SMELLS LIKE BULLSHIT

In the last 2 weeks we lost an American Icon in Ed McMahon, THE sex symbol of the 70's Farrah, and a crazy black man who liked to touch little boys and grab his crotch. Yeah ok Micheal sang a bit too, sold some records, big fucking deal!

Farrah...well her poster hung in my bedroom, I lost my masturbatory virginity to those triple A battery sized nipples, AND even though she was only on Charlies Angels for one season, she inspired a hair style, that 30 years later still bears her name!

Old drunks and semi black pedophiles? FUCK YOU!

Farrah, thank you for your being you, and for all mankind I apologize for what you had to put up with with that wife beating asshat Ryan O'neil!

Chapter 12
As I wait for Pauly, I look around the “office”. It is clear this was a slapdash effort to look like a legitimate business. The trim around the floors and doorways were close but didn’t match exactly, you could see tape edges in the drywall, and an occasional brush mark. Someone bid this job really cheap, or Pauly did the job himself as he sampled the stock. I feel the receptionist’s eyes on me, as I turn and catch her looking at my crotch.

“See something you like Doll” I said laying down my best glimmer of the pearly whites. She grins the grin of a naughty vixen, mini Vance struggles to get a look.

“Can I touch it?” she asks?

“Touch it?” I reply, “Baby you can, touch it, kiss it, stroke it, rub it, grip it until it turns colors be my guest.

She looks back down and runs her tongue over her perfect lips, wetting them slightly. Mini Vance is starting to really pay attention, and I see her eyes dart over to my left thigh as she catches the slight movement in my pants leg.

Confusion sets in.

She says…”It’s so big and shiny”

Shiny? What the hell is she talking about? Mini Vance hasn’t surfaced yet.

Then I remembered the .50 jammed in my waist band…shit.

“Oh that. Sweetie, Vance would love to show you that as well.” I take a step forward - a door opens behind her, as I hear another open behind me. A trap! I quickly draw both guns, and back up until I am against the wall, aiming at opposite ends of the room. This is not good. If I cap someone, even if I just wound someone it might frighten or turn off this Polynesian Princess. If I need to shoot someone and hesitate... damn, why can’t women resist me? I wonder if the Desert Eagle is even loaded?

The man at the door behind my receptionist must be Pauly, he looks like a Pauly. When he sees me pointing the .50 at him, an angry frown covers his already threatening mug. Then his expression changes to “what the fuck.”

I notice that he isn’t really even looking at me or the hand cannon. I quickly look to my left and see why. Standing there, frozen, with a startled look on her face was the cleaning lady. I lower the 1911, then the .50. The cleaning lady lets out a loud sigh, clutches her chest with one hand and grabs her cart with the other. “Sorry ma’m, Vance didn’t mean to scare you.” She just stood there staring at me wide eyed, and breathing heavily.

“Put away the hardware, before you hurt yourself.” Pauly had moved to the receptionist’s desk and was staring straight into my skull. “Youse the one who wants to talk with me?”

“Yes sir, but Vance won’t take up much of your time”

“Vance better not take up my time, I have a dinner date and a craps game to get to.”

“This way.” Pauly turned to walk toward the door. I glanced at the receptionist. She was looking at me with her big, soft, brown eyes. I smile. She slowly winks, and lightly licks her upper lip. A shudder races from my ears, through my shoulders and down to my loins… She would have been worth getting shot.

“Shut the fuggin’ door” Pauly says, with just enough Jersey accent that told me he wasn’t long out of the Garden State. I step into a small office and shut the door behind me.

I extend my hand and say “Vance, Vance Manion Private Eye and Personal Strength Coach”

Pauly looks at me somewhat puzzled, and grips my hand in what I could only believe a vice would feel like if some crazed gorilla on steroids and crank were manning the controls. I give it my all so I wouldn’t look like some sissy from homoville, but I could feel the bones in my hand starting to grind together. He releases my hand quickly and the blood rushing back into it was almost as painful as his grip. Pauly sits down behind the desk and motions to an empty chair.

“So Vance Manion what can I do for you? You looking for a job? I seem, to have an opening in my distribution department”

“Vance has a job, but I would like to ask you about that opening, how exactly did the position become ‘open’?”

“Well Vance, let me tell you a secret, never go into business with family, sometimes it works and sometimes, well sometimes your brother catches you groping his crush and puts two in your chest in broad daylight. Know what I mean?”
I paused a little shocked…did Pauly just solve the shooting for me? What is his part in this? This guy is talkative, how much more will he tell me?

“Let Vance get this straight, the two Samoan brothers worked for you? And the dead one was your distribution guy?”

“That’s right Sherlock,” Pauly replied.

“You guys are the liquor distributor right?” I asked.

“I spoke to soon, Sierra Minerals, does that sound like liquor to you?”

