W3F Banner

Author Archive

Freeloading Out West

Friday, March 27th, 2009

One of Alex’s worst anxieties has always stemmed from the relative proximity of Bend to San Francisco, and this fear was fully realized when Saul, sick and tired of the blatant liberalism of the Bay Area, packed a suitcase full of dirty clothes, sports jackets, and moustache wax and purchased a one-way train ticket north.

After making himself comfortable on Tim’s couch, turning Tim’s study into a walk-in closet, and joining an upscale local gym, the only thing left for Saul to do was inform his new landlord that he would be staying for an undetermined length of time, fully expected board as well as room, and would not be paying so much as a penny in rent while in residence.

Although his primary goal in Bend was to drive his friends’ meat-pie stand into the ground, Saul was also keen on finding work after months and months of endless loafing. However, he was shocked to discover that the media accounts of the recession which he had previously written off as yellow journalism turned out to have some truth to them after all. And in short order, the desperate times drove the hapless hobo into the always-booming migrant labor industry.

You can see him here, making full use of his Master’s Degree as he picks juniper berries at $30 a bucket for the local gin distillery. 

It is hard, thankless work, but fortunately there is plenty of down-time as well, even with the hundreds of hours per week that binge-drinking with Mitch takes up. Naturally enough, Alex and Saul’s preferred leisure activity is to saunter down to the local bathhouse, where they join all the other couples in steamy gratuitous displays of what Max bizarrely termed “Romosexualism.”

But whether picking berries or frolicking in steambaths, the one thing that doesn’t change is the crisp line of waxed hair running across his upper lip. That always remains consistent.*

* This actually did change as well. Saul – allegedly – was found with a razor in Alex and Mitch’s bathroom just before getting in a bitter argument with Enterprise and barreling down Route 101 in a bright-red Cobalt, adorned in a vivid pink tie, to a Motel 6 in Gilroy, California, prior to an interview for a coveted Professorship.

 

FAIR BUT FIRM

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

 

Looks to be a little too friendly for a lawyer-client relationship

When Saul heard that Mitch was heading down from Oregon on a quick California vacation to the Santa Rosa County Courthouse, and was looking for some pro bono legal representation in case things turned sour, he did what any normal friend would do: cancelled the day’s luncheons and meetings,* raced out to buy a grey three-piece suit and purple necktie, and woke up at 4:00 A.M. the next morning to research the California penal code before the big day.

                    

      Rubbing one out for good luck                             A quick spritz of Vidal Sasoon Mousse

Although able to document Mitch’s temporary transformation into an apparently upstanding citizen as he donned “business casual” attire and gave himself “a quick spritz” in the courthouse parking lot, Saul’s photojournalistic endeavors unfortunately came to a decisive end minutes later, when he was caught attempting to smuggle a digital camera through an x-ray machine and was momentarily barred from the courthouse as a result.

Once that little knot had been untangled, Saul rejoined his client in Courtroom 9 with no further trouble, and the morning proceeded uneventfully as the pair sat in the back of the courtroom, giggling about how much more fun they were having than the obese, handcuffed, wheelchair-bound woman who broke down into tears soon after being wheeled into court.

Their childish, carefree laughter unfortunately attracted the attention of a surly Hispanic prisoner, freshly delivered from the local prison system, whose very neck-tattoos seemed to quiver with dislike as he spied them from his “box” at the front of the courtroom. Although Mitch forgot to ask him the status on his steak and cheese, his glares still became so ferocious that they were noticed by a husky bailiff, who approached the chuckling pair and told them that any more “communication with the prisoners” could lead to their “immediate arrest.”

Strangely enough, the incident made Saul miss Mike for the first time in his life, as he wistfully thought about how Mike would have shot back a line such as, “Well, my grandfather was a Santa Rosa bailiff, and he says all the bailiffs around these days are faggots.”**

But by the time Docket #4: The People v. Mitchell B. was called, the confidence of the defense was again high, and Mitch faced Judge Stephanie with every intention of taking a page from Buck Baker’s book and “charming her goddamn robe off.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take a lawyer of Saul’s formidable abilities to notice that the two didn’t seem to be hitting it off as expected, and Fair but Firm seemed to be drifting steadily towards the Firm side with every passing second. Why? We might never know. All that remains certain is that her scowl quickly grew as she caught sight of Mitch’s bushy black beard, lime-green shirt, and million-watt smile advancing towards her. Below are a few brief excerpts to illustrate the next few minutes.

