Cookout etiquette for Savages

I can't lie to you, the summer months are always tough for a brother. The favorable weather conditions always put an unwanted spotlight on my reclusive nature, forcing me to make impromptu guest appearances like a major motion picture star during sweeps week. The oppressive heat turns pedestrian chores like cutting the grass into weekly altercations with my toughest nemesis. Routine courting rituals in search of the vaginal promised land, like romantic walks or catching an outdoor concert - become necessary evils during the summer months. Also, not for nothing, the season when I'm most likely to show off my Popeye sized calves and a tattoo that I thoroughly regret makes it extremely challenging for me to pull off my patented "Bill Belichick" sexual maneuver.(Clumsily fucking a woman while wearing a sweatshirt) But what I really hate about summer, from the precise moment that inept tong wielders everywhere break out their barbecue grills and throw on cliched "kiss the cook" aprons, is that it reminds me of my deceased father.

My old man, for all the shit I've posthumously given him on this blog, had a bevy of talents. Cooking barbecue was one of them. I still remember how he'd start grilling super early, systematically bringing the finished product into the house, and how that beautiful smell would wake you out of the deepest slumber. The incessant snacking on his culinary works of art all day were a foregone conclusion, so much so that my mother stopped giving her "you'll ruin your dinner" diatribes sometime in the late 70's. I've never flirted with Islam, but if I ever did I'm sure spiritual enlightenment and one day pilgrimages to Mecca would have been forcefully trumped by the blissful mastication of my father's grilled swine drenched in barbecue sauce. Some of our brave veterans have vivid flashbacks of some precarious firefight they once found themselves in. Many of us daydream about that one love we carelessly let slip through our fingers. Not for nothing, but when I'm not thinking of sex that involves receipts and inept rappers who I want to mercilessly curb-stomp, most of my day is spent thinking about my father's barbecue and my Keystone Cops-like inability to recreate it.

Unfortunately, not only has the sub par cook-outs that I've attended every summer since my father death(2001) reminded me of the best barbecue that I've ever eaten - it has also brings to mind some of the more unsavory traits these sort of shindigs expose in folks. Here is some etiquette advice for all you motherfucking savages out there.

Bring a friend, not a fucking entourage: What was weird about my old man was that for as much of a hard ass he was, he'd routinely let his friends get away with triple homicides in his presence. I can understand being invited to a cookout and bringing a person or two, but it always seemed like these uncouth knuckle-draggers rented a church van, crammed it to the hilt with as many like-minded people with an an agenda of greed that they could find, and headed straight to our place to happily eat us out of house and home. I attended a friend's cookout recently where someone had no problem violating the aforementioned hell-worthy trespass, with reckless abandon I may add. So I took it upon myself to put those crumb-snatchers to work, making them go on beer runs and such, then helping clean up afterwords. They were going to earn their meal that day. Again, bringing a person or two is fine - but any more than that is unacceptable. At least call the host first to see if its alright.

What you bring becomes community property: How many times have you seen a person bring something to a cookout, lets say a 24 pack of beer, and then try to take the remaining cans of beer home with them when the shindig comes to a close? Sorry, but that is straight up savagery my friend. Once you bring anything to a cookout, unless its something in a fancy schmancy dish that you understandably aren't trying to part with, it is no longer yours you fucking savage. (Unless the host insist that you take what's left back to your place of residence) I really don't see why this is so difficult for some folks to understand.

For Christs sake, cover that shit up: The worst feeling in the world is going to a friend's cook-out completely famished, ready to take a bite out of a live horse if its seasoned right, only to find every dish fly infested because the neanderthal of a host failed to simply cover it up. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this, feeling the need to put on a fucking bee keeper suit just to walk by the plates of neglect simply because most people didn't grow up in the same sort of germ conscious family that I did. Desperately hoping that the contents of the nearby keg will successfully subdue my appetite. Cover the food up you fucking caveman, it isn't that difficult.

Only if the Host says its OK: Similar to the "community property" example, the only time its acceptable to take a plate of goodies home with you is when the host insists. That's it folks. Every time I see some unsavory bottom feeder cavalierly stacking their plate like a carnivore's version of "Jenga", I want to walk over and punch the offender dead in the throat. You'd think that people had better sense than that, but unfortunately they don't - my otherwise faulty memory bank is filled with 30 years of vivid instances of people proverbially wiping their ass with someone's hospitality. If the host doesn't suggest that you take some food home with you, keep your grubby little hands to yourself. You goddamn savage.

Some hippies deserve to be punched.

Two months ago I went to a friend's dinner party. For an uncultured, masturbation machine like myself it was good to mingle amongst people with such varying political opinions, while hypertension inducing delicacies and liver enlarging spirits served as the backdrop. I have to say, as much as I usually take the scorched earth, bring a motherfucking missile launcher to a knife-fight approach to debating republicans - the right leaning guests at my friend's dinner party came equipped with an arsenal of substantive arguments. No birtherism. No 14th Amendment talk. I don't even think the word "socialism" was uttered once. Usually, as a republican is making his/her arguments, I'm openly wondering whether or not slashing my wrists and bleeding out all over the place in an act of utter disgust is theatrical overkill. But that night, refreshingly, I fully embraced those fleeting moments of political civility that are few and far between these days. What really threw me for a loop that night was the heated back and forth that I got into with someone I believed to be my liberal, dope smoking brethren - my friend's older brother, a hippie named Miles. It wasn't as if some of his arguments weren't substantive mind you, the snails pace it is taking to close GITMO and end DADT are legitimate criticisms, it was the unwarranted vitriol towards Obama that they were laced with that gave me such pause. At first the rhetorical sparing we did that night felt like Déjà vu, any honest person with a computer will admit that segments of the liberal blogisphere are littered with garden variety defenses of Obama being carelessly characterized as lockstep sycophancy and accusations that the President is George W. Bush's personal surrogate(a Bruce Willis movie reference) are as plentiful as the bumps on Lawrence Fishburne's daughter's ass. So the ease in which I proverbially parried and counter-punched his firebagging nonsense made me feel like Donnie Yen in "Ip Man". When it came to legislation he felt wasn't strong enough, I smiled and quietly sat through all the incendiary rhetoric about Obama grabbing his ankles around bankers and giving the health insurance companies unprompted reach-arounds - mainly because my patience was rooted in the silence I knew I'd bask in after asking him what he would have legislatively done differently. But things took a turn for the worst as soon an Miles ended his rather arduous "Obama is just like Bush" rant with what I still believe to be a vague assassination fantasy.