“Vance noticed that there were no tax stamps on your client’s liquor bottles.”

Pauly leans forward in his chair, cocks his head, looks at me and asked, “Who’s paying you to give a shit?”

“Vance can’t say, client privilege”

Pauly leans back and opens his desk drawer, and the next thing I see is my sawed off shotguns twin aimed squarely at my face. “I asked you nicely, and now I’m telling you…who da fuck you working for?”

Irrefutable truths about being unemployed.

I have been gainfully unemployed for a month now and whereas I am not ready for polyester and paper hats I can do that when it becomes necessary for a cash flow. But I have been observing a lot of really weird things that I didn’t see while I was busy working.

Running errands; you would think that once 9am rolled around the streets would be a tad more empty. But I realized that I was not the only person trying to take advantage of down time to run errands. Did you know that old people come out in DROVES during the 9am to 2pm daylight hours? Well they do and they drive worse then they do on Sunday. At least on Sunday they have an agenda, go to church, go have breakfast at Denny’s, maybe Perkins depending on when their social security check has come in, and then head home to watch the game on TV while napping until 4 when they get up and eat dinner.
During the week they have a vague idea what they are doing, but they can’t seem to make a decision and they spend the majority of their day clogging the streets while driving in what I believe to be random concentric circles, because they haven’t organized their coupons good enough to make a comprehensive shopping, social club, coffee clutch, agenda and have to back track a lot. This isn’t too bad if you live in a town of 40K people, but when you live in a sizeable “city” this creates a metric ass load of trauma for the regular people who are just trying to get shit done.

Spending Money; I never realized how much money it cost me to go to work. I got paid on the 6th and I still have ½ that check left. And yes I have curbed some spending but not all of it. I used to blow through my checks like monopoly money. Gas, Lunches, snacks, bullshit that I thought was necessary, I find out that not only is none of it necessary, I am also being more green, by not driving as much and reducing my carbon footprint.

Honey-do List; I have got more done around my house in the last month then I have gotten done in the last 3 years. It is awesome. AND the bonus here my wife is LOVING all of the bitchen things I have completed.

Being Healthy; Yes it is true, lack of work makes you healthier. Gone are the days of fast food and canned crap. Now I do some real cooking with real food and it is healthier, and better for me. I also spend a HELL of a lot more time in the basement moving heavy weights around, preparing for the old guy invitational power lifting tournament.

Meditation and contemplation; Having some “spare” time in my day has allowed me to do some deep thinking, and life affirming contemplation. What do I want to do with the next 50 years? How long will it take some company to realize that what I have to offer them no one else has, and they will be missing the boat if they don’t hire me? Where did all of these dirty girls come from that are all naked in the interwebs? They weren’t around when I was in my teens and twenties, where the fuck did they come from?

Facebook is a TOOL; Yes that is right, facebook isn’t just a nice toy that you can keep track of friends and family or answer a seemingly endless string of top 5 lists, you can actually use it to do business. For instance yesterday I hooked up a friend with another friend so he can get started on buying a new house and if my house hunting friend says he was referred to the agent by my Wife, well she gets a referral bonus….25% of the real estate agents commission….which in California, depending on the house could be $4K-$9K…..not so bad for chatting to old chums on the FB (that is what the cools kids call it)

There are a lot of other things that I have noticed but if I tell you know what the hell would be the incentive to come back tomorrow?

Vance is about wrapped up, so look for the exciting ending coming soon!

I now leave you with a picture I took in Wisconsin back in Feb. This guy built this for what I can only assume is for parades and photo shoots.

