Freddogg Off The Chain

Question: What do you call an anorexic on lunch duty? Answer: A public school employee.
I have great compassion for any child suffering through a self destructive syndrome that can lead to their demise. But once that person passes 30 I take off the gloves and start making jokes. And if the person is passed 50 I will commence to bring my A game.

The unattainable control exhibited by an aging dieter just brings out the raw dog in me and I know it’s wrong and I don’t care. I used to watch this rail thin dieter every morning take a piece of toast from the cafeteria, carefully package it inside cross hatched napkins, then place it in the warmer oven. One day I saw her come back at 10 o’clock where she snagged it and took it to her office. Do you know how long a single piece of toast can be made to last by the clinically disturbed dieter?
Easily two hours until the ritual of eating like a bird at lunch surrounded by wallowing hippos takes place.
So I started stealing her piece of toast or substituting cheese for plain toast then once I just took a bite and put it back. Weight loss feeds on itself and some selves aren’t built for positive reinforcement because they don’t know how to handle it the boney bastards.

Oh dam, Sunkist my butt. Who ate all the chocolate covered raisins? Now I have to make another run to Sam’s Club.

Peace Freddogg

The summer of 1964, I have just graduated from high school on my way to Temple University on a full basketball scholarship. I am at a center city testing center with my mother. I am eligible for Veterans benefits as the child of a disabled now deceased father who fought World War Two in Seattle. But a battery of tests were required to see if I was college ready. I could have told them I wasn’t even high school ready. I left my best game in third grade.

After all the tests were completed it was some ‘Great Garlu” Test and Measurement Psychologist along with my mother and me sitting down to discuss tests and inventory results.

“Your son has an I.Q. that is way above average which is amazing considering the lack of input of any significant or appropriate information in his life, "the Psychologist said. But I have many concerns. Like here on this study habits and study skills survey. I’ve never seen this before but he doesn’t have any. And it gets worse. He’s never read a book, written a paper, pursued an intellectual interest and yet somehow here he is.”

The he turned to me. “Young man, how did you get here and who do you think you are right now?”
“I am the virtual Tabula Rasa, fresh out of high school, ”I told the guy. “I am the “react to acts” guy. The “response to the stimulus” man. I know nothing. I am the "consequence of the antecedent. The effect of the cause.”

“Whose theory—I interrupted, “John Locke but stolen from Aristotle. I am the blank slate of education. I am the nails being dragged across the black board of formalized knowledge.”

My mother who was brilliant, comedic and a non working nurse, looked at me and asked, ’Who are you? How do you know this stuff?” The she looked back at the perplexed and perspiring psychologist.

“He is telling you the truth about the blank slate stuff but the freighting thing is there is no explanation for the knowledge that he does possess. I have even considered that he is possessed.

I explained: “ Plato said some people just show up having pre existed somewhere in the heavens and come down to reunite with a physical body here on earth, in my case, one that can dunk a basketball. I mean, how lucky am I?

My senior year in high school, myself and another student from my high school, got the only perfect scores in the Philadelphia Area Diocesan Standardized Physics exam. He was on his way to MIT while I was on my way to basketball practice.

I was yanked into an office and there was the physics priest, a monsignor from Philly and the basketball coach who was about to lose his best player.

“Mr. Frederick. I am going to ask you two questions and if you answer no to the first one and satisfactorily answer the second you can go.”

I knew these amateurs had no business in my league and there was no fear in my personality because I am a person who is not afraid to lose.

“Did you cheat of the Physics midterm?” The cheater of course responds in predictable fashion.

“No!”

“Then perhaps you could give us all a working definition of kinetic energy?”

“It’s minute particles of matter in motion. Can I go now?”

I walked out the door and down the hall, looked up towards the heavens and said, ”Thanks Plato. Thank You God!”

Peace Freddogg

A little sign hung in front of the sunglass shack. It cleverly read, ”Sunglasses.” On the other side of the sign it read "Totes”. I backed up because I thought it said sunglasses. I was confused in a short term memory sort of way. "Well, what the hell was it?”

I didn’t realize I needed one of those preppy sunglasses straps but in the door I went. “Where the hell are my sunglasses? Have you looked on top of your head? Are you happy to see me?"

A tall black retail guy was on me like he stepped off the NBA’s all defensive team.

“Is it sunglasses or totes yo, ”I asked jokingly.

“What are you looking for, ”he asked?

“Do you have straps for glasses or whatever the hell you call them?”
“Yes we have lots of them over here.”

Jesus there were thousands all looking pretty much the same. How many can you sell? How many losers walk in a store prompted by the sunglasses/totes swinging sign?

“Are they all pretty much the same or is one pretty much as good as another, ”I asked the young man. “Pretty much depends on what color you prefer.”

“Black like my women, ”I said, borrowing a joke from the movie Airplane.” He didn’t bat or black an eye.

“Here are the black ones. “

I picked one up, it was six dollars I went for cash tried to check out with efficient retail white lady on cell phone. She held out her hand but I wouldn’t hand her the strap until she got off the phone.

I don’t converse or interact with phone people because I end up answering questions from the other conversation. “Sure I’ll be in town this weekend I live here. I don’t have a cat.” “What are you talking about?” “No, what are you talking about?”

So I look over at all the sunglasses and ask this really dumb question. ‘Do you have an array of sunglasses here?” The unintentional pun comes deep from within a person’s pun center. “An a-ray of sunglasses?”

“Yes we have lots of different kinds of sunglasses?”

‘Well of course you do. Otherwise you’d have two thousand pairs of the same sunglasses. So why did I ask that question? Let me answer it. I am Big Loser Boy! And I’ll tell you another thing, "I don’t mind it!”

Have you ever done that? Walked out of somewhere talking badly about yourself? “You are such a dunce! You freaking idiot! Where’s your keys you fat freaking hair all messed up cargo short wearing moron?

Peace Freaking Freddogg

Let’s contemplate the creepiness of sleepiness. One of life’s cruel jokes is the less you have to do the longer you are given to do it.
I am currently operating on about four hours sleep a day but at least my mind is always racing. I refuse to take any medication that intercedes in this process and, in fact, I’ve turned insomnia into a sort of sport like I when I win the Olympics in every event or run for touchdown or become the first person to swim across the Atlantic Ocean or whatever else I want to do.
Most sleeplessness (what a weird word) is rooted in the anticipation of how it will affect wakefulness but if you don’t give a dam then what does it matter?
Author Dan Jenkins said, ”When I was a younger man I used to fall asleep every night thinking about pussy. Now I think about killing people.” That’s a great old guy quote and I’ll let each old guy contemplate it for four hours or until his medication wears off.
Now if you are creative and always thinking like me you not only have a better chance of being afflicted by exotic and hilarious mental illnesses but your dream state will be incredibly weird especially if you kick it off my consuming and an entire Sam’s Club pepperoni before falling into REM cycled sleep.
I sometimes wake up and shout, ”Holy Shit Am I Strange!”
My son took a Saturday morning five hour Psych Class at the prestigious and academically elitist Wilmington College and when they got to the section on dreams the teacher asked the entire class to bring pillows and to sleep for the first two hours then share dreams with each other. I believe the bitch cable knitted a sweater for her fat dachshund over three Saturdays.
Got a dream theme, recurrent night terrors or appropriate fantasies? I’ll be glad to analyze them for you being as I’m riveted in attention 20 hours a day. I’d welcome a dose of A.D.D.

Peace Dr. Freddogg

I was sitting at a high school faculty lunch table. A woman who taught basic communication skills through the English Department was complaining about a student who was in over his head .He was a person to whom the word basic meant advanced placement, a real academic challenge.

The teacher lamented, ”That boy don’t even understand a simple sentence like, ‘The Dog Bark.”

Some years later it was a foreign language teacher. She had brought her young son to work, I know not why. The cafeteria was serving Chinese food that day. This woman, crude by nature, looked at the server and pointed to her fat little son and said, ”He wanna egg roll.”

This person taught English and Spanish and I just shook my head because I can go up and down the slang ladder but I know when I’m doing it and I really wish that so many teachers didn’t sound so ignorant.

I don’t mind it when people misuse language and I would never correct them because that is rude. But teachers at work should sound educated and many don’t because they’re not.

A few months ago I looked at my 10 year old grand daughter Anna and said, ”What’s wrong with this sentence? Where’s the cat at?”

She didn’t even flinch, ”Where the cat?”

How about you? How many languages do you speak? Middle class, working class and no class?

I’m out, yo!

Peace Freddogg

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/412276p-348540c.html

Duct tape a couple 10 years old to their desks while also taping their mouths shut and right away they cry to their parents and the parents claim the little pampered maniacs were traumatized.
Do you have any idea how many times nuns traumatized me during my primary school years? No joke, my dad who had M.S. and walking with a cane accompanied me to my first day of first grade in North Philly. I walked right into a cast iron lamp post, caught the entire thing with my face and my father fell over from laughter. An hour later Sister Euphemia repressed and hostile having elected for a life with no sexual euphoria smacked me in my 7 year old head as hard as she could and said, ”Get that smirk off your face.”
“This is my face, ”I responded. “And I’m not holding hands with the boy next me whose name also begins with F as in “Fat Boy” and I don’t care how many times you smack me you craggy faced penguin bitch!” –Yea that’s what I said, you’d better believe it! I should have been so lucky as to be taped to a chair. They didn’t even have duct tape when I was a student. I’d have been sheep shanked with a Tarzan rope that grew tighter around my neck every time I moved.

