Everything Great Auntie Ann directs us to down here is either on Cuyamaca, or off Cuyamaca. It’s just past Cuyamaca. Or somewhere around where Cuyamaca used to be before they put in the bypass. There’s also a “North” and “South” Cuyamaca. That’s important to know, she says. She lives on Mission Gorge, which is far busier and more heavily traveled—but she never mentions that.

Who are those guys, anyway? The Cuyamacas? Mafia Dons? Mortgage modification specialists? Hedge fund managers? Is this an Indian tribe?…

If so, just forget I brought it up. I don’t need any more people suing me.

Share on Facebook

They never heard of Great Auntie. They’ve been sucking thirty-some bucks out her checking account every month for two years, and never heard of her. The company was sold, you see, and this and that, and blah blah, and maybe it’s their sister company that’s doing the monitoring. These guys never heard of Great Auntie.

Okay. Give us their number. They don’t have it. It’s their sister company that maybe does the monitoring—while they concentrate on siphoning the accounts of people they never heard of—and they don’t have the number. Cool. Thanks.

Okay, here’s the plan: One, you push the pendant button and see who calls back for a confirmation of the emergency. Then you take down the pertinent contact information for future use. Or maybe…two, you push the button and nobody calls back. In either case, three, you cancel the automatic deduction for the monitoring.

If you stop paying they can stomp and shout from dawn to dusk, and try to stop the monitoring service. But they don’t have the number. And apparently, they don’t have Great Auntie’s either.

Share on Facebook

So he said he was done with it. Gone dry now forty-eight hours and running. Best thing. Had one of those bad cholest’rols; felt no good; liver shot; blood pressure off the scale.

After a while he began to lose his belly. He began to think of that cool party where somebody knocked over the punch bowl, while forgetting that it was him who stumbled drunkenly into it. The excitement of that moment when he was asked to entertain at a party, while forgetting how he was so wasted he had to quit after several ill-fated tries.

Now he thinks he can re-capture those euphoric moments with just a little sip. Not a problem. He can totally control it better.

I knew a guy once who liked to belly up to the bar…

Share on Facebook

Well, he’d gone out one night to get us each a small resupply. I noodled around with this or that on the guitar. When he got home, we watched the beginning of an old movie, and I went home.

At home I turned on the rest of the movie, laid back, rolled up a “pinner”, and considered impure thoughts with Donna Reed. The phone rang and I  distractedly reached across and picked it up.

God! James! Don’t use any of that stuff I gave you. You hear me?! Don’t use it! That stuff was meant for my wife! I…uh, Rest her Soul.

And that’s how Dave saved my life. How will I ever repay him?

Share on Facebook

Is he kidding? I’ve always been a vodka martini man. He knows that. You give me sour mash whiskey tonight and tomorrow I wake up feeling like somebody flossed me through the ears with a strand of barbed wire.

Share on Facebook

While I’ve been over here awaiting arrival of my long-deserved Publishers Clearing House check—he shows up with a new Beemer, Marc Jacobs sunglasses and a leather Sharks jacket.

I guess I should have been more suspicious when he asked for my autograph last week.

Share on Facebook

Scratch has got an itch to get rich and a thousand ways to get there, all involving your money. That’s why he can truthfully say he’s never lost a dime.

I asked him how things are going with my last investment in his cat bathing business?

Share on Facebook

He said he never talked in his sleep, never has. Told her that when he was a young stud-muffin he used to date four/five women at a time. Some of them married. If he talked in his sleep, he said, he’d be dead.

Yeah.

Now nobody knows whether he talks in his sleep or not. He’s sleeping somewhere else.

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

So he goes down to Vegas for a little vacation, and stays in a big Strip hotel. And just for a hoot, he decides to register as Dr. Steven Jones. Then he goes off to see a show, try the tables, whatever.

Pretty soon he’s bushed, been a long day, and he goes up to his room for a little shut eye. About an hour later…BANG!…BANG!…BANG!… there’s a security guy at his door.

“You the doctor?” he asks.

“Well, not exactly. I’m not a med—”

“You the doctor or not? There’s a guy downstairs who collapsed. Manager says could’a had a heart attack. Tells me to bring the doctor.”

“RD…” Steven says, “not MD… I’m a radia—”

“Look, pal. I don’t care if you’re Dr. Seuss. Manager says bring the doctor, I bring the doctor—or it’s my [mild expletive]“.

It takes a while to get everything straightened out and find a real doctor, but eventually, Steven gets back to bed.

He says he learned a very important lesson from this experience.

Next time, stay at a different hotel.

Share on Facebook