Email To My Brother: Million Dollar Picture

A lawyer tells his client, "What do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad?"

     “Give me the good news first,” you—I mean, the client—says.

     "Your wife just found a picture that’s worth a million dollars!"

     "That's GREAT! What can possibly be the bad?"

     "It’s a picture of you having sex with that lady from the Hidden Yellow Cafe.”

 

 

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Email To My Brother: It Got Me Thinking

Your last two emails got me to thinking.
     It doesn’t take much.
     Anyway, why is it that a woman’s ailments that keep her from having sex always can’t be verified, and why is this sentence so awkward? Anyway, your wife suffers from her bad back. My wife suffers from her migraine headaches. My buddy Maloney's wife has her pains that make her cry out so loud that our father can probably hear her without his hearing aids.
     Yet all strangely unverifiable.
     I’m not saying that they don’t suffer from these ailments. I’m just saying that it’s pretty convenient that these ailments can’t be verified, visually or otherwise.
     A broken arm, you can see.
     Same with a gunshot wound.
     That girl in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue with the missing leg, I’d understand if she wasn’t in the mood for sex. It must be exhausting for her to try to hang onto a guy boning down on her with only one leg to wrap around him. Although there was a porn actress in the 70s with only one leg. Her name was Long Jean Silver, and she didn’t seem to have any problems.
      Maloney's wife is going all the way to Panama to have an experimental medical procedure performed on her just to get out of having sex with him.
     When your wife was told she had to have surgery on her back, she said, “It’s worth it if it gives me an excuse to not have sex with the gas-producer that is my husband.”
     I tell my wife, “Sex is good for your headache. It releases pain-relieving endorphins that will help you get rid of it.”
     She’d rather suffer.
     If you’re tired, sex perks you up.
     If you’re wired, sex relaxes you.
     Sex improves your mood.
     Sex makes you feel attractive.
     Sex bonds you with your partner.
     Even the one you're seeing on the side.
     Want to lose weight?
     Sex does that.
     Want to get fit?
     Sex does that too.
     Sex helps prevent prostate cancer.
     I bet sex even fights Alzheimer’s.
     Sex is good for the heart.
     Sex is good for the lungs.
     I don’t care what Mickey tells Rocky, it’s good for the legs, too.
     You know how the late, great Joan Rivers said a woman’s vagina falls out when she gets older? Well, it does, but...
     NOT if she’s having sex.
     There are a THOUSAND reasons for having sex.
     But only one for saying no:
     “I’m not in the mood.”
     Hence, phantom pains.
 
 

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Email To My Brother: An Emergency Surgery

Your upcoming surgery reminds me of the emergency surgery you had a few years ago.
     You had some kind of an accident, the specifics were never made clear, but the end result was your penis was lopped off by that elderly gardener you employ. He's--what?--98-years-old? He mistook it for a turnip or something, is what I heard.
     They rushed you to the hospital. You were unconscious,  Your wife was told that another penis could be re-attached, but someone would have to donate THEIR penis in order for this to happen.
     And what bozo is gonna do THAT?
      She asked your best friend Mike Curry, but that was when he started coming down with Alzheimer's. He may have been mentally disadvantaged, but he wasn’t stupid.
     "I would," he said, "but I'm already losing my memory, I can't afford to lose my tallywacker along with it."
     "Don't worry," Mike's wife told her. "You're not missing much."
     Well, the way I heard it, the surgery was a success. When you woke up, the doctor and your wife filled you in on the details. Your penis was severed, in an emergency operation a donated penis was used and attached.
     “It’s okay,” your wife said when she gave her okay for the procedure to take place. “He’s well-familiar with other men’s penises.”
     "So who donated the penis?" you wanted to know when you became conscious.
     Everybody hemmed and hawed.
     “I did!” said a voice beside you, and, for the first time, you noticed the elderly gardener laying in the bed next to you. “I wasn't doing anything with it anyway.”
     You should have given him a raise.
 
 

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Email To My Brother: You Know What I Did?

When your doctor told you that you had a problem with your Anterior Horn, I'm sure your wife spoke right up and said, "He sure does, doc. The one in his pants!"

     The way I heard it was that you're having an emergency addadictomy.

     I would say THAT'S worth $50,000.

     You know, we have a doctor right here by the name of Dr. Ebenezer Bombay. He's a naturopath. I used to see him back in the day. He can sell you some herbs and supplements that will fix that weak penis of yours. Your heart, too. For my heart, he advised me to take Lysine, Oxy-something-or-other, and to empty my wallet of all the cash it contained, because the weight was adding undue stress. You know what I did?

     I got married.

     That took care of the excess cash in my wallet.

 

 

Raising My Father

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How Many Characters?

