Normally I walk to work, but it was raining (well, drizzling) this morning, which required I get in my car in drive. Good thing I hadn’t had my morning bourbon yet! Did I type “bourbon”? I meant coffee. Coffee with bourbon.

Anyway, I got to work, and who should I see in the parking garage but my good buddy Christopher Lambert! (“Christopher Lambert” is not my friend’s real name, but I won’t presume it’s okay to just put his name on my widely read* blog without his permission… and I just don’t want to ask for his permission.)

He was sitting there with the car running, and my first thought was, “Oh crap… Christopher Lambert wants to go gently into the night, even though it’s the morning!”

I walked up to him and explained that the parking garage was way too large and ventilated for what he appeared to be doing to work. He explained that that was not what he was doing at all, but that he was instead getting an odometer reading for his car insurance since he moved and — oh shit, I need to change my address with MY insurance. Wait, where was I… ?

So, anyway, I tell him to hurry his ass up and get out of the car. How long does it take to write down a few numbers? And why did the car have to be on to do it? Christopher Lambert doesn’t make any sense half the time.

He gets out of the car to follow me to our awesome  day jobs, closing his door as — oh crap. “Did I really just do that?” Christopher Lambert asks, billy goat eyes wide, face full of terror.

I look at his car, headlights pointlessly on (really, why did he have those on to check his odometer?), engine humming. “Do you have a spare key?”

Christopher Lambert said he did… at his apartment… and his apartment keys were with his now trapped car key. I made some other dismissed suggestions as Dan Cortese (named, for the purposes of this story here, after the famed MTV SPORTS host in order to protect the real individual’s name à la Christopher Lambert) parked near us. I innocently asked Dan Cortese if he had “breaking into car skills,” which Christopher Lambert deemed racist. Whatever he was commenting on didn’t occur to me, as, to me, there is but one race: the human race. (And dolphins. So maybe two races.)

Anyway, Dan Cortese didn’t know about breaking into cars, and Christopher Lambert was freaking out. I felt guilty, as my talking to him had probably caused Christopher Lambert to stupidly close his locked door with his keys still in the ignition of his running car. It was all my fault, and soon Christopher Lambert would realize it and guilt me into having a terrible day. Just a terrible, awful day.

But then Christopher Lambert’s face changed from a look of despair to one of triumph! “I have a spare car key in my jacket in my cube upstairs!” This was a great moment and one deserving of a hi five even as Christopher Lambert needlessly elaborated that he was going to wear his hoodie but instead wore the jacket in which he always keeps a spare car key.

After he’d used his spare key to turn off his car, he came to the realization I knew he would: this whole fiasco was essentially my fault. Thinking fast, I lied that this had all been part of my plan. I came upon a man who looked broken and inept at suicide. Though this was not the case, I continued on as if it was, for to see the light, one must sometime travel to the depths of the dark… I knew he’d end up locking his key in his car! I knew it’d cause moments of panic and fear! BUT I ALSO KNEW that he had a spare key, which he’d realize hopefully before tears started welling up in his puppy dog eyes!

This day would now be the greatest day he’d ever known. A day that started with triumph out of adversity. And I’d insisted I’d knowingly given it to him.

Okay, now I have to call my car insurance company, a company I’ll call, oh, All State (not really, but I want to protect my insurance company’s name instead of asking it for permission to mention it here), to change my address.

*Untrue. Quite the opposite in fact. – Truth Police

Look, as I wrote a couple days ago, I have issues with waking up in the morning. So many so, that I slept through yesterday. A whole day! I guess my 7:00 AM alarm went off for a while, then stopped… then went off again at 7:00 AM this morning, and it stirred me from my epic slumber. And even after a whole extra and unplanned 24 hours of sleepytime — I still groaned and grumbled about getting out of my slightly too short for my body length bed!

The part of not liking getting up in the morning that I can change (as I have to go to work regardless, which is the other unlikeable part), is my alarm music. Currently it’s a “melody” on my 12-year-old girl appropriate Samsung Rant phone called “Sunny Day.” I picked this due to it’s name, which I’d hoped would translate into a g’mornin’ smile. It’s got a nice, brassy beat and a celebratory feel… and is incredibly annoying.

I think there is only one bit of music that I’d be happy with interrupting my dream time…

This would make me wake up with purpose! Gotta find that ringtone and then figure out how to download ringtones and if I can even do stuff like that on my Raaaant.

Yeah! Wakin’ up in style! Heroically!!!

As I was growing up, I was, almost right from jump street out of the womb, bigger than the average human baby. As I grew up, when my doctor or teacher measured my height, I was always in the top percentile, well above the “norm.” The curious thing is that this bothered no one. Not once was I told to just act like I was smaller or slouch. I was born tall, and, hey, who cares? I just had to get pants with longer inseams than some of my classmates.

When I was a little kid at whatever age little kids are when they start picking up crayons and drawing and trying to write, and I picked up the crayon with my left hand, no one freaked out. Sure, most people are right handed, but my parents and doctors and teachers didn’t get worried or upset when I used the OTHER hand. They even let me use “left-handed” scissors when we started cutting construction paper.

And when I played tee ball? No one looked down on me for standing on the other side of the tee from my righty teammates. I even got a glove that enabled me to catch the baseball with my right hand and throw with my left! Not that a glove helped with my lack of athletic prowess, but, still, baseball glove on my right hand — no one protested like they often did in the generations before mine.

