Mickey Hadick

Last week, a man spent more than 20 harrowing minutes in a Toyota Prius with a stuck accelerator on a highway, going more than 90 miles per hour. Here in Michigan, that's referred to as "getting to work," but I'm not going to split hairs. The mystery as to why that Prius went that fast for so long has been solved.

It turns out that the Prius' Flux Capacitor was malfunctioning. Had it been operating properly, the Prius would have crossed the space-time continuum, and gone back to a simpler time in our history, when idiots driving too fast were shot by other motorists suffering from road rage.

Labels: standup

I volunteered to paint faces at the children's Christmas party hosted by my company. I enjoyed it, but it was strangely intense because the line of children never ended until the party was over, and, while painting, the parents scrutinize your every move. I also felt a mild competition with the other face painters who I was certain were more talented than I am. That combined with having to bend forward for two straight hours while painting a squirming child's face left me exhausted. I am not very good at it, but the children were, by and large, thrilled with the result.

Two children were not happy. One was just a toddler, and she became frightened when I drew close enough to touch her, and she screamed at the first flick of the paint brush. She acted as if I was the uncle who got drunk at family parties and said inappropriate things, but there is no way she could know that about me, so I don't think that was the problem; it was just a coincidence. The resulting candy cane was pathetic and resembled my finger painting work done in my preschool period.

The other was a boy, about ten years old, who requested a Batman cowl. When I showed him my progress, he realized I had no idea what I was doing, and also that he was screwed, because you just don't rub black paint off of your face and walk away like nothing ever happened. I offered to paint his entire face black like he was in a minstrel, but then retracted the idea with a casual laugh because I couldn't tell if his mother was cool enough to understand the uber-irony of the political incorrectness of painting an innocent child's face like he was in a minstrel.

In spite of those setbacks, it occurred to me that face painting would be an interesting power for a super hero. When someone needed to be cheered up, call on Face Painting Man. When there was a party that was doomed to boredom, call on Face Painting Man. When there was something you needed, but didn't know what, and thought that a small design on your cheek might help, and definitely wouldn't make things any worse than they already were, call on Face Painting Man.

Face Painting Man himself would always have a different design on his face, and so that would be part of his power. People in need would know that, if Face Painting Man showed up, it would be with a new and exotic picture, tightly integrated with his own features. The general public would look favorably on Face Painting Man because he was always making clever designs and executing them with care and skill, and almost never left a child in black face.

That's kind of how I was at the children's Christmas Party: Face Painting Man. Champion of the meek, defender of the pale, decorator of the undecorated, and dedicated to brightening the lives of children twelve and under using non-toxic paint and inoffensive designs. "No need to thank me, hot mom; making your boring child happy is thanks enough."

There would be two other face painting super heroes: Face Painting Woman and Face Painting Boy. Face Painting Woman and Face Painting Man would admire each other, and respect each other's work, but their relationship would remain strictly professional because to give in to their attraction for each other would put the public at risk. Face Painting Woman would also be really hot, and would sometimes paint her costume on her body, and she would be so good at it that you'd have to get really close to her to realize she wasn't wearing any clothes. But of course no one ever would get that close to Face Painting Woman. Even the children she painted would be totally oblivious. The dads would fantasize, but they're going to do that whether she's wearing clothes or not.

Face Painting Boy would be this quirky kid that always admired Face Painting Man, and couldn't wait until he was old enough to leave home and help defend the pale, etc., because he thought Face Painting Man was the greatest thing since sliced pickles. (The kid is quirky, right?) He might go astray sometimes, and try his hand at graffiti, but Face Painting Man would be all patient and understanding, and would help bring him back around to serving the public good, rather than hiring himself out to gangs to mark territory on the side of buildings.

I realize Face Painting Man is serving only a very small of society that has a very specific need, and would therefore not compete well against the traditional superheroes with all their strength, speed, and ability to fly. (Well, he'd still be better than The Green Hornet, but I don't want to get bogged down in that argument.) The prime directive of super heroes is: "First, do no harm." Assuming that Face Painting Man never poked a child in the eye with his paint brush, I think he would have a legitimate claim to serving the public good.

Labels: standup, story

Two of the happiest people on earth at the moment have got to be Richard Heene, from "Balloon Boy" fame, and Jon Gosselin, formerly of "Jon and Kate, etc.", whose unseemly behavior had cast them, figuratively and literally, in unfavorable and unforgiving light. Their publicity aside, Richard seemed to be perpetually in need of a shave and a hair cut, and Jon seemed to only have his picture taken with special cameras that emphasize double chins and puffy eyes.

