Guilty Pleasures – A Fitting Tribute to my Pops
This Sunday is Father’s Day and I hope you make sure you to spend some quality time with your father. If you’re a father yourself, good luck with avoiding your kids.
So this is probably where I should get sentimental and talk about the times my dad played baseball in the park with me and passed on precious words of wisdom while wearing a yellow cardigan. And in tribute to him, I should post a heartfelt, emotional song celebrating his life and what he meant to me. Like this…
God that song sucked.
Nope, no sentimentality here. My dad was a gregarious, opinionated guy with no room for mushy stuff like that. He didn’t care for societal norms and happily did the cooking and cleaning around the house while my mom outearned him. No only did he love listening to music, he was actually pretty good at the piano for not taking any lessons. In short, he’s was the original Food and Wine Hedonist. Except he didn’t drink.
And of course, I got my sense of humor from him. He was pretty ruthless in the way he skewered different races and religions, but he was fair about it – call him an equal opportunity offender. His true forte, however, was dirty jokes. The phrase “we’re in mixed company” had no meaning to him as I recall him telling some to a Catholic priest who visited our house.
Here’s one of his classics, which he told to a 14-yr old me, a used car salesman, and the salesman’s boss –
There’s this woman who LOVED Elvis Presley more than life itself. She had all his records and had portraits of him all over her house. One day she went to a tattoo artist and asked for The King’s face on her thigh. After a couple hours he was done.
Tattoo Artist: There you go. Elvis is on your leg.
Woman: Hmmmm… I dunno, that looks nothing like Elvis.
Artist: What are you talking about? It looks just like him.
Woman: No, it’s all off. This sucks.
Artist: Ok, how about if I put a tattoo of him on your other thigh?
The woman agreed and four hours later …
Woman: You know, I appreciate your hard work. But that’s not him either.
Artist: Are you insane? That looks just like him – the hair, the lip, the eyes.
Just then, someone else walked into the tattoo parlor…
Artist: That’s Jimmy, he’s one of our best customers. We’ll ask him… Hey Jimmy, do any of those two guys look like Elvis?
After careful studying, Jimmy says: No, but that one in the middle’s a perfect Willie Nelson!
Damn, I miss him. So here’s a vid in honor of my pops, the ultimate no-nonsense guy.
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great post