Good Scenes in Bad Movies

At work recently, a conversation drifted to the topic of good scenes in bad movies. Immediately I thought of Vegas Vacation, the 1997 movie that killed the Vacation franchise for almost 20 years.

It’s far and away the weakest film in the series, but still has its moments (usually when Randy Quaid is onscreen as ne’er-do-well Cousin Eddie). In the film Chevy Chase and family go to Vegas for vacation and all the usual hijinx ensue.

In the movie, Chase loses a large amount of cash playing blackjack against croupier Wallace “Inconceivable!” Shawn. Those scenes are pretty good. But my favorite part in the movie (other than all the scenes with Marisol Nichols in short skirts) was when Chase and Quaid go to a very low-rent casino in a desperate attempt to break even on his earlier gambling losses.

“But the GPS says…”

A few weeks ago I sorta bashed Gen Z for doing everything through their goddamned smartphones. But I recently had an experience with Gen X and Millennials who were doing something similar.

At work, coworkers and I drive cars almost every day. It’s just the nature of the job, we go from building to building for the city to do our jobs. We also drive to various businesses and vendors for supplies we need to buy or errands we need to run.

In two cases, I was driving in a car with someone who mindlessly followed their GPS instructions, or who expected me to mindlessly follow the GPS. One guy was mid-3os and the other was about 50.

In both cases, we were driving in neighborhoods which I knew intimately but the other person was unfamiliar with. I mean, I know these neighborhoods inside and out. I know the shortcuts and the intersections to avoid when traffic is heavy. I know where all the stores are. I know which gas stations have the cheapest gas and which supermarkets have the best donuts.

In the first case, I was the passenger. I warned the driver to avoid an upcoming intersection because it was the morning rush hour and it’s a goddamned fugging bitch to make a left turn at that intersection when there’s heavy traffic flow. He said, “But the GPS says” and continued to follow the GPS. Sure enough, we waited a long time at the intersection because the left-turn lane was about a zillion miles long. “Guess I should have listed to you,” he said after the light cycled five times and we were still waiting to make the turn.

The other time, I was the driver and the passenger insisted I make a U-turn at a particular intersection. Bad idea, I said, I’m going up a few blocks and will make the turn from there then loop around the block. He sort of scowled and said, “But the GPS says,” and I said: trust me.

I looped around and came back and sure as hell we saw someone who tried to make a U-turn at that same intersection and almost caused an accident. It’s a small intersection and he nearly collided with another car that was trying to make a right turn from an adjoining street into the same lane the u-turner was trying to enter. I mean, the passenger and I saw the U-turn car try to flip around, and then we saw him slam on his brakes to avoid the crash. Had there been a collision, the U-turner would probably have been at fault because they were crossing the flow of traffic. The passenger said, “Wow looks like you were right.” No shit. I know this neighborhood.

So sorry if I came down too hard on the young couple using the Green Dot app as their bank. It was a foolish move to deposit $300 in $5’s at the dollar store rather than a real bank. But with hindsight I don’t think it was any more foolish than mindlessly following the GPS when you’re driving with someone who knows the area like the back of his hand.

You occasionally hear news stories about people following GPS instructions off a cliff. Now I see how that happens.

Squatter’s Story

I

When a Washington Post article attempts to dismiss a phenomenon as “a right-wing media frenzy” that’s probably a good indication of a serious problem. Middle America says “hey wait WTF is going on with Thing X?” and smug activist hacks say “Thing X is such a far-right right-wing alt-right talking point, amirite?”

Anyway there have been a wave of news stories nationwide about people occupying properties and attempting to claim “squatters rights” to gain possession of the properties. According to a professional real estate group cited by the New York Post, in the Atlanta, Georgia area alone there have been over 1,200 squatter incidents. Fulton County, Georgia is obviously a notorious hotbed of right-wing media frenzy propaganda, he typed facetiously.

There was also a not-very-bright fellow who entered the country illegally and created social media accounts in which he advised people to squat in residential properties. Call me crazy but if you’re doing illegal stuff it’s not very smart to advertise yourself online. But what do I know.

II

In US law there is a principle called “adverse possession”, which potentially allows someone to gain possession of a property they don’t own. But adverse possession applies to undeveloped land as much as residential properties, it not more. It also is a process requiring several years of possession of the property. Breaking into a house and living there a few months is not adequate to gain possession. Squatting a few months can require a protracted court process to kick someone out but it’s not enough to own the property.