JUDGE:                       What is your profession?

MITCH:                       I’m a mentor…***

JUDGE:                       So you’re telling me you work with children?

MITCH:                       Yeah.

JUDGE:                       What do you think your employers would say if they knew you had pending drug charges against you?

MITCH: (huge grin)   I don’t think they’d like it.

——————————

Judge Stephanie then went on to lecture Mitch for several minutes (with little to no visible effect) before asking him whether he preferred to receive a monetary fine or attend 20 NA meetings.

MITCH:                       I’ll go with the fine, yeah.

JUDGE:                       The fine?

MITCH:                       Yeah.

JUDGE:                       What are you saying? I can’t even understand you.

MITCH:                       Yeah.

JUDGE:                       Do you mean yes?

MITCH:                       Yeah.

JUDGE: (agitated)        Then say “yes.” Not “yeah,” but “yes.” Okay?

MITCH:                       Yes.

Although Saul was on the edge of his seat wondering whether to object to this exchange on the grounds of badgering the witness, Husky Bailiff shot him a warning look, and he restrained himself until joining his client outside the courtroom, where they agreed that it had probably been a good decision not to enter a Nolo Contrendre plea as originally planned. 

Aren’t oysters an aphrodesiac?

From there, it was a quick drive back to the first San Francisco oyster bar they could find, where they celebrated the greatest client-attorney pairing since OJ Simpson/Johnnie Cochran by sucking down oysters, crab cocktail with extra ‘Louie’ sauce, and a bottle of white wine faster than you can say not guilty.****

    

These are simply too good to leave out

Ms. January 2009

EDITORIAL CORRECTIONS

* Saul has actually been unemployed since August, and the last work-related meeting he has had was his Moustache March ’08 photoshoot with Mairk

** It was this line – with the words “Boston cop” substituted for “Santa Rosa bailiff” that led to Mike’s arrest in the winter of ’01

*** Technically untrue, as Mitch was laid off on New Year’s Day.

**** Mitch was actually found guilty

Launch Party

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

SUPER HICK UPDATE: Mairk submitted a rendering for a cover below the release. Check ‘er out.

SUPER HICK UPDATE II: The original cover and the new one have been switched for aesthetics and to piss Saul off.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

WWWF is happy to announce that after a long delay it is finally getting into the magazine publishing industry. Although this news may not come as a surprise to its bored and indifferent readers, it was naturally assumed by everyone that the initial foray would be purely pornographic, aiming to entertain readers with such possible cover features such as:
  
•    Dave Does Dallas
   
•    How To (Kind of) Have Sex While Floppy

Special travel editions, such as
•    The San Fernando Valley on $5 a Day

And of course the long-awaited Bedroom Profile
•    STANDING PROUD
Corporal Max: Always Outweighed, Never Outdone

However, WWWF’s first full-length magazine series will instead focus on the lucrative smokeless tobacco market. Lacking the creativity to produce its own original format, the magazine will simply do what its contributors did in any high-school physics test and leach off its more-intelligent neighbors instead.

Thus, instead of the Wine Spectator, we give you the heavily-plagiarized but otherwise unaffiliated Dip Spectator, a magazine devoted exclusively to the kind of tobacco that makes its home between gums and lip.

Please feel free to send in ideas for articles over the coming weeks.

Out of desperation for content, Dip Spectator will cover any product at all – just so long as it is guaranteed to give its users incurable lip and mouth cancer within twenty years.

Happy reading, and happy dipping!

    
 

Sydney, New Hampshire

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

Same weight, double the girl.

The general reaction was “it’s about fucking time” when the bald, frumpy senior citizen that we used to know as SK moved across the world from us*, but after the initial glee at his long-awaited departure wore off, speculation on the real facts of the matter began to run rampant. What exactly happened, anyway? Is it really possible that SK is in Sydney, Australia? And more importantly, is it really possible that SK is that bald? And most importantly of all, what was going on with that female figure standing next to SK – was she, or was she not, a tranny, and either way, how much had she been paid?

