My friend, Ralphus

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

“I feel terrible,” I said, to no one in particular, except that Ralphus heard me.

No matter.

Because I did, you know, feel terrible.

I had the flu, or so I thought.

I mean, I probably did.

I felt bad, and all.

I had chills, and a fever …

Was exhausted …

And I was just saying, you know. I don’t feel good.

And then I remembered.

Ralphus one-ups.

“You don’t feel terrible,” he said, confidently, too confidently, if you ask me.

Like he knew, or something.

“I don’t?” I asked him.

Thinking that, well …

Maybe he was onto something.

“What do you have? A headache?” Ralphus said, condescendingly.

Setting me up, I realized.

But I played along.

I was too tired not to.

“A headache. A fever,” I said, going down the list. “You know. Cold chills. An upset stomach. That’s about it. I don’t know. I just feel terrible.”

“You don’t feel terrible,” Ralphus said, emphasizing the word terrible.

Again, like he knew.

What a (censored).

“Let me tell you what it’s like to feel terrible.”

“What?”

What?

“You take five kids, two wives, three dogs, two cats …” Ralphus stopped, dramatically … again for emphasis.

And then he laughed, heartily, and I knew.

I had been one-upped.

Again.

I don’t know why I deal with Ralphus.

I mean, arrggh. You know?

No matter what you tell him, he can tell you something better.

Have the flu? He had malaria. No, make that typhoid fever. Or the Ebola virus.

A headache? He had a brain tumor.

A minor fender-bender? He was in an airplane crash.

With no survivors.

Don’t ask.

In short, if you did it, he did it better, or worse, or whatever. Or he knows somebody who did. Or he knows somebody whose third cousin’s best friend …

“Why can’t I just have the flu?” I asked, exasperated, which is a big word for peed off.

“I mean, you know? I’m sick. So why can’t I just be sick?”

“You’re sick now?” he asked me.

“Hmmm. So you’re saying you’re sick now … You’re not sick.”

“Yes, I am,” I said, now getting peeved, another smart word for, well, (censored).

“I’m sick. I have the flu. Why can’t I have the flu? Why can’t I just have the daggone flu and enjoy it?”

“Huh?” Ralphus asked me.

He looked confused.

“You do this all the time,” I said. “Remember when I went bowling a couple of weeks ago?”

“You didn’t go bowling.”

“Yes, I did,” I said. “And I told you how I bowled a 191 …”

“I bowled a 215 one time. One ninety-one? That’s not bowling. Two-fifteen? That’s …”

“That’s nice. That’s great,” I said. “I wasn’t bragging. OK, maybe I was bragging. But I did. I bowled a 191. I was happy. So what? Big deal. But then you …”

“Let’s go bowling. I’ll show you bowling,” Ralphus said.

“That’s not my point,” I said. “You can’t leave well enough alone. Like when we were talking about …”

“You scared?” Ralphus asked me. “You afraid to go bowling? I bowled a 215.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Who cares about bowling? A bunch of out-of-shape people …”

“You’ve never seen out-of-shape people,” he said, steering the conversation again. “Not until you’ve seen Phil.”

“Phil?”

“Yeah, you know Phil,” he said, reeling me in.

I then realized: I was falling for the Ralphus hook.

“Phil’s FA-A-A-T,” Ralphus said, laughing, almost choking as he said it and laughed at the same time.

“He’s as big as a house. Couldn’t walk up the steps unless he …”

I wasn’t even listening.

Because mainly, I was mad at myself.

I’d already been one-upped, and now I’d been hooked.

Ralphus, like many attention-seekers, likes to control conversations, and the way he does it is by throwing a word or two out, enough to get you to ask, OK … what?And then, when he hooks you, and you’re out there, flapping on the line, desperately, he reels you in.

I’ve learned to pretty much ignore him.

Doesn’t work.

But still.

“And then he split his pants!” he said, finishing his latest ditty, laughing so hard that he was crying.

And then he noticed I wasn’t laughing so hard that I was crying.

Or at all.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m sick,” I said.

“You’re not sick.”

“I am so,” I said. “Why can’t I be sick?”

“I was sick,” he said, out of nowhere.

“That summer in Puerto Rico.”

“Puerto Rico?”

“If I never tell you anything else, remember this,” he said. “Don’t ever drink Puerto Rican rum.”

“Um. OK,” I said.

“Made me sicker than a dog.”

