Underpants On The Outside

Getting engaged is awesome. (Even when it doesn’t go according to plan.)  I’m confident that getting married will be awesome.  The stuff in between has an awful strong tendency to suck. 

Let me be clear from the outset: I’m not doing SHIT.  It’s been strongly suggested to me that I should never forget that this wedding is Wonder Woman’s day.  What she says goes, and unless she wants my opinion, I shouldn’t do a thing.  I like not doing a thing, and besides, Wonder Woman plans everything we do anyway.  In our two-man organization, she is officially the Vice President in charge of Social Coordination.  (She also holds the titles of Chief Wardrobe Officer and Executive Gift Chooser.)

Yet even with my minimal involvement, planning this wedding still manages to blow from time to time.  It’s been brought to my attention that I have way too many friends and way too little money, and in one of life’s great injustices I can’t sell my friends.

I don’t even know how many times we’ve gone over the guest list.  When all is said and done, if you’re a friend of mine and you get invited to the wedding, (and I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you… Dad) it’s only because I couldn’t think of a reason why you suck.  That’s right: things have come to the point where I find myself searching for reasons to dislike my friends.  Remember that time we ordered pizza but you were out of cash?  If you never paid me back, you better BELIEVE you’re not invited.  (Though we will gladly accept that $4.50 from 2001 as a wedding present, if you’d like.) 

Okay, for serious: for any of you who don’t make the cut, I want you to know that this isn’t easy for us.  Please believe that you are in our hearts and minds, and understand that this decision isn’t about you.  It just came down to the fact that you, y’know, eat.  And you drink.  And we can’t have that sort of thing going on all willy-nilly.  So if you’re looking for someone to blame, perhaps you should look in a mirror…

BTW, here are a couple tips for anyone else out there tying the knot soon. 

1) When your fiancé gets stressed out about planning this thing, don’t say, “Well, look at it this way: you’re learning some valuable lessons for the next time…”

2) Instead of “fiancé”, do not refer to your bride-to-be as “Ball with Chain Pending.” It’s not as funny as you think it is.

More tips to come as I learn them the hard way…

Some of you - very, very, very few of you - have read my comic book blog “The Superhero Diaries.”  It was a labor of love that required a whole lot of labor and didn’t get me any kind of love, so I kinda let it fall by the wayside.

Until now. 

The fantastic people at Crave Online saw it in their hearts to nurture this poor, dying bit back to life, and I will be publishing Superhero Diaries every two weeks on the site until the joke gets old. Check out my inaugural article here. 

Another publishing credit!  COUNT IT!

 Lost has a habit of setting up dozens of mind-boggling mysteries and solving NONE of them. My friend Jordan, whose use of imagery is nothing short of genius, describes the experience of watching the show as frustrating as “Dry-Humping a Supermodel.”

My dad firmly believes that Lost will only end up breaking my heart.  Deep down, I know that he’s probably right, but it reminds me of a certain Bill Withers classic: “My Brother / if you only knew / you’d wish that you were in my shoes / Oh, you just keep on using me / until you use me up.”

I especially feel this way after last week’s episode.  It was awesome.  In fact it was the epitome of a Lost episode - it raised ten questions, it answered none, and even though I should have been frustrated I wasn’t.  Exhausted?  Yes.  Confused? Even more than I usually am. Wanting more? Desperately.  Sure sounds like a dry-humping to me…

This week’s mystery:  what the fuck is going on?????  I know, I know - it’s the official mystery of the show.  But there’re at least two ways that question can be asked.  The first is when you know exactly what’s going on, but you just want to know the reason why, like when you find your wife having sex with your pool boy.  Last week’s episode was a good example of this, because I could understand how and why strangers had come to the island, I just couldn’t understand why they had chosen that particular group of fuckwits.

The other way to ask “what the fuck is going on?” is when you truly have no understanding of what is happening around you. Like when you find your wife having sex with your parakeet. (So THAT’S why she wanted a macaw so badly!!!) You’ll worry about the reasons behind it later - first you just want to make sure you’re not having some kind of stroke.  That’s what this episode was. 

In the alternate storyline (Lost episodes always have two stories - one on the island, and one in the past or future) we see Sayeed on a golf course.  To remind everyone, Sayeed is a former torturer in the Iraqi army and all-around ladies man.  I also feel the need to point out that in this flashforward Sayeed’s hair looks incredible.  It was the first thing I noticed about him. (I think this has more to do with the fact that mine is rapidly falling out, rather than a general interest in hair care, fashion and dude-humping.)  But seriously: it’s like the man sweats conditioner.  When it comes to heroic hair care, Sayeed is right up there with Lion-o and He-Man.

As I said, Sayeed is on a golf course, preparing to take a swing when a jovial looking man pulls up on a cart.  The guy starts chatting Sayeed up, advising him to use a different club, and generally getting on his nerves, which is not a smart thing to do to a man who never realized pliers had so many non-mutilating uses. When Sayeed mentions that he was part of the “Oceanic six” the man gets extremely nervous, and that’s understandable because a moment later Sayeed shoots him in the chest. What the - ?? Who was that?  Why did Sayeed kill him??? Unfortunately, I can’t ask too many questions, because when a supermodel knows how to handle a gun and a pair of pliers, you dry-hump her and you like it and you don’t say shit.  (On the plus side, Sayeed is doing a good job healing the Jack Bauer-shaped hole in my life…)

Since we’re at our first WTF moment and we’re only minutes in, this looks like it’s going to be more of a marathon dry-hump than a sprint.  I wish I had stretched first - I could pull a hammy. But dry-humping is a lot like being stuck in an elevator; it’s better with friends, and fortunately I was joined by ex-Roommate Mary (ex-Roommate Kat was working on her taxes - boooo!) and fellow Lost devotee Banana Bread, named so because she brought over banana bread.  Do not attempt to understand the workings of my creative process.

The next time we see future-Sayeed, he has stopped filming Herbal Essences commercials long enough to meet an attractive blonde in a German café.  She says that she works for a very important economist who mysteriously contacts her via a phone she keeps on her at all times.  She tells Sayeed this because she is totally down to hump, while Sayeed listens because he is going to kill the economist, and probably her. There’s also a good chance that he’s gonna hump at least one of them before the hour is up, because that’s what happens when your hair has volume, bounce and a healthy sheen.  My bald-ass gets a dry-hump and no apology.  Or, putting it as an economist might, the demand for supermodel-humping is a great deal larger than the supply of willing supermodels. 

But let’s leave Sayeed here in the future. Back in the present, as you’ll recall, the Losties have split into two camps.  First is the Lord of the Flies camp, led by John “I Stab Because I Care” Locke.  It might seem weird that people would follow a man who will throws knives at people just for the fuck of it, but then again, their other option was the camp led by Jack.  Sure, Locke is crazy, but that’s only dangerous on rare occasions.  On the other hand, every time you go somewhere with Jack the best outcome you can hope for is that you’ll only be taken hostage. If I were offered the choice between stupid and crazy, I’d probably take crazy too - crazy tends to make for better stories.

