Q:  What’s the appropriate tip for a wine steward?

A:  A wine steward’s life is one that may have been chosen in haste, for in the heart of every wine steward lies the shatter pieces of what once might have been.  They get the praise for judicious decisions, but are not those decisions ones that are a matter of individual taste?  If even at that, for this steward has learned to dull his senses to the mind-numbing melancholia of offering up a sliver of his talent for your trinkets of nickel and copper.  He could have been a playwrite, he cries.  A painter, a dancer, a master thespian of Olivierian proportions.  He is not about the wine, he is about art , and every vintage brings him closer to the realization that he should have been so, so much more. This, my friend, preys heavy on the mind of our unfortunate servant and eats at his very soul, so try ten percent.

Q: I am job hunting and my resume is in Word format, but a lot of places now-a-days are requiring that resumes be submitted in pdf format.  How do I turn a Word file into a pdf file?

A:  Would that we could turn our life accomplishments into something that can last forever.  We scream for the fonts of our deeds to be well met and gain us a fair shake.  We trumpet for our image headers to start a torrent of interest in who we are and what clip art we have a personal relationship with.  We flaunt our perfect alignment, never missing the real message “I am a stand-up person, straight as an arrow, that’s how I fly.”  We do not want to be interpreted as the black cloud we truly are, because, I mean, why else would we be out of work.  Try Abode whatever-it’s-called.

Q:  I am really confused by all this mortgage collapse talk.  Could I lose my home?

A:  Well, first of all, thanks for not including any details about your situation, that makes it a whole lot easier to answer that question.  Second, what is a home? Is it a roof over your head to shelter you from what you seem to be harmful to your family?  And what is it you find most harmful to your family?  The War?  Drugs?  Roving gangs of geriatric mall-walkers?  No, it’s the weather.  When you say that you want to protect your family from the elements, just come out and say you’re an elementalist.  You are prejudiced against the elements, and, in particular, rain.  You can say, in your elitist hoidy-toidy voice, “oh, Rainy Day, you’re different than dark, scary, Rainy Night.  You’re romantic, you inspire songs, and god damn if I don’t love puddles” But a Rainy Night?  Only one man loves a Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbit.  And look what the media did to him. Yes, yes, Rainy Night did have some trouble with the law back in ’74.  But those were different times; society didn’t have the stigma of a sixteen year old girl having sex with an element.  But this is 2008.  As it says in scripture, let thee without sin cast the first hailstone.

Q:  How come girls can wear guys clothes but guys can’t wear girls clothes?

A: Quit talkin’ stupid.

Spry young widow Nancy Reagan, 114, being attended to by her son, Sen. John McCain , 106. The former First Lady and famous Hollywood entertainer endorsed the Arizona Republican for president.  The endorsement prompted Clinton advisor James Carville to brand Mrs. Reagan as “Jezebel.”

Recently, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has been confronted with allegations that she embellished some details of a 1997 visit to Bosnia when she serving as First Lady.  When video of her visit didn’t match her recent recollections of the event that she has been recalling on the campaign trail was unearthed, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign claimed that Mrs. Clinton had been sleep-deprived and “misspoke”.  In order to avoid such an embarrassment in the future, the Clinton campaign released this list of other things Mrs. Clinton has misspoke about.

• ·      It doesn’t actually take a village; just a couple of huts will do.
• ·      She is not happy to be here today; her and the mayor are not actually good friends.
• ·      That vast right wing conspiracy?  It was just Rush Limbaugh, his maid, and a couple of shifty dudes in wife-beaters.
• ·      The American people are actually not tired of “liars and people pretending to be something they are not.”
• ·      She didn’t invent the hula hoop.
• ·      Certs is not a breath mint; Certs is a candy mint.
• ·      Sinbad is, in fact, not a comedian.
• ·      As it turns out, the camera doesn’t actually add ten pounds.
• ·      That whole thing about being bamboozled by that idiot president of ours and voting to give him the power to invade a sovereign nation on blatant lies?  Yeah, she meant to say “no” to that one.
• ·      She actually can believe it’s not butter.

