Author Archive

You complete me. Now get your ass over here.

This is how the day began at my Misinterpreters’ Disorder Anonymous Meeting:  

Me (to group):                      Hello, my name is David Hardiman and I suffer from  Misinterpreters’ Disorder.

Co-sufferers (collectively):   Hello David.

Me (visibly shaken):               What do you mean “Hello David?” What are you trying to say? I wish I remained anonymous.

With Misinterpreter’s Disorder (MD), the big things (relationships, schooling and parenting) I got. It was the little things (simple greetings, stop signs and expiration dates) I just couldn’t process. They took on a different and wholly unexpected meaning not at all related to my drug use (if you can call watching Hogan’s Heroes drug use). This newly discovered disorder is now covered by ObamaCare along with treatment for people who still belong to the Mark Hamill Fan Club. MD sufferers often misconstrue the cues in their environment and interpret them incorrectly. For example, the other night at a poetry reading, a woman leaned over and quietly sneezed in my ear. Not wanting to embarrass her I calmly said, “God bless you madam.” She looked me at me kind of funny and said, “I didn’t sneeze. I was just asking if you enjoyed haiku.” Read the rest of this entry »

Author and lady-Viking Siri Hustvedt

Reviewer extraordinaire and lady-Lesbian Terry Castle

That line is from the movie Jaws, where an incredulous Richard Dreyfus surveys the peculiar wreckage of a shattered boat and announces, “This was no boating accident.” And in a sense this could apply to Terry Castle’s review of Siri Hustvedt’s novel The Blazing World. That is, at first glance the decimated boat looks just like any other wreck, but upon closer inspection Dreyfus observes the imprints of shark teeth and the telltale splinters and concludes otherwise. Similarly, at first glance, Castle’s well formatted review looks just like any other review, but upon closer inspection, we see the imprints of snark teeth and the telltale heart of the reviewer and I conclude: “This is no book review.” It’s something much more interesting than that and I was on to it early – I could smell the blood in the water.

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Red Loin Hotels: Championing Gay Geriatric Sexuality for almost 2 weeks (In other words, we’re trying to increase our occupancy rate)

No matter how old you are, age is something you always have.  And as you approach your twilight years Red Loin Hotel chain recognizes the special needs homosexuals of a certain age may require. And that’s why not only are we gay-friendly, but we’re also LGBT-compliant even though we have no idea what the B or the T stand for. Our marketing department can worry about that. We simply want to get the message out to people who enjoy similarly equipped people, that we’ve taken concrete steps to ensure your stay with us is both memorable and unforgettable; even though memorable and unforgettable both mean the same thing. Our marketing department can worry about that. We had earlier taken wooden steps to ensure your stay with us was memorable, but we found the concrete steps were more enduring and so will you.

Therefore it is with great pleasure we present Red Loin’s gay-friendly amenities:  Read the rest of this entry »

Zen and the Art of Nothing.

I know what I want to say I just don’t know how to say it. So in this case we’ll just let nature adore a vacuum. And don’t bother depressing the Read the rest of the entry>> link below – it’s depressed enough.

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My Gym is great, but the basketballs are way to small.

Perspective

The 2016 Apple iCar. Think differently. Way, way differently. Way, way, way differently..

Apple Corporation whose Midas touch has yielded an unbroken string of innovative and advanced products has whiffed mightily on its latest venture: the Apple iCar. I’m sad to report this Apple is a lemon. Although the iCar was Voted Car of the Year for 2015, what Apple failed to mention is that it was voted car of the year by the National Towing Association.  

As expected Apple has made the shopping experience unique. Instead of buying the car, you “bob” for it. The company announced a hybrid model whose gasoline engine is supplememted by the buyers own sense of self-importance. The iCar comes in two versions prompting one marijuana-dazed customer to comment, “Wow man. It comes in 2 virgins. That’s frickin’ amazing. How’d they get it to do that?”   

Each iCar contains an authenticated tear-stained note from a desperate Foxconn worker who helped build it in China. These workers are constantly reminded that Apple means Jobs. This wordplay confused the workers causing one to remark, “Of course Apple means Jobs. But is it Steven or the actual job?”

A test drive revealed the Apple iCar  possesses crisp handling, but is decidedly low-tech. Evidently engineers let one of the cars ferment. And that’s how one bad car spoiled the whole bunch of them. The vehicle does, however, come with a touch screen that allows for “good touches.” Or for an extra fee you can get a touch screen that allows for “bad touches.”  The new iCar is powered by a search engine that doesn’t seem to know where it’s going. As if it’s always looking for something. Apple says the car should be parked in a cool, dry cellar. If it’s left outside too long it tends to get mealy.

One bright spot for Apple is the iCar’s crashworthiness. The car is dent-resistant, although it does bruise rather easily. To restore the finish to its usual luster just fog it with your breath and buff it out. If you’re offered one (especially by a saleslady named Eve), you’d better think twice about sinking your teeth into it. 

I hope you find these apple metaphors a-peeling.

Better luck on their next venture – the iCondom. Supposedly this one also comes in 2 models…I mean, if you’re lucky.

I get it. Thumbs up.

The theme of this piece is me. How appropriate. Theme, the me, me. It’s all one idea in 5 letters. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t about me. But how did I, David Nostradamus, get discovered at the advanced age of 55? I would never have predicted it. 55 is a time when men of a certain ­­­­­­age are coping with their wife’s menopause. Not me. Instead I became incrementally famous – not virally, but larvally.

With so much noise in the channel how does a Baby Boomer compete with InstaBook and FaceChat? The answer is, you don’t compete. You transcend. I didn’t so much go viral as I went larval. You see I’m a slow burn. Some might even say I’m an acquired taste and now that I’m well-aged and have developed complex flavonoids, I’m very tasty indeed. And this is not just wishful thinking; it’s an empirical judgment. For example, at a recent barrel tasting of my work at the offices of New Yorker Magazine in Altoona, PA, all agreed my latest think piece on Monica Lewinsky went down very easy. And even though it’s a stale topic and a cheap joke it was unable to mask the superb notes of organic brilliance and herbaceous luminosity in each sampled sentence. These palette pleasing phrases indicated the indigenous soil from which the story sprang was not only incredibly fertile, but also really dirty. And I had no trouble dishing the dirt. Read the rest of this entry »

Early DC. Virginia eventually reclaimed its unused gift west of the Potomac.

Dear Maria,

Good evening and hello. We’ll just assume it’s evening. It reads better that way. It appears your next adventure in this journey we call “life” remands you to the District of Columbia (originally a 10 mile square tilted cube until 1846 when Virginia retroceded its portion back into the state leaving Maryland’s cession as the location of present day DC.). You are both fortunate and burdened to have your intellectual capacities exercised to the degreee they will be in DC (The extra e in degreee was intentional, although it serves no purpose, in much the same way long parenthetical entries are more confusing than enlightening – agreed? Agreed!). Yes Maria, your lot in life will soon revolve around DuPont Circle (formerly DuPont Square, but numerous revolutions have rounded its corners rendering it DuPont Circle). Read the rest of this entry »

Phil Silvers: A star of the species Hamus Actorum.

Among the constellation of worthy subjects demanding to be illuminated, Phil Silvers is not one of them. Not that he’s unworthy. But Phil Silvers. Really? He’s a fossilized relic leftover from the Vaudevillian Era – a prehistoric time when tummlers, crooners and acrobats performed on poorly lit, unmicrophoned stages. As you may recall from your high school Celebrity Geology classes, the Vaudevillian Era was sandwiched between the Shakespearian Period – a period marked by proto-thespians in unmolted drag crawling out from under the curtain and soliloquizing anyone at the Globe who would listen, and the Television Epoch when shadowy 2-dimensional images ruled the airwaves and were at the apex of the entertainment food chain.

Phil Silvers barely registers with me and probably doesn’t move the needle with most of you either. Although justly beloved by many, he was the kind of entertainer I despised as a child (me being the child here, not Phil) for one reason – utterly predictable humor. Mr. Silvers strutted around ‘neath the proscenium arch like the well-trained pro that he was: hitting his marks and delivering his punchlines. He larded his performances with super-sized gestures and lusty dollops of feigned disbelief. His predictable repertoire of hammy attributes only served to harden my bias against the so-called other white meat. He was like a very uncool uncle who you hoped would just leave the pink box of goodies from Lyncourt Bakery on the kitchen table, then get back in his 9 mpg, 1973 Plymouth Gran Fury and drive his insincere persona back to Weedsport where his “scenery eating” talents weren’t much appreciated either. And to think that Phil Silvers is responsible for today’s microwave oven technology, just boggles the mind. He isn’t responsible for it. But to think he is – oy vey. Read the rest of this entry »