In a squatting case in Queens County, New York (yet another hive of far-right miscreants), the squatters went to court in an attempt to gain legal possession of a house worth almost a million dollars. Evidence to support their claim included a delivery receipt from Shake Shack. Weak sauce, as the saying goes. The receipt was a desperate hail Mary pass, as it showed only that the recipient had food delivered to the address and does not establish residency.

III

This absurd story reminded me of a story from my life. About a decade ago my parents died. Mom died first. Dad died about a year later.

I was the executor of my parents’ estate, because I’m the only one of the kids who was (a) in regular contact with my parents and (b) has any sense about money management. Most of my siblings dropped out of contact after my parents stopped giving them money. They’d get themselves into a financial mess, run to my parents for cash to get out of the mess. After a while my parens shook off their guilt and starting saying no. Most of the siblings were outraged! and didn’t speak to my parents for five years or more. As I was the only child who didn’t engage in this pattern of behavior, I was the natural choice to handle their affairs after death.

In the estate plan prepared by their lawyer, my parents did not distribute their assets evenly to all their children. Mainly because my parents didn’t want to enable substance abuse. Some of my siblings were unhappy about the will, and were deeply entitled as addicts often are. Some of my siblings went for my throat within hours of dad’s death.

They hired a lawyer who had a reputation as a shyster (underused word, shyster) and who was disliked by most of the other lawyers in town. Lawyers are supposed to remain emotionally detached and objective, doing their best to calm things down and behave reasonably. Even if the litigants in a case are metaphorically at each other’s throats and going nuts, the lawyers for one side are supposed to negotiate with the other in good faith. It’s not unusual for lawyers to move from firm to firm, so it’s good to maintain cordial and ethical relationships with the other lawyers in town in case next year you end up working with the lawyers who today are your opposing counsel.

But, of course, my degenerate siblings find one of the few lawyers in town who’s almost universally loathed because all the other lawyers in town can’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth.

As part of their blitzkrieg warfare against my parents’ estate plan, one of my siblings filed legal paperwork that falsely accused me of making threats. The paperwork also falsely listed my dad’s house as the sibling’s residence. The sibling hadn’t lived in the house for over a decade since they went to college. Their crooked lawyer probably recommended this tactic because it meant I was served with a temporary restraining order to keep me away from the sibling and away from my dad’s house. In the meantime, my evil siblings tore the house apart looking for valuables and paperwork they could use in their court fight.

Plot twist: I already had most of the important paperwork, which dad gave to me months earlier because he wasn’t an idiot and while he loved all his children he also knew their character and ethics. I had the car titles, bank statements, marriage certificates, mortgage paperwork, legal documents, insurance documents, pension statements … nearly all of the critical important paper documents were in my possession. I also had access to a joint bank account dad established after mom died, so the liquid cash was all under my exclusive control and the accounts had a payable on death provision so it all became mine and bypassed probate. Dad probably had a few hundred cash at the house for minor expenses and I never found it afterwards so my scummy siblings likely did find that much. He was old school, didn’t use debit cards and got a bit of cash every week or two for groceries, gassing up the car and other minor expenses. Used paper checks for larger bills. But there was not a large amount of cash at the house. He wasn’t like that because, as I said, he wasn’t an idiot.

Anyway, we went in and out of court a few times. I prevailed in court every time we entered, because my siblings had no case and they couldn’t even think clearly half the time so pickled were their brains in vodka.

But they bought themselves enough time to tear the house apart and organize a pathetic case to challenge the will. The lawyer who drafted the estate plan testified as to the circumstances of the plan and how I was the intended executor. I testified, and I did a very good job if I say so. I had tons of documentation and paperwork to back up my case. My lawyer was excellent, gently but thoroughly ripping them new assholes on cross examination and poking holes in their inane stories. And we won, because the facts were on my side and my lawyer was not a crook.

Part of their desperate case involved a claim my sibling lived at the house and was entitled to inherit it because reasons. It was similar to the crazy squatters cases in the news recently. The claim was basically: “I lived at the house and Harrison was mean to me, therefore I deserve a house even though the will cuts me out as an heir.” I’m not exaggerating. That was their case.