by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

MY FRIENDS, WHERE IS MY SCREWDRIVER? TIMMY, JIMMY, MARTHA, PEGGY SUE, PATRICK, ALL OF YOU KIDS, GRANDPA HAS GOT SOMETHING TO ASK ALL OF YOU.  NOW, I KNOW THAT I GAVE ONE OF YOU, MARTHA, BELINDA, JOHN MCCAIN IV, THE FLAT HEAD SCREWDRIVER.  NOW, GRANDPA IS NOT SURE, BUT ONE OF YOU KIDS, I GAVE IT TO ONE OF YOU KIDS TO GIVE TO GRANDMA IN ORDER TO JOBBER THE LID OFF THOSE PERSIMMON PRESERVES WE ALL ENJOYED SO MUCH AFTER SUPPER LAST NIGHT.  WELL, MY FRIENDS, I’M AFRAID GRANDPA CAN’T REMEMBER IF HE GOT THAT SCREWDRIVER BACK.  HAVE YOU SEEN IT, REGGIE, CLARA, MARTHA?  IT WAS A FLATHEAD SCREWDRIVER, MY FRIENDS.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS?  THAT’S RIGHT MARION, LINDA, CHARLIE, MARTHA, IT MEANS THAT THE HEAD OF THE SCREWDRIVER IS STRAIGHT ACROSS, NOT SHAPED LIKE A CROSS.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT ONES IS CALLED?  A WERTHER’S ORIGINAL CANDY FOR BOY OR GIRL WHO CAN TELL ME WHAT THAT ONE IS CALLED.  NO, MARTHA, IT’S NOT A T-SQUARE.  THAT’S RIGHT, THEODORE,  IT’S CALLED A PHILLIPS HEAD.  HERE’S YOUR CANDY.  BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, MARTHA.  WHEN GRANDPA WAS A KID…NOW, THE TWO OF YOU, HUSH YOUR GUMS, GRANDPA IS TELLING YOU A STORY.  WHEN GRANDPA WAS A BOY, WE CALLED THE PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER A FLATHEAD SCREWDRIVER, AND WHAT WE CALL A FLATHEAD SCREWDRIVER NOW WE CALLED A SLOTTED-HEAD SCREWDRIVER.  WHEN THIS BIG CHANGE-OVER HAPPENED GRANDPA DOESN’T KNOW.  I MISSED A FEW YEARS HERE AND THERE.  ALL GRANDPA REMEMBERS IS WALKING INTO OLD MAN BURLEY’S HARDWARE STORE ON MARKET STREET IN 1978 AND ASKING CHARLEY BURLEY FOR A STANLEY FLATHEAD SCREWDRIVER AND BEING HANDED A STANLEY SLOTTED-HEAD SCREWDRIVER INSTEAD.  I JUST STOOD THERE CONFUSED FOR FORTY MINUTES, SCRATCHING MY HEAD.  IS THIS WHAT OUR COUNTRY HAD BECOME, I SAID TO MYSELF.  GRANDPA TRIED HIS BEST TO MAKE THAT SCREWDRIVER WORK, BUT IN THE END, I HAD TO RETURN IT.  UNFORTUNATELY FOR GRANDPA, MY FRIENDS, CURLY SUE, JEANETTE, RICKY, ELVIS, I DIDN’T KEEP THE RECEIPT.  BUT BACK IN THOSE DAYS, OLD MAN BURLEY DIDN’T MIND MAKING EXCEPTIONS.  I AHVE A FEELING THAT OLD MAN BURLEY WOULD HAVE MADE THAT EXCHANGE FOR ME EVEN IF WE HADN’T HAVE GONE TO GRAMMAR SCHOOL TOGETHER.  NOW, HA HA, NOW THAT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU WOULD SEE TODAY, MY FRIENDS.  I WOULD PROBABLY BE THROWN OUT ON MY TUSH TODAY IF I TRIED TO RETURN THAT SCREWDRIVER TODAY.    MY FRIENDS, NANCY, MIKE, CARL, MARTHA, IT IS THIS SCREWDRIVER I BOUGHT THIRTY YEARS AGO THAT I AM SEARCHING FOR TODAY.  HAVE YOU SEEN IT?

By Catherine Swarmy

Honestly, I figured I would just retire in peace when it appeared that The Elm Street Journal was not going to get back off the mat. Really, I did. I had heard many false promises from that smarmy, snake-tounged Sean Gothman over the past seven years that he was going to get his fat ass into whatever “gear” would enable him to get the god damned thing back on its feet. I don’t know how gears work, they require oil, I think. Well, all the oil obviously went to his hair, to look at him. What a god damned wreck. I mean, honestly, my god damned butler has a net-page. It must not be that hard. I would wager to say that it is not as hard as, say, building a cuckoo clock, or making waffles. Apparently, that, taking out the trash, and a palm full of Redkin is too much for ol’ Gothman. It must be.

And, my dear, it’s not as though I foolishly signed an exclusive seven year contract in 2002. Remember that? Jesus, I must have been drugged when I signed that. Who knew Gothman was a contract lawyer, though. I mean, he must be, because my attorney, the famed Alan Dershowitz, could not find one god damned loop-hole for me to wriggle out of. Can you believe it? Me and George Bush, stuck in a hopeless situation once again.

