Friday Funnies

This post comes from one of “Big Daddy’s” Marine Corp. buddies Curtis Lowe. The tears were streaming down my face as I read this from laughing so hard. I asked Curtis for his permission to share the laughter with y’all. I hope y’all enjoy it as much as I did…..

4th of July at the Anderson House

I would have posted this earlier, but my wife just scraped up the money for bail, on account of my drunk brother-in-law getting me arrested on the 4th of July. Technically it was the 5th of July, because it was after midnight by the time I was in the back of the cruiser, but I’m not nit-picking.We had all gotten home from getting all liquored up at a friends barbeque and we were getting worked up for the town’s fireworks/tomato festival by lighting off all the great fireworks I bring back from Tennessee each year when I go down to pig hunt. We had all the good shit that drives all the dogs and half the neighbors crazy on the 4th. We had yellow screamers and fountains and bottle rockets the size of shock absorbers and blue meanies and roman candles and Huge-Ass Mortars (says that right on the side) that the cops later said they actually felt and heard all the way over at the police station.The cops also said later there was a huge traffic jam at the park because some people got in their cars and started for my end of town thinking the town must have changed the location of the fireworks this year. Half of ‘em trying to get out of the park and half trying to get in at the same time was a mess I guess.Anyway, there we all were, standing in the street between my house and my hippy neighbors’ house. Just for clarification, the Hippy Neighbors live to the right of me in the house that looks like Sanford & Son relocated to Ohio from California, and the “Other” neighbors live to the left of me.So my drunk brother-in-law lights a 2-foot long roman candle and then proceeds to drop the cigarette he lit it with. As he bent over to pick it up, the roman candle shot its first Ball-O-Flamey-Goodness. Right into the “other” neighbor’s cat’s ass.The cat took off at about mach 1, resembling an F-4 in terminal descent, trailing bright orange flames and burnt hair. Unfortunately, as it ran between the houses, it passed by my dog, an 85- pound Weimaraner who is still a puppy (one year old next month).I had him on a line tied to the porch railing. It was a good line. Good enough to keep a generally normal, un-pissed off un-hyper dog captive. Unfortunately, my dog is the exact polar opposite of that dog whenever he sees this cat.When we picked him out, there were also two girl dogs left from the same litter there. Now, I got nothing against girl dogs, but one of them sat there with her head kind of lolling to the side staring at a tree trunk. ‘Course my wife wanted her because she was “mellow.” I told her “She’s not mellow, she’s retarded.” The other one kept biting her own leg and then yelping at herself, and besides she had a lazy eye and smelled like a toilet. I decided they were both retarded and dismissed them as “possibles” immediately.So anyway, the dog got up a good head of steam before he hit the end of that line. I don’t know if you ever saw a Weimaraner at full speed, but they look like that blurry silver-bullet train on the Coors Light commercial, especially if you are blotto’d.Just as the cat makes a left turn around the back corner of the “other neighbors’ house, the dog hits the end of the line and pulls a section of the porch railing off. The railing, at the end of 20 feet of super-taught line sails in a perfect overhead arc, stopping at the side of the “other” neighbor’s house and taking out two of the bedroom windows and setting off their house alarm (they were in Massapequa for the weekend).As the dog got to the corner of the house and was scrabbling to keep upright while going 40 miles per hour and simultaneously making a hard, 90-degreee left-hand turn, the cat shot under the other neighbors’ deck. It was probably good he brought his own light source with him, as he traversed the deck and came out the other side without missing a beat.They went around the other neighbor’s house like that two or three times, the cat always making the corner about a half a claw in front of the dog, the cat taking tight turns like a fighter jet, and the dog, at full speed, losing ground going out wide but catching up in the straight-aways. One more lap and I think he would have had him.So finally, on the last lap, the cat runs up the redwood ladder and straight into the other neighbor’s above-ground pool. I don’t think he was smart enough to try to extinguish himself, I just think he was trying so hard to outrun the flames and the dog that he didn’t know where he was or what the hell to do.
The pool BEFORE last weekend. The edge of the above-ground pool is about 4 feet higher than the level of the deck, a height which is normally, a non-event for a Weimaraner to clear at full speed. He doesn’t even need the stairs, he just launches himself like a friggin’ Saturn rocket from the deck. However, this particular Weimaraner was trailing 20 feet of line and 5 feet of porch-railing. Right at the pinnacle of his leap, right at maximum apogee, the porch railing at the end of the line met the deck railing and the line flipped him around quicker ‘n Barack Obama on gun control.The dog crashed right down onto the edge of the pool on his chest. You ever seen the chest on a Weimaraner? Its like a barrel full of cement. In fact that’s all Weimaraners are, is back legs and chest. Well they must not make above-ground pools like they used to, because when he came down on the edge of that thing, he collapsed the whole section and 10,000 gallons of water came roaring out and down the driveway between the houses.I thought he would be seriously hurt, but he just stood there bleeding and looking for the cat. I guess they were all retarded in that litter.Now, when 10,000 gallons of water is let go in a split second, it unleashes a hell of a lot of a lot of energy. I don’t know if its kinetic energy or potential energy or nuclear energy because I didn’t really pay attention in high school, but I’ll tell you what: It knocked the hippy neighbors’ 82-year-old grandma right off her chair. Last we saw of her she was body-surfing a wave down my street. Good form too, she was still holding her sparkler above the water.So the water swamped the yard and went down into the other neighbor’s basement garage. That’s where he keeps his vintage Corvette Stingray that he won’t even drive in the rain. He’s not back in town yet, though, so he’s still a happy man at this point. The good news is that all that water must have shorted out his electrical box, cuz the alarm siren finally shut off.
The other good news is the water also put out the fire that started in the leaves under the other neighbors’ deck when the cat ran under there all flamey-like. They can still use the other half of the deck that didn’t burn.So about now, the cops pull up in the street in front of the hippy neighbors’ house. They want to know who owns the fireworks, and I ain’t saying anything, but everyone is looking at me, so I point to my drunk brother-in-law. They put him in the back of the cruiser and handcuffed him to the door handle.Now the cop is asking if there are any more fireworks because they are dangerous (no shit!) and he needs to confiscate them (why do I hear that word so much?).Just as I am explaining that there are no more fireworks left, that we have lit them all off, that they are all gone, a (formerly) dud mortar decides its time to strut its stuff and goes off under the front bumper of the cop’s car. They sure do make those bumpers tough though, and luckily they had already painted it black, because it only melted the bull-horn/siren thingy a little bit, and it smelled like burnt rubber for a little while.Right about that time, the muddy, half-drowned cat comes back from the dead looking like a reject from a freak show and goes like a shot into the back of the cop’s cruiser with my drunk brother-in-law and the muddy, bloody (85 pound) Weimaraner is right on his ass. Just then my drunk brother-in-law passes out and falls over, puuling the crusier’s door shut and locking himself, the dog and the cat inside. Swear to god, the Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil has nothin’ on those three. Turns out I didn’t get the wrong dog, I got the wrong brother-in-law.Arraignment is tomorrow. The other neighbor comes home today.