Why We Suck

by DR. DENIS LEARY

  You’d have to pay a hooker an extra twenty grand for that. Maybe more.

  Just ask Eliot Spitzer. He probably knows.

  Which reminds me—just one day after the world burst open with the wicked news of his decade-long, under the radar, sick and expensive liaisons with online ladies of the night—after everyone from Letterman to Leno to the scions of the Catholic Church and Hebrew heads of scholarly study had chastized him in disgust and disbelief—when all of his trusted aides had fallen by the wayside with nasty asides and angry bromides—when even his wife had given up being photographed in the ex-gov’s disgraced presence—the paparazzi caught him out for a leisurely walk along Park Avenue with his one and only remaining confidant—his dog.

  His dog could care less who he hired to fuck or how he fucked them or where or when or how often. If the dog had been along for the trysts he would have happily sat in the corner of whichever five-star hotel suite whiffing sexy whiffs and playing One Dog Toss with a hooker’s bra or Chew Through The Crotch with her discarded panties or seeing how fast he could munch a bunch of sixty-five-dollar-apiece Oreos out of the minibar cabinet.

  Dogs don’t care if you are a hooker or a hater or even Adolf Hitler—it’s all about how you feel to them when they first meet you.

  It’s not a dog-eat-dog world. It’s a dog-eat-cat world.

  Why?

  Because dogs can’t stand cats. And if you have ever known and loved a dog—think about it:

  If a loving, caring creature who trusts you with his life doesn’t care for someone—don’t you get suspicious? Some visitor or friend of a friend who approaches the dog or just enters your house and your dog acts immediately strange and gets his guard up—isn’t there something inside that makes you instantly distrust that person? Yes. It’s true. Because dogs can smell fear, they can sense danger. If that’s the case—why does your dog abruptly wish to kill and/or chase down each and every cat he meets? Let me do the doggie math for you:

  Because your dog knows your cat is evil.

  Your dog knows that any cat alive is only out for its own interests.

  Your dog knows that cats would slink right up to the Devil should he somehow adorn your door, slithering along Satan’s leg—unable or unwilling to differ between Beelzebub himself and you.

  Which brings us to Michael Vick.

  In the dog world, Michael Vick IS the devil.

  An All World Star Quarterback famous for his unbelievable speed and agility and highly rewarded for turning the Atlanta Falcons into an exciting NFL team, Vick’s jerseys and commercials and assorted other endorsement deals made him a multizillionaire almost overnight.

  What was Michael’s response to all the money and the spotlight? 1

  Paying the up-front money, the house bank for the bettors and providing the backyard arena for a dogfighting ring that resulted in countless dog deaths and abuse.

  Dogs fought to the death and the ones who didn’t die but may have been seriously maimed were shot in the head or hung from tree branches or choked until breathless as female dogs were chained to raping posts where the male dogs could have their way.

  Do not YouTube the videos.

  Vick was arrested and charged and did the expected American stepdance of criminal guilt:

  STEP ONE: Deny deny deny.

  STEP TWO: Blame it on friends and family.

  STEP THREE: Blame the media for blowing things out of proportion.

  STEP FOUR: As investigation heats up, blame a “friend gone bad” and a “second cousin.”

  STEP FIVE: As media glare gets worse—break out “can’t a rich black man get some justice?” speech.

  STEP SIX: When confronted with irrefutable evidence and testimony provided by said bad friend and second cousin, blame your actions on booze and pot.

  STEP SEVEN: Go to rehab.

  STEP EIGHT: When rehab stint doesn’t faze judge or make looming prison sentence disappear—find Jesus.

  STEP NINE: Go to church a lot. Toting a Bible. Even on Tuesdays. Jesus this, Jesus that.

  STEP TEN: Convicted and sentenced—and in desperate need to hopefully still be allowed to play football and make millions when you get out of the joint—hold a press conference in which you mention Jesus, apologize to your fans, talk about God, make amends to your family, mention Jesus again and apologize to the owner of the Atlanta Falcons.

  That’s what he did.

  Apologize to everyone he thought was involved in his dirty, filthy, inhumane activities.

  Except dogs.

  He never mentioned the dogs.

  Not once, anywhere along the line.

  Jesus, yes. Dogs—nope.

  Not even a dog named Jesus.

  And there were many members of the media—mostly black—who tried to give Michael Vick an out by saying that people didn’t understand the culture Michael had grown up in, where dogfighting is considered a normal sport.

  Oh really.

  Well, then—here’s the culture I come from:

  Instead of going to prison for a solid eighteen months—where he is hopefully having footballs forced up his ass by heavily tattooed ex-Wu Tang Clan members (very very DRY footballs, by the way)—I offer an alternative.

  Vick—or any other convicted dogfighting czar—doesn’t have to do hard time in the big house. He just agrees to perform in a little charity event that I like to call “Strap A Meat Suit On Michael,” which consists of this:

  1. Sell out Giants Stadium—all proceeds going to buy Snausages, raw-hide bones and multicolored squeaky toys.

  2. Broadcast it live on international TV.

  3. Strap an entire suit made of meat onto Michael Vick OR just have him wear some jogging shorts and a T-shirt and we will attach a sixty-pound pack of assorted juicy beef to him, with a fine filet mignon arranged right around his groin (think of it as an athletic supporter made of steak).

