In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy (18 page)

TRAIL MIX

Another office-food abortion is the trail mix. Is there anything sadder than the trail mix after it’s been sifted through? Once the raccoons in the office have picked out the M&Ms, peanuts, and smoked almonds, there’s nothing left but a busted banana chip and a couple of raw sunflower seeds. This is what you should do when you start a new business. Buy a tub of trail mix and put it out. Let all your employees sift through it. Whatever’s left at the bottom, don’t buy any more of that crap. We don’t like it. Why not just buy a thing of smoked almonds, a thing of honey-roasted peanuts, and a thing of M&Ms? Isn’t that what people want anyway? Have you ever heard somebody say, “I could really go for some of those weird round date-pellet things with the white powder on the outside”?

The other problem with trail mix is that it has the illusion of being healthy. But if you ever read the back of the bag, you’ll see a handful of this shit has more calories than a pack of Twinkies. Much like the Raisinets, I’m convinced the reason for its popularity is the name. If it were called by its real name, “I Hate 75 Percent of What’s in This Mix Mix,” they’d never sell a bag of it.

VARIETY PACKS

They talk about variety being the spice of life. Variety is not that great, especially variety packs. They sound good at first, but it’s the same as trail mix. Some stuff you like and a bunch of crap you don’t. Me and my wife were watching TV not too long ago and she was eating a lime Popsicle. I said, “Give me a hit off that.” I tasted it and thought, This tastes like ass. Lime Popsicles suck. So I asked, “Why do you like lime Popsicles? How did I marry someone who likes lime Popsicles? I hate lime Popsicles.” She replied, “I don’t like them either.” So I said, “Why are you eating a lime Popsicle if you don’t like them?” Then she said, “Well, I wanted a Popsicle and we were at the end of the variety pack.” We’d gone through all the cherry ones, all the orange ones, all the ones we like, and were left with four lime ones. So my wife was eating a Popsicle she didn’t want to eat because it came in a variety pack.

And who buys the cereal variety pack? Why not just get one regular-sized box of cereal you like instead of twelve key-chain-sized boxes, nine of which suck?

CAKE VS. PIE

Cake probably outsells pie by a margin of fifteen to one, yet pie is a superior dessert. So how does one explain this anomaly? I will explain in painstaking detail, but let’s first just set some ground rules. When I say pie is better than cake, I mean your average pie versus your average cake, because I know what many of you are thinking right now: “There’s a German bakery on the east side of town that makes a seven-layer dark chocolate with a raspberry center that is out of this world.” That cake is sixty-three dollars and requires a two-week lead time. Here’s my simple experiment. If I said, “Pie lover, I’ll give you nine dollars to purchase the pie of your choice, and cake hole, you also have nine dollars to purchase the cake of your choice,” and I put them both out at an office party, which would get eaten first? Obviously it would be the pie. Because down the street from me, as we speak, there’s a Marie Callender’s that has a huge banner that says
ANY PIE, $7.99
, and a smaller sign beneath it that says
NEGROES EAT AT THE COUNTER
. I’m assuming that’s older. Or you could take that eight dollars to the nearest supermarket and pick up a lard-frosted sheet cake, which, if you say it fast and with an Israeli accent, gives you a more apt description.

So why the disparity in sales? I believe it’s because the cake makes a better platform for candles, messages like
HAPPY 25TH ANNIVERSARY
, soccer fields, and SpongeBob. You can’t put a goalpost on an apple pie. How fucking retarded are we that we pick an inferior-tasting dessert based on its ability to deliver a message? Can you imagine making that argument for any other food? “Sure, the lobster tastes great, but I’m going with the SPAM because I can set an army man on it.” Why do cakes even need themes? We know it’s the kids’ fucking birthday, and the cake is the last thing that comes out—we’ve already seen the pile of presents and the pointy hats. It’s not as if they brought out a birthday pie we’d all get confused and start singing “Happy Kristallnacht.” And just like my stuffed-crust argument, when you bring out a dessert that has a detailed re-creation of the
Avatar
rain forest, you’re basically admitting your food sucks. And don’t get me started on this new Photoshop frosting technology. Am I the only one who thinks it’s a little bit weird to take a knife and put it across the neck of an exact representation of your seven-year-old in a Dodger uniform? (By the way, if you had one of those machines in the seventeenth century, you would rule the land. “He hath placed my image on a confection. What sorcery is this? Dismiss Michelangelo and give this man a thousand gold pieces to frost the ceiling of our greatest chapel.”)

