The Adventures of Dapper Dale and the Waffle Stomper: Part I of an Epic Brotherhood

For the past twenty-six (26) years of my life, one of the many constants has been my shining and absolute affection and respect that I have for my older brother, Dale (name changed to protect the humiliated). Over the years, Dale and I have had our differences, a couple of times even throwing down in fisticuffs. But we have also been each others' staunches allies, especially in the face of the tyrannical Steve-O. Now, as I mentioned, I have nothing but unwavering love for my older brother, but I could go on and on about his many faults. I mean, I could talk endlessly about his ruinous and awkward obsession with pregnant-woman porn. Sure, I could tell you all about Dale's "Heavy Girl" phase that he went through in high school. But this entry is not about that. This entry is meant to be a celebration of two brothers' complex, poignant and moderately homoerotic relationship. If you would be so kind as to offer me just a little of your time and indulge me, I would like to share with you some of our greatest battles. I have a lot to be envious about when it comes to my older brother. He has the ripped body of an Adonis. A jawline so perfect, Michelangelo himself would weep at its beauty. An astonishingly flawless hairline, and a charm so innate and hypnotic he can scarcely say two words before women begin to throw themselves at him and beg for his seed. He's a good-looking guy. And me? Well, if Dale got all the brawn, I guess I would be the one with all the brains...and a lot of the brawn. But Dale and I lack any true similarities in physical appearance. My hair is usually a disheveled mess of wild curls, and it is retreating faster than a French battalion (oh, snap). A weak and waddling chin is hidden beneath an I-don't-give-a-fuck beard. My eyesight is so bad, when I made love to my girlfriend outside the other day, I went down on her for ten minutes before I realized I was eating grass. My body can be accurately described as gelatinous, and my penis curves so much it looks like the tip is making a fucking U-turn. However, Dale has said that he wishes he has my broad shoulders. So...I got that. Now, since Dale looks like a goddamn Greek hero and I look like I might molest someone if I stayed in one place too long, Dale has long been a favorite of immediate family and relatives and the weaker, much less paid sex. Yet, there have been occasions where I actually felt bad for him. The most vivid happened in the late 1980s. I was probably five (5) and Dale was seven (7). It was Christmas Day, and one of the presents that I got from Santa Claus was a bright yellow Big Bird doll that would talk when you pulled on a string. I ripped it out of its box, gave it a big hug, and tirelessly pulled on his little string, listening intently as Big Bird said to me, "I love you," and "You're my best friend." Finally, my parents persuaded me to put the Big Bird doll aside and open my other presents. I tore through a few of them, showing mild interest. But then, I turned around to check on Big Bird, only to find him in the clutches of my malevolent older brother. An intense and burning hatred swelled up in me like a herpes outbreak, and I lunged at Dale. "Noooo!" I screamed at him, and I tore my feathery companion away from him. Now, this memory is so clear to me, not because I can recall it so accurately in my mind, but because the whole incident was captured on home video. After I take Big Bird away from Dale, there is a moment where he looks up at the camera with a sad smile as he leans lazily against a recliner. I'm telling ya, the heartbreak of this little kid is so palpable it just pours out of the TV. What a selfish little prick I was. It is one of the few times my brother has ever garnered my sympathy. But there are other times when Dale had to play the Virgil to my Dante, guiding me through the trenches of adolescence and doling out advice when he saw fit. For instance, there was the time I ran away from my baby-sitter's house, only to find myself sitting on my bed, bawling and waiting for my dad to come in an administer a promised punishment. Dale looked at me with a wry and victorious smile. "You shouldn't have run away, Eric," was the sage wisdom he bestowed on me. There was also the time where my brother and I were playing on a large dirt pile, but were forced to flee after a group of kids pushed us away and took over. Dale decided to mete out his own form of justice. I watched him dig his hands into a mud puddle and craft a pretty orbital globe of mud. Then, he covered the thing with rocks. "I'm gonna chuck this at 'em," he said defiantly. It was the first time that Dale became my hero, seeing him push those sharp angular rocks into the small, mud planet. "This guy don't take no shit from no one," I thought. Back then mine Englishes weren't that good. Of course, time has a nasty habit of forcing people apart, and as Dale and I got older, the raft of brotherhood began to come undone in the ocean of life (fuck, my metaphors get me hard). Dale had his style and his friends, and I had my style and my friends. By the time I was in elementary school and Dale was close to junior high, we looked and acted less like brothers and more like inmates forced to share a cell. I favored sweatpants and bulky shirts and kept my hair nice and short. Dale had a fetish for acid-washed jeans and any t-shirt that could be securely tucked in as tight and restricting as a straitjacket. Also, Dale wore his hair longer than me. In fact, by the fifth grade, he was sporting a pretty good mullet. Now, his mullet wasn't as epic as, say, a Billy Ray Cyrus, but it was a fucking mullet, and Dale did not wear it well. The slogan for the mullet is "Business in the Front, Party in the Back." But the slogan for Dale's mullet was, "Kick My Ass" in the front and "Kick My Ass" in the back. I think it was around the time Dale was in the seventh grade and I was in the fourth that he started to notice that maybe he was getting handsome. When he was twelve (12), Dale had a homely-looking ginger for a girlfriend, and in eighth grade he