Sodomizing Poodles

The Street Hustle

I have discovered something troubling about the population of the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Not a thing or personality trait that appears to be inherent to all 5 million souls in the Valley. No, it’s a look, a pained face made when any understanding of a joke, comment or statement seems to be lost.

My first few weeks in area took a lot of getting used to. The people in Scottsdale/Phoenix are friendly, genuinely so and are looking for a connection. Connections between two individuals in New York City are hard to find. We generally move through people as fast as we can. When people are right on top of you all the time, the energy created is manic and will destroy you if you don’t learn how to harness it for your own means. If two people can manage to fuse their disparate energies together, you have a new lover, friend or associate. That same energy which pushes everyone and thing aside is spiritually violent to our fellow Americans. It is exactly why people in the rest of the country hate New Yorkers. They view it as arrogance, not the defense mechanism against the hostile mass that is your fellow citizenry in NYC. And in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert et al. it is totally unnecessary.

One of the side effects of that energy is a quick mind. New Yorkers are quick with a quip, story or put down. This quirk has given the world Chico and Groucho Marx, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield and Pat Ford. However it seems to befuddle Phoenicians.

In the last 3 months, I have told stories, jokes, and anecdotes and have been met with that ‘look’: blank, mouth open, eyes showing the pain of lack of comprehension. After over hearing a man complain about his wife always being late and wondering how he could make her be on time, I offered him this piece of wisdom from Henny Youngman: take my wife, please. I take my wife everywhere but she finds her way home. Out came ‘the look.’

Did this 30 something unshaven man in a baseball hat with shorts and a dingy olive drab shirt have some sort of learning disability, one millions in the Valley of the Sun had? I was perplexed. Was it my timing, my delivery? Did all budding Catskill comics have to deal with this ‘look’ at one point or another in the fledgling careers?

I decided to cut down on my quips and just tell stories, like the time I saw the Hells Angels kick the shit out of the Easter Bunny. No luck, same look. Blank. Eyes in pain from lack of understanding. No comprehension – AT ALL; so much for the New York sense of humor playing in the desert.

Two days ago while I was having a burger at a local resort bar, the couple sitting next to me go up to leave five minutes before last call. In the hour and a half we had been neighbors they had a cocktail or five, dinner, a bottle of wine or three and now wanted to go to another bar in the hotel, one that had more people to party with. The bartender had already run their credit card and walked away. She knew they were hammered and didn’t want to cut them off. She just wanted these two to go away.

“How is the bar downstairs, happening,” the guy asked me. I shrugged.

“Are there people down there,” the woman asked.

Before I could stop myself, this popped out. “I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball. I keep asking Sheriff Arpaio for one but he won’t give one to me.’

Then came ‘the look.’

As this couple, she in an all too tight yellow sweater showing off the latest in plastic surgery and he throwing his salt and pepper mullet around stared at me it became clear, this face. It is the look of a poodle that has just had a cattle prod shoved up its ass.

When I was in high school I had to learn to filter out smart assed remarks during wrestling practice or I would run until I would literally vomit. Note to self: find that filter and put it back in place for similar remarks to the populace of Phoenix. Causing pain through forced canine sodomy isn’t something to enjoy.