Drained
Many of you good, probably drunk people have sent me your photos of the canals in Lewiston, which were recently drained. I appreciate all the images of busted computer monitors, bent shopping carts, sad-looking boots, bald tires, wrecked bird cages, ancient TVs, ugly sofas and doorless microwave ovens scattered half-buried in the muck at the bottom of the canals. It occurs to me, though, that you’ll send me photos of mud and stinking water while I’ve never received a single Christmas card from any of you people. I’m getting mixed messages about my place in your life.
I just get it for the articles
I wanted to go commando into the flotation pod, I really did. (For context, glance to your left if you’re reading the good ol’ newspaper. Glance at this if you’re not.) Getting naked in a semi-public place is always a thrill, but no. I had a news photographer along with me and, as one bystander pointed out, “We’re not shooting a Playgirl spread here.” True that. I refuse to pose for Playgirl again after they stiffed me the first time. Burt Reynolds got WAY better play than I did.
Foliage season!
Ah, bite me. I’m not ready to talk about this yet. No peeping until I say so.
Shotgun heaven
Sketch master Bill Eldridge got me again, this time whipping up his own rendition of my shotgun prowess out on the range in Bridgton. I appreciate the tribute, my good man, but let me ask you: Why am I always sweating in your sketches? Do I have some kind of fever or something? Give it to me straight, man. Am I dying?
Pumpkins
No. Just, no. I don’t care if Shaw’s already has a display set up, it’s still technically beach weather, so there will be no talk of pumpkins. Not a word. Don’t think I won’t find out, either.
Dirt: An American Campaign
When I wrote the novel by the above title, I worried that my fictional presidential campaign was too absurd for any reader to believe. Along comes the Hillary vs. Trump stand-up comedy show and now I realize that my premise wasn’t absurd enough. Clearly I should have included more fainting spells, comb-overs, metal things falling out of pant legs, Rosie O’Donnell references and cuckolded old guys from Vermont. Now Hillary and the Donald are exchanging medical records like a couple of young swingers about to hook up in a bar. Only Franz Kafka, or possibly Bukowski, could write fiction as weird as the 2016 presidential campaign.
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