There are four Newbies on the island, and each camp is trying to be the first one to collect the complete set.  Jack’s camp is in the lead, 3-1, with extra points because they have the helicopter.  Sayeed makes a deal with Lawnmower Man: if Sayeed rescues the redhead-newbie from Locke’s Funhouse of Flying Pointy Things, he’s on the first helicopter when it goes back to the boat.  He takes Kate and the asshole-newbie, and suggests Jack stay behind to guard the Lawnmower Man and the Sad Sack.  Jack actually has a good chance at pulling this off, because neither of them wants to go anywhere.

Unfortunately for Sayeed, nothing goes as smoothly as his hair.  He, Kate and the Ghost Whispering Dickhead get trapped by Locke, who curiously places Sayeed in a room where Kevin Spacey’s Cousin is tied up.  Now, normally, when you take a man who knows how to ask a question (while pushing a bamboo spike under your fingernails) and put him in a room with a man who knows all the answers (and is tied up in a chair), what you get is 90% screaming, 10% thorough explanation.  But then this show would have to be called “Found”, and I’d have to rename the column “Humping a Supermodel Whenever I Want.”  And while Sayeed seems to really hate Kevin Spacey, he doesn’t want to question him because he knows Kevin Spacey is a liar. What??? What kind of half-rate interrogator is he??? “Sayeed, how’s the interrogation going?” “Not good boss - he’s lying. I might have to go home early - I all out of ideas…”  I imagine this came up a lot during his performance evaluations.  It’s like a supermodel who can’t walk in heels.

I must admit that when it comes to intrigue, this half of the story is less a supermodel, and more an ugly girl I’m listening to while I wait for her supermodel friend to come back from the future in her time machine.  However, there are a couple interesting developments.  First, remember that Sayeed hates Kevin Spacey - he even says that the day he trusts him is the day he sells his soul to the devil.  This is going to come up again.  Also, while Sayeed is gone, Sad Sack (a physicist) sets up an experiment: he places a beacon on the ground and radios the boat to fire a particular kind of rocket at it. But while the boat’s radar shows that the missile reached the target, the rocket doesn’t actually arrive until several minutes later. When Miles compares a clock from the rocket and a clock from the beacon (which presumably should be running concurrently) the missile’s clock is ahead by several minutes.  That’s WTF #2.  Maybe it’s unwise of me to try and hump a supermodel whose vagina bends space-time, but what can I say?  I’m a man of science.

Speaking of bending space-time…If Sayeed thinks thinks things are bad now, they’re going to get worse in the future.  Like when his pending German girlfriend shoots him because she knows he’s planning to kill her boss. First Sayeed turns down an opportunity for a bloody interrogation and then he lets his guard down; I’m going to have to revoke his “Jack Bauer” status and demote him back down to “Curtis”.  Not that Jack doesn’t have a weakness for awful women (Audrey…) but at least they don’t shoot him.  Jack knows how to lay the pipe. 

Sayeed does manage to rally, though, killing his girlfriend/assailant.  In three-plus seasons, Sayeed is now two for two in the category of “love interests fatally shot in torso.”  That’s the danger of luxuriously long-haired men, ladies.  Maybe you should rethink your stance on balding guys.  That is, unless you like the feel of Kevlar.

Now Sayeed finds himself in the enviable position of being newly single in Europe.  On the downside, he’s been shot.  Worse, if he doesn’t get himself fixed in a hurry, the stress might give him split ends. So he lurches his way to veterinarian, where a mysterious voice asks him about what happened.  When I say mysterious, I mean, mysterious to everyone but me.  BECAUSE IT’S KEVIN SPACEY.  Once again, Kaiser Soze controls everything.  I should have seen it coming.  Sayeed said trusting Ben (the character’s actual name) was like selling his soul to the devil.  Well, Ben = Kevin Spacey.  Kevin Spacey = Kaiser Soze.  Kaiser Soze = The Devil.  Transitive property, bitches.  In fact, I’m renaming Ben/Kevin Spacey’s character to Kaiser Soze. WTF #3.  The trifecta!

And if that weren’t exciting enough, on the island Sayeed traded Kate and the dickhead for the redhead, making out like a bandit.  And at the end of the episode… WE SEE THE HELICOPTER TAKING OFF AS IT HEADS BACK TO THE BOAT.

This was a phenomenal, hall-of-fame episode. For all this time I, and I think a lot of people, assumed that the flash-forwards occurred outside the scope of the show - that the show would end “before” these events happened.  But now it seems like we could be flashingforward to as soon as next season, or maybe the one after that.  Giving credit where credit is due, before we watched last week’s episode, Banana Bread thought this might be the case.  Still… wow.

Analogous Dry-Hump:  It’s as if you were invited to participate in a supermodel foursome… only you had to wear a haz-mat suit. 

Analogous Supermodel (In this case, supermodELS.  Plural.): I’m going to go with Victoria’s Secret models Adriana Lima, Karolina Kurkova, Izabel Goulart, and Selita Ebanks, as they appeared in the February 2008 copy of Esquire. But remember: you’re in a haz-mat suit.

Some final thoughts… In the comments of last week’s post, Robbb put his theory out there: the island is an anomaly that will be protected when the Earth’s magnetic poles switch.  This is actually close to my own theory, which I had developed about a half-hour before this week’s episode.  Lately the show has included more of the paranormal.  For so long, we’ve wondered how this show would fit into the regular world, but I’m starting to expect that rather than fit the island into the plausible, they’ll just introduce the fantastic.  What I mean is, I think the island is an anomaly, but I think it’s a gateway to some kind of alternate dimension.  I’m slightly disappointed, because it’s the easy way out, explaining smoke monsters, teleportation, immortality, ESP, and whatever else tickles their fancy.  I also think certain people, like our newbies, will have an affinity for this new dimension, manifesting in special abilities, like how Dickhead Miles can talk to ghosts.   As for Sayeed and Kaiser Soze, this is what I think happens: during this episode, Sayeed is in Kaiser’s house, looking at his bookshelf, and he pauses when he sees a copy of the Qu’ran, along with other holy texts.  I think companies like Hanso want to research this dimensional rift for their own gain, but I think that other people will view it as something sacred and holy, and they fight to protect it.  I think Kaiser is on this team, and when Sayeed discovers more about the island, he is convinced to join Kaiser on his crusade.

Boom.  Recognize the skills.

[Editor’s note: I’m exhausted. There may be some typos and/or incoherent rambling, but that’s only because I don’t have the time or energy to proofread more than half of this, and I want to get it up. (That’s what SHE said!)]

I tried to come up with some cutesy intro for this, but like most things,the best way to say it is the simplest: if you go to Google and search for “penis wonder woman road head wizard”, the Underpants is the number one site.

