Brain Droppings

I hope these pointers and suggestions will enhance your next experience dining out. Tell ‘em George sent you. BREADSTICKS:

If drumsticks are for playing drums, you’d think breadsticks would be for playing bread, wouldn’t you? “Would you like some breadsticks?” “No thank you. I don’t play bread; I play drums. Perhaps I’ll have a drum roll.” SHELLED PEANUTS:

Why don’t shelled peanuts have shells? If you’re clothed, you have clothes, so if you’re shelled, you should have shells. You’d think they’d call peanuts without shells, “unshelled” peanuts, wouldn’t you? Same goes for pitted prunes.

And boned chicken. I ask you, Where are the bones? I can’t find them. In my opinion, it ought to be called de-boned chicken.

And what about semi-boneless ham? What’s going on? Does it have only half a bone? Or does “semi-boneless ham” mean that some complete object that is not entirely a bone has been removed from the ham?

GEORGE

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WAFFLE IRON:

Why on earth would you want to iron a waffle? Wouldn’t that just flatten out all the little squares? No, I believe waffles should be dry cleaned. Pancakes, of course, should always be ironed.

Everyone thinks they have a really good idea for a restaurant but I’ve heard some terrible schemes. I even had a few myself.

My first idea was: All You Can Eat for 60 Cents. That didn’t work. So I went the other way: All You Can Eat for $1500. That didn’t work either. Then I made my fatal mistake: All You Can Eat for Free. Closed after one meal.

My next idea was The Used Footwear Restaurant. Our slogan was, How Would You Like to Enjoy a Nice Hot Meal Eaten Out of Someone Else’s Used Footwear? Somehow, it didn’t work. Although, after I sold it, it became the very successful fast-food franchise, Beef in a Brogan.

Chili Alley was my favorite, and a lot of people got a kick out of it. It was a drive-through chili restaurant. And you didn’t even have to slow down. You could drive through at speeds up to 40 miles an hour, and we would shoot the chili at you from a shotgun. Just two dollars. Both barrels, three-fifty. Dry cleaning extra.

Vi

could think of was something I liked a lot: a toast sandwich. Usually on toast. We also tried Toast on a Bun, but the public wasn’t ready. Too high-concept.

Then there was Bombs Away. This was an idea that should have worked. Patrons were seated on the ground floor; the kitchen was on the balcony. When your order was ready, you stood under the balcony holding a plate, and the chef dropped your food while everyone yelled, “Bombs away!” It worked great with steak and chops. But the idea began to unravel when we tried things like soup and creamed spinach. Peas were a definite problem, too.

My last unsuccessful attempt was The Top of the Schmuck. It was a ten-story statue of a schmuck wearing a cowboy hat, with a revolving restaurant in the hatband. The problem was, it rotated way too fast. People got sick just waiting for a table. But I still think the idea was basically sound. Bon appetit.

On Thanksgiving at our house we like variety, so we don’t have turkey every year. Last year we had a swan. It was nice; everyone got some neck. Another year we had a seagull. Delicious! It’s a little fishy, but at least there’s no need to add salt. Two years ago we had a stork. Lots of meat, but, Jesus, the wishbone makes a helluva noise. This year we’re expecting a few people over, so we’re having a flamingo. And I’m getting the leg that folds up. They say the meat is sweeter and more tender because the flamingo doesn’t use it much.

GEORGE CARLIN

brain droppings

WELL, yA GOTTA LIVE SOMEPLACE

I grew up in New York City and lived there until I was thirty.

At that time, I decided I’d had enough of life in a dynamic, sophisticated city, so I moved to Los Angeles. Actually, I moved there because of the time difference. I was behind in my work, and wanted to pick up the extra three hours. Technically, for the last thirty years I’ve been living in my own past.

I knew I didn’t want to move to the Midwest. I could never live in a place where the outstanding geographic feature is the horizon. The Midwest seems like a nice place to catch up on your sleep.

Another reason I could never live in the Midwest is that it gets really cold there. You’ve heard of hypothermia and exposure? I could never be comfortable in a place where you can die simply by going out to the mailbox. Living in an area where an open window can cause death seems foolish to me.

Of course, living in the South was never an option—the main problem being they have too much respect for authority; they’re soldier-sniffers and cop lovers. I don’t respect that, and I could never live with it. There’s also way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health.

Still, I love traveling down there, especially when I’m in the mood for a quick trip to the thirteenth century. I’m not someone who buys all that “New South” shit you hear; I judge a place by the number of lynchings they’ve had, overall. Atlanta even found it necessary to come up with an

apologetic civic slogan: Atlanta: The City Too Busy to Hate. I think they’re trying to tell us something.

There’s also the communications problem. I have trouble understanding Southerners. Some of them sound like they’re chewing on a dick. And I really have nothing against them individually; one by one they can be quite charming. But when you take them as a whole, there’s some really dangerous genetic material floating around down there.

So, I live in Los Angeles, and it’s kind of a goofy place. They have an airport named after John Wayne. That ought to explain it. It has a charming kind of superstitious i

But if you really want to understand life in California, forget the grief clinics and yogaholics. Forget biofeedback, Feldenkrais, neurolinguistic programming, and the Alexander technique.

Disregard spirit guides, centering groups, dream workshops, bioenergetics, pyramid energy, and primal therapy.

Ignore centering, fasting, Rolfing, grounding, cha

And don’t even think about polarity work, inversion swings, flower essences, guided synchronicity, harmonic brain wave synergy, and psychocalisthenics.

You also need pay no attention to nude volleyball, spinach therapy, white wine hot tubs, jogging on hot coals, and the people who sing Christmas carols to zoo animals.

Forget all that. The only thing you have to know about California is this: They have traffic school for chocaholics. Okay? California is the only place where you might hear someone

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say, “Jason can’t come to the phone, he’s taking his wind lesson.”

The problem most New Yorkers have with Los Angeles is that it is fragmented and lacks a vital center. The people have no common experience. Instead, they exude a kind of bemused detachment that renders them intensely uninteresting. The West Coast experience is soft and peripheral, New York is hard and concentrated. California is a small woman saying, “Fuck me.” New York is a large man saying, “Fuck you!”

Still, I live in California. But I’m not “laid-back,” and I’m certainly not “mellow.” I associate those qualities with the comatose. The solar system wasn’t formed because matter was laid-back; life didn’t arise from the oceans and humans descend from the trees because DNA was mellow. It happened because of something called energy.