That’s why I think the cycle of violence is a bunch or horseshit and that goes for the cycle of everything including sexual abuse. Uncle Ernie “messed with me” so you had better believe when I get to a position of physical dominance I’m going to do the same thing to little people. “Bullshit! It’s Pure and unimaginative, psychobabble horseshit.

I was physically destroyed every year of my Catholic education and later became a teacher. I never hit a kid, twisted his arm, picked him up by the sideburns, kicked him in the calf, none of those things. And I never wanted to. So what happened to the cycle of violence? No it wasn’t displaced aggression because I never kicked the family dog either.

It’s not what the teacher did, it’s the judgments behind the act of doing it. “You’re fired because you’re a stupid Mo Fo, Yo! It ain’t about duct tape. This was never about Duct tape. You don’t like it, go on the Maurry PO-Bitch show, who it turns out was abused as a child and married a Chinese woman and let’s stop there before I open my torture joke book.

Speaking of which when did Rumsfield and Bush convince our nation that torturing naked prisoners with lesbians, hot wires and German Sheppard’s not t mention actually out of work Sheppards was culturally acceptable?

Does anyone else see a problem with all this cycle of abuse theory? I mean how freaking sick are we?

Peace Love Tranquility and Harmony-Celibacy plus reality = hostility.

Dr. Freddogg

Years ago in downtown Lewes, Delaware, a dirt bag rich guy used a house across the street from us he purchased at auction, to store boxes of crap he purchased at other auctions. The house had been lived in by an elderly man and it was only after he died that we discovered there was also an elderly woman living inside. I was sitting on the front steps on a summer’s night and there was her silhouette in the window looking like Mrs. Bates. It freaked me out! A week later the fire department came and took her away as she was not only off her rocker but had set it on fire. She never came back.

One afternoon the hoarder of other peoples memories laid an industrial strength 45 foot construction grade aluminum ladder against the slant of a side roof. It stayed there for two years. One afternoon I saw my young twin sons and friend climb up the ladder and onto the roof. I walked across the street yelled at them to back down one at a time and that’s when I decided to steal the ladder.

So that night I single handedly and without conspiratorial assistance muscled the ladder down from the roof carried it across the street and put it inside a 20 by 75 tin shack on the back of my historic property.

The next day the dirty assed greasy guy and two town cops were walking around the outside of the house like suddenly a 45 foot ladder was going to walk up to them and ask, ”say have you guys been looking for me?”

The Chief of Police came across the street with a smile on his face and asked, ”Hey Fredman. I don’t suppose you noticed anyone taking a ladder from across the street.”

“As a matter of fact I did see two old black guys in a beat up pick-up take that ladder like they knew it wasn’t theirs.”

“Really,” said the Chief who was black.

“Hell no, not really, ”I laughed "You know black people ain’t stealing no big assed ladder. You know some big assed white dude took that bitch. Someone big and strong who could handle that ladder and make it disappear.”

The Chief looked and me and I said, ”Go ahead Mr.Ready to believe Black People Be Stealing Ladders and shit. Go ahead and ask me.”

“I’m not going to ask you,” he said. “I know you didn’t take it.”

I’m not sure which of my friends now has what we call the “hot ladder” but if you ever need one that big just give me a holler.


Some crimes are simply justifiable and make you feel good about yourself. How about you? Ever pull off the perfect crime even if it was only a candy bar?

Peace Freddogg

I have a certain respect for men who dress up as women on a Saturday night and hit the gay bars. I'd have even more respect if they pulled up a stool at a regular bar. "Bobby,what's up? Looks like you have dry wall dust on you blouse." Transvestites are disordered individuals and although I have never had the urge to wear a sundress and I don’t understand the allure I am willing to accept another person’s commitment to deviance that doesn’t hurt anyone

But what about the "364 days a year straight men" who dress up as women on Halloween? And then they begin to swish around and bat their eyelashes and even pout and deploy other facially alluring behaviors that inspire real gay guys to exclaim, ”Please stop it, you big hairy fairy.”

My wife came up with the observation that most people dress up on Halloween as what they secretly wish they could be. I absolutely hate adult Halloween parties. I especially can’t stand educated married couples with complimenting extravagant disguises, you know, like freaking Jedi or shit like that.

In an old episode of "All in the Family", Gloria dressed in a blond wig which turned on her husband Meathead –they don’t call me meathead because I’m stupid- and every time they went to bed he wanted her to wear the wig and she got mad because he was aroused by wig women and it was a funny shtick because in real life on Halloween night weird stuff happens across this strange culture of ours like, ”Honey would you mind leaving the nun outfit on while I look for a ruler.”

The few times I dressed up it took about five minutes. Once I wore a real hollowed out pumpkin on my head and this fat woman dressed like Momma Cass kept following me around. It was weird. Another time I was Superman or Superfredman.

Remember the Super Hero joke where Superman lands on top of a sleeping and naked Wonder Woman, has quick sex with her, then quickly flies out the window. She opens her eyes and says, ”Whoa, what was that?’
“I don’t know, “says the Invisible Man. But he tore my butt up!”

I once dressed like Yassir Arafat and I was cool with that but everyone thought I was Ringo Starr off the Sergeant Pepper Album. Another time I went as one of the Outsiders or what is commonly known as a Greaser.” Most people thought it was a better look for me.

I would like to know what costume you wore as an adult where you felt so weirdly out of character that you couldn’t wait to take it off and conversely what character did you become where you felt in complete harmony.

And if you went the cross gender route tell me why and were you good at it.

In real life I own no suit and no dark socks and one pair of black othepedic nun shoes and the rest sneakers and just two shirts with collars a black one and a white one and one intermingled ball of ties on the closet floor that would take a Chinese puzzle grandmaster three weeks to unravel.

What does that say about me?

Peace Freddogg

I am a finalist for “Rookie of the Year” on the Don Ameche All Cocoon Team. You remember the movie where the old guys in Florida swam in a prohibited pool that was a uterus for germinating alien pods that gave them renewed youth and vigor.

And you know how some people freely discriminate against others from the same cultural group like when a person of color threatens a person a darker color with a warning like “You better back off you black bitch!”

I’m the person who sometimes calls people old and or fat but not to their faces and not to others just mumbling to myself because I think I’m entering a period of self loathing in my life and anyway I’m tired and being well adjusted and productive because where does that get you other than the same place if your not responsible.

I was covering a road race Sunday and you should see the way some runners give you the, body up and down once over, like a middle aged loser checking out the prom queen. It’s because their weight loss solidifies a feeling of self worth using you as a standard of what can happen if you’re not narcissistic, self obsessed with diminished sex drive unless you’re alone with yourself.I am a granddaddy Mack daddy beast to use hip-hop “I ain’t tryin to be no bony assed 8 minute miler. Some time keeper said, ”Could you step aside you make a better door than a window and I certainly can’t see around you” and people giggled like that was a put down and I realized they viewed me differently than I viewed myself but I’m a funny wide guy and not allowed to smack people because it’s bad for business.

Saturday night I stopped at “my bar” after dropping off grand children to listen to a blues and soul group. I love loud and tight music coming from a band that has black and white voices. I was just sitting at the bar next to an Irish friend not trying to be better or worse, younger or older, thinner or fatter, just content, like a calico in a window sill.I laughed when the retired mailman came up behind my crouched down photographer and did a dirty dancing number on him and I thought, just good clean fun in a small down on a dreary Saturday night.

A soulful classic was played and people began to dance. I was tapped on my right shoulder and turned slowing as the vertebra in my neck made ratcheting noises. I heard one young male bartender say to the other, ”Did you hear that crackling. I think it’s going to storm again.”I waiting for the depth of field function of my weakening eyeballs to auto focus and there she was, a red died haired, deep set make-up shrouded hollow eyed , 75 year old barfly who looked at me with bad attitude and said, ”Do you dance?”“If machine gun bullets were aimed at my feet by Arab gunmen I don’t dance. There have been times when I’ve gotten funky but never dancing.”

She looked at me like, ”you big fucking loser” walked away and I felt like such a schmuk but it wouldn’t have mattered if she were the 25 year old Belarus girl from the window of Dunkin doughnuts where I had just spilled my coffee that afternoon trying to pull it through my window.Like Frank Sinatra sang, ”I don’t dance, don’t ask me.”By the way, planned, radical, written grouchyness is therapeutic and I should teach it at the Academy of Life Long Learning while I’m “still on top of my game” like a prideful aging lion with lumbar issues.
What about you? Don’t you ever want to come loose and just bury people figuratively speaking.

Peace Freddogg

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12442765/site/newsweek/

Check the link above for recent seven page News Week account of the alleged rape of a black stripper by three white guys inside a Duke Lacrosse house

I have rapped with rapists on lockdown. I’ve interviewed a few, including a serial rapist with his own title, “The Trolley Square Rapist.” I know that rape is a crime of violence committed by a man with a hard-on , the same goes for the pyromaniac. “It’s not about sex” is a bit of a poor description when someone is sodomizing an overweight, wigged, stoned and drunk stripper. Are there people out there who are that sick? Absolutely there are but that level of deviant behavior doesn’t happen spontaneously. And if three white guys did that to an older black woman you think she doesn’t know where to go to get some juice. Why what allegedly happened didn’t provoke a “black attack” on that white house of privilege is a mystery to me unless it was a story not likely to play well back on the campus of N.C. Central.

So at the hospital she is examined and let’s be blunt the condition of her vagina is consistent with someone who has been raped. Maybe so, but it may also be consistent with someone who gives it up frequently and considered no DNA linked to the lax guys the next logical question is there must be DNA not belonging to the victim or the lax guys so like where is that person or persons. Not even Rita Cosby whom Don Imus calls “that fat cow” has raised that question.

Somewhere in the story also is the woman making comments to some boys questioning their masculinity or virility and I can only suppose it was in the category of “white guys having little Jimmies” so maybe some retaliated be calling her a name she wouldn’t like.

The last time I witness a white person call a black person a nigger was 30 years ago in a football locker room. Two good friends were horsing around like they did after every practice when the black one stung the bare assed white one with a major league towel snap. “The white guy broke bad and shouted, ”It ain’t funny, you fucking nigger.” “The black player who went on in his life to earn a masters degree while the white guy died young of alcoholism just smiled a broad smile and said, ”Well there you are.”

I can’t see properly raised athletes condoning for a second the use of racial slurs. That’s just ignorant and I guarantee several teammates would shut down anyone who came loose with that type of verbiage. And they would also shut down a flash fire three on one rape in a small bathroom. An experienced stripper says, ”small Jimmie” and the small Jimmies come out to play? I don’t think so!

If any or all of those accused actually did do this then I hope they get them and they go to jail .I have no horse or ho in this fight. The difference is some students from N.C. Central said they hope the guys go down, innocent or guilty, to make up for all the injustices of the past and present.

I was in my high school classroom playing a little radio when the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced. The class had 30 college prep students but only a few black ones. “Not guilty” was read and Delores, an African American, nice and smart as anything, dove from her seat to the floor and shouted “Yes!”

I asked Delores, ”Do you think O.J. was innocent and that justice was served?”
‘I don’t care,” she said. “We needed a win. And anyway you know that white cop Furman was a racist.”

There in lies the danger of using elements of truth that are offensive to the sensibilities of all good people to prove a story that is in basically untrue.

Please comment and tell me what you think about this case.

Peace

Freddogg

Demonstrators were “dogged by police in the streets of Kathmandu” --Bob Seager rocks!--on Friday or Saturday it depends on which side of the dateline you live but then a deluge of rain thinned out the crowd followed by a large hail boinking brought down by a friendly yet vengeful god who does not cotton to Maoist rebels who run amok speaking in parables and killing people in the streets.

But it got worse. A hail of rubber bullets which hurt like hell dropped protestors to their knees where they were then beaten with bamboo sticks and trampled by herd of Hindus because someone yelled, ”Half price slurpy sale!” (You right, that was a weak joke.)

The bigger joke will come on Sunday morning on news programs in the United States when President Bush tries to explain to a national audience of U.S. citizens who already believe he’s a moron why we should care what happens in any impoverished nation. “Gas cost $3 dollars a gallon at Wawa and they think they have problems?”

Nepal is a country of 28 million at the foot of the Himalayas whose sole purpose of existence is to take rich white people up the steep side of Mt Everest then subsequently get them lost and occasionally providing hospitality to Harrison Ford and the series of Raiders of the Lost Ark movies.

Another near riot situation flared late Saturday when King Gyanendra cut off cell phone service and screamed from the loud speakers of his guarded palace, ”Can you hear me now assholes!” The King suspended democracy two years ago after a bloody palace coup where his royal family imploded and killed each other. Citizen groups are too fractured and stupid In Nepal to understand sociology 101 and the Social Contract theory and even though in America we have many groups who hate each other we all agree that red means stop and green means go. You know, just the basic shit. They are in a state of anarchy,unemployed and impoverished.

In the last three weeks of protests 14 Napali people have died which isn’t a drop in the Yak bucket compared to downtown Baltimore.

The geopolitical significance of all of this is that Nepal sits between India and China and if that throw down ever gets going the Iraq War and too many Mexicans will be the least of the United States troubles.

But your chances of scaring up an intelligent conversation on Nepal are about as good as finding a Duke grad working the night shift at the 7-11 in downtown Durham.

Peace Freddogg

Who invented support groups and court ordered mandatory counseling and classes? I saw a public service announcement in a local paper that said, ”Monday evening meeting for adults afflicted with A.D.D. Meeting is from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

You can’t make that up! “Hello my name is Fredman and I have A.D.D. Hello, ”I said, My name is Fredman and I have A.D.D.”

“Yea Yea we heard you.”

“Then what’s my name?”

“You didn’t say your name, you said you were a dead man. Anyway no need to go on and on about it.”

I use to teach a Psychology class in the evening division of a community college. Across the hall was what became known as the “drunk class.” These were people without licenses matriculating themselves back to full credentials because they felt stupid and at risk riding a bike home from Happy Hour.

Many of these people showed up late for class and half drunk. In today’s parlance, we’d say they had alcohol issues, but back in the day they were just good old fashioned drunks.
I had a friend once with a suspended license who asked me for a ride to Anger Management class. He had threatened his estranged wife with a garden rake after rolling dead drunk from the front bench seat of his Ford F150 in front of a trailer where his wife was staying.

My friend, who had been drinking all afternoon told me, ”I don’t have any fucking anger problems. I’m no more-angrier than the next person. Anyway it was a leaf rake. Do you know how hard you’d have to hit someone to hurt them with a leaf rake? You would have to hold it high over your head and beat them in the face over and over just to draw a little blood, that fucking bitch!”

I argued with my friend and persuaded him into skipping Anger Class that night. And I warned him,"Don't even think of reaching for a yard implement. I ain't your fat assed former wife!"

Do you know that the Homo sapien is the only primate who can take control of the group without kicking someone’s ass? Or at the very least exhibit a baleful stare that no one wants to challenge.

That’s why in my 35 year teaching career I hardly ever attended mandatory meetings, first of all because I hate the word mandatory and secondly I could almost always beat up the person doing the speaking and I figured if I can beat them up then I shouldn’t be listening to them as they did nothing to earn my respect at the most primal of levels and I would not contribute to the overall watering down of the physical strength of the tribe of humans.

Ironically those who work professionally in the field of education are among the dumbest and disconnected people on the planet.

Like the experts who rolled into a high school to tackle the problem of chronic truancy. They ask for only the most truant of the lot those who excelled in the art of being someplace other that the place required.

The first session was just for the 11 students selected, no teachers or parents were allowed. The experts were going to get down to it and uncover the real reasons these children didn’t want to attend school.

You guessed it. It was 100 percent perfect non attendance. The kids didn’t show up. They had better go find them because my guess is that they are our future leaders.

Peace Freddogg

It was first day of Spring Practice for the Temple football team prior to the 1965 season. Coach George Makris, a University of Wisconsin graduate who was an NCAA heavyweight boxing champion was entering , a win or get out, season.

I was standing there having been recruited to Notre Dame and Michigan out of high school but electing instead to play Big Five basketball at Temple. A catastrophic knee injury and resulting surgery with a hacksaw had me on the trading block within the Temple program. They were trying to lure and entice me to play football.

Coach George Makris looked at me in a meeting with the Athletic Director Ernie Casell and said,” I’ve seen you play basketball Fredericks and you ain’t no basketball player. Now in football I believe you could letter for us as a sophomore.”

“Letter? Did you say, Letter? Is somebody kidding me here? Letter? I’ve seen you guys play and if I couldn’t start for your team I’d turn in my helmet for a drum major’s hat.”

“You are some kind of smart ass, aren’t you boy,” Makris said. I only responded, ”You started it.”

So there was Makris standing in front of a rolling blackboard out on the field with the red brick of Temple stadium behind him. Players stood silently in rapt attention,listening to his speech. Somewhere near the end he said,” And I’m not interested in your personal problems, I don’t care if you like me and I don’t care if you talk about me. And you can call me anything you want but I’d better never hear you call me a Goddam Greek”

Right on cue a boy from Brooklyn directly behind me shouted, ”Goddam Greek!”

Coach Markis looked directly what me. “What did you say boy?” I looked around to see who he was looking at but when I turned he was still looking at me.

“What did you say boy?”

“Coach, I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t me!”

“What your name boy?”

Now that really made me mad that The Goddam Greek Head Coach who lured me away from the basketball program didn’t know my name and the truth be told,”he didn’t know my name, which is why I was listed at fourth team offensive guard on the depth chart.


True the following fall I was the starting right guard on the team and I was a player with an edge and attitude like the time in practice Makris looked down at my size 13 shoes then contemplated the rest of my body for size and speed and said, ”Fredericks Goddamit. If I had your size and speed when I was in college I’d have been an All American”
“Coach in all due respect you look like you’re having enough problems just being yourself. “

My line Coach, Dave DiFillipo, crouched behind a canvas blocking dummy and started laughing.

“Call me a Goddam Greek one more time so I can kick your ass, ”Makris said.

“Coach I didn’t say it not then and I’m not saying it now. In fact, I speak every language but Greek.”

“Really, say something in Italian. “

“That’s Greek to me.” The goddam Greek walked right into my joke.

Peace Freddogg

Link below to Makris obit

http://www.owlsports.com/sports/football/releases/release.asp?RELEASE_ID=16502

My Lesbian joke book: Never date a girl who can throw you out taking the extra base. I am a sports writer, not a sociologist, well actually, I am a sociologist, as good as any who practice that inexact social science and get paid for their bullshit observations. And I love Lesbians athletes and gay guy sprinters and anyone else who can put points on the board for me and help me win games.