As part of the claim to possession of the property, the sibling produced mail addressed to them at dad’s house and postmarked in the weeks before his death. It was like the Shake Shack receipt: I ate a burger at this house, therefore I deserve to own it.

When I testified, my lawyer asked if my sibling ever lived at the house since they moved out for college.

Nope.

Were any siblings living at the house at the time of dad’s death?

Nope.

Why did they get mail at the house?

Because they moved residence frequently and dad let them use the house as a mailing address.

My siblings had no other proof of residency other than the random bits of mail. Their cars weren’t registered at dad’s house, for example. They just used dad’s address to dodge bill collectors.

IV

As with the Shake Shack miscreants, my siblings lost their case. I guess the moral of the long-winded story is that the truth usually comes out in court, even if it takes a little time.

And on the plus side, my siblings sort of got screwed by the shyster. I get a warm fuzzy feeling about this fact. His legal bill, I later heard second-hand, was obscene. My lawyer’s bill was not exactly cheap, but it was much more reasonable and I didn’t feel taken advantage of.

The Dollar Store is not a Bank

I

I was at a dollar store recently. Needed chapstick and a few other small items and didn’t want to trek across the 50 acre parking lot for Mega-Lo Mart and enter the cavernous airplane hangar. Plus the dollar store was closer.

I was in the checkout line behind a young couple, 20-ish, who didn’t have any items. I assumed they wanted to buy balloons, which is usually the case when someone doesn’t have a bag of chips or a notepad in their hands at the dollar store.

Oh no.

This young couple wanted to use the dollar store to deposit about $500 in small bills onto their prepaid card for a company called Green Dot. The cashier was baffled. No customer had ever asked this before, and the cash drawer is not prepared to handle $25o in $5’s. The young couple didn’t even have the cash sorted by denomination; it was all folded in sandwich bags and crumpled in their jacket pockets.

Cashier called manager. Manager said they could accept the cash deposit, but she called the couple aside to work on the process so the rest of us could buy our items.

II

My first response was irritation. WTF is going on here? Just get a bank account like a normal person. There were a dozen banks or credit unions in the surrounding square mile.

But later, I realized I’d seen something important. I’d seen evidence of a stark generational divide.

At my old job I worked with several people in their early 20s. Two of them said they did all their banking through apps. They implied, at different times and different conversations, that a regular old bank was quaint and archaic. Similar to listening to music on a wind-up victrola, something their great-great-grandparents might do.

The young couple at the dollar store seemed completely baffled and slightly embarrassed by the prospect of depositing a large-ish amount of cash. Perhaps they’d never done it before. As I said, it wasn’t even sorted by denominations by $20’s, $10’s and so forth, which makes it easier to count.

On reddit, I’ve seen younger people ask if they really need a regular bank. The answer is yes. You will eventually need in-person service of some type. You will need to deposit cash, you will need a certified cashier’s check, you will need a document notarized. Just deposit a small amount in the traditional bank or credit union, and you can access most of their services. I’d recommend a small community bank or credit union. Avoid the mega banks like Wells Fargo as if they carried ebola or another virulent plague.

The generational divide is among those who think they can do everything they need to do through an app on their phone, and those of us who realize otherwise.

Two Headlines, Two Anecdotes, and One Book Quote

I: Two Headlines

On local news website KSL.com last month, there were two headlines at the same time that seemed to compliment each other.

One headline:

And a few hours later, the other headline:

Are the people spending the money they don’t have also the same people who are accessing the food bank? Or are these separate parts of the population?

II: Two Anecdotes

First anecdote: I spoke to a neighbor recently, an elderly lady, who told me an interesting story. One of her grandchildren came to visit for a few weeks and stayed at the house. The grandchild is a young adult, mid-20s. After the grandchild left, my neighbor cleaned out her fridge. The granddaughter ate out almost every day, or had food delivered. The granddaughter stuffed multiple styrofoam food containers into grandma’s fridge. Most of the food containers still had plenty of food in them, as if the granddaughter habitually ordered more food than she could possibly eat in a sitting and, after eating half of it, forgot about the food and and never bothered to finish the leftovers before purchasing more food. By the time the granddaughter left, most of the food she’d ordered was growing mold or otherwise inedible and revolting. My neighbor thought this behavior was wasteful and indulgent; she’s not old enough to have been a child of the great depression who was traumatized by living in a period of privation. She just has a bit of common sense and is old enough to remember when eating out was a bit of a luxury for the typical American, reserved for special occasions.

