Backwash
Jimmy the Fetus
Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, showing us all that what we learned in Sunday school really matters.
Dear Jimmy:
My Jesus-freak friend Patrick was going off on your column at school, saying that you were an “abomination” or something — but he always talks like that, so I didn’t think too much about it. I told him to chill out because it was obvious you make up all those crazy Bible quotes that he gets so worked up about. But then he went off on me, saying that actually, those really are quotes from the Bible! No shit? Those are some crazy quotes! Anyway, Patrick wasn’t too happy about it. But whatever it takes to get him off my back for five minutes about accepting Christ as my personal savior is all right by me. So thanks for messin’ with his head.
Jeff
Merriam
Dear Jeff:
Yes, the question I get more than any other is whether the Bible quotes that appear in this column each week really are taken from the Good Book. I may be only a blusterin’ blastocyst, but one thing I know how to do is find apt aphorisms from both the Old and New Testaments. As for your friend Patrick, just try to keep in mind that the ferocity of his proselytizing is probably in direct proportion to the thoroughness of his self-doubt. After all, remember what the Bible tells us, Jeff: “If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?”
Got a moral quandary? E-mail Jimmy at editorial@pitch.com.
Threads
Off the rack and on the town.
O’Dowd’s on the Plaza, 9 p.m. Tuesday
The place is dead when Pitch fashion expert Bud arrives. Just a lone guitarist onstage, crooning to mostly empty tables and abandoned bar stools. Dragging a friend behind him, Bud isn’t worried. He knows his friend will soon be The Main Event.
The friend’s name is Ben, a buzz-cut 25-year-old in a blue polo, thermal undershirt and jeans. Ben leans against a table nonchalantly, hands in pockets, casually thrusting his pelvis outward. A passing waitress notices it first: Her eyes lock like laser beams on his crotch. The jeans are spotless except for an inchlong tear along the zipper.
Unlike such swell ’80s trends as sock-stuffing or codpieces, the Gap’s latest dark-blue, low-rise, boot-cut jeans offer a groin gimmick with a built-in paradox: Usually worn-out looking jeans have been industrially rubbed in naturally stressed areas such as the knees and thighs. Ben’s pair institutionalizes every man’s pickup phobia: the white crotch spot.
“It’s not subtle,” Bud says. “What does it say? I’ve been humping trees?”
The waitress, a 22-year-old brunette named Michelle, mistakes the rip for a stain. “I probably shouldn’t touch it, because I serve food and drink,” she says. “I figured he probably didn’t notice it before he left [the house].”
Working in a meat market, Michelle is used to giving her male clientele the quick, discreet once-over, logging any attributes worth a second glance. She says she’s an “ass girl,” usually focusing on men’s butts and ignoring the front cargo area. The crotch spot, however, gets her attention.
“I’d look at it again to make sure I’m not seeing things,” Michelle says. But groin grunge is a telltale sign that some sloppy joe already had some action, probably solo, and is out looking for more. “I wouldn’t use that to pick up chicks if I was a guy,” she adds. “I thought that you guys had a little fun before you came in. Something involving young male prostitutes and him with his pants on.”
A thick-limbed, 27-year-old waiter named Tim stops by to see what the commotion is about.
“Looks like a rip,” Tim says quickly, though he finds the “milky white” color unsettling. “Probably sell better without the stain,” Tim says of the jeans.
Earlier in the night, Bud and Ben had hit the Gap on the Plaza, where the jeans, originally about $60, were on sale for $39.99. There, an assistant manager named Jonathan called the rip’s mayonnaiselike coloring “a conversation starter.” Nad roughage happens quite naturally, he said — say, when you lean against too many countertops. But Ben reveals that when he bought the jeans, an employee at the Oak Park Mall Gap advised him to avoid controversy by coloring over the rip with marker.
Notes from KC’s Blogosphere
Net Prophet
Notes from KC’s blogosphere.
Wednesday night I had my first day back to school in a long, long time. I arrived late (good work, dude), but in time to hear everyone introduce themselves and say what their “major” was. Quite a few people seemed to be in the class because the only thing they needed to get their degree (Associate of Arts, I guess) was College Algebra. One kid was pre-med, there was a nursing student, a few undecideds, one decent looking chick with a great rack named Pilar, one guy who took “lots of online classes” and then Joe.
Joe is a real peach. His intro … “I’m Joe. I’m a programmer, I’m going to work at NASA. I’m serious, I’m taking 23 credits this semester.” I tuned Joe out while I assessed him and placed him in the social retard bin in my brain. He’s probably 30-35, wearing a raggedy tee shirt, had a tray of nachos on his desk, along with a huge Coke and was still talking about NASA and his 23 credits. I was thinking Joe is probably on meth and I decided I will call him Tweak from now on. Tweak’s hair is greasy and his face is leathery and looks like it could hold a five day rain. I remind myself not to make eye contact with Tweak or he will try to become my new best friend. From “Heimer’s Homilies,” the online diary of a junior-college student.
