Why? Where to begin! The thoughts he put in my head. Case in point coming up. Ten'll get you twenty. Here's a bet I can't lose. In fact, I'll give you odds: 2 to 1 says that if you talk about: cat mutilation, cheese, watermelon sex, pampers, old man snot, trees shaped like oprah, prostate surgery, gramma's socks, swapping dentures, amphibian mating rituals, or shop class dismemberment accidents, either Andy or Sam will say, "Don't go there." Double or nothing they both say it.

See what I mean? Fuck Sureality. This is Baron Reality.

Sam Rockford once said there was just too much of it. My best friend Tom used to have a dog named Sam. This mutt would eat 24, 7. Chuck Wagon, Mighty Dog, leftover turkey, leftover steak bones, squirrels, bunnies, styrofoam, newspapers, bubble wrap. I even saw him eating hay like a horse, chewing on Uncle Frank's, wooden leg, grazing in the back yard like a cow. Day and night this dog had an appetite. It would crap everywhere. Most dogs smell around for the right spot. They do that find-the-right-spot-for-my-business-ritual. But not Sam. She would crap wherever convenient: on the sidewalk, in the street, the linoleum floor, the laundry room, the back porch; Everywhere we walked, we stepped in it. There was just too much of it.

Now you see what I mean. I never once, not one time did I hear Sam mention fucking. That's so fucking cool. He never even said the word! I wish I could go one fucking day without saying the word. Then, maybe then I'd be more like Sam and be able to focus . Like, here's an ode to cheese. Cheese is good. Really Good. Here's all the things you can do with Cheese before you eat it. Make a cheese bong (but not with Swiss). Make a cheese-o-lantern. (When the candle melts it, it's fondue). Make cheese money, and use it to buy more cheese! (Best with Kraft singles- get it?) And this is the best one of all: make wee little cheese people, and pretend you're Godzilla! Oh no! Here comes Mothra! (cheez-whiz). Use your acid breath, (limburgher) Godzilla! Mothra is dead! Where's the crackers?

I met Sam tutoring math. True story. Once, I would have said, math sucks. The other day my dad called me up and said, "How's school, son?" And I said, "Fuck you, dad! Math sucks!" I don't say that anymore. Cause of Sam? No, I like math now. Know what? Melissa Brickman tutored too. No segue, folks, I'm just talking. Anyway, Melissa is fine, like fine so fine that she sneers at you. Seriously. I mean, you look at her and the sneer just naturally comes out, like, okay. The holy ghost. If you got the spirit in you, you will find the mountain scene beautiful. That's proof of God: he's in you, showing you beauty. And here's proof of Melissa: her beauty's in you, and that makes you see the sneer. God.

Sam. He's dating Melissa! That. Is. Cool. Cause he's so down to earth, Sam is. God, I want to be him. And not just because of Melissa. Once he said: Muchos gracias. People who own companies should not do their own commercials. I watch lame local cable channel with its home made commercials, with its hometown technology, with its homegrown companies: do these lame ass people think I will buy their products because Dave tells me about a "heleva" deal? Dave can kiss my ass. But the Dave thing exists on a national level as well. If I see Dave Thomas in one more Wendy's commercial I will die. Mucho gracias, Dave. Pardon my French. And pardon me for not being Sam.

What else? What else makes me want to be Sam? Did you know he's met Yasmine Bleeth, the only woman who has ever looked healthy in a white bathing suit? Okay, he hasn't. But in the universe of cool, (I mean for fuck's sake the man plays a Hammond Organ in a Jazz/Funk band), in the universe of cool, whether or not Sam has actually met Yasmine Bleeth does not really apply to the truth of that statement. It's true whether he has or not. Cool. Me? Well.

I do know a few things. I'm not cool like Sam is cool, but I do know that dead cats don't make good doorstops. Lets say you're having a party, and it's gonna be killer, because you've got a real keg this time, and even a real live band, and your mom an dad are going to be gone for a week, so there's plenty of time for cleanup. And let's just say your porch light is busted, so the only way to let folks know which house is yours, is to prop open the front door. Well, don't use a dead cat. Because usually they're dead from skull injuries, (and chicks hate that, which equals no play for you,) or sometimes they die from gastro-intestinal disorders, which can really stink like a mother (again- no play). And even though it may be tempting, cause they're heavy and soft, just think what'll happen if the girl who owns the cat trips on it as she walks in. And while you're trying to peek up her skirt, she's looking at dead Mr. Buttons. And while you're asking her for three bucks, she's starting to get queesy. And while you're thinking, "Hey, maybe this chick'll give me some play," she's starting to barf all over your mom's afghan on the divan. And that means no play. And your fantasies about that afghan are all shot to hell, too. So don't use dead cats as doorstops.

