Tales From This Side

Continued from Part II To the squeamish: At this point, the story becomes a bit more graphic. I wake up the next morning feeling hung over, but oddly, not in pain. The night’s events come flooding back to me. I slip the sheet off, which is a bad idea since it is partially stuck to my legs. Luckily, I can’t feel anything. According to a surgeon I talked to, 3rd degree burns destroy the nerves in the skin and muscle tissue that they damage so that no sensation of any sort is relayed to the brain. Hooray for that. Anyway, my lower legs are both now two gigantic welts. Seriously, they are pretty gross. So I enlist a friend to take me to the local hospital whereupon telling my tale I am derided and otherwise humiliated by the staff for my stupendous idiocy. They wrap me up and tell me that their hospital isn’t equipped for an injury of this magnitude (they really did tell me that), sending me instead to Van Nuys where, by some luck that I’m sure I don’t deserve, there lies the G...

Continued from Part I Ok, back to this story. When last I left you, I had learned of the non-dairy creamer-fireball secret, but had yet to envision its far flung ramifications. Enter alcohol. You all remember the first time you got drunk, right? It was like a revelation. Everything suddenly became exciting. Sitting around the house was suddenly a party. Jumping off roofs into pools becomes “the coolest” idea ever, lifted from its former rank of “dumbest.” Before I digress into further reminiscing, though, a little theme music, regarding one’s man desire to reach beyond his limitations. Kind of like those cavemen in Quest for Fire, who, as chance would have it, were doing the same sort of thing I was doing. Between this and Hellboy, how has Perlman not won an Oscar? The only difference is I didn’t have to wait for lightning to strike in order to get a flame. As we shall see. It’s the summer of 1999, back at my parent’s house which apparently is the staging ground f...