"What are you doing?" my father asked me.
     Wait a minute... cancel that.
     Let me begin by saying that I hate having to constantly sign up for new things on my old, out-of-date computer and having to constantly come up with different passwords.
     Which is what I was doing.
     "I'm trying to think of a new password, pop," I told him.
     He had seen how stymied I had been for these last few minutes, so he couldn't resist rubbing it in a bit, "What's so hard about that?"
     "It's just hard to come up with something unique that's easy to remember," I told him.
     "Let me try," he offered.
     My initial instinct was to say no, but I've learned that when you tell people no, they will quit offering to help.
     "Okay," I told him, "but it has to be eight characters long."
     "Eight characters? That's easy," my father snorted in victory. "Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs."
 
 

Raising My Father

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Email To My Brother: Third World Medicine

Never gave it much thought, so I didn’t know about what could happen to a person if they came up short on their hospital bill payment in a third world country, but I do know about the possible risk of medical fraud in a foreign country
 
     (i.e. Steve McQueen’s coffee enemas)
 
and financial fraud
 
     (“You owe us $30,000.”
     “THIRTY THOUSAND? You said TWENTY-FIVE!”
     “Yes, but remember that glass of water you asked for...?”),
 
and what can we do? We’re strangers in a strange land, and don’t have Kim Kardashian to intervene for us with President Trump. I also didn’t consider that contributing to her Panama Vacation Fund might unknowingly be contributing to their death.
     It makes my being cheap noble.
      I’ve only heard of chemotherapy being used against cancer. I’ve never heard that it’s used to fight other diseases. Then again, maybe I’m lucky I’ve never had to learn that. Still, the impression I got was that she is covered for chemo, but not for the out-of-country stem cell treatment.
     Why not try the treatment you’re covered for first, and then, if it doesn’t work, you can try the non-approved treatment?
     I don't know.
      I remember, back when you were at the tail end of grade school, you came home from swimming with your friends one summer, and had water in your ear. No matter what mom and dad tried, they couldn’t get the water out of your ear. Dad even gave you an enema, because that was always his go-to plan for his kids' medical problems, but it didn’t work. It just sent you down a path that we could never talk about.
      Finally, mom and dad agreed they had to take you to a doctor, BUT they didn’t have the money to take you to an AMERICAN doctor, so they took you to Juan’s Emergency Medical Clinic & Tire Repair across the border in Mexico. The doctor/mechanic said he’d have to stick the air hose they used to inflate tires with into your opposite ear and blow out the water that way.
      So he had dad pinch your nose shut with one hand and cover your mouth with the other, while the “doctor” held your head still with one hand and inserted the business end of the air hose into your non-waterlogged ear with the other. When he pressed the lever to release the high-pressure air, your head inflated to TWICE its normal size!
      “Don’t worry,” he told mom and dad, “as the air leaks out, your son’s head will return to its normal size.”
     Sadly, mom never lived to see that happen.
     And dad is STILL waiting.
 
 

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Email To My Brother: Come Back When You Can't Stay So Long

You know, it's funny about my buddy Louie.
     When I fell, I got up and went back to work. When you fell, you got up and continued your life. My buddy Louie fell a few months back, and he hasn’t been back to work since.
     When it happened, another co-worker showed me a picture Louie had taken to document his injuries and he looked like a sad Cantiflas after going eight rounds with Mike Tyson.
     To be fair, he needed surgery on his wrist.
     Have a safe trip back.
     Mom was sad to see you go.
     “Thank God he’s gone,” we’re her exact words.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Good Soup

My lovely wife is an excellent cook.

     When I look into our refrigerator, I see nothing to eat. My wife, however, can reach into anyone’s refrigerator and come up with a feast. Her leftovers are better than a gourmet meal at the snootiest of restaurants. My dad agrees with me, but he has a backhanded way of serving compliments.

     One weekend, I was laid low with a nasty cold, so my wife made me a hearty stew. There’s no such thing as canned this or anything from a bag that with my wife. She loves to cook and cooking from scratch is the only way she knows how, so she prepared the meat, chopped up the fresh, carefully chosen vegetables, and dropped them into her favorite stew pot along with her unique blend of spices and herbs that Colonel Sanders would be jealous of. As the delectable concoction was simmering on the stove, the intoxicating aroma enticed my father from his chair in the great room into the kitchen, where he stood over the stew pot and, with his eyes closed, took an appreciative whiff.

     “Mmm...” he moaned, hungrily.

     “Would you like some?” my wife asked him, pleased that he was so taken with her food.

     “Oh, boy,” my father said. “You bet.”

     So my wife served him a bowl.

     She’s thoughtful that way.

     “Oh, yeah,” my father said after several spoonfuls. “This sure does hit the spot.”

     My wife smiled to herself at the rare compliment from my father.

     The spell was broken, however, when my father added, “Campbell’s sure does make good soup.”

