My New Column, My Worst Day

And my "big decision"

Here’s this week’s column. It’s personal and self-indulgent, like everything I write. But it does have import, at least to me (like everything I write).

Link: Of Course Elon’s a Nazi

Okay, I’m getting a TON of new followers but few new subscribers. You know, jerkasses, it’s subscribers, not followers, that help boost a Substack. I don’t need followers. I mean, it’s equally free whether you follow or subscribe. So…why are you all doing one and not the other? Take your “follow” and shove it. And BTW, I don’t see unfollows, only unsubs. Hah, jokes on YOU! If you’d subbed, I’d SEE your rage-quit unsub. But since you followed, I won’t even know you’re gone.

Several of my regulars have been wondering if there’s a video of the play for which I won the 1986 MACY Award (national high school acting award) for best actor. I mention that in my column, and if you didn’t know it that means you haven’t read it, so you’re worse than an Ebola virus spermed by Diddy into the rectum of an AIDS carrier who then shat it out in an alley.

You’re literally worse than that. Literally.

Here’s a photo of me as Bobby in the first-ever high school production of A Chorus Line, the role that won me the award over every other teen actor that year. And my secret? You can see it in the photo: the gaping mouth. Frail curly-haired boy with a BJ-ready mouth, a mouth that literally screams “stick it in, Mr. Spacey.”

Hey, let’s have a contest! One of the four other people in that photo is dead. If you guess correctly, I will not call you jerkass for one month.

And since I’m posting theater pics, this is me in Grease from 1984.

No, I can’t play the fucking guitar. Regular guitar, yes. But not fucking guitar.

See that tall leggy blonde in the center? She was playing “Sandy” (the Olivia Newton-John role). And see me there to her right? This was my high school girlfriend. I’m the only one in that photo to know the carnal pleasures of that young lady. And you wonder why I’m so angry these days? Look how far I’ve fallen.

Speaking of which, I just had the worst day of my life. Now, I know it’s tempting fate to say that. Technically, the worst day of your life is the day you die, or the day the doctor says “it’s ass cancer; you have two months, three tops. And they’ll be spent vomiting endlessly as our radiation makes you bald and we know you’re gonna die anyway but hey, that radiation’s putting my kids through college.”

Nobody is a better humorist than God. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 56 years, it’s never supply a set-up when God can deliver the punchline. Because He will. So I know that by saying “I just had my worst day ever,” the temptation on the part of the Almighty to be like “oh really? SHAZZAM - ass cancer” will be irresistible.

But you know what? Part of me would welcome ass cancer at this point, so maybe the joke wouldn’t be on me.

Anyway, as you regular readers know, almost one year ago exactly, mid-February 2024, a rat got into my house, and it was a big joke, we all had some larfs about it. I kept the rat contained in my washer/dryer room by building a wall around the hole he dug to get in. It was cheaper than paying beans to actually repair the hole, especially as I think there were several holes, not just one, and I was like “fuck this I’m just gonna Cask of Amontillado the entire room.”

That was February last year. Then in March I built a secondary wall, just in case the rat got past the first one. And for a year it held. For a year, I forgot about rats.

And then this week, Tuesday night March 11 2025, as I was sound asleep dreaming of Justine Bateman in her prime, the largest fucking rat I’ve ever seen broke through both walls. Yes, both walls were breached. By the time I heard the commotion (which I initially dismissed as the rain, as it’s been a rainy week), the fucker had ravaged my garbage, strewn it everywhere, SHAT on my nice green couch, and hidden, somewhere.

Again, what’s my point about never give the Almighty the perfect set-up to a gag? In the last Week That Perished I mocked the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, who died of Hantavirus - rodent droppings - so now I have rodent droppings all over my house.

Good one, sir. Hat tip.

I armed myself with a baseball bat to find the rat. This goes on all night, with no success. So I figure, as the wall is breached, he’ll likely try to leave the way he came. I turn off all the lights (rats only emerge from hiding places in the dark) and wait…and yes, he DOES try to exit through the wall he scaled, but he can’t make it. I’m sitting there in darkness watching him try. But his climbing skills are failing him. So I rush at him with the baseball bat but he’s way too quick, and he disappears into the rooms that I myself had darkened to lure him out.

Again, a great gag. The darkness I created allows him to hide.

Fucking hilarious.

