tonight i got to play with my new little friend and i have to say i kinda dig the results. but when i first saw myself, a line from the “movie” corky ramano shot through my head…
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ya wanna know where the subject line came from? i went to the gym tonight, and was coming up with another workout related bit i wanted to do, when about half way through i finished my workout. so, i went to the locker room to get dressed, and there was one of gold’s gym’s finest giving a tour to a newbie. great…and as he walked in, that is ACTUALLY what he said.

“this is a locker room…”

can you believe that shit? how do you follow that line?

“and this is a bench…this is where you plant your ass so you can put on your shoes…”

at least that’s what i THOUGHT i said quietly under my breath. but apparently it wasn’t TOO quiet, going off the look i got from little mister tour de gym. so of course later, we probably could have heard…

“and THESE? these are weights…they’re heavy things you lift up and down repeatedly to increase your size and definition.”

wonderful. remedial fitness. i was kinda surprised to see this new guy in there. not a lot of new traffic this time of year, i thought. then i started to realize what was up when i saw his bag. it still had his high school logo on it, although he looked to be a good decade out of high school. still sporting the class ring, too. and he had more than just a BIT of a gut. then it hit me; what time of year it was. it was turkey guilt/i’ll show ’em time.

allow me to explain.

see, austin’s population is mainly two types of people…the freaks and the students. as kramer so eloquently put it, the majority of austin (south side in particular) is all small town refugees (and usually the more artistic of the bunch) who wanted to break free of the oppressive shackles of their small town to commune in a place with twenty-four hour vegetarian breakfasts and twenty-four types of coffee to go with it where they could learn massage therapy and have access to decent weed…so they came here. as did students for ut. and acc (who all say they plan to transfer to ut, but most seldom do). and concordia. and st. edwards. and whatever else in the name of higher education has taken over an abandoned mega store or strip mall this month.

but all these people do have homes. and austin ain’t actually it.

no, home is where the mom guilt is, and a good chunk of them went home recently for one of the two winter parent’s place pilgrimage days, the second of which is coming up towards the end of this month. and a good portion of them experienced one of three things…

a. a parent or friend who hadn’t seen them in a while getting just enough booze (or having enough of a natural asshole factor) to tell them how much they’re starting to “let themselves go…”

b. an ex or someone they had a crush on in high school that they ran into at the video world or h.e.b. or something that still looks REALLY good and mentioned the idea of getting together for coffee over christmas when they’re back in town since the ex will have the kids and the divorce will be practically final…

c. mom fed you until you couldn’t see in color any more.

d. all of the above.

ALL of which motivates someone to try and undo six (or more) years of doritos and beer and pizza in four weeks. good fucking luck. but this is how gyms make their money, and why they have contracts. they DAMN well know you won’t go for more than a month of three (i should say most, not all on that one) but if they get you to sign for a year, you have to PAY for a year. that’s why the the old texas barbell company in lockhart texas is a brilliant place. they HAVE no contract. but your first month costs more than your second. and your second more than your third. it doesn’t get down to something reasonable until after six months. why? ’cause he knows most would have bailed by then and that way he got you for what he could before you lost all hope. wanna avoid the crowds at the gym? or know when there might be a bit of the eye candy handy? know the shifts and waves that come in as the calendar progresses…

late november to late december

more specifically, the week after thanksgiving till just before christmas. and we’ve already covered why. then there’s a dead week between christmas and new year’s where you can actually move about freely until one of the BIGGIES hits…

the first full week in january

“for 2003 i resolve to lose 20 pounds by years end. yes, it’s five pounds less than i promised myself i’d lose in 2002. but since i only gained ten in 2002, this would be erasing that PLUS another ten, which i feel is a more realistic goal. that whole “25 lb” thing scared me ’cause i went in, lifted a 25 lb. plate, realized how much that was, and got depressed that i was already lugging that much extra me around. then when i walked outside, i saw baskin & robbin’s across the parking lot, which i saw as a sign from god that this wasn’t my year to lose 25 lbs, but instead to try all 31 flavors. i don’t like bubblegum.”

nice.