Let’s examine the wisdom of the time-honored birthday candle. I’m no Howard Hughes, but somewhere around the third attempt to blow out the candles, the one in which the five-year-old is joined by his sister and heavyset uncle, I’m out. Once there’s more spittle than frosting, I magically become diabetic. And as long as we’re on this archaic practice, let’s talk about the novelty candle, the candle that goes out and then reignites, forcing Grandpa to dig deep and blow a hot wind of Polident and tuberculosis over the cake for yet another round. And then the same guy who washed his hands thirteen times that day immediately grabs a wedge and digs in. Would anybody do this if instead of cake, Grandpa was blowing on a pan of lasagna? Every motherfucking person in that room would be like, “Hey, Grandpa. We’re going to the Olive Garden.”

And speaking of unsanitary, how about the practice of removing all the army men and football players from their frosting foundation and licking the base? Do you think those plastic figures with the lead-based paint were transported like an organ and placed on top of the cake in the OR? Or did a fat junior-college dropout just grab them from a shoebox she keeps open under the counter and stick them on the cake in between nose rubs?

So let’s review. The reason the inferior form of dessert outsells the far superior form fifteen to one is because you can stick plastic shit on it. Goddamn, are we dumb. My final and perhaps most compelling argument for why you should serve pie at your next party instead of cake is simple. When you put out pie at a party, it attracts a crowd. You have to tell people, “We’re not going to cut into it until after dinner has been served.” With cake, there’s never a line. Some poor bitch gets put in charge of distributing it to guests around the party. Here’s how that interaction works. Someone who looks like one of your mom’s friends shows up where you’re sitting holding a small paper plate with a wedge of cake on it. “Would you like some cake?” “What kind is it?” “I think it’s vanilla.” “I’m cool.” “Are you sure? How about I just set it down on the arm of the sofa. You might change your mind.” Later on that night, that wedge of cake will be found with one finger of frosting removed and a cigarette put out in it. That has never happened with a wedge of pumpkin pie.

But a note of caution to all of my pie-toting friends. Don’t think you can head to the supermarket and get a decent pie. I don’t know if it’s the mass production or the fluorescent lighting or the MSG, but whatever it is, those pies suck. And they’re still $7.50. For another buck nineteen, you could go to a pie shop and get a real pie. And don’t get cute with the flavors. Pineapple is not a pie filling, and chocolate pie is nothing more than pudding in a pie tin. If you’re going strawberry or peach, make sure it’s in season. Now go out there and eat like champions.

THIS CHAPTER
IS NOT A HATE
CRIME

Racism is a topic we never get tired of discussing in this country. Here’s my semi-offensive take on racism.

First of all, we have to admit that there’s a certain amount of cultural pride that is inherent in all human beings. If you turn on the television and there’s a boxing match on, you will usually root for the guy who looks most like you. But if you find out that the guy who looks less like you is from your hometown, you may start rooting for him. Or if the guy who isn’t your ethnicity was pronounced dead after an incident at a public pool when he was only nine and has beaten the odds to vie for the welterweight championship. For me it doesn’t take much. If the guy who looks like Wesley Snipes is the underdog and the guy who looks like Greg Brady is unbeaten (I know that’s never going to happen), I’ll be rooting for the black guy. Because I always root for the underdog. All things being equal, every bit of history aside, people are going to root for the person who looks most like them. I don’t think I’m different from anyone else who’s being honest. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, I’m just saying it’s built into all of us and we should just accept it.

