I AM EGO, EGGS & ETCH-A-SKETCH

                                                           

I am embryonic fluid and darkness dancin’ to the oldies. I am ham and eggs and sperm. I am fetus, feel me kick. I am a Spielbergian blast of white light and a slap on the bottom. I’m a breast full of milk and a mouth chugging on a nipple like it was a can of Carnation. I’m a diaper sloshing with smelly secrets.

I’m a sparkling smile in my father’s eyes and a weary grin on my mother’s lips. I’m a puppy licking your face. I’m a cat scratch and a million meows. I’m a bump from a bang on the back hanging over your father’s shoulder. I am the Cat in the Hat. I am Sam, I am.

I’m a training bra and an athletic supporter. I’m school, summer vacations and swimming. I’m puberty, pimples and piano lessons. I’m a girl’s giggle and a boy’s bashfulness on a first date. I’m the power of love and the friction of sex. I’m X-rated. I’m out of gas on a dark country road with a girl who is not amused and who has some big brothers who’ll want to talk to me later. I’m straight as an arrow. I’m gay as a blade.

I’m the prayer in the dark that seems to cure cancer. I’m a nun kneeling, a preacher praying and a sinner straying. I’m a Buddhist, a Muslim and a Methodist. I’m black, white, red and yellow with Kodacolor chromosomes. I’m the universal soldier dying for the sins of his leaders. And I’m the innocent caught dead in the middle.

I’m Christmas, Easter and the Year of the Dog. I’m Passover and Palm Sunday. I’m a family holiday sitting all alone in front of festive old movies on TV and becoming more suicidal by the minute. I’m a family holiday with all your relatives fighting the same fights since childhood, getting a knot in your stomach, big as a beer pretzel, and becoming more suicidal by the minute. I am hope and hype, delight and despair all sitting in your favorite chair. 

TRUMP UNIVERSITY, BACON, TWITTER, HILLARY, BERNIE  and  PLAYBOY

DONALD TRUMP, TED CRUZ, ROAD RAGE, POT & TAIL GATING

KING KONG TRUMP

EPIC 80's PARTY IN A LONDON FLAT

WILD 80'S LADIES NIGHT OUT IN LONDON

THE FALLEN SOLDIER

THE FALLEN SOLDIER

They say I died fighting for freedom.
They say I died for liberty.
They say I died trying to free 'em.
They say I died for a legacy.
They say I died flying the flag.
They say I died for a true cause,
that due diligence never lags
and that the righteous never pause.
They say I died for my country
and that it'll never forget
my sacrifice in my Humvee
and I'll always have its deep respect.

All I know is, that when I dropped
down to the ground
and died,
my mama cried
and she's never stopped.

ALFARATA GRADE SCHOOL, HUNTINGDON, PA

A lifetime ago I went to first grade at Alfarata, a neighborhood grade school, two blocks from my Huntingdon home. My 95-year-old mother, Millie Roddey, remembers watching me walking off to school holding hands with Chuck Garner, my best friend.

Alfarata is long closed and the arched doorway that we ran thru for recess to the playground is bricked over. But it was a cornucopia of wonders. It brought me Linda, my first girlfriend, who was the fastest and toughest kid on the block. She could beat up anybody who bothered me and beat them in a race at the same time. That was invaluable for me as a scrawny fearful five-year-old.

But Linda outgrew me when I watched her walking into the woods holding hands with an older boy. I yelled to see if she wanted to play some b-ball, but she never turned around, having another sport in mind at the time.

Alfarata had some of today’s hot button issues for schools, that were only cold button non-issues then. It had rumored suggestive shenanigans between a male teacher and his girl student at night in the school building.


Often, when I was on the playground alone shooting hoops at twilight, I’d stare at the lit windows in the school and try to see if there was anything going on there. A shadow passing in the night would have excited me beyond belief, but I never saw anything.

Alfarata had bad teachers and worse students. One poor teacher, Mrs. B, kept breaking rulers beating on her desk trying to get her jabbering students’ attention. Once, a boy stood up, walked to a garbage can in the corner, and threw it out an open classroom window. She broke two rulers that time. And there were mental health issues back then, because it was like watching a nervous breakdown every class Mrs. B. tried to teach.

I remember rumors of a father regularly beating his daughters with a belt. He was a skinny little man and the rumors came from his daughters. Alleged child abuse reared it ugly head here, but nothing was reported.

Alfarata had bullying galore. Mad Max was the recess bully who stood me against the school’s brick wall, ordered me not to move, then threw a volley ball at me as hard as he could. It was dodge ball, without the dodging, and I got hit most of the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Max ended up attending one of our finer schools of lower learning, making license plates for a living. He seemed headed that way.

Good times also happened at recess. I used to play a vicious game of tether ball, slapping the ball hard with the heel of my hand till it went numb and the ball on a rope whipped around the pole in victory, vanquishing my opponent, a little girl.

Life then was spread before me like a banquet of new delights daily. I just grabbed each day and shook it silly like a big bell of clanging wonders. I remember running everywhere till I fell, skinning my knees, which was the only way I’d stop running.

Today I know where the majority of my life went as the decades flash danced past me. But back then at Alfarata, everything was new and life was filled with joy, excitement, total fear, little boy lusts and endless energy. It was like racing with lightning in a thunder storm of emotions.

Published in Common Ground Magazine

MY DAD'S GARAGE

In our one life we lead many lives as babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, spouses, parents, in-laws and, if we’re lucky, senior citizens. And in those lives we’re ruled by different people at different stages of our ages.

When my father’s garage was the epicenter of his amusement business in Huntingdon, he was the bully boss of the family, with many mood swings. Living with him was like jumping off and on a playground merry go round as he built his business. You never knew when you were going fall and skin something bloody.

His garage was filled with three or four helpers every weekday morning, preparing to go out on the route like the spokes of a wheel, and empty the various pinball machines and jukeboxes of change along the way. Every day a different town. That garage was a hustle bustle of activity and was his livelihood for 30 years or more, till he retired.

