Allow me to field this question. The problem is the returning to the car to retreive the groceries. Proper form requires getting no more groceries than can be carried inside on the first trip out of the car. Plastic bag handles can be slid as far up the arm as you prefer, but any items that cannot be carried on the initial trip should be left in the car. That many items at once may cause more than the first plane of the fridge to be filled, which would lead to the horrible situation of having to move things around to find something in the fridge.
Dear Brynda:
Your husband fills up half a closet?
With clothes?
What is he doing – putting each sock on a hanger?
You’re going to have to explain to him what closets are made for. They’re intended for storing exercise bikes.
Now, I don’t think your husband has to “come out of the closet.” There are lots of straight guys who are real clothes horses – like Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas.” But your husband, he sounds like he has fallen for an urban legend. This particular legend says that certain clothes and colors “clash,” or “don’t go together.” So, because they’re afraid that they might wear something that allegedly “clashes,” some guys buy more and more clothes, hoping to improve their changes of getting something that doesn’t “clash.”
Well, let me tell you, this whole “clash” business is just something cooked up by the clothes industry to sell you more clothes. Ask any straight guy who is confident in his masculinity and he will tell you – ain’t nothing clashes. Everthang goes with everthang.
For example, I read somewhere that navy doesn’t go with beige. My first reaction was “bullshit!” My second reaction was to look up “beige” in the dictionary. It’s some sorta brown, says here. Well, what doesn’t brown go with? If you take brown out of our wardrobes, you take away our ability to hide coffee and gravy stains. Take away coffee and gravy, and what reason do you have for living?
Some fashion “experts,” pretending to be expert and all, will try to tell you that some clothes just don’t go together. And to prove their point, they’ll make up some absurd example, like saying that a tuxedo doesn’t go with playing football. Well, let me tell you. Once I got me one them tuxedos real cheap from a Salvation Army, and I wore it in our Sunday football game. I looked real sharp in a tux, running shoes, and an old-fashion football helmet like Jack Nicholson had in “Easy Rider.” Dude! The tux was really appropriate because that Sunday we played in the Peaceful Vista Cemetery, out back of the rendering plant. In our game, the rules said that whoever you threw the ball to had to catch it, and only a wuss would worry about all the headstones in the way. Let me tell you, running your groin smack into the outstretched arm of a stone cherub is one way to learn the value of wearing a cup. That’s why I was on the ground when a bajillion cop cars screamed up and busted all my buddies for trespass. And it was just because some soreheads were having a funeral nearby.
Me, I just ditched the helmet, picked up some flowers from the grave and stood up, looking horrified at the heathens who dared desecrate this sacred ground. The cops didn’t think for a second that I was part of the football game. I mean, I was wearing a tux. I was still wearing it when I bailed out my buds.
So yeah. Everthang goes with everthang.
Dear AlbertRose (and Wolfman)
I’m not sure I get this “taking off the shoes” business. Why are you doing it? Especially indoors? Doesn’t make any sense to me. Say you’re making your way through your dining room and you accidentally kick one of your barbells. See the problem? Whenever an object like that takes it upon itself to inflict pain on your innocent foot, you have to teach it a lesson and kick it good. Just try doing that without shoes.
There is one place in my house I don’t allow shoes. The hot tub. After I got to fiddle around getting the pH and the bromine just right, I don’t want nobody tracking in stuff. Guests all have to put their shoes and their flip-flops beside the hot tub. Unless they’re women with especially fine – credentials. (Man, I let them get away with murder.)
I don’t want to get into the habit of taking my shoes off indoors. Say I’m over at my girlfriend’s house. And say I get used to taking my shoes off all the time. Then one day her husband’s going to come home early. I want to be in my shoes and out of there.
Take off your shirt indoors if you want. Take off your pants and your shorts. But your shoes? Sounds like a real fashion mistake to me.
Stop looking at me.
Esprix
Who’s interruping the show?
Well, look, folks! Right in our studio tonight, it’s Esprix!
(Applause. House band plays the Esprix intro theme.)
Esprix has flown out tonight all the way from San Diego, California – and boy, I bet his arms are tired.
(Polite chuckles and groans. Some audience members go woof-woof.)
This is a special honor. As you all know, Esprix is the pioneer of the “Ask the …” threads. He’s a close personal friend and a wonderful, wonderful human being. So I have to ask, Esprix, what questions to you have tonight for The Straight Eye for the Gay Guy?"