They can rest easy for the next few weeks thanks to Tiger Woods. It will be his strong face, winning smile, and sparkling eyes that are plastered on all the magazines at the grocery store checkout line, and Entertainment Tonight will open every episode with "...but first, the latest from the expanding saga of Tiger Woods sex secrets."

The cheap tabloids will likely pay extra bounty for pictures of Tiger taken mid-chew as he eats his lunch so that his face looks more like the normal silly-putty skinned monsters that the rest of us are, but don't want to be. That poor man would be well-advised to never scratch his nose in public again because some photographer will be there waiting at the precise angle that makes it look like he is picking rather than just scratching.

It's an old adage in modern America that when a high-profile celebrity does something embarrassing and stupid, they need only wait about a month before the next garbage scow of celebrity stupidity arrives in port to draw all the attention, and your own garbage scow can go quietly out to sea. None of what any of these poor bastards has done is all that bizarre; they are, in fact, very human. But they are doomed to ridicule for having been famous.

It's Tiger, of course, who will have the last laugh. His fame was based on real talent, and he has a clear path to redemption: zip up his pants and play golf. He'll get another wife if he wants, and he'll eventually be a billionaire if he isn't already. The other poor fools will be lucky to end up, like me, obscure and forgotten.

Labels: mistake, standup

A simple game of bean bag toss takes on a very different tone when you call it "Corn Hole", depending on where you live. This tournament took place in Ohio, and we knew exactly what was meant. Our friends in Wisconsin, when we offer to play corn hole with them, raise an eyebrow.

Labels: standup

I tore into a brand new box of Lucky Charms and ate them out of the box. I'm not going to apologize for this behavior, but neither am I proud of it. Those charms are not just lucky, but they are also magical. I think they could be called "Magical Charms." I'd still buy them, but instead of a leprechaun as the mascot and spokesman, you'd have to have a midget-wizard, or maybe an elf.

I find them magical because of the aftertaste that lingers on my tongue and in my throat. I enjoy the aftertaste more so than the actual taste. There is something about the chemicals they use to create the marshmallows that coats my throat, and prolongs the flavor and the release of sugar. I find it intoxicating and delightful.

They coat the cereal things with some bland frosting, but I don't even notice those. They are just in the way, but I wouldn't want to eat just a box of marshmallows—that wouldn't be right. In truth, there is a fine interplay between the two ingredients, cereal and chemically-created marshmallow, that makes it work. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't even mind that they keep creating new shapes to include, but at some point in the future they are going to run out of cute things and someone in their design department, feeling desperate and having a very bad day, will suggest that they make a poop-shaped charm. I believe that that idea should be rejected. I don't think Lucky the Leprechaun can add "brown dookie" to his brag list of charms inside the box and sell cereal.

When I was but a mere child, I was careful to separate the marshmallows in my bowl of Lucky Charms, and save them for last. They would begin to melt in the milk, and a sugary scum formed across the top, but oh how proud I was of myself to have upwards of two dozen marshmallow charms remaining in my bowl, clinging to each other because of what I would later learn was surface tension in the milk. I thought they were friends, having fun in a white, sweet pool, or survivors of a boating accident, desperate to live, thinking they've been rescued by the great big spoon from the sky, only to realize they were being devoured by their God.

Now I just eat them out of the box.

Labels: standup, story

I will vote today, but I'm not going to tell you for whom I'll be voting. For the most part, I have no idea who is on the ballot, so I couldn't tell you much about the vote beyond the big ones, President and Congress. The names for the local election are all a blur, but I'll do my best.

The most memorable campaign speech I know of is from the Patty Duke show. It's the episode where both Patty and Cathy (her identical twin, for those of you under the age of forty) are running for class president. They wage a vicious campaign with Patty appealing to her friends and calling in old favors, and Cathy taking the moral high-road. There is a third opponent, some quiet wallflower whose entire speech consisted of "Vote For Me". The wallflower wins as Patty and Cathy knock each other out.

That would be a frightening prospect for our Presidential election especially if Nader or Kucinich somehow snuck into office. (By the way, Dennis Kucinich's first wife—who was not nearly as hot as his current wife—was once my substitute English teacher in high school. How's that for a brush with greatness?) Luckily, the forefathers anticipated the "Vote For Me" possibility, and created the Electoral College. Well, I guess they were really worried about a regional demi-God who might win it all through crazy-ass popularity rather than some quiet girl lurking in the wings.