OUR “RACIST” CULTURE

The left would like us to believe we’re living in a racist culture. Well, the highest-paid person on TV, Oprah, is black and possibly even female. The highest-paid movie star is Will Smith. The highest-paid singer is Beyoncé. The highest-paid athlete, pre-divorce, is Tiger Woods. And of course the guy who leads the country these people all live in is black. Permit me to go Dr. Seuss on your asses for just one moment. What if there was a planet where 90 percent of the population were white Sneetches and 10 percent of the planet were black Sneetches. But the highest-paid performers and athletes (and I don’t just mean for what they do on the field, I’m also talking about endorsements) and the leader of all the Sneetches, as voted on by the entire Sneetch population, were black Sneetches. And what if I went on to tell you how racist the white Sneetches were. Wouldn’t you stop and say that doesn’t make sense? How racist could they be?

For every real racist, there are twenty-five guilty white guys trying to undo what that guy and his grandfather did and actually be nicer. If a white guy cuts me off, I shout, “Fuck you, motherfucker!” But if a black guy cuts me off, I don’t say anything, A) because he’s packing, and B) because I don’t want him to think I’m doing it just because he’s black.

RACIST OR ASSHOLE?

I have a theory that’s going to sound convenient because I’m a white male, but if the brothers who stole this book will hear me out (see, that’s a racial joke), I will attempt to explain why it feels like there are so many racists in this society. You’re confusing assholes for racists.

First, let’s talk about “driving while black” and the LAPD. The LAPD are basically assholes to everyone they pull over. And I’ve been pulled over for everything from not having a front license plate to flicking a cigarette ash out the window. Not throwing a cigarette
butt
out the window, but flicking an
ash
out the window. And
not
in Malibu during fire season, in Hollywood in November. I had a cop pull me over on my motorcycle and tow it when I begged him to let me just push it and park it on a side street and leave it there. He said, “Tough shit,” and while I was hitchhiking home I saw my motorcycle pass me on the back of a tow truck. I once got a jaywalking ticket in a crosswalk because the cop said I began walking after the light started blinking “Don’t Walk.” I arrived on the other side so far in advance of the light changing that the asshole motorcycle cop had time to cross the intersection behind me and the light had still yet to change.

You think the LAPD picks and chooses who they pull over and who they’re assholes to based on the color of their skin. Now, I’ve never tried to outrun a cop in my car and been caught, but I’m sure if I tried and was caught, they’d beat the shit out of me. The same way they beat the shit out of the brothers. I’m not saying there are no racists on the LAPD—what I’m saying is, there’s an army of assholes on the LAPD that you think are racist because you’re black. If I was black, I could draw no other conclusion than that the cop who wrote me the jaywalking ticket was a racist.

Let’s move from cops to fellow citizens. In almost every home I’ve lived in, I’ve had a run-in with an unreasonable neighbor: calling the cops every time I had a party, accusing me of things I didn’t do—I won’t bore you with all the details, but let’s just call it general douchebaggery. But here is one specific example.

I have a home now that when I bought it was a dilapidated, rat-infested mess. I dumped almost a million dollars and a ton of sweat equity into it, and I turned it from an eyesore into a palace. I have an old man who lives next to me. An old white guy. There is a hedge between our two homes. It’s not growing into the sewer pipes, it’s not obstructing his view; it’s not doing anything except offering a little privacy. But he called the Department of Building and Safety on me. He didn’t come and talk to me; he called Building and Safety, who sent over a letter and then an inspector. The neighbor even checked the box that said “unsanitary living conditions” despite the fact that my house is pristine. So I said to the guy, “Why do you have an issue with this hedge?” And he screamed, “It’s above regulation height.” I replied, “So is every hedge on this hill. Most people like it that way. Next time, instead of getting the city involved, ring my buzzer, tell my gardener, or just leave a note saying, ‘Hey, the hedge is a little high. Please have your guy cut it.’ ” Four months later, I got another summons from the Department of Building and Safety for a court appearance. And it hasn’t stopped. I just got another super-shitty letter from him the other day threatening me about the hedge.