Second anecdote: At the old job, I worked with a guy who was always stressed about money. He’d routinely mutter things like “I know I need to save more for retirement” or “I gotta cut back spending on hobbies.” But he never did change in any meaningful way that I observed. One hobby was customizing his precious truck. He once mentioned he’d spent over $1000 a month on the truck over about year, only realizing this excessive spending after the fact when he tabulated all the receipts and bank statements.

III: A Book Quote

It seems, for whatever my observation is worth, that spending for many people has taken on an almost frenzied quality. Orgiastic, one might say, in the unrestrained hedonism people display in their spending habits. Such as ordering copious amounts of food they never eat, or spending what was at the time not far from a typical mortgage payment on new accessories for a truck that already was, by any standard, opulent.

In the bestselling 1960s book Games People Play, the psychiatrist Eric Berne outlined a theory of ‘transactional analysis’ which identified various ‘games’ people used in their daily lives. Games could be positive, negative, or neutral in their overall tone or effect on our lives. He defined a game as:

[A]n ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome.

Berne observed these games in his practice as a psychiatrist, and noted they occurred in more or less the same form, yet in different settings by different people at different times. So much that Berne uses ‘Black’ and ‘White’ to describe the parties in the games — anyone can play the roles. Games include ‘Alcoholic’; ‘Buzz Off, Buster’ (when a woman flirts with and then rejects a man); ‘Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch’ (escalating minor disagreements into major disputes); and a variety of games seen among criminals and people seeking therapy.

One of the games is called ‘Debtor’:

‘Debtor’ is more than a game. In America it tends to become a script, a plan for a whole lifetime, just as it does in some of the jungles of Africa and New Guinea. There the relatives of a young man buy him a bride at an enormous price, putting him in their debt for years to come. Here the same custom prevails, at least in the more civilized sections of the country, except that the bride price becomes a house price, and if there is no stake from the relatives, this role is taken on by the bank.

The debts are not merely practical, they often give people a sense of meaning. Berne goes on:

“Try and Collect’ (TAC) is commonly played by young married couples, and illustrates how a game is set up so that the player ‘wins’ whichever way it goes. The Whites obtain all sorts of goods and services on credit, petty or luxurious, depending on their backgrounds and how they were taught to play by their parents or grandparents. If the creditor gives up after a few soft efforts to collect, then the Whites can enjoy their gains without penalty, and in this sense they win. If the creditor makes more strenuous attempts, then they enjoy the pleasures of the chase as well as the use of their purchases. The hard form of the game occurs if the creditor is determined to collect. In order to get his money he will have to resort to extreme measures.

Either way, the Whites win the ‘game’. If there is no attempt to collect, they can enjoy their orgiastic spending. If there is an attempt to collect, they have injected drama and meaning into their lives and now have a purpose and a sense of conflict and self-righteousness.

Games People Play is a book I stumbled across in the library decades ago. It is on the list of books that have changed the way I think and view the world. I quickly recognized games I’d seen people play in their lives, and became aware of some games in which I’d participated. Berne also outlines an ‘antithesis’ for each game, a method to identify and avoid getting sucked into each game.

Berne and his book came to mind again recently, reminding me that there may be a deep psychological need being expressed with overspending.

$0.00

I

My new job issued the W-2 tax form.

Under the box for Social Security tax withholding, the number was $0.00. The new job is for a government agency which is exempt from paying Social Security (I obscured my federal income tax and Medicare taxes). It was a little odd seeing $0.00 in that particular box. I’ve worked full-time since I was 18 years old, and have paid Social Security tax on every paycheck for decades before landing the new job last year.

II

By coincidence, or not, I recently read a book by historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr. titled 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask (published 2007).

Woods is a libertarian associated with the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, an organization I’ve mentioned in the past; see here or use the search bar. But I happened across this book at the library and the title caught my attention.

Question 13 in Woods’s book is: “How Does Social Security Really Work?” He notes how early in the history of the Social Security program, it was promoted to the public as an insurance policy. Woods quotes statements by President Franklin Roosevelt on the topic:

The Act provides for two kinds of insurance for the worker.

For that insurance both the employer and the worker pay premiums, just as you pay premiums for any other insurance policy. Those premiums are collected in the form of the taxes you hear so much about.