My dad gouged out a living by sheer will power as he went to every restaurant, bar and service station on the route to get his machines placed there; then he split the nickels, dimes and quarters 60/40 with the owners.

And it all started from that humble garage at the end of our backyard. That garage was where I first heard Elvis Presley played on one of his juke boxes. I predicted that Elvis would never make it, thus ending my music prophecy career before it even began.

In the front was a long counter where Dad put things he needed for the day’s travel in the truck. In the back were various pinball machines and juke boxes, both new and needing repair. He also had some sort of gambling machine called a flasher, that at times was legal then illegal, depending on the changing laws. I remember once he frantically pulled all them out and moved them to Virginia for a while. Then he moved them back, when they became legal again.

After a morning’s meeting at the garage’s front counter, everybody scattered for the day to return later around 5 or 6 p.m. His second in command, who my dad was convinced was robbing him blind but could never catch, had a crazy sense of humor and was always fun to bounce around all day in the truck with in the summer, when I worked for my dad, getting the same $10 a week allowance I got for free during my fall, winter and spring school days.

You’d never guess today, looking at the debris and decay in that decrepit garage, that that enlarged shed made and sustained my father’s career, made his modest fortune and made it possible for him to retire to Florida in his 50’s. Without it, he wouldn’t have had a staging area for the daily war of making a living as a self-employed businessman. Come to think of it, that’s quite a garage there!

Published in Common Ground Magazine

LIFE IN SIX WORDS

There’s a book out called “Not What I was Planning’ which has numerous people summing up their lives in six word statements. Joan Rivers quipped “Liars, hysterectomy didn’t improve sex life.” Humorist Ray Blount Jr. wrote “Maybe you had to be there.”

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote “Revenge is living well, without you.” I can smell a bitter divorce here. Kelsey Ochs said “Follwed yellow brick road, disappointment ensued.”

“I wrote it down somewhere.” someone wrote. “Never finished anything, except cake.” “I colored outside the lines” and columnist Craig Wilson wrote “Dad was Santa. Down hill form there.

Maybe you could come up with your own summation, if you think you’re old enough. I got to thinking and here’s one reason, out of many, as to how I’ve finally summed up my life.

When I was stationed in the Air Force in England in 1969 I took some leave to see Europe. In Paris I bought a leather pouch where I put some foreign coins in, like French franks and Italian lira, as souvenirs.

I had them in my barracks for two years till I packed them in my duffle bag to send home upon my discharge. Back in the USA I moved several times taking that pouch with me each time.

I brought the souvenir pouch into my office and put it on my desk for 33 years, looking at the coins once in a while to remind me of my travels. Then one night someone broke into our office thru a window the size of a small suitcase. A SMALL SUITCASE! And robbed us. My own office was ransacked and my Paris pouch was stolen.

Several months later the cops caught the thief, but he didn’t have the pouch full of my foreign coins with him. They were gone forever. Then last week I was watching the news and they mentioned the Euro, the standard currency that replaced all of Europe’s different bills and coins.

So even if I made it back to Europe one more time, I couldn’t replace my old souvenir francs and lira, if I wanted to. Which leads to the 6 word summation of my life which is “Hell, I never saw that coming!”

PART OF A SPEACH GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIAN CHRUCH GROUP

ATLANTIC CITY HOTEL KITCHEN

There are kitchens and then there are KITCHENS. There’s my mother’s kitchen with the pink Westinghouse stove, the dinner plates from the A&P collection circa 1955 and the kitchen table that my mother still considers new because it’s only 50 years old.

Then there’s the huge Hotel Morton kitchen in the late 60’s Atlantic City where I worked two summer breaks from college. Today it’s probably a penny slot machine parlor at the Trump Taj Mahal, since it was torn down to become a casino.

I was Billy Pancake back then because I worked the breakfast rush in the pantry making row after row of pancakes. Flip them over when the batter bubbles burst for 15 at a time.

For the dinner rush I dipped ice cream and cut pies, cakes and juicy Jersey cantaloupes, while my associate, filthy finger nailed Dorothy, tossed the salads in the sink. Once she scooped up the drain plug plus chain for a customer’s fork to bounce off of when diving into his delicious house salad.

Before entering the kitchen you changed into your white uniform in the locker room, with my boss Bob often modeling his latest underwear for you.

There was old Pop, who looked about 70, moved like he was 90, but had a 30-year-old’s chiseled chest with bulging forearms. He was stooped over, bald with wisps of white, bespectacled and ripped like Arnold in his Mr. Universe days. He was the strangest contradiction I’ve ever seen.

You burst out of the locker room into the bustling greasy floored kitchen to face the big smoking stoves and the cooks on your right, the steaming dishwashers on your left, the sweaty waiters and waitresses zipping in and out of the swinging dining room doors and the rectangular pantry straight ahead.

My favorite job of all time was riding the overflowing smelly garbage can on wheels from the pantry to the trash shoot in the front, where I dropped the garbage down the hole, individually lobbing the bottles to crash in a splattering splash on the concrete floor below.

The kitchen was flush with urgency and hot meals, full of characters I’ll never forget. There’s something about being young, single and aimless that makes the strangest people seem almost normal in the course of your work day.

There was a dishwasher named Jim, who ran me down all the time until I challenged him to meet me in the alley sometime. That was easily the dumbest thing I’d ever done, because with his bodybuilder strength he could have mopped the floor with me and kept my remains as a souvenir in a bucket. But he never showed.

There was Bonnie and Sue, who were runaways that I helped get a room. Sue’s mother had the police chasing Bonnie for taking underage Sue with her. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

After they left the hotel to work elsewhere, Bonnie wrote her mother saying she was marrying me, because I was the only guy she’d mentioned in her letters home. So on her wedding day the police came to town looking for me. I cut the cantaloupe rather raggedly that day waiting for the police to show, but they never did.

Then there was the lovely laughing waitress Eddie, my summer love that blazed and blistered under the steamy August sun, only to flicker out and freeze over in the ice snowball that was our January reunion. I got my Dear John letter leap year day with a request to mail her class ring back to her.

