Where the Battle of Algiers rages on ...Rick's Cafe Americain

There has never, in the history of news, been a story that started with this phrase and ended well:

A 16-year-old Florida mother...

...and two of her relatives made the girl’s ten-month-old baby drink from a cup containing gin and videotaped the incident, said police who arrested the group this week.

The latest in a series of “features” that I think I will run on the blog and then lose interest in, Virtual Notepad is where I’ll write the ideas for jokes that haven’t coalesced into something complete yet. Hopefully what is funny about them will still shine through.

1) Right now my workload isn’t too intense. The few projects I’m on occupy less than an hour of my day. Still, when my officemate turns around to talk to me about the case that we are working on I still can’t help thinking “Jesus, didn’t he see that I was reading?"

2) Today’s NYT had an Op-Ed by Nina and Tim Zagat that threw their two cents into the immigration debate:

Twenty years ago, American perceptions of Asian food could be summed up in one word: “Chinese.” Since then, we have developed appetites for Korean, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese fare. Yet while the quality of the restaurants that serve these cuisines ... has soared in America, Chinese restaurants have stalled. ... China and the United States should work together on a culinary visa program that makes it easier for Chinese chefs to come here. With more chefs who are schooled in China’s dynamic new restaurant scene, we would see a transformation of the way Chinese food is served in this country.

Today was a minor milestone in my career and a bit of a silly one: I picked up my first set of headshots. It is neat because now I actually have a headshot. It is a tangible thing on heavy-duty 8x10 paper. My mother can hang it on her office door. And she will. It will, in some way, feel like I am making progress to her, just in the same way it feels like making progress to me. This is despite the fact that both of us know that with a digital image and $100, anyone can get a headshot done.

And so the definition of progress is internal: I felt that I was ready to get a headshot. Worthy. In need. Able to take advantage of their presence. The headshot, then, is the manifestation of my own sense of progress. With that, Silly Thing becomes Good Thing.

Of course it isn’t exactly me. A little touching up was necessary because I am flawed and even a good photograph has some unavoidable imperfections. The shine on my nose and cheeks and two stray hairs: gone. The refraction from my glasses: corrected. The bump on the end of my nose: erased. It is still me, but a ‘better’ me. It is still far enough from perfect that it looks like no work may have been done at all. A touch dishonest, but a far cry from the photoshop crimes and out-of-date pictures that decorate the profiles of match.com.

Don’t worry, Mom. It’s me in the picture. You remember the flaws, right?

18 months after being labelled “endearingly chubby” by a reporter at the NY Observer, I was contacted by a reporter at the NY Post to see how, as a funny schlub I felt about the romantic prospects of fellow schlubs in the wake of Seth Rogen’s star turn in Knocked Up. I have to admit that I prefer the term “endearingly chubby” to “schlub,” though I’d take “strapping” over either, if only it weren’t so obviously false.

That article came out yesterday, and I am quoted near the end: Schlub You the Right Way.

If we combine the news that Paris got a cavity search on arrival at prison and that she was released early for medical reasons, I think we can conclude that a follow-up biopsy revealed that her brains actually were up her ass.

This concludes Easy Joke Thursday at rickblaine.com. Look for more smarter jokes about more important targets later today at Stay Free! Daily.

And the Ramble project is complete and future Rambles will be cross-posted here. I hope at least a couple of people read this, Dawn.

5/25/07

The hits keep on coming. After “The Bicycle Incident” I figured that I was clear of further injury for a while. This is known in the psychology biz as “delusional optimism.” In fact, I find myself with enough cuts and scrapes all over my body that I could be confused with someone (at first glance only, of course) who actually works with his hands.

This could not be further from the truth. I still have the baby soft skin that can only come from work avoidance so aggressive and complete that, if the energy were better channeled, would result in “accomplishing something.” As if.

Anyway, the injuries started when we offered to catsit for my sister-in-law to be’s cat, Fluff. Fluff is an amiable, if skittish, cat and we hoped that bringing her by might help us with a mouse issue that we no longer have. We quickly realized that we would not solve our mouse problems with Fluff. As awesome as she is, she is large and not all that into moving, much less chasing mice. The best way to describe Fluff is as “a pile of cat.” This did not stop Fluff from making a quick dash for the border and stepping on my wrist when I tried to pet her, resulting in a deep gash. Probably due to cat allergies, I will apparently bear the Mark of Fluff for all of my days, as it has not and probably will not heal completely.

Then the bicycle thing.

