Wrong turn, Clyde

I cannot be the only guy here who has accidentally walked into the lady’s room at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston. It happened at a hockey game a few weeks ago and I’m still traumatized. I tell you, the way the restrooms are laid out over there, with the signs posted between the doorways, it gets very confusing. There’s nothing like the slow dawning horror of standing in a vast bathroom and wondering why there are no urinals. And then the screaming begins.

Leave a message at the %$!@#! beep

Got an awesome message in my newsroom voicemail the other day from an irate man who was apparently expecting to hear the voice of Mimi, my devoted and entirely fictional secretary: “It’s an answering machine! What the %$#@!@! good is an answering machine?” Click.

Pickled

Got an epic voicemail this week from a man who ranted for seven minutes about the many joys of pickles. The fellow went on at length, deeming himself an ardent “pickle hunter” and describing his hopes that one day he’ll be embalmed in pickle juice. “You want to win a