I owe a big thanks to my friend Miya for this. I don’t know what sort of genius-juice she was drinking late last week when this occurred to her, but I can’t even remember the last time something this cool happened to me!

 Lost has a habit of setting up dozens of mind-boggling mysteries and solving NONE of them. My friend Jordan, whose use of imagery is nothing short of genius, describes the experience of watching the show as frustrating as “Dry-Humping a Supermodel.”

As I mentioned in my engagement recap, I was unable to watch Lost on Thursday due to unforeseen reveling.  In fact I wasn’t able to get to it until Monday night - hence the lateness of this dry-humping.

About a year ago, Lost’s producers announced that the show would only run for seven total seasons.  I believe I’ve mentioned it before, but this was genius.  When a show like this continually throws weird shit at you, one starts to suspect that they don’t really know what they’re doing; they’re just including the weirdest thing they can think of, and they’ll figure it out later.  “What about a polar bear?”  “Sure, why not.”  “Wait - a polar bear on a tropical island???” “Hell yeah - I like it.  Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out later.  Or we’ll go on strike.”

By slapping an expiration date on the show, the producers let everyone know that they would not just be coming up with increasingly outlandish shit for as long as the public was stupid enough to watch it (cough, cough - 24 - cough cough).  Whether or not they actually have a plan, I believe that they do, so once again I’ll buy whatever it is they’re selling. It’s like I found myself at the end of a two-hour marathon dry-humping (I don’t even real hump for two-hours - THAT’S HOW GOOD THE SHOW IS!), and just as I’m rubbing Cortaid on all my chafed parts and texting my friends “no, not this time either,” the supermodel patted me on the head and said, “Don’t worry.  I know we’ve been doing this for three years, but I’ll make it up to you at some point in the next four.” Keep in mind she hasn’t said WHAT she’s going to do to me anymore than the producers have said “don’t worry, we know exactly what’s going on, and once you do too, you’ll realize that it makes complete sense.  In fact, you too will be able to raise polar bears and smoke monsters in your own backyard, using nothing but everyday cleaning products!”  In other worse, I could be waiting four years for the metaphorical equivalent of a wool-mitten handjob.  The things I do for my Underpants readers…

This week’s supermodel: new people

Even before the producers announced the seven year timeline, the show had already established a countdown clock: there were 48 survivors, and they just kept dying.  If they’d continued on a linear path, by now the show would be nothing but Kate, Sawyer, and Jack, sitting on a beach with Jack muttering, “Sexual tension, sexual tension, sexual - y’know what??? Screw it - I’m gonna go hotrail that slutty looking coconut!  How about ‘dem apples, Kate! You had your chance, and now this ship has sailed!!!!”

So how do you introduce new characters? Okay, first there was the crazy French chick, and while it was plausible that she could have learned to survive in the jungle commando-style, I had a tough time believing that after all those years she had yet to befriend a lovable lazy bear or a gorilla and worked out some kind of musical number.

Then there were The Others. Being the mysterious jungle ninjas that they were, there really was no way to tell how many there were, so that was a good source of new blood (particularly Ben, who is tied up and bloody and is still running the show.  When I say he’s the poor man’s Kevin Spacey, I actually mean it as a compliment.) After that, things started to get a bit silly.  First there was Desmond, the Scot who can see the future who was holed up in the hatch.  (I’ve decided to call him Groundskeeper Willie.) Then there were the Tailies, the biggest bunch of unintended pregnancies I’ve ever seen. 

The overarching dilemma was that as far as solutions go Desmond, the Others and the Tailies were a lot like condoms: you need them for a short time and you never, ever try and reuse them.  I couldn’t see how they could keep bringing in new characters, even though the answer was staring me right in the face: CONTINUE TO CRASH AIRCRAFT ON THE ISLAND. The sky is a bottomless well of new people!

After that long-ass intro, let’s talk about what’s actually going on, and find out just what kind of supermodel we’ll try to get to second base with.

Towards the end of last season, a woman named Naomi parachuted onto the island, crashing onto the trees.  She said she was part of a rescue mission sent by Groundskeeper Willie’s supremely rich long-lost love, Pehneh.  (People keep telling me her real name is Penny, but I know what I hear.)  But Naomi’s not working for Pehneh. (Don’t worry how we know that - it’s a long story involving an underwater radio jamming station, a man who doesn’t die and a Hobbit, and I’ll just sound like a lunatic if I try and sum it up. Just take my word for it.)

[Editor’s note: Fuck.  I just realized I’m about five hours from the next episode and I’m only a paragraph into the setup for last week’s episode after over a page of navel gazing.  Time for a power boost! {reaches into desk; pops three Adderalls} YEAH, BABY! LET’S GO DRY HUMP LIKE WE’RE TRYING TO START A FIRE!!!!!  CHAAAAARGE!!!]

After landing on the island, Naomi revealed a satellite phone, with which she could phone her boat nearby.  I don’t know much about the nautical rescue business, but I’m pretty sure that the standard procedure is not to get real close with a boat, then launch parachuters into an area with lots of tree cover.  I think they just pull the boat even closer, then send a smaller boat in to pick everybody up. 

The same moment when Naomi got a signal through to her “boat”, Batshit Crazy Locke threw a knife into her back - because the island told him too.  (Oh, did I not mention that?  The island talks to people, though it generally gets chatty with the crazy ones. Intriguing? I think so too.  I think the supermodel has a bare spot of thigh, if you want to get in on some of this action, or lack thereof.) Undaunted, Jack picked up the phone and told the guy on the other end to come pick them up, and if Jack saw fit to do it, it pretty much guarantees that it’s a bad idea. 

ADDigression: I know I always talk about how Jack is an incompetent leader. I believe this largely stems from the fact that Matthew Fox is really chewing the leafy scenery these days. Jack believes so adamantly in everything he says that when it invariably goes wrong he looks all the more stupid for being so gung-ho in the first place.  In fact, (or based on no evidence whatsoever) I’m pretty sure he’s been doing it ever since the Tailies came ‘round. Yes: I’m now saying that Michelle Rodriguez manages to fuck Lost up from BEYOND THE GRAVE!!! (Wait, she’s not dead? Oh. Whoops.)  

But the Naomi stabbing incident really illustrates the incompetence of Jack.  A woman has been stabbed and a homicidal psychopath and/or weirdo is among his people; as both a doctor and a leader, this is really Jack’s moment to shine.  Yet while he’s on the phone with the boat, both Locke and a woman WITH A KNIFE IN HER BACK manage to disappear!!!! Jack sets out to find Naomi following a trail of blood, yet when Kate finds another trail, suggesting one might be a decoy, Jack assures her that it’s probably someone else’s blood… I mean, who ISN’T bleeding, right? He also assures her that he has a foolproof plan to catch Naomi: he’s going to paint the image of a tunnel on the side of a rock.  If that doesn’t work, he’ll place a dish of bird seed under an anvil. Thankfully the ACME company ships to Lost Island.

