The Weaker Digits

My name is Hasen, some call me "Has" for short. One of my best friends is named Phil. Proceed.

Recently I was introduced to a girl named Lindsay. Here's how the conversation went. Oh, and I'm going to omit the use of quotation marks because right now the thought of typing out a long dialogue and having to keep reaching my pinky (one of my weaker and less agile digits) way over there while hitting 'shift' with my other weak and un-agile digit makes me want to cuss the p.m. word. The p.m. word is "puta madre" and, though not an English phrase, still constitutes a pretty heavy cuss:

Nice to meet you, Lindsay.
You too, Austin.
Hasen.
Haustin?
Haw-sin.
Hasen?
That's right.
You seem familiar, Hasen. Where do I know you from?
Not sure, did you go to Utah State?
Yes! Wait a second...were you friends with my roommate Melissa Shipp? (*side note: Melissa Shipp is a very talented concert violinist, and I once declared her the prettiest girl at USU)
You bet I was. My friends and I used to play music with her.
Wait, I remember you now. You're Hasenphil!
(stall, wait, brief silence, not sure how to respond, then...) Yup, that's me. Hasenphil.
Ya, I remember you!

I guess she remembered hearing Melissa talk about "Has and Phil" and always thought it was one in the same person.

A Perfect Scandinavian World

In a perfect world, Scandinavia would produce the biggest movie superstars on the planet. Spies wouldn't be British like James Bond. Instead of watching endless series with titles like "You Never Live Twice With the Same Golden Eyes Are Forever Never Lasts," we'd be focusing all of our spy movie energy on one trilogy and one trilogy only—The Bjorn Supremacy.

And instead of being jerked through an emotional roller coaster of intensity, confusion, love, and spaciness by the actor who played Han Solo in the original Star Wars movie, we'd be unanimously in love with a hot Scando hunk turned silver fox named none other than Harrison Fjord.

On the other hand, the most creative musicians would NOT come from the Northerlands. We'd be hypnotized by dark lullabies, mystic chants, and foggy anthem rock by the beautiful, the eccentric, the always innovate yet very non-Scando—Bork.

Grammar Hooligans and Meat-head Assailants

Last night was the opening night of the free Salt Lake Summer Concert Series downtown at the Gallivan Plaza. Ever played Mad Gab?: Displace wasp act. Sound it out, don't stress, you can get it. Dis place was pact. Got it yet? That's as far as I can take you. If you haven't figured it out at this point, there's no one that can help you. You're best off resigning yourself to small town, finding a nice, pretty wall, and passing your time in a rocking chair staring at that wall. For excitement you can sing the first line to the chorus of We All Live in a Yellow Submarine. Just the first line, which is the line you just read. Repeat it over and over. Anymore than that could cause serious damage.

The place was overflowing with peeps. It was like the peeps machine at the peeps factory had malfunctioned and was cranking out the disgusting marshmallow Easter candies at an astronomical rate, filling the room, the entire factory, then even spilling into the town streets. In order to survive, people in Peepstown would have to get into canoes or just use their mattresses and paddle around the river of flowing peeps.

At the concert I ran into my friend A-Rod. Don’t worry, she was fine. We briefly hovered on the outskirts of the peeps disaster, then I told her that I wanted to get down in the middle of the action. The Roots was playing (who, previous to the announcement of the concert, was a band that I’d never heard of) and I wanted to get all up in there, feel the vibe, rock the Casbah, hit me with music, with or without you, I’m too sexy for your love, hey kid put your pants back on!

A-Rod lead the way as we worked through the sweet and condensed mass of pulsating people, trying to get closer to the action. Suddenly I felt a pair of strong hands wrap around my throat and squeeze. I was being suffocated from behind. I couldn’t turn around. I was being shaken, my throat being crushed by an unknown demon. Then I heard a deep growling voice yell, “Get behind me!” and I was thrown like a limp biscuit. I luckily landed on my feet (there really wasn’t any room to land in any other position), almost crushing some lady’s little kid.

I looked at the dude that had attacked me from behind. He was a huge squatty meat-head that had the fire of Dick Cheney in his eyes. His solid glare held me back like a wall—not that I had any intention of going back near him. I don’t know if I’ve seen rage like that in one person, especially rage directed at me.