Since it was around 2 AM at that point I abandoned the conversation by standing up and telling the debate rubberneckers, "Ok, that is my cue to go", then I proceeded to distribute both pounds and hugs to the extremely interesting folks I had met that night. Of course giving Miles the time honored snub. The next thing I know, while I'm digging in my pockets for my car keys outside, I see Miles running up on me in my periphery - waiving his arms wildly, eventually getting in my face, screaming rather incoherently. Right when I'm about to do a Savion Glover inspired softshoe routine on his motherfucking forehead, my friend runs out the house screaming "Please, don't beat up my brother, he's high!!" I immediately say, "Shit, I'm high too, but marijuana is what kept me from making you an only child!" He then says, "No, he's smoking a lot more than weed these days" - as my friend said that Miles was grabbing my shirt so I immediately quipped "Well, you and your brother must be smoking dust if you think I'm going to let any continued act of aggression go unanswered." And that's when he sucker punched me. *POW* So I proceeded to lace him with a 5 punch combination to the face, a throat chop, a couple of kidney punches, and a kick in the gut for good measure before throwing him head first into a gigantic shrubbery of some sort.

I've been thinking about that incident ever since Robert Gibbs gave his now infamous "Professional Left" interview. As much as I questioned the strategy of him broaching the subject at all, and I did feel the term "Professional Left" would allow too many liberal commentators to conveniently play the victim - I immediately knew what Gibbs was talking about and co-signed his sentiments immediately. Two more things that also instantly came to mind: 1)I knew I'd be one in a small handful of liberals who actually had Gibbs' back on this one. and 2)That you wouldn't be able to throw a rock without hitting some liberal commentator having a rather telegraphed hissyfit over what Gibbs had to say. Even though the unpopularity of my Robert Gibbs co-signing has only shown itself to be anecdotal via twitter, the evidence of all the liberal commentators who got their delicate little feelings hurt in a rather scripted fashion was empirical like a motherfucker. The common denominators in all those videos: The using of Robert Gibbs' interview to re-litigate liberal grievances, and a convenient morphing of the Press Secretary's words into a frontal attack on the liberal base as a whole. I don't have a problem with the former, but the latter is intellectual dishonesty bordering on journalistic malpractice. Even Rachel Maddow, who I thought felt the issue was justifiably silly by her not dedicating a breathy diatribe to it on last Tuesday night's show, a person who strikes me as more of a straight shooter than most - took it upon herself to take an Obama criticism that I feel is above reproach(ending DADT) and clumsily wrapped it in what Robert Gibbs didn't say. I guess she was just following the liberal rulebook: "When it doubt, give Glenn Greenwald masturbatory material."



Robert Gibbs made it clear that he wasn't talking about garden variety liberals, just some of the chattering cable class and other influential progressives who desperately tried to convince me last week that the Press Secretary took a healthy shit in my Cheerios. More pointedly, the incessant liberal nihilism that has been masquerading as constructive criticism for the last 17 months - those are the real folks who I wholeheartedly believe Gibbs was talking about. You know, like the guy whose health care frustration prompted him to very casually float the idea of a Primary challenge to the President. Or his petulantly scripted outrage over President Obama's oil spill speech. Or the chick who thought it was a good idea to blow up a bill that improved on our health care system simply because she didn't get her precious way - then proceeding to clumsily team up with Grover Norquist. And support Erick Erickson. Then there's the guy, when he's not waxing poetic about the President's lack of genitalia and calling him a sell-out - is telling his viewers how he plans to sit on his hands come mid-term election time. Hell, just this past weekend we had certain progressives clumsily tripping over themselves like Barney Fife on mescaline in their rush to blast the President on a supposed walk-back that he never made - thus making Robert Gibbs look like a goddamned prophet.

Look, holding the President accountable is a must, no one is arguing that. But what I haven't seen from influential circles of the left if what Bob Cesca likes to call "smart accountability" - it just seems to be nothing but whining malcontents taking every opportunity imaginable to poo-poo the President's impressive string of accomplishments. They like to lecture all of us on how much of what he's gotten done lacks teeth, but then proceed to tightly cup their ears and scream like petulant 5 year olds whenever you point out what exactly the legislative realities are.(See Cenk Uygur) The funny thing is, these same people will wax poetic about the President's depressed base as if they themselves didn't have something to do with that. The same way the President shouldn't be above reproach, neither should any of his liberal critics. Sorry Keith Olbermann. Sorry Adam Green. People have regrettably noted that what Robert Gibbs participated in last week was something that folks call "Punching Hippies", the art of a Democratic administration attacking its liberal critics. Well, as I found out at the dinner party I attended a couple months back, some hippies deserved to be punched. And just like that night, many need to be drug tested.