took a liking to a pretty blond that he talked to in CCD classes. I think it was some point around this time that Dale realized, "Girls like me." This was also about the time I realized that I could just take a dump while I showered, and just mash the filth down the drain with my foot, saving both time and water. Well, since Dale was the good-looking one, and I was still humping my pillow to the cover of Ween's Chocolate & Cheese album, I began to experience girls vicariously through Dale. When we would go to the mall, it wouldn't be long before a gaggle of giggling girls (alliteration get me hard, too) would approach my brother. We would go to church dinners with my family, and even there girls would haunt my brother's steps. Of course, we went to a Catholic church, so its no surprise that those girls were ravenous for the cock...Catholic chicks are skanks. Anyway, Dale could do little to control his movie star looks and the magnetic pull that they had with women. All he could do was ignore them...and he did...like a little bitch. Seriously, I would have killed for the attention that Dale got from girls, but he considered it an annoyance! The two of us were at an arcade in the mall called Aladdin's Castle once, and Dale was playing a video game called Silent Scope. The object of the game was to look through a plastic sniper rifle mounted to the game and take out enemy targets. While Dale was bent over, looking through the scope (which was indeed silent), a random girl walked behind him and grabbed his bulbous ass! And what did he do? Nothing! Not a fucking thing! He just went on playing the game, completely undisturbed. Well, what are ya gonna do. I suppose that's the curse little brothers must endure, always in the passenger seat, never allowed to drive. And as time went on, Dale's female admirers got prettier and prettier, and of course it was only a matter of time before Dale began to actively engage them. And yes, there was a "Heavy Girl' phase he went through. At one point my mother even commented, "I think Dale likes those bigger girls." Yet, for all of my brother's suaveness with the ladies, there was one time, just once, where I got a girl he couldn't get. I was sixteen (16) and Dale was eighteen (18). It was New Year's Eve 2000. My family and a bunch of relatives were celebrating in a hotel in Council Bluffs, IA. This particular hotel had a wide open courtyard next to a pool and a hot tub. After a while, Dale and I noticed a small group of girls talking around a table next to the pool. Naturally assuming that they would melt like butter in my brother's hands, my father encouraged my brother to go over and talk to them. Dale begrudgingly obliged, knowing that if he did not, my old man was only two or three beers away from going over to the girls himself and ranting about his handsome and lonely son. So Dale and I stood talking to these girls, in particular a pretty red-haired girl wearing a sports jersey. The chat did not last long as I recall, and Dale eventually left them alone, perhaps a bit disappointed. During the conversation, I did what I always did when Dale would talk to girls: suck in my gut, stand behind him, and try not to get caught staring at their tits. Anyway, our prediction came true, for eventually my father did start talking to these girls, much the humiliation of Dale and myself. Yet, when my father confessed to Dale and I that he had indeed spoken to the girls, what he had to relate was most queer. It seemed that the girls, the red-haired girl included, were not interested in Dale at all, but rather "the blond boy" who was with him. Now, since I was the only person with Dale at the time he talked to the girls, and since I had dyed my hair blond in an act of nonconformity like my friends, I could only deduce that it was in fact me that the girls liked. At one point during the night, Dale went to the room alone. When I went to find him, I saw the girls standing outside our room. I tentatively approached and opened the door, saying awkward and stupid things to them. They came in the room a bit, and I saw Dale lying on the bed watching TV. The girls and I chatted before they left. My heart was thumping like crazy as I watched them leave. It was probably because most of the blood in my body had swiftly exited my brain, torso and limbs that I stammered a quick question to Dale: "Should I ask that chick to make out with me?" I said, breathlessly. A large grin spread itself across Dale's face. "Do it, dude!" he wisely advised. I turned and spit my gum out, and called down the hallway. Now, I didn't even know the red-haired girl's name, so I merely shouted, "Red! Hey, Red! Come here." The red-haired girl turned around and walked back to the room. Very creepily, I put my arm around her shoulder and ushered her back into the room, in full view of my older brother. "You want to make out?" I asked. Her response was a sudden jerk, as she pushed her lips into mine and invaded my mouth with her tongue. I was just-turned 16, and it was my very first French kiss (up to then I was like the Wilt Chamberlain of fingering). It was all too brief, and the red-haired girl and I parted ways. After she left, it dawned on me that it felt like the fucking Hindenburg was going down in my pants. I casually slipped onto the empty bed and then moved to floor to watch TV. I was lying on my stomach, and Dale asked me, "Doesn't it hurt laying like that?" "Fuck yes," I replied. Now, Dale was not obsessed, much less concerned with the affections of the red-haired girl. In fact, he probably could give a shit if she liked him or not. But that's not the point. The point is, she had a pretty distinct choice: Dale or me, and she picked me! Time once again did its thing, and eventually Dale went off to what could technically be called a college, and I meandered through a few more years of high school. The first time I saw bewbs, Dale was there. The first time I drank a beer, Dale was there. The first time I smoked weed, Dale was there. The first time I stole something, Dale was there. The first time-actually, now that I think about it, Dale was a fucking horrible influence on me.