Tig screamed back “Don’t shoot, you fucking piñata heads!, you’ll hit me!”
Jose and Juan froze, Juan still crying with his pepper laden face still burning like the day after a jalapeno eating contest, and Jose, just lay there grasping his knees in pain “Madre de dios!”
I walked out using Tig as a tiny shield. I stopped at the bar and took the hand cannon out of ½ blind Juan’s hands, I didn’t want to leave them armed with more than that had when they came in, and I knew I sure the hell didn’t want that gargoyle to wake up with a split lip, PMS AND a .50 caliber Desert Eagle…Vance lives on the edge, but that was just lunacy.
“Vance doesn’t want anyone to leave this shit hole for 5 minutes! I’ll drive up hwy 513 and drop Tig at the phone booth, how you find him, Vance leaves up to how well you listen to these instructions”
“Do as he say! Do as he say”
That was a pretty good Sheriff Bart impersonation Tig!” I say as we walk out to get into the Betsy the Goat.
“Fuck you Cracker, when I get through with you you’ll wish I was never born!”
“Sorry Tig you have to be this high to threaten Vance”
I toss Tig into the passenger seat and fire up the old GTO Betsy. As I tear out of the parking lot I spray gravel and get squirrely. God I love this car.
So as I drove and tried to block out Tig’s constant chatter and idle threats I had to do some thinking, first what was that tasty dish’s name that spanked me with the canoe paddle last time I was at the cabin? She was a beautiful blonde Swedish goddess type, well over 6 foot tall and built like one of the Alps….I was hoping to run into her again as I made my way up to the cabin and see Mike. Second, how did all this fit together? Was Pauly just a distributor? Did he have an inside man at the port authority?
I noticed that I had almost passed the phone booth where I said I was going to leave Tig , so I slowed down a bit, looked at Tig, all wrapped up like a burrito, and said “don’t for get to tuck and roll, try bending your knees when you land” Tig’s eyes got as big around as dinner plates and he started squealing like a little girl. I reached over and grabbed the door handle, and pushed Tig out.
As I looked into the rear view mirror I saw his tiny body skip and bounce right up to the edge of the phone booth…in horse shoes that shot would be worth 2 points.
Sierra Minerals was just past Reno up 395. It was an old Silver mine that they had reopened 15 years ago when a freak earthquake uncovered a vein of borax or some such shit, I heard it on the radio during a workout. As I pointed Betsy south I thought I better give Watts a call. I dug into my pocket looking for his card, not in the right pocket, not in either back pockets, where the hell did that card go. …Then it hit me, that 2 mins I was knocked out, that chump must have taken a souvenir.
Damnit.
So no call to Watts, a new lead at the mines, and I needed a power bar and a water.
45 minutes later I pull into the parking lot of the head offices of Sierra Mineral Mining Corp. As I walk into the front door I am greeted by a sight that would have made the masters weep. She was bronze, her black hair glimmered even under the harsh fluorescent lights, her immense chest was straining to bust out of her tight white blouse and then she smiled and the sun emanated from her mouth.
Vance was in a seriously deep case of lust.
”Welcome to Sierra Minerals, how can I help you?” Her voice had the unmistakable trace of a Polynesian accent, and my temperature shot up 5 degrees
“Vance needs to have your phone number and a meeting with Pauly”
“hmmm, Well Vance can have whatever he wants, my number is 513-4653, and I’ll get Pauly for you, please have a seat.”
As I sat down she turned to the left and I noticed that she was wearing a short skirt and as she stood she gave me a peek at what I would be getting when I called….Island Smoothy with a hint of coconut oil, My favorite.
I took in my surroundings as I waited. The office was like every other office I had seen in any corporate environment, harsh and bad for morale. I could never work in a place like this. If I did, I would welcome a disgruntled worker bursting in and killing me. I have a bit of a problem with people making counterfeit liquor having anything resembling a corporate office with a hot secretary.

I am tired, I will get back to the story asap, but for now I am asleep.

Well, this may come as a shock to some people but Last Wednesday, after a long and horrible road trip to California, where I worked 17 out of 18 days, got tired of being berated, treated like a second class citizen, and watching my Chief act like a spoiled, petulant 5 year old.

So I quit.

Cleaned my desk out, wrote a letter of resignation, and waited for the HR director to come in so I could give it to her. They accepted, and I am looking for a new job.

I have some voice over work ...possibly...this weekend, and I am looking to open a gym..old school style. So anyone in KC who wants to get strong by turn of the century methods...just check the site, and I'll let you know when I am up and running.

If you have something else you want to do, let me know!

I have the time.

We interrupt this story for an honest to god update of Nightmare's life.

I am busy. I have been flying all over the country since November, and I am back on the road in the morning. I am flying to Sacramento in the morning for two reasons.

One is bad, one could be life changing.

First the Bad.
I have a friend who was diagnosed with cancer last sept. they thought They got it all, two weeks ago they gave him two months. I am going to say good bye.

The Life Changing reason.

I'm going to see if an E-friend is compatible in real life for a possible business venture where I franchise his ideas, concepts and life plans in a new style of gym that centers around being strong and healthy and less about looking like you are strong and healthy. To see what I am doing go here And then buy his book and look for a way to change your life. Darrin, I'm talking to you!

The reason that this gym feels right to me is because every since I quit playing football I have been missing the camaraderie of the "team" and this place replaces it. There are no mirrors, Mr. Conrad says the people who need the gym the most ALREADY have body image issues, and don't need a reminder when they work out trying to change those issues. It is also an art gallery and the occasional live music venue.

It is a renaissance gym using archaic tools and fun. I want to spread that fun.

So for the 4 people looking for Chapter 11 of Vance Manion Private Eye and Personal Strength Coach, it is coming...sit tight I have other shit on my mind.

Does anyone remember when I said just a few months ago that enough was enough? And people repeated that "god only gives you what you can handle..the rest makes you stronger"...How much fucking stronger do I fucking need to be? Seriously would someone please call their imaginary sky friend off my ass because I'm fixing to send Thor back over there and put the Hammer on him.