I’m not surprised in the least when Jack is outfoxed by a woman who’s bleeding to death.  Because it’s not like I’m dry-humping a supermodel for her mind.

Later that night, Jack and Kate see a helicopter spinning out of control above them.  (See what I mean?  New characters, falling from the sky like angels…) Enter “Dan”, who parachuted from the helicopter and tells Jack he’s there to rescue them.  

And that’s just the setup for last week’s episode.  At the time that I’m writing this, there are three hours ‘til the next episode.  Oh boy.

Dan wasn’t alone in his helicopter, and last week’s episode focuses on his companions.  They are:

Dan: the only back story we get on Dan is that the day the plane crashed, he started sobbing uncontrollably while watching the news footage.  When his wife asks him why he’s crying, he replies that he doesn’t know.  You know what sucks?  Dry-humping.  You know what’s worse? Trying to enjoy the dry-humping while the supermodel won’t stop crying. I speak from experience.

Lawnmower Man (I didn’t catch the character’s real name, but he’s played by the guy who played the Lawnmower Man): In the very first sequence of last week’s episode, underwater scientists discover the wreckage of Oceanic flight 815.  I mean the entire wreckage, even though that makes no sense: we know that the middle of the plane landed on the beach, the cockpit landed in the jungle, and a tail full of douchebags landed close enough to a beach for the douchiest dozen to swim to safety.  But we’re the only ones who know this wreckage is a fake…until Lawnmower man shows up.  He sees news coverage of the wreckage and notices that photos of the pilot show no wedding ring on his finger.  Lawnmower calls Oceanic and tells them that he knows that’s not the real flight 815, and when they ask him how he knows, he says “because I was supposed to pilot the plane that day.”  DUNH-DUN-DUHHHHH.  Wait, you’re telling me I’m supposed to be dry-humping someone else?  Oh man… This is awkward…

Miles: [Editor’s Note: It is now Friday, and I have been lapped by Lost.  Dang it. Things might get a bit abbreviated.]  Miles talks to ghosts.  And he seems like kind of a prick.  Insert tired supermodel dry-humping joke here. 

Charlotte: Charlotte is an archaeologist.  Our introduction to her is when she goes to a dig someplace where there’s a lot of sand.  They probably mentioned the location, but I forgot it.  The dig has uncovered the skeleton of what Charlotte identifies as… you betcha - A POLAR BEAR.  She also finds the remains of a collar, branded with the same “Dharma Initiative” logo that’s all over the island.  The Dharma Group is an industry leader in the field of all-weather polar bears. I wish I was on their marketing team.  I  think my slogan submission would be, “Dharma all-weather polar bears - why should Inuits get all the fun!” Except we would lose the prized Eskimo demographic…

These are our four new islanders, and they’ve just discovered why the island isn’t called “Runway Key” - it’s pretty friggin hard to land there.  When they bailed out, Crybaby Dan landed near Jack and Kate, Charlotte risked perforation by being captured by Locke, and Miles is found unconscious on a rock.  OR IS HE??? No, of course not, and instead he puts a gun in Jack’s face.  Congratulations, Miles - you captured a nitwit.  Maybe after a few more months of training you’ll be ready to invade a day care center.  Ostensibly Miles is upset because in her last moments, Naomi radioed the boat and told them to tell her sister she loves her, which was code for “some asshole threw a knife into my back.” But he’s also a prick, so it’s tough to tell.

As Miles is leading Jack, Kate, and Crybaby Dan to go pick up the Lawnmower Man, Jack suddenly stops.  He says that Miles has guns pointed at his head.  Miles doesn’t believe him. I don’t believe him either. But we’re both wrong, because Sayeed and someone else I don’t care to discuss come out of the jungle with rifles.  I mention it because Jack got this smug smile on his face as he took Miles’s gun from him - did he not realize he was the bait??? It’s not like you’ll ever find a worm yelling, “What’s up now, you bitch-ass sea bass?!?”

At the end of the episode, they find the pilot.  Astoundingly, he did not actually crash the helicopter - it’s sitting in a clearing. 

This may seem like a huge development, and it might actually turn out to be one.  But I’ve already seen a submarine get blown up, and I can’t help but feel that these new four are a bunch of fuckwits.  Something’s bound to go wrong, especially with Jack hanging around, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

Supermodel to be Dry-Humped: I know that I said I’m in for the long haul, but not because of this episode. These new four just feel like next-generation Tailies, and I bet they’re dead within a year. That’s why I’m going with Kate Hudson.  First of all, she isn’t a supermodel.  Second of all, I don’t even think she’s that hot, and it has nothing to do with the time when she was a real dickhead to me when I was working as a cashier in a Blockbuster Music. 

Dry-Humping Scenario:   Me and Kate meet in a bar. She asks me if I know who she is.  I say, “Sure I do, but I won’t lie to you:  I haven’t seen any of your movies, and I don’t expect I ever will. Besides, you were an asshole to me when I was fifteen.” After I relay the story to her, she feels guilty over her immaturity. She offers to make it up to me over drinks. She’s intrigued by my indifference to her celebrity, and as the night proceeds, she invites me back to her house. I go. (I’m not engaged to be married in metaphors.) But as we make out, she begins to miss the adoration of most of her sycophantic lovers. Sure, I’d hump her, but would I ever love her? (Answer: nope.) She stops me before anything serious happens. But I’m not surprised.  I saw this coming a mile away, and I was just going through the motions.  On my way out, I steal her CD collection.

Reading that again, I realize it has NOTHING to do with an episode of Lost that happened over a week ago. But it would be really awesome.

Thursday night I proposed to Wonder Woman. She said yes.

Some of you might think that it’s tasteless to distribute this entry via blog message. Well, up yours - I need the traffic. Also, when you tell someone you got engaged, it’s not like,

“Hey, I got engaged.”

“Sweet.”

(High Five)

Everybody wants to hear a big long story. And as much as I like talking about myself, it is, in fact, a big long story, and not one I want to tell eighteen times today. [Editor’s note: for instance, I started writing this on Friday. It is now Sunday.] Instead, I figure I can tell the story on the Underpants, then send people here - it’s one stop shopping: z’s engagement story AND dick jokes about the latest episode of Lost!

Now I can only hope our marriage will go a hell of a lot more according to plan than the proposal.

Wonder Woman has been bugging me for over a year to marry her, and being a lawyer, she had several stipulations concerning how I was to go about it. Above all she wanted to be surprised, which was going to be difficult since she was on the lookout like an unmarried-and-thirty-year-old hawk. In order to surprise her I’d have to be a Ninja o’ Love. Well, fear my Tiger-Crane style!

Here was the plan: on a random weekday (in this case, a Thursday) I made up an excuse for WW and me to go to our usual date-night restaurant: a sushi place around the corner. It’s nice as far as we’re concerned, but not enough to for her to go to WedCon 2. (WedCon: WEDding preparedness CONdition. Hovering at an elevated state of urgency - WedCon 3 - ever since WW’s thirtieth birthday. Analysts fear an unprecedented WedCon 1 alert sometime in 2009.)

Despite what you may be thinking, I wasn’t about to get down on one knee (in accordance with paragraph 4, subsection 17 of the “Propose to Me Already, Dickhead” memorandum sent to me in April of 2007.) Nor was I going to have the waiter place the ring in a glass of champagne. (Paragraph 32, subsection 6) What I did is I wrote a custom prix fixe menu for the waiters to give to us as we sat down. Each course had a romantic sounding title, then a funny caption with cutesy inside jokes, and finally a contextually relevant dish to tie it all together. For example: on our first date WW and I ate cheesesteaks. This was the 2nd Course…

“The Circle of Life” - No matter what hardships we may face, no matter what we may disagree on, two truths are eternal: our love for each other and our love for beef. As new lovers, as newly betrothed and in every stage of our lives, we hope to be filled with both. Beef Negi Maki - “The Cheeseless Cheesesteak”

In retrospect that could be read that I hope we are filled with both beef and each other, which is kind of gross. I meant that we would be filled with beef and love. But whatever - the menu was adorable. I even worked in a reference to our second meeting, when WW flew out to L.A. to stay with me but I spent the entire time in bed because of an insanely painful TESTICLE INFECTION. (Apparently you can get them from the flu, which I had had a few weeks before. Trust me, it wasn’t a VD - I was in a very very dry spell at the time.) Do you know how tricky it is to come up with a barely-tasteful sushi-based reference to a testicle infection??? Pretty freaking hard, as it turns out - the local sushi place doesn’t serve a Swollen Goose Egg Roll.

The menu was also dated March 1, 2009. I thought this would really be the tip-off, because a while back Wonder Woman latched onto an offhand comment I made and convinced herself that I would propose in March. “March 2009!” I’d reply, and laugh uproariously. Even though I told it about two hundred times, she must have not gotten the joke, because I swear she never laughed once. Lastly, to really tie the whole thing together, the last line of the menu was, “Price: you have to say ‘yes.’”

It cannot be said enough times that I am an adorable motherfucker.

This is how I imagined it: first, the waiter would give us the menus. After a moment of confusion, it would dawn on her: this is actually happening. A sharp intake of breath; her hand covers her mouth. Tears well up, and she looks at me with the unspoken question, “Can this be true?”

Then I’d hold out both fists and tell her, “pick a hand.” (I may be adorable, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.)

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

WHILE this would be going down at the restaurant, Ex-Roommate Mary (who punched me when I told her about the “pick a hand” plan) would go into our apartment, straighten up, and leave a bottle of champagne on ice, surrounded by rose petals and a lovely flower arrangement sitting in a vase. When we arrived home WW and I would sip champagne, discuss our future together, then hump. Even better, my co-workers (very, very sweet of them) bought me a bottle of Dom Perignon, which was a lot nicer than the Korbel I was going to splurge on.

But if the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry, you can imagine what happens when a halfwit like me gets to thinkin’…

I called WW that evening while she was still at work and told her that I’d received some good news about a bonus at work and we should go out to celebrate. I suggested the sushi place. She loved the idea, so much so that by the time she got home, she was starving. This may have been the start of all the trouble.

We got to the restaurant and I made meaningful eye contact with the waiter. He knew the plan. He came over and told us there were special menus that evening, and handed them to us. I discreetly palmed the ring and watched Wonder Woman’s eyes for the moment she realized what was going on. That’s how I was able to see them SCAN THE MENU FOR A HALF-SECOND BEFORE DROPPING IT AND MOVING ON TO THE REGULAR MENU. (As I mentioned, she was hungry, which usually means she’s not in the mood to mess around with frivolous time-wasters like reading or exchanging pleasantries with me.)

Z: “Uh…Did you check out this menu?”

WW: “Yeah, but I’m probably going to get the usual stuff.”

Z: “Yeah, but…did you read it? It’s really weird. You should check it out.”

WW: (picks up the menu)

WW: “There’s too much going on with it…” (puts menu back down.)

[At this point I can feel my plan spinning wildly out of control. I start to panic.]

Z: “No, I’m serious. Read it.” [Editor’s note: WW recalls that I was acting a little scary right around this point.]

WW: (picks up menu)

WW: “You know what’s really weird? It’s not March.” (PUTS MENU BACK DOWN)

[Editor’s note: “It’s not March”????? By the way, that’s a direct quote; I’m not exaggerating. I mean… C’MON…]

Z: “Babe? Read the menu. Pick it up. Start at the top, read to the bottom.”

WW: “Why?”

Z: (angry glare)

Even when she had finally read it, I would say there was much more confusion and unease than emotion and compulsion to have sex with me. Certainly no tears, and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t earned a bucketful. I was close to drop-kicking a puppy if that’s what it took to make her cry. Desperate to get my plan back on track, I held out my fists, but I had jumped the gun - instead of cute, joyous frustration at me stalling the moment she’d been waiting for, the “pick a hand” game only increased the bewilderment. By the time I asked her to marry me, this was her response:

“Really??? I mean, of course, yes, but… really???”

Here I had put together a really cute bit and she was fucking it all up. In her defense, she told me that at that moment she kept waiting for the punchline. I had had so much fun making jokes about proposing to her that by the time I actually did it she figured it was a gag, so I got what I deserved.

From that point, we shared a terrific meal together, though frankly I could have done without this moment:

WW: “I still amazed you were able to surprise me… I mean, I can’t believe you didn’t m-… that no one screwed it up!”

Z: “Just so we’re clear, I know you were going to say, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t mess it up.’”

WW: “…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I mean, just because we’re both thinking it doesn’t mean it needs to be said. I also thought the peanut roll (included for reasons you can probably guess now) was not so wonderful. Overall, though, a very special meal, even when WW, completely unprovoked, said, “I’m not drinking a thing tonight. I want to remember everything.” Well, good thing I didn’t have a bottle of really expensive champagne being put on ice as we spoke…

This is getting long, so let’s just say that WW was able to convince herself to have a glass once she saw exactly what kind of champagne it was. Then she rushed off to spend the next four hours on the phone. I was fine with that because it gave me time to watch Lost, but Wonder Fiancée informed me that she and I were reveling in a very sacred moment, and was important to her that we share this moment together, though ‘together’ did not mean that we would necessarily be talking to each other or even in the same room. If I wanted to, I could either speak with friends or play online Scrabble, but I could not watch TV and most certainly could not go to sleep. This got a bit annoying around two in the morning.

One last thing: at 7:45 am on Friday, I woke up to find WW staring at me. I had just enjoyed five and a half hours of sleep. She looked into my eyes and said, “I’m so excited we’re engaged… How many groomsmen are you going to have?” [Editor’s note: again, that’s a verbatim quote right there.]

