Target Friendly
by Alamo Cruise, “The Hopeless Loser” 

“Four score, and seven years ago these fuckers couldn’t even get a date.”

There’s a famous quote by Mark Twain that I’ve never heard before. It goes, “When I die, I want it to be in Kentucky. Because everything happens ten years later there.” So my first idea was I wanted to go there and see if I could catch that last episode of Murphy Brown I never saw.

Don’t bother going, that’s all I’m saying. It’s all some sort of joke because Kentucky is in the same time zone, as far as I could tell, and the newspaper there has the same date. And the grass isn’t blue there, either. It’s mostly brown, at least in that cow field I checked out. “State of Big Fat Liars,” that’s what the licensed plate should say.

It would be great if license plates said real stuff about the state. Texas would be like “We grow assholes daily!” and Florida would be “Most likely to secede!” Rhode Island’s could be “Who?” You could give them all new nicknames, too. What’s with Missouri being the “Show Me State”? Last time I was in East St. Louis there was only one guy to show me something and it wasn’t enough to make me want to go back to St. Louis again, I’ll tell you that. New York could be called the World’s Biggest Target State. Wyoming could be called the Sounds of Silence State. Minnesota, the Amazing Shrinking Frosty Scrotum State, if that will all fit on one license plate, and Montana could be the FBI Standoff Capitol State.

It’s amazing, I can just ring those off one after the other. I would do all the states but I’m not going to take up the whole column naming six more states. Not when there’s more important things that are easier to remember.

I’ve been to almost every state on the continent, though I can’t say with certainty if there’s any I haven’t been to. Keep in mind as part of my job I get knocked out or drugged and dragged across state lines a lot. So I wouldn’t rule out the possibility I’ve been to Hawaii, Alaska, or even some of the U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Canada. There are some times I’m pretty sure the engine is a plane and it turns out to be a diesel truck or something, so I’m sure I could have made the mistake in reverse a few dozen times.

If I had to pick one state to be abducted and taken to, forced to dig your own grave and then piss yourself scared before they tell you it’s all a call-in radio show prank in, I would say Pennsylvania is the best yet. Now keep in mind I haven’t seen more than a few other countries, so this is just amongst states, but these guys are, at least in my experience, extremely friendly to victims of call-in radio shows. If you get struck from behind in an abandoned parking garage and wake up to find yourself tied with guns trained on you, and you suspect it will all be a joke, try to remember to request Pennsylvania. Especially if you think you’ll be forced to find your own transportation out. They’re nice as hell to hitchhikers.

I liked it so much I’m going back next Thursday. But don’t tell the guys at WROK, I want them to think it’s a real surprise.

Lasorda Frisbee
For real, those CD cases used to piss me off. I would open the box and expect a real long metal thing you could put in a CD player. Instead there would just be a smaller case with a silver disc inside. That package was so long I always felt completely ripped off that there was only one CD in there.

Intergalactic Train Mouth
That’s the first thing I learned during my history of riding the rails. I spent my college years, 20 through 20 ½, living my life as a hobo. I shared my stories with fellow vagabonds, dined on whatever I could find, and went wherever my whim took me.

Dyslexic Monks
Some people call it test anxiety, like where you get really worried about how you’re going to do and forget all the stuff you know. But that’s not it. I mean, if I knew the stuff and forgot it, that would be bad enough, but I have no clue what they’re talking about.

Doctor Kiwani
When I was a kid my mom tried to sign me up for everything, from 4-H to the Cub Scouts, but I kept failing the entrance exams. I was in some other youth organization my dad got me into for about a week, but my hand kept cramping up trying to do the sign.