 

 

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Never Fight An Angry Monkey

My dad was pretty tough in his youth.
     These days, I could probably take him in a fair fight, but the fear he instilled in me as a young boy has me trembling at the thought of a fight with him, fair or otherwise.
     Back when I was still in single digits, I came home crying because my best friend's father had booted me in the can. "Get the Hell out of my house!" he yelled. I had broken something. I don't remember what, but he must have been pretty fond of it.
     When my father, who was in the street changing his car's oil, saw me crying, he immediately wanted to know who did it.
     "Mr. Sanchez," I sniffed.
     My father dropped his tools. They hit the pavement with an angry clank. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me along to our neighbor's house, banging on the door when he got there.
     Mr. Sanchez opened it, and stood there with a tough guy smirk on his face. He had a revolver stuck in the waistband of his pants. The implication was apparent. You've got to remember, this was a different time. A time when people took care of their own problems. There was no scurrying off and calling the police.
     "Qué, buey?" Mr. Sanchez said, lifting his chin defiantly. What, ox?
     Trust me, it sounds worse in Spanish.
     My father fought in the Philippines during World War Two. It wasn't the first time he faced a man with a gun. In a move even Rambo would envy, my father grabbed the gun, cracked Mr. Sanchez against the skull with it, and stuffed it back into his neighbor's waistband before he had a chance to start falling. When he did fall, he crumpled to the ground hard.
     I thought it was over with, but I got it, too, when we got home.
     "I don't know what you did," my father told me between whacks, "but I know you did something."
     My father once told me about a fight he got into at a bar. The bartender told them to take it outside. They obliged, both of them wanting to continue drinking after it was over. My father was the first one out the door. When the other man was one foot across the threshold, my father slammed the heavy door against him. It knocked the poor guy back several feet. He never got back up. When the bar closed, they moved him to the sidewalk out front and left him there to spend the night.
     I write all that because my father and I were watching Blazing Saddles the other day. When he saw Mongo, played by Alex Karras, knock out a horse with one punch, he said, "I could do that."
     I looked up from fussing with my laptop. It's about ten years old, and on its last legs. I'd buy another, maybe even a MacBook Pro since I've never owned an Apple, but that takes money, and these days my money goes to fixing the things my father breaks.
     But I digress...
     "Do what, pop?" I asked him.
     "Knock out a horse."
     "Is that right?" I said.
     My father shrugged.
     I thought about that. Then purposely picked the toughest animal I could think of, "What about a rhinoceros?"
     "Rhinos," he said, "are the bullies of the animal world. Stand up to one, and he'll back down. With that big horn up front, it makes them look tougher than they are. It's intimidating, but that's about it. The horn protects his face, so that makes a rhino overconfident. Just grab that horn to steady yourself. He'll grunt, because that's the way rhinos laugh, but he won't be laughing when you give him a roundhouse to his temple. That's his weak spot. He'll go down quick."
     That was more words in just a few seconds than my father had spoken to me my entire life. I wasn't sure if he was serious, or, like Mel Brooks, was just having fun with me at the expense of the animal kingdom, but I played along.
     "How about a dolphin?"
     "Cover Flipper's blowhole. When he starts to panic because he can't breathe, an uppercut to his jaw will do the trick," he told me. "Dolphins have a glass jaw."
     "What about a manatee?"
     "Mana-who?"
     "Mana-tee."
     "Now you're just making things up."
     "No, really. They're also known as a sea cow."
     "A sea cow, eh?" my father said, lifting one skeptical eyebrow.
     I was embarrassed to have brought it up, so I said something else just as ridiculous.
     "Well, have you ever punched a cow?"
     "Who do I look like? Rocky?" he wanted to know. "I don't know about manatees, but seals, seals are tough. It's like fighting a beach ball smeared with Vaseline, but stomp on his flipper and he's all yours."
     "Giraffes could be a problem."
     "A karate chop to their windpipe will take them out," he said, karate chopping the air in front of him with one muppet-like arm. "You just have to get out of the way when they fall."
     "I heard a Komodo dragon bit off Sharon Stone's husband's foot."
     "The actress?"
     "Yeah, remember her from Casino?"
     "No, I remember her from Basic Instinct. I don't know why her husband was fighting a giant lizard, but one thing he should have known is anything with a tail is easy to beat. Grab the tail, lift it high, and whatever it is will just hang there looking ridiculous."
     With my father's tall tales, I felt like a kid again. He did, too, I bet.
     "What about a chimpanzee?"
     My father looked at me.
     "You don't ever want to fight a chimpanzee, son. They have that monkey strength going for them, and the angrier they get, the stronger they get. They don't fight fair, either. They'll bite off your nose, tear off your face, anything to win the fight." With that, he paused, and then said, "You leave those monkeys alone."
     Good advice, I guess.
 

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