Something tells me I’m going to have a lot of material for the Underpants over the next year…

Lost has a habit of setting up dozens of mind-boggling mysteries and solving NONE of them. My friend Jordan, whose use of imagery is nothing short of genius, describes the experience of watching the show as frustrating as “Dry-Humping a Supermodel.”

What is it about exes? Why do we remember them being hotter than they were, and the sex being better than it was? Why do we forget the pain, and the moments when we’d look at them and think, “I’ve wasted so much time on you…”?  I don’t know.  All I know is that on Friday at six AM I sat down to watch two hours of the most infuriating show on television. 

That’s right.  6 AM.  Thursday was a terrible, no good, very bad day.  The work day sucked, I overcooked my dinner, I found holes in two of my best workshirts which meant I had to do laundry, and by the time I was done it was 10:30 and I was too damn tired to handle the confusion and unfulfilled expectations that come from watching Lost.  Also, given my luck that day, there was a good chance my TV would catch fire.  I set my alarm for six and went to bed. 

I woke up feeling happy and refreshed, and then spent the next two hours ruining that feeling…

From the very first minute, the show had already given me a Blue Ball Special.  For the past several months ABC advertised a blockbuster, two-hour premiere.  PSYCHE!  The first hour is a recap.  That is not a two-hour premiere.  That is a one-hour premiere, and a one-hour reminder.  Up yours, ABC.  That isn’t equivalent to dry-humping a supermodel - that’s a supermodel who just pulled the move where she plants kisses all the way down my torso to my waist… then comes back up.  I hate that maneuver.  Women who do that should be given empty Tiffany boxes for every birthday for the rest of their lives.

In theory, recap episodes are for new viewers who have heard all the talk about this show and want to jump on the bandwagon without bothering to Netflix the DVD’s.  These people are lazy.  Lost is like a religion.  You can convert in, but in order to truly call yourself a believer, you have to have spent dozens of hours digesting the literature and constantly reviewing it.  You have to have spent long nights searching for meaning in insignificant details.  You have to believe in something that will continually test your faith and accept shit that makes no sense because deep down you believe it will all be revealed in the end.  Oh yeah - and it will deny you sexual release.

Some of you might wonder why I sound a bit angry.  That’s because when I originally took these notes it was early and I could have had another hour of sleep.  That and I’d just found out that Cinnamon Pecan Special K tastes nothing like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  That was sort of the cornerstone of my new weight-loss program.  Now I’m going to have to take up smoking.

Considering I have trouble recapping a single episode in less than three pages, I’m curious to see how ABC recaps three seasons in an hour.  Turns out: not so well.  Fifteen minutes in, this is what a new viewer would know: there’s a polar bear, a smoke monster and a pirate ship, while people are constantly scared, bloody, and being rained on. It makes no sense.  Take away the polar bear and the smoke monster and you’ve got everything I can remember about European History. Welcome to the program, Johnny-Come-Latelys.

I’m just going to end the recap of the recap here.  Instead I’ll take a moment to discuss some of the commercials.  Unlike a lot of people with DVR, I don’t manage to save a ton of time fastforwarding through commercials.  There are a few reasons for this.  First, a lot of commercials contain hot women, and it’s hard to press fast forward when I’m masturbating furiously.  Secondly, some commercials happen to be entertaining.  You know what’s not one of them?  The one where the Maytag guy uses a pitching machine to shoot baseballs at a washing machine.  Call me old fashioned, but where I come from we wash our baseballs by hand.  Even if I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t load them into a washing machine using a 90-mph fastball.  I don’t expect my car to make my whites whiter, so I don’t expect my washing machine to survive high-speed collisions.  However, I do like the commercial where the chick says “door open” and hits the glass door at full speed with a cup of coffee.    My dad constantly runs into pull doors the same way, and it never gets old. 

This week’s mystery:  The Future.  I’ve already made the analogy of this show as an ex-girlfriend, but let’s flesh out some details.  She and I had a tumultuous relationship.  She said I moved too fast, but in my defense, she IS a supermodel, and she wore EXTREMELY scandalous outfits.  Over the past few months she and I took some time apart to think things through. 

Just before the split, she gave me the mother of all dry-humps.  The show has always relied on flashbacks, but in last season’s finale they pulled a flashFORWARD.  The flashbacks always gave me blessed relief - finally a character’s odd behavior made a bit more sense with context. The flash forwards do the exact fucking opposite. 

The episode of that first flashforward focused on Jack, played by Matthew Fox.  When the show started he was the charismatic, quiet, reluctant leader of the castaways.  His reluctance may have been a result of him being an incompetent leader, because since then he has fallen for every single trap the island had to offer.  He’s still waiting for someone to tell him how you keep an idiot in suspense.  Then again, I’m the one sitting down for a fourth year of this crap, so I’m not really one to talk. 

In that episode, Jack was back in Los Angeles.  This is great, I thought.  There was a light at the end of the tunnel.  From the context of the future, mysteries of the present would be gradually revealed.  I was filled with hope.  Then that hope was told that the supermodel loved him like a brother, and that meant no handjobs.  For some reason, in the future, Jack wants to get BACK to the island, he thinks they never should have left, and he goes on flights hoping they crash. Of course, he doesn’t feel like any explanation is needed for any of these statements.

Now it looks like the flashforward is going to be the show’s M.O.  When Thursday’s episode began, we see a pile of mangos.  I figured they would turn into some kind of flying mango monster back on the island.  Instead, we find ourselves in a farmer’s market, and the mangos explode when Hurley, the show’s big tub of comic relief, goes plowing through them in a Camaro.  We’re back to the future (sorry - couldn’t help myself), and Hurley’s being chased by the cops.  Of course, like most fat people, it’s not long before Hurley’s caught, but as he’s dragged away, he yells, “I’m one of the Oceanic Six!  I’m one of the Oceanic Six!”  (FYI: Oceanic is the airline whose plane started this whole shebang.)   In the present, there’s like forty something people still living on the island.  So if Hurley’s part of the “Oceanic Six”, that means a whole bunch of people are going to die.  I would really like to know who, and how.  That there is the supermodel.  The fact that I may die before I ever find out… well, that’s the dry-humping part.

The cops put Hurley in an asylum because he’s having visions of The Hobbit, who died back on the island. Then a man comes to visit - a lawyer from Oceanic.  Right away, I know this guy is bad news.  Not because he’s black - because he’s THIS black guy.

This guy is ALWAYS EVIL!  ALWAYS!  On top of that, half the characters on the show are conmen, liars and thieves, so of course he’s not what he says he is.  But just before he leaves he asks Hurley, “Are they still alive?”  Just in case that weren’t vague enough, Jack then pays Hurley a visit because wants to know if Hurley is going to “tell.”  Hurley doesn’t answer.  Tell what??? Tell who??? It’s amazing that this show can be so good when its mysteries are only mysteries because no one is willing to finish a sentence or use proper nouns.  Fuckers.

A bunch of other things happened in this episode, but overall, it was the flash forwards that affected me the most.  At the end of the episode I was overwhelmed by the sense that not only do I not know what’s going on, but even when I do finally find out what’s going on, I won’t really know what the hell is going on.  The supermodel analogy is especially appropriate here, because the previous sentence is an incredibly concise yet accurate summation of all of my sexual relationships.

So where does this rate on the supermodel/dry-humping scale?  (I’ve decided that when I do these posts from now on, I’m going to a) relate them to an actual model based on how intrigued I am, and b) describe the dry-humping scenario.)

Supermodel to be Dry-Humped: This week’s episode was a terrific one.  I am completely charged for this season.  So of course we need someone really really hot.  But Lost is also trying some new tricks and looking ahead into the future, so I need someone I wasn’t previously aware of; someone with a bright future ahead of them that I would like to watch (with x-ray specs).  I’m going with new Guess Girl Sarah Mutch.  (Thanks to my Maxim subscription.)

Dry-Humping Scenario:  With this new flash forward device, the show’s writers are messing with me from the future.  It doesn’t have the same feeling as dry-humping a supermodel.  Instead, it’s like I actually got a supermodel to agree to hump me, but just before I stick the tip in, a cyborg from the future shows up and cock-blocks me.  DAMN YOU SKYNET!!!! 

P.S.  Throughout the episode, there were commercials (get this) advertising a “commercial” from Oceanic Airlines, to be aired during Eli Stone, the following program.  It’s a ploy by ABC to take advantage of the insatiable curiosity of Lost’s viewers and increase ratings.  So just in case dry-humping a supermodel weren’t frustrating enough, imagine trying to enjoy it while she’s pitching Amway products.

I bought a new TV last week, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. That’s because my new TV is very, very big. The stereotypes are true; I’m a dude, and therefore I wanted as big of a TV as I could possibly fit in my apartment. I was willing to take down a wall or two, if that’s what was needed. But the process wasn’t easy; certainly not for Wonder Woman. One day I guess she’d finally had enough. She turned to me and said, “You just want a bigger TV than M [a friend of mine], don’t you?!? Why? Does that mean that your dick is somehow bigger?” I forgot to mention: we were inside a crowded Circuit City, and Wonder Woman wasn’t so much using her “inside” voice as she was her “inside a KISS concert” voice.

It was a bit embarrassing. She was kind of implying that I might need a bigger dick, which I don’t, unless she’s expecting some kind of vaginal growth spurt. But more than that, it pissed me off because she was assuming the worst about me, that I could be so base and petty. So I explained that a big-ass TV is practical because I’m thinking ahead, to the day when she and I have a family together and move into a bigger place. (I’ve found that when your girlfriend is 30 and unmarried, this rationale can pretty much be used to explain anything. I could probably get away with a pre-marital affair by calling it an “au pair audition.”)

Of course I was lying. If* we get married, have babies and buy a new place together, I’m still going to want a bigger TV. I just didn’t want to discuss my junk in the middle of Circuit City. She had me pegged exactly: having a big ol’ TV makes me feel awesome, probably as much as I would with a twelve inch moose-cock. That’s why I thought that for the rest of this post I would refer to my big-ass TV as “My Dick”.

I love My New Dick. It’s so big I could probably sleep on it if I wanted to. It’s almost seven times as long as my other dick, and don’t get me started on its girth. Yes, I DO love that My Dick is bigger than M’s, but more than that I love the way it ticks him off that mine is bigger. In fact, My Dick is bigger than just about all of my friends’, except for Ex-Roommate Kat and Jackie Treehorn. (Not only is Kat a girl, but they’re both Asian, so I guess the stereotypes aren’t true…) My friend Maverick says his is bigger, but you know how guys talk; he’s going to have to whip it out before I’m convinced.

Admittedly, when My Dick arrived, even I was a little shocked by how big it was. I was worried that it would look awkward, or even worse - that I wouldn’t be able to find someplace to put it! But it didn’t take long before I got into the swing of things, and to her credit, Wonder Woman has been VERY accommodating. She spends more time with her eyes glued to My Dick than ever before, and trust me when I say that she’s found a whole new appreciation for it.

In celebration of My New Dick, I also bought an Xbox 360 along with Halo 3. These shall be known as “My Balls,” because when you pair My New Balls with My New Dick, it is a sight to behold. Even when they’re not doing anything, they look good just sitting there; but when you turn them on, what comes out is truly amazing (though if you’re not ready for it, it can be difficult to take all of it in on your first try.)

Lastly, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how good attractive women look when I see them on My Dick.

There. That was my best effort at discussing my new television as lewdly as possible. As regular readers might expect, I’m rather proud of myself right now, though I wouldn’t be surprised to come home tomorrow and find Wonder Woman rubbing my new TV down with bleach. I only hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

*I imagine that people who know us find it cute to see me clinging to the delusions that any other options are still available.

Recently, I signed up for Facebook. Not to talk to my friends, of course; at this point I’m a bit old to use the Intermajig to communicate with my friends. Social networks are great when you want to tell everyone that your house is throwing a kegger, but these days  the biggest news is if one of my friends buys a couch, so it’s really okay if they’d rather just surprise me.

There’s only reason I signed up, and it’s the same reason I log on every day: online Scrabble. But my love for Scrabble goes beyond the pompous intellectual nerd-high I get from knowing that “Qi” is an alternative and acceptable spelling of the word “chi.” I developed my Scrabble soft spot years ago, when I spent a semester abroad in Israel. It was a tough time for me: I don’t speak any Hebrew, I didn’t learn much in my six weeks of language training, and on top of that, I found that Israelis could be a bit abrasive. (Read: they’re kinda pricks. Then again, I would probably be bitter too if we were constantly at war with Mexico while Canada refused to admit that we were even a country.) There’s really only one thing to do in that scenario, and that’s find a group of Americans and drink.

Mostly we sat around drinking shitty wine and frying frozen French Fries in butter, which makes apple pie look about as American as borscht.  (USA! USA!) Then one day (that I don’t remember) someone brought out a Scrabble board, and from then on it was a daily exercise, usually three or four games in a sitting. If I wanted to romanticize it, I might muse how Scrabble was our way of celebrating the English language, as it cured our homesickness and provided a respite from the unease of wandering around where you don’t understand what anyone’s saying and they all have rifles. If I was a little more true to myself, I could say that we played Scrabble because there’s nothing like the moment when someone attempts to explain why ‘jizz” should totally be legal. And if I was REALLY being honest, I’d say that I loved playing Scrabble because I usually stomped the living shit out of everyone.