  4. Have him run from one end zone all the way to the other—as fast as he possibly can.

  5. Watch as he tries to avoid the sixty-seven pit bulls and twenty-three Doberman pinschers who have gone unfed for a week and will be 1 running full speed right at him from the opposing forty-five yard line.

  He makes it from one end to the other alive? He gets to go free.

  I’d offer that deal to Michael Vick right now.

  Otherwise?

  Let him finish serving his time.

  And send a feral cat up into his colon to claw the old footballs out.

  CHAPTER 13

  GRANDE VENTE MOCHA OPRAH CHAI

  No, this is not an anti-Starbucks rant.

  I did that already.

  It’s called Coffee Flavored Coffee and it’s on my second album, Lock’N Load. Buy that or the DVD and listen as I wallop my way through nine minutes about bullshit java recipes—nine minutes of caffeinated cobra spew.

  I could update that bit this very second with my thesis on how Starbucks may be responsible for the pussification of America—I reresearch the subject once or twice a week when I stand in line there and listen as some limp-wristed, yellow-Lance-Armstrong-bracelet-wearing, metrosexualhair-goo-sporting, Hillary-Clinton’s-tired-old-ass-worshipping puke spends twelve minutes trying to decide between the Orange Cranberry Vagina Muffin or the Pumpkin Cream Tampon Cake while fingering a Save The Rain Forest Compilation CD featuring Sting, Sheryl Crow, Joni Mitchell, Sting’s Abs, That Hot 19-Year-Old Blonde White English Chick Who Sounds Like Janis Joplin, and Sting’s Penis—who apparently pops out of his master’s yoga pants to sing his new single “How I Have Tantric Sex With Trudie Styler For Seven Straight Hours.”

  Which is amazing.

  Not that the penis can sing—but that he can actually be that horny for Sting’s wife. I mean—seven minutes maybe.

  I guarantee my wife would not be interested in me physically expressing my love for her over the course of seven straight hours—unless six and a half of those involved getting out of bed and cleaning the house.

  Very quietly.
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br />   And while we are on the subject of bullshit—let’s get rid of the term “barista” right the fuck now.

  In the dictionary—not the Starbucks make up your own words dictionary—the Merriam-Webster real life, real words, real definitions dictionary—“barista” is defined as coming from the Italian language and meaning “someone who works behind a bar.”

  Which is big news for a bevy of guys named Sully and Fitzie and Clyde and Reggie who have been serving soda glasses full of Canadian Club with Budweiser chasers and Jell-O shots and Colt 45 Malt Liquor for decades thinking of themselves as nothing more than trumped-up bouncers with two dishrags and a baseball bat under the counter.

  Hey guys—you are no longer just bartenders. Yer baristas!

  Run down to Starbucks and get a goddam raise, a sixteen-thread Egyptian-cotton apron and a free copy of Mitch Albom’s new book Five Dead Guys Who Are Dating My Dead Mom!

  Barista is meant to conjure up images of a profoundly dedicated coffee sommelier who busies him- or herself with a constant search for the perfect mug of espresso-tinted java with just the right hint of cream combined with enough of the individual bean’s aroma to justify its taste on your eager and expensive tongue.

  That ain’t what it means no more.

  Thanks to Starbucks, barista has come to mean an overly friendly, far too kinetic Fall Out Boy fan who chowders up a smirky smile and a loud Welcome To Starbucks Hope You’re Having A Great Day So Far What Can We Get For You Sir but then immediately blanches when you mention the actual word “coffee.”

  He almost always just stands there for a beat—the Fall Out Boy lyrics draining from his Vicodin-rattled veins—before asking if you would prefer to order from the menu.

  Then when you say For seventeen goddam bucks a cup I don’t wanna read a fucking menu, he begins to blink uncontrollably.

  That’s what the term “barista” conjures up.

  Or a slow, slim-witted, corporate robotron who feels the need to mention that the term “large iced coffee” has to be reconfigured as Grande Vente Ristretto Breve Bullshit Blah Blah Mucho Machiatto Craptalk.

  When she is finished and you deliver a long sarcastic stare back at her nose ring and a quick gander at her neck—where the red tendrils of a dragon or a flower or a dragon EATING a flower tattoo are peeking out of her Obama ’08 T-shirt—she makes a mental note to blog on her blog later on during her blog break about how she was sexually harassed by a middle-aged celebrity who she’s pretty sure was the bad guy in the first Spiderman movie.

  Her blog is called Rebel Notes From The New Millennium, by the way.

  And is read on a daily basis by her, the Fall Out guy and her boyfriend Seth—who’s in a band called DysFunktion (they sound like a cross between Pearl Jam and Audioslave, if Pearl Jam sucked and the guys in Audioslave somehow had their hands lopped off) and he actually thinks that drinking any Starbucks beverage with the word “chai” attached to it leads to good karma (plus, like—I’m pretty sure some of the money goes to help improve the environment, dude).