Fortunately, I have the great privilege of being white, and thus the knowledge that this guy is just an old fuck and not a racist. If I was black, Hispanic, Asian, or even Jewish, I would have no choice but to assume he was a racist, and I don’t think any reasonable person would disagree.

Here’s my final synopsis. Again, I’m not saying there are no racists, I’m just saying you’re inflating the numbers by mistaking a lot of assholes for racists. These shitty neighbors/cops/nine-dollar-an-hour dickheads behind counters/rude garage attendants aren’t racist, they’re assholes. I wish they were racists; as a rich white guy, that would make my life easier.

People need to understand the difference between passively racist people and actively racist people. Every guy I know loves a race joke, will use derogatory terms to get a laugh, and probably has thoughts that range everywhere from “I hope there’s not a bunch of Middle Eastern guys on my flight” to “I’d rather a Japanese family bought the house next door than an Israeli family.” Our society would love to label them bigots and racists. But my point is, unless they’ve ever acted on any of these thoughts, who gives a shit? If you call a fat guy fat when he’s not in the room and never say a thing to his face and you don’t have any policies against hiring fat people, then what the fuck’s wrong with a fat joke as long as fat Marty isn’t within earshot? I believe this country is filled with people of all ethnicities who like to toss around racially insensitive jokes and racial epithets but would never do anything to harm, degrade, or deny employment to anyone because of their race. I’m sure many of the people reading this book, at some point in their life, wished that someone was dead. But that doesn’t make you a murderer. Killing somebody makes you a murderer. Making a Polack joke doesn’t make you a racist. Not hiring a Polack makes you a racist. And writing a book where you say
Polack
doesn’t make you a racist either.

I’d argue that the guilty white liberals in this country are actually more racist. Take the example of drugs coming in from Mexico. The left is basically apologizing to Mexico and explaining that it’s our consumption of these drugs that’s creating the market and funding their corrupt government, police, and army. It’s not the drug dealers’ fault; it’s our fault for consuming the drugs. Then why are these same people coming down on the tobacco industry? They just manufacture the product; we create the market. If nobody smoked, they’d be out of business. And what about gun manufacturers? The lefties don’t like them very much either, yet all they do is make a product. So why does Mexico get a pass while Philip Morris and Smith & Wesson don’t? Race is the answer. Two of them are rich and white, one of them is poor and brown. And it’s always Whitey’s fault. While constantly complaining about racism, they engage in the ultimate racism. They treat Mexico as if they are inferior and incapable of governing themselves. If these drugs were coming out of Canada, they wouldn’t be blaming the U.S. They would insist that Canada fix the problem and fucking fast. It’s belittling and far more racist. Just like when the news reported about what was going on in the Superdome after Katrina. Every rich Manhattan honky I knew was shouting, “There are three-year-olds being gang-raped! Why isn’t Bush doing anything?” If the Superdome had been filled with white people, your question wouldn’t be “Why isn’t Bush doing anything?”—it’d be “What the fuck is wrong with those people?”

And why are the charges of racism only directed at white people? Not too long ago, Miley Cyrus got in trouble for a picture where she pulled her eyes back to do the Asian squinty-eyes thing. But what about Japanese anime, where all the white people have enormous round eyes? Sure, we do an exaggerated version of what we think Asian eyes look like, but they draw ours in a caricature too. Our eyes are rounder than theirs, but they don’t look like dinner plates. Each one is an exaggeration, so why was Miley Cyrus raked over the coals while Speed Racer got a free pass? Because we don’t give a shit. We don’t have a chip on our shoulder. Us roundeyes have a sense of humor, which perhaps we should export.