See, my mom is left-handed, too, but a little before her time and maybe occasionally still during when she was in school, teachers would try to take that crayon out of their student’s left hand and put it in the right. How awkward and just, well, wrong and pointless and stupid that was. Everyone can agree on that. Just kind of silly, right? Everyone now understands that there’s no reason a lefty has to be changed. I never had to, anyway.

Interestingly enough, I also never had to “come out” to my parents that I liked girls. My heterosexuality was never an issue. It was never something that I worried about or even thought about in that way. I didn’t have to have any tentative or awkward conversations with my pals to let them know that I wanted my penis to go with a vagina. Seriously, it just never came up. Not once. Because that’d be absurd, right? It’s just how I was born. It’s my chemical and mental makeup for some reason. Just a wacky glitch of genetics. It doesn’t hurt anyone, as I just like ladies in that manner, and if one likes me in that manner, and we hit it off, all is well. No worries. No one cares, really.

If I’d been shorter, no one would’ve minded either. Or what if I’d picked up my first crayon with my right hand and showed instinctively that I obviously felt more comfortable drawing and scribbling that way? My parents and teachers would’ve been fine with that, too, as the silliness of worrying about something like that had long since been accepted.

So, one would assume, if I’d had a predilection toward pee pees instead of vajayjays, it should be the same thing, right? I’d have gone about my life pretty much the same way, never having to make a big deal or any announcements about it. I’d just be who I was, and when I started reaching “that age” where you notice people in a different way, well, surely there’d be another boy who felt the same way, and we’d get to be adolescently awkward together and hold hands and go to the movies (with a parent chaperoning) and slow dancing at the miserable school dances and whatnot. Like anyone else, me and the fella could go steady, maybe exchange class rings in high school. It wouldn’t matter. No reason it should. Just how some folks are born.

Right?

Sometimes I wonder, I wonder what Jon Bon Jovi is up to. In my daydreams, as I zone out from my boring daily life of living boringly each day, I occasionally drift away from the day-to-day boredom of reality… just let my mind drift and wander to where it’d really rather be.

And where it’d rather be is in the body, or head rather, of Jon Bon Jovi.

No! Wait. Um… I don’t want to possess Jon Bon Jovi or have some sort of brain transplant with him, for that would curse one of the rockingest musical heroes of our age to suffer in the failing body of, well, me. That wouldn’t be fair.

Still, I do kinda wonder what JBJ (“J” for “Jon,” “B” for “Bon,” and “J” for “Jovi”) is up to while I’m toiling away in the bowels of pointlessness for just enough money to scrape by. Is he wearing red and black leather pants with gold highlights? Is that just cas (short for “casual”) to him? Or has he outgrown the red and black leather pants with gold highlights look? Does he ever miss it?

There has to be a lot of pressure, despite being super successful, to replicate the glory of the Slippery When Wet days. It’s not like New Jersey or Keep The Faith were slouches, but… c’mon. “You Give Love A Bad Name.” “Livin’ On A Prayer.” “Wanted Dead Or Alive.” WANTED FUCKING DEAD OR ALIVE, PEOPLE! Just that song alone secures JBJ and the rest of the band a spot in Rock Valhalla.

Okay, I have to come clean. I’m now still really actually wondering what it’d be like to actually be Jon Bon Jovi. Especially mid to late 80s era Jon Bon Jovi. It must’ve been awesome. The whole Bon Jovi team (I see them as even more of a team, perhaps a superhero team than a mere band) rocked out what is arguably their most amazing music, and, c’mon… they looked AWESOME.

Can you imagine what it must’ve been like to be those guys back in those days of rocking in amazing style? To be David Bryan, Alec John Such, Richie Sambora, JBJ, and Tico “The Hitman” Torres. Yes, they’re still doing great (well, not sure about Alec, as he’s not in the band anymore, but, well, I hope he’s swell), and, yes, they still sell lots of records, but I don’t know who is buying them. Lots of people, sure, but the Bon Jovi in the above picture is the Bon Jovi about which I daydream.

Why, I bet even JBJ himself, richer in nearly every single way a person can be rich than I could ever imagine, still looks at pictures from this era and wishes he and his pals could still rock that look. And what a look to rock. My word. These fellas were not messin’ around.

Shit. I really do wish I was Jon Bon Jovi. No lie. No offense to anyone who actually likes me, but I’d rather be Jon Bon Jovi. You’d probably like me better if I was Jon Bon Jovi, likers of me. Admit it. I’m not lyin’, so you shouldn’t lie either.

Let’s rock this blog out like it should be rocked out…

Run and tell that.

TRES POWER MEN!

Three men with the power of TRES!

TRES POWER MEN!

Pusherman push you!

Smasher’s gonna smash!

The Puncher punch you in the face!

TRES POWER MEEEEN!!!

(Music rocks out with a spoken word montage of their mighty origins.)

Born out of gray cubicles,

three boys learned the power of action-packed violence

and became men…

TRES POWER MEN!

(super rockin’ guitar followed by power drums)

PUSH!

SMASH!

PUNCH!

TRES POWER MEEEEEEN-UH!!!!

TRES POWER MEN created & illustrated by Doug / lyrics by D.J. / embodied on this Earth by Chad (Pusherman), D.J. (Smasher), and Doug (The Puncher)… Believe in your dreams. (Don’t even try to fight it).