Cookies make everything okay

I really want to write about soups because I have been painting them in an unconventional way lately. But that post wouldn't be funny enough, so I will tell you about the time I got pee on a fat stranger. And I will illustrate this post with some of the paintings of soups that I have been working on, even though they have no pertinence to the tale.

Years ago I suffered from a nasal infection and my doctors had me give blood and urine samples to be analyzed for a diagnosis.

I showed up at the lab early in the morning. I hadn't eaten, as requested. A large, alarmingly unkempt phlebotomist called me into a little room and handed me a plastic jar to pee in. I went to the bathroom, peed and returned to the small room to have my blood drawn. I guess I didn't screw the top of the pee jar on sufficiently, but I didn't know that yet.

I sat in one of those special chairs with the arm rest that protrudes from a very clinical type of seat that is used specifically by labs to draw blood. My sample of pee sat safely on a counter next to me. The phlebotomist asked if I was afraid of needles? I said no. This was a lie. I also failed to tell him that the sight of blood made me light-headed. All of this would become clear to him in about 4 seconds, when he thrust a jagged telephone pole of a needle into my vein with what I recall as vigorous enthusiasm. Just as I felt as if I were powering through the pain, I peeped a look and to my horror I saw what appeared to be a geyser of blood spouting from my arm like a breaching whale. I instantly felt faint. My ears rang and I felt my body falling fast towards the floor. I instinctively reached for any support from my surroundings. In the midst of all of the chaos I managed to grab the jar of urine that sat next to me on the counter. For some reason I tossed the jar to the phlebotomist. It was then that we both realized that I had not in fact fastened the lid to the jar of pee properly.

For a moment, I passed out. As I regained consciousness, I saw an empty jar lying on the floor and the poor man who had been drawing my blood covered in my pee. Two nurses quickly came into the room and helped me stagger to a recovery room which was unfortunately located on the other side of the waiting room.

So a room full of people, who were were already anxious about having their blood drawn, watched in horror as two nurses conveyed me through the waiting area, visibly drenched in urine and covered in enough blood to to be alarming, like some officer wounded in battle.

The nurses sat me in a chair. Handed me orange juice and a chocolate chip cookie. I was fine. Just a little embarrassed.

A delicate French onion soup in a thermos

A spicy tomato soup, carrot ginger soup & tequila in thermoses

Cream of asparagus saffron in small thermos

Clam chowder and vichyssoise, obviously 

I could have handled that better...

So last night I went to dinner with my best friend Adrian. We went to a fish restaurant and ordered some oysters, had a few beers, and laughed about stuff. This restaurant, like so many, has a huge tropical fish tank that comprises most of one of the walls. After we had consumed about two beers, I noticed that one of the large beautiful blue and yellow fish in the tank was dead. It looked like the fish that was portrayed by Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo--that really capped it for me.

I tried to listen to what my friend was saying, but I was too saddened and fixated on the beautiful dead fish draped over some orange coral. I couldn't believe that everyone in the restaurant didn't notice. I have some eye issues and it was a strain for me to see the fish, but I could not stop staring. In order for me to see things easily, sometimes I need to close one eye and really concentrate. So while my friend was talking about stuff, I was just staring at this dead fish, squinting and blinking and shutting one eye. Eventually my friend noticed. He was perplexed, and asked me what I was doing with all the facial contortions. I told him. Then we both started to stare at the fish, grimacing and laughing in a sad and uncomfortable way for quite a while. Suddenly I noticed that the dead fish was right behind what looked like two drunk college girls who weren't aware of the fish corpse behind them. They were aware of me laughing and making weird faces at them, however. I tried to explain to them from across a crowded noisy room what I was looking at. I pointed at them and yelled: "Dead fish."

Sadly they didn't understand, and my explanation only seemed to make matters worse. It got a little embarrassing.

Other than that, it was a great night out with my best friend.

A Thin Blue Line A Thin Blue Chip

Once years ago I was driving along a hilly street. As I drove along, I listened to the Al Franken Show on the radio.

It was one of my favorite programs...and the episode I was listening to was the very last broadcast.

All of the regular guests came on to talk to Al and the whole thing got super-emotional. I started to get emotional too and before I knew it...I was driving along crying.

All of the sudden I see red lights in my rear-view mirror and hear the whoop whoop sound of a siren. I was being pulled over.

