Throwback Thursday Column "John McCain:A Candidate for The Ages"- By: Charlie Spink

   The blatant buffoonery of our current presidential election has many of us wondering,"Were our candidates always this awful?"

   In a word, "Hell to the No!" (Note: that line should be reread in an extremely sassy voice.)

   In honor of Throwback Thursday, here is a somewhat silly/ somewhat scathing piece that I wrote about the 2008 Republican Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. At the time (2008)I thought that McCain was a crazy old man who made poor decisions (and this was before he chose that half-mentally handicapped hussy as his running mate).

   Now with hindsight being 20/20, I realize that McCain was a courageous war hero, who wasn't afraid to cross the isle to get things done. And while I don't regret voting for President Obama in 2008, I would give my left gonad to have McCain running this time around.     

   Enjoy.

Senator McCain (Pictured above) sharing with us his stance on immigration.

 

John McCain:

“A Candidate for The Ages”

    Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain is trying to run on the platform that he is the “Man with experience.” Even if many of us young people see McCain as being out of touch, it is hard to argue the fact that he has been around the block quite a few times.  While some candidates have a lifetime of experience, McCain has had literally lifetimes of experience in elected politics.  

    Here are five fun facts that you might not have known about the elderly Senator from Arizona.

5. John McCain is the only candidate in this election to have been one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence.

4. As a matter of fact, John McCain was a member of the first Continental Congress.  Oh no, not the Continental Congress of the late 1700’s.  I’m talking about the Congress that took place thousands of years ago when all of the Continents were still connected. Yes, I'm talking about Pangea.  McCain was a member of the Pangean Senate, and all of the continents felt that he was so disagreeable that they decided to break-up and drift apart (literally and literally)

    For the record: Senator McCain (who beat out an incumbent woolly mammoth for the position) voted against evolution.  As a result, he has refused to evolve throughout his eons of existence and thus has become a fossil.

3. Senator McCain not only remembers the “good old days” he even remembers what happened before them. John also has a first-hand recollection of when there was “Peace in the Middle East.” Jesus actually was “His Homeboy.” (Who do you think wrote the book of John anyway?)

2. McCain batted lead-off and played short-stop for the 1919 Chicago White Sox. He batted .400 and that is the closest that a player has ever come to having his age and batting average match.

And the number one fact that you probably didn’t know about Senator John McCain is…

1. John McCain is the namesake for every bathroom and loveless man on the face of the Earth.  Because of what this man has accomplished on the battlefield restrooms from here to Vietnam are called, “The John.”

    Let us not forget that “Johns” are also the title given to men who employ prostitutes (possibly because calling them a “William Jefferson Clinton” was a bit too long to remember).   

    So, hate him or love him: Senator John Sidney McCain has proven to be a candidate for the ages...all of them. The Ice Age, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages: he has lived through them all.  

    It appears that this moldy maverick is here to stay. John McCain will never die, literally.  He is immortal. He’ll be around forever, or at least until the end of time (which will be sooner rather than later if he wins the White House this November). 

Buying the Rights to Anti-Trump Sites - By: Charlie Spink

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Adventures of Batman & Ketchup - By Charlie Spink

The Adventures of Batman & Ketchup

By Charlie Spink

A New Dynamic Duo?

                Every now and then, I get a little peek into my children’s psyche, that proves itself to be an involuntary progress report on how I’m doing as a parent.

            Today I had one such moment while I was hanging with my two-year-old son, Quentin. We had just come back from the park and I asked him, “Alright Q, what do you want to do?”

 Quentin told me “Daddy, I want to play Batman!” which sounded great to me. I’m always down to fight a little bit of crime with some tricked-out gadgets… I may not be the Daddy that Gotham wants, but I’m the Daddy that Gotham needs (Note to reader: Repeat that last line in the same kind of deeply distorted voice that Batman used in the Dark Knight trilogy.)

            So I asked Quentin, “Which one of us is going to be Batman?” I was secretly hoping that I’d get to play the caped crusader, but I knew that Quentin would probably want to call dibs on the lead role himself, and I was perfectly cool with that. 

           Quentin said, “I will be Batman, you’re my assistant.” totally acceptable. 

 I asked “Okay, so then you want me to be Robin?”

 “NOOOOOO!” he says in a tone and pitch that lets me know that even at two-years-old he is already utterly offended by my existence. He clearly didn’t think that Robin was Batman’s assistant, and I immediately thought to myself, “What kind of father doesn’t teach his two-year-old son that Robin is Batman’s assistant? THIS IS ALL MY FAULT. Not only would I be a bad Batman, I’m also a bad Daddy. I deserve to get shot down just like Bruce Wayne’s old man. That would be the only acceptable fate for me at this point.