I SAID STOP LOOKING AT ME!
Esprix
Dear Straight Eye,
I am a gay man, and enjoy doing such manly things as working/restoring old cars, and walking around the house wearing my green plaid pajama pants and a black t-shirt (with those particular pants bought expressely because they don’t go with anything. I’ll even not shave for 3 days at a time.
My problem, Straight Eye, is even though I enjoy working on cars, I was never taught the proper way to block one up in my front yard. I have a '74 Road Runner that I’ve been restoring for 3 years, but being as I have yet to actually finish the car, I figured I would just put it on blocks in my front yard so that neighbors can admire my work until finished.
Any ideas on how I should go about using the car as a centerpiece for my new front yard landscaping, and how I should accessorize?
Straight Guy, may I take this one?
Yes, you are definitely gay! A true straight guy wouldn’t have a clue that those pants didn’t go fine with his entire wardrobe.
As for accessorizing the Roadrunner, I assume it is already in two colors of primer and an assortment of Chrysler OEM colors of the correct year, such as Limelight and Plum Crazy. (Note: Cars are not clothes. A straight guy who couldn’t tell the difference between ecru and taupe can identify correct factory paint colors and tell you in no uncertain terms that you didn’t match them.) Now let Nature take the reins. Soon you will gave attractive prairie grasses growing through the rust holes and before you know it a small tree coming up through the hood scoop!
Dear Straight Eye:
I’m a San Franciscan lesbian. That means that (a) my male friends are gay and (b) my lesbian friends are lipstick.
I so want a buddy to just hang out and talk baseball with. I mean man, Giants are leading by 8 games right now! Jerome Williams rocks the corners! Gay guys, alas, just stare at me uncomprehendingly when I talk like this. My lesbian buddies lecture me on how public funding of stadiums rob necessary social services.
Where can I find a straight guy who’ll love me for my sabremetric mind?
Well, certainly, Esprix, and … huh!
(rim shot)
(Straight Eye does a double-take worthy of Ben Turpin.)
(Laughing trombones go wah-wah-waaaaaah.)
How ‘bout that crazy Esprix, folks! Comes all the way from San Diego just to say "Stop lookin’ at me!" I tell you, folks, let’s give it up for the one, the only … Esprix!
(Audience chants Esprix! Esprix! Esprix! Esprix! House band plays the Esprix theme.)
And now, our next guest – the legendary George Thorogood and the Destroyers, singing the new theme from "Straight Eye for the Gay Guy."
(Audience cheers)
(Band plays)
I’ll change my style
Even change my smile
If the beatin’ in my heart
Is too slow for you
Tell me, baby, tell me, I’ll change that too.
(fade)
Dear modro:
First off, I’m glad there are some gay guys who are not totally clueless about fashion. Good work! It makes my job just that much easier.
Dropzone hit the nail on the head about factory paint. Some guys’ heads are filled up with information like their mother’s birthday or the names of their kids, but where will that get you if you can’t remember the paint job of your Dodge A-100?
Now pardon me if I get sentimental, but you’ve reminded me of one of the rites of passage in every boy’s life – the time when he gets his first car up on blocks. There’s that old-car smell, the feel of Bondo, the sleeks and racy cinderblocks under the wheels. Takes me back.
Now, if you’re looking to make your '74 Road Runner a true landscaping centerpiece, here’s what you do. Resist the temptation to put it under a tree for shade. Tree sap is a bitch to get out. Instead, get you some two-by-fours and set up corrugated metal roof over it. The best kind is “pre-weathered” (i.e. “found along road”). Ideally, you should get you some them metal shears and cut up your old soda and beer cans, so you can patch the gaps in the roof. Now you got you some shade to work in.
Next order of business is setting up your speakers. This is just as simple as running some real long cords from the house. After that, you want a cooler strong enough for your fattest buddy to set on – cause he will. And if your dog is really old, you might want to install a ramp so he can get up in the back seat to sleep. Roll the windows down so he can get a good bite at anyone not authorized to be around your car. Next step is to install a fire pit for night work.
Now that you got the essentials, you can start on the decorative touches. Show your True Colors with a patriotic windchime or two. It’ll look right proper hanging off the corrugated roof. Next, you can’t go wrong with a Jesus birdbath, is what I always say. And not to leave our friends of the Jewish faith out, there’s plenty of good yard sculpture for y’all, too. And in the arid southwest, folks might go with a birdbath that has more local color. Or the lady of the house is sure to love a tasteful and artsy bunny bath.
Now, to really complete this ensemble, pour a concrete path across the front yard so you can wheel your Craftsman toolchest out to the car – and roll it back into the garage so it don’t “walk off by itself.” Just remember to always lock the toe locks when it’s sitting by your car. Especially if your yard is on any kind of a slope. It’s good advice. Once this ex-girlfriend of mine came storming up the walkway – she came to get her fricken ABBA albums back (like I wanted to keep them!) Anyway, that big old toolchest just started rolling down the path at her. Don’t know how that happened. When it run over her and fell over, it was terrible! I had to spend hours and hours putting all the wrenches back right.
Dear mojave66:
You have hit on one of the greatest injustices in our society. I know from hours of research at the cineplex that every straight, single woman in America has a gay male friend she can shop with, trade recipes with, and learn important lessons about heartbreak and survival. So it’s only fair you ought to have a straight male friend to go fishing with, watch ballgames without ever saying a complete sentence, and discuss which foods produce the loudest farts.
And it would be that way if there were any justice in the world. But the problem is biological. You say you want a straight man who will appreciate a woman just for her mind. About the only way this is going to happen is if you turn 65 years old, and you memorize the JC Whitney catalog.
I mean, take Condoleezza Rice. Brilliant woman. She could be discussing the Gini Index on the distribution of family income in Belarus – and the straight guys in the room are wondering if she gives head. Of course, they don’t do this with every woman. There was this lesbian, Shelly, who would hang around with us and we treated her like one of the guys. She always wore corduroys, and black T-shirts. Had lots of tattos. No one ever tried anything funny with her, because we were enlightened and aware type of guys. Plus she wore these boots that could do some seeeee-rious damage anywhere she decided to plant them.
On the other hand, you could take the stodgiest Professor of Medieval Literature and say just two words to him – lipstick lesbian – and he turns into Howard Stern. Don’t ask me why.
So what’s my advice? Well, if you’re just looking for sabremetric talks, you could hang out with math geeks. They’re harmless.
Other than that, the only hope might be to find guy sports fans who go to games in complicated costumes, so you could hide your identity. The Washington Redskins have these fans, The Hogettes, who dress up like women and go to games. Convenient, right? Just say you’re a Hogette, and join the gang. The plus side is, you’re already a woman. The downside is, you’d being hanging with guys who think that skirts plus a beer belly plus a plastic pig nose is the Parnassus of humor.
You might want to rethink this business about hanging out with guys.
Dear Andy,
After weighing the pros and cons of lung versus lip cancer, I have decided to quit smoking and get my nic-fix chewing tobacco.
There is so much to learn! Should I go with a long cut? Perhaps a dip a la Coppenhagen? Perhaps a pouch such as the cute little Skoal Bandits?
Since I do not swallow, I assume I will require a spit cup. Should I dedicate one cup to this task, or go with opaque disposables?
Is chewing tobacco still as taboo as it once was? Is this a habit I should be keeping to myself? Should I throw open the doors and tell the world I chew chaw and spit like a redneck taking in a hot afternoon on the sofa on his front porch?
Yours,
Newcrasher
BTW, Satisfying Andy Licious, John Stewart on The Daily Show tried to steal your schtik. On Wednesday’s show (I believe) he tried to set himself up as the Straight Eye, but I wasn’t fooled. I know you’re the real deal.
Hmmm. Is it just me, or does anyone else think …Andy… is confusing “straight guy” (general) with “redneck cracker” (specific)?
Because redneck cracker is the ideal all straight guys should aspire to. I know I do. Moving to Virginia was just my first step.
I['ve been in Sturgeon Bay, Musicat. You can’t fool me that Andy isn’t describing just about every straight guy in Wisconsin. 
Oops, dropzone got the drop on me. I been unmasked and rendered insignificant. 
But serially, folks, this is my back yard. Plain, unadorned, uninviting. What does Mr. Satisfying suggest I should do to properly decorate it?
Well, I am sure I can speak for Straight Eye when I say there is nothing that you can do for that yard. Just send the deed to me, and leave the keys on the porch on your way out.
If not, you wouldn’t happen to be single, would you?
Thank you, Kallessa! He’s just a Johnny-come-lately. So what if he’s on TV and has millions of fans, big income, groupies. You think I’d trade with him?
Well, yes, actually.