A Veteran's Day Remembrance

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, the day that most of us "soft boys with pussy new-media hands" tend to forget. Well, buddy, it's days like this that we need to remember the most. If it weren't for our fighting men, we wouldn't have freedom, liberty, or that G.I. Bill commercial from the Eighties with that guy who asks his friend if he's going to eat that pickle.

So, go buy that old soldier you know a cold one, and let him tell you about the day he helped to shape the world. Let him tell you a long story about the time he earned a medal, and while I have your attention, let me tell you how I got the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I was in Chicago one summer day. July 29, 1991, to be exact; I'll remember that date forever, since I still have a 1991 calendar on my desk. It has a picture of a mule in a floppy hat and a beach ball at his hooves. Man, it's a hoot.

But that's neither here nor there.

I was in Chicago on a mission: I needed to find a beer stein that could hold an entire six-pack. Funny thing about that stein... I never found it, but T. Mike got me one a couple of years later, and it said "I Bet You Can't" on the side, and he gave me a six-pack as well! I believe the beer was National Bohemian. Anyway, the mug might have said I couldn't, but let me tell you, I could! The toughest thing is that the beer starts to get warm if you don't drink fast enough.

But I digress.

I was in Chicago, looking for a stein, when I encountered an anti-American demonstration in the streets. Naw, I kidding. It was just a bunch of Cubs fans, because I was outside Wrigley Field! Now that place is COOL! If you like baseball and you ever have a chance to travel to the Windy City, you really have to check out Wrigley, because that place just smells like history. That is, if history smells like stale beer and urine. That's what I think history smells like, anyway. Even though back in the old days, there was probably saltpeter smell mixed in the history smell. That's because saltpeter was used to try to curb the sex drive of people, especially soldiers! No, it's true, I swear! And so these guys probably had saltpeter mixed in their pee-pee, so that smell is combined with the stale beer smell and the urine smell to create the old smell of history.

But that's only a theory. Let me get back to the story.

I was in Chicago, outside Wrigley Field, looking for a beer stein that holds a whole six-pack on July 29, 1991. Man, it was hot that day. Did I mention that already, because it had to be over 100 degrees! I mean, I'd expect a place like Los Angeles or Miami or Dallas to be that hot, because those cities are in the south, but Chicago? Well, Chicago IS hot, hot as heck, and the humidity was so thick you could write your name in it! That makes it even hotter, or at least seem like it. And if you know me, I sweat a lot. I can sweat at a drop of a hat (so if you're making a movie and you have a need for that, I'm available) even at regular room temperature, so you can imagine how sweaty I was that day. But I was at Wrigley, with real baseball fans, and they don't mind the sweat. In fact, they respect sweat, these hard-nosed, blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth Cub fans! I was definitely in my element, let me tell you. And I wasn't even the sweatiest guy! No, there was this one guy, I didn't catch his name, but man, could he sweat! But he was fat, he had an advantage.

But I'm straying from the story.

I was in Chicago, outside Wrigley Field, looking for a beer stein that holds a whole six-pack on July 29, 1991, and sweating my pants-residents off. I'm about to walk away from the stadium, when some batter (I'm not sure if he was a Cub or not) hit a home run out of the park and into the street where I was. Did I catch the baseball? No, but I did catch an elbow to the temple that knocked me cold for about fifteen minutes. When I awoke, I was shirtless. "White Sox suck" was spray-painted on my chest, and "$5 Blowjobs" painted on my back. I must have laughed for a whole hour. True story!

Oh, and how did I get the Congressional Medal of Honor, you ask? Bought it on eBay for twenty bucks. Wanna buy a beer stein? It's freakin' HUGE!