Having nothing but time on our hands, WWWF turned its powerful investigative arm loose, with a demand that it get to the bottom of these utterly unimportant questions as soon as possible. Months passed, and as they did, some puzzling information began to sift back to us, until eventually, with growing disgust, we slowly pieced the pieces of this contemptible puzzle together. And the true facts of the SK Situation are, I’m afraid to say, more sordid, more pathetic, than anything anyone of us – even Mike – could have imagined.

Let’s just spit it out: SK is not in Australia any more than Max is on the moon. Instead, SK is in LYME, NEW HAMPSHIRE, and has been ever since he claimed to have left the country! That’s right, everyone!  SK has been hiding out in his parents’ basement since October, 2006.

The truth is that SK, as we all know, has never been right since the night that he overdosed on an exotic combination of mushrooms and salvia in a seedy Amsterdam hotel room, while Noah, Saul, and Sam observed his breakdown with the truly sincere pleasure that can only occur when one watches a good friend doing something that everyone else knows will have a devastatingly negative effect on him for the rest of his life. Ever since then, SK has drifted through Brown University (may I remind that the other HHS person to attend that eminent institution was Paul “Oh-I’m-So-Normal” Schminlaw) and, subsequently, life with a deeply scarred mentality, existing in a paranoid world of colorful fantasy and confused imaginings where the only true anchor he has had is the undeniable fact of his own accelerated balding.

When the time came to leave Lyme for the Eastern world that he had preached about with such annoying earnestness to his so-called friends for the last three years, SK realized, with a sickening jolt, that he was unable to bring himself to go through with it. Brain sick and fogged with the remnants of saliva, he instead spun a cunning plot to spend the next five years holed up in his parents’ house, using high-powered Photoshop technology to make him appear to be moving through a variety of foreign locales. Fueled by desperation, enveloped in a thick cocoon of shedding hair, SK might well have gotten away with the whole scheme, had not his newest post – complete with girl – finally provoked us into finding out the truth.

Realizing the controversy that this post will cause, we asked our media department to offer up a quick example of how easily deceptions like this can be carried out. The above picture is the result.

* Although “it’s about fucking time” was, as stated, a generalized response to the news of SK’s departure, we realize that not all of you feel this way, and that some of you surely dislike him enough to make this reaction sadly understated. Therefore, we encourage you to think back and send in your own comments to let the WWWF community know how you felt when you first heard that you might never see SK again.

As a different exercise, feel free to rank that day among the overall best days of your life. As an example:

1.    Day I found out Tim had a trust fund I could leech off for the rest of my life
2.    Day SK said he was moving across the world
3.    Day I lost my virginity
4.    Day Noah got fired from his EMT job for pooping on a coworker’s windshield
5.    Day I heard Max lost his virginity behind a potted plant in the lobby of a Japanese brothel 

BREAKING NEWS: Saul’s Long Lost Brother Emerges

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

    Well, we are happy to say that our classy little number of a website can now add “Mysterious Twins” to its list of gossip topics – a list formerly limited to such perennial favorites as “Flacidity In All Its Forms,” “Fatness: The New Thin,” “Girls – What’s That Word Again?” and “How To (Not Get Not) Sick From Whiskey.: Yup – you read correctly. The always-ready cameras of our newly-appointed Creative Director, Moustache Mairk, caught Saul’s lackluster twin brother, Pierre, as he ventured onto Hanover turf for the first time since ever.

    A little background on this disburbing revelation: As most of you probably don’t remember, Saul sidled into the hallways of Hanover High School back in 1997, fresh from serving a fifteen-to-life stint in ‘Scoma. Little did anyone know that Saul – eager to take advantage of the enhanced shoplifting that HHS’s proximity to the Co-Op provided – made his move with such haste that he left behind his maladjusted twin, Pierre, whom he cautioned never to venture beyond Route 4 for fear of discovery and subsequent disgrace. Fast-forward more years than we can count, and we have Saul – an apparently upstanding and successful member of the Dartmouth community. Little did he know, as he prepared to leave for his on-campus office last Friday, that much more than his day would be interrupted when a vengeful Pierre roared back into his life on a rusting Kawasaki motorcycle that was older than both of them combined.

