Welcome to Bawdsville!

The first year I lived in Thailand I was at a friend of mine’s bar on Sukhumvit Soi 22.  The bar is called The Sport Corner.

On one particular night I wound up back at the Gary Dale hacienda with a guest rider.  I don’t remember much about coming home (straight vodka can have that effect) but the next morning I was awaken by some bad breath beneath some sad eyes.  I took the nudge as a kind reminder that my boarder was trying to earn her keep.  She gave me a shake and said “Now?!?”  So I rolled her over and obliged then fell back asleep.  A bit later she was shaking me harder “Now?!?”  Damn!  Didn’t she know anymore words in English?  My head was pounding but my ego was taking a pounding from this girl’s pleading, so again, I rolled her straight over and obliged.  And went right back to sleep.  A bit later, again, the scene was repeated but this time with much greater force and persistent clarity…  “NOW?!?!?!?”  She whined like a three year old nanny goat.  “Okay, okay, you damned insatiable hussy!”  So after finishing this time I didn’t go back to sleep.  I bolted to the shower so I could start my day and shuffle this one on out the door.  When I came out of the bathroom there she sat on the bed, all wrapped in the sheets and covers with a hurt look.  She pointed at the thermostat and pleaded “NOW?!?!?!”

You guessed it.  The whole time she was just telling me that she was cold!

I was recently at an exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium, and I was approached by an older gentleman from Morocco named Mahmoud.  We were having a nice conversation when an old friend of mine from Varna, Bulgaria, George Stephanoff Belev, walked up behind me and was looking over my shoulder.  So I turned and introduced the Moroccan gentleman to George.  The Moroccan immediately turned back to speak with me, hurting George’s feelings a bit so George interrupted him with the very little French in George’s arsenal.  “ÇA va?” George asked Mahmoud, which is like “Howdy do?” in French.  Most educated Moroccans speak French quite well, but George was placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable which seemed to confuse our North African friend as he had that hurt look which screamed “What the hall is this moron trying to say?”  The man looked at George for a short while with his puzzled gaze and turned back and continued speaking with me.

George cringed because he thought he was being ignored so decided to give it one more go. 

“ÇA va?!?” George interjected again and this time the Moroccan turned toward George, realizing that George had actually been addressing him in French so he cut loose en français and gave George a two minute spiel about his company and his hometown in Morocco, Casablanca.  George stood in front of him with his head tilted to the right like a bewildered bird dog.  His mouth was drooping and agape.  When George realized Mahmoud had finished his elevator speech he snapped to attention and said “BRAVO!” then paused for a second and continued “So could you now translate what you just told me into English for our American friend because they don’t speak no other languages!”

George should have been a politician.

It is Christmas Eve and I am at my desk. I just got the below message from my old good friend, Thilo Krüger, on Skype:

[2:50:43 PM] Thilo Krueger says: Sitting with David Appleton and his family in the TELL in Siem Reap, and we’re talking about you while going through the pages of “Gary Dale gets off offensive”. We are laughing tears and giving our warmest regards !

TELL is his restaurant and the spelling / grammatical mistakes either has to do with his uncontrollable laughing or the fact that he’s drunk. Or both!

I have had mails from people who tell me they bought Gary Dale Gets Offensive only for the book cover but once reading it they thought it was absolutely hilarious. The fact is, good humor is good humor, whether it is from the South or wherever else. In this case, Thilo happens to be German and David is English and they are sitting in Cambodia.

I don’t look for the book to win any literary awards – only to make people laugh. But I have seen that virtually everyone who has purchased one of these books never loan it out. They keep it close to them for conversation starters. That is as long as they can keep it from their kids!

Anyway, as long as it reminds old friends of me who are far and way at Christmas time, I am happy…

Hung over and late for work at the saw mill again, Gervis rear-ended a car with Texas tags going up the state highway. To Gervis’s surprise the Texan was a verifiable dwarf!  The little man stormed over to Gervis’s pick ‘em up truck, looked up at Gervis, and yelled, “I AM NOT HAPPY!”  

Without missing a beat Gervis I looked down at him and asked, “Well, which one are you then? Grumpy?”

 

Here’s another one from my forth coming follow up to Gary Dale Gets Offensive:

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Gervis went fishing down at the banks of where the Ozan Creek met the Little Missouri River.  It was a hot day and there wasn’t nobody else around so he took off all his clothes and went skinny dippin’ for a while.  As he was hung over from the night before once he was finished swimming he fell asleep on the river bank for several hours and got one hell of a gosh awful sunburn.  He looked like roasted razorback.

Gervis’s skin was all cracklin’ and hot.  He felt like someone to a horseshoe file to his skin then applied cayenne sauce to top off the torture.  Fannie rushed him to go see Doc Jessup who diagnosed Gervis with second-degree burns over 80% of his body.  Gervis’s skin was starting to blister like the whites of eggs frying so Doc Jessup gave him continuous intravenous feeding with saline, electrolytes, a sedative, and two Viagra pills every hour.

Fannie Mae, whose curiosity was now “aroused”, asked Doc Jessup what good Viagra would do for old Gervis.

“It ain’t gone do nothing for his condition,” said Doc Jessup, “But it’ll keep shol’ the sheets off his legs.”

This is one from a new publication I am working on which is a follow up to my Bawdville book…

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Gervis Fife and Fannie Mae were sitting at a table at their high school reunion.  Gervis  kept staring at a drunken bag of a woman who was swiggin’ and chuggin’ her drinks alone at a nearby table.  The hag kept givin’ Gervis cold glances every chance their eyes met.  If looks could kill she’d would have been huntin’ out of season that day.

Finally, Fannie Mae had enough.

“Do you know her?” Fannie asked.

“Yep,” said Gervis, “I shol do.  That’s Virginnie Lou Cooper.  She’s my old girlfriend.  I feel sorry for her condition cause I hear tell she took to drinking right after we split up those many years a go.  She ain’t been sober since.”

“Glory be!” said Fannie Mae, “How could a person celebrate for so long?”

My doctor friend, Erik Fleischman, has struck again…

This morning Erik sent me this picture from Papua New Guinea.  Was it a warning in case I go to Port Moresby?

What I want to know is if there is any discount if the doctor is the one drunk?

I may not be an acrobat on the balance bar but I can balance a Beer Chang in my sleep!

I have been told I could drink in my sleep…  Now I have proof positive!

Erik Fleischman needs his neck wrung for taking this picture.  (So why hang it if I am not so “proud” of it?  If it gets hung, I want it on my site and not someone else’s!)

I have a German friend with a great sense of humor.  His name is Thilo Krüger.  He’s intelligent, witty, always quick with a joke and a light of the smoke.  Then one day Thilo was in Bangkok visiting from Cambodia.  We were exchanging jokes and I so told him this German joke…

I guess it goes to show what they used to say at the Seoul H.A.S.H. was really true:

I guess maybe I should stick with my off beat Southern humor.