Best Lines: “That’s Cajun Spice.”

Right after I graduated from Yale, there was a massive wave of weddings as college sweethearts tried to give it a go in the real world — or, as my four-year-old boy likes to say, “for real life.”  I was clueless about weddings.  Honestly, I don’t think I’d ever been to one my entire life until I graduated from college.  My parents both had very small families and relatively few friends. 

I had no idea about wedding etiquette and I recall today with much shame a wedding invitation that I didn’t even have the decency to RSVP “no” to.  I had decided (in my own mind) not to go.  It was in Detroit or someplace out of the way like that and what was the big deal anyway?  My friend (the bride to be) called me a few days before the wedding. 

“Are you coming?” she demanded.  “We haven’t heard from you.”   

“Um, no, I guess not,” I said in the halting tone of voice used by someone gradually coming to the realization that they have fucked up royally.

One wedding that I didn’t miss was held in New Orleans, one of America’s great cities.  My friend, Christine, was getting married to a complete lunatic named Tom.  I always carried a torch for Christine.  She was a Southern girl — smart, pretty, funny, the whole package.  I never did anything about it, of course, but then was horrified to think she was going to marry someone that I didn’t know very well at all, but who seemed like a bit of a jerk, at least compared to me.  (I believe they are still married, some 20 years later.  Guess I was wrong.  Or Christine really likes jerks.)

Anyway, I flew down to New Orleans for the wedding and was pretty much hammered for the duration of the weekend.  It’s not hard to do in New Orleans, of course, where you can walk down the street with a drink in your hand or in both hands, for that matter.  (They should try this in Baghdad.  Why blow yourself to smithereens when you’ve got a nice little buzz going for yourself?  Get McCrystal on the horn, stat.)

The night of the wedding merely ratcheted up the drunkeness to a new level.  The groom had his arm in a sling, having fallen off the roof of a house the previous night at his bachelor party.  (Dude, you NEVER schedule the bachelor party that close to your wedding, come on.) 

At some point, my dear friend, Liam, and I were wandering around the streets of the French Quarter, looking for something to eat.  I’m guessing it was about 2:00 a.m. and we had it in our alcohol-soaked heads that we wanted to experience some real New Orleans barbecue.  I remember (vaguely) deciding this while sitting on a park bench eating beignets from Cafe du Monde.  I believe I burned my fingers reaching into the bag of beignets and not really caring because they were SO DAMN GOOD.

But it wasn’t barbecue.  And so Liam and I set off into the New Orleans night.  We asked a few locals where to go.  By this time, it was probably about 3:00 a.m. and, even in the Big Easy, most of the places to which we were directed were closed.  We ended up VERY far away from the French Quarter, wandering around in search of one last mythical barbecue joint.  I’m not sure how we didn’t get killed.  Two fancy white boys from Yale.  Drunk off our asses.  Lost and well outside the tourist district (which itself isn’t the safest place on Earth).

But there is a God and apparently he likes white boys from Yale and he LOVES barbecue because we found the place and it was OPEN, baby.  To call this place a hole in the wall is to disparage all other holes in the wall around the world.  The entire place basically consisted of a giant fat man standing behind a little glass counter.  No tables, no chairs.  Nothing. 

“We want some genuine New Orleans barbecue!” we said, thrilled to have found this place, any place, really, that would satisfy our fix. 

The man served us some chicken.  We stood there on the other side of the counter and started eating. 

“Holy shit, that’s good,” I said, or maybe Liam said it, I don’t really remember.

“Mm-hmm,” the fat man responded.  “That’s Cajun spice.”

Liam and I still use this line with each other today, typically to indicate that something is excellent or, alternatively, disastrous.  A pretty girl walks by.  That’s Cajun spice.  A pretty girl walks by and you have a giant booger hanging out of your nose.  That’s Cajun spice, too.

I’m laughing as I type this and wondering if it will make sense to anybody but me and Liam.  I guess I don’t care. 

Because that’s Cajun spice.

Best Lines: “You Ate Your Own Heini?”

My son is three, my daughter is eight, and I am 41, but we all love “Phineas and Ferb,” an animated show on the Disney Channel, which offers a little something for everybody.

Phineas and Ferb are brothers and the show is set during their seemingly endless summer vacation. For kicks, they think of incredibly elaborate things to do, like building a roller coaster in their back yard. Their older sister, Candace, lives for the day that she will be able to bust Phineas and Ferb to Mom and Dad, but it never quite works out that way.