Don't forget to vote, but don't bother writing me in. I'd be a swell leader, but I'd be hell-bent on annexing Canada, and that's not good for the long-term stability of the globe. Then again, how stable is the globe anyway. Heck, we wobble on our axis, and the Republicans have pretty much nationalized the financial system to keep their own greedy bastard supporters from robbing us blind.

So what the heck: go ahead and write me in. I appreciate your support.

Labels: standup

Yesterday, while working in the yard, I had an incident that demonstrates my own fault and folly with immaturity, and my relationship with my wife. She had done some pruning in one of her gardens, and loaded the refuse into a laundry basket. The laundry basket, overflowing with dead vegetation, was left at the side of the garage, presumably for someone other than herself to take it to our mulch pile in the backyard.

I could have been the person to do that, for I walked past that laundry basket everyday for a month making the exact route prescribed, from the garage to the backyard. It would have only taken a moment of thought to complete the transaction. But I have a fault in that I don't like cleaning up messes created by someone else. It's childish, I realize, but it's no sillier than other childish belief systems, such as the Unitarianism, Dewey Decimal, or Social Security.

I finally broke down yesterday and decided to take the laundry basket to the mulch pile. Of course, the laundry basket is a story in itself because it had fallen into disuse, I threw it away, and my wife retrieved it out of the trash. So I had plenty of resentment against this laundry basket before we even started.

On one of my many trips around the house while raking leaves, I bent over and grabbed the laundry basket. I noticed a foul, fetid odor. It reminded me of the mice nests whose stench I often find in our shed, so I held the basket away from me with some trepidation that a mouse (EEK!) might still be nested within. I felt something wet on my pants leg, and heard water pouring. At least I thought it was water, and in my mind imagined that basket sitting through rain storms and water gathering in the bottom. All that changed in an instant.

The foul, fetid stench gained strength. I looked at the water spilling from the basket in my hands, and noticed it was not clear like rain water, but tinged with yellow. The dogs had been urinating on the basket for weeks, and their pungent pee had been gathered there, and was now soaked into my pants and shoes.

When my anger subsided and the chore was done, I went inside the house. My daughter reeled at the smell. It turns out that massive amounts of dog urine is an effective family repellent.

Labels: mistake, standup, story

One of my all time favorite phrases is "A Lick and a Promise", as in

I'm going to give the floor a lick and a promise.

This usage refers to quickly wiping up the floor, but having the intention of cleaning that same floor more thoroughly later on. But I am so turned on by that phrase that I want to drop to my hands and knees and scrub the floor myself, a stiff brush in one hand, up to my elbow in hot, sudsy, dirty water with my other hand.

One of my coworkers used the phrase today in a meeting, referring to some task that she was committed to doing, but not having adequate time to do it properly just at this moment. She said, "I'm going to give the requirements a lick and a promise." I bet you are.

The first time I heard the phrase was from the lips of my mother-in-law. I about shit when I heard it, stunned and disbelieving my ears. She is devoted to her religion, curses very infrequently, and was in her late seventies at the time. I understood that she was talking about the floor, but the phrase crashed into all sorts of other ideas in my head. My wife's mother? A lick and a promise?

At the time, I was so shocked that I told my father about it. He reported that his own mother used the phrase herself quite often. Apparently it offered my father very little in terms of titillation to hear his mother say it, and so he was slightly perplexed at my reaction. My grandmother? Gramma? A lick and a promise?

I suppose there are a number of phrases that sound dirty even though they really aren't, but none of them effect me like A lick and a promise? Consider:

• Stump Grinder
• Waxed Beans
• Bone Dry
• Weiner Schnitzel
• Tongue Depressor
• Ben & Jerry's
• Screw Driver
  

All of these are used in the course of normal American English, and, if you really think about it, can probably have other connotations that are impolite. But those things never occur to me. Except for my favorite. I guess it's just one of those things.

Labels: standup

I just added the first of many articles to my site: Pandemic Joke, which was delivered as a Toastmasters speech a couple of years ago. It was inspired by Monty Python's "Funniest Joke in the World" skit, which actually demonstrated the weaponization of a joke.

The first time I delivered it, it went over the time limit, and I had to redo it. This version has all the nasty bits still in it.

Also the first time I delivered it, someone actually snorted in her laughter at the moment when it talks about snorts, and so that was great fun.

Labels: standup, toastmaster

I eat a lot of bananas, and so does my son. It's not unusual for him to eat four in a day. I'm always good for two, occasionally three, and today I had four. I like them ripe, and have been known to eat them when they are dark brown on the outside, almost to the point of turning greasy and black. I will usually slice away the bruised and rotten parts, but not always.

