A Hero Gets Wet but Stays Dry, The Tar Dipped Chicken Derby and Cancer Survival With The Osmonds

I was laying on a New Jersey beach with a couple of friends, it was very crowded and somewhat dirty. I thought I was far enough from the waves to stay dry, I was fully dressed in a suit as always so that was an important detail. I had my head resting on the sand and my eyeball was as close to the ground as possible without touching it. Just as I was really feeling good about my ability to locate myself in just the right place for such a show as the one I was watching of the sheets of water approaching and receding, a sheet of water rolled right in and consumed me spraying over me and rolling me up. The first thing I thought about was my phone which I quickly snatched out of my pocket finding it dry as a bone. Except for a few beads of water here and there my suit was dry too. I had forgotten that water needs time to sink in and of course a quickly approaching and receding wave on a beach is obviously moving too fast to get a person wet. You have to soak if you wanna get wet. Duh. I stood up with my old high school pal Andrew Tso and he too remarked that he was momentarily tricked by the water thinking that he'd get wet. We should have paid more attention in high school physics.

We walked toward the mini truck show that was being held at the beach and which was also the reason for the crowded beach. At the water's edge there was a lowered mini truck that was apparently stuck in the wet sand. Looking around I noticed many mini trucks in the same predicament. Andrew had made his way around to the first one I noticed which was in a full throttle rev attempting to free itself. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the truck's front end lift up wheelie style so high that it flipped over backwards onto my friend Andrew's head. I was only slightly concerned because the truck was pretty small and my friend Andrew is a barrel chested Navajo, surely he'd survive. I ran towards the upside down truck and found Andrew's head poking out from underneath, some other asshole standing near by apparently couldn't be bothered to help me lift the truck off of my friend so I was left to do it myself. No big deal, it wasn't even very heavy, plus I know how to use leverage.

When Andrew emerged I thought I could see a really large dent on his chest and shoulder area. It appeared as if he had broken some major bones. He shook it off and claimed to be o.k. the driver of the truck sped off without so much an apology or thank you for tipping his truck back over. What a dick.

As the TV crews descended on Andrew to interview him about his incredible survival story it was revealed that the driver of the truck was a childhood neighbor of Andrew's and that every time that dude got a new car, he would brag and brag about it only to have it destroyed in some fashion minutes later. Andrew claimed to have known the truck was going to flip over. i was still worried about his broken bones but he was apparently feeling fine. Nobody mentioned my heroics or that I single handedly lifted an entire truck off my friend and surprisingly I wasn't annoyed by that fact even though some douchebag sound man had his boom mic blocking my view.

I was excited to get back to my new room in the place I was staying. It was an exact replica of Mr. Brady's den where he'd conduct his architecture business. It was the same room that Greg Brady turned into his new "pad" in the episode where he started to call his parents Mike and Carol instead of mom and dad. I spent a bit of time trying to hook up the cable to the few vintage Brady era television sets in my new room but I soon realized that those old TVs weren't set up for cable. I chopped up a few chickens and threw them in the oven instead. Turns out the oven put on a better show than a TV could anyway. The bottom of the oven was like a big aluminum pan that would tilt, shift and slide throwing the chicken and whatever else was on it's greasy surface sliding back and forth and to and fro cooking it all evenly. Sometimes the chicken would bash into the side of the oven so hard it would momentarily turn inside out which was damn convenient because I could gauge exactly how pink it was in the middle. It sure was making me hungry. One of the chickens appeared to be burnt black on one side which for a moment cast doubt on the effectiveness of this type of cooking method, that was until I remembered that I had dropped the chicken in some hot black tar before I put it in the oven. I could smell the tar.

Later I attended a cancer survival benefit for a friend of a friend in Provo Utah. The benefit was held in a Mormon ward house in one of the very very large sunday school rooms with a stage. The Osmond Brothers made a special appearance because they apparently new the dude with cancer. All the Osmond brothers looked really good and in shape, they were all very young looking and had very stylish retro rock haircuts. They all kept their attention focused on the cancer dude and they were smiling and making jokes. I thought it was weird how it wasn't weird at all to have them walking around the room doing their act in front of our small 30ish people crowd when they were so famous when I was a kid. Life as a Mormon I suppose. Cimi was making herself very comfortable on my lap. Sometimes it's nice having a girl on your lap. Donny sure did look like my younger brother Dan.

Last night I was everybody's awesome older brother. At least it felt that way.