Whenever Newsletter 4-4

Before I forget, may I ask you, my creative and stouthearted friends, to come up with some new column ideas for The Star. My audition assignments went well, but now I need an encore.

Here are the types of ideas they have fancied...

• getting a bikini wax


• following two people around on their first date


• dressing up as a homeless person and reporting on what it's like to panhandle


• dressing up as a woman and reporting on what it's like to get hit on by men (or to get *hit* by men, depending)


• taking care of children at a daycare center


• asking local drinkers what it means to be cool


• removing my tattoos

So. Any fresh ideas? Bueller?

With the twelve words I have left, I must share that I have finally, inevitably, developed carpal tunnel -- or as my friends call it, wussy tunnel. I wear the wrist brace and everything. It's really pathetic.

You would be surprised at how much carpal tunnel bugs, especially for guys like me who use their wrist for, well, lots of things. In case you are unfamiliar, carpal tunnel is when the little tubes inside your wrist swell up and refuse to be happy. It's like arthritis, only you complain twice as much.

When I was growing up, I always told my parents that I would like to become a stunt man.

"A stunt man?!" said my mom. "Heavens no; that's too dangerous. Why don't you use your imagination and be a writer or something?"

And here I sit with an all-but-unusable arm. The writing injuries don't stop there. To this day, there is a chunk of pencil lodged in my left palm; my vision has gone from 20-20 to 20-what the hell is that?; and I have gotten two ear infections from those yellow squishy noise thingies.

The day I got bikini-waxed, I sat on the torture chamber with a tear in my eye and one thought on my mind: "If I had only become a stunt man..."