nobody, this joker that punched me out, he’d be famous, like real famous, like way too famous. This wasn’t what he was bargaining for. Now he’d be the only guy in history to have landed a punch on history’s greatest boxer. He’d be the new champ. And everybody would want a piece of him. And he’d try to explain to the press that he didn’t mean to knock me out for good, that he’s not a real boxer, that he’d please like it for promoters to stop signing him up for these huge pay-per-view boxing matches, but it would be totally out of his hands, he’d be swept away by the currents of his unintentional celebrity. And these matches would be brutal, a whole line of boxers, as soon as one boxer would knock him out there would be another boxer right behind him to pick him up and knock him out again. And medicine is going to be so advanced in the future that this guy’s going to get the beating of a lifetime, over and over again, and a team of futuristic doctors is going to be right by his side, to rush up to him right as he takes his last breath, and they’re going to completely revive him, fix him up good as new, instantly ready for another pummeling, and it’s going to be like that for years and years and years.

And then science is going to get even more advanced, and eventually somebody is going to invent time travel. And some genius promoter is going to figure out a way to convince a scientist to let him borrow the time machine, and they’re going to go back in time to when this nobody knocked me out, gave me my first and final blow, and right as that guy punches me out, they’ll swoop in from the future and take me with them, and in the future the technology will be so great that not only will they bring me back to life, but they’ll make me young again. I’ll be back, totally in my prime. And it’ll be the rematch of a lifetime. A once-in-eternity type of a fight. It’ll be history’s greatest boxer versus the one guy who was able to actually punch him out. And it won’t even be a contest, because that guy was lucky to sucker-punch me while I was an old man, but now I’d be stronger than ever, and this guy’s going to get destroyed.

And after I beat him senseless, the doctors will revive him and I’ll just wipe the sweat off of my brow, but there won’t be any sweat, because it’ll be so easy for me that I won’t even be sweating, but I’ll do the wipe away motion just to make it look like I put in some effort, and I’ll say, “again,” and the match will start over and over again. “Again,” I’ll keep saying as this guy begs me to stop, but I won’t. Punch. Knockout. “Again.” Revive. Punch. Knockout. “Again.” And nobody will ever get bored this time, because just the idea of what’s going on, just the idea of this eternal slugfest made possible by such incredible feats of technology, people will be transfixed, unable to stop watching the beating. “Again!” they’ll chant with me in unison. It’ll be absolutely spectacular.

Time for a haircut

I hate getting a haircut. It’s one of those things that I always put off for way too long. I never even think about it until somebody says to me something like, “Hey Rob, you could sure use a haircut,” and then it goes from something that I hadn’t even considered to something that I can’t stop thinking about, not even for a second. I’ll always be told I need a haircut at the least convenient time, like right as I’m about to start an eight-hour shift at work, or on Saturday night, right after the barber has closed up shop until Tuesday morning. I’m told that I need a haircut and now I have to wait a ridiculous amount of time, all the while not being able to think about anything else other than my pressing need for some grooming. Every time I walk by a mirror I’m reminded of how awful it looks. How could I have not been thinking about getting a haircut? It’s so obvious now.

So finally a moment becomes available where I’m able to go get it cut. I’m hoping that one of the haircutters will be totally free, just completely available to immediately have me sit down and get started. But that’s never the case. I’ll be sitting in the little waiting area, listening to the barbers try to make ridiculous conversation with the people that are sitting there having their hairs all cut off, just hoping that they’d hurry up, because I can feel my hair growing, faster by the second. I’d just like to have this taken care of as soon as possible, please.

