I’m still on paternity leave. Massive sleep dep and being at the whim of not one, but two children now if you don’t count the dog. One small and sweet with a need to be fed every two hours or so and the other, a three year old toddler who just wants to play with daddy all day. I think I’ve aged ten years in the last four weeks. I went to a urology appointment yesterday. A consult for a vasectomy. I think Jo’s exact words were “Vasectomy or condoms, your choice.” Yup. My reply of course had to be the classic, “But condoms are for sailors baby.” Your friendly neighborhood aging bartender is going in next month for the old snip snip, also known in the medical world as “sterilization.” Yeesh. Well, as MC Paul Barnum said in the now classic tune Salvation Barmy, “We started to slow dance, I said no time for romance if I have to wear condoms because they feel like snowpants.” Anyway, allow me to tell you about my surreal experience. Upon entering there was a little tent advertising a supplement the doctor came up with, Popstar, which advertised Bigger Loads + Better Taste. What the hell? The blurb read “Our revolutionary, patented men’s health supplement was created by the country’s top urologists specializing in sex medicine and the first to focus on complete semen health. Physician formulated, Popstar supports sperm health, promotes semen volume, and enhances the taste of semen. In our proprietary blend you’ll find only the good stuff, none of the bad. All-natural, super high quality, and tested by third party labs for purity, quality, and efficacy.” Uh, ok. Not bad for $50 a bottles I guess. The ingredients? Zinc, L-arginine, sunflower lecithin (?!?), bromelain, pygeum extract, and fructooligosaccharides. So, basically pineapple and oysters…And in case you’re wondering, pygeum is from the bark of a cherry tree in Africa. Yeah, the world is full of all sorts of these male enhancements. There’s a street in Koreatown with many storefronts showcasing the antlers of a deer for this same reason.

Of course my mind went to formulating a potential cocktail based on this.

Anyway…The atmosphere was odd. I was giddy and nervous and wanted to snicker at the Popstar, but held my cool and instead took a snapshot and sent it off to some friends and the wifey. Just about ten minutes later I was asked to pull my pants down and lay back while a total stranger fondled and prodded my penis while I thought, “I should have shaved down there.” Yeah, it looked like a sad, dead albino snake slumped over in a swath of the pubic form of canopy jungle.

Ah, I thought to myself. You and me boy. You’ve taken me on some really crazy adventures in this life and now we’re going to take away the reason you exist, you son of a bitch. Your ability to create life will be eradicated and you will now be solely for pleasure and nothing more.

“Prostate checks usually occur at 55, unless you’re African American,” the doc said. “But we can still do a digital exam today for you if you like.”

“I’m good.” I said. For some reason the word “digital” really creeped me out. I looked at the doc’s fingers. Boney and long, not thick. It seems I picked the right guy and for some reason I thought about Tony Robbins and his giant banana fingers…And shuddered…Then thought, why do black guys have worse prostates then everyone else? Don’t they have enough other shit to deal with?

When I got out of the appointment I walked back to my car which took a couple of minutes because I refuse to pay for parking in a garage and I also hate garages due to their being full of carbon monoxide and when I returned and sat in my chariot I glanced up at the rear view mirror. Staring back at me was a stranger. A hollow eyed revenant. Thinning hair askew. Larger bags under my eyes than first and third base over at Dodger Stadium (Doy-yers!). I hadn’t shaved my neck in a month and the beard, well, let’s just call it homeless chic. The sole attribute saving me from looking ten years past my age is that I have almost no grey hair. Call it the only good genetics passed on from my forefathers and mothers.

Angel came up with this one and named it after a Van Damme movie. Good kid. Good kid.

Lionheart

1 oz. Japanese Whisky

1 oz. Bourbon

1 oz. Lemon

.75 oz. Orange-Carrot Calpico

.25 oz. Vanilla Kumquat Syrup

.25 oz. Lemon Sherbet

.25 oz. Meletti

2 Dashes Ango

Lionheart was released right after Kickboxer in 1990. Van Damme plays an French Foreign Legion soldier gone AWOL who pit fights illegally to help out his dead brother’s wife and kid. Something like that. It takes itself a little too seriously, like most action flicks I guess. It’s still up there in the Van Damme pantheon, however, as it’s low budget enough to make it good but not so low as to be bad. Does that make any sense? It’s semi-historic in that the fight sequences featured a new wave of editing where the same kick or punch would be shown two, three, sometimes four times from different angles. See the video below at 1:38, but especially the finishing elbow uppercut at 2:24 to see what I mean.

Good fight in a pool while wearing spandex wrestling onesies. Ah, the early 90s. We were so good, so clueless as to what was to come, eh?

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