I also have found that men and women who rant on about homosexuality usually fall into the “missing a great opportunity themselves” category because I really don’t care one way or another.

The quote below is in reference to a Penn State basketball coach of 27 years who got nailed with a $10 thousand dollar fine and what’s worse mandatory diversity training for discriminating against a black player she perceived as lesbian which the girl denied—not the black part—refusing to dress more feminine to satisfy this coach’s ideal of how a woman should represent herself. “Flowered dress my ass!”


Ms. Portland had been quoted in a 1986 Chicago Sun-Times article about a team policy banning alcohol, drugs and lesbians. "I will not have it in my program," she said of homosexuality.

Then be prepared to lose a lot of games bitch!

A Los Angeles Times reporter recently did a full year’s study of the WNBA and concluded that the sport was very popular with organized lesbian groups and the same has been said of the LPGA and reporters who attempt to analyze this apparent raw data are almost always men who are subsequently chopped off at the knees because “Lesbians don’t play dog!” They know how to defend themselves against social attacks disguised as fair and balanced reporting.

I once sat around a bar with the champions of the local adult woman’s softball league. I knew most of the players and enjoyed drinking with them and paying for my own beers. A married mother came over to me and said, ”I think I’m the only woman on the team who is not a lesbian.”

“Here you tell it,” was my response, a phrase I learned from one of my high I.Q redneck friends.

I do know she was the worse player on the team by a long shot to the opposite field and perhaps a little “diversity training” would have increased he “playing time” know what I’m saying because I don’t, I’m just dancing with myself” around the obvious jokes I ain’t taking.”

As Lyle Lovett sang, “I love everybody, especially you.”

Peace Freddogg

I was creeping like a motorized stalker a few feet a minute being funneled by highway workers that could have cared less and why should they. They are working while I am “inconvenienced”, they are wearing orange vests that read, “Flagger” I am chilled listening to Sirius radio.

The orchestrated bottle neck, three lanes down to one, with cross traffic jumping into the parade. I turned it into a sociological learning experience figuring it will make the dead time go faster.

I look off to the left into a grave yard I had never noticed. ‘The dead people are moving faster than me, ”I think, or perhaps a sign, ”why not drop in and have a cold one?” A fancy short bed hydraulic dump truck pulls up next to me with lettering that reads, www.1800gotjunk.com, it’s a national franchise for people clueless on how to get rid of their own accumulated junk. What’s wrong with yard ape sales? Post a sign and they will come, waddling across your front lawn. Just write "two dollars" on a few worthless items and they will wedge them into the trucks of their Buick Century’s.

There is a warning sign, ”Uneven Pavement!” and I think,” Thanks for the heads up dog!”
Popeye’s had a Family Special on Chicken and Biscuits and I think, ”I like bad food but even I won’t dive so deep to do family night at Popeye’s. "

I saw a fat girl to my left driving a ratty assed Chevy Corsica, she was bobbing her head up and down, swearing she was cool, smoking a nasty cigarette and nibbling on bagel chucks. “A gestaltist” I thought, "one who exhibits all the traits of a syndrome that make up the final product of personality, in this case, ”Nasty Fat Bitch!”

But wait, cutting across traffic is the “light weight wanker” in racing cap, driving his BMW convertible. I mumbled to myself, ”Jerkoff!”

Finally, the scenery changes after 45 minutes, as I come up to the orange arrow trailer, which is pointing to the right, just like Paula Jones said of Bill Clinton. There is a New Jersey license plate, all beat up and shit and I know it has to be a joke and I start to like the highway crew better, a step up from not at all.

I have a theory that if you hand a decent kid a skateboard he immediately turns into a little obnoxious asshole and if you put a white hard hat on some moron who can’t even back out of his own driveway without riding over the electrical box and trashing the mailbox you have just created the highway engineer, and yes, it does take three of them and six “flaggers” four hours to have a light bulb change lanes.

I spot a grungy full grown sheep dog riding in back of the porta John flatbed. He is gray and white except for all that nasty brown fur around his mouth and he is lying next to those big black “suck the shit out” hoses and, say it ain’t so, but if you’ve ever walked a dog in a field of fertilizer, you know it’s a, roll over turn on, for them.

There’s a sign on back of the truck, ”It’s not just a job it’s a “Dudy”.

I’m almost through the neck of the bottle but not before two low riding seniors with a “support the troops “ribbon on the back of their Buick cut me off, but the joke is on them because “Shit Faced Shep” is staring right into their souls. "How you like me now?"

Life is never a “waste” of time, only some people.

Peace Freddogg

Nuns just had a knack for bringing young boys into the strange hallways and stairwells of life bless their immaculate hearts. And the fact that every single one I ever knew hated me with a passion disallowed by the vow of celibacy didn’t make my life any saner. But I didn’t start these weird conversations, they did!
I had no idea why I was called from class on a hot afternoon to face eggplant breasted Mother Superior and her fat Irish red freckled-faced self. And I certainly didn’t know why classmate Bill Zarr was standing next to her. Zarr was the fifth starter on our undefeated basketball team and virtually never touched the ball the entire game. In fact, I’m not sure what he did but he was out there. I mean “way out there!”
“Mr.Zarr tells me that you were trying to teach him dirty words at recess, ”Mr Frederick. “I was wondering if perhaps you could teach me a few.”
“I don’t talk dirty to nuns, Mother.” She smacked me hard!
“Mr. Zarr, what did this pagan child try to teach you”?
“He asked me if I knew what a boner was Mother? And he asked me if I ever had one. I told him as far as I knew no one in my family ever had one but anyway we were from Russia.”
I rolled my eyes back into my head right before face crack number two. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what a boner is young man, ”Mother asked?
“Mother, I am very uncomfortable talking to a nun about these wild claims by Mr.Zarr. But as far as I know, nobody in my family has ever had a boner either, although we do own a brand new 1959 Plymouth.”
I took a round-house left to the skull but I was on the offensive because I could take a hit! Zarr then said something about pussies and knockers and other more specific parts of the female anatomy that I knew nothing about. Then it dawned on me. Zarr had set me up! At first I thought I was probably guilty although I had no memory of early morning boner talk with Zarr. But 12 year olds talk a lot about boners. Say Bill, that isosceles triangle on page 47 is giving me a boner. How about you”?
“What’s a boner” was never an acceptable answer?
This entire inquisition was complicated by the fact that Mother Superior was my classroom teacher for the entire long day’s journey into the night. I knew she hated me anyway but this boner incident just complicated matters. And about twice a week she would look at me and say, ”Run into any boners at recess today, ”Mr Frederick?
“Actually yes. Richard Neilson (retarded classmate) had one but he said he lost it on the way to school!” I mean I was getting tired of this fat penguin bitch running her boner schtick on me.
This polygamous penguin from the extended harem-scarem of god himself threw several left and right open handed combinations into my smart-aleck face. I just smirked and took two more shots. No student in the system had ever seen a classmate get under the habits of nuns the way I could. And they had better bring weapons if they wanted to hurt my hard German head.
Mother Superior backed off her boner brigade of barbs and moved me to the leadoff desk in aisle number one. That was real preferred seating in Catholic grammar school because you got to get up and answer the door and deliver notes to the office. Somehow being a rebel was becoming a cool thing with Mother Superior who was seeming to be more fat and contented and less frustrated with her vacant lot in life.
But the last week of school when I was seemingly “home free” for the summer the hornet in the hot habit turned into an agitated killer.
I answered a knock at the classroom door in the late afternoon when the temperature outside was 95 and inside was 157 degrees. It was a middle-aged woman in a black dress and a hat. Not a habit but a little hat and you could see her ears. I told Mother, ”Some lady is at the door to see you.” And I stuck my index finger straight out in a display of boner humor for the hearing impaired and the class chuckled.
Mother Superior spent a full 25 minutes in the hallway and when she came back into the room she had tears in her eyes. She whimpered a picture study assignment to the class but told me not to bother because she wanted to see me in the hallway.
I followed the moping mother out into the hallway and she closed the door behind her. That made me nervous because nuns never shut the door on a classroom filled with sinners. Once again we were back on the overlook of “boner bight stairwell.”
“Some lady’s at the door! Is that what you said? Some lady’s at the door. Well that was no lady that was my lover—I mean that was a nun!”
And I took a porter house shot that cupped the entire side of my skull. And the hits just kept coming one right after another. It was Rocky Marciano versus some palooka from Penndel up against the ropes. I was 12 years old. I didn’t understand much beyond boners let alone the forbidden fruit of lesbian lover nuns. Then she told me she hated my face and she had tried to offer her hatred up as a sacrifice to the lord but she couldn’t take it anymore. “I hate your face!” (look who’s talking ) she screamed in a simple declarative statement.
Mother seemed to have climaxed into some expungement of evil. She had exorcised a pair of demons in one afternoon. She moved deliberately back towards the classroom, flipped me a rigid finger, and slammed the door leaving me outside with red handprints up and down both sides of my face.
I walked outside and sat on the concrete steps in front of the school. I was in a stunned state but gaining strength by the second. A new young priest sat down next to me. “What happened young man, ”he asked lightly touching my red rouge face?
“I called Mother Superior’s nun friend a lady and she beat me up for it. But I think she was a special kind of friend.”
The priest did not look surprised. “What’s your name young man?”
“Dave Frederick, Father”.
“Hi David. My name is Father Dick.”
“Right” I said. “And they call you boner for long but not for short.”
Father Dick laughed. “I wish our nuns would stop trying to beat the smarts out of people like us, ”the priest said. Father Dick was a regular guy and not a Dick whatsoever. But I couldn’t say the same for full time mothers and part time lovers. I still have a bone to pick with that lady!