    As can be seen, the two environments have had dramatically different effects on the brothers’ lives. We hope you enjoy browsing through the results – whether you prefer your vests made of cheap black leather or fine Merino wool, there should be something for everyone.    

EDITOR’S NOTE: Let’s all rejoice that the end of the Writer’s Strike has allowed our uber-talented, well lubricated poet laureate to return. Like all other entertainment outlets, we suffered heavily in the absence of our greediest Jew.

Max Reads Books!

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

                      

        For all those middle school and high school English teachers who threw up their hands in disgust and said Max would never amount to anything – well, apparently you’re wrong! This former Marine proved he has brains AND brawn when he strapped on his reading glasses and sauntered down to the local bookstore last week.

Here is what Max says about his newest foray into the literary world, and I quote:

————————————————————————
dear gandolf,
          this is the description of the book i’m reading, ver batum; Felix has survived operation iraqi freedom.  being turned into a vampire, by a ravenous horde of  nymphomaniacs.  now he faces his toughest task ever- navigating the the corrupt world of los angelas politics to solve the murder of a  distinguished young surgon turned porn star. But both human and vampire  alike have reasons to want this secret to stay buried……

  perhaps next i’ll read his other nover; The Nymphos of Rocky Flats.

————————————————————————

Although he has not yet quit his job checking IDs at the gym to swipe library cairds, we do hear rumors that Max – once he regains his student status this fall – will be out-gunning 13-year-old Indian children in next year’s National Spelling Competition. And that’s ver batum.

 

If We Were Gay

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007


Given our constant and obsessive preoccupation with homosexuality in all its forms, I decided to go ahead and jot down a few lines imagining what we would be like if we all woke up one morning to find ourselves gay. Would we be the same? Different? Less fat and narcissistic? Or would we be even pettier and bicker more than we already do? The possibilities are both endless and intriguing to people with as little going on in their lives as us. So – wriggle into your tightest pair of Diesel jeans, shake up a nice cold Appletini, and consider this post a kind of alternate universe, where everything is the same except for our sexual orientations. (And by alternate universe, I mean five years from now.)

Alex: Would become obsessed with a guy, pursue him until he broke up with his boyfriend, and then lose all interest. Would smoke weed, get really paranoid, and wonder if he was actually straight. Would shave his chest. Would get drunk and send dirty, dirty text messages to different guys. Would spend hours each day on the phone with Saul, complaining about guys.

Noah: The gang-bangs he is so fond of would have one extra guy (meaning 4) and one less girl (meaning 0). Would finally lose interest in Tiffany, since her curvy feminine body would hold about as much sexual appeal to him as a block of marble. Would tea-bag guys even more than he already does. 

Mike: Would be exactly the same – completely asexual. Might switch cigarette brands to some sort of Slims. Would giggle and ask Courtney to get a sex change or at least a strap-on.  

Baker: Would wear lots of bright spandex on his forty-mile bike trips. Would shave his entire body. Would keep going out with his girlfriend so he could ask her about fashion tips and get her opinion on the guys he brought back. Would put his dental career on hold and move to San Francisco, explaining to his dad that he had to ‘sow his wild oats’ while he was ‘young and shapely.’ 


Max: Would quit his job at the gym, move to New York, and work at a Chelsea sauna instead. When he cuddled with his pillow at night he would call it Long Dong Steve or Big Ted instead of Tracy. Would continue to have extended periods of bitter sexual frustration, interrupted by brief drunken flings with dudes who weighed far, far more than he did. Would break up with his imaginary girlfriend and begin dating an imaginary boyfriend instead, who would also have been a dance major in college. Might eventually become a ‘bear.’  

Smalls: Would pose for all those magazines that they put high up on the top shelves at truck stops. Would look at himself in the mirror and call himself a ‘huge faggot’ and then go out and chase cock all night. Would work out even more than he does now. 

Saul: Would wear black t-shirts even tighter than the ones he currently wears. Would wear the leather pants Gabe got him constantly, rather than just at costume parties and by himself at night. Would grow a permanent pencil-thin moustache. Would spend hours at a time on the phone with Alex complaining to him about guys. Would run for president of the Dartmouth LGBTQ society and try to make Speedos and tuxedo vests mandatory attire for all members. 

Draper: Would hit on every guy with a pulse.