            Then after a couple seconds of crippling comic book-related depression, I calmed the heck down. I realized that the character of Robin really hasn’t been in 4 of the last 5 Batman movies… So I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Quentin is a child of the new millennium, and new millennium Batman fans aren’t all that familiar with the Boy Wonder.

            So I regrouped and thought to myself, there is another trusty side-kick that has been prominently featured in the last few Batman films. Sure he may not kick as much ass as Robin does, but he does have a great British accent, a brilliant mind for inventions, and he really knows his way around a feather duster. I’m talking, of course, about Alfred the butler.

            I asked Q, “Oh… okay, so if you don’t want me to be Robin? Then you must want me to be Alfred? …I’ll be Alfred. (Then in a bad British accent) Good evening Master Bruce, shall I fetch you some tea, or maybe some weapons?”

            That’s when Q threw me for another loop. He said, “No Daddy!!!” sounding even more disgusted than he did the first time. At this point Q is acting like I’m the bane of his existence… which is bad on two levels because of his pretending to be Batman, and the bane of Batman’s existence, who happens to be an evil-doer named Bane (I felt like Bane squared at that point & that’s not good at all). “Alfred is not Batman’s assistant!” Q proclaimed.

            Quentin looked at me and then he let me know in a very stern, matter of fact type voice, “Daddy, Batman’s assistant is Ketchup!”

            “Ketchup?” I asked

            “Ketchup Daddy, like for eating!” he told me.

            Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of this particular condiment. Tomatoes by themselves are alright, but when you throw in some extra sugar and put it in a bottle, that stuff becomes magical. However, the fact that Quentin thought that ketchup was Batman’s assistant, leads me to believe that my son doesn’t know the difference between Batman and a hot dog (and I find that very troubling).

            These are two objects in nature that you’d never see confused for one another. You’d never go to a snack vendor at your favorite stadium and say, “Alright, my family is starving. We haven’t eaten since breakfast and we’ve worked up quite an appetite while rooting for our favorite sports team... get me Batman!”

            Or on the other hand you’d never see Commissioner Gordon on the roof of the Gotham City Police Headquarters saying to Chief O’Hara, “Great Scott! Our fair city is getting puzzled by the Riddler, there’s something fishy going on with the Penguin, the Joker is making a fool of us, Catwoman has us stuck in a tree, and Mr. Freeze has got Gotham on ice… Chief O’Hara… I need a hot dog!"

            Yes, The Adventures of Batman & Ketchup doesn’t have that nice of a ring  to it...but the idea of Batman and Ketchup as the new dynamic duo does grow on you if you give it some time. I could see comic book nerds for decades saying, “Sure, George Clooney was a shitty Batman, but Seth Green was a very convincing Ketchup. I really believed that he was made up of the best ingredients that Heinz 57 had to offer.”

            I’ve realized that no matter who Batman’s real assistant is… Alfred, Robin (or Ketchup for that matter), what’s truly important is that I’m getting to spend time with Quentin… who has become my little assistant. Actually that’s not fair to call him my assistant because we’re both assisting each other. I’m trying to share my life experiences with him and his brother, so I can assist them in becoming strong young men. In return they are assisting me everyday, teaching me to be less selfish and to put their needs first. Thus they’re assisting me in the process of becoming a better man.

            I am very proud to call Quentin my Batman. Also I’m proud to be his Ketchup.

            Being a parent is a lot like playing Batman and Ketchup…it’s a confusing adventure but at the end of the day you’re left with something truly delicious. After 20 minutes of playing Batman and Ketchup we spent the rest of the afternoon eating hot dogs and watching The Original Batman TV Series on DVD (just so he never confuses those two things ever again).  

            I’ll give you more parental progress reports as they happen. So please tune in…

            Same Bat-time.

            Same Bat-Channel.

When Batman needs assistance he reaches for his new side-kick, Ketchup!

www.TheCharlieSpink.com

Twitter: @iSpinkThere4iAm

Charlie's  next scheduled appearance will be at Alfie's Lime Light in Fairfield this Cinco de Mayo, Thursday, May 5, 2016 at 9:00PM at 558 Parker Rd. Fairfield, CA 94533.

I Missed Lunch: Turning from a Beautiful Butterfly Into a FATerpillar - By Charlie Spink

HOT DOG! It's a hot dog. Well it wasn't quite a steak from Outback Steakhouse, but the chili-dog (pictured above)  was eye-openingly delicious. This was by-far the tastiest weenier that I've ever had in my mouth (not that it's had a lot of competition. I don't live THAT close to San Francisco). It's food like this that has turned me from a beautiful butterfly of a boy, into a FATerpillar of a man. 

                Just as the tiny, slimy caterpillar evolves into a beautiful butterfly I too am ever-evolving. In recent years I’ve noticed that marriage and fatherhood have been the cocoon that has been transforming my body into some kind of deranged reverse butterfly situation. 

