I was just at the drive though ATM of my credit union, and I noticed I had been waiting in line far too long. I look at the newer model Hyundai in front of me that is parked next to the ATM, and the driver, a middle aged man with a button down shirt and glasses, is just sitting there reading his receipt like it was a novel. I wait another minute or so because I'm fairly patient when it comes to things like that (I space out all the time), and when he didn't budge, I tapped my steering wheel as to give a little chirp of the horn instead of a blaring "fuck you" horn and causing an altercation my pre-coffee sensibilities just weren't ready for.

*beep*

He didn't move. At this point the gears in my caffeine deprived rusty brain mechanism begin rotating. "Is this guy just oblivious or does he totally not care that he's inconveniencing the cars behind him? How interesting could a receipt be that you would do this?" I look behind me and apparently I was the only other car in line. I look back, and he's still pouring over his receipt. I continued to wait. "No, he can't be oblivious. He's at a drive through ATM. Who would just sit there, even if there was no line? Somebody would eventually pull up. This guy is an asshole. Don't make it more complicated than it is. There's nothing else to it."

*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*

At this he put the "receipt to end all receipts" down and slowly crept away. Breathing a sigh of relief, I pulled up to the ATM, made a withdrawal that took all of 57 seconds and left. The incident was immediately scrubbed from my brain and replaced with base, manly thoughts such as "coffee is good" and "I think I might poop when I get home".
As I pulled up to a two lane red light on 33 heading back into town, a car pulled up to me in the adjacent lane -- the Hyundai -- and stopped. I looked over, and the middle aged man had a white knuckled 10 and 2 grip on his steering wheel and was making a face that could only be described as "illogically aggressive". Amused by this guy's bizarre behavior, I turned back to face the light and turned up the Riff Raff song that was playing on my stereo.

*Vroooooom*

The Hyundai's motor revved up, which was weird because we were still at a stop light. I ignored it and continued to nod my head to the musical stylings of Houston hip hop's favorite codeine addled ginger.

*VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!*

"Holy shit. This guy wants to race me. A 50 year old dude in a Hyundai wants to race me."

There was no doubt about it. The motor of his Hyundai kept revving higher and higher, to the point I thought a piston was going to shoot through his hood and kiss the sun.

I'm 32 years old and I drive like an elderly woman trying to navigate through a grocery store parking lot, so I had no idea what this older man, who looked so painfully normal on the outside given his sensible car, wardrobe and glasses, was trying to prove. He looked like he was on his way to some dull cubicle job where he counted widgets or created SOP manuals for break room amenities like Keurig coffee makers or microwaves. On the outside, he looked like a guy who made office memos with PowerPoint clip art and absolutely loved it. On the inside, he was clearly a seething cauldron of hatred who wanted nothing more than to blow me off the line and "show me who's boss", or whatever his goal was.

Clearly, I wasn't going to race him. I got that shit out of my system in my late teens, when the height of entertainment was beating a Corvette off the line in my little '83 Volkswagen Rabbit. I'm an adult. Why would I risk the points on my license and the higher monthly insurance payment? No, I'm just going to let this guy pass me and --

The light turned green, and without any conscious decision on my part, my foot crammed down on the gas pedal of my Jeep like I was trying to escape a fiery gasoline tanker that was tumbling toward me from behind. It was almost as if Teenager Mike just couldn't let the shame of being taken off the line by an old dude in a Hyundai befall Adult Mike, and he commandeered the wheel to ensure that. The Hyundai's motor whined next to me, but the middle aged man gradually drifted behind, unable to keep up. I mean, it was a fucking Hyundai. What other possible outcome could there have been?

Before I knew it, I was at the part of 33 that merges from two lanes to one. I slowed back down and checked my rear view mirror. He was tailgating me pretty tightly, so I had a good view of his face and the unbridled rage that was building in it. I couldn't stop laughing. The more his face contorted, the harder I laughed. It was 8:00 on a gorgeous summer morning in New England, and I was watching a middle aged man devolve into a soulless, frothing berserker right before my eyes.

Without warning, he began beating on his steering wheel and dash with the rhythmic left-right-one-two-left-right pounding you would see in a National Geographic film where a baboon was performing the death drum on the chest of his murdered adversary. His horn would occasionally be struck, letting out a staggered, erratic chirping that made his emotional breakdown that much more entertaining. At that point I was in tears with laughter. My stomach muscles were exhausted and I was out of breath. There was no way the situation could get any funnier. That's when he let out a scream.

"AAAAAOOOOOOOOOOGGGGGRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!"

It was unlike any scream I've heard in my short life. Normally when you're mad, you swear or belt out something like a "RAHHHHH!!!" or a "AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!". This was more like a combination of an old "aoogah" sounding car horn on a Model T and the sound a tugboat's air horn would make if you stuffed an oily rag into it. It was the single funniest sound I've ever heard a human being make in my life, and the raw anger that fueled its sounding made it eleven times funnier. I was done. It was too hilarious for a single person to ingest in one sitting. I laughed so hard I started coughing, and was only able to stop when I realized I might shit myself if I kept it up.
I eventually turned right on Peverly Hill Road, and the man in the Hyundai went straight through the lights toward Middle Road, and that's where we parted ways.

So how's your morning going?

Life is great. I live with my amazing and thoroughly supportive girlfriend in a beautiful condo which we're going to buy within the next few months, I have an awesome job that allows me time to pursue writing and I have a lunatic smooth coat collie named Rodney that licks my face every morning and shows me how good he is at chewing his toys. I'm in the best shape of my life, running half marathons and actually paying attention what kind of food I shove in my face. My bad credit is slowly being whittled down, I'm no longer having to decide whether I'm going to eat or go to the bar and I rarely go without much of anything. My best friends in the world all live close to me and I see them all regularly. I look at myself now and am amazed at how much I've grown personally over the last five years. The five-night-a-week boozing, fucking and fighting KungFu Mike of five years past definitely didn't see this coming.