  After a decade or so of blighting stares and angry grimaces and trying to set an example to the others by storming out of Starbucks with nothing in hand and the echoes of my brilliantly abusive tirades ringing in everyone’s ears—I have come to realize the one weapon we all have just waiting in the wings:

  Oprah.

  Because Oprah can shame anyone into admitting the truth.

  There was an author named James Frey who wrote a book called A Million Little Pieces. No one was going to buy the book, besides Frey and the various people in it he blamed for making him a giant, alcohol- and 1 drug-ingesting mess and—of course—the chosen special few who had helped him climb out of that very very dark hole.

  Then he appeared on Oprah and voilà—the book became an international best-seller.

  After many sales and almost as many months, it became known that most of what Frey claimed to be true in the book was, in fact—lies. Blatant, made-up, totally untrue and fiction-dressed-up-as-factual crap.

  So Oprah invited him back onto the show and asked a million little questions about A Million Little Pieces and the next thing you know, Frey had crawled away cringing and crying and spewing I’m sorries.

  Oprah had used her secret weapon: shame.

  Shame shame shame, shame on you.

  I wanna drag a barista onto Oprah and have her cross-examine him or her and I know that within minutes she will have an open admittance that Chai and Vente and Breve and all that shiny sugary Starbuck smack is just an excuse to charge mo money mo money for what is—in the end—just another good cup of joe.

  Oprah, my friends, is the cure for what ails America.

  Too fat, too thin, too out, too in, too dumb, too smart, your skin, your teeth, your ankles, your ass, pregnant man, pregnant man’s wife, pregnant man’s penis—you name it and Oprah has asked about it, investigated it, researched it, been funny around it, bitten into the middle of it, digested it and spun it out into silken rivulets of golden information that helps to mollify us all.

  When I saw the headlines and a front-page picture on the New York Post about a woman who became a man but retained his/her womb just in case and then got pregnant I had many many many questions—a million little questions—but the one that bubbled up to the front of my head every time I read about it was “Does this guy have a dick or what?” As expected, no newspaper—not even the Post—addressed the issue. And if the Post ain’t gonna do it—you know it just ain’t gonna happen.

  But God Bless Oprah.

  If the story ran the first time on a Tuesday? Oprah had the guy and his girlfriend on her show that Friday—she found them and flew them in and sat them down and you bet your Oprah-loving fan site she said—about four minutes into the interview—“Let’s get to the penis question.” Turns out the guy has enough of a clitoris going on that it actually forms a small penis and him and his gal pal can have intercourse. I don’t think it’s any kind of Sting and Trudy marathon event but it qualifies and obviously satisfies them both. But that’s not the point.

  The point is Oprah.

  Asking anybody about anything.

  And always getting an answer.

  Pregnant Man, Cancer Dogs, Brad Pitt, Young Millionaires, Great Moms, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Messy Kids, Tyra Banks, Bad Dads, Bill Clinton, Energy Vampires, The Husband With 24 Personalities—she has dissected and discussed and presented them all.

  Jerry Springer and Maury Povich and Montel Williams and Sally Jesse Raphael and all the other dig-up-the-dreggers who pulverized us with drunks and junkies and whiter-than-white-trash trailer trash in their tighty whiteys and cheap lace panties and thong-cracked asses have all died by the wayside—victims of Oprah’s ultimate faith in just how smart you can be—no matter how dumb you already are.

  Before I started writing this book all I knew of Oprah was The Occasional Guy Click-In—that’s where men dial up Oprah on the TV because of The Wife or The Girlfriend—usually in the middle of an argument about a towel that turns into a sudden tornado involving:

  a. Sex

  b. This relationship is going nowhere

  c. You never talk about your feelings

  d. All of the above but not in alphabetical order

  And then in the midst of the teardrops and the angst and the stony side-long looks she finally deigns to mention that Oprah just yesterday said blah blah Find A Better Soul Mate blah or Oprah said a couple days ago blib glib Is He Really The One For You? glub Oprahdey glub.

  They talk about Oprah like they spoke to her on the phone on Sunday or she was just here having tea this afternoon.

  I clicked in once and saw Oprah’s Extreme Makeovers and thought yeah this housewife looks better after being plucked out of the audience and taken backstage and hosed up and wet down and rubbed raw with Loofah pads and trummeled and trammeled with resins and oils and cucumber creams—before being tucked into a designer dress held together with a roll and a half of two-sided fashion tape and some
glue but—what happens after the show? She won’t make it from the studio to the car without the blow-dry foofing up into a horse’s mane and tomorrow when she and her husband wake up she’s gonna look the same way she did before she went to see Oprah because there won’t be a team of eight gay men and six Korean cuticle experts to cut, paste and paint her into the tart he saw on TV.

  What then? Huh?

  Before I started writing this book I blamed Oprah for all the damage Dr. Phil has done. He was nothing before her. Just another balding blowhard with endless axes to grind, but she made him into a star and produced The Dr. Full Show which unleashed him onto all of America, where he can say such thick and exasperating things as “Everyone has their own personal Ground Zero.”