Why do “war stories” send individuals and crowds ducking for cover? War stories aren’t just about military combat rather they are stories told by someone who lived and experienced something they think was important enough to tell the tale later to individuals who generally are not remotely interested. I sometimes resemble that story teller but it ain’t my fault the entire planet in on medication for A.D.D and or/bipolar disorder.

I met the new University of Delaware basketball coach, just 35 years old, an African American and Philly boy just like me. Well, not white like me, and not old like me, but otherwise we shared quite a bit. I told him about Saint Joe’s “back in the day” gave him a starting lineup of Matty Goukas, Billy Oakes, Clifford Anderson, Marti Ford and Tom Duff, a team coached by Jack Ramsey, who later coached the Portland Trailblazers to an NBA tiled beating Julius and George McGinnis and the rest of the Sixers. I was doing what I do, mapping the Gnome of the entire sports universe. Coach Ross was getting that polite look on his face like “when is this mother fucker gong to shut the fuck up?”

I then go and schmooze with Delaware football people and when I tell them that I actually played in a game for Temple against Delaware before legendary and now Hall of Fame Delaware Coach Tubby Raymond was the Head Coach. Listeners are mentally mapping the room imprinting escape routes. I tell them this true anecdote.

“I was warming up in the Temple Stadium end zone doing dumb lineman monkey roll drills with my fat and hairy buddies when the student manager of Delaware came down and told stadium manager Skippy Wilson, ”Coach Nelson said there is no toilet paper in our locker room.”

“You tell Coach Nelson to go fuck himself.” That’s what Skippy said to this little manager dude.

Temple football staff hated Delaware because their campus had grass and then there were those uniforms and helmets and precision wing t offense and that Blue Hen mascot and they were just faggots that’s all there was to it.”

All in all not a bad story if you like football war stories and no one does unless they’re telling them and they are a player.

I once conducted a silent experiment in one of my high school classes where I brought an authentic plaque to class that read, ”Dave Frederick: Outstanding Basketball Player in Philadelphia Catholic League 1963.”

I passed it around and told them the title of this lesson would be “Let’s talk about me for awhile.”

I started to roll with one war story after another all casting me in heroic game winning situations. After 15 minutes my students were suicidal. If they all had Nike sneakers they’d have caught a ride on the Hal Bop Comet. They’d have bobbed for Apples in a cauldron of Jim Jones Kook-Aid. When I had them good and agitated I stopped and said, ”The lesson is, ”Nobody Freaking Cares!” It’s not about me and it’s not about you.”

A smart student spoke up. “Tell us wise old Fredman , relic of the past and prophet of the future. What is the meaning of life?”

“Life is like a bridge,” my young students. “Life is like a bridge.”

“I don’t understand,” said the one girl taking notes. “How is life like a bridge?”
I gazed out the window and pondered the universe and shrugged my shoulders. “So it’s not like a bridge.”

Peace Freddogg

Just before halftime in the press and media bathroom at Raven Stadium in Baltimore it came down to just me and another broad shouldered guy standing deltoid to deltoid. He was about 6’5” dressed in a power suit with moistened hair slicked back. I was in sportswriter’s uniform: Polo shirt, jeans, white socks and off white New Balance sneakers.

The man began to talk to his penis. “What’s that you say down there, speak up I can’t hear you.” I remembered that same lyric from the “Talking Heads” on the song “Wild Wild Nights” or was that Knights? Anyway I thought, how ironic and penis irony would be painful even with sizing and a Proctor and Gamble set on steam.

I glanced sideways at head level—that’s not funny—then stared straight ahead bulging out my eyeballs to bear witness to the fact that this was my first eavesdropped penis conversation I ever overheard in my long life, no pun intended. “Speak up I can’t hear you?”

“I’ll be down there as soon as I get a hotdog. Do you want me to bring you one? How about the agate guys in the boom truck”?

I knew agate was a sports term used to define “raw data” I also know it’s a testicle synonym like “Ahh, I just got hit in the agates with a ground ball.”

The game was being stepped up with hotdogs on special delivery to penises and agate men in boom trucks. I know this is Baltimore but did you just call me Bun, Hon”?

It was only when this guy was leaving that I noticed Mr. “I talk to penises that call me out by my name” was wearing a head phone set and I guess talking to real people down on the field and I found that rather mundane and disappointing but also stupid and offensive.

Wait my cell is vibrating in my right pocket. There is no cell phone in my pocket. I have entered the “Twilight of my Life” Zone.

Peace Freddogg

This is Good Friday morning in Sussex County Delaware the land of Wasps and Carpenter Bees where Catholic boys are a minority and no children are forced to go to their rooms from 12 to 3 in respect for the three hours Christ hung on the cross two thousand years ago.
But when I was growing up in row house Philly, in a German Catholic neighborhood, all children were banished to the upstairs back bedrooms to suffer a sort of penance on the way to the Sunday Easter basket.

I was always a broad and big kid but my older brother was a huge kid. I was smaller, quicker and more aggressive and could kick his ass for the first hour of full contact pillow fighting. But eventually, a tremendous thud would bring my mother into the room and she’d yell at my brother, ”Tommy, I told you not to throw David into the wall.”

It wasn’t just that I got in more pillow whacks but also the psychological assault I unleashed calling him foul names the best a five year old could summon, things like, “fat fucking dick head” and my brother was bound by holiness as I never heard him utter a profane word ever, not then, not now.

When the clock chimed three, doors opened up and down the block, and kids raced into the street. The urban Olympics games began .There were Wire Ball games, Baby in the Air, Half Ball, Chink, Hose Ball and the Philly game popularized to the rest of the country by Bill Cosby, Buck-Buck.

I liked to sit on the wall down by the corner bar and make fun of drunks on the way out. “Hey, fat fucking dick head” and I would run and I learned that if you call someone a “fat fucking dick head” they will try to kill you and you have your own high stakes game of Chase afoot and you don’t have to recruit players.

There is no good way to end this treatise without being offensive in a sacrilegious sort of way but if someone had the courage to call Pontius Pilot a “fat fucking dick head” the resulting throw down would have changed the history on modern day mankind.

Peace

Father Freddogg

‘She’s actual size but she looks much bigger to me.” They Might be Giants.”

I will never be aging fat loser white boy with a drink in his hand posing for a photo. Someone will have to hold my drink because I ain’t going to end up online or on the front page of the local paper representing some Heart Ball fundraiser with other zoned out white loser do gooders. Freak that!

And what loser poses with the Jagermeister girls three hours into happy hour just for a size small polyester tee shirt and a beer huggy? I tell those young bitches straight up, ”Get those things away from me. You ain’t impressing nobody! Sure you’re studying to be a teacher. Have you ever watched the show 24? Well here in Delaware it’s 28/7.”

So I go to a wedding where a teacher got married and there are lots of ethnic white people with genetic predispositions for alcohol abuse on the guest list. And somehow I get in a picture but not with a drink in my hand and anyway it’s early so maybe I had a screwdriver in my pocket and maybe the Jagermeister girls are in the bridal party?

You reach a point in life where an afternoon photo taken with a harsh light makes you look drunk ever if your not. So I walk into the local high school on business and two girls I know said, ”It looks like you had a good time at that wedding. We saw the pictures.”

Now what lunatic shows “teachers at the wedding” photos to kids from the teacher’s high school? I’ve covered high school sports for 30 years and never showed up with alcohol on my breath. Sometimes I just didn’t show up but I never drink before work because who wants to be that loser guy?

Kodochrome: When I think back to all the crap I taught in high school. And remember crap in dyslexic is carp.

Peace Professor Freddogg

" If I couldn't be Long Dong, I'd be Long Gone." Marvin Gay


Cheeta, the very same chimp that starred in the Tarzan movies, just celebrated his 74th birthday. He holds the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest documented living primate.
I covered a high school baseball team that had this little speed demon base runner named Thomas but everyone called him Cheeta that is everyone but me in print because Thomas was and still is black and named Cheeta but I ain’t calling him that, no way.

I was covering another sport and everyone kept referring to this athlete as Stiff. I ask a teammate, ”Do I want to know why he’s called Stiff," and the athlete replied, “no you don’t.”

I can think of a football player they called Captain Hook and again I was told to stay away from the nickname.
Some nicknames are obviously trouble like the baseball guy teammates called “Beer Can Dick” whatever that means to adolescent boys.
And do you remember the accusation of Anita Hill during the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas charging he sexually harassed her and once asked if she saw a certain porn movie starring Long Dong Silver? Imagine the stenographer entering that into the congressional record? What is short hand for Long Dong? Or as Marvin Gay sang, ”If I couldn't be Long Dong I’d be Long Gone”. Remember Marvin’s last hit? “I Heard It Through the Carbine.”

Send me the most favorite nickname you’ve ever heard and tell me the derivation or where you think the name came from.

Peace Freddogg

Some humor falls into the category I call the cliché cheap shot. The joke is there but it’s old and tired and unimaginative.