“OK. Note to self.”

There was a pause.”

“Puerto Rican women,” he said, cryptically.

Waiting for me to fall for it.

I resisted.

It came anyway.

“Prettiest women in the world,” he said, finishing whatever it was that he was trying to say.

“Puerto Rican women. Filipino women. I don’t know. It’s close. Maybe Guam.”

“Guam?”

“You ever been there?”

“No,” I said. “How did we get to talking about Guam? I thought we were talking about …”

“Rum,” he said. “Puerto Rican rum. Made me sicker than a dog.”

“No. We were talking about … Hmmm. What were we talking about?”

I was at a loss.

“Know why I drank all that rum?” Ralphus asked me.

Hooking and reeling and one-upping all at once.

“You’re going to tell me anyway,” I said.

Defeated.

I was hanging there, waiting for the answer.

Why had Ralphus drank up a gallon of Puerto Rican rum?

Why? Why?

For the love of God. Why?

“Puerto Rican women,” he said. “Have you been listening at all?”

“No. I’m sick,” I said, remembering what it was that started all this.

The talk about foreign women and foreign rum and bowling and whatever else it was Ralphus wanted to tell me and I didn’t want to hear.

It was my aches and pains.

My flu.

“You’ve got me confused with somebody who cares, brother,” Ralphus said, one-upping me for the last time.

 

(Published 01-31-03)

Pitch man

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

My agent, Harvey D. Shyster III, Esquire, called me up over the weekend to tell me about this great idea that he had.

This is never good

, I remember thinking at the time.

He had an idea to help me through my short-term budget crunch, he said.

The idea: endorsements.

“Have you ever thought about endorsing a product, say, for example, Coca-Cola®, or Pepsi®, or Sprite®?” he asked.

“If you were to endorse one of those fine soft drinks, or to cite another example of a fine soft drink you could endorse, Barq’s Root Beer®, you could make a killing.”

“You know, Harvey, I really hadn’t thought about endorsing any of those fine, fine soft drinks, or to cite other examples of fine soft drinks that I could endorse, Mountain Dew® or Dr. Pepper®,” I said, perplexed as to why I hadn’t thought of it myself.

“And I certainly never thought about the money that could be involved, and what it could do for me.”

I really hadn’t.

And there was a reason why.

“Why would the people who make those fine soft drinks, and also, let’s not forget, a plethora of fine, fine diet and caffeine-free and diet caffeine-free products, among other things, want me to endorse their already fine products?” I asked Harvey.

“And why would they want to pay me so much money to do so that they’d have to back a truck up to my front door to deliver it to me?”

“You’d be surprised, kiddo,” Harvey said to me as he shuffled some official-looking papers.

“You have the broad-based market appeal that companies like IBM® and Microsoft® look for in a celebrity endorser. I just got the results back from the demographic-market analysis that we had done on you a couple months ago, and you’d be surprised what we found out.”

Uh-huh.

Sure.

I would be.

At least interested, that is.

Demographic-market analysis?

“OK, I’ll bite,” I said.

“Well, pick a demographic … any demographic,” he said, looking through the report.

“Kids ages 8 to 18? They love you, enough to have their parents give them $100 to buy two new pairs of Levi’s® jeans, if you told them you thought they needed them.

“Young adults, defined in our study as people ages 18-30?” Harvey continued, not really questioning, but still, at least inflecting a question. “Get this. They adore you so much that they’d even buy O’Doul’s® non-alcoholic beer if you said you liked it.”

I was stunned.

“Need I go on?” Harvey said, sensing my amazement.

“Chris, the young folks love you, the older folks love you, the politicians love you, the baby-sitters love you, though I’d be careful there.

“The point is, well, we can do something here.”

“So … what are you talking about?” I asked.

“I mean, am I going to have to appear in a cheesy local TV spot with a guy in a chicken suit or some lady on a horse trying to sell cars?

“It would be one thing for me to endorse my favorite cereal, Apple Jacks®, or my favorite pizza, Papa John’s®, but it would be another thing entirely to shlock, among other things, used furniture for some guy named ‘Weirdo Al.’ ”

I have my integrity.

I didn’t say that, but I meant it.

“Well, you’ll need to get over that if you’re serious about a product-endorsement career,” Harvey said to me.