Continue reading "Update"

My girlfriend and I just moved into a condo, and held a housewarming party to celebrate with our friends and family. I was celebrating extra-hard, mostly because I'm finally living somewhere that doesn't smell like a hollowed out horse carcass baking in the desert sun, and decided it would be a good idea to test our puppy's new bark control collar on myself. It took a while for me to figure out that barking wouldn't set the collar off, but a low-level DMX-esque growl would do just right. Luckily, my friend Teddy just picked up a Blackberry and decided to use its camcorder function, albeit late enough that I was forced to electrocute myself twice.

Also, I'm working on a new story for you guys and I should have it up sooner than later. Sorry for being a phantom for so long.

Hello there, Internet Land. I just wanted to check in with you to let you know I have not been kidnapped by Hamas or murdered by some jealous boyfriend. I know a lot of people out there just now lost a bunch of money in their respective "KungFu Mike death pools", and I apologize.

I've been working hard on the book the past few months and I just started a new position that allows me to work strictly from home and on my own schedule, which is going to facilitate my writing schedule in a very positive way. Hopefully I'll have so much time on my hands that I'll be able to pump out some new entries for you guys. I have a list of half sketched-out stories that I'd love to put up here.

One thing that I think about a lot while I'm writing this book is about its believability. The closer I get to finishing everything, the more I'm afraid that my life has been so tragic and ridiculous and self-mutilated that people who don't know me will refuse to believe any of it when the book is done. I mean, I have plenty of people I know in real life who will always vouch for its credibility and I'm not going to get James Frey'd out of existence, but it's still something I worry about because I always feel irrationally guilty about shit. It's the same reason I can't walk out of a store without buying something. I'm worried that someone will think I'm shoplifting so I'll buy a pack of gum, even though I don't look suspicious and I don't have any ill gotten merchandise stuffed in my boxer briefs. I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and I almost have to change the channel every time Larry David makes a mess out of things. There's an evil gnome in my brain that prods whatever lobe that evokes guilt at strange intervals, and I am slave to it. I'd delve into that further, but that would spoil a bit of the book for you.

I started writing this entry when I was sober, but then my friend called me and I went to the bar for a few hours. Just keep harassing me about those new entries so I don't forget.

Something about this entry doesn't feel right. Cunt. Fuck. Fireworks. Tits. Monster trucks. Dead people. Blowjobs.

There we go.

A flawlessly sunny summer day. An audience of hundreds of thousands has congregated in front of the Washington Monument, all facing the same direction. They are listening to a lone speaker at a podium positioned in front of the reflection pool. The voice of the speaker is broadcast through vintage speakers in wooden boxes mounted on poles throughout the area. I was at the very back trying to get a look at the man at the podium through the tightly packed group and unable to hear the man on the microphone clearly.

I lift off of the ground and begin flying over the masses toward the monument and the speaker. I look down at the people below me. They are entranced by the speakers words; hanging on every turn of phrase and point of emphasis. I still couldn't quite make out what the speaker was saying, but it was definitely resonating in a powerful way with the people around me. I whizzed over the heads of hundreds of thousands of loyal listeners until I came within eye and earshot of the focus of the gathering.

Continue reading "Ginsanity; Part 5"

I was in bed with my girlfriend when we were woken up by a loud thumping noise and muffled screaming. It was 3 a.m. on Monday morning. At first it sounded like there was some kind of domestic dispute in the apartment upstairs, but after the grogginess of Sunday night football beers and a few hours of sleep wore off, we realized there was somebody outside trying to gain entrance to our apartment building. Every 20 seconds or so, the thumping and screaming would start and stop in a new location; on the front porch, on a window, on the vinyl siding on the side of the building, almost like James Bond rapping on a bookcase to find the secret passage behind it, but with less style.

BANGBANGBANGBANG. "RAAAWWRRKAAALLLLLLRRGHHHHHH!!!"

BANGBANGBANGBANG."RAAAGHHHHHHHRRRLAAAAARRR!!!"

Continue reading "The Prowler"

Ladies and gentleman; there isn't going to be a part 5 of Ginsanity on kungfumike.net.

The more I work on this series, the more I'm coming to understand it isn't going to be complete as a multi-entry blog post. In order to give it the detail and attention it demands, I've come to the conclusion that Ginsanity is going to be my first book.

Tucker has been telling me to do this for years now. "Mike, you're hilarious and everything, but you and I both know your magnum opus is going to be the story about you and your father." I always knew he was right when he'd bring it up at the bar or in a random email exchange, but I pushed Tucker's advice to the side because I knew I wasn't emotionally ready to tackle it. I always thought that one day I'd be stable enough to open the vault that contains all of the hurt and the guilt and organize its contents for you in a calm and calculated way, like some kind of dark Rube Goldberg mechanism that spits my soul out at the end of its process. The more I live, the more I realize I'll probably never be that pillar of stability, but the more I work on this series, the more I understand that Ginsanity demands that I lock myself in that vault in order to write it the way it needs to be written. I now know there will never be a perfectly ideal time for this project to take the front burner...so why not now?

I'll still update my site to keep you guys entertained in the meanwhile, but as of right now, the book is where I am going to focus the bulk of my energy. Well, I'll at least split it evenly between the book, the therapist and the bottle.

And boobs. Don't forget boobs.