this wave dies down by february, and then it’s slow for the shortest month of the year. in the middle there IS valentine’s day, but that tends to pass without incident or crowd burst ’cause it’s more a couple’s holiday and say what you will, you’re either gonna get some or you’re not. i have never gotten any on valentine’s day. sucks to be me. let’s move on before i get depressed; at least for THIS one i get to see santana in sa…

march madness

this is when the REAL eye candy hits the gym. why? spring break. they went bikini shopping, saw what they looked like in it after an entire winter of pub grub and baggy sweaters and went, “ick”. now it’s work that ass time, so the college girls come in in droves to look good for their daddy-bought trip to cancun.

then you have the week of slowness in the gym that is spring break, followed by the combo rush…the girls who thought they looked okay but then saw what they looked like compared to the other girls on the beach and now wanna do it just for themselves, combined with barely legal (in hustler terms) girls who wanna be able to shoehorn themselves into a size six prom dress not realizing that if they just go up a size they’d still look good and it would make it easier on their date come the end of the night.

right about the time the prom wave subsides, you get the group of folks in to kick off the late spring / early summer rush of either…

a. trying to undo the TEN (or more) years of yadda-yadda-yadda so they can show up all those popular fucks that have let them selves go when they coast in stag at the high school reunion and possibly score a one-nighter with some blast from the past, or…

b. trying to go down a dress (or tux) size (or two or four) before they have to be seen in front of god or the fates or whoever as they stand by the victim friend of their peer group this summer who’s getting married. again.

march madness usually will carry you through most of the summer; but of course here in texas, the oppressive heat DOES tend to slow up the crowd ’cause you work up a major sweat, walk out of the gym, and…well…sweat some more. so summer, with the exception of the “must look good by the pool” crowd is typically a bit slow…but then comes the “this semester i’m gonna take OFF the freshman fifteen” crowd, which carries us back into the holidays, and we start all over again. yee-haw.

*2022 point of pride – all spelling errors corrected without any reference, unless intentional words duped spell check, of course*

so yes, i DO occasionally get inspired to write this page. even lately. the problem is, it very rarely happens when i’m sitting at home. and it also typically involves booze…a little “fuel for the creative engine”, i guess we could call it. the difficult part comes the next morning, when i’m laying in bed trying to figure out what the fuck i thought was just so entertaining the night before. and who’s thong i just found in my pillow case. and where the midget-sized wonder woman outfit came from. but perhaps i’ve said too much…

when these bits o’ inspiration kick in and i’m out and about, i started phoning notes to myself to help out the diminishing short term from the night before. so without further ado, here’s what’s on my answering machine right now, not including the outgoing limerick, of course.

syntax de liquor

when i worked at sundance in san marcos, there was this kid (fresh out of high school, hence the term) that worked with us even though the store typically didn’t hire teenagers. he was the son of the doctor of the owner or something and so he ended up working a summer with us. he was a cool kid who i liked even though he basically had the spoiled little rich kid thing happening, but still wasn’t a jerk…a hard thing to accomplish with that kind of upbringing, ya know? so this one time, he was recounting the weekends beer-fueled activities when he got to a point in his story where he referred to “falling asleep in his buddy’s front yard”. i had to explain to him that people don’t “fall asleep” in other’s front yards, they PASS THE FUCK OUT in other’s front yards. if i had had a couple more last night, i would have been waking up with a concrete gnome, too.

is it a bad sign when you find your mobile phone sitting atop the styrofoam take out container from ihop in your refrigerator at noon on a sunday? i was afraid you’d say that.

see, my REAL job isn’t having a xmas party this year, so i’ve decided my NON real job (i.e. this astrowhore thing) needs to have SEVERAL. maybe a “twelve parties of xmas” kinda thing. the first of the series was last night, where kathi and i went to shoot pool, and i made her drive with the understanding that her minimal boozing would be covered by me so i could get my drunk on, and get it on i did. my drunk, that is. about a half hour after we got there, josh joined us fresh off trabajo de grande, and then a half hour after that my friend leslie drove in from sa, which i figured would be cool so we could do the whole two-on-two billiards thing, but leslie didn’t really play, as i recall. of course, due to MANY rounds of double crown and cokes, i don’t recall a great deal of last night, and i somehow ended up signing of on an $80 bar tab at the end of the night. ouch. at least a chunk of it got kicked back in, i just wish i hadn’t been quite so loud in trying to remember a term i’d come up with the night before. see, for some reason, i started coming up with slang terms (predominantly for josh’s amusement) for sexual acts. like referring to anal as “kicking it on the back porch” or a blowjob as “shutting her up the old fashioned way”. but i had come up for a term, that was DAMN funny at the time (and yes, i was actually sober when i came up with it) for a facial shot. and i think i used the term “facial shot” too loud and too often for most of the ihop crowd, including the people at my table; and all ’cause i was trying to remember something from friday night, who’s title would be…

