Designated Drinker
Oy, I can't believe I forgot to showcase the crown jewel of the Drunk Shang Graff photo series; here it is in all its resplendency:
And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to announce it yet, but Shang and his cuz have launched a superbly executed site related to the fineries and vagaries of civilized drinking and billiards. I tell you, it's a heapin' helpin' of genius. Dig it:
Turning now to more unsavory developments: your dirty rock emissary buddy Yalestar has been subjected to just about as much negative stimulus as a man can take. Consider:
Item! The car wash honeymoon appears to be over. Why, just last week at an enchilada party at my friend Ellen's house, I was bragging up my free car wash scam to the other guests, much to their delight. (If you're just joining us, I'm talking about a peculiar and yet wondrously fortuitous chain of events in which I was able to secure unlimited [or so I thought] free automatic car washes as a result of the foibles of a particulary derelict attendant.) The very next day, I thought to myself, as I do every Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, and third Monday, "what a glorious day for a FREE automatic car wash!"
To my utter horror, dismay, and disillusionment, friends, the car wash entry portal was barricaded with forbidding orange traffic cones and an unsightly dumpster! Well, I don't need to tell you that my stomach knotted up like a 25ft. telephone cord: They're onto me!
Or maybe it's just broken, but it's been a god damn week now. I wouldn't imagine it would take more than a day or two to round up a journeyman car wash mechanic, would it? For fuck's sake, when I worked at a greasy spoon and the dishwasher broke, you could get a Hobart rep in from Helena the next day. Next Day Service!
At any rate, tonight I found myself in some filthy manual car wash with all the other plebians, being forced to inhale any number of pollutants as other car washers shook out their floormats upwind of me. Oh, the indignity of it all.
Item! For some years now, I've conducted an informal study of what I perceive to be the fucked-uppest marketing trend since the "-busters!" trend of the early 80s. In the wake of the movie Ghostbusters, you may recall, a person couldn't go ten minutes without hearing of some new product or service with "-busters!" affixed to the end, e.g. Pricebusters!
Dirtbusters! Fatbusters!
And this new trend I speak of is most certainly as annoying, if not more so than the imported beer naming paradigms we endured in the 90s; you know, [wildlife species] + [dramatically ironic unpleasant bodily function], e.g.
Moose Drool, Gurgling Grizzly, Quail Queeb Pale Ale, Goat Booger Doppelbock, Stillborn Bighorn Wheat Brown Ale, and so on and so forth.
So with this new annoying trend... now, please understand that I'm having trouble describing this new phenomenon with any sort of cogency or clarity, but consider the results of my last six months' worth of data collection:
Palettes (restaurant in a theatre)
Cycles (laundermat) Slammers (sports bar)
Fantastics (lingerie store)
Chopper's Sports Grill Fins Seafood Market and Grill
T.J. Cinnamon's
Souper! Salad!
Results (fitness club)
Possibilities (hair salon)
And then tonight, as if the degradation of a manual car wash was not traumatizing enough, I drove past a sports bar called, I shit you not: Balls.
Yes, Balls. "Ah, me and Brad and Fudgie, we was all fucked up down at Balls the other night..." Would you ever consider arranging to meet a business associate at Balls? If, by some cruel fate, you met your future bride (or groom, as the case may be) at Balls, could you expect to retain even a soupçon of dignity? No, no.
Do you see the trend here? I guess you take some sensory thing associated with whatever it is you're peddling, and by gosh, you name your store after it.
Is that right? Am I making this more complex than it really is?
If you seek further evidence of an extremely obnoxious nomenclature trend at play, look about you! I'm sure your town is more than amply stocked with this very same sort of ribaldry.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about Hooters. Now, I'm not too up on the history of the Hooters franchise, but I somehow suspect they're the trendsetters in this frenzied dance of banality.
I came up with a few of my own, and it would delight me and the staff here (hi girls!) if you'd transmit your own suggestions to me at yalestar@yahoo.com
Chafes (big and tall clothing store)
Grunts (rib joint)
Pukey's (martini club)
Dorks (comic book store)
Dorkelby's (upscale cigar bar)
Las Flatuladas (Mexican restaurant)
T.J. McBallbag & Sons (steakhouse)
Twinks (gay singles bar)
And a couple unrelated, but nonetheless ridiculous product names I came across in the past few months (actually, Mr. Oxidized Smetanka found 'Javables'):
Nacho Beef Bake
Javables
Go-gurt (the portable yogurt)
Oh, and then Item! I got sunburned all to shit on Saturday, laying in the grass topless reading about the Mayor Daley years in Chicago. The sunburn is so bad that I can't sleep more than two or three hours a night. But it does have one good part: the constant pain and itchniness makes for a kind of perpetual state of disquiet and anxiety, so a guy can get a lot accomplished. It sure is hard to be cheerful though.
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