I realize I’ll have to call an exterminator, but it’s not business hours yet, so I decide to rest my eyes a bit - escape the living nightmare, maybe reconnect with that Bateman dream for a few hours, and the next thing I know I hear a din - and I don’t mean Gunga, but hellacious - coming from my one good bathroom (regular readers know that I’ve really let my house go…broken kitchen sink, two of three bathrooms unusable because I haven’t wanted to pay for repairs), so the giant fucker is in my one good bathroom, raising absolute hell, because he’s trapped (he squeezed under the door, but, much like with the wall, he got in but he can’t get out…this is a rat with poor planning skills).

Armed with the bat, I enter the room. Lights on. And Jesus on a tortilla was this bastard big. This was a large rat. I mean, Chihuahua-size. Honestly, I just didn’t feel like charging him. In his panic, he’d wrought havoc in that room — linoleum chewed up, WOOD chewed up. This guy’s teeth are mighty indeed. I’ve no idea if I’ll suffer any ill effects from the droppings he left throughout my house (I caught the ones I could, but I’m certain there are others, unseen), but I DO know that I didn’t want to get bit by him.

Christ, just last month I Elephant Manned from an infection. I do NOT want to go to the ER. If any of you geniuses think that Beverly Hills’ main hospital - Cedars Sinai - is full of people complaining of sprained fingers from drinking tea with their pinky out, you are quite wrong. Cedars’ ER is Dante’s Inferno. It’s the ONLY ER in this part of town, so every hobo with the shits is sent there. It’s also the only location to 5150 a schizo, so every nutcases is sent there by LAPD and BHPD and every other PD in the county. That ER is hellish.

Have I made my point? I didn’t want to get bitten by Chihuahuarat. And funny enough instead of running when I turned on the light, he climbed up to the window, which I keep open for the breeze and also I eat a lot of Mexican food and the room doesn’t have a ventilator fan, and he clawed at the screen like, “I want out.”

Okay, man and rat have an understanding. He wants out, I want him out. I close the door and retrieve a knife. I return and advance toward him - he disappears into a hole in a cabinet that he chewed (did I mention that this bastard’s teeth are mighty?), and I walk to the window, bat in one hand, knife in the other, and I cut the screen to allow him an exit. And it you’re asking how a rat that can, in only twenty minutes, chew through wood and linoleum can’t chew through a simple mesh screen, ask the author of the gag. I’m just the foil.

I cut the opening, leave the room, shut the door, and I hear him exit.

So now I have a lot of work to do in that room. Cleaning the mess he made, repairing the screen, knowing that now that he views the screen as a throughway, I guess I can’t leave that window open anymore.

Remember, he’s great at getting in. It’s exiting that’s his problem.

And when it was all done…and I’m just sitting there…I rebuilt the wall that he breached, I repaired the screen, I think I’ve found most of the poop but there’s no way I can be sure…it occurs to me…why am I still living here? This house is an expensive liability. DWP bills, gas bills (I do love my tacos), homeowners insurance, a neighborhood crawling with rats because the Oygenflaygins at the HOA decided years ago to kill all the feral cats, and trees in my backyard that could fall at any time and paralyze me (I don’t care if they kill me, but what did I say about not tempting a funny gag).

So I decided I’m gonna sell. The market’s hot in BH right now because of all the burned-down buildings in the fire areas, and though my house is crap the lot is huge. And yeah, I just don’t need this anymore. All I need is a toilet, a shower, and a bed. Hell, I’ve proven for four years that I don’t even need a kitchen sink. And I like the idea of being a renter where I can call someone else to deal with problems.

Time for me to go. As long as I have good wifi I can work…so me, my computer. That’s all I need.

Today I’ll be calling the real estate vultures who regularly visit hoping I’ve got ass cancer and need to sell.

But it wasn’t ass cancer that brought me around. It was one giant fucking rat.

I’ve never sold a house before. I don’t even know how it’s done, or how long it’ll take. Or where I’ll go.

But sometimes one terrible 24-hour period can make you realize that you gotta move on.

I hate that rat…but he taught me that it’s easy to get in, and hard to get out.

I want out. Hopefully I’ll be more skilled at it than he.

As I begin what will surely be a lengthy and cumbersome process, my engagement here might drop. As always you guys buying me a beer brightens even my darkest days.