TO BE CONTINUED.....

The Moore You Know: OK, the other day I came up with this joke: "My washing machine is so racist it still has separate settings for whites and colors." Now, hilarity aside, I feel like that joke is so obvious, that I'm not sure I even made it up. Did I hear it somewhere? I can't remember. If anyone thinks or knows they have heard that joke before, let me know from who. In the meantime, I'm fucking taking credit for it.

© Eric Moore - 2010

The Legend of the Dragon Wolf: My Time As A Student Of Karate

"I told you not to wear the same outfit as me!"

You probably wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I am in fact a certified green belt in the Okinawan form of karate known as Isshin-ryu. This is true. And I know some of you are thinking, "Eric, I've physically seen you...like, person-to-person, right in front of me, and I gotta tell ya, buddy, you don't look like you know fuckall about karate." Well, guess what cock wrangler, I said I was a student of karate, I didn't say I was a goddamn Ryu from Street Fighter! So let me provide you with a little backstory. Growing up, I felt that my sole purpose in life was to avoid conflict at all cost. I did everything I possibly could to avoid getting into a physical altercation with someone. The only time I have ever thrown a punch at someone was when I socked my older brother Dale when I was in high school, and even after all my training, I found the curl-into-a-ball-and-pray-mom-and-dad-get-home-before-Dale-somehow-manages-to-castrate-me-with-a-kick-to-the-head method to me most effective. There are rumors floating around my family that when I was in first grade and on the wrestling team my dad told me I could not leave a Saturday wrestling meet until my match was over, so when my match came I proceeded to just lay down on my back and not put up a fight (a technique that has served my sisters well, also). And it is true that I was once straddling a fence watching a homecoming parade when a friend of mine threw a corncob at my head and knocked me off. I cried. When I was in the fourth grade I went to a friend's overnight birthday party, and while throwing a football around in his basement I got shoved into a wall. I cried. That same year another friend of mine asked me if he could punch me to see how I would take. I anticipated that he would be hitting my arm, but he instead hit me as hard as he could in the side of the head. I cried. So here we are in 1995, living in a shitty rental house in Treynor, IA, and I am eleven (11)-years-old. My hair is thick and wavy and I comb it back, giving me a slightly more retarded look than Corky from Life Goes On. My shirts of choice are Bugle Boy, and my Arizona jeans are size Husky. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had had some trouble regarding our next door neighbors and certain aspects of their property, specifically me destroying their property and them not wanting me to destroy their property. It's all political. Anyway, spawned from my delinquency was a friendship between my father and our neighbor, Blackbeard, whose daughter (in order to protect the innocent I will refer to Blackbeard's daughter as Talia al Ghul) was in my class. One night, Blackbeard and my old man got to chatting over a glass of good Vinho do Porto-or it could have been a dozen cans of Milwaukee's Best Ice-and as it turns out Talia al Ghul takes karate lessons from Blackbeard's uncle in Carson, a town about ten miles east of Treynor. This piques my dad's interest, and the next day he informs both Dale and myself that we are going to start taking karate lessons as well. Now, a severe, primal fear of my dad disallowed me from protesting, but in my head I thought, "Is he goddamn serious?" I mean, picture this: I'm 11-years-old, its about eight o-clock at night, and I am watching TV with my brother and sisters. All of a sudden, Steve-O bursts into the room and states, "You boys are taking karate!" Then he walks out. It was fucking vexing...disturbing even! I thought my dad might have had a brain tumor. "You boys are taking karate! This chair has no meat on it! I can only smell the color blue!" I just thought that it was such a random thing to declare all of a sudden. But what was I going to say, "No?" After about ten instances of Steve-O slapping his wedding-ringed hand across the back of your head, you learn to just go with the flow. "OK, I'm in karate now." Up to this point I have been a failed wrestler, a failed soccer player, a failed t-baller, and a failed Christ-Eric-you-are-ten-fuckin-years-old-why-are-you-still-wetting-the-bed! I have no idea why my dad thought I would be any better at karate, an art that requires discipline, dedication, honor, heart and makes it very easy to tell if you have an erection under