There are always a few barbers giving haircuts and, even though I usually have a preference for who I’d like to cut mine, I’ll never act on that preference. I’ll always just take whoever is available next. Trust me, if you tell the next available barber that you’d like to wait for somebody else, that guy’s never going to forget it. And someday you’re going to come back for a haircut and, whether it’s a time constraint or just a lack of available barbers, you’re going to have to settle for this barber that you had passed up that first time. And, well, maybe he won’t give you a purposefully bad haircut, but he’s not going to give you a great haircut. He’s not going to take his time and make sure it’s one of his better haircuts. He’s probably just going to crank on the old autopilot and zone out to whatever the TV is showing. Ten bucks. An OK haircut. Seriously, just take whoever’s next, and if you get the barber that you wanted, then it’s good luck. You can’t always have the barber that you wanted.

Growing up, my dad, my brothers and I used to go to this barbershop called Primo’s. It was located in a small shopping center by our house, right in between a Pathmark and a sushi place called Sushi-Ya. (Every time my family went to Sushi-Ya, I would scream out “Sushiiiii-YA!” and give a karate chop to one of my brothers or sisters right as I let out the “YA!”) The sign was really old, and the P and the R had fallen off, so if you didn’t know any better, you would think that the place was called Imo’s. But it wasn’t. It was Primo’s.

There was always a huge line of people waiting to have their hair cut personally by Primo himself. But, like I said, it’s totally ridiculous to request an extra wait just to have Primo cut your hair. He’s going to wind up resenting the fact that he has to work so much harder than all of the other barbers. He probably felt rushed, and his haircuts probably reflected that feeling. I’m sure he was flattered at first, but after a couple of months, he’d look at this ridiculous line of people impatiently waiting for their turn, and then he’d turn to his other side and see all of the other barbers relaxing and reading the newspaper.

So Primo was basically unavailable. The other barbers left were Ross, Abraham, and Tony. Each barber had his own advantages and disadvantages (except for Tony, who only had distinct disadvantages. I’ll explain later.) Ross must have been a childhood friend of Primo’s great-grandfather. It’s the only possible reason for why this hundred-year-old man still held full-time employment. And I’m not saying anything bad about old people. If the guy still had it, I’d be first in line for a Ross haircut. But he was so shaky with his tools. You could feel the tremors in his hands as he pressed the buzzer to the back of your head. And he insisted on having at least somewhat of a back-and-forth with his customers. He would fish for small talk, but completely out of left field, like, “Hey, don’t you work at Pathmark?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” With the pleasantries out of the way, he’d be free to zig-zag his way through your hair all while making vague comments about how the neighborhood sure isn’t what it used to be anymore, which, I’m assuming that whenever any old person says this, it’s always a thinly veiled racist remark, like look, there used to be more white people around, but now there’s a Japanese restaurant next door. (Sushiiiiiii-YA!)

Then there was Abraham. If I had to choose, and if I had to choose somebody other than Primo, I’d pick Abraham. The drawback of Abraham was that he never used any scissors, ever. It was strictly buzzer cuts. So you always came away from an Abraham cut looking as if you’d just enlisted in the army. But he totally owned it. He would brag about how he didn’t even need to use a pair of scissors. Ross hated Abraham, and let everyone know it. “What kind of a barber don’t use no scissors?” he would mutter way too loud to nobody in particular. I’m not sure where Abraham came from, but he had a big mustache and a thick accent. Maybe Turkey? I don’t know. I’m sure Ross knew, and I’m sure he didn’t approve.

Abraham wouldn’t use scissors, but he always finished up the haircut with a straight-razor. In fact, Abraham’s proficiency with a single blade was probably his most redeeming quality. You could always use it to get out of a Ross haircut. If Ross were available, he’d wipe off his chair and motion for you to come over. All you had to do was request a shave. Ross at some level must have known his own limits. He’d stare down at his shaking hands and say something like, “Sure, uh … Oh geez, I must have forgotten my straight-razor at home. You’re going to have to wait for Abraham.” And then Abraham’s face would light up. You could just tell what he was thinking, “Ha! Primo thinks he’s so popular. Looks like Primo’s not the only popular one around here. Now Abraham has a line too! Now Abraham is popular!” And while Abraham reclined your chair back and lathered up your face, he would openly brag, probably to just rub in Ross’s face a little more. “Now you are going to feel the magic! Abraham’s magic hands!” It reads a lot creepier than it sounded in real life. But it was a great shave, one of those shaves where your facial hair wouldn’t come back for close to a week.