This past weekend, Carrie decided that we should make our house less garrison-like and remove the security bars from the second floor. We are the only house on the street that has them and, besides the impact on light on our house, it virtually screamed “terrified white folks.” The plan was simple. With Carrie’s help, a strongman would lower the wrought-iron grate down to me, and I would guide it to the ground. Like I said, simple. To help us get the bars down to street level, we asked a neighbor and friend to help. He was on his way to the airport, though, so he could only help with one window. For the second window, we had to ask a stranger. Rather than handle the weight of the grate himself, and let Carrie slowly let out the slack on the twine we used as a backup restraint, he used the twine as the SOLE restraint on the grate.

I mentioned that I was to guide the grate from below, yes?

Needless to say, the twine wasn’t strong enough to hold the grate. I realized this when the grate wasn’t being slowly lowered to me but was instead tipping and hurtling toward me, just behind the screams of Carrie and her assistant. Good thing sound travels faster than gravity - and light faster than sound. That fortunate quirk of physics allowed me to move quickly out of the way (or as quickly as I move) enough for the grate to merely clip my arm and then bounce into my leg, rather than crash directly onto my head, turning me into a drooling moron. Carrie has gotten used to living with a moron, but I think the drooling would have been even more than she could bear.

So, no drooling but a hell of a contusion on my left arm and scrapes and bruises on both legs. I remained stoic and didn’t cry because I know that is the least that I could do to continue the charade that I am a man.

To sum up, since Carrie was on “upstairs” duty, I consider us even for crashing her side of the car into a tree on our honeymoon.

5/9/07

I have a bad cut on my knee. I hurt it riding my bike over the weekend. I have a bad history with bicycles, so this is par for the course. It all falls under the theme of “Did the person who used the expression “it’s like riding a bicycle” to describe how easy it is to restart an old activity ever ACTUALLY take a long hiatus from riding a bicycle?”

I rode my bike a lot when I was a kid. Of course I did. I was a kid. (If you didn’t ride a bicycle as a child, your childhood was probably unbearably sad.) Then I kind of stopped riding. I went to school on a bus and anything else I did was pretty much close enough to walk or far enough to drive.

After a few years of not riding, I got jealous of all of the people in college who zipped back and forth to class while I found myself slowly trudging everywhere, so I pulled my bike out of the garage and brought it up to Ithaca. During my first week of riding, as I was struggling up a hill, I was passed by a woman pushing a stroller.

The bicycle went back into the garage.

14 years later I met Carrie, who rides or walks everywhere. One night, when I had to go home because I didn’t have work clothes at Carrie’s apartment, Carrie volunteered her bike to me. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that a trip from a neighborhood called “Park SLOPE” to one named “Prospect HEIGHTS” was not the ideal maiden voyage. It was a mile and a half, uphill, over the streets of Brooklyn - which are roughly like downtown Fallujah. It the intervening 14 years I had completely forgotten how one cushions ones balls from the shock and by the time I arrived home, I was sweating like I just came in from a thunderstorm, heaving like I was having a
heart attack and walking like I just rode a bicycle for a mile and a half without any shock absorption.

The next time I needed to go home for a change of clothes, I walked.

3 years later, Carrie finally convinced me to get a bike so we can ride together. I like it. It is red and shiny and maybe I’ll get a bell for it, just to recapture my youth. This past weekend, however, I was using it to ride to the softball fields in Prospect Park. As I was riding in the park, I saw that I was going to have to make a left turn into a steep incline up. So I leaned forward, pressed hard to make the charge and fell over.

I repeat, I fell off of my bicycle. I didn’t hit anything or anyone. I wasn’t avoiding a dangerous object. I FELL. OFF. MY. BICYCLE.

I have been limping since Sunday and have not been on the bike since.

4/30/07

I have to wear a tie at work again. This is not good news.

I got used to working at a contract attorney assignment where anything more formal than assless chaps was considered workplace-appropriate. When I accepted my current position I received the news that not only would I have to suffer through wearing Dockers, I’d also have to wear a tie. I took it as any man would: I put on a brave
face, my lip barely quivering in the conference room, then went to a bathroom stall and cried until the cleaning lady whispered “Todo será fino” through the door. And, for a while, it was fino.

I wore a tie daily for my first few weeks, but soom backslid to a few days a week. Then I stopped wearing a tie. This lasted for a month. Then I started wearing jeans occassionally. Then always. Five months into my assignment and I had, by silent, mostly-unwitting rebellion, singlehandedly rewritten the company dress code for contract attorneys. Then, for reasons I can barely begin to understand, I didn’t tuck my shirt in a couple of times.