Since the last page of a love letter is usually the most passionate before a lover bids adieu, I buried Eddie’s ring beneath a pile of her letters’ last pages in a box, so she’d see what she was missing as she dug frantically for her ring to put back on her finger and put her back on the market. However, she hasn’t missed me in over 40 years, so I’m beginning to give up hope.

I had a big old ball in that crappy crowded kitchen. I found friends, love and treachery, while single handedly integrating it, by being the only white person on the actual kitchen staff, at a time when life lay before me like a sumptuous buffet of choices, with free refills on the pop.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN COMMON GROUND MAGAZINE

EXOTIC DOWNTOWNS

“Leaving On a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul and Mary was the theme song of my early 20s. Back then I was always leaving on a jet plane, leaving behind crying loved ones to land later embraced sometimes by other loved ones. I had a lot more loved ones when I was young, single and almost cute.

Compliments of Uncle Sam I got to see the downtowns of some of the world’s greatest cities. “Downtown” by Petula Clark became my mind’s soundtrack. All of the cities’ downtowns, midtowns and uptowns were like my personal playgrounds to chase girls, see the sights and soak in some culture. Here are a few snapshots of my memories.

I was first stationed outside of Washington D.C. which provided many dating opportunities. There was this beautiful girl, with no discernible sense of humor. We shared a sullen Thanksgiving meal together then she fell asleep afterwards, while I was kissing her. I left quietly that night for good. The only thing we had in common was eating.

There was a bundle of British girls who invited us to a party during the April 1968 riots in D.C. after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. As I drove thru the riot area to get to the party, there was an explosion behind us and a ball of fire blasted out from a store front that filled up my rear view mirror. I gunned it and a cop car shot out of nowhere, siren blaring and light whirling, speeding to the fiery scene.

D.C. burned that night. We could see it from the party apartment’s balcony, but a party was a party, so we partied; callow shallow youths that we were.

Next I was posted to England 60 miles north of London, only an hour’s train trip away. I took that train often. While walking back alone to my London boarding house at 3 a.m. once, I stumbled upon a rather rowdy ruckus.

Some squatters in an abandoned downtown building were throwing rocks and rubble at a cordon of coppers surrounding them. The Bobbies ebbed and flowed, while ducking the debris. A post pub closing crowd was cheering on the squatters and heckling the police. A grand time was had by all, except the cops.

London has Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, where anyone can literally stand on a box and spout their political philosophy or whatever. One starry eyed Chinese communist boy was praising the communist ideal of equality and compassion for the masses, till he broke under a vicious barrage by British hecklers and shouted “When we take over the world I will personally stick bayonets into your stinking bodies!”

The English can be very disrespectful of authority and political platitudes. That’s why you gotta love those crazy bastards so much, those sucky superior limeys.

I took some leave to explore Europe a bit. Paris is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen with its wide white avenues, magnificent monuments and the sensuous River Seine, where on a boat trip I once saw some buck naked Parisians sunbathing on the river bank in broad daylight. That’s enough to make your Super 8 movie camera jiggle uncontrollably when you zoom in.

The American Bar on Paris’ Left Bank had a unisex bathroom, where you could give a pretty girl the eye, then follow her into the toilet, where she’d enter a stall and let loose after too many American beers. That’ll blow the bloom off the rose fast.

Once in Venice, Italy my roommate and I took a long grim gondola ride where the gondolier regaled us with stories of Americans bombing them during WWII. Strolling past Rome’s ancient ruins I held hands with a Canadian girl, I’d met only an hour before, as she serenaded me and some lecherous Romans with her lilting singing voice from her choir days.

Later in a letter she recounted how she’d been clipped by a car while riding her rented moped down the mountainside of Monte Carlo and ended up in a French hospital. That meant we’d never meet again as we had planned to in Rome.

The song says that “The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares, so go Downtown.” Downtowns were full of promise when I was young and in love with love and life was full of young girls’ laughter and kisses.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN COMMON GROUND MAGAZINE

A SMALL WORLD INDEED

One of my best friends at Juniata College in the1960’s was Mick Kalacia ’67 from New Jersey. He and I were history majors and had a lot of classes together. Mick was stoic, studious and strictly loyal to his girlfriend back home. I tried to change all that.

I felt Mick should loosen up a lot. He was as serious as paralysis. In fact, one of our classmates woke up one morning in the men’s dorm, raised his arms to stretch and somehow paralyzed himself. He left school immediately and never returned. To this day I never stretch awake.

Horror stories like that made me feel that life was way too serious to take seriously, so I doggedly tried to get Mick to study less and have more fun.

The thing I concentrated on the most was to try to make Mick doggie paddle in the deep pool of cute coeds on campus. I just couldn’t believe his devotion to one girl at a time in his life when he had a duty and an opportunity to date as many girls as possible.

He was young, good looking and I felt he should take a bite out of the girlish apples of their fathers’ eyes to see who was the sweetest on campus. Why stick stubbornly to a Granny Smith, when you could sample Fujis, Galas, Mcintoshes, Winesaps, yellow/red Delicious and Cortlands? OK, I love apples.

So many girls, so little time. If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Those were the twin tenants I followed in those delirious days. I’d even broken up with my high school sweetheart my freshman year after being overwhelmed by the fullness of the coed student body prancing around campus giggling.

I tried to get Mick to go to the weekend dances and to, at least, talk to the girls who asked me about him. But he was like a boulder and wouldn’t budge. He was on the choke chain of love stretched tight to Jersey.
Our senior year some of us took the Air Force officer’s test because the Vietnam war was raging and our future after graduation was one of four things- the Army, the Navy, the Air Force or the Marines.

The Air Force wanted pilots, so the officer’s test was four long hours of mystery, fantasy, wild guessing and complete confusion for me because I’d never flown before, let alone as a fighter pilot. The only one I knew who passed was Mick. He was that smart.

Mick and I went our separate ways after graduation. I went into the Air Force and after two years stateside, I got orders for RAF Woodbridge in England. Almost everyone else in my barracks got sent to Vietnam.

In 1969 on my second weekend in England, I took the base bus north to RAF Lakenheath for an intramural football game. I really just wanted to cheaply see the countryside.

Once there, I stopped at the snack bar for a bite and amazingly spotted Mick sitting alone at a nearby table in the empty room. I couldn’t believe it! We caught up with our lives. Mick had married his sweetheart Sue after all and was one of only a handful of Navy personnel on this big Air Force base. We parted promising to keep in touch, but never did. I’m afraid after the history classes ended, we were history.

So if I hadn’t been stationed at a British air base at the height of the Vietnam War, boarded a bus for a football game I had no interest in and stepped into the base snack bar at precisely the same time Mick was eating there, I’d have never had this one person class reunion. ‘Tis a small world indeed, Sparky.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN COMMON GROUND MAGAZINE

FACEBOOKING 4 THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

Bill Roddey: We're all born with a death sentence. Merry Christmas everyone!

There was a flash mob in our little town square last night. Two drunks showed up to fight and swear at each other to "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" playing on a car radio that passed by briefly.

You can lead a horse to water or just bring him a cup of water. Save yourself some time and tugging.

I lost two facebook friends recently. I'm not sure why. Probably the usual reasons- neglect and sexual asphyxiation.

I finally found my place in the universe. I'm an expanding gas belch in the youngest supernova in the Milky Way which blew about 140 years ago. Thanks Hubble telescope.

I can't control the big things in life like terrorist attacks, hurricanes hitting my house and why people never show me the love, so I concentrate on the petty things like wrinkles in my ascot and demanding ribs in my McRib sandwich.

The sun stares down on me like a scorned lover.

Have you ever held a flutter by butterfly in your hands and, mistaking it for a Butterfinger, ate it? Have you ever watched the half moons on your fingernails setting and shrinking and thought you were dying, only to discover you were drunk? Have you ever wept when Jeffrey, the robot, gets crestfallen in the cafeter...ia in the Intel Processor (Bum...Bum Bum Bum Bum) commercial? No, me neither.

Don't you hate conversations where you say "Hi.", then 30 minutes later you say "Bye." and those were the only two actual words you uttered?

Did you know that you're not the King of Anything? says the Queen of Everything.


World leaders come and go, Presidents only last 8 years, religious founders pop up then poop out, but real immortality like that of John Lea and William Perrins last forever. Because those two British chemists invented Lea and Perrins' Worcestershire sauce in 1837 and I soaked my sirloin in it last night. And I haven't even mentioned Ed McIlhenny's Tabasco sauce that's been keeping us hot and spicy since 1868.


You can never out kneel a nun. Don't even try.

She's a porn star, not a a hooker. For God's sake people, get that straight already. So that makes Charlie Sheen her co-star, not just another john. There could be an Academy Award in here cum the Oscars.

Charlie Sheen had a bad reaction to drugs- Viagra and Spanish fly. That's all.

At a Bruce Springsteen concert, all his songs start the same...ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!


The sun will shine tomorrow. The radio alarm will go off at 6 a.m. People will laugh at work. We'll eat lunch. We'll watch TV. We'll pet our dog and cats. Even though it's Jack Roddey's birthday, he won't turn 16 tomorrow. And that'll make it the saddest day of the year.

The seagulls soar over the Atlantic City boardwalk mocking our fevered casino dreams of instant wealth and dive for the odd half eaten junk food castaway.

Life is but a dream...with pee breaks.

The night curles around me like a lover with cold feet and long piercing toe nails.

Death- when the warranty on your birth certificate expires.

The fine print on my birth certificate said "Not valid in the hereafter or at tupperware parties. So if that's what you're here after, find someone else."


In my long life I've known many great dogs, but only a few great people.

I dreamed I was dreaming and never woke up again.

Strawberry Fields was a Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool, England and that's where the Beatles got the name for their song "Strawberry Fields Forever". Also the Eleanor Rugby football team in Liverpool was the inspiration for the Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby".
That last factoid was a lie, in lieu of a joke.


Andy Dick must have deleted me from his Facebook friends. Should I be mad, sad or relieved? How 'bout jubilant?

They're remaking Bonnie Tyler's 1985 hit song "I Need a Hero" with a Philadelphia spin and renaming it "I Need a Hoagy".


Have you ever kissed a dog and made it cry? Have you ever talked to yourself and been snubbed? Have you ever taken a pulse, forgotten to give it back and killed that person? Have you ever been at your wit's end and channeled Oscar Wilde? Pink wants to know.


I think my cat is judging me, especially when I'm naked. OK, OK already, I won't have that second doughnut. HAPPY!?? At least, my dog accepts me for what I am.


The British owner of Segway segues into death on his Segway.


Love makes the world go round. It's something to do with top spin.


Life is a snapshot, then it fades out of focus.


Have you ever jumped to conclusions and suffered a concussion from hitting your head on a tissue of lies? Have you ever made a promise you'd never keep for sex or a beer? Have you ever lied in your prayers for money? Pink wants to know.



Future taste sensation- chocolate barbequed bacon! With a hint of cinnamon pecan. Come on America, you can do it.


Texting during sex is tacky, honey.



We toil in obscurity and make a very little impression on people, us bed bugs do.


Sometimes arguing with a woman is like trying to hold back erosion with your thumbs. You're just digging a hole for yourself like the Grand Canyon, which was caused by erosion.


I'm beside myself. So now I can't fit into my La-Z-Boy. Damn!

Conversation just after pulling into a spot in the Taj Mahal casino parking lot in Atlantic City. "Hey, are you coming or going?" "Coming, I haven't lost any money yet." "Are we close?" "I don't know, we just met." "No, I meant the roof of my SUV clearing the roof of this garage. Are we close?



What the world needs now is a time release martini.


Have you ever petted a tarantula to death? Have you ever seen a beautiful sunrise that made you vomit? Have you ever had to go to a Mob loanshark from the Mafia Wars to buy fertilizer for FarmVille? Have you ever lost your virginity to a turtle...twice? Have you ever saved someone from drowning, then thrown him back... because you didn't like him all that much? Have you ever burped up toe jam? ...Yeah, me too.

FACEBOOKING THREE THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

BILL RODDEY As your dog circles endlessly for the perfect poop plop place, is it assessing asphalt acceptability, sniffing out soil substance, weeding , looking for an even pooping field or other dogs' excretory decisions, listening to hear God tell it where to go like a canine Glen Beck, practicing Feng shui or is it all just the... random fickleness of life, as in "Shit happens."?

What the world needs now is a time release martini.

Have you ever petted a tarantula to death? Have you ever seen a beautiful sunrise that made you vomit? Have you ever had to go to a Mob loanshark from the Mafia Wars to buy fertilizer for FarmVille? Have you ever lost your virginity to a turtle...twice? Have you ever saved someone from drowning, then thrown him back... because you didn't like him all that much? Have you ever burped up toe jam? ...Yeah, me too.

All roads may lead to Rome, but all vapor trails lead to Paris...Hilton, that is.


Who is your father? Who is your father?" worst dialogue of a sex scene ever.

It's tough being type cast as the bald, fat, incredibly handsome, but humble, old man.

Does the entire internet know? I keep getting SPAM e-mail titled "Stop feeling like a loser." Who told?

I’m a semi- vegetarian. I only eat animals that eat vegetables.

In 1983 there was a hot singing group called Katrina and the Waves. Were they the precursor to Hurricane Katrina and the waves that crashed over New Orleans 5 years ago? A coincidence? I think not. Nostradamas predicted this in the day as he was Walking on Sunshine.

Women live by consensus, as in "What do YOU think I should do?", whereas men decide like a dictator. Screw it, I'm gonna do it.

BOOM! There goes another baby boomer meeting his maker.
Sue Dunmire hope it wasn't me.
Bill Roddey If you're not all over the place, then it wasn't you. BOOM! Check yourself again. We are a pretty explosive generation, Sue. Always have been. BOOM! Wow , that one was just down the road. Gotta go see who it was.

She's got more baggage than the cargo holds of a fleet of 747s.

If you've HAD IT, don't give it to me, 'cause I had it years ago, and I need my job.

What do I do? One of my imaginary friends owes me $203.47, but he just lost his NASA job and has a baby on the way from his imaginary wife who's messin' around with an imaginary Charles Manson. He's hurtin', but I could sure use the money


The day after I'm gone, it'll be like I was never here. Such is the power of the present.

What's beside the point of no return? You can get to the point with a knife and a stick. AND
What's the point of life? It's sharp conclusion?


I just discovered that I have a split personality and that I have nothing in common with myself. This could really screw up my sex life.

I need an electrician to rewire the electrolytes in my Gatoraid. It's flat.

‎"Get hammered and nail a carpenter." The Carpenters' Ass. of America.

After 40 years of pondering this puzzle, I've come to believe that Bugs Bunny has serious health concerns, because he's always asking "What's up, doc?". This indicates multiple medical consultations about the state of his well being. Ah, wait, wait. .. Either that or he just calls everybody Doc and is incurably inquisitive and a wise ass.


It was so hot and dry today that our neighbors hired five fat guys to stand in the sun and sweat in buckets to be used later to water their garden. Unfortunately, I was unavailable.

The best work week is the week you're on vacation. The worst work week is the week you return from vacation.

Buffaloes have chicken wings, spaghetti has meat balls and I have a headache. Good night.

‎" I believe in hugs, as long as they lead to sex. Otherwise, screw 'em." The most interesting man in the world. "Stay thirsty, my friends."

It hit 103 today in the Baked Apple today!

Heat Wave- It's gonna be as sultry as an overworked Hooter waitress‘ panty shield. .

I never understood the subtle difference between the undead and the living dead, which, of course, is a contradiction in terms. Then there's the Greatful Dead who are thankful zombies with a rock and roll band. I don't know though how appreciative Jerry Garcia was about dying. Then there's the Dead Heads who, by definition, are dead from the neck up. This ends today's silly seminar.

It must be the Fourth Of July, 'cause tents selling fireworks are popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain

WARNING: You feed him, ladies and he'll follow you home. That's pretty much any guy.

My life contains strong language, nudity, sexual situations, graphic violence and death. Viewer discretion is advised.

NEED YOU NOW- " It's a quarter after one and I'm a little loaded, and if goaded, I need you now. Uh oh. Fuckit, need a bucket first! Ummm Ummm Waaaaaaahhhhhhh!"

I found a photo of myself, as a baby, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself, holding a photo of myself. And in each photo I got older. And I thought "OMG, I'm Benjamin Button!!!"

It's so damn hot today, my id stuck to my superego.

Patience just takes too much damn time.

Midnight madness at 11:45. It's all just one long goodbye. Then you die.

SECOND FACEBOOKING THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Bill Roddey: You can be right all the time and be alone. Or you can be wrong most of the time and be in a relationship.

It's 2 P.M. somewhere in the world. Time for a nap.

Look out, he'll come after you like a Philly cop with a taser!

The most interesting man in the world once poked Jesus on Facebook, started a Mafia War in Farmville and turned tap water into Poland Springs. Stay thirsty my friends.

Life is short, so when you're down, dance inside your teardrops.

Worst wake-up call ever-Death

An ideal demise for a struggling actor could be to drop down dead in Manhattan after auditioning for a one word extra role in the movie "Squid Man"- representing the reality of death with the illusion of following your dreams. Later your wife learns you didn't get the role from a giddy guy who did, illustrating luck, ...loss and the futility of ego, in one final rejection after death.

It was so hot today that the flies were dropping like people.

I'm writing wrongs today. Put ice cubes with dead flies frozen inside to chill jugs of your child's lemonade at his corner stand. Then when the ice melts and flies float to the top make fun of the kind people who buy glasses of warm fly bobbing lemonade. For Christmas give gag Fix-A -Flat cans that not only don't fix flats, but make farting sounds and smells when used in emergencies.

The daily drama of life goes on and on, while Jack recedes further and further into the past, as just bones in a box.

Went for a walk today. God sure loves bugs and bunnies, and of course, the great Bugs Bunny.

There's an order in the universe. Unfortunately, it's for fries

It was so hot today the wind was sweating.

It was so humid today, Donald Trump's ego wilted.

It was so hot today a cold cup of tea in the kitchen collected a swarm of mosquitoes.


Patience just takes too much damn time!

General McCrystal Meth Head

" I could have had a G-8...Summit that is! Instead of a G-20." Pres. Obama.

A team of scientists is going to examine Ozzy Osborn to see why he's still alive after all his years of incredible abuse. He should have died long ago by all medical standards. I wonder what the lab tests are for zombieism.

A true pessimist doesn't see the glass as half full or half empty, he sees it as so cracked it could cut him if he used it.

AN EMPTY POOL FULL OF SALT WATER

Summer brings out the nostalgia in me. When you’re still in school and on a hormone high, summer holds out the promise of passion, romance and adventure. What it ended up for me was swimming in Huntingdon’s downtown swimming pool with my pals. There was no real passion or romance, but it was an adventure.

Now that’s all gone for me, my friends and apparently the kids of Huntingdon too. I’ve passed the downtown pool many times this summer on my way to my mothers and nobody’s ever there. Once I saw two boys sitting near the missing diving board, but that’s it. All that beautiful cool cow-stained (from the bovines upstream relieving themselves) water wasted.

In the old days (the first time I heard that phrase was from Gabby Hayes, looking 100, in an old Roy Rogers’s western) the pool was packed with kids diving, splashing, cannon balling, pushing, shoving and dunking each other. The spit of a sandy beach spread before you like a carpet of beach towels and sun worshippers shoulder to shoulder, nose to nose, bumper to bumper and some nose to bumper.

There was a concession stand where the specialty was frozen candy bars, hard and chewy as chocolate covered rocks. There were potato chips to make you thirsty, pop to quench that thirst, then more chips in a round robin spasm of salt and sugar in the sun on the sand. The boys’ and girls’ dressing rooms book ended the concession stand. After a full day’s swim, you struggled to strip off your swim suit that stuck to the sand that stuck to your skin like wallpaper to a wall.

Ah, the good old days of sunburns and ear infections, that I got almost every summer. Once I had to wear a girl’s bathing cap, as my earplugs weren’t keeping out the cow patties circling downstream. Oh, the humiliation! The girls giggled at me and the guys asked me out laughingly. Then there was the time I got caught in the pull of the waterfall at the dam end of the pool. I held on, dangling in the rushing water, beside the diving board as kids ran and laughed above me. Nobody seemed to see me, so I just let loose, then everyone noticed me with shouts as I fell thru the falls onto the rocky creek bed below the pool .

Those were the days! Painful times harden you as a child and prepare you for the disappointments of adulthood like supermodels will never look at you with the same interest and lust that you look at them, unless you’re rich and famous.

I suspect the downtown pool crowd has gone way upstream to the huge Raystown Dam to swim. Growing up in Huntingdon, the promise of the expanded Raystown Dam was to make us a resort like Atlantic City. Downtown Huntingdon would become the boardwalk of the dam with thousands of tourists strolling and shopping there.
It never happened and it may have dried up my beloved downtown pool population.

The same kind of promise popped up in Atlantic City about legalized gambling when I spent several summers there between semesters in college. They thought that gambling would transform Atlantic City into the Paris of the Jersey shore, the French Riviera of the east coast. With the distance between Paris and the French Riviera, this would have been geographically impossible to have them both in the same place, but what did they know?

Before the concrete casinos shot up, the boardwalk was a whirly gig of pizza places, ice cream parlors, souvenir stores full of saltwater taffy and tee shirts, grills bubbling and spitting with hot dogs, hamburgers and Italian sausages , fortune tellers, movie theaters and auction houses selling tacky paintings to the highest bidders. Hawkers, like Ed McMahon, demonstrated amazing peeling and paring gizmos on innocent potatoes and apples that shredded before your very eyes while seagulls sailed overhead laughing at you.

Then Donald Trump and his casino cronies came and everything except the food, salt water taffy and souvenir shops, succumbed to these goliaths of gambling that took your money quicker than a million muggers. Now there are no more movie theaters in all of Atlantic City. Movies would take two hours or so away from the gamblers, so they’re all gone. The seagulls still laugh at you from on high, but now it’s because of all the money you’ve lost.

The beaches in mid-summer look more like a cold day in September because everyone’s inside the casinos, instead of frolicking in the ocean or sunbathing like in the old days. A block behind the new boardwalk swelters the old Atlantic City deteriorating, dirty and dangerous. The casinos transformed the boardwalk into a loser’s paradise where gamblers auction their future to the next spin of the slots, the next tumble of the dice or the next slap of the cards, but the rest of Atlantic City’s stayed the same since the 60’s

The thudding fall of the promises of the new improved Raystown Dam and A.C.’s casino gambling echoes in my ears like the mundane ping of my slot machine as it taketh, but rarely giveth back. Maybe if I tried the pretty poker machines in the next aisle.

FACEBOOKING THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

Bill Roddey: Fanaticism is the enema of the people. Where would you be, if you weren't where you are? Contrary to the name, Minute Rice can not tell time. There's another SAW movie coming out. It's set in a playground. It's called SEE SAW. That is all. Spock out.

I read that there's a nurses' shortage. My solution would be to hire taller nurses.

He's like a boulder. The only thing that would move him is a thousand years of erosion.

Just one of life's little observations. You know, as a guy, that there's some gender confusion if you sit down to pee in a stand up urinal. Or, I guess you could just have a beer battered brain.

I was gonna get one of those new iPads, but you can only plug it in during THAT time of the month, so I decided not to.

The most interesting man in the world says "Stay thirsty, my friends." REALLY? That's all he has to say? What is he a beer salesman? Oh right. He is. REALLY!
Lil' known fact. Prescription glasses don't come in gelcaps.

I like my bananas ripe enough to have to fight the fruit flies for them. I just thought you'd want to know.

With all the death around us daily, it feels like we're all just circling the drain.

For most of us, the closest we'll ever get to a three-way is a light bulb

I was just blown to kingdom come and it mussed up me hair.

Somebody built a bird's nest in our garbage on top of the empty burrito box in the kitchen. I thought you'd want to know.

That high definition is so detailed that when I saw a cartoon in hi def on HBO I could make out the artist in the background drawing it.

Ice skatin' zombies. 'Nuff said.

The sign going into the hospital said “TOBACCO FREE”, so at the reception desk I ask for a pack of free cigarettes.

GPS means -GO PAST your STREET.

“Don't ask. Go to hell. It's none of your business!” says the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

First I used to eat the old Domino's pizza, that even they said was crappy, second I thought Toyotas were cool cars, not death cabs for cuties, third I had over 400 Face Book friends delete me 'cause I asked to borrow money from them as they were my new friends and I joined I'm With Coco 'cause I love hot cocoa and I believed John Edwards never had a baby with that woman. I'm such a loser

What do you get extra from a Face Book friend with benefits? Fertilizer from Farm Ville? Dirty Money from Mafia Wars? Or Cyber Sex from Virtual Barbie?

Once upon a Timex...The clock struck 12...innocent people and sent them to the hospital. Which way is clockwise on a digital watch? Sideways? What happens when your watch stops? Does that mean the world's run out of time?

I'm up for the Nobel Pizza Prize. Keep your greasy fingers crossed. This could my year. Frankly, I could use the dough.

His Royal Furiness, Mr. Mustang. I scratched his head, he gave me one last wet nose kiss, then crawled under the computer table and died. Sweet cat, The best. Monumentally missed.

As I walked thru the valley of the shadow of death I saw no weasels, but I did spot an S&H Green Stamps Redemption Center, shuttered since the 70's.

Chocolate is God's gift to bellies and butts.

You mean I'm a suspect? ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. .....for male enhancement. HUUMMMMMMM. You mean I'm a suspect? ZZZZZZZZZZZ.... We find for the defendant. HUUMMMMMMMM. You mean I'm a suspect? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. ...... erectile dysfunction. HUUMMMMMM. You mean I'm a suspect? ZZZZZZZZZ. "Honey, honey it's time to go to bed.... Honey!" Next week on LAW AND ORDER... CLICK!

An agnostic is just an atheist hedging his bets.

Hi there, I'm available for long wet walks in the woods. Call me soon. I'm booking up fast. Wilma.

I'm a semi-vegetarian. I only eat animals that eat vegetables. Which is why we won't be serving Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter with corn bread stuffing and ketchup for Thanksgiving dinner. I have my principles.

I don't care what they say, failure is ALWAYS an option.

I'm morally bankrupt, I need a sexual stimulus.

The center will not hold, so white knuckle the edges.

I just wanna wake up on a day when my grandson Jack is still alive.

I sleep walked so much last night that I walked into someone else's dream where I saw a mob hit and I've been running ever since. I can't fall to seep for fear I'll get whacked by Guido "Pizza Crusted One Tooth" O'Hara because I'm a material witness. The material was mohair for my baby doll pajamas

HITCHHIKING THRU OLD EUROPE

Even though it’s spring, I’ve got cabin fever. Not from the weather trapping me in the house, but because we haven’t been on a vacation since the last summer and have months to go before we hit the road again.

So I’m reduced to hitchhiking through my memories of old Europe- England, Holland, France, Italy- when I was young and single and everything was possible. Everything meant that I could possibly meet a pretty girl who’d let me spend all my money on dating her.

I remember strolling around Nice on the French Riviera with my buddies Mike and Mark, wearing my Troop 91 explorer scout shirt trying to attract the girls who liked men in uniform. I couldn’t wear my U.S. Air Force blues there because of the rampant anti-Americanism due to the Vietnam War then.

It was 1970 and we were ahead of our times as we sipped bubbly bottled French water while standing in the sea on a rocky Riviera Beach. The water was so crystal clear you could see your toes wiggle under the waves. It was naturally stony, so they had to bring in sand for the rich to have sandy beaches like in America.

We drank wine at dinner because it was cheaper than coke. Breakfast and lunch was crusty torpedo loaves of bread and pungent French cheese. From Nice we looked up at the castle on the adjacent mountain in Monaco to see if the lights were on, indicating whether Prince Rainier and Princess Grace were home.

Grace Kelly filmed Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch A Thief” there with Cary Grant and returned later to catch a prince. The lights were on, but we never saw the royal couple. We did see rich men losing thousands of francs at the one and only casino that made Monte Carlo in Monaco so famous.

They played James Bond’s baccarat game where the cards are scooped up. All I did was buy a $5 poker chip as a souvenir. My money was too precious to gamble it away then.

However, money was no object when it came to buying an expensive book on my favorite painter Salvador Dali on the left bank of Paris later. I couldn’t read it because it was in French, but I could marvel at the photos of his surrealistic paintings. Mike and Mark were appalled that I had spent my beer money on a book.

But I shared my book with Elise, a pretty American girl at a dive called The American Bar. She loved Dali and hated Frenchmen philosophizing all day without getting to the point. She bought me my beers.

Like the old TV show “Ali McBeal” the bar had a unisex bathroom where men and women went to go. It was all stalls, sinks and mirrors, so you could keep eye contact with the opposite sex of your choice from bar to bathroom and back. Only a stall door separated you briefly till the flush.

We left the American Bar at 6 a.m. for another bar that opened at 6. I lost Elise there to a philosophizing Frenchman and ended up talking to the bartender who said that Dali used to get drunk there. I showed him my new book.

Another time in Paris, my new found friend Barry and I did dialogue from our favorite movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” on a bus through the city to meet some American girls we had befriended in Amsterdam.

I had stolen Barry’s girl from him in Amsterdam, so on the train trip to Paris I guiltily gave up my seat beside a beautiful Italian girl to Barry. So while I stood and watched the French countryside speed by, Barry turned on the charm and got her phone number to call.

As I walked around Paris’ right bank holding Barry’s girl’s hand I pointed out how beautiful an ornate bridge was linking two buildings. Barry’s girl said that they had one just like that in Cleveland. And they say that travel is so broadening.