Then there was Tony. Nobody ever got a haircut from Tony. I think it was just a generally accepted fact. For a guy who made his living in cutting hair, he had the worst haircut imaginable. It was these long, flowing, permanently wet-looking locks of thick hair. Normally, I would have assumed that the haircutter with the worst haircut has to be the best barber, because he’s the only one who can’t benefit from his own great haircutting skills. But that definitely wasn’t the case here. My brothers and I would all sit there and squirm and complain if we got called up to a Tony haircut. And my dad would get all pissed at us for making a scene and would say, “Fine, I’ll take a Tony haircut,” as if to show us that a haircut’s a haircut, that it didn’t really matter and that we were all being babies and making this whole family haircutting outing much longer than it needed to be. But then my dad would walk out with a weird new-wave hairdo and we would all try not to laugh for fear of getting yelled at on the way home. After a few visits, we would all just kind of try to avoid Tony’s pathetic gaze, his empty chair. He would gesture to my dad towards his seat, but my dad would just kind of shrug and look over his shoulder, almost saying, “Who me? No, you must be gesturing towards somebody else. Um. What? What?”

I recently went back to Primo’s, but some guy named Davy had bought the place. Apparently Primo had sold his majority stake in the firm and got relegated to second barber chair. Tony got the boot. But Davy got jealous because everybody still kept waiting for Primo. So then Primo got the boot. And then Ross came in to work one day and Davy just looked at him and said, “Really?” and Ross understood that he had given his last haircut. So it was just Abraham and Davy. I went with my brother and the place was empty, which, while terrible for the business, was great for us. I got Abraham, my brother Davy, and we both requested shaves. Abraham hadn’t lost any of his magic touch, but Davy clearly had never given a straight-shave before, and he totally mangled my brother’s face.

After that my brother started going to a new place. The new barber asked him where he had been getting his hair cut, and he told him at Primo’s. The guy apparently went into a huge rant about Abraham’s lack of talent, how this other guy makes the majority of his money fixing Abraham’s botched haircuts.

I started going to this Korean nail salon that also happens to give super cheap haircuts. It’s OK, but I hate going there because they always ask me if I want a shampoo first, which I don’t, because I always just shampoo in the shower, so why would I get another one here? But I feel like they resent me for it, or think I’m dirty, or cheap or something. Like I said, I really hate getting a haircut. It’s never a good experience. Some happen to be less terrible than others, but they’re all terrible, just terrible, terrible haircuts.

Fresh to death

You can’t box me in. I won’t fit into any type of mold. I don’t do presets. I’ve never even heard of the word conventional. What does it mean? Maybe I should go look it up. But I’m not going to do it in any dictionary. I’m so original that I’ve never looked anything up in a dictionary. It’s too tired, too cliché. That’s for everybody else. I only do things that nobody else does. I eat breakfast for lunch and I eat snack-foods for dinner. And once I do something, I’ll never do the same thing again. I’m too new. I’m always innovating. I ate breakfast for lunch today, but it was the first time I had ever done that. Yesterday I had dinner for lunch. And that was the first time that I had done that. And I’ll never do it again. Tomorrow I’m going to eat some pancakes. I’ve heard they’re great. Somebody told me they’re delicious. You know what? I’ll never eat pancakes. It’s already been tried. Old news. No, I’m going to eat some tancakes. What’s a tancake? You’ll find out when I invent them.