Gerber: Would wear tight pants, sweater-vests, and pink button-down shirts all at the same time. Would cook dinners with less carbs. His tattoos would get racier. Would pierce tongue and nipples and listen to lots of R&B. Would still continue to dance a lot. 

Tom: Would give up joints and get really into poppers instead. Would quit Canoe Club and go to work as the pool boy at the Super 8. Might paint his car lime green or Strawberry or get really into interior design. Would develop a taste for ‘clubbing’ and as a result get over his phobia of any city bigger than Enfield, NH.  

Tyler: Would move into Pappas’s bedroom and turn the extra room into a Pilates studio. Would trim his goatee, retire the hat, and use lots of hair gel instead. Might even ‘frost his tips’ while he was at it. Would open Hanover’s first all-male discothèque on the island and name it the Man Lounge or perhaps The Cockpit. Would turn the party barge into the flagship of a gay cruise line.  

Pappas: See Tyler.

Tim: Would continue to date his girlfriend just to throw everyone off. Wait a second…

      
Gabe: Would have long relationships with attractive younger guys and then go into a tailspin when they left him for someone else. Would get even more cosmetic surgery. Would quit HBO, switch to Showtime, and pitch them the male version of the L-Word. Would continue to live with Tim. Would go to Thunder Down Under on his frequent Vegas outings and tell anyone who asked that he had been at Scores. Would get even more cosmetic surgery.  

Mitch
: Would move back to Hanover, sit in his hot tub, and wave at everyone who drove past while sipping a Peach Bellini and smiling from ear to ear. Would tell Caroline he never actually enjoyed the sex. Might or might not shave his beard. Might possibly get a job as a cocktail waiter or steward on Tyler’s cruise line. Would wear really short cut-off jean shorts 12 months a year.  

SK: Would immediately buy a toupee. Would move to Asia and commence a series of sweaty, sordid affairs with every teenage boy he could get his hands on, provided they wanted to make a quick buck. With that kind of love life, why come back to America at all?

Sean: Sorry, some things just wouldn’t happen. Sean being gay is one of them.

Sutton: Would hook up with TONS of dudes. Would have even bigger muscles. Would go to tanning salons when the weather was too cloudy to lounge poolside on Rip Road. Would funnel more Stoli Vanilla than any guy in town. Would ice Mike whenever Mike called him a ‘homo,’ which would be constantly.  

Mairk: Would become a promiscuous little slut. Would turn his parent’s basement and big screen TV into a makeshift movie theater – the kind where you don’t just watch the movie, if you know what I mean. We’d probably all come over, not tell any of the girls that we used to be friends with, and think it was awesome that it was a sausage-fest. 

Alex/Saul Feuds of the Century

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

Top Eight Alex/Saul Fights Of All Time: 

When setting out to write this novel encyclopedia post, I originally intended to compose a long-winded preamble leading up to it, or possibly transform the basic facts into a three-volume epic poem. But then I realized that everything here speaks for itself with a voice much louder and more annoying than anything I could attempt to give it. Ever since the cruel and fickle English alphabet decided to make them locker-partners throughout high school, Alex and Saul have had a relationship comparable to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii – they get along just fine when one of them is not in the midst of a hideous fiery eruption.

After moving in together for a year of domestic bliss in Manhattan, the bets began flying furiously as the best handicappers this side of Vegas tore their already-thinning hair out trying to set odds on which of the two ‘roommates’ would develop BWS (Battered Women Syndrome) and murder the other one in his bed first. But, somehow, they emerged just fine, assuming of course that you define “just fine” as follows: Alex had moved hundreds of miles away, they hadn’t spoken in two months, and a bizarre, spectacle-wearing, weed-smoking young fellow named Sharrif was living in Alex’s room.

 This post was not an easy one. I had to delve through town records, unpleasant memories, and conduct various oral histories trying to come up with the most memorable battles in the last ten years. But, like a diver triumphantly emerging from a sewage tank with the pearl necklace that was drunkenly dropped into the toilet at a cocktail party, I finally came up with a list that I am fully confident represents the best moments out there. And after all four major television networks rejected this pitch as a reality show, there was nothing to do but put it on a website, where it is sure to be read by all six of the people still bored and pathetic enough to actually return to our page. So, brace yourselves! And remember that when these two go at it, they make a Mairk/Rory fight look like two baby doves reclining in a bed of jasmine and lilac petals while cooing at each other. 
 