I quickly tried to regain my composure. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and cleared my throat. Slowly, as the policeman approached, I rolled down my window.

He looked at me for a moment and asked me if I was crying.

I said I was just listening to the radio and that I wasn't really crying...but moved by a program.

He looked at me, puzzled, and said, "I can't let you drive in this state, sir." He pointed to an empty parking lot up the road and asked me to pull in there and wait 15 minutes.

I drove to the parking lot and he followed in his squad car. We parked. He sat about 20 feet away in his car watching me. It was a little embarrassing...but it was about to get worse.

I guess there wasn't a lot going on in town that day. So some of the extra patrol cars decided to swing by and hang out too. Everyone was just hanging around waiting for me to stop crying. Before long there were at least six cops there, leaning on their vehicles, talking about who knows what. Every once in awhile one of them would walk up to my window to see how I was doing.

Eventually one offered me some Sun Chips. I declined, but then I changed my mind. After I started eating the chips everything got better. Before I knew it we were all hanging out eating Sun Chips and drinking Dr Pepper. They had some pretty funny stories! I forgot all about my embarrassment.

Much ado about something

I will now tell you two stories that involve guys being embarrassed.

I will start with something that happened to my friend Josh once in Beijing. To protect the identities involved I will refer to Josh as Chambliss Masterson as I recount the events that transpired on that cold and dark night so many years ago. Myself and my friend Chambliss Masterson (Josh) were at some charming little German restaurant on the outskirts of town eating spaetzle and drinking beer. Chambliss was in kind of a somber mood because he was having some relationship woes with his girlfriend in the United States, Kaitlin. To protect Kaitlin's identity I will refer to her as Ambrosia in this story. Anyway, Chambliss Masterson was bummed out because it looked as if there was trouble brewing on the horizon in terms of their relationship. Around our third or fourth round of delicious dark stouts, a young Chinese man approached our table peddling his wares. In this particular case what the young man was pushing was pirated DVD's. This was very common, so we both started to leaf through his merchandise which he kept in a cardboard box. Immediately Chambliss came across a Sex and the City box set which he knew Ambrosia would love...so he got the whole glittery pink thing. Instantly he seemed very interested to know if I was going to get anything. There was lots of good stuff in there, BBC documentaries, Kon-Tiki, I even remember seeing Deliverance. That is worth owning! But suddenly I understood that Chambliss just wanted to sandwich his Sex and the City DVD's between legit titles. He would say, "Let me carry those for you." A seemingly friendly gesture, with a slightly less than honest motivation. If Chambliss was going to buy a big pink Sex and the City box set, I was determined to make sure he carried that big sparkly wedding cake of a DVD collection all the way home under his arm for the world to see. I wasn't going to let him sandwich that big pink glitter jewel between a directors cut of Apocalypse Now and Alien. No way! So, like a man, I didn't buy a single DVD that night! and yes, Chambliss carried that girly sparkle package all the way home. He took responsibility for himself that night. Like a soldier with a noble purpose he marched off into that night with his head held high, even though he totally had to drag that thing across town for everyone to see! It's not like there aren't a billion people in China either! I'm pretty sure a billion people saw him carrying that dainty laced-up box home that night! I'm just glad I was one of those lucky billion.

When I was about seventeen I really wanted that song "Nothing Compares to You" by Sinead O'Connor. Unfortunately, then, the iTunes store did not exist. If I wanted that song I would need to buy the whole album. So I drove down to Borders only to find that I couldn't go through with it. I made a couple dry runs, but opted to ask my sister if she would buy it for me. The next day we both went down to Borders and got the album. I even pretended to mock my sister's musical tastes in line, so the other patrons and the check-out lady would believe I thought Sinead O'Connor was stupid. I know, it was clever and my sister got a kick out of it too, I think. It was funny to pretend I was an asshole in public, when in secret I couldn't wait to sing along to "Nothing Compares to You." And I did. As soon as I was alone. Unfortunately the next day I was in my car singing the high part in my best falsetto voice at a stop light thinking the windows were up--but they weren't. To my horror, I looked to my right and saw a jeep full of my water polo friends staring at me. They were so shocked they hadn't even started to laugh. They got over their shock eventually, and they did laugh about it. It was embarrassing. I blame my sister for the whole thing. She can be so inconsiderate! It's like she planned it or something. She's so messed up like that! Jeez.