When I shop, I occasionally am a little self-conscious when I pile eleven pounds of bananas on the conveyor belt. I have a line ready just in case the clerk asks what I do with them. I'm going to say that I have a chimpanzee, and he gets really pissed off if we run out, and that I'm tired of scrubbing feces from the wall after he throws it. But the damn clerks never ask.

I guess the clerks see it all anyway, and don't particularly care to begin with. Condoms and cucumbers and coupons? Whatever. Price check on the zucchini? Sure. They are making their four or five or six dollars an hour (I really have no idea) and it's a grind of a job to stand for hours on end, dealing with repetitive motion and cranky customers who can't count, use checks, or smell bad. They have to deal with baggers that can't bag and managers that don't care.

But how many people do they see buying twelve pounds of bananas at once? Aren't they just a little curious? Don't they want to ask? Couldn't one of them ask just once. I really want to give them the chimpanzee line.

Labels: standup

I love the first cup of coffee in the morning like nobody's business. The aroma turns my head and draws me near as it brews. The sound of the coffee dripping into the carafe brings excited anticipation. And when I pour that first cup, I marvel at the multi-colored bubbles that form, thanks to the oils of the bean that miraculously survived the brewing process.

When I drink that first cup, it is all wonder and ecstasy. My problems become solvable, my goals achievable, and my outlook is rosy and full of joy. Even my bad knee stops hurting. I sit at my desk and begin to work, sipping frequently at that first cup of coffee.

But just five minutes later, the heat has begun to leave my coffee mug, and I grow suspicious. Did I have the correct amount of coffee grounds in the basket? Was the carafe clean? Is there something wrong with the water?

As the coffee cools, it is also exposed to the air and begins to oxidize. So I return to the carafe, and pour a second cup.

But the second one is lousy. Worse than lousy, as now it is just as oxidized as the first, and has grown bitter under the heat. I wonder, "Why do I even like coffee?"

I really need one of those single cup brewers. It'd be like meeting the love of your life for the very first time with every cup of coffee. The spark, the excitement, the arousal. Whew, now I need a cigarette.

Woot.com had one of those brewers a few months ago for $20, but I missed the deal. I may never forgive myself for that.

Labels: standup

It used to be that how one squeezed the toothpaste tube could ruin a marriage. If you were a ham-fisted buffoon that grabbed the tube in the middle, you'd soon trap a third of the toothpaste at the bottom. And what a horrible reminder to your wife that she would never be caressed gently or tenderly by her husband, for here was a man that could only manage the crudest of touch. A man like that would be better off single, using his heavy grip on jackhammers.

Back then, the tubes were metal. If you don't remember that, then this whole story is pointless. Nowadays, there are plastic tubes and small bottles for toothpaste, both of which are immune to the squeeze from the middle problem. There are also pump driven cylinders that draw the paste out vertically.

If you remember the metal tubes, do you also remember the plastic key designed to grip the bottom of a metal toothpaste tube. Once installed, you would turn the key (which folded the tube over itself neatly) to squeeze out toothpaste. When the tube was nearly empty, you'd have this huge wrap around the key of tube, and just a little nipple at the top. Without tension, the key would unwind slightly, and the unraveled tube suggested a form of abstract art to me.

My wife and I keep our own, seperate toothpaste. There is no risk of arguing over how the tube was squeezed, or if one us misplaces the cap. Is that progress? I'm not so sure.

We go about our lives like roommates, never really testing the water to see how volatile our marriage might be. With separate toothpaste, separate shampoo, and separate closets, are we even married? Marriage is about conflict, stress, and the constant threat of divorce. Yet, by depending on each other to not screw up the toothpaste tube, my parents found meaning in their lives, and probably love.

I can't believe that modern culture has robbed me of that possibility.

Labels: standup

I. If something bad happens to me, that's tragedy. But if it happens to you, that's comedy.

II. Tragedy plus time equals comedy.

III. Everything is really just a dick joke.

IV. Getting hit in the balls is always funny to someone.

V. Words with the 'K' sound are funny.

DISCUSSION

These laws have been gathered from the greatest comedic minds of the past three millenia, except for Aristotle. He thought he was funny, but really wasn't (which, by the way, is a fine example of tragedy).

Law V. is a little shaky, and may be revised at some point. Well, it's immutable, so it can't be revised; so we may just cut the little bugger (just as long as we don't cut my little bugger).