Oh, I have never told you about that, have I? Well, our president, George W. Bush, and I once spent a very uncomfortable night in an overturned Lincoln at the bottom of Long Island Sound in 1964. Sure, sure, I was a little drunk, what can I say. The father, that old goat, turned the screws on the press to keep it all out of the papers, I guess I should be grateful for that, at least. But that kid, what an idiot. I’m afraid the whole incident left quite a mark on him. No, really. He was quite the poet and gentlemen before almost drowning that night. After, not so much. I did notice that, after me, he seemed to go for women who were vehicularly reckless.

Well, honestly, either way, I refuse to vote for a Yale man. Don’t blame me, I voted for Carrie Fisher.

So, it was in 2005 when Dersh called me up to give me the bad news. After three years and thirty million dollars in legal fees, Derch telephones one afternoon and goes, “Catherine, I’m sorry, but this contract is airtight. I can’t find a way for you to take that position at Vanity Fair.” Yes, Vanity Fair, under suggestion from my dear friend Christopher Hitchens, was reconsidering its blacklist of your truly. Hitch called up ol’ S.I. Newhouse himself to make the plea for my case. I mean what did S.I. care if I burned all Graydon Carter’s hair off with a carelessly discarded butt. This is business! Besides, almost all the hair grew back.

“Well, god damn, Dersh, I have an idea, I saw it in a film with Rosalind Russell.” I bleated brightly.

“Ughhhh, Catherine…”

“No, no, hear me out,” I said. “Rosalind Russell was in a similar situation in some cock-a-mamie pic I saw the other day, and you know what she did? She just tore the contract up and that was that. Did you ever think of doing that?”

I couldn’t hear Dersh’s response as the line went dead.

Well, it seemed I was semi-officially retired.Here I was, hmmbmmbbmmm years old, and I was retired. Can you believe it? It was all I ever even wanted out of life.

Except that my husband, Dick, had returned. Oh, you remember Dick Swarmy. He was missing and presumed dead for six years and the god damned police had it in their pea-brains that I had God-all to do with it? Some fancy detective work, there, don’t you think? I would certainly murder my husband for money just to be, for all intensive purposes, under god damned house arrest and not able to spend any of it. Yeah, that sound like me. (I am being sarcastic.) Dick had come home after a spiritual pilgrimage to India, of all places, and was basically a “new man”. Except I think he was an even bigger dolt than before he disappeared. What did he learn in India but to take his shoes off before entering the house. Oh, now I’m going to heaven, look at my stinking, fetid feet. Idiot. He told me he learned something called “Kundalini Sex”, where he could, get this, belay his orgasm for hours and hours. First off, I could barely stomach the usual seven minutes of his flabby corpse flopping around on top of me, what made him think I would spend a whole god damned afternoon in his coital clutches. Second, I felt sorry for the brown skinned girl with whom he practiced this technique for all those years he ran around as shoeless as a beggar.

But get this. Instead of getting cross with me for refusing his clumsy advances, Dick took the rejection in stride. He instead focused his “energies” on his career. When Dick found the aluminum shed business he left in complete disarray, though, he lost his god damned marbles. He sold the business to Jake Kingston and embarked on a lounge singing career. You read that right, Dick took up singing the songs of Mel Tormé and, at age fifty…whatever… transformed himself into “Richard Swarmy, Viscount of the Standards.” Well, with a name like that, I sarcastically chided, he was sure to go far.

But god damn it, he did go far. He went farther than fucking far. Dick was the toast of the town. He got the key to the city, the key to the county, and a crate of god damned Napa Valley shit wine. The old biddies just loved Dick. We had god damned seventy year old groupies coming to our door at all of 9 am some days, all calling to see my god damned idiot husband. One of them even broke in to leave him a plate of confections made form breakfast cereal. Breakfast cereal. You would think my butler, Winston, would do something to turn them away, but it seemed, at times, that he was encouraging these old dingbats to come and visit. I mean, that god damned shit town had no association with show business before. There were no Oliviers or Gielguds making their home in Yuba City. Then why would Winston start one of those “Star Map” companies in town like we were in god damned Beverly Hills? Our house was the only attraction on the god damned thing.

Well, I had had enough of the hoopla. I decided I was leaving Dick. After thirty years, two marriages, three children who ignored me, and a butler who was somehow richer than I was, I was retiring to New York City.

NEXT TIME: HOW I WAS ALMOST MURDERED BY JOE TORRE.