The boys have a pet platypus named Perry, who doubles as a secret agent charged with foiling the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz. (One of my favorite moments in every episode comes when these cheery female voices sing the evil doctor’s corporate jingle: “Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated.”)

A few months back, my kids started saying the phrase, “You ate your own heini?” and I had no idea what they were talking about except that it seemed to crack them up to no end. One day recently, we were watching “Phineas and Ferb” and my daughter gushed, “This is the heini episode!”

As it turned out, Dr. Doofenshmirtz zapped Perry with a machine that encased the platypus in a thick coating of chocolate. Doofenshmirtz exults in his triumph and plans to unleash his machine on the entire planet. But Perry emerges to battle him once again. Doofenshmirtz, who speaks with a silly German accent, looks over at the chocolate shell of Perry’s body, where a certain piece of the anatomy has gone missing, allowing him to escape.

“You ate your own heini?” Doofenshmirtz says incredulously and we all laughed long and hard.

It has become a standard phrase of ours whenever we want to express complete shock and surprise at something.

Best Lines… “Your daughter needs open heart surgery.”

OK, this should actually go into the category of “Worst Lines,” but, fortunately, there haven’t been enough of those in my life to justify a category by that name (unless you survey all the women I’ve tried to pick up over the years).  Let me start at the end of the story.  Everything worked out just fine.  So, then, to the beginning…

I wrote some months ago about my daughter’s birth by emergency c-section.  Madeleine was full term, but only weighed in at four pounds, ten ounces.  We were told that she had “intrauterine growth retardation,” which basically means she was not receiving sufficient nutrition in utero.  (It does not mean that she is mentally retarded.  The fetus is smart enough to feed its brain first and fully, though that means there is even less left to go around for the rest of the body.) 

There is this hilarious picture of my wife and me bringing our daughter home from the hospital.  We are posed in front of our house, proudly holding Madeleine in her car seat.  You can barely see her in there.  Some years later, my mom confessed to being scared to hold our daughter, her first grandchild, because she was so tiny. 

Despite all of the early drama, everything was proceeding normally for the first few weeks.  Madeleine wasn’t eating much and wasn’t sleeping well, but nothing that seemed all that extraordinary for first-time parents to deal with.  Then my wife took Madeleine to the pediatrician for her one-month check-up.  She called me in tears to say that the doctor had picked up a heart murmur and had sent them immediately to a pediatric cardiologist at Overlook Hospital, near our home. 

I was working in New York City at the time, more than an hour from the hospital.  My secretary ordered me a car service to speed my trip.  The driver was a Russian fellow, maybe 50 years old.  He asked me where we were headed, and I told him and then told him why in the way that people share very significant things with complete strangers.  He said he had teenage girls and that being a parent could be hard.  “It will work out,” he said and it brought me an odd measure of comfort.

By the time I got to the hospital, the doctor was already doing an ultrasound on Madeleine’s heart.  He provided no running commentary about what we were seeing on the monitor.  Holy shit, I thought, that’s my daughter’s HEART we’re looking at.  The doctor finished the exam and brought us into his office.

Madeleine had four holes between the chambers of her heart, he told us.  Rather than flowing efficiently from chamber to chamber, some of her blood was, in layman’s terms, leaking back and forth between the chambers.  Kids with this condition are often very small and sluggish.  Their hearts must work extra hard to get the right amount of blood pumping through their bodies.  As a result, they burn a lot of calories and they’re always tired because, even at rest, their hearts are working overtime.  Madeleine wasn’t in immediate danger, the doctor said, but her heart WOULD need to be repaired at some point and the repair would need to be done via open heart surgery.

Open WHAT?

My wife recalls it as the single worst moment in her life.  I felt like Wile E. Coyoterunning off a cliff.  For a few seconds, you keep running, not realizing there isn’t ground under you anymore.  Then you look down.  Then you look helplessly straight ahead.  Then you fall, with your eyebrows perhaps staying suspended in middair for a few more seconds before plummenting to the ground with the rest of your body.

We waited until Madeleine was 13 months old before going ahead with the surgery.  The man who did it, Dr. Jan Quaegebeur at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, is widely considered to be the best in his field and is known simply as “Q.”  We were warned ahead of time that his bedside manner might leave something to be desired.   We scheduled several meetings with him prior to the surgery and he canceled on us everytime.  “You’re not trying to make a friend,” a co-worker told me, whose own daughter’s heart had been repaired by Q.