STRAIGHT EYE FOR THE GAY GUY

NBC had a hit show called Queer Eye For The Straight Guy , where well-dressed gay men try to make straight guy slobs fashionable, or, at least, more presentable in public. I’ve only seen the commercial for the show because, frankly, these makeover shows, be they about homes, gardens or people, pique my viewing interest almost as much as watching toenails grow. They bore me to snores.

The media shows that gay men have a style and flair that the average straight guy can never attain, even if he puts his mind to it, which he probably wouldn’t. The gay way of putting together a man’s wardrobe is being held up as the ideal, the epitome of how the sharp dressed 21st century male should appear.

Men should all look like male models on the catwalk when they go to work at the plant or to the ballgame in the park as presented by gay men. Now who died and made them queen? I heard this royal title bestowed on gays by gays at a Gay Pride Parade in New York City once, which is why I crowned them thusly.

But not all straight men aspire to be fashion plates. They’re more dinner plate people. Yes, the gay guys you see on TV have a panache that I know I could never match. However, I did buy a $40 tuxedo at Boscovs once so I could dress up too, but I rarely do.

I just don’t have the interest or energy to coordinate my wardrobe in order to make some sartorial splash somewhere. My daily fashion statement is made by grabbing the first shirt and pants I find in the closet moments before dressing for work or going out.

I give more thought to my cereal choices in the morning than to the attire adorning my spare tire. And I suspect the average straight single guy makes his choice from a clothes pile thrown on the floor. I know I did before I got married. In life I’ve searched longer for the perfect pizza than for the perfect pair of pants, with shoes and shirt to match.

I began wondering about the tragically hip gay man who might love to be less of a slave to fashion, but can’t help himself. The pressure of trying to keep up with the Armanies must be tremendous. Perhaps this gay fellow would like to come out of the closet as a simply dressed straight guy, but doesn’t know how.

That’s why I came up with my Straight Eye for the Gay Guy guidelines here to help. It’s much easier and cheaper dressing up straight. You basically don’t really care what you look like in public and, consequently, not much is ever expected of you.

You have to be willing to wear outside what you would casually wear inside, keeping in mind that there are public lewdness laws that have to be obeyed. This means that nothing really matches or is color coordinated, whatever that means.

I’m white, so does that mean I always have to wear white or red in the summer when I get sunburned, to be color coordinated? I don’t have a clue and that’s often a sure sign of being a straight guy. We never know what we look good in, nor do we really care that much.

Straight guys aren’t overly concerned with cleanliness, unless the bacteria count turns toxic. Beer and pizza stains on sweatshirts just add character. A pizza stain resembling the boot shape of Italy would be accessorizing to a straight guy. Some streaks from changing the oil in your car would not eliminate a shirt from proper evening wear.

Frayed cuffs and shiny seats on your pants just give that treasured lived-in look to your ensemble. Remember when your mama told you to always wear good clean underwear in case you had to go to the hospital suddenly? Not really necessary for the average straight guy. As long as most of your elastic waist band is left, your underwear is fine. A few dozen rips and tears just let the fresh air in. Straight guys are very attached to their heirloom Fruit of the Looms.

Usually the only way the average straight guy dresses well is if his girlfriend or wife, out of total desperation, buys his clothes for him. And they will. But the poor gay guy has only himself to rely on for looking good in the neighborhood. It’s all up to him to be natty.

Hey, if this column helps only one gay man dress inappropriately and sloppily, then my work here is done.

IF ONLY THIS WERE ALL TRUE

Here are some facts to share and some other things that would be great if true and factual. First the facts, ma’am.
Babies are born without kneecaps. (And some husbands have no spines. You know who you are. Yes dear, I do.)

Butterflies taste with their feet, which is why everything they eat taste like feet and why they stay so slim. I can see the next craze-The South Beach Feet Diet.

Cats have over 100 vocal sounds, yet our cat just whines in one constant high pitch.

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated. I guess after that shark petting zoo disaster in 1508 at the Moscow Sea World, they just quit trying.

If you’re an average American, in your whole life you’ll spend about 6 months waiting at red lights. And if you’re the average dumb guy, you’ll spend about 3 months waiting at green lights until someone beeps at you to move.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. This is so you don’t see who you’re sneezing on. It’s a legal defense in case you get sued.

No word in the English language rhymes with orange, silver or purple. Hey, hey I got one! My Slurpee is grape purple. If I drink it too fast I’ll slurplee…all over myself. On second thought, I guess that’s still true.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket, not in his hand. It was also the invention of M&Ms that only melt in your mouth.

The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet. Yeah, except 3. Huh! What? Never mind.

A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second, unless it’s a woman saying she’ll be ready in a jiffy. Then it’s anywhere from a half hour to half a day, at least.

Women blink twice as much as men and dumb guys wink back thinking they’re flirting.

Here are some things that would be great if they were true and factual. If you play lottery numbers based on your family’s birthdates, you’re bound to win the big one eventually.

The good they do die old. This would sure reduce the burgeoning world population as all us bad dudes checked out early.

Freedom is on the march. Or limping badly in certain designated dictatorships around the world and in Connecticut, where its former governor just went to prison in Pa.

The actual real reason we invaded Iraq was to set up a democratically elected Islamic government that won’t turn radically religious later and hate us like the rest of the Moslems.

That children can run around their neighborhoods free and unafraid of sexual predators and drug gangs, like some of us baby boomers did in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The only warnings we had back then were from our mothers to be on time for supper or else…we’d just eat it later warmed up. My mother never knew where I was most of the summers of my youth and didn’t worry.

That all the fine folks on the Internet just want to be your friend and not crash your computer with worm viruses they send out hourly and that they want to meet you in motels miles away NOT to kill you or worse.

A nice big layer of body fat is not only attractive, but it’s good insulation that’ll keep you warm in the winter, cool in the summer and is doctor recommended.

That, as they say, love is in the air, instead of the usual hatred.

That when people ask you how you are they’re just concerned and don’t really want to get the dirt on you, so they can run you down later to their friends.

And finally, that all the world needs now is love, love, love and not AIDS’ relief, debt forgiveness and a tank full of gas that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg and a liver.