I march to the beat of my own drum. I’ll never settle into the same routine. I wait for the light to turn red and then I put my foot on the brakes. Sounds pretty regular, huh? But my car is original. I switched the brake with the gas, so it’s unique. You hit the brake and it takes off. You hit the gas and it stops. So when I’m at a red light I hit the brake and I go. And if the cops stop me after the light I like to ask the cop for his license and his registration because I’m not going to go through the same boring, done a million times traffic cop routine. And if he asks for my license, I’ll roll up my sleeves, because when I got my driver’s license, I had it tattooed on my arm, and then I threw out the original, because this is even more original, the most original, and the cop always lets me go. And then I pull up at the next light and wait for that light to turn red, and then I floor it, and maybe another cop will get behind me and turn on the sirens, but I’m not stopping. I just did that a block ago. I told you, I never do the same thing twice.

I voted for John McCain, only because I really wanted to vote for Barack Obama, but I knew that if I voted for Obama in 2008, then I wouldn’t be able to vote for him again in 2012. It would have already been done. I need to always be doing something fresh. I never watch reruns. I like it even fresher. But when I voted in 2008 it was in the cafeteria of some public school. No way I’m going back to the same place to vote again. So I set up a fake residence in some other country, and I’m going to vote via absentee ballot. And I’m not going to use a pen. It’s going to be in crayon. Because I stopped using pens a while ago. They’re so everyday, so pedestrian. Pens? Really? Could you be any more unoriginal?

I never even write these blog posts. I wrote the first one, and that was it. You think I’m going to sit here every day and do the same thing over and over again? No way. Everyday I find some other writer and pay him or her to write something new for me. It’s all on the books. I make them all file tax papers and everything. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “What, you make them do the same thing every day? How exciting.” But you’re wrong, because I’m not filling out the papers, they are. They’re the stupid ones. And besides, I get all of the papers printed at a different print shop every day. And then after the writers write something, they get fired. Take a hike. But I do it in a different way every time. Like one time I sang it out, like a song. Another time I baked a cake with a pink slip in the middle and I made the writer finish every last bite. Another time I sat the writer down and said, “I’m sorry, this isn’t working out.” But I only did that once, so it was new at the time.

I wear my pants on my torso. I wrap a bunch of shirts around my legs. Have you ever seen somebody skiing with the skis on their hands? And he was skiing upside down? And he was going up the mountain instead of down? And there wasn’t even any snow? And it wasn’t even winter, it was spring? And he had three skis instead of just two? That was me. That was my first ski trip. I loved it. I always wanted to go back. But I’m done with skiing. I need to find some new activities. Something completely different. Something that’ll really make me stand out from the pack.

I’m so goddamn funny! Hahaha!

Hahaha! I like to be so funny at work. Everyone thinks I’m the funniest. All day long I’m just making jokes and doing wacky stuff. Everyone loves it! There used to be this other guy that worked with us and everyone else also thought that he was pretty funny, and sometimes people would say, “I don’t know which one of you two is funnier!” but that guy got fired like three months ago, and so now it’s just me. I hated that guy, mostly because I was really jealous of him and afraid that one day someone would say to somebody else, “You know, I’ve though about it and I’ve decided that the other guy is actually much funnier,” and word would get back to me and I would get so pissed off. And I’d get really angry just imagining that happening, and it would stay with me for the rest of the day, really getting in the way of my sense of humor. But, like I said, he’s gone now, so I have the spotlight completely to myself. I go into work and everyone’s like, “Here’s Rob! Get ready to laugh!” Hahaha!

I do this thing where I go up to three unsuspecting coworkers and I’ll ask one of them which one of the other two coworkers he or she likes better. Ha! Like the other two people aren’t even there! Ha! Like I’m talking about them behind there back, right in front of them! Ha! It’s great. And then while everyone is busy laughing at that joke, I’ll make my own decision, I’ll say something like, “I’m going to have to go with …” and then I’ll just say a random name. And everyone is so busy laughing from the first part of the joke that they don’t even see the second part coming. And the laughing gets so crazy, so intense, it’s like the muscles on the sides of everyone’s jaw are aching from holding their mouths open in such a sustained heavy laugh for so long. Like everyone’s face is red and the laughing is so hard that it hurts. There’s a part of everyone that wishes they could just catch their breath, just for a second, just one breath because they are all running out of oxygen, but the laughter is so gripping that nobody can even relax their chest muscles at all, not even for a second, not even to take half a breath. It’s like everyone’s torso muscles are just locked in a flexed position, and it’s not even a laugh anymore, it’s beyond a laugh, it’s just a bunch of deep-red-faced people standing around twitching almost violently because they’re stuck in the grip of a profoundly deep seismic laugh. It’s great!