Like 30 years ago, I was reporting to work as an Ocean lifeguard in Rehoboth Beach on a hot July afternoon with my good friend Bill who was black the last time I checked. Bill fielded a series of stupid race related jokes from the assholes on the Beach Patrol and finally said to me, ”You know Freddy. Two hundred years of watermelon jokes is enough.”

“And I’ve never seen you with a watermelon, ”I told Bill. ‘Do you feel any particular attraction or pull to that mystical fruit or vegetable or whatever it is?”

“Not really, ”Bill said. “Like anyone else if someone hands me a piece of chilled watermelon with the seeds removed I’m going to eat it.”

‘Right, ”I said. “I remember a day from my childhood when my big assed aunts were excited and agitated simply stating that “Poppy plugged the watermelon and they knew they were getting fucked up.”

I told my big brother “Stop after the potato salad because Poppy plugged the watermelon, that sick bitch.”

I later learned that a plugged watermelon was filled with vodka applied from—not a syringe but hypodermic needle or in the case of my German aunt’s a pachydermic needle. You know you’re an alcoholic when you are plugging a chilled watermelon with a fifth of Sky Vodka. You’re right it does sound like fun what I call the up side of alcohol ruined by all those wife beaters and husband beaters who suffer from addiction and overuse syndrome.

I started this missive wanting to explain my problem with covering this summer’s gay games without taking jokes that were just dropped in front of me like a 16 pound shot on my foot. I mean I could say, “Last call limp wrist shot put” but that’s such a gay joke and anyway I think my Poppy was gay but only his watermelon knew for sure.

Check out www.chicagogaygames.org and you will be impressed. Make sure to click on Rugby to check out the photo. And Greg Louganis Olympic diving champion is on the homo—I mean home page-and who will ever forget him hitting his head on the diving platform and that famous exclamation as he fell into the pool, ”Bitch!”

Peace Freddogg

Personally, I defend the rights of racists to say whatever they want and also uphold the right of employers to fire them for it if they consider those remarks detrimental to the running of a business, let’s say public education.

N word doesn’t work in the telling of this story so my friends of many colors will excuse the use of the word nigger but without it the story has no impact.

I would always ask my students if they were on the inside of racist conversation, commentary or jokes because everyone around the table looked the same would they let it happen and just smile or interrupt and make a point and stand up for what they though was right. Let me answer that most of us just let it slide because it’s racism by gossip and stereotype and if only white people are around when the word nigger is used than what’s the harm” I mean who’s offended.

So it’s 1976 and I’m about to sit down with my friend Dick who was a couple years from retirement and a long drive from death itself to have lunch in a public high school faculty dining room.

This “strictly by the rules” teacher of science comes in and sits down with us. He starts looking around the room like some paranoid people do and I notice and say, ”Are you looking for something”?

“You guys want to hear a great joke," he whispers? As it turns out Dick is hard of hearing and actually was once the Principal at a school for the deaf.

“Pick it up a little, ”I say. “He elevates the whisper producing words from the lips not the throat.

“This white guy, a Jew and a nigger are blown up and killed by a land mine in Vietnam.”

“Really, I say. What a funny premise. And what did the devil say to them.”

“How did you know they went to hell? Have you heard it?”

“Actually, I haven’t heard it.”

“Well, he tells them if they give him 50 dollars they can go back to living on earth. The white guy gives him a 50 dollar bill and he’s back with this platoon.

What happened to the other two guys, ”the captain asked, after hearing the story.

“Now the teacher is twisting his head and darting his eyes and hunched over getting ready to deliver the punch line.

“I don’t know, ”the white guy said. “When I left the Jew had the devil down to $39.95 and the nigger was looking for a cosigner.”

I didn’t laugh and Dick looked spaced like he was outside his own body.

“Don’t you guys get it, ’he said. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Go ahead Dick tell him.”

“I have three mixed race grandchildren,” Dick whispered.”

The teacher looked confused. ”What do you mean?”

“He means his grand children are niggers, is what he means. Just cute little, milk chocolate colored, co signer seeking mother fuckers. One of them goes to school here. He’s that tall light skinned nigger who’s smart and real good at art.”

I love that story because I believe racism is all right if you mean it in which case you shouldn’t whisper but shout it out like millions are doing today in the first national “Let’s kick out the Hispanics and cut our own grass" day in America.

Peace Dr. Freddogg

FAMILY CIRCLE

The song is the new Wooly Bully. “Let’s Get This Party Started!” performed by Pink which is at least as good a name as Sam the Sham.

A ground level reception room in an eight story motel gives license to call the place an Inn. The wedding lasted only minutes, then the crowd, most spawned from the bogs of Jersey, set out on the Great Adventure of the evening which began at the bar. The phrase “this is going to get ugly” is a good expression when the bar crowd if five deep and the liquor if free.

Woman were ordering shots of things I never heard of but sounded like Chewbacca and I wasn’t going to stand there like Hans Solo stroking my Wookie so when someone offered my a shot I took it in between spearing hot grab balls with a tooth pick from roving tray women. “Crab ball? Take two they’re small.”

Murph the Groom, parked his green and gold dump truck with gold lettering out front. It was the classiest vehicle in the parking lot. He has his name on one door and his bride Eileen’s on the other. Eileen is an English teacher who I nicknamed “Crack Rabbit” because every day at lunch it was a large garden salad inside a Tupperware bowl as Eileen cruised in conversation at 80 miles and hour and ate salad at 70.

The D.J. looked “luded” out and it was obvious he had no soulful sense whatsoever. It reminded me of the mystery of homely and out of shape teenaged girls entering beauty pageants which they sometimes won and got their picture in the paper and everyone would make fun of them when they weren’t around and I felt bad for the girl and also not because what is the bitch doing representing beauty in the first place.

Suddenly it was Pink. And there was a family circle on the dance floor that looked like all the generations from the Sopranos show. I saw Murph go middle and start spinning. I got up to watch. Some little kid took over the center circle then a tall young man with high black hair moistened and pulled back. Aunts and uncles took their turns and finally Great Grandmom who was flat out rocking.

It was the most awesome three minutes of entertainment I had seen all year including all those pro and college football games I covered. I was envious because I am incapable of reaching that level of spontaneous exuberance. This was people “going jersey” and I understood that I could never go there. In Philly it was “The Stroll” a funky bad attitude walk between two lines, a “what are you looking at” dance.

I have suffered through weddings including Polkas, The Mexican Hat Dance, Hokey Pokey, the freaking bunny hop and that awful snaking line around the room train thing usually led by a relative you hate.

Pink is my Sunday morning hero. Let’s get this party started. “Hey There Little Red Riding Hood. You sure are looking good! “

Peace

Walking the Freddogg

I looked down at my sky blue shirt by Polo this morning, the same one I wore to dinner last night and the same one I slept in overnight and noticed a big butter stain right in the middle. I often wondered if talking to your self constituted referring to yourself in the third person? ‘Fredman, you disgusting low down groveling pig. You do have that side of you and pigs by definition have no sides because they are round.

The image of the ugly American to me is some rich ass older rumpled white guy with a disagreeable attitude cracking a whole lobster then dipping lobster body parts in butter. I was watching this guy last night, he was dining alone and when the young waitress asked him ”Is everything all right” he just shrugged and emanated an attitude that called for a smack down but I was too busy dropping food on my shirt.

Then I saw him give the waitress five dollars to crack his lobster because he didn’t like the way the lobster tail fit inside the provided cracker device. I wished I had been his waiter at that point I would have said, “Crack your own fucking lobster it may be one of the few survival skills you have left.”

Earlier in the day I was at Dunkin Doughnuts getting a coffee and home style for my dog Jesse. But first I had to suffer through pony tailed 40 something white guy and his adoring red necked girl friend confusing the counter girl from Thailand as they ordered fancy ice cream

I mumbled to the heating and air guy next to me as we were both ready to unravel, "Stupid assed pony tailed mother fucker”. Then this idiot who took way too much time didn’t leave the Tai girl any coinage in the tip cup. No wonder we as a culture are so easy to hate.

The heating and air guy called to me when we both got outside. Does your dog like hamburgers? I have a extra one because they had a special 2 for 1 at McDonald’s today and the thing is smelling up my truck.

I took it, unwrapped it, and handed it to Jesse in the front seat of the truck. She just sat there with a burger in her mouth like, ”What happens next?”

What happened next was I broke it into smaller pieces and fed them to her ‘two for you and one for me’ but basically I was cracking her lobster the lazy assed yellow stick retrieving bitch.

I sure hope those Mexicans finish detailing my Japanese car today.

Peace Freddogg

THE SOUND OF ONE HAND PRAYING

“Ours is not to reason why ours is but to do or die.”

A teacher sitting in front of a class of adult lifelong learners was updating his desk calendar using various colors of highlighters to help organize the next month of his life. His desk was organized which to me means a sterile mind. Sitting on top of a stack of papers he had a paper weight which was an old military shell he found two years before while out reconnoitering with his metal detector.

This shell looked like a really big and fat bullet or what the hard of hearing jar heads call Ordnance.

Suddenly with the theme from jaws rumbling at low base in the background a desk roach appeared. It was just there back up against the weighted paper and he thought how amazing that such a low level life form could actually have a front and a back that were different.

The teacher sneaked a look sideways to see where the bug was going to go. If he went away he’d let him live but it was scurry without mercy across the wide open middle of the polished desk. This provoked the teacher into homicidal bug obliteration behavior.