“Not everybody starts out like Michael Jordan, selling Nike Air Jordan® shoes, which, by the way, are fine shoes, to millions of schoolkids who can’t afford them, and using that as a base to build an endorsement empire through which he can now hawk Hane’s® underwear and Ball Park Franks®, to name just two of the 2,204 products that he endorses daily.”

And all are fine products, I’m sure.

“And all are fine products,” Harvey said.

Hmmm.

I wasn’t sure.

“You’ll have to start small,” Harvey said. “Honestly, kiddo, you couldn’t sell Nikes®, or Reeboks®, or adidases®, or anything like that. Not yet. But I bet you could sell … socks.”

I was incredulous.

“Socks?” I said.

“Socks,” he said.

“Think about it. You wear white tube socks with everything, to the point of being annoying, almost.

“You wear white tube socks with black Thom McAn® dress shoes. You wear them with white Thom McAn® dress shoes. You wear them with Thom McAn® wing tips. You even wear them with Thom McAn® flip-flops.

“Remind me to call the Thom McAn® people later,” he said, catching himself in mid-thought.

“They make fine shoes.

“But back to my point. I think we should have you start endorsing Joe Boxer® white tube socks. Now.”

Now.

Me endorsing tube socks.

“Yeah, come on,” Harvey said. “We could even put your name on a pair. ‘Grahams.’ That’s it. ‘Joe Boxer Grahams®.’ We could work with the company to try to make it cool to be completely and hopelessly unhip.”

I tried not to take offense at Harvey’s not-so-polite criticism of my fashion sense – not only because I don’t see anything wrong with wearing white tube socks with various dress shoes, but also because I could see that he was onto something.

“So we start off with something basic, like socks, or jeans, or maybe leopard-spotted bikini underwear, you know, something people need to buy because they have to wear them every day,” I said, trying to show I could see where this was going.

“Then we go for the specialty markets, like fitted Atlanta Braves® baseball hats, or maybe cheap rayon neckties, and then the endorsement requests will start rolling in.”

“That’s my boy,” Harvey said, intoning at me like a proud papa.

“But we have to be careful here. People only know you from what they read about in your column and hear on the radio, so right now they look at you and see, well, basically, an emotionally insecure guy who moans constantly about being overweight and also watches way, way too many sports on TV to have any semblance of a real life.

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Chris, but companies like Chevrolet® and Ford®, and also Isuzu®, they don’t exactly like to hire emotionally insecure role models,” Harvey said, breaking eye contact.

“If we want to make a go of this, we might need to, ah, um, tweak your image.”

“To sell socks?” I asked.

“We have the first commercial all laid out,” he said.

“See, there will be this guy in a chicken suit, sitting on a horse, and then you’ll come in and say …”

 

(Published 01-27-03)

Don’t hate me because …

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

“Not even close.”

That was pretty much the answer I got when I called People to see why I hadn’t been included in the most recent edition of the magazine’s annual “50 Most Beautiful People” list.

Again.

I mean …

Talk about snubs …

“See, I noticed my name wasn’t included in the ’50 Most Beautiful People’ list, and …” I said.

“You’re a little behind,” the lady who answered the phone said, interrupting me.

An obvious flunky.

If there ever was one.

“I know. I know. The list came out months ago,” I said.

“But I know how y’all put out multiple editions of that list every year.”

“Uh-huh.”

” ‘Most Beautiful People.’ ‘Most Eligible Bachelor.’ I don’t know. ‘Most Eligible Bachelorette.’ Just thought I’d …”

“Your name again, sir?” the flunky, er, the lady, said.

“Chris Graham …”

“Are you on a prime-time TV series?”

“No.”

“A soap opera?”

“No.”

“Made any movies?”

“No.”

“Played a pro sport?”

“No.”

“Why did you call again?”

I got it. It took awhile, but I finally realized what was going on.

“You got a face made for radio, kiddo,” my agent, Harvey D. Shyster III, Esquire, once told me.

Actually, he tells me that repeatedly.

Over and over.

And over.

I’d thought he was complimenting me, until I realized recently what that meant.

You can’t see my face on the radio.

“Bummer,” I said to myself – the day that I learned what the Harv-ster was really saying to me.

“Did I at least make honorable mention?” I asked the lady on the phone.

“You’re a persistent bugger, aren’t you?” she said.

“You can never be too sure,” I said.

“Yes, you can.”

She paused.

“No. No honorable mention. No … dishonorable mention. I don’t see you mentioned … at all.”

For the record, I’m not ready to concede this.

See, I live by the theory that the world comes full-circle.

The yin and the yang. The alpha and the omega.

I was a dork-boy in high school, a pizza face, a … help me here.

Goober-rama.

Thanks.

A goober-rama in college.

The kids with pocket protectors used to make fun of me.

The glee club used to beat me up.

For sport.

By my theory, it’s my turn to shine – eventually.

No more dork-boy. No more pizza face.

It’s time for the world to come full-circle …

“Excuse me, brainiac. If the world comes full-circle, that would mean you’d be a dork-boy again,” my friend Eli pointed out, astutely.

“Yeah,” our friend Mordecai said.

“See, circles are round,” Eli said.

Genius.

“You’d be back at the starting point,” he said.

“Uh-huh. You probably just want the world to come half-circle,” Mordecai said.

“Yeah. A 180.”

“Otherwise, you’re a dork-boy.”

“Make that still a dork-boy.”

So my theories are a little off, but the point remains.

It’s time for me to shine.

I’m due, baby. The first shall be the last. The last shall be the first.

“Massive total nuclear annihilation,” the lady on the phone said.

“That’s it?” I said back.

I’d asked her how it might be possible for me to get on the list next year.

“Well, let me clarify that,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“Let’s just say … are you familiar with the concept of the last man standing on the face of the earth?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, if that happens, and you’re the last man, we might give you a call,” the lady said.

Cool.

 

(Published 01-25-03)

Success is overrated

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

Something ba-a-a-a-d’s going to happen to me.

I just know it.

And I’m thinking, for the record … it’s going to be really ba-a-a-a-d.

Really, really ba-a-a-ad.

Because I’m due.

Overdue.

(Make that way, WAY overdue.)

Don’tcha hate how you get that feeling sometimes – that something untoward has to be in the cards because things are …

Well …

Going too good?

Take me, for example.

(To the Super Bowl. If you have an extra ticket. Please. Bada bing.)

I’ve been worried as all get-out since the end of this day last week that was among my better ones … ever.

You know the kind of day.

Everything went my way.

Work was a breeze.

The radio show was among my better efforts.

My YMCA basketball team had the best practice I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of.

The first thing that went through my mind on my way home from practice was …

Drive slow.

Don’t get in an accident.

Because something bad’s going to happen.

Because today was so good.

And I’m due.

Overdue.

Way, WAY …

Let’s just say that I followed my instincts.

Oh yeah.

I might as well have been 80 years old in Florida, I was driving so slow.

Turtles were passing me – on the inside lane.

“I’m doomed,” I said more than once as my Geo sputtered homeward.

(One turtle gave me the finger. At least I hope it was the finger.)

Ahem.

So …

Why is it that …

I don’t know …

That it seems that we human types tend to dread success?

You know what I’m saying?

It’s strange how it is – how we’re not happy until we reach a certain level of success, but once we get there, we hate going too far with it.

What’s especially strange is that nobody wants to go through life a miserable failure – though I’d be willing to bet that people who are miserable failures are probably more happy with themselves than those who are the opposite.

Consider, for example, the plight of your average billionaire.

Have you ever seen a happy billionaire?

Or a happy – a genuinely happy – Hollywood movie star?

Or millionaire baseball player?

All you hear about is the burdens of stardom, the trappings of making it.

Burdens?

Trappings?

(Sounds like something that rodents leave behind.)

As for me …

I want to be happy again.

So I’m endeavoring to be less successful in the future.

It was fun being on top of the world for a few hours and all, but …

 

(Published 01-13-03)

Portrait

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

I can understand why members of the House of Delegates are so interested in commissioning a portrait of now-former interim House Speaker Lacey Putney, I-Bedford.

You know, so that they can then hang it on up on the wall.

Right there in the Capitol.

Because Putney …

Um …

Hmmm.

Why are they commissioning this portrait again?

The question begs.

Because it’s going to cost us right about $6,000, for one thing.

Which means, among other things, that this isn’t anything like the kinds of portraits that you get made at the Olan Mills.

(Or … hey … remember those Sears portrait studios? Top of the line there ran a couple hundred, tops. And they were … really nice. Really, really nice. So, you know … er … six large? Now, that’s going to be some portrait.)

They’re also going to commission and eventually hang a portrait of former House Speaker Vance Wilkins in the Capitol, for those keeping score at home.