Labels: standup

Amongst men, if you want to pick a fight with another man, you should enter the room in anger and throw something at him. Other acceptable forms of the invitation to fight are the two-handed push to the chest, the finger poke to the sternum, and insulting his mother.

This formal invitation is often seen in movies, and is most famously done in Westerns in a bar. However, the fight frequently escalates into a shootout, and so it is not recognized as being a fight, but rather a gun fight. Of course, to invite someone to a gun fight, you need only throw your poncho over your shoulder and rest your hand on your holster.

The following do not qualify as official invitations to fight, and may be safely ignored by the invitee without loss of dignity:

• A one-handed push to the shoulder (you can turn with the push and back away).
• A slap in the face (no sissy-fights please).
• A chest bump (what is this, the NFL?).
• A vehement stream of insults (I'm rubber and you're glue.)

The following forms of invitation are for street fighting:

• Spitting
• Sucker punch
• Any form of weaponry from handgun to candlestick or beer mug (see gunfights, above).

Street fighting, of course, is not bound by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, and may be met with a chair over the head, a knife in the back, or a knee to the groin (preferred).

These used to be unwritten rules, but are codified here for posterity sake.

Labels: standup

When I played hockey, most of the guys on the team would blow their nose by closing one nostril with a finger and blowing, spewing phlegm across the ice. We called it "coach's handkerchief," but it always creeped me out. I would sneak tissue onto the ice, hiding it in quiet places in my uniform. I was lucky I wasn't abused by them in the shower.

I have seen, on more than one occasion, grown men blow their nose into the sink in the men's room at work. I just barely understand this, but only just barely. It is, technically, probably, as equally hygienic as using tissue, but it's just one of those things that creep me out slightly. It's like someone that brushes their teeth in the kitchen sink. It just doesn't seem right.

Do you say, "bless you" when someone is bent over the sink blowing their nose? Small talk is tough enough in the men's room without some weird breach of protocol. I don't quite know what to say, so it's imperative that I don't make eye contact. When you're shoulder to shoulder at the urinal, all is right with the world. Just don't make any sudden movements, and don't glance in their direction, and everything will be all right.

But when the guy is bent over at the sink, if the timing is wrong, he's going to stand up and you can't help but look. Dumb ass. It's not like I wash my hands in his cubicle, or pee in a jar while waiting for the elevator.

Labels: standup

When it comes to ending telephone conversations, I have lost the ability to hang up the damn phone. It becomes an awkward series of...

"Okay...see you...take care...talk to you later...have a good evening...alright....later...mm-hmm...goodbye...bye.

It doesn't matter who the other person is, be they a close friend, old friend, remote acquaintance, service manager at the auto repair shop, my son, my daughter, or a wrong number. I've become too polite on the phone, and the endings become like a ping pong match between two mediocre players, back and forth, volley return, over and over again, because no one has a smash shot they can use to hang up the God damn phone.

There is, of course, one exception to this rule, and that is with my wife. After twenty years, we end our conversations like this:

"Is that it?"
"I guess."
"Bye."
Click.

It's over in two seconds. Hell, we don't even say hello when we call.

"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"Did you bounce a check for $215.37?"
"I guess."
"Okay."
"Bye."
Click.

I need to imagine that the entire world is my wife, and that there is no reason for pretension or ceremony. I need to end every phone call like it's just another conversation in an infinite series of phone calls, mundane, boring, intrusive, and annoying. I need to say goodbye and hang up.

I'm done.

Labels: standup

Some men like to pretend they're golfing. They swing an imaginary club while waiting in line at the movies, or waiting for an elevator, or while talking to someone outside of their cubicle at work. It's usually a drive, a big, roundhouse swing, with lots of follow through and an excellent pose at the end.

I've seen men that actually take some imaginary warm-up swings, adjust their stance, and then take the big swing. It can take longer for the imaginary swing than they might take if they actually were playing golf with a club and a ball.

I have done this myself, swinging the imaginary golf club, watching the flight of the imaginary ball, and then planning my second shot. I imaginary drive very well, so I'm almost always in the fairway, just a wedge away from the green.

The reason we men do this, acting out a sport in an imaginary life in public, you might think is because we men have golf on our mind all the time. I assure you that we have sex on our mind. Because we can't have imaginary sex in public, we intead pretend we are golfing. Golf in really boring whether you play it or watch it on TV. So when we swing our arms for the big drive, what we'd really like to do is take an imaginary woman in our arms, kiss and caress her, undress her, and then take the really big drive.