The first kind of insurance covers old age. Here the employer contributes one dollar for every dollar of premium contributed by the worker; but both dollars are held by the government solely for the benefit of the worker in his old age.

In effect, we have set up a savings account for the old age of the worker. Because the employer is called upon to contribute on a fifty-fifty basis, that savings account gives exactly two dollars of security for every dollar put up by the worker.

Woods goes on to describe how the insurance industry had a good reputation during the depression of the 1930s, because insurance policies were largely honored despite the fragile economic landscape. So FDR and other government officials who used the insurance metaphor for Social Security were appealing to the public’s respect for the insurance industry.

However, in a case that made it to the Supreme Court in 1960, the US government made the argument that Social Security was not an insurance policy. The case involved a Bulgarian-born man named Ephraim Nestor who was deported from the US. He paid into Social Security for decades, but was denied benefits based on a 1954 amendment to the program which prohibited Social Security payments to those deported for criminal activity.

In defending the case, government attorneys prepared a brief which said:

[Social Security] is in no sense a federally administered “insurance program” under which each worker pays premiums over the years and acquires at retirement an indefeasible right to receive for life a fixed monthly benefit […] The “contribution” exacted under the social security plan from an employee…is a true tax. It is not comparable to a premium under a policy of insurance promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age.

Hardly the first time, or the last, when governments spoke from both sides of their mouth.

III

I’ve touched on Social Security for this blog, see here or use the search bar.

Because Social Security is not an insurance policy, the program basically pays as it goes: current workers pay the benefits of retired workers. In the past, this was easy because there were far more workers than retirees. As demographics have shifted, there are now far fewer workers per retiree. This chart is from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

The article which goes along with this chart says Social Security needs at least 3 workers per retiree to remain stable.

At the new job, the employer contributes what would have been their 6.2% Social Security tax into the worker’s 401k plan. Nice little benefit.

But during a new employee orientation, a speaker from the city reminded us we would not accrue Social Security credits during time employed in this job. Depending on our age and the years we work for this employer, we may get little or no Social Security benefits relative to if we worked another job. We would not pay the worker’s share of 6.2% of income as Social Security tax, but the speaker warned us to not think of that boost to our income as “free money.” The speaker urged us to “save aggressively” into the 401k and 457b plans available via the job, or save aggressively into other retirement plans such as a Roth IRA.

It seemed to me that most of the new hires were not paying attention. Their eyes were glazed over with boredom. They may come to regret that inattention at retirement age…

RIP Mojo Nixon

I

Back in junior high and high school, I hung around with a group of guys who listened to the syndicated Dr. Demento show on radio each Sunday night and then talked about the show all the next week at school.

Dr. Demento’s radio shows specializes in novelty and comedy songs, but he also turned me on to blues musician Blind Willie Johnson so he appreciate all types of music. Demento abandoned traditional radio in about 2007, and now does his thing online because of course everything needs to be on the internet now. Dr Demento is probably most famous for brining Weird Al to wider attention back in the early 1980s when Al was just a weirdo with an accordion and funny songs.

We were the kids who’d sing goofy songs like “Fish Heads“, proudly memorizing that part where the lyrics get fast at the end (“Roly-poly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women…”). And then we’d insist on explaining how the song was written and performed by the guy who played the kid on the old TV show Lost In Space, even if you had no interest in novelty songs, fish heads or old science fiction shows.

Here’s how you had to listen to Dr. Demento back in the day: You had to have tape player with two cassette decks:

You needed two tape decks, because iTunes and Spotify didn’t exist yet and making playlists of custom songs was a pain in the ass process which required dedication.

(a) You’d tape the entire Dr. Demento show as it played live on air.

(b) You’d put the freshly recorded tape in one side of the tape deck, and a blank cassette tape in the other tape deck.

(c) You’d pick the songs you like the most, and record them from the old tape to the new tape, because you didn’t want to listen to the crap songs and have to fast-forward or re-wind endlessly to get to the good stuff.

(d) You’d listen to the tapes with friends in the back of class on your Walkman portable cassette player and the teacher would get upset because you were laughing about funny songs rather than learning about the Golgi Apparatus.

II

Anyway, one of the songs I heard on Dr. Demento was “Elvis is Everywhere” by a guy named Mojo Nixon, who performed with another guy named Skid Roper. I can safely assume those were not the names on their birth certificates, but frankly I don’t care what their legal names were.

Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper had a few minor hit songs, including “Elvis is Everywhere.” The song is sort of old-style rockabilly with goofy lyrics about the omnipresence and omnipotence of Elvis Presley who is so amazing he built Stonehenge.

Why do boats disappear in the Bermuda Triangle? Because Elvis needs boats!

There’s also a video of Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper performing on the Arsenio Hall Show, which is the most late-1980s thing I can think of at the moment.

“Why don’t they just shoot ’em?”

I

With all the news about record numbers of illegal crossings at the Mexican border with the United States, a conversation from many years ago came to mind.

This was about 20 years ago. I was working with an older guy, older than me by 25 or 30 years. He was fundamentally a decent person, but could be loud and occasionally obnoxious in a redneck sort of way. His mouth ran ahead of his mouth, so to speak. His tendency to spout off quickly, without thinking about his words, got him in trouble a few times at work. Formal reprimands and so forth.

Then, as now, illegal immigration was in the news.

One day, while reading online about the latest wave of illegal immigrants crossing the border, he angrily said: “Why don’t they just shoot ’em before they cross the border?”

I said, “Ummm because shooting across a border into another country is not a smart thing to do and might be seen as an act of war. What if Canadian border officers started shooting into the US at the Ambassador Bridge?”

“Well, why don’t they shoot ’em after they cross the border?”

“Law enforcement isn’t supposed to go around shooting people unless it’s self defense or defense of others. Should cops just start shooting all the criminals, rather than giving out speeding tickets?”

That took the starch out of his sails. “Oh yeah, good point.”

He’d received multiple speeding tickets, and somehow the idea of being shot for going seven miles over the speed limit was his entry into the concepts of empathy and police brutality in this conversation.

He hadn’t seemed to contemplate the fact that illegal immigrants were, y’know, people, and it wasn’t a target shooting range on the Rio Grande.

I mean, I’m not happy about thousands of people crossing into the nation illegally but neither would I sanction a machine gun nest at the border to mercilessly slaughter everyone trying to enter the nation.

II

Another thing that’s been on my mind: why do they call it the “Southern Border” in media?

“Southern Border” has four syllables. And to my ear, it flows off the tongue better than “Border with Mexico” (six syllables) or “Border between the United States of America and the United Mexican States” (more syllables than I’d care to count).

But still, that phrase “Southern border” is a little galling for some reason….

RIP Wayne Kramer

Kramer was a guitarist and occasional vocalist with the MC5 in the 1960s, a group which burned blindingly brightly for a very short period. Their debut album Kick Out the Jams was recorded live, which was a ballsy as fugg move but the MC5 were up to the challenge. One of the great live bands of their era, of any era, when at the peak of their powers. As sadly usual, the MC5 collapsed amid acrimony and drug abuse.

After a period in prison and getting his life together, Kramer emerged in the mid 1990s with his debut album The Hard Stuff. Indeed. The album hit hard, as the opener “Crack in the Universe” showed. It was a great comeback for a man who still had things to say.

Mormon to English Translation

Long time ago I worked with a boss who used me as a resource to translate Mormon jargon into basic English. I live in Utah, and there can be a bit of a problem with some Mormons who assume everyone else understands the jargon, argot or slang that is particular to their group but not known outside the group.

The boss was a gruff guy, big and burly and a little loud, but fundamentally a wonderful person. Occasionally he was baffled by some of the Mormon-speak.

One day, he conducted interviews to fill a position. Afterwards, he called me in to his little office and said: “What the hell is laurels?”

I had a brain fart for a moment. The only thing I could think of was the plant used to make that headgear in the ancient Roman world, “crown your head with laurels” after winning the Olympiad for duck-wrestling or being named Emperor.

So I said, “Laurels like Julius Caesar wore?”

And he said, “No no, I was interviewing this college girl and asked if there were any days she couldn’t work. She said she can’t work Wednesday nights because she has laurels.”

The penny dropped and I got it.

I said, “Laurels is a young women’s group for Mormons. She teaches a girls group at church on Wednesday evenings.”

Blink blink blink. Then he got it. “Like a youth pastor?”

“Basically.”

“Why the hell didn’t she say she can’t work Wednesday nights because she teaches a girls group at church?”

“She assumed you knew what she was talking about.”