those little pants. Now, on top of being forced into these karate lessons, I have to start carpooling with Blackbeard and Talia, two people who hated me just weeks before for the alleged damage I did to their stuff. Also, it wasn't like Talia and I were friends. I only had 36 kids in my class, so yeah, we knew of each other, but we didn't hang out or anything. I think at this point in my father's life he could only produce an erection when fantasizing about ways to humiliate me. So there are Dale and I, riding in the back of Blackbeard's Buick, on our way to Carson as the sun retreats behind us. Now, let me be absolutely clear about one thing: Blackbeard's uncle was 100% legit, a Grade A badass muthafucka of Samuel L. Jackson proportions. This guy, whom I will affectionately refer to as Scorpion (Scorpion being the most badass of Mortal Kombat characters) taught Okinawans their own form of karate! In 2001 he was inducted into the Isshin Ryu Hall of Fame. He knew his shit. He operated a small dojo of roughly twelve (12) students. As far as I can recall Talia was the only girl, and the ages ran from anywhere from middle age guys to elementary students. I can remember my very first day, putting on my pristine white gi, tying the long white belt, bowing at the entrance to the dojo, bowing to a picture of Tatsuo Shimabuku (the founder of the art), and stepping onto the cold wooden floor. In my mind I had been transformed from the timid, overweight boy that I was, into the sleek and deadly Dragon Wolf! A ninja persona of my own creation. I imagined Scorpion's dojo to be a clandestine training ground set deep in the mountains of Japan; a mythical place where I honed my secret and mystical ninja abilities. This delusion served me well until the first time I stepped in front of a mirror dressed in my karate garb. My chubby red cheeks stood out like inkblots on my moon-like face. A tiny chin protruded below my lips, edging away from a face that lacked any form of discernible jawline. And my salient stomach curved out like a descending sun from a gi that I saw was much to small for me. The pants stopped well above my ankles, and they were so tight that my colored Hanes were visible underneath. The top half of my uniform was disheveled and the tight sleeves restricted much of the movements I would need to fight the forces of evil. The long white belt that signaled my beginnings as a novice looked like it had been tied around my waist by Theresa Uchytil. On the other hand, Dale looked like goddamn Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat II. His gi fit him perfectly, and just looking at him in his uniform would give one the impression that he could totally kick the ass of that doucher from Sidekicks (R.I.P.). Needless-to-say, I was pretty disappointed, but what choice did I have? Over the next year or so I attended karate class every Wednesday night from 7:00-8:00. Over time I began to develop and memorize many of the different katas I would need to learn to advance my training. I understood how to punch and kick properly, and the more classes that I attended the more my confidence began to grow. Despite my awkward appearance, the shadow of the Dragon Wolf began to slowly creep back to me. Now, even though I was learning my shit, I still was nowhere near as good or as passionate as some of the other kids in the group. I mean, there were a couple of kids in there that looked like they would go on to seriously fuck someone's shit up. They were the kids I tried not to practice with when we had to pair up. They would go balls to the wall for every exercise, where my training mostly consisted of trying to run out the clock. So I would usually go with younger kids in the class who showed the same half-ass consistency that I did. Sometimes I would go with Talia al Ghul, but that was only when I was hoping to practice some move that would let me brush up against her bewbs. My training took a massive hit when Dale was no longer required to go to karate lessons. Once he started junior high sports he convinced my father that his schedule was full enough as it is. I was upset at having to attend karate alone, but in the end I sucked it up. I was the fucking Dragon Wolf after all, and both dragons and wolves are solitary creatures. That's just science. One of the defining moments of my Isshin Ryu training came when the class had to complete an obstacle course of sorts. Around the dojo, Scorpion had set up different exercises that each student had to complete. So we all formed a line and began to move through the course, one after the other. For the most part it was pretty straight forward stuff: perform this move here, use this weapon here, do this kata here. But there was one stage...one fucking stage that was being overlooked by one