                That’s right, as a young, single-man my hard-bodied abs and my lack of a second and third chin were my striking Technicolor wings that would help me fly from flower to flower and pollinate all of the baddest looking daisies in the club. However, although fatherhood and husbandhood have made me emotionally stronger and happier than I’ve ever been, they have each taken a devastating physical toll on my body.

In true reverse butterfly fashion I went from being beautiful and so weightless that I could fly to getting chubbier, slimier and growing dozens of new itty-bitty legs out of my side (metaphorically of course, if this were literally happening the it would be completely impossible to buy me a pair of pants in this upcoming holiday season. I can see myself getting kicked out of Macy’s for asking for a pair of pants with 98 extra leg-holes).

                After almost a decade of marriage and a little over half a decade of being a baby daddy, my body is now much closer to it’s caterpillar stage than to it’s time as a butterfly, but on the inside I still see myself as a skinny kid.

                Now I know that the camera can add 10 pounds and sometimes the mirror can be deceiving ,so I’ve only really noticed how fat I’ve been getting through the eyes of my friends, family, loved ones, etc. 

                Heck, even my pieces of modern technology have been getting in on the act. For example: whenever I use my phone to check my work email, I have to type out www.outlookcom, because that’s our office’s email service carrier. Being in-and-out of the office as often as I am I probably have to type-out www.out... three to four times a day.  However, now before I can finish the word "outlook"  the task bar scrolls down and asks did you mean www.outbacksteakhouse.com/coupons/throwanothersteakandshrimponthebarbie.com/matekangaro.org (which as I’m sure you know is the same way that all Australian websites end).

                That’s true, and every single time my task bar suggests that I got to www.outbacksteakhouse.com/coupons/throwanothersteakandshrimponthebarbie.com/matekangaro.org I do.  I definitely love checking out all of the great online deals at my favorite ethnicity specific steakhouse. If you login to their website often enough they give you printable coupons for a free-order of their delicious blooming-onion appetizer. And over the last few years I’ve acquired enough free orders of the blooming onion to choke a whole family of koalas (which is a ridiculous way for a marsupial to die, because their pouch is a build-in doggybag… if they’ve had too much blooming onion then they should have just taken it to go instead of continued digestion leading to a blooming onion overdose).

                What’s even more insulting is when a living, breathing person calls me a fatty by using their own mental auto-correct key. I can always tell what a person really thinks of my weight gain by the way that they react to my food-related statements.

                My favorite example of this took place a couple of days ago at the office. We were having a particularly busy day and in order to get all of my work done in a timely fashion I had to work straight-through my lunch break. At the end of the day I ran into a long-time work acquaintance who I tend to see when it’s time to clock-out. While she was making an attempt at small talk she asked me how my day was.

                To which I replied, “I was busy so busy today that I missed lunch.” And as the conversation carried on I could tell by her body language that when she heard me say that I’d missed lunch, that she had interpreted what I said not as being that I missed lunch as in I didn’t have lunch… but instead she thinks that I'm such a hopelessly insatiable fat-ass that when I said that I “missed lunch” she thought that I did eat lunch and that it was such a highlight of my day that I’m now reminiscing about my lunch.

                She heard my mouth say that I "missed" lunch but she took one glance down at my body and auto-corrected that statement to say that I "miss" lunch. And that kind of body language based fat-shaming felt like a big, swift kick into my newly protruding gut.

                Apparently my co-worker thinks that instead of doing my work, that I just sit around and fantasize about food all day. As if I just sit at my desk and think about the last lunch that I’d had about how savory the seasoning was on my shrimp, or how I was craving the crunch of the world’s crispiest croutons or ordering a prime rib that was so prime that it could have only come from the land down under and it could not even get cut with an American knife, if an Aussie was given an American knife with which to cut that steak, he’d calmly say “That’s not a knife” before pulling out his own mammoth of a machete and saying, “Crikey, That’s a knife”on my tender steak salad… or how those thinly sliced pieces of steak in the salad were so hearty that it seemed as if the cow from which they came had just murdered an alligator with a blooming boomerang (likely by wounding it with the 1^st toss and then actually killing it with the contact of the 2^nd go-round).

                Man, I lost track of where I was going with that… but anyways now I could really go for some Out-Back Steakhouse. As a matter of fact I could order their Butterfly shrimp and continue with my Reverse Butterfly Evolution. With a cozy booth serving as my cocoon I could complete my transformation from beautiful boy butterfly,, to chunky caterpillar to a new species that is found only I the Outback it’s called the FATeripillar.

-Le Fin

-or as the Aussies would say, All Done Mate.

 

This Blog was brought to you by Charlie Spink and (Unofficially from) Outback Steakhouse