We had two false starts leading up to the surgery.  The first time it was scheduled, our daughter came down with a cold and the surgery was canceled.  The second time, my wife and I had on our surgical scrubs and were minutes away from bringing Madeleine into the operating room when there was a sudden flurry of activity on the ward.  “A heart has just become available,” one of the nurses said to us as she hurried by.  “We’re going to do a transplant.  You should probably just go home.”  (The child who received the heart was only a few weeks old and occupied the bed next to Madeleine’s in the ICU.  He was still there when we left.  As I recall, we either bought him a balloon when we left or gave him Madeleine’s balloons.)

The third time’s a charm, as they say, and it was for us.  My wife and I brought Madeleine into the operating room.  There were lots of people and lots of machines.  I laid Madeleine down on the operating table and gave her a kiss.  She started to cry as they put the mask over her face.  She fell asleep almost immediately. 

“OK, Mom and Dad,” someone said.  “Don’t touch anything on your way out.”

A few hours later, Q walked up to us in the waiting room.  “Everything went fine,” he said.  He’d repaired three of the four holes; the fourth wasn’t big enough to justify the effort.  We shook his hand and he walked away.  It was the first time we’d ever met him.

Young children recover from major surgery remarkably quickly.  Within a day, Madeleine came off the ventilator.  Another day passed and she was sitting up in bed.  By the third day, she was up and about, playing with toys in the hospital playroom. 

We desperately wanted to go home.  I was terrified that something awful was going to happen to Madeleine in the hospital, that she would get an infection or something and everything would come crashing down. 

There’s that great scene in “Jaws” where Quint, played by Robert Shaw, tells Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss about being one of the crew of the USS Indianapolis, the boat that delivered the A-bomb, but was then sunk by a torpedo.  Nine hundred men went into the water and nearly 600 were killed by sharks over the next five days before another ship arrived on the scene.  Quint says it was THEN that he was the most scared, waiting his turn to be plucked out of the water, and that’s just what it felt like.  Madeleine had survived open heart surgery, now let’s GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

We went home on the fifth day after surgery.  As we walked down 165th Street toward the parking lot, I let out a triumphant yell.  We made it.

Today, Madeleine is a healthy and happy seven year old.  You can still see a thin scar about three inches long running down her chest — her “zipper” as we called it when she was younger.  She doesn’t remember the surgery, of course, but we’ve talked to her about it a lot over the years.  We tell her that when the doctors fixed her heart, they put extra love in it.        

Best Lines… “Come On Down!”

This is the third in a series of posts discussing the most memorable lines I’ve heard in my life.

In 1992, shortly after the Rodney King riots, my friend Dave and I traveled to Los Angeles to visit our friend Pete, who was living out there at the time.  Pete couldn’t get time off from work, so Dave and I were on our own during the day.  Pete dropped us off one morning at “Television City,” where you could get tickets to attend tapings of all kinds of different TV shows.  Since we were 23 years old, single, and did not own homes, Dave and I chose “The Price Is Right.”

Every person entering the studio was briefly interviewed.  Where are you from?  What do you do for a living?  And so on.  There were people with Bob Barker t-shirts and hats who had traveled quite a distance just to be on the show.  It was a real scene.

Into the studio we went.  We took our seats, the first four contestants were invited to “Come on down!” and out came Bob Barker.  The place went nuts.  After a few games had been played, Bob uttered those immortal words, “Who’s the next contestant on The Price Is Right?” and, as you’ve probably figured out by now, it was me.  

I can’t say I was all that surprised.  My “interview” had gone well, I thought, and, on a more philosophical level, it was a time in my life when weird things seemed to happen to me fairly often.  Why WOULDN’T I be the next contestant on “The Price Is Right”?

I’ve watched the videotape of my appearance dozens of times.  It is my own personal Zapruder film.  There are many high points, but my run down the aisle is certainly one of them.  My right arm stays thrust in the air the entire time, while my left arm is tucked oddly behind my back.  I am laughing like a complete lunatic.  I take my position on “contestant’s row” next to a young sailor from the Navy.  As the newest arrival, I bid first.  For some reason, I decide to add the word “Bob” to the end of my bid — as in “$750, Bob.”  Every sentence I utter for the rest of my time on the show will end in “Bob.”  I lose.  The next item comes up for bid.  I try the infamous “one dollar more than the highest bidder” trick, but it doesn’t pan out because I am not the final bidder.  We next bid on an apothecary chest and I am, finally, last up.  I bid a dollar more than the Navy guy and he shakes his head in disgust.  I win and head up to the main stage.  I shake Bob’s hand and begin rocking back and forth with the tip of my tongue sticking out of my mouth like I’m some sort of autistic Michael Jordan about to dunk right over Barker’s sorry ass. 