of the oldest students, a hulking figure of a man that looked like a mustachioed psychopathic Dauber, the idiot from Coach. At his stage, which I am assuming was inspired by one of the nine circles of Dante's Inferno, he held out a long bow-staff about three feet off the ground, and instructed students to dive over the bow, immediately go into a somersault, and then pop up in one fluid motion. Bullshit. When I saw the other kids doing it I thought, "Surely, he isn't going to make a white belt do that." When it was my turn to jump over the bow, I simply walked up to it and began to step over it. But the crazed Dauber told me no, I had to dive over it. Dive over it? At this point in my life I didn't even know how to dive into a swimming pool! How the fuck am I supposed to perform such a sophisticated move? Christ, the only reason I'm here is so my old man has an excuse to leave the house for a few beers. After much hesitation and steeling my nerves, I took a deep breath and dove over the stick. Well...dove is a strong word, I guess. I actually ran up to the bow, bent over it, but my hands on the ground on the other side of the bow, used my momentum to pick my feet up off the ground, and jumped over, landing on my side and looking very much like a drunk person who had set himself on fire and wasn't a hundred percent sure how to put it out. Of course I fucked up my wrist on the maneuver, officially destroying any remaining enthusiasm I had left. The Dragon Wolf had been confronted with his first test of ability, and the Dragon Wolf said, "Fuck it, can we get onion rings after this?" Eventually though, I did test for and attain my orange belt, and a little bit after that I tested for and got my green belt, which, if you can believe, is only two belts away from black. But I was only eleven, and if I remember correctly one had to been either sixteen (16) or eighteen (18) before being able to achieve the rank of black belt. Five more years of this? I couldn't do it. But knowing my father, it sure as shit wasn't me who ended my karate days, it was my old man, who I'm sure just got tired of having to drive my ass to Carson every other week. After a while, my training just sort of puttered out and eventually stopped. Fortunately for my enemies, I have not yet had to call upon the mythical and deadly powers of the Dragon Wolf, but I always have them ready, waiting in reserve in the form of an old steak knife I keep under my bed. Dale eventually returned to Scorpion to continue his training once my brother was enlisted in the Marines. Unfortunately, Scorpion passed away a few years ago, but the spirit of his badassery lives on. Oh, and my days as the Dragon Wolf did have a kind of fortuitous side effect. One Friday night, while I was still enrolled in Isshin Ryu classes, I was attending a high school football game with some friends. As I was walking to the concession stand with a buddy, I saw Talia and her friends approaching; they were giggling. As they passed my friend and I, a few of them chanted, "Eric, Talia likes you! Talia likes you!" Talia of course was telling them to shut up. The fact that Talia al Ghul fell madly in love with me does not surprise me in the least, as any woman who spends a long enough time with me will eventually wonder what my penis looks like. Here's a hint: I nicknamed it the Caduceus.

The Moore You Know: I was walking through the supermarket the other day, and my errands just happen to take me down one of the most dreaded aisles in the store for any man: the disgusting feminine hygiene aisle. As I walked passed the tampons and assortment of creams, I found myself stopping in front of a large section of douches. What had caught my eye was the plethora of aromas that these products come in. One douche's scent was Tropical Rain, another's was Island Splash. I even saw one for Baby Powder and one for Extra Strength (I believe this was just a can of Raid). Anyway, it hit me, the Summer's Eve people are missing out on a huge section of consumers: men. I mean, a man should have a say in what his lady's vag is going to smell like if she expects him to go tongue spelunking, and I think men would be more apt to buy these products for their women, if only the scents were more appetizing to a man. No guy wants his woman's church door to smell like Hurricane Katrina or his newborn's ass. Summer's Eve should market more man-friendly douches, like Summer's Eve Taco Pizza Rolls, or Summer's Eve Brats and Sauerkraut. Instead of the going down on a girl that smells like an autumn night, wouldn't it be better to go down on a girl that smells like your mom's homemade fried chicken? Or how about, Summer's Eve Your Ex-Girlfriends Pussy. Steph has a degree in marketing...we're going to get started on this.

© Eric Moore - 2010