(and before i wrote this, i called kramer, which even drunk i couldn’t bring myself to do at 2:00 am last night, and he reminded me that my slang term for a facial shot was “spilling some paint in the garage”, but i digress…)

syntax de caffee

sue me, but with slight holiday depression kicking in, partially due to another mom-less xmas and all, a comedy routine wrought with suicide and cancer jokes** kinda brought me down a bit. josh and kramer had a blast, but the other half of our opera box didn’t make it out so cheerful. anyway, afterwards, i met up with the josh and the k-man at this new place that serves nothing but desert, coffee, and booze, or a combination of all three called halcyon. the night then contained everything from beer and s’mores (the late night breakfast of champions, or at least people who damn near set themselves on fire with a deadly combo of sweater sleeves and six-inch-high blue flames who’s parents named them josh) and a coffee menu that offers up more varieties of java then most places have varieties of overall beverages, which brought to mind a question…

why must coffee be so damn complex?

for some reason, coffee can’t just be called coffee anymore. for example, they have something at halcyon called “caffee americano”, which is “espresso with a splash of hot water that tastes just like fresh, hot coffee”.

okay.
fine.
what?

i guess “caffee americano” does have a bit more marketable zing than “watery-ass espresso”, but last time i checked espresso went for a good bit more than coffee, so why not just make a plain ol’ pot of coffee? why would you drink something pricey that has been done just right to TASTE like coffee instead of just drinking coffee? that’s like these annoying vegetarians that brag that their $4.95 veggie burger tastes just like my $2.95 cheeseburger but without the beef. great. you spent twice the money for the same amount of flavor and taste…your parents must be proud. i guess with coffee speak, my glass of chocolate milk would be an “iced espresso-free mocha latte, hold the ice” since they say “mocha” instead of “chocolate” and “latte” instead of milk, right?

if you like watered down espresso to taste like coffee and veggie burgers that taste like beef without any cows coming to harm, do you also enjoy an orgasm without the fucking? just curious. weirdo. and to think i’ve been told MY pervertednesses were odd.

** 2023 note – the routine in question was george carlin. yes, THAT george carlin. the only time i ever got to see him, and the whole last half hour was about white guys that shave their heads, guys with tattoos, guys who smoke cigars, and how maybe people who died of cancer (my mom, my grandfather) kinda deserved it. it was targeted enough (purely coincidental, i might add) that josh and kramer asked me if i met him before the show and pissed him off. neither had occurred…

Replies: 3 Comments

i couldn’t have said it better myself…veggie burgers and pseudo coffee is nothing more than dietary masturbation…you get the effect of the real thing (i.e. caffeinated to the tits or a full belly) but none of the fun of getting there…

sean (very impressed) said @ 12/10/2002 04:44 PM CST

er, isn’t an orgasm without the fucking called “masturbating”?

topenga said @ 12/10/2002 10:16 AM CST

brave boy…

😉 said @ 12/09/2002 03:43 PM CST

yeah, i know…why does it seem like i’ve suddenly developed an astrowhore allergy? like my creativity has run dry? well, good question…i’ve heard it all in my quest to figure out what the fuck is up…that the “newness” has worn off. that i’m depressed. that’s it’s the winter blahs. perhaps a bit of all of them. it is NOT because my brain has been sucked out by aliens and replaced with an interplanetary control device that seeks to govern my every mood. yes, i’ve even heard that one, which only shows that kramer’s readers read my page after all. speaking of, a riddle…
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okay, so maybe she’s not my FIRST pick for the girl i want in nothing but a v-string in my bed with a bow on her head as my ultimate christmas gift, even if it has to be the weekend before christmas or something (’cause at this stage a whole weekend will be needed)…but since the actual numero uno choice has done everything shy of a legal injunction to keep me from posting HER pic on here, i figure this lil’ bit of eye candy would do…and yes, it’s the girl from the action flick xxx…not to be confused with the rating on the majority of my video collection. i just wanted to try out the new shit and see how photos and text interacted on here.