But Sam Rockford know so much more! He used to tell me things. Once he told me, "He started to cry. My little cousin, he's eight, tried a magic trick on me the other day. He took two coins and made them disappear. I was in a crappy mood, so when he asked me where the coins went, I told him to shut up. So when he pestered me again I told him -- 'What do I look like, Kreskin? David Cooperballs? Why don't you and your coins, balls, magic, balls, kiss my ass.' He started to cry." I loved that story. I mean I really loved it. Right there, I loved Sam.

He was like no other. Consider. Bob Is weird. My friend Bob smokes way too much pot. You'd think that would be a good thing. He doesn't rape cats anymore. And he's down to 97 lbs. But Bob scares me sometimes. Once when he lit up a bong that bob had made out of a hollowed-out Barbie, I asked him if he wanted some fritos. He said, "Naw, my shoes are too small anyway." Explore the infinite mosaic that makes up the thread of universal reality and tell me where Sam or his shadow selves would ever even comes close to acting like that, and if you do I will smack you.

I tride to tell things to Sam, too, and he always acted as if I was a real person. I suggested that Blaire Brown is an average looking chick. If I had a dollar

for every time I get a passionate craving, an insatiable hunger, a saliva-swapping fantasy for Blaire Brown; if I had a dollar for every time I had ol' Guy Smiley in my palm, and I started thinking about Blaire Brown; if I had a dollar for every time I wanted to do it aith Blaire Brown... I'd have $3.87. And Sam laughed, like no other man with a capital MAN would have laughed. I swear to you twenty, a thousand shrines shot out of the earth at that moment.

Where is he now? I don't know. In my soul, at best. I moved away form there, away from him, away from Melissa, her sneer, her ski jump nose, her eyes that would melt you where you stood when she graced you with a chuckle or a giggle at an amusing thing you said. I moved. I must have been out of my mind. I got deja vu for weeks, and at each episode I would try to predict: "and now Sam will walk into the room." but of course it never worked.

I'm lost, but I can still hear his voice sometimes. What does Sam Rockford say? "Get your feet off the table or I'll kill you." I had dinner with my roomates the other night. Under the table, in the underworld, I sensed a smell. My God-- Dan's feet stink. He keeps them in these unwashed, holey socks. The warm, sweaty, fuming feet rest in those three year old Nike high tops. Those damn feet run through my mind all day- they scare me. They annoy me. They ruin my life. How could an object with such putresence exist on God's earth? These are the feet of Lucifer. They will drive me to hell. "Get your feet off the table or I'll kill you." That's what I hear Sam telling me to say.

You see? Sam to me is poetry, but not just poetry. He's novels. He's novelty, the way a thing that begins must end, like, It Was a Dark And Stormy Night- where is that going? I don't know, but it's going. Somewhere.

"Nothing was that funny," he thought looking in the eye of those questionable people that spread their happiness like it was something that everyone wanted. He gave them, the ones sat across that brown ink stained, red stained, math stained table, the insatiable right to unconciously fling their laughter on to others- no one. And what I am saying to you is, with such a beginning, maybe only Sam could finish it.

Or this one. When Sam was four, without knowing what it meant, he asked his father if he could be a lesbian, and when his father said no, and he asked why and his father replied, "You aren't hairy enough," and when his mother struck his father across the bridge of his nose, drawing blood, little Sammy began to suspect for the first time that perhaps theirs was a mariage of convenience. But what's funny is that this is not where it went: The twirling engulfed his mind as he watched her sleek red writing utensil race anxiously through her fingers, like that time he anxiously raced his heart on that two-timing, love-sharing, double-husband woman, that he used to call his wife, by wearing her sweat soaked running shoes, just so he could remind her she was his. He knew this time was going to be different because while Daina had blond hair and lived in a trailer park, and Deena had red hair and liked to eat cheez whiz straight from the whizzer, and Donna had brown hair and was crowned miss Noxie back in sixty-three, Deidra, his new love, well, she had no hair, except a few gray ones near the corner of her mouth, and most charmingly of all, she was in a coma. How the pen raced, only Sam knows. And if there was never a more fitting end to a story, than it was this one: only Sam knows.