The face of hope

This is the face of hope and charity. Note the smooth Star Wars iron on t-shirt that the face is sporting.

My friend Gary in the picture over there is a better person than I am. He works for the Red Cross, he goes to Mass, he visits his parents regularly and at most times in my life has had money owed to him by me and hasn't busted my sack to get it back on an even remotely timely basis.

We've been friends since we were six years old. At first we hated each other because we both had eyes for Ms. Goodwin, our sultry teacher, but after a playground scuffle where he beat my ass we were told by Ms. Goodwin (that harlot) to be friends or go to the Principal's office. Being that we were both raised in the houses of Air Force officers we were geared towards respecting commands from authority figures, (at least at that time), so we followed orders and have been friends ever since.

Gary has always looked out for me as I stumbled idiotically through life. From running into an emergency room with no pants on when the Mrs. was in the operating room and I was badly freaking out to getting into a fight that I started in Dave Grohl's moms English class and getting tossed out of school for a bit he's been the guardo camino deluxe to me. I have foisted terrible stupidity upon him over the years and aside from the occasional charlie horse and throwing me over a coffee table covered with champagne flutes he's been amazingly tolerant and supportive. Maybe he's secretly in love with me. I mean, look at me. It's not THAT hard to believe.

A good Gary moment - Once when I was at the end of my rope in Hollywood I called him from a pay phone, collect, and rambled at him for several hours about how I was going to die from my sadness and the total and horrid conditions that I was living in. Of course none of this predicament that I was in was my fault. I chalked it up to circumstances cast upon me by a cruel and unforgiving higher being that was jealous of my hair and rock star potential. Oh it was a sad lot indeed let me tell you and I was full of enough narcotics to talk about it all night long. Gary as a college student actually doing something productive with his life at the time and could have been sleeping or studying or masturbating while eating pizza or whatever it is people in college do at night, (I certainly wouldn't know) but he stayed on the line as long as I was able to babble. I think the cost of that phone call was roughly equivalent to his first year's tuition but aside from the occasional telling of this embarrassing story in bars where I am working my ultra-cool routine he's never really given me shit about it. Gary has been a rock and continues to be for the rest of the world with all that good Samaritan stuff he's into, what a guy.

So here's to you Gary, no matter if you are a jackbooted fascist that has a weirdly affectionate obsession with Theodore Roosevelt you're A-OK in my book. Keep up the good work at the Red Cross because people in need need people like you. Mean spirited assholes that enjoy histrionic rantings with little basis in actual knowledge need people like me!!

Donate you bastards, let's keep hope alive, (and Gary employed as I'm already sixty bucks in the hole to him and will probably need to hit him up for a bar tab in the near future).