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nice ti.. i mean tattoo
harold said @ 12/10/2002 11:50 AM CST

so, between the holidays and browser issues and internal issues i haven’t done the whore thing in a while. i realize this. i had every intention of doing my typical sunday night, post-soprano’s throw down and then my browser decided that i didn’t need to…so i went to bed. and here we are…
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i don’t remember when they invaded, but i DAMN well know they weren’t here when i grew up. i’m talking about lizards. or geckos. or whatever the little clear skinned mother fuckers that are all over the place now would be called. when i was growing up, you saw plenty of green lizards, and occasionally brown lizards…but it was rare. now, unless you live WAY urban, you see these little translucent bastards everywhere, and they rarely grow over an inch or two before they get stepped on, or caught on a bug or rodent sticky trap, or something. the first time i saw one, i caught it, thinking i had something kinda rare. than it’s 176,453 relatives arrived and i gave him (or her…who can tell?) back to la familia reptilia.
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i don’t know what it was about this weekend. maybe it was the planetary alignment. or the prada shoes. but i heard it more than once, although pretty jokingly i’m sure, at least MOST of the time…

“are you SURE you’re not gay?”

“yes, i’m sure…”, i would respond. but when i was giving shopping advice to a gay man on monday night, i kinda started to wonder. add to that the fact that i was sitting six rows from the stage, in the center floor section of the sbc center wearing a semi-see-through black shirt and jeans and the pradas and it made it look even MORE suspicious, since it was a cher show and all. but i’m secure enough in my masculinity to accomplish all this and still be sure i’m not gay. and for those of you who CAN’T, i truly feel bad for you…’cause real men know this is all okay.

i was promised two things out of this evening…an amazing, vegas-style show and amazing company. i got both. cher is really great live, i frighteningly knew a larger percentage of the material, and even had bitter-sweet childhood flashbacks when they played clips of the sonny & cher show. see, THAT was what was playing on the tv the night my mom and dad pulled me into the living room to tell me they were getting divorced; the next morning dad was outta the house…and i always flash back to that night whenever i see any clip from that show. earlier in life, that hurt, ’cause it reminded me of the start of my dad-less childhood. but considering how cool i turned out, and how that probably would have been way different had things gone another way, now it always makes me smile…but i digress. let’s get out of the seventies and back into monday…

being a white male between the ages of 18 and 34 makes it even weirder for me when i end up being the minority among minorities. this time, being male, white, under thirty-five and straight made me a definite minority in a very large group of people. but that was okay. being a guy at a cher show, you have to take the good with the bad; an example:

good: when we hit the can between cyndi lauper and cher, i was in and out way faster than my “competition”, and she CHEATED…

bad: ya know when it seems like the guy at the urinal is giving more than just a passing glance at yo’ shit any you wonder if he’s checking you out in an un-cool way? here you’re pretty much guaranteed he is.

as for the show, it was definitely vegas-style, with great visuals, cirque de soleil style choreography, and cher going through more wardrobe changes than you’d see barbie do if you walk down that girle pink aisle in toys r’ us twice. and my company? as amazing as promised (and then some) covered by four L-words…

Little
Lovely
Latin
Leather-clad

let’s face it, you KNOW the woman looks good when even the incredibly gay guys (as cher said at the start of the show, “ladies and gentlemen and flamboyant gentlemen…”) in the seats next to you tell her (and more often, you) how awesome she looks. but they couldn’t tell me the two things i left wondering and still don’t know…

1. cher’s real age
2. cher’s real hair color

bet a few of you know the first…but does ANYONE really know the second? i bet at this point even SHE’S forgotten. little help here, readers?

Replies: 3 Comments

I always hate it when I come to in the middle of a week long bender like that….

harold said @ 11/27/2002 10:41 PM CST

why did i just know you’d have an answer to that one really quickly?

sean (still straight…but looking good enough not to be last night…) said @ 11/26/2002 08:05 AM CST

cher: Taurus, May 20, 1946. Cap Moon, Cancer Asc. Probably brown hair. But I’m not taking bets on that guess.

astrofishy said @ 11/26/2002 01:17 AM CST

sunday, cruddy sunday. i FINALLY whipped it out…
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for the first time in two years, my mobile number is changing. yep, i decided it was time to give up the company phone (or to be more specific, the company carrier) and move on to something that in the long run, due to my chattiness (and the chattiness of others, but mainly me), will save me a shitload of money…since i HAVE gone consistently WAY over my allotted plan minutes and therefore burned through a lot of cash in the last year…
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