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New Italian Place that Ray made me goDecember 14 2008

Dang but they shoehorned this new Martha Stewart-type Italian place into the old Letty's Taqueria space, that old dingy F-minus "what in the hell empty since six years where do they get a dollar" taco shop on the drag on Benson. I never really saw how they stayed in business since if you ordered a chicken burrito you could really tell that the chicken was sittin' around in a cold steel tray for five days developin' grain. I ate there twice and got the read and freaked hard each time on dreams of pump skitters and doin' the fetus pinwheel in sweated-up sheets.

Ray totally loves this new place, mainly based on the Italian dude Vito who runs it and is all friends with every customer pretty hard. I don't know. I get that read on Vito like, "The man who is friends with everyone is friends with no one." Ray eats it up like the bread, actin' all "made" when the dude says, "Is a special lasagna today for you Ray, I bring it to you special." He don't give it to Ray for any kind of deal and the only thing special about it is that the word "special" got said twice. I think he's just sellin' it to Ray 'cause he knows Ray would buy anything he talked about and it's one of those casserole-based dishes that you can scrape outta the pan corner and dump some red sauce on. Ray pays twenty-nine dollars for stuff Vito's dishwasher would put his cigarette butt in.

Here are the following categories of dude accents that can sell things to dumb American guys, graded by power of

First Rain.October 4 2008

Alright so the deal with first rain is that I like to bundle all up in this preposterous old North Face "ski rescue"-type thigh-length jacket that I lifted outta Ray's car one time (it has like seventeen zippers and three drawstrings and a thermal-lined waterproof hood that stuffs down into one of the collars) and put on some shorts and my crispiest Chucks and walk the town for a good half day or so. I smell the creek and look at the gutters run (kind of foamy since it's the first) and listen to the drops fall on my lid when I go under the cedars by the high school. I always make a little pass by a storm drain we used to skate; it's all broken up by time and throbbin' ground now and crammed with roots. I run kind of fast and sideways up where the edge of the bank was and jump over the gap where we would ollie. I doubt I could even ollie any more. I doubt anyone would care if I did. I certainly don't think anyone needs me to.

After I did my big long walk today, all miles and miles, I stopped into a calzone place and got a pretty good do-up. Then I hoofed it home and Molly was on the TV and I just read my sites for a good long bit. I hope you had a good first rain too or that you have one soon. I don't realize it but it's probably the center of my year.

Why did I get screamed atMarch 27 2008

Man I was down at Lucky Go getting the wrong printer cable for Molly and when I was out in the parking lot with my cheap little plastic bag this forty five year-old gutty dude with real flat wet combed hair got out of his car (a pretty bad old Nissan that a man his age should be beyond) and started over at me. He kept patting down his hair and running his thumbs around the inside of his waistband, you know, and when he got like ten feet from me he had a pretty good lather on, just screaming that I was a son of a bitch. It gave me the feeling that I hadn't noticed him earlier when he drove by and he thought I had flipped him off (I had not just errantly done any flipping off that morning so that seems unlikely). Maybe he reasoned me for another dude who had done him over with some cash or parts. I just started to back away because I didn't have much anger at the time and when he advanced I actually ran fifteen feet. When I saw that he didn't chase after me I started to walk again. It was a pretty basic "weird scene," like might make sense if you were looking at two fairly sophisticated beetles in a terrarium but man was this guy coming off the whiskey or something. Or is it whisky? No wonder people who drink whiskey are always so mad, they're like WHAT THE HELL AM I DRINKING WHISKY OR WHISKEY and that just makes them drink more. This guy was like that, a man who would drink to excess because his beverage had an outmoded spelling distinction, and then yell at people by the chea

Ray's Pedicure Routine.February 6 2008

So like Ray was all mincin' around dandy on the white carpet in his living room today while I was watching car races on the satellite, and that kind of ate at me after a while, so I was like "what's up with you making tiny little pleased steps and smiling. You look like Liberace doing the Don't Step On The Baby Ants Dance." Then the dude smiled directly at me and the rest went like this.

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RAY: Dude, I just had the mother of all pedicures. This girl Xa Bi was rubbin’ on my doggies so hard and long, I don't mind tellin' you that I closed my eyes and thought about the act for like half an hour.

ME: Well that's fine I mean I hope you did not get a nasty old tumescence though.

RAY: Like hell I didn't! Why you think I go there?

ME: To have your feet cleaned and your nails trimmed and perhaps some calluses scraped, I don't know.

RAY: Don't get me wrong, they do that. But a big part of their service is the whole fantasy angle. It's like, "Wink, nudge, you are making me hot as the devil, and don't you know it, you sweet little mystical peach."

ME: I think if the chick knew you were thinking that she would jump back like that part in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox plays a guitar note through Doc Brown's massive speaker.

RAY: Hell no, dogg. Those ladies know what it's all about. They're hella cuttin' it up in Vietnamese, all smilin', and sometimes I catch the other ladie

McDonald's vs Starbucks vs Ray vs MeJanuary 8 2008

Dang it man but Ray just has so much faith in McDonald's it is ridiculous. Today it came out in the news that Mickey D's is gonna try to compete with Starbucks by havin' baristas and fancy coffee drinks and Ray was just all kinds of sure that was gonna put Starbucks outta business. It's lazy to side with the big-ass (well, bigger-ass) ruthless worldwide conglomerate and it shows no bag. Maybe that's how you make it in his investments and finances world but lazy don't fly with me.

RAY: Check it out, dude! McDonald’s is gonna wipe Starbucks off the map by havin’ baristas and fancy coffee drinks!

ME: Man that is baloney the Venn diagram of their customer bases looks like an eight

RAY: Say what you want. McDonald’s plays to win.

ME: Tell me what you like most about Starbucks I mean I know you get coffee there

RAY: The chicks who work there, dude! All tight black pants, smilin’, hell of took a shower lately...

ME: Now tell me what you remember about the McDonald’s worker chicks

RAY: They...they get these weird little purple blotches on their faces, but they don’t seem to come to a head. And...and they got those flappy bellies that the company makes them tuck into their pants. Bellies that could hang into a sink, but not stick out above a sink. Wait, hold on a minute, man—

ME: Plus think about it Ray if they can’t even repeat NUMBER THREE, DIET COKE how they gonna do