Which comes to, well, to be sure, at least another $6,000 out of our pockets – and this one here for a guy who resigned his position and seat in disgrace last summer after admitting that he had paid a former employee $100,000 on the eve of the 2001 state elections to settle a sexual-harassment claim.

(It’s good to see that they can be so forgiving down there in Richmond.)

I’m all for the portraits – and I can accept the costs (though I might want to recommend that the legislative types open up the process a little, maybe solicit some bids; I’m sure we can knock a couple grand off apiece if we allow market forces to do their thing).

What I can’t figure is how we can waste $8,000 or $10,000 or $12,000 (or whatever it would end up being) in a time when we’re talking so much about the need for fiscal austerity.

I mean, it might not seem like much in the context of the big numbers we’re hearing talked about in terms of the budget shortfall that the state is facing.

A billion dollars.

Two billion dollars.

Eight K (or 10K or 12K) is a literal drop in the bucket when you’re talking numbers that start with a b.

But whatever happened to the idea that every little bit helps?

I believe that it does.

You don’t see me throwing around a dollar here, a 20-spot there – throwing caution to the wind, acting all willy-nilly …

(Sorry. I just got this new book of cliches. It was on sale at the book fair. Ninety percent off. A great deal, all things considered.)

If we’re having to tighten our belts out here in the hinterlands, I say that what’s fair is fair for the folks down in Richmond.

You want your portraits?

Fine.

Schedule an appointment for Messrs. Putney and Wilkins at Olan Mills.

(And if you refer a couple more folks there after, I think you get some kind of discount. But you can ask about that.)

 

(Published 01-08-03)

Violate this airspace

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

You’re out flying around the nation’s capital on a pleasant, sunny Sunday afternoon, minding your own business.

And then out of the blue (literally), an F-16 sidles up next to your Beech 35 – thinking you’re some sort of terrorist or something.

Aha.

Very good.

Yes?

No

.

Anyway …

Suddenly, you’re on the ground in Front Royal – and the Secret Service wants to talk to you.

And they look …

Really, really

mad.

Ahem.

So …

Um …

What can we learn from this, ladies and germs?

Aside from the fact that we continue a little sensitive to the issue of planes flying too close to certain locations in D.C.?

Well, we also learned – without a doubt – that the anti-terrorism measures that the federal government put in place in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania are still being executed to the letter of the law.

Right?

Right.

I mean, we can’t figure out how to get a counterterrorism department together … or get the FBI and CIA to end their urinating contest … or even get Tom Ridge an office with a desk and a phone (touch-tone, preferably, though he’d settle for rotary at this point) …

But we sure know how to scramble the fighter jets when Joe Schmo flies too close to the Lincoln Memorial.

Whoo boy.

For those who didn’t hear all the details on the incident that I’ve been babbling about for a couple hundred words now (need we remind you that we’re not making this up) …

Here’s …

The rest of the story …

According to published reports, the Air Force scrambled two fighter jets (whatever that means) shortly after noon on Sunday when the unidentified pilot of the aforementioned Beech 35 flew into restricted airspace around Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.

Just in case there was an attack in the offing (it being a Beech 35, you know, the guy could’ve done some serious damage – to the row of hot-dog vendors lining Pennsylvania Avenue, for example, if not a pretzel vendor or two as well), the fine folks at Dulles International Airport suspended departures for 15 minutes.

The pilot (we’re efforting to get his name, and a report on how many black eyes he now has, as well as the number of broken fingers he’s suffered in the past couple of days) continued on his merry way, according to the reports – flying all the way to the northern tip of the Shenandoah Valley before landing at an airstrip in Front Royal.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the man did not appear to be interested in harming anybody with his violation of the Reagan airport’s airspace.

Even so, he was detained by Warren County Sheriff’s deputies for a friendly tete-a-tete with the Secret Service, the spokesman said.

(Wink, wink.)

As for an answer to the question that we posed above – What can we learn from this, ladies and germs?It seems the answer is clear.

If you really want to see the Lincoln Memorial, and you don’t want to have to fight your way into and out of the parking lot …

Take the Metro.

You might get mugged by vagrants …

(Make that you will get mugged by vagrants …)

But who would you rather mug you?

Some guy who wants $20 for a run to the liquor store?

Or another guy bucking for a promotion to an assignment in Dick Cheney’s underground bunker in a hidden, secure location?

You decide.

 

(Published 01-01-03)