Come Here, Go Away
Come here, chorus of De La Soul
Go away, dog poo daubing every square of sidewalk pavement on the north side of President Street.
Come here, Yankees home game against the Royals on a perfect sunny spring day.
Go away, That Cheap Seats Guy who is embarrassing his children with his bellowed “jokes,” his bellowed cheers, and his bellowed nicknames that, no, will not catch on no matter how loudly he screams them; who is embarrassing Don Mattingly by wearing a Mattingly jersey, because for some reason, That Cheap Seats Guy is always wearing either a Mattingly jersey or a Munson jersey, and somewhere in the great beyond, at a card game with Payne Stewart and Patsy Cline and The Big Bopper, Thurman is glaring down all “leave me out of it, dickhead”; and who looks like a cross between a ferret and Tony Danza. Switch to lemonade and shut up.
Come here, Windex wipes. I generally try to avoid buying products with the word “wipe” in them, because: ew, “wipe.” On the other hand: hee, “wipe.” But I have to give it up for these wipes (ew…hee!), which are all the nifty cleaning-power goodness of Windex, with none of the nose-tickling blowback, in a resealable pouch.
Go away, cloggy sink that necessitated a wits’-end plunging over the weekend, during which I gagged about eight times due to drain grodiness thereby dislodged, and about which I will not go into detail except to say that whatever gnarl you imagine, tint it Scope green, and then thank me politely for the best diet aid you’ve ever known. And the sound effects, good grief. Next time I have to plunge something, I’ll wear my iPod, because I never remember that plunging sounds like squeezing a half-empty ketchup bottle, but times a billion, and it is so squoogy and disgusting and loud and…not ketchup, and…barf. And then it’s time to clean up, and…wipes. (Ew.)
(…Hee.)
Come here, Jell-O pudding cups with chocolate and vanilla pudding in them. …No. Closer.
Go away, cat that batted an empty pudding cup way under the sofa while I didn’t feel well, because I just left it there for a day until I could work up the energy to fish it out, and in that time, it attracted a silverfish EEEEEEYIIIIIIIIIIKES huhhhh-HAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH, so when I say “go away,” what I mean is “go catch that thing, eat the shit out of it, and tell all its friends to stay away from here.”
Come here, William Poundstone
Go away, Stephen King’s relentlessly folksy expressions, with which I have become intensely annoyed, and yet obsessed, in the same way that I could never not read “The Family Circus.” Recent offenses include:
“I would walk over my grandmother rather than miss an episode” (of, for the record, 24 — dude is high)
myriad uses of “ain’t”
“hep”
calling something “a hoot”
“passing [x] like a kidney stone”
“tank-town palooka” instead of “boxer”
“dig,” used as a command
“stewbums” instead of “drunks”
addressing readers or unseen third parties as “Freckles” and “Grasshoppah”
“you big-city people”
“a real Cadillac”
“dead as the dodo”
“like watching rats drown in a drainpipe”
“I do not cockadoodie where I eat,” the esteemed runner-up in today’s Most Painfully Folksy Expression contest, and then the winner…
“Slap my tail and call me stinky”
I will do no such thing, sir, not least because I have never heard that locution before and do not know what it means, exactly, except to imply quite strongly that you come from a folksy part of the country and consider yourself “just folks,” but the fact is, you’re a best-selling author of several decades’ standing, so give the “I put my L.L. Bean discount-outlet flannel-lined simple-woodsman pants on one leg at a time” over-sell a rest for five minutes and just write it straight or I’ll folksy you over the head with a hardback copy of Walden.
Come here, potato kugel.
Go away, lack of impulse control. I ate so much potato kugel that I had to readjust the seat in the car on the way home. I think I even threw off the alignment.
Come here, little grey cat that lives in the Zipcar parking lot.
Go away, fellow Zipcar customers who always, always leave one solitary McDonald’s French fry moldering in the console, always. What is that? Just throw them on the ground — they’ll biodegrade! Stop leaving them there and gaslighting me with your careless ant magnets! …Seriously. Every time. Every single time.
Come here, that drunk girl outside my window the other night who delivered a too-lengthy and slurry, but quite sensible, monologue about how someone needed to figure out a way to put alcohol into candy. Your friend didn’t seem all that supportive, but I’ve totally heard worse ideas than Snickers 151. Next time you come to the nabe, ring my bell and we’ll discuss.
Go away, sketchy Thai food that kept me awake to hear that brainstorm in the first place. Two out of three people at the table had an intestinal “event” afterwards. Bad shrimp! No biscuit! And speaking of that, chef at Tanterne, lighten up on the sprouts. That plate looked like a vegan exploded.
Come here, Easter jellybeans.
Go away, bad Jelly Belly combos. The other day I got a Satanically awful combo of, like, blueberry, hot buttered popcorn, and…I don’t even know, Cajun catfish or something, but it tasted like Port Elizabeth, NJ and got stuck in my teeth for about a year. Brutal.
Come here, Brooklyn Industries sweat-skirt. So cute! So inexpensive! So pocket-y! Please come here in even more colors since I already bought all the ones available!
Go away, espadrilles. And take your time-consuming, unflattering lace-up cousins with you. I will not wear you with a shirt; I will not wear you with a skirt. I will not wear you with Bermuda shorts, J. Crew catalog, my god, so get off the rock; I will not wear you…er, with a frock. I will not wear you and eat ham; I will not wear you, Sam I Am!
Come here, Rosalie Aprile, my favorite tertiary Sopranos character. Every time a scene with her in it starts, I yell out “RO!” Her “…aiy” eyebrow is an example for us all. Love her.
Go away, Ace Young. You seem like a nice boy, but don’t tell Queen what to do. And don’t sing.
Come here, Dane Cook.
Go away, Bacardi and Cola. First of all, those commercials should be way funnier than they actually are and I keep getting disappointed. Second of all, the jingle is maddeningly catchy, and now I’m singing it to random pairs of items all damn day. “Tooth-brush and! Some tooth-paste! They get the job done!”
Come here, Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai protein drink that is so yummy.
Go away, bedhead. I know, I know, you “just got back.” I didn’t miss your ass, for one, and for two, bedhead with a bob is maybe kind of charming, sort of, but bedhead with a quarter inch of hair is “locked ward at Bellevue.” I looked like a digested mitten this morning. Beat it.
Come here, Thymes fir-scented room spray. It’s a living room and an enchanted forest!
Go away, leaky pen. “[Schporffle]!” Tell it to the garbage, Bic Bomb.
Come here, excellent blogs of Alan and Matt.
Go away, bras I totally forgot I had hanging all “hey, sailor” on my bedroom door when Alan stopped by.
Come here, everyone at the bank who heard my ringtone and all promptly started bugging out to it in line. It’s Super Mario, and I’m not the only awesome one in Cell Phone Land.
Go away, “My Humps.” Worse than Bacardi and Cola, that shit.
Come here, sandals weather.
Go away, suicide-cluster thing where one pair of socks blows a hole, and then five more blow holes in two days, and then every light bulb in the house goes kerflooey even though the lamps don’t get equal use, and then the earrings have to get in on the act and start dropping beads and unlooping, and then after months without a paper cut, I have four at the same time, all on knuckles — two of them on the same knuckle, oriented in different directions — and I broke two drinking glasses in three days, and a pair of scissors.
Come here, cats.
Go away, cats.
(“The cats and! This di-et! Won’t get the job done!”)
April 17, 2006
Tags: curmudgeoning movies music