But doing that in public while waiting for an elevator might seem silly. If you acted out imaginary sex in front of your cubicle while talking with coworkers, no one might ever visit you again. That's strange but true. The men are all thinking the same thing, but they are afraid of being ostracized for lewd behavior, so instead they pretend to swing at a golf ball. Now you know what they're thinking about.

Labels: standup

My son asked me about the afterlife. He said, "When I'm in heaven, will my video game have infinite lives, or will I need to use a cheat code?"

Labels: standup

My father's sex talk with me was very brief. He said,

"You have a penis, and you stick that in a girl's vagina, and you ejaculate sperm, and that's what makes babies. You got that?"

I got it. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I got it. He didn't want any questions, and he especially didn't want any trouble. I didn't have much sex in high school.

When my older brother went to college, my father's parting advice for him was:

"If you get a girl pregnant, I'll cut your balls off."

When I went to college, there was, apparently no need for such advice. In fact, I think my father was so concerned that he had frightened me off girls, that he went out of his way to introduce me to girls in the dorm. Now, how is that for good luck? First day of college, I'm surrounded by rich, intelligent, beautiful young women from all over America, especially Long Island, and my father, wearing soiled, pink seersucker trousers and a jacket embroidered with a softball team's nickname, "The Ball Blasters", is cruising the dorm, introducing me. I must have seemed like quite the catch. My college social life played out as one might expect. Luckily, the university's androgynous society met in our dorm on the second Tuesday of every month, so it wasn't as if I was a total outcast.

Oh, and to top it off, most of the upper classmen on our dorm were born again Christians who had decided to stay in the dorm so that they could pray together in the evenings. The one guy who had a fake ID would only use it to buy communion wine.

I met my wife through a catalog, long before that was the popular thing it is today. Unfortunately, I ordered mine before the women of eastern Europe were desperate, and so she doesn't do a damn thing I say. She doesn't even make a decent cabbage roll, and if you're going to be married to a woman with thick ankles who wears a babushka to bed, she damn well better make a decent cabbage roll. At least that's what I think.

Now my own son is 13, and it's time for his talk. Luckily, The Family Guy and South Park have removed most of the mystery for him. I take solace in the fact that if he happens to know what a rusty trombone is, he didn't hear it from me.

Labels: standup

So my wife brought a cat into our home. I'm not strictly against cats, and we have had them in the past and I have enjoyed them. But playing with a cat is like having an affair with a fat chick: it's great fun until your friends find out.

What bothers me most about the cat is that it jumps up on everything, the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, whatever it feels like. This cat is always searching for food or adventure, and my wife tends to be fake mad at it a lot, the way women get mad at rich, good-looking men that cheat on women—oh, he was dating Susan, but then ran off with Susan's sister Becky and went to Bermuda for a long weekend and rode her mercilessly, to the point where she needed a wheelchair at the airport, but Susan took him right back after he bought her that diamond necklace—so the cat is on the counter eating my damn omelet, and my wife says: "Get down from there you naughty kitty!" She puts her hands on her hips and stamps her feet just like in the movies and everything. Of course, she doesn't make me another omelet (she didn't make the first one, so why should she make the second?) but just picks up the cat and hugs it.

People say that cats are cleaner than dogs because they neatly cover their turds in the litter box, but the cat doesn't wash his paws after using the litter box. No, the cat goes for a walk, making a beeline for the kitchen counter and my omelet. So we have these germs spread all over the place, and, in truth, I'd rather not even know, but having witnessed this, I can't help but to think of all the places that cat has walked. I got out of the shower the other day and I see the cat on the bathroom sink, rubbing up against our toothbrushes. I guess he had an itch that needed scratching. So I threw my toothbrush out, and I used my wife's toothbrush to groom the cat. Serves her right for not making a decent omelet. My wife and I don't kiss much any more.

Labels: standup

My name is Mickey Hadick. That's spelled Ha, d-i-c-k. As in, hey. D---. It rhymes with attic, but everyone wants to say it more like two words.

I was teased in grade school, as you might imagine. Not because I was fat and wore "huskies" from Sears; not because I cried like an abandoned crack-baby every time it rained; no, not even because I had a crush on Ms. Anderson, my fourth grade techer. I was teased because of my name. The other children though it sounded dirty.

So the long and the short of it is that I'm thinking of having my name changed to avoid all the silliness. I'd still be the same person, but all the idiots in the world with an arrested sense of humor won't be able to make fun of me. So instead of Mickey Hadick, I would be 'Mickey Hadpenis.'

Labels: standup