Everyone at work has to be clean-shaven every day. I know, right? Crazy. What is this the army? Ha! That was funny! I say funny little witty comments like that all the time at work. Like the boss will post a memo about some new rule, and I’ll just point to it and say to everyone, “Geez, what is this, the Marine Corps?” and everyone will just laugh and laugh. Anyway, one time for a whole month I only shaved one side of my face, letting the other side get all beardy. Every time my boss came into the room, I’d make sure that she was only facing me from my clean side. As soon as she turned away from me, I’d switch sides and silently point out my bearded profile to everyone else, right behind her back. Everyone would start laughing and my boss wouldn’t get it, obviously, so she’d turn around to see what was going on, but while she was turning around, I’d expertly rotate my body 180 degrees, almost in unison with her turning around to me, and I’d pretend like I was working really hard, not even paying attention to what was going on. She would get really flustered at the other employees for fooling around on the job too much, and while she yelled at them, I’d turn around again and start dancing behind her, constantly switching sides, alternating between serious, clean-shaven Rob and zany, bearded Rob. This only made my coworkers laugh even more, and it was made my boss even angrier, because this was all going down just as everyone was getting yelled at for laughing and goofing off in the first place, and they were trying really hard not to laugh, like biting down on their fists and pretending that the laughing wasn’t laughing, but coughing, but it wasn’t convincing at all. That was so funny! People are still talking about how funny that was! Ha!

I have this other trick where I walk around with a teapot. Hahaha! It’s crazy! Usually, when someone’s walking around with a teapot, it’s usually filled with boiling water. You know, for like tea and stuff. So I started this little game where I would walk around with a teapot, making sure to take really careful steps, holding it by the edge very cautiously, and then as soon as I got near a coworker, I would pretend like I’m spazzing out and I’d lose control of the teapot. But, hahaha! here’s the twist: there wouldn’t ever be any hot water in the teapot. Get it? So whoever was by me would get all freaked out, would get ready for a scalding hot burn, but just after all of the muscles in their body finished clenching up they’d realize that it was all a big prank! And the teapot always made this hollow crashing sound to the floor and that’s when everyone would start laughing like crazy! And after whoever it was realized that it was empty, they’d just catch their breath and then kind of shoot me this look that said without saying it, “Who else but Rob G.?” before joining in the laughter with everyone else. It’s hilarious! (Although one time I actually did drop a pot of really hot tea on somebody, but this person must have been so conditioned to laughing whenever I had a teapot that, instead of crying out in pain, he just doubled over on the floor, busting a gut. I’d like to think that I made a normally terrible experience just a little bit more enjoyable.)

I do all sorts of crazy stuff at work! I hide people’s stuff and then leave little notes that are half-jokes/half-clues, all leading back to their missing stuff! I’ll dip my hand in honey and then walk around the room giving unsuspecting coworkers high-fives! I called up a coworker’s phone from a payphone down the block and told them I was the cops and that their parents got locked up for a vast money-laundering scheme! I fill up everybody’s drinks with Tabasco sauce! I replaced all of the Tabasco sauce with cherry syrup! I replaced all of the cherry syrup with vanilla syrup! I replaced all of the vanilla syrup with good maple syrup! I replaced all of the good maple syrup with gross Log Cabin artificial maple flavored syrup! One time I mixed up all of the labels on the soda machine! When one guy lost his wallet, I found it, but I stole fifty bucks! I’m so goddamn funny! Ask anyone! Hahaha! Hahahahaha! Ha!