There was a meeting. I was informed of the dress code. Once again, I am wearing a tie.

I suppose I wouldn’t mind so much if I could simply leave my officewear at the office. Unfortunately, now that I (a) live in deep Brooklyn, (b) don’t have a car and (c) would get the evil eye from my wife if I had a car and elected to gratuitously drive it into Manhattan, I have to wear these same clothes out to my shows after work. On the Lower East Side. No matter how gentrified that neighborhood becomes, a tie after dusk is still rare indeed.

Lewis Black made a rumpled, post-work look his thing but I don’t want it to be my thing. For a while, though, my thing it will be.

February was… eventful.

2/19/07

A couple of weeks ago I had a relapse of a back problem that has been tormenting me since my sophomore year in college. (For the record, that would be 1989. Take a second to remark to the person sitting next to you how you had no idea I was 36 because I look so young.) I spent Monday through Thursday in increasing amounts of pain, magnified by a few very, very long workdays. Then the pain suddenly vanished on Thursday, which was awesome. Until Friday.

On Friday I realized that I had adopted the gait of Verbal in The Usual Suspects. My right foot no longer flexed up. It, along with my lower leg, sort of hung there limply when I raised my leg. And so I immediately - if “immediately” means “immediately after the weekend because I didn’t want to miss the Super Bowl - went to the emergency room. The emergency room defines “immediately” a little differently than I do and they “immediately” started getting people together to perform back surgery which they did later that night.

Following surgery, I had an unfortunate discovery. (Warning. This gets a little graphic.) I had to be catheterized during surgery. I suppose I understand; I wouldn’t want random spraying going on in an otherwise sterile environment. Still, the upshot of it was that I found out - without warning - that it really burned when I peed. When
I mentioned it to the resident that came to check on me she said, using exactly this much sensitivity, “Yeah, that happens.” When I pressed further, hoping for a solution, she said “Drink a lot of water.”

Thanks, Dr. Mengele. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention to the symptoms.

In any event, I was out of the hospital inside of 24 hours of the surgery. Some people might have stayed overnight but since I could walk (um, limp) - and the elderly gentleman in the next bed was getting visits from doctors in the “Infectious Disease” department, I thought it best that I take the early checkout. I am now going to PT twice a week, exercising my still mostly-immobile foot twice a day and hoping for the best.

Needless to say, my hiatus from comedy ended last night (successfully, I thought) and I’m back at it again tonight. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. My foot will be back to normal within a year, I hope.

Then I can get back to being the superstar athlete / Dancing Queen you’ve come to know and love.

More of the Ramble project. In 2007 I started writing longer pieces, so I’m going to post the rest one at a time.

1/2/07

Gerald Ford recently died, reminding the world that he was still alive. Saddam Hussein also recently died, in what appears to be a counterprogramming ploy by Fox News against what otherwise would have been wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral of a President that literally nobody remembers fondly, if at all, as other than as a genial grandfatherly figure who took a break from slipping Werther’s candies to his grandkids to casually pardon Nixon.

Nixon, if you will recall, is the grandfatherly figure who took a break from stealing secrets from his business rival to sexually molest his grandchild, America, in such an obvious way that the parents - both houses of Congress - had to forbid him from seeing the grandkids again. (Yes, this was a tortured metaphor.)

He was the scariest grandfather figure our nation had seen in high office until Dick Cheney became VP, a grandfatherly figure sort of like the old man at the head of the Leatherface family in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I didn’t send out many updates last Fall. The next interesting thing I wrote was right before the election

11/1/06

Today was Hallowe’en! Oooooo! Scary! It was particularly scary to see Kerry rise from the dead at the very peak of the Democrats’ popularity, only to say stupid things in public on the eve his party’s anticipated recapture of at least one house of Congress. Yes, John, we know that you didn’t mean to call the troops stupid.

Still, since everyone thinks that it was a Freudian slip, rather than merely a malaprop, maybe shutting the hell up would be good for your party and your country. Agreed? Agreed. Thanks John. And no, I am not going to vote for you in the primary, so as soon as the election is over, please touch a chatty page in a secret place.

That was pretty short, so here is another one.

11/30/06

I thought that I might have something to say, but I have nothing to say. No news, good or bad, has graced me over the last few weeks.