The game I play is called “Make Your Move,” which, in a sign that at least one person on Earth has more free time on his hands than I do, has its own entry on Wikipedia:

“‘Make Your Move’ is played for three prizes – one small prize (worth up to $99), a prize worth between $100 and $999, and a prize worth more than $2,000.  The contestant is shown a board containing a string of nine digits representing the prices of the three prizes placed consecutively. Below the digits are three sliding markers which represent the prizes. The red marker represents the two-digit prize, the yellow marker is the three-digit prize, and the green marker is the four-digit prize.  The contestant must slide the three markers so that each is placed below the correct price for the corresponding prize. All nine digits must be used, as the prices never overlap. If the contestant is correct, they win all three prizes.”

My three prizes are as follows: a manicure set (small prize), a silverware set (medium prize), and a camper (big prize).  The audience screams out advice as I attempt to place the sliding markers in the right spots.  I make my picks… and win all three prizes. 

We move on to ”The Big Wheel,” which will determine who gets to go to the “Showcase” – the final game that is played for the biggest prizes.  The object of ”The Big Wheel” is to get as close to $1.00 as possible in two spins.  If you land on $1.00, or if your two spins add up to $1.00, you win $1,000.  I spin last.  My first spin is a paltry $0.15, which will not get it done.  I spin again.  The wheel comes to a stop on $0.85 and I let out a Braveheart-esque scream for the ages.  I am given a bonus spin.  If the wheel lands on $1.00, I will win an additional $10,000.  I spin, but do not win.   

Onto the Showcase!  I am playing against a girl my age named Becky.  I am the “big winner” of the day, so I have the right to bid on the first showcase or pass.  The first showcase features lots of furniture.  I live in a studio apartment in New York City AND I now own a camper.  I pass to Becky. 

My showcase starts off with a barbeque grill.  Not great.  One of the showgirls walks nearby and I try to strike up a conversation with her.  Clearly traumatized by Bob’s constant, unwanted advances in the dressing room, she shuts me down instantly.  The next item in my showcase is revealed — a motorcycle.  Now we’re talking, brother!  The final item is an African safari.  Sweet!  Bob asks for my bid and I give it my best shot — $14,000.  At this point, I am licking my lips like a madman.  It’s hot up there under all those lights. 

Bob reveals the actual retail price of Becky’s showcase.  She has underbid by several thousand dollars.  I’m going to win, I think to myself.  I’m going to ride my fucking motorcyle across Africa. 

Bob dramatically pulls the price tag of my showcase out of its envelope.  I have OVERBID by $400.  This is the cardinal sin on “The Price Is Right.”  My bid is 100 times more accurate than Becky’s, but she is under and I am over, which means she wins.  A foghorn-like sound blasts through the studio indicating that I have overbid, that I am a loser.  Becky’s friend rushes to the stage to join her in celebration.  I am hustled off the stage and immediately asked to sign a variety of tax-related forms acknowledging that I have won about $12,000 worth of cash and prizes, which Uncle Sam treats as income.  (I later learned that the real-world value of my prizes was vastly lower than the prices quoted on the show.  I was able to sell my camper, allegedly worth over $9,000, for about half that to Carl’s Acres of Trailers in California.  I never set foot in it.) 

Dave and I eventually emerged back out into the L.A. sun.  I called my parents to tell them the news.  They chastised me for being drunk so early in the day, but, ultimately, I was able to convince them that I was telling the truth. 

The show itself was broadcast several weeks later when I was back in New York.  I did not have a TV in my office, so I walked a few blocks to a nearby electronics store.  They had dozens of TVs on display, all tuned to the same channel.  I asked the salesman if he wouldn’t mind putting on “The Price Is Right” for a while, which he did, so I was able to experience my 15 minutes of fame in a very special way. 

I gave the manicure set to my girlfriend at the time.  Years later, we gave the apothecary chest to our babysitter, and we still use the silverware to this day.  I’ve never owned a motorcycle, nor have I gone on an African safari. 