And so, with no further ado, I give you the TOP 8 ALEX/SAUL FIGHTS in history*.

*History is defined as the day in 1997 A.D. that Saul moved from the Mascoma to the Hanover school district, put on his baggiest pair of pants and his biggest silver earring, and spent a year sharing a neighboring locker with Alex, where the two didn’t say a word to each other the entire time.   

(more…)

Backsweat

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

Top of the World, Bottom of the Heap.     In retrospect I suppose I chose not to wear an undershirt for a multiplicity of reasons – and they all seemed good at the time. For one thing, I was (as always) running late, and finding the time to put on two whole shirts seemed downright impossible. Even one was pushing it, and I was grateful I had the time for that. But even had I not been so rushed, it seems safe to say that my torso would never have received an undercoating. After all, every undershirt I owned was crammed into its usual storage place – my dirty, over-filled hamper. Like more than six ounces of butter a week in times of war*, laundry has become a luxury that we cannot all enjoy as we should. Of course, I’d be the first to admit that my decision was also based on pure aesthetics. With no undershirt cramping my style, I was free to unbutton my top-shirt just as much as I pleased, thereby flashing the outside world generous amounts of my muscular upper chest – and that, I tell you all, is a luxury that I will never ration. Finally, the decision seemed just plain safe. It was cold and grey outside – how, I wondered, could moisture ever materialize in such conditions?

    As I entered the first public building on my route this morning, these innocent suppositions of mine were proven horribly false. No sooner had I walked inside than I felt a crawling down my spine as my pores opened wide as the legs of a forty-five year-old Russian hooker. Cold air or not, my back had found a way to buck the trend and was now pouring enormous portions of clammy sweat from shoulders to waist. Surprised, I stopped in my tracks and, puffing mightily, managed to reach a hand behind me in order to paw awkwardly beneath my shirt. No sooner had I done so than I jerked away, horrified. I had not been dreaming. My back was altogether quite saturated. I mopped up what I could with my shirt, and then of course the next stop was the Men’s Room to make a full diagnosis. Removing my jacket, I turned and craned my neck behind me, trying to establish just of much of my shirt was sopping wet to the point of transparency. (Like mentally-challenged people in past times, backsweat is fine provided it is kept hidden and locked away.) A jaunty young fellow walked in – just an innocent passerby with a presumably full bladder. His eyes took in my stance, then darted away in horror as he pretended to have noticed nothing. I was in no mood for this. 
    “Backsweat,” I snarled at him in response to the un-asked question. “That’s right, backsweat! That’s what I’m in here for!”
He hurriedly continued to the urinal, wanting no part of my sweat-fueled rage. I stumbled out of the bathroom, hastily donning my jacket. This would not help the problem – god no – but at least it would mask its presence, and matters had gone too far for any true repairs to be done.

*Not counting any war later than 1945

MOUSTACHE AROUND TOWN PART DEUX: THE TOLLBOOTH AFFAIR

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

You Should See What He Wears If You Have An EasyPass.
While reluctantly paying my 75 cents at a tollbooth last week, I looked across the booth and noticed that the driver going the other way was none other than an attractive female. My piercing gaze had skewered her in the very act of paying her toll. Perking up at once, I took stock in a flash: blond, early twenties, presumably hot body, quite possibly lonely and tired of being battered and disappointed by this hard-edged world we so mournfully inhabit… I suddenly realized the obvious – that no attractive woman would ever drive alone unless she was starved and desperate for the company of an obsessive, overly-possessive male with more hair on his lip than his scalp. 

I slowly ran my tongue over my chops, already thinking of how I could somehow turn this exciting situation to my advantage. Would shouting at her to give me her number work? What about throwing my cellphone through her open window and then calling it from a payphone down the road? That gesture would be sure to touch her heart – a classic mix of sexy go-getter energy fused with the impetuous romance of those sizzling CVS paperbacks. It was at this moment that she looked up, saw me, and smiled. Little did she know she might as well have held up a sign saying:
“Please Jump In My Car This Second, You Handsome Devil.”
(more…)