Except that the video camera that Steven and Wendy got me (er, us?) for our wedding is friggin’ amazing. So far I have only taped shows for me to review so that I can control my tics (current tic: my hand flops around like a bass tossed onto the dock) and make myself more appealing for televison but I will soon be taping shows for transfer to audition DVDs, etc. Neat-o, as the kids say. Or would if they were more neat-o.

Step 1: Body control.
Step 2: Liposuction and a case of Whitestrips.
Step 3: Meet somebody that can get me on television.

It is OK if Step 3 happens first, if anyone reading knows someone.

The Ramble project continues. This was one of the most popular essays I sent out.

7/17/06

I keep rewriting the intro to The Ramble and each attempt is worse than the one before it. Stops and starts about moving to a new neighborhood; gentrification; the local vibe. All of it read like a gruesome cross between faux romanticism and fake intellectualism. Here’s the deal: I’ve got cornrows.

Coming home last Sunday night I saw a guy in front of the apartment building next to my house getting his massive Ben Wallace ‘fro twisted into braids. I turned to Carrie, hair flopping in my eyes, and said. “I’m going to do that.” She laughed. When I floated the idea to Elon from the Brooklyn Comedy Company, he said “If you do
that I will punch you in the stomach. Please don’t make me punch you.” He reconsidered when I told him that I would be wearing the braids to work.

Last night, on my stoop, in front of a crowd of varying degrees of drunkenness who were engaging in varying degrees of sexual harrassment and eating a lot of delicious smelling barbecue, Tisha twisted my hair into some tight goddamn braids. It took two hours, but there were a lot of delays - rubber bands to keep my silky hair
from unspooling; crying children; sexual harrassment. It was worth it to feel the breeze on my scalp.

So for two days only, Charles will be rockin’ the braids at a few shows and during the workday.

Needless to say, I wasn’t joking.

For more cornrows pics, go here.

The Ramble Project continues.

6/8/06

In the immortal words of Biggie Smalls, Mo’ money, mo’ problems. Oh, the perils of homeownership! Because I am now the sort of person who says domestic things like “My fiancee and I bought some flowerpots at Home Depot for our front stoop,” Carrie and I bought some flowerpots at Home Depot for our front stoop. They were squarish and funky looking and we placed (but did not actually pot) plants in them and set them on our stoop.

And then two days later they were gone, along with a less funky mate.

When Carrie noticed that they were missing, she immediately claimed that she was going to jog around the neighborhood, find them on someone else’s stoop and swipe them back. Fearing that I would have to ID her in the morgue with shards of broken flowerpot in her head, I told her that would be a bad idea. And then, the very next day, when walking home from the subway Carrie noticed the flowerpots - our flowerpots - in the front window of a health food store AROUND THE CORNER FROM OUR HOUSE.

When I confronted the store owner the next morning, he said (in a Jamaican accent, that you are free to do as you are reading becuase it is accurate (or not, if you fear that it will sound racist)) “Someone left them in front of my store and I thought they were so beautiful that I put them in the window.” I took the flowerpots back without incident.

I am amazed at his story, though. Those pots were heavy. Apparently three separate people stole our flowerpots and got tired of carrying them after walking the exact same distance. Very suspicious. From now on I am going somewhere else for my spirulina needs.

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I pick up today with what was the introduction of the term “RAMBLE” for my meanderings. It was for Mother’s Day, last year. So here are the first two Rambles.

5/13/06:

It has been so long since I’ve sent one of these schedule notices. It is like we have become strangers. I so very much do not want us to become strangers. And who is the very opposite of a stranger? Mom! So let us celebrate Mom together. What a relief that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, salvaging the relevance of this homage. (Schedule follows the ramble.)

THE RAMBLE
--------------------
Unfortunately this is the worst possible forum for me to celebrate my mother. It is supposed to be funny, so heartfelt praise would be out of place. On the other hand, an e-roast wouldn’t be a kind surprise to lay on her either. She reads this silly thing - and even posts it on her office door because her coworkers like to feign interest in my career.

Instead I will talk about a “trend” piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. In it, the author claims that there is a wave of young men who, in lieu of a Mother’s Day gift, undertake a bit of self-improvement that they “know” will make their mother happy. Examples in the article including lasering off a now-regretted tattoo, removal of a hideous back sweater or signing up with a dating website so that they won’t forever be alone. In other words, they are assholes.