I don’t know if it was the adrenaline or the surprise or what, but it wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I really understood all that had happened. And that my throat started hurting. I contemplated my options:

1) Go find a chair, come back, and crack it over the bully’s skull, hopefully knocking him out or at least rendering him unretaliatable.

2) Try what my church softball coach told me when I was 15—if you’re in a fight with a guy that could probably pummel your brains out, punch him as hard as you can right in the nose. That will stun him, and probably swell up as it fills his eyes with tears, that way he can’t really attack you.

3) Pull a samurai sword out of my backpack and slice his thighs, Achilles’ tendons, and buttocks. Or…

4) Walk away from the loud noise, call the police, direct them to the criminal, and get him hauled off to the slammer.

In the end I decided to do nothing. My initial anger at getting man-handled like that subsided fairly quickly and I just walked away, eventually working my way up to the front row and having one of the funnest (which, for all you grammar hooligans living in the past, is an actual word) concert experiences I’ve had in a long time. Poor Squatty probably spent the rest of the night on his tip-toes trying to catch a glimpse of the action, while I moved on and became the action.

Thunder Down Under

Australia is a great place. It’s like the US in a lot of ways—they drive cars (though on the opposite side of the road), they have McDonalds (though it’s considered a lot nicer of a restaurant there than here), they cuss (though damn and hell aren’t considered bad words, whereas bugger and bloody are).

It’s also very different in a lot of ways—all the animals are weird and freaky as hell, they don’t suffer from million-mile-an-hour syndrome in every aspect of life like we do here, and almost everybody drives around with ladders on top of their cars (not really sure why). I’m not kidding about that. You go anywhere, and tons of cars and trucks (they call trucks “utes,” and don’t have huge Fords and Chevys like we do here) have ladders strapped on top of them. It’s weird, man.

I went down one summer to live with the fam, who had moved to Brisbane a couple of years previous. My folks and I, and a couple of the old step-siblings all went through a scuba certification class so we could enjoy the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef below the surface of the water.

Part of the certification process involved passing a physical examination by a doctor. I set up an appointment, got work off, and showed up to the doctor’s office ready to cover my eye and read the chart that has a huge E at the top, and a bunch of other letters trickling down below it.

Explanation: As most of you know, English is the official language of Australia. They speak it, we speak it, everyone pretty much understands each other. There are, however, a few words they use down there that the average American bloke might not be familiar with. Like bloke, for instance, which means guy. Also, tucka means food, prawn means shrimp, avo means afternoon, bite your bum means be quiet, etc.

The receptionist called my name and I went in for my check-up. The doctor went through the routine stuff—open up and say ah, sit down while I bang your knee with this hammer, you know—the usual.

Then it came. “Take off your joggers,” politely commanded the Doctor from Down Under. In my head I quickly did a guessing mental translation of what he meant by joggers. I was wearing some sweat shorts (don’t judge me), and quickly deduced that he was referring to them. I stood up and dropped my drawers, undies included, trying to act as normal as possible while knowingly and intentionally showing some old dude my Yankee parts.

The doctor just kind of sat there for a moment, not doing much. I wondered when he was going to get down to business. Then he said five words that I’ll never forget. Ever.

“I meant your tennis shoes.”

Fish in the Pants

So there we were, surfing the Puerto Rican Pipeline, rocking as we rolled and vice versa. The waves had to be double overhead and faster than a Utahn at a KFC 2-for-1 coupon give away. We rode, we got pummeled, we paddled, we swam. The sun bronzed our perfect bodies, bleached our Aryan hair, and freckled our Irish faces.

When we got back to the guest house we were staying at, Phil went into the hallway shower and I hopped in the shower that was in our room. As Phil took off his shorts (don’t worry, it doesn’t turn dirty at this point…if you want dirty, try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdBMRlf2gI), two little fish fell out onto the floor. The fish were in his shorts, repeat, the fish were in his shorts. He says he felt a school of fish run into his legs as he was out in the water, but was unaware that they had set up shop in his trunks.

The Rich Port, or The Misadventures of Hasenphil Cline

In Puerto Rico I saw a real-life submarine.