Unfortunately, Scrabble gets a bit harder when I’m playing against the entire 34 million unique users on Facebook. What’s that? You doubt that there’s a network-wide conspiracy to rig the games against me? Oh, well then how do you explain the following, Professor Einstein van Hawking? Currently, I have 8 active games. These are my tiles for three of them:

#1) ATIIIOAA
#2) ITEOEIIE
#3) IIOLOSI

That’s 37.5% of my games that officially qualify for “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this crap?” status, and in a serious oversight, the programmers didn’t think to include a “Slam Table With Fist, Scattering Tiles Across The Floor, Then Pour Yourself A Glass Of Wine And Pout In The Corner” button. I now feel obligated to mention that there isn’t an actual point to this post; I just want to mention it because most of my opponents are Underpants readers and I’m trying to make an excuse for why I’m losing.

If only I was playing Hawaiian Scrabble or “Scrabble: Fellatio Edition”. Then those letters would be kick ass. ATIIIOAA: The blowjob transliteration of “Attire”. 57 points!

Once again, I spend weeks in L.A. over the winter holiday and come back to find that my blog has been demoted from “ghost town” to “wasteland”. If I neglected my actual underpants the way I do with these here Underpants, I’d have scabies, a majority of the Hepatitis alphabet and an unidentified lump. Then again, while I was away I saw just about everyone who comes to this blog, except for the three or four people who I didn’t previously know, and who have probably moved on to bigger and better. (Take me back, baby! I swear, I’ve changed! I’m a new man! Those other blogs don’t mean shit to me!) I can only attempt to make up for my negligence with vigor. In other words, unlike anything in my actual underpants, this is probably going to get lengthy.

It was a great trip. I saw my nephew, who is two years old. He giggles when he farts and pays attention to people in order, according to their boob size - I agree with where he stands on a lot of the big issues. (Diego in ’08!) You know what’s interesting about two year olds? EVERYTHING. People will spend hours watching a kid do the exact same thing over and over again, a phenomenon I call the Ocean’s 11Paradox. In social situations I frequently run out of things to say, but having a baby around meant I never had to have a conversation about the weather or Britney Spears, because whenever we hit one of those pauses that is usually followed by, “So what ELSE is going on with you?” somebody would just look at the kid, who’d be putting some object into some other object in a way that would either be cute or incredibly dangerous. Or he’d fart and then say, “I fart,” and as far as I’m concerned, that’s Wilde-caliber wit, right there. (Note: There’s only one thing funnier than a fart: a fart accompanied by play-by-play. I’m going to start shouting “DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?!?” every time I rip one.)

I spent New Year’s at the Magic Castle. It’s a dinner club for magicians, which tends to inspire a chuckle or two when I say it out loud, and understandably so: It sounds like somebody’s trying to call their treehouse a VIP lounge due to its exclusive, “no girls allowed” door policy. And was it nerdy? You betcha. There were magicians all over the place, and every one looked just like your average dungeon master dressed up in a tux. Like all nerds, they tended towards the short ends of the bell curve: overweight or skinny; bald or with a shoulder-length pony tail. Even the tuxes were mostly in purples or crimsons - the standard colors of warlock cloaks.

But this wasn’t your average tree fort. First of all, the place was a terrific steakhouse. I had like, five different animals over the course of my meal, and they were all delicious. And the club, built into a mansion that extends several floors underground, has bars on every floor made from the type of old wood that makes you want to order a scotch, whether you like it or not. And as nerdy as the aspiring Gandalfs all were, they were by no means anti-social recluses, because they weren’t just nerds; they were REDEEMED nerds. All those dorked out years had come full circle and it was paying off in full. The ladies in that place were every bit as USDA choice as the prime rib, and you didn’t have a chance in hell with them unless you owned a cane with a gold dragon on the grip. These guys knew that they were hot shit too. They would hit on your girlfriend while you were standing right next to her, and you could only hope that he hadn’t somehow impregnated her via slight-of-nuts.

And while every wizard had some self-deprecating jokes in their act, they were immediately followed by a come-on aimed at the hottest lady in the crowd. For example: one performer (who wasn’t even a magician – he was a juggler… A JUGGLER for cryin’ out loud) had an act featuring those wooden paddle ball toys, with the ball tethered by an elastic band. Playing with one of those? Geeky. Playing with one in each hand? Buy one geek, get the next geek free. But this guy was able to get THREE going at one point: one in each hand and one jammed into the zipper of his pants, kept in motion through crotch thrusts conveniently aimed at an exotic, dark-skinned beauty in the front row. I had an epiphany at that point: during those high school years I spent playing Magic: The Gathering, not only was I dork, but I was the wrong kind of dork. I’d invested heavily on the Pets.com of nerdom.

But the best part of the trip was I got to see most of my family and friends. The only downside was a logistical one: my two sets of close friends in California live on opposite ends of the state, and as it turns out, California is pretty goddamn big as far as states go. In order to see everybody, I had to drive from LA to San Francisco and back within 48 hours; approximately six hours each way. Don’t get me wrong; it’s an incredibly entertaining drive, as long as you enjoy artichoke farms and Spanish radio. If you’re one of the unfortunate few who don’t, then it’s nothing but a long, straight highway over an irrigated desert. To illustrate just how flat and straight the road is, in college I would actually read comic books or masturbate while I was driving, just to pass the time. (Note: Comic book reading and masturbation were not simultaneous, as that would be dangerous. I mean, semen stains really cut the resale value…) One time I even jerked off to a movie playing on a laptop in the passenger seat, and I was driving a stick shift at the time. (Yes, yes, I get it. But I actually mean it – my car had a manual transmission.)

But in college I made the drive alone; this time I figured it would be much more enjoyable, because now I have a girlfriend, and that means roadhead. I know that Wonder Woman’s father occasionally reads the Underpants, and at this point he might be gnashing his teeth at the idea of his daughter giving me a bobojo, or he might not, because I’m Jewish, and most Jewish parents don’t care as long as their daughters are eating kosher. But it doesn’t really matter, because the scoreboard reads: Hours driving – 12; Bobojo’s - 0.

Turns out that being in a car makes Wonder Woman sleepy, and in twelve hours I was unable to find a position where I could get my penis to her mouth while still keeping one appendage on the gas. (My KINGDOM for some cruise control!) I gave her coffee but it didn’t help; a few miles down the road I’d casually mention, “You know what I hear goes well with coffee? My dick,” but I’d look over and she’d already be lights out. She also considers roadhead to be dangerous, but commercials for erectile medications say erections lasting for more than four hours are dangerous too, and they’re talking about some guy in a bathtub on the edge of a picturesque hill, not a frustrated motherfucker in a Toyota.

Even worse: if she didn’t trust my ability to drive while orgasming when I had both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road, she probably would have thrown a fit if she woke up and found me “interrogating the prisoner” at 90 mph. Not to say that that stopped me from doing it; I just did it LESS. But she wasn’t just not giving me roadhead; by limiting my in-transit orgasms, she was actually road-cockblocking me.

Now, I’d have to check Wikipedia to be sure, but I believe that the internationally recognized roadhead ratio is equal to one bone smooch per three hours driving. I think it’s in the Magna Carta. That means I’m living with a fugitive from justice. (Please feel free to make up your own “penal system” joke here.)

And on that note… here’s to a happy new year!