Believe It

You may have noticed that I love to include snippets about my brother in my blog postings. This inclination is due, in part, to the fact that the guy has some crazy stories in his arsenal and we therefore engage in some pretty ridiculous dialogue pertaining to his various shenanigans (observed or lived) on a somewhat regular basis.

In fact, I often think that I could write a book called Conversations with My Brother. And it would be, to use one of his favorite adjectives, unbelievable. I am not exaggerating either. It is truly my sentiment that you would be reading the book, flipping the pages like mad of course as your devoured this sanctimonious piece of literary genius, and would be muttering aloud to yourself: “I just don’t believe this. This is truly unbelievable.”

In fact, people in Robert’s life—myself included, feel that the realm of reality television is doing the world at large a disservice by offering up dum-dum shows featuring insipid Housewives of wherever and various people generally being tactless and tyrannical, when we could be watching Big Rob sail through life. It is like eating bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread everyday only to suddenly be introduced to an Italian sub on ciabatta. I mean you would never go back. Are you with me here? Rob is not the bologna in the analogy if I lost you. Cliff’s notes to follow.

But Robert often says that he is a terrible candidate for a reality television show because no one would believe that his life was real. Although we all know that is hardly a criterion for “reality” television as we know it.

What I really think is that it is the whole shedding of general human decency that feels quite repugnant to him. Actually I sort of know that to be the case.

I say that because, being a sometimes model and actor, a few years back he was solicited to appear on a reality show. On this show, he would have had to actually marry someone and then embody every possible characteristic that her family would find disgraceful. The whole purpose of the show was to appall her entire family, only to reveal after months of psychological torment (“Our baby girl married THAT?”), that the whole marriage was a sham designed to keep all of the evil-minded television viewers at home entertained.

Implicitly, he turned down the audition. If you have to ask why, then please log off now and engage in some rigorous self-examination and/or bring your moral compass in for a complete tune-up.

So the other day, we were talking about a poker game he was invited to join. A truly social creature, my brother just loves striking up conversations with strange people, often in strange venues, often at strange times. The whole thing is strange in my opinion, but you probably got that.

Post-poker game, I received a recap of the evenings events. Rob thought it would just be a group of guys hanging out, playing cards, and maybe having some"brew-pops and mellow eats," as my friend Dave likes to say. I guess it was a bit more wild than that.

In fact, it all sounded sort of like Animal House meets Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, with a little Boogie Nights thrown in. But hey, he lives in L.A. so what could we really expect?

In the poker night scenario, Rob played the role, as my communication classes tell me, of participant-as-observer. It was sort of like a humanities research project, this poker night.

At one point an uninvited woman entered the room, talking loudly and acting quite strangely. She was proclaiming to anyone who would listen that she was not a stripper. I find this an odd thing to need to tell a room full of strangers. So did my brother, and thus she was one stranger with whom he did not feel compelled to chat.

The non-stripper proceeded to lock herself in the only bathroom off the common area where the poker game was taking place. Now I know men and women have different levels of “needing” to have a bathroom available, but I think it is safe to say that a room full of guys drinking beers would likely notice the unavailability of a restroom.

A line forms.

She emerges after about a half hour, and proclaims (big on proclamations, this gal): “The toilet is clogged.”

Ew.

But some brave soul (not Robert) goes into inspect the specifics of her announcement. He comes out and evidently encourages other people to go in and have a gander at the situation.

The guys file in for a viewing, and it turns out that dolly has dumped the contents of a trash can into the toilet. There were various papers coming out, a plastic container, I think Robert mentioned there was a paper towel roll stuffed in there.

The real mystery is where the woman was hiding this alarming amount of debris before she entered the rest facility. But perhaps I will have to accept that as a mystery for which I will never have the answer.

Well, yesterday I was in a public restroom in a medical building. As I often do, I marveled at the sign that instructed all visiting parties not to throw anything in the toilet other than toilet tissue. I mean who would throw anything in a toilet other than toilet tissue?

The exception being dramatic scenes in Lifetime movies where someone ceremoniously dumps handles of cheap vodka and/or bottles of pills into the can. But those are usually in private homes. As a rule, no one actually puts things into toilets other than toilet tissue. Right?

Wrong.

I will tell you who does: poker-game crashing, non-stripping, bathroom hogs. Who knew.

And all of this emerged out of a simple conversation with my brother. You see what I am saying? Unbelievable.