Thinking only of themselves, they do something that they want for themselves, jot that idea down on a card and imply that their selfishness is, in fact, the ultimate sacrifice. I suppose the furthest extension of this idea - and just the sort of thing these louts would do - would be to say “Whenever I talk to my mother I get upset. And she says that she just wants me to be happy. So I am not going to call my mother this year. It is exactly what she would want.” Jerks.

That is why, Mom, for Mother’s Day, I am telling these jerks off in this email on your behalf. I know it is what you would want. You can thank me tomorrow by picking up the check at brunch.

5/29/06

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. I know that my Memorial Day will be filled with holiday goodness because I was recently informed that the building is technically closed, so I will be working sans A/C. If you look at your computer screen, you will note that I am sweating enough to cloud your monitor. You might want to get that looked at.

THE (short) RAMBLE
-----------------------
As it happens, there is only one thing worth talking about. I have joined 2004 with a bullet and finally signed up on MySpace. If it is anything like Friendster (it isn’t! it is so totally better!), I will check it for a couple of weeks and then never, ever look at it again.

But that won’t happen because MySpace is great! I have over 100 friends already (popular!) and you can use it to lure and murder teenage girls! (or boys; no sex discrimination around here!) Not that I want to but it is so awesome that I totally could!

What I am saying is that MySpace makes me want to use exclamation points and I’ve never felt this way before! Please kill me!

But add me first.

Please?

As I go through my the mailings from the last three years, the first thing that I am realizing is that the long free-form writing didn’t come until later. Instead, I’ve got a lot of short one liners, so I’m just going to give you some Pre-Ramble highlights. It is also fun to read my enthusiasm for shows that I wouldn’t really want to do anymore (notably, bringer shows on weeknights).

To the highlights:

2/15/05:

I have just been doing the same old things: performing at open mics, lazing around my apartment and trying to prove to myself that the fact that I have a a girlfriend isn’t a delusion or an elaborate prank. I’ve almost convinced myself, but I have to say that Occam’s razor - combined with 33 years of contrary evidence - points to the “delusion” or “prank” theory. Needless to say I don’t expect that posing the question here will bring me any closer to an answer.

9/8/05:

First, the real news: Carrie and I are engaged.

Many of you know this. Others of you do not. To the latter group I say “Man we really should talk more often! It really has been a while.” And then awkward silence may follow as we realize that we no longer have very much in common but remain friends because of shared history or inertia or something. But hopefully we will instead realize that not talking is the result of our busy lives, not emotional distance, and we will make a concerted effort to reconnect and all will be well.

1/7/06:

Bush’s new Medicare prescription plan may bring promised savings, though. Since a lot of old folks are being refused their meds, this could considerably cut down on the cost of long term care.

3/10/06:

Carrie and I moved in together on February 21 and so far, so good. If you picked two weeks in the “How long before she realizes what she’s done Pool,” you lost. However, if you picked two weeks in the “How long before they realize that the renovations are way more expensive than they realized Pool,” congratulations. Unfortunately I can no longer afford a prize for you.

4/6/06

It is freezing again! Hooray! At least it isn’t snowing today; yesterday felt a little apocalyptic around lunchtime. I hadn’t found time to repent or find Jesus in my heart, so when the wind starting blowing and the skies opened up I was worried that a reckoning was coming. It wasn’t. And with that knowledge any temporary worries about repentance went away. Good thing; Mom would have been furious if I backed out of our seder plans.

In other news, my house is more expensive than an addiction to snorting cocaine through straws made from original Picasso sketches. We have now replaced the bathroom fixtures, floor, paint and some plumbing in the tenants apartment; de-cancered the basement (adios, asbestos); lined the boiler chimney; removed a fence that was destroyed by three years of ivy growth and decades of rot; replaced a refrigerator apperently housing the dessicated - but still stinky - remains of Jimmy Hoffa or D.B. Cooper (time has made it tough to tell); and just found out that the shower tile in the master bath is porous and the drywall behind it is probably shot.

Did I mention that I love this house? I say that because my mortgage actually requires that I make clear that I love the house. It does this with 402 pages of legalese that makes clear that (a) it is mine, no-backsies and (b) the no-backsies rule is unilateral; they can take it if they feel like it. Also, there is the matter of Carrie who loves the house unconditionally and can do far more damage to me than the bank could ever aspire to. So, I repeat “I
love this house.”

Please, come to a show. I’ll let you buy me a drink so I can save money for when the blood starts seeping from the walls. Exorcisms are more expensive than you think.

OK, that’s enough for now. More tomorrow. If you like this sort of thing and would like to get on the mailing list, go HERE.