Day 4

On the road now in Dallas (Addison), Texas.  I am concerned about my food plan when I’m in another city, but my fears are somewhat cancelled out by the fact that I can lose pounds through alternative methods – stepping outside.

I enjoy the outdoors, but in this case, my experience with nature is the run from an air-conditioned building to the next. I guess I owe God a fee for the steam bath use. Today, I saw a building sweat.

I did my usual press run this morning, and hung out with my old buddies on radio, Lex & Terry. I go way back to the late 80s with Terry, who lived in Southern California and started his radio career there. I knew him with a mullet and he knew me with a cut that resembled “Wham.”

When Terry teamed up with Lex several years ago, their syndicated show took off, primarily appealing to the young male demographic, meaning their show usually contains humor based on hot chicks and alcohol.

The reason I bring them up in a blog about weight loss might be a stretch, but most times I take off my shirt I have a memory jog. I am reminded of an appearance I made a coupla years ago, during another media stop while in Dallas.

I was sitting at the far end of the console in the Lex & Terry studio and trying to pull some focus my way. When I wake up at 5am, the purpose is to move tickets for the shows, and to do so I look for opportunities to get some funny in and turn on some new fans.

Well, this day I had a rough go of getting some mike time, since the studio was filled with other guests, including an ongoing L&T bit called…”Drunk Bitch Friday.”

So here I am talking about my kid’s birth and it gets constantly interrupted with the hosts screaming, “Ohhhh! There she goes. She’s blowing chunks!” This is followed by another tradition of Terry spraying Lysol in the room, as that week’s young drunk girl vomits into a bucket.

Not so easy competing for voice time with a trollop in a tank top bent over with her hair in a trash can…

To top it all off, in our world of short attentions, they had a guy come in to have a tattoo mural put on his back of the host’s logo. Now I’m really alone on the other side of the room, thinking of how to fit a tattoo routine into the mix just to get some attention.

Finally, I blurt out; “I’ll get a tattoo.”

Boom! All heads came my way. I could have said I was kidding or bowed out, but no. I went all in, like a poker player down to his last chips. They asked me if I had any tats. Not only do I not, but I always refrained from having ink, no matter how drunk I ever got or how many strippers told me it’s hot, I had a self proclamation that I would never go through with it. Let them love me for my bare arms and bony shins. If they want artwork, I will take them to a museum.

I had a dot put on by the visiting studio artist. One dot. I figured it would not be seen, and it was worth it if I drew more of a crowd to the show. They “encouraged” me to add two more dots, and then tell me after the last one, “You know, that’s a gang symbol. It means jail-hospital-death.”

Yeah, that’s me all right. A guy who looks like John Boy Walton and John Ritter’s love child is a regular bad ass from the hood. Call me “Busta Gut.”

My kids make fun of me, and that includes the young ones, who scratch it to see if this asinine sign comes off. It resembles a notification for radioactivity or smurf moles.

Today on the show I brought up this story, which at the time had a disappointing ending. I asked the crowd that night how many had heard me on the radio show that morning. Ever hear the sound of one hand clapping?

When I told the tale today, I asked that listeners go to my facebook fan page and give the code word, “Tat.” Much to my pleasant surprise, I found a bunch of new friends visit the page, all of who gave me a tat comment. Too funny!

So, finally my idiotic move paid off. A little, but I need to find some worth, like selling a bad stock when it makes a tiny upswing on the way to bankruptcy.

I’m just hoping now the Texas summer will melt the tat away. I think I got all I could out of this one…