Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Confessions of a Strip Mall Santa

Ready for Work

“Just getting ready for another fun-filled day with the little tykes!”

I know what you’re thinking. Oh, don’t worry, I know. You’re thinking uh-oh here he goes on his annual Shitmas tirade. Well folks, you are in for a treat. Now maybe last year I didn’t do the best job of showing how much I love the holidays in this less than Yay People!’ post. True, I was letting the stress of the season get to me, and I maybe wasn’t thinking clearly about all of the great things that go along with this festive time of year. What a difference a year makes! Well, several months actually since not too long ago I was eating pizza pops on a shitty futon in my underwear plotting what turned out to be a Joaquin Phoenix-style ill advised foray into attempted rap superstardom. Out of the blue I met someone great that handily met all of my qualifications for a life partner/financial supporter/identity theft crime accomplice: She wanted me to put my clothes back on because I grossed her out in my underwear (I gross me out in my underwear too!), she sits on the shitty futon and lets me have the comfy chair if I get to it first, and she loves pizza pops as long as I buy them and microwave them and promise that one day she’ll never see another fucking pizza pop as long as she lives.

I know, seriously right?! You can’t make this kind of love story up, it’s just too perfect. You know, unless you were responsible for doing a re-draft on a script for a crappy Jennifer Aniston-Jack Black romantic (?) comedy (?). The story better be pretty good to convince the public about that pairing. In real life she wouldn’t even bang him with your punanny.  So anyhow, I was all aglow this holiday season with positivity about my future prospects with this girl, mostly about the identity theft stuff ‘cause she’s really awesome with computers and shit. I was thinking maybe I should spread some of my manic-phase happy-jones around and try and get a job as a mall Santa to bring in a little extra cash when I saw an ad in the local paper seeking applicants for Santa-wannabes like me to take shifts at our very own local den of capitalist pit vipers. I went down and talked to the mall manager about the position, but he informed me I smelled too much like gin to be a high class center concourse mall Santa, and suggested I try the outlet strip mall out by the overpass, as he had heard they were hiring. Needless to say I aced the interview, due in no small part to the fact that the strip mall manager smelled more like gin than me. Looks like I had picked a great day to not smell like vodka! So there I was, sitting in my folding outdoors chair next to a lovely plastic tree with popping and farting seventies-era lights strung on it and an aroma that could only reasonably be described as “burning” just inside the entrance of the Electronics Emporium Shack of Craaaaazzy Deals ©. I found myself listening to one hard luck story after another from the the underprivileged kids perched on my lap. All at once, I experienced  a Will Ferrell style Thought Bubble! Someone needs to tell these poor kids’ hard luck stories so that we can all learn to appreciate the things most of us take for granted at Christmas! Unfortunately before I could expand the thought bubble a bit, it burst as some kid pissed his pants on my lap and I had to take the rest of the day off to drink away the stress of it all.

One little tyke in particular told a sad tale that really tugged at my heartstrings, and I asked his permission to record his sad story so that others might feel empathy this holiday season for those less fortunate than themselves. Oddly, he refused to have his story captured, but fuck him, I was wearing my mp3 player under my coat next to my flask and I just hit the ‘record’ button as he spoke. The world needs to know this story! I selected excerpts from the transcripts of our conversation to help illustrate to my reader(s) just what I was talking about. I also snapped a quick pic of him with my cellphone as he left. When he got annoyed about it and asked me if I was taking his picture I just told him I was checking a text from a hooker, which he seemed to accept as a reasonable enough excuse for me to point my camera at him. No disrespect intended, but christ underprivileged tykes are fucking stupid. Snippets of our sad conversation are excerpted here along with a picture of the frowny little fella:

Frowny Face Psycho Case!Have you ever seen such a sad face on a psychopathic woman beater underprivileged Christmas tyke?

An excerpt from our little talk:

Me: Hi little feller! Actually you’re not so little at all are you there uhh…youngster? What’s your name son?

Sad Little Tyke: I have a hormone problem. And I smoke too much. My name is umm…Smell….Smell Fibson.

Me: Smell! Quite an interesting name you’ve got there! Why don’t you sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas.

Sad Little Tyke: Well Santa, it’s been a pretty tough year for me. I lost my whole career and got myself involved in a messy situation with a woman, and I got a bit drunk a few times and well, I kind of fucked everything up.

Me: Uhh…how so Smell? It’s okay, you can tell Santa.

Sad Little Tyke: You know, the usual shit, get drunk, crazy jealous, and threaten your midlife crisis baby mama with a beating from a baseball bat and burning her house down with her in it.

Me: Ooookay…that is a pretty bad year alright, and I think you would agree that you’ve been a little bit….naughty. Santa believes even naughty kids deserve a gift though, so what would you like for Christmas Smell?

Sad Little Tyke: I want a guaranteed Hollywood blockbuster headlining career; I want a call back from Ron Howard; I want TMZ to fuck off and I want a magic device that makes any phone I talk into only say good things out the other end. I heard someone talking about it, it’s called a Discretion or a Therapy or a Lobotomy or something. Some Chinese sounding name like that anyway.

Me: Well, that’s a pretty tall order Smell, but Santa will see what he can do.

Sad Little Tyke (whispering): You better make it happen Santa or you’re gonna be eating some good old Louisville Slugger maple while your fucking igloo melts down around your ears. Mark my words douchebag.

Me (hastily): Thanks for coming son, see you next year!

 

Folks I think you can obviously see that there are people out there in the world that went through a heck of a lot tougher year than you and I did, and I hope you think of them when you are enjoying the warmth and comfort of family and friends this Christmas season. Me? I need a drink. I think what bothers me the most is that someone didn’t see this coming and do something to stop it or help. If only someone, anyone, even a stupid dickhead blogger had seen this coming. Sad, so very sad.

6 comments:

  1. Hey - you're back!!
    I hope you have a very merry Christmas, Strip Mall Santa and that 2011 will bring only the best!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for stopping in Eileen, hope you and your family have a great Christmas as well. As for 2011, it can't possibly be worse than 2010 can it?

    At this point wouldn't Armageddon feel like sweet relief to everybody?

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. BRAVO!!!! I really can't even comment on this, other than to say it is "brilliant", once again, BRAVO!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Mummy,

    It's so unlike you to be pleased with my output! Of course the quotation marks on "brilliant" lead me to believe you might be being derogatory. And "BRAVO"? I'm not sure what that means, I don't speak Uzbekistanian.

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh for God's sake, guess I forgot to learn you how to just accept a compliment - must have been too busy trying to get you to learn Uzbekistanian. FYI, BRAVO in Uzbekistanian means really, really shitty - tee hee!!!!

    CHEERS!!

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete