American Chimpanzee

I was probably a pretty rambunctious kid, because I remember my father always being after me for one thing or another. When I was a Senior in high school, and prone to staying out later than I should on a Friday or Saturday night, he would always make it a point to get me up early the next day. "Why do I need to get up early?" I'd ask him. "Because everything has a price," he'd tell me. I'm sure he was trying to teach me something, but it was something I didn't want to learn. After a few early mornings of me getting up to do nothing but learn a lesson, the only lesson I did learn was if I got out of bed so he could see me, and then, when he went inside, immediately laid down on the floor of the far side of my bed, the side facing away from my bedroom door, so that he  couldn't  see me, then I could happily spend the rest of the morning in dreamland.  Happily, that is, until he discovered what I was doing. My snoring gave me away. As a kid, I was ...

The crazy granny proudly pulled a tart cake from her greasy navel and declared it well-baked.      "Everything in my kitchen is low-fat except me." –anonymous      song recommendation: Mashed Potato Time by Dee Dee Sharp       Pardon My French, But Revisité      My older and much less attractive brother was telling me about a book he’s reading called No Green Bananas . Or something like that. To tell the truth, he talks so much I tend to tune him out. The point of the book is that life is short, so why buy green bananas when there is no guarantee you’ll be alive to eat them when they finally ripen? My first quibble with the book is how do you get 50,000 words out of what I just summarized in one sentence? I’ve run across similar books. I would name them, except that would take research and I'm not up for that kind of effort since, according to Green Bananas , there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before I...

Hard Core Advice From  Hard Core's Hardest Core...  John Leslie! Dear John,      My brother just got engaged. He and his girlfriend have two kids. Usually, this is a happy time for families, but eight months ago, my brother's fiancee cheated on him.       At that time, my brother decided to keep his family together and work things out, which I greatly admire, but I just found out that his fiancee is still talking, emailing, and texting the guy she cheated with. My brother still wants the wedding to go on, and wants the rest of us to mind our own business.      I really think this is a bad decision for my brother. I worry his girlfriend will continue to cheat and hurt him over and over again. Do I say something or keep my mouth shut?      Hurting Dear Hurting, There is an old saying in our industry: "If you keep your mouth shut... you won't make any money." You're welcome. D...

   au pair in quagmire clears scuttlebutt with squeegee ends rigamarole    "Wherever you go, there you are." from the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension    song recommendation: Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson    The Big Tree    I am driving my father to visit an old military friend a few cities away. On our way there he decides he wants to visit relatives who live somewhere in between, so I make a little detour to accommodate him. It's no big deal. I know how to get there and I know the area. In fact, we’re almost there. "Are you lost?" he asks me. I continue to drive down the street I'm on. I say nothing. Between you and me, I'm on the right street. Out of the corner of my eye I see him looking out up and down the street. Side to side. His head on a swivel. "I think you're lost," he tells me, his eyes bugging out. "I don't recognize anything." One funny thing about my father that I've not...