He picked up the weighted shell and crushed that bitch. The class was startled and in denial when the shell exploded and blew off the teachers hand.

An axiom is psychology is that we instantly deny that which does not fit into our natural ordering of realities. “No way, ”they all screamed. ‘Oh gosh this is so gross. I can’t even spell tourniquet let along apply one. What do we do? Let’s pray. What about teacher man? Are one handed prayers answered? Evidently not!

The battle between man and roach has gone into overtime. Put me in Roach!

Peace Freddogg

ASS KICKING WOMEN

Anyone of any sex can be dominated at any age by any mammal, evidently, if everything I read and see is true. I mean, if you’re on the boardwalk with your sweater dog carrying a plastic shovel and sandwich baggy I’d say your ass is being dominated by let’s say a Cock-A-Poo then you certainly ain’t no real guy who takes a big dog on the beach, watches that dog produce a steaming vile pile, and then you kick sand over it because your feeling civic minded that morning.

What about middle aged blue collar adult league ice hockey players who come clean to local papers and hire lawyers saying they were molested by father Kennedy over a period of five years when they were alter boys or is that antler boys explaining that they were young and insecure and there was no male role model or butt pirate at home to show them the way. I listen to all that then I say, ”Nope, I don’t buy it. The first time Father Kennedy produced the Bishop’s staff and put on that Miter you should have been outta there like a Bonds fly ball at the Little League Park.

Now I read of a new support group of men who take regular ass whuppins from their wives which is not something I’m talking to CNN about I can tell you that much. I mean if a guy's face is scratched and his head roller pinned and his balls potato mashed it is possible that it was justified and I may grant a one time waver but the next time I’m defending myself at least wearing one of those mattress sleeves used by the state police during K9 demonstrations. “Come holler at your dog bitch!”

Peace

Freddogg your best friend off the chain and running free

I was in my late twenties and a teacher at a private school. I walked by an isolated stairwell and there was this Science Teacher Guy sitting on a step and five steps above him was a beautiful high school girl wearing a straight skirt. They seemed to be having a personal conversation. I imprinted the data and saw it for what it was and I didn’t like it.

The next day I made a point to go by the stairwell again at the same time and encountered the same scene and the same players. I told Diane I wanted to speak with her.

‘Don’t sit on steps in straight skirts having serious conversations with a male sitting below. Now get to class or some place else and if you really want to talk about this we can go see the principle.”

And then Science Boy, who made the mistake of thinking he was a “teacher peer” of mine, made another mistake by asking me, ”Is there a problem?”

“”Yea, you big fucking predatory loser asshole, there’s a problem. Don’t ever let me see you playing the roving counselor again with cute high school girls. You ain’t qualified or certified and you’ve got nothing to say. Stick to Earth Science where you are harmless.”

In told the principal who was a friend of mine to keep and eye on this loser and to talk to the entire staff about confidences shared by students and to make sure to tell them if they’re going to squeeze the upper arms of cute girls that they also squeeze the arms of fat boys.

I taught for 35 straight years and I know who the lechers are and I know the behaviors no matter how they try to mask them. I’ve spoken to administrators about offering a workshop that many teachers would find insulting but I don’t care because it is necessary.

I once walked by an empty weight room except for one track girl who was kneeling at the universal machine pulling down a bar behind her neck. “Fredman, would you come over here and hold me down,” she innocently asked. “Who’s going to hold me down, ”I joked, she didn’t get it, and I didn’t do it I just stayed in the doorway.

Another time I came down by the gym to find Community Guy who only follows girl’s sports taping the ankles of some cute girl. He was in a chair, she was up on a table, he was sitting between her legs in broad daylight.

I called her over and told her that it was sad I had to mention it then mentioned it and told the guy who I knew how bad it looked and that he had better watch his fat ass without the aid of a mirror.

Solid and well adjusted adults don’t need to be told these things. They are instinctual unfortunately the United States seems to lead the free world in porn site hits so you would expect a few problems therefore a codified body of rules seems necessary.

Abu Dhabi Hammurabi

Freddogg

I have this suppressed memory of being a young boy “motorvating” down a two lane road on an early morning weekday in an old car with a big back seat surrounded by a herd of fat nasty women. I was hitchhiking and was pulled into the car by my polo shit collar and the jokes and probes began and yes I felt like a redneck abducted by aliens.

I could smell their sweat and see the red marks that stretch waist bands made on their fat white bellies. About five of them, all unnatural, all fat, and all seeking genetic revenge. I was like a pure breed puppy in a third world dog pound. One of them licked my ear, not like a pointed tongue probe, but spit filled lapping.

I was only going a couple of miles and when I came to my stop they invited me to stay but let me out. I knew I escaped unimaginable horror because the beasts from the Fifties were bigger and nastier than today like two handed cream donuts at a cheap price.

There are too many stories in the news today of “Teacher Women” having sex with young boys and I find it disturbing, nasty and unnatural and somebody needs to just punch these bimbos in the face, the fat freaking losers, and that goes for the cute ones too.

freddogg

I first smoked marijuana before there were 100 synonyms to describe it. And I did it for the first time of not many times at twilight in a carport after lifting weights. There was a cinder track across the grass from my friend’s house and I had planned to push the 60 second barrier for 440 yards, not bad for 220 pound muscled lineman with no body fat.

I liked fitness, loved the feeling of waking up in the morning and having my muscles ache so badly I could hardly sit up. I grooved off the spontaneous leg cramp and my thighs were solid, like planks of lumber. A smart mind and solid body is what I was into before that was cool and before every non athletic poser in the world went to the gym for a workout.

I knew marijuana was not dangerous and also that it was not all my goofy friends made it out to be and it didn’t scare me. There were other hallucinogenic drugs like LSD which I perceived as “temporary insanity” drugs that would send you on a trip without a return map to get home. I saw friends laugh and cry at the same time exhibiting two conflicting emotions and my instincts said “stay away” or you may miss the punch line for the rest of your life.

So I took a few hits off a corn cob pipe, no big deal, but I had a goal to accomplish of breaking 60 seconds, so I jogged over to the track. You can tell real athletes because they always pull up their white socks before taking on a challenge. This is before Gatorade and stupid ass water bottles, before “athletes” missed their mouths on purpose while drinking water. We drank from rubber hoses before nozzles were invented. You want a nozzle, I got your nozzle!

I looked down and I was complete, no segmentation, no underdeveloped muscle groups, just a ripped German boy who could endure pain and play off lactic acid buildup.

I was off and the only sound was my pre Nike feet slapping the stones of the track. It was dark and I felt so fast and was immersed in my own fitness, caught up in the speed and magic of my body. And then I saw it, what was it doing there. I had to incorporate it into my awareness and soon it dominated my thoughts.

The big red seven shining above the 7-11 as I looked up and off to the right. It was the most majestic image I had ever seen. It was visionary like Fatima, it was a god goof , a big red seven glowing in the sky riding high above all the labor and toil of the human race. I thought it was the most profound and hilarious thing I had ever seen.

I crashed to the track and couldn’t stop laughing. My cooled out friends came over and at first gave that stupid ass laugh that pot heads summon when they think a friend has converted to their lifestyle but then they became annoyed and said, ”It ain’t that funny, now knock it off and let’s go to the diner and get some food.

I learned that the world is plenty funny, serious, sad and scary without the enhancement drugs provide. I learned for me the advantage was in reality. I’d rather break 60 seconds in the 400 meters at 60 years old than win the Power Ball. Neither is likely to happen. I have no problem dealing with that. Pass the pipe! I’m kidding!

freddogg

OLDEST PHILLY SMALL STORY COMPARED TO YOUNGEST OCELOT

By Dave Frederick

My first bylined newspaper story in 1980 unfolded before my eyes in the classroom at Cape Henlopen as the Philadelphia Phillies closed in on their first franchise World Series appearance in 30 years.
“The oldest living Philly is living in the Lewes Convalescent Center,” my prize student Darlene said. “My mother works with him every day and says he’s sharp and really cool.”
I grew up around the newspaper business as my mentor and best friend Dick Dougherty was the sports editor of the Bristol Courier Times in Pennsylvania. “ I know every rat hole and asshole in Lower Bucks County, ” Doc used to say and he was right. Doc could smell out a story the way a beagle could smell out a bologna sandwich between the sofa cushions. This story was a sledgehammer job but no one else had it. Darlene had put me in a position to scoop the entire press corps, both local and national. But I would have to get up off my butt and do it and I was prone to be a lollygagger.
“Lollygagging” was redefined by me late that fall when I asked Darlene, ”Do you think your mother could set up an interview between me and the oldest Philly sometime soon?”
“You should have moved more quickly, Fredman. The gentleman died last week. He was still the oldest when he died but I guess someone else is the oldest now?”
“I guess so, Darlene!”
I decided to interview the surviving son of the “Oldest Philly,” a retired emergency room physician who was an avid outdoorsman and fishing companion of teaching colleague Danny Coffman. Captain Coffman was a respected fishing boat captain in the town of Lewes and he set up an interview with the highly skeptical physician who lived outside the town of Greenwood, Delaware. Let’s call the physician Dr. Sturgeon to protect his identity and mine because I don’t want some paranoid surgeon dude coming after me with sharp instruments.
I brought my 10-year old son Dave along for the interview so I would look like less of a threat. We followed directions through and out of the town of Greenwood as we searched for a hidden driveway on the darkened back roads of Sussex County. After several misses and backtracks I discovered a road going between two brick pillars. The drive meandered though grounds that resembled a small liberal arts college. We finally came up to a house that was the epitome true colonial restoration elegance. “What is this place doing in Greenwood, Delaware? ” I said to Dave, who responded, ”I have to go to the bathroom.”
I knocked on a back door leading into a sunroom and Dr. Sturgoen was quick to answer.
‘Hi, I’m Dave Frederick from the Whale newspaper and this is my son Dave. Man, what a place you have here! I’d have never guessed a place like this existed outside of Greenwood.”
We were led into a richly paneled cherry wood den with lots of deep red leather furniture. Dr. Sturgeon’s wife delivered us sodas and gave me a history of the house that had evidently been moved from several estates in northern Wilmington and reassembled in Greenwood.
Early into the Oldest Philly interview I found myself getting lost in a maze of obfuscating answers. Dr.Sturgoen excused himself and went to a phone to call Danny Coffman. “Some guy and his son both named Dave Frederick are here in my house,” Dr. Sturgoen said, also giving Dan a physical description. “This guy says he’s a sports reporter with the Whale newspaper.”
“It sounds like Dave Frederick,” Danny said. “But he’s no sports reporter but then again I don’t know everything.”
Dr. Sturgeon returned from the phone and started questioning me about my credentials and I showed him my driver’s license. I told him to call Dennis Forney, my editor at the paper, which Dr. Sturgeon did and we got things sort of unraveled and straightened out to the degree that “paranoids” can be assured.
Dr. Sturgeon showed me a picture of his father with President Teddy Roosevelt. I fell for it because I couldn’t place Teddy in historical perspective but then Dr.Sturgoen laughed in my face and told me the photo was a fake, and added “what a kidder” his late father was both in real life and in the clubhouse. My interview was going nowhere in a hurry fast!
Dave still wanting to use a bathroom and so I went with him. I’m standing at the toilet and there hanging on the wall behind is a picture of a young woman standing atop a felled polar bear. She had a rather large rifle cradled across her forearms. Remember that I was born and bred to have a reporter’s instincts so there was no chance I could let the polar picture lay as dead as the magnificent bear itself.
“Who’s that lady standing on top of the dead polar bear in the bathroom? ”I asked. “That’s my daughter, ” Dr.Sturgoen said. “She shot that bear at 87 degrees north latitude in 1978. She’s quite the accomplished big game hunter.”
“That’s amazing,” I said being truly impressed if not overwhelmed. “Where is your daughter now”?
“I don’t want to talk about it, ” Sturgeon said. “I will only talk to you about dad and the Phillies.”
As it turned out his dad once walked through the Phillies Clubhouse in a uniform and I still have no idea to this day whether the old boy played ball or a lifelong practical joke on his family and everyone else.
Suddenly I wasn’t half the man I used to be as a way out of perspective spotted cat pushed through a cat door the size of a coffee table. The great cat jumped onto a leather chair and perched like a vulture, panting and staring at us. “Cat!” Dave exclaimed somewhat regressively for a 10-year old. I was reminded of a lyric from “They Might Be Giants.” “She’s actual size but she looks much bigger to me.”
“Cat, my ass!” I yelled. “That’s a South American ocelot if I never saw one, which I never did! But I watched ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’ religiously and I believe that to be an ocelot. A pet ocelot?”
“You could say pet, ”Dr. Sturgeon said. “Just don’t pet him and tell your boy to stay up on the couch. Ocelots get braver as the prey gets smaller.”
A baseball interviewer’s son becomes potential prey in a family room in suburban Greennwood. Dave’s mother will kill me if he gets eaten by an ocelot. There would be no way I could go home with that kind of news.
I began to check out the room ignoring the ocelot’s stare down. There were several big cat heads that were either professionally mounted or got stuck in an elevated cat door and died.
“Excuse me, Doc. I know I’m not supposed to ask you any animal questions but if I’m not mistaken isn’t that a black leopard’s head mounted on your wall”?
“I shot that leopard in Uganda about 10 years ago, ” Doc said. “And that spotted leopard in Tanzania the following year.”
“If I’m not mistaken, Doc, the big cat down along your left wall bears a striking resemblance to a tiger. I’m sure it was a nice shot but aren’t they endangered?”
“The government of Kashmir commissioned me to hunt down and kill that man eater back in 1972, ” Dr Sturgeon said. “It took a month but we finally found him but not before he had killed 12 people.”
“The government of Kashmir has your freaking phone number? ”I asked. “Call Dr. Sturgeon if a man- eating tiger is tearing up your neighborhood. Where do you advertise? The big game hunters’ yellow pages?”
“I think this interview is now over,” Dr. Sturgeon said. “Do you need anymore information on my father?”
“No, I don’t! I want to do the Big Game Hunters of Greenwood story! It’s just a better story! What’s that’s ocelot’s name and how come he’s starting to hiss at me?”
“He doesn’t like you, ”the Doc said rather matter-of-factly. “We just call him The Big O.”
“Is that because he has a large O under his tail or are you an Oscar Robinson fan? ”I asked.
“Who’s Oscar Robinson? ” Doc countered.
“Never mind, Doc! How about getting The Big O under control until we prey skulk on outta here?”
A three paragraph “Oldest Philly Except For The Fact He’s Dead” story appeared in the Whale under my byline. The story was thinner than an ocelot on a vegetarian diet.
The Big Story Hunter struck out on The Big Game Hunter story! And Sir Ocelot is still roaming the fields of Greenwood ripping apart surprised prey whose last words “No Way!” were never published!

SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUE

What I say is not always what I mean. It’s called sarcasm, satire or just a joke. The people who become unraveled by words out of context are the stupid wired up tight asses of the world, however, a word to the wise is that sometimes “words intended not to be taken seriously can blow up in your face because morons continue to be the bewildered majority in any neighborhood on the planet.

Years ago after a double overtime basketball game won by the Sixers a radio reporter ask Charles Barkley who had a monster game, ”Charles what’s it like if you lose a game like this?”

“In that case you just want to go home and beat up your wife, ”Barkely said. You guessed it, the freaky deakies came out to play and protest and Barkley was asked to donate part of his salary to battered women’s shelters. Barkley’s wife said that the vacuum cleaners with the lights were made for Charles because he was fastidious and did all the cleaning in the house in the middle of the night even after games and was like a puppy dog which is why I named my Golden Retriever Barkley but later after a trade to Phoenix had to change his name to Hornecek which is the dumbest name ever for a dog.

The Philadelphia Inquirer did an investigative report on the relationship of sports to violence and found that way too many shelters across the city were the most busy on Sunday nights and Monday mornings following a loss by the Eagles. But no one wanted to talk about “Blue collar beat down guy" they wanted to chase Barkley all over the country. Remember when Barkley spit on some drunk ass obnoxious fan sitting courtside and instead of backing down Charles said,” I’m a nineties nigger, I don’t have to take that shit." Barkley would eventually have his own program on TBS which he wasn’t smart enough to carry because is just honest not necessarily clever.

And I can tell you the word from the inside was that Barkley was the most generous person with his money and time when it came to charity causes than any athlete in the city at that time especially cheap ass Mike Schmidt.

There was another radio post game interview after the Celtics beat the Pistons where a reporter kept asking Isaiah Thomas about Larry Bird. I know that you never ask a great athlete questions about another great athlete. Thomas finally said, ”If Larry Bird were black he’d be just another good guy.”

People took that and ran with it and Thomas couldn’t explain enough times that he and Larry were friends and that he was not racist, that it was just a joke but the problem was it was true and white people don’t be liking that shit.

Another case was the Orange Bowl for the National Championship featuring Penn State versus Miami. That was Jimmy Johnson and the combat fatigues worn by the players at the dinner. A Penn State Co Captain trying to be banquet funny guy said, “We are way more liberal up north then you all are up here. When Penn State travels by bus we let our black players sit in the front.”
That’s what he said and he broke a cardinal rule which is don’t make jokes about people you don’t represent except if your not white you can do white jokes because whitey will laugh anyway because he knows he still has all the money.

The big bad Miami players in combat gear walked out of the banquet which I thought was a bit of a pussy move because they knew the guy was just being stupid.

By the way Penn State won that game when My Cousin Vinnie threw five interceptions.

Jesse Jackson in 1988 running for the Democratic nomination with his Rainbow Coalition self was standing on a street corner in New York City getting ready to cross the street. An open radio Microphone was nearby and Jackson was heard to say, ”New York City, Hymie Town.” I’m not sure what that means but I do know Jewish people don’t like it but how many of them have ever come over to Jesse’s rainbow?

I worked at a previous newspaper that was getting really repressive and they were reigning me in like the runaway stallion of satire I had become. I wrote something in a column which quoted a friend and former athlete who was spinning records at his sister’s 40 birthday celebration. ”Make sure when you write about this you write we had a "Do" because black people call this a "Do" not a party.”

An unpleasant women, whom I had never met, but in charge of everyone inside a conglomerate of newspapers, sent me an angry memo telling me to watch my racist comments.

I responded that contrary to what she may think not every one in the world wanted to be a 50 year old white woman.

She didn’t like it but I can’t help it, they don’t.

I’m bailing out this Japanese Zero.

Peace Freddogg




www.davefredman.blogspot.com/