My dad, who regularly watches the Game Show Network, says he has seen me in re-runs a few times.  “I always hope you’re going to win that Showcase,” he told me once.

Best Lines… “What’s that for?”

This is the second in a series of posts discussing the most memorable lines I’ve heard in my life.

The father of one of my college roommates, Dave, owned a high-end photo studio in NYC.  Their claim to fame was that they used to produce those enormous photo-ads for Kodak (I think) that would wrap around the walls of the main terminal inside Grand Central Station.   

Well, that gave the roommates and me an idea, since our dorm room happened to have high ceilings and a very large, empty wall in the living room… We would take a photo of ourselves (natch) and Dave’s father would make a giant print of it that we would hang on the wall.  I’m not sure why we thought this would be funny, but we did.   

So the four of us got dressed up one day and our friend, Christine, took a whole bunch of pictures of us in various poses — sport jackets slung rakishly over our shoulders, crammed into a phone booth, staring profoundly off into space (in an “homage” to the cover of U2’s “The Joshua Tree,” which was huge that year), and so on. 

We picked our favorite shot — the four of us just sort of standing there looking at the camera, no smiles – and Dave’s father dutifully turned it into a print that I’m guessing was 10-11 feet high and 6-7 feet wide.  We hung it on the wall, covered it up with some sheets, and invited everyone over for the “unveiling.”  (“An exercise in hubris,” I believe it read on the formal invitations that we sent out.) 

A few weeks later, Dave scored two front row seats to “Phantom of the Opera,” which, at the time, was the hottest ticket on Broadway.  Instead of inviting one of his beloved roommates, he (quite reasonably) invited this girl he was interested in, Laura.  Prior to departing for NYC, Dave invited her over to our room (she had not attended the unveiling).  Laura took one look at the giant poster on the wall and said rather sharply, “What’s that for?”

This may seem like a perfectly reasonable question now, but, at the time, it was seen as a clear omen that Dave’s romantic evening in NYC was going to tank (it did) and that Laura was devoid of a sense of humor or any other redeeming quality.  (I’m sure she was lovely; I never really got to know her.)

Today, my college roomies and I still use “What’s that for?” in situations where someone is completely missing the point… even if there is none.   

Best Lines… “Two beers, please?”

The first in a series of posts discussing the most memorable lines I’ve heard in my life.

It was 1989 and I was heading into NYC with two of my college roommates, Liam and Dave, and one of Dave’s friends, Chris Knapp.  (Chris was nicknamed “Knapper,” prompting my girlfriend at the time to ask him if he took a lot of naps.)  The destination? The Bottom Line, the legendary downtown night club.  The problem?  We were all under 21, meaning that, legally, we should not have been allowed in. 

Our strategy was simple… and lame.  We did not have fake IDs.  No, instead, we had driven all the way from New Haven to New York on a Saturday night simply to see if we would be stopped at the door of The Bottom Line or not.

I’ve always looked a bit older than I am.  This sucks now that I’m 39 (and rising, baby), but came in quite handy during the years leading up to the magical 21.  I was assigned to lead the charge and made it into the club without a problem.  Dave and Liam followed with equal success.  Ah, but Knapper was not so lucky — perhaps because he looked like he was about 13.  The bouncer asked him for his ID and Knapper just shook his head.

And here is what separates youth from age.  Rather than leaving the club, giving Knapper a high-five, and taking another shot at it someplace else, the three of us simply waved at him and went about our evening. 

We sat down at a table and a waitress approached us.  “What would you guys like to drink?” she asked.  Somehow this question — perhaps the most frequently asked question in the history of nightclubs — sent the three of us into a panic.  While a cold one would have been nice, we were there for the music, not to get drunk.  Was there some second layer of security at work, where the waitress might ask to see our IDs if we asked for alcohol?

Dave finally spoke up and I honestly don’t remember what he ordered.  I think it was a Coke and it certainly is funnier that way.  The waitress then turned to Liam.  He looked at me, took a deep breath, and said, “Two beers, please?” with his voice jumping an octave on the “please.”  The waitress didn’t bat an eye (of COURSE she didn’t!) and Liam and I were soon enjoying our beers, while Dave nursed his Coke. 

“Two beers, please?” has become a running joke among the three of us since that night.  We trot it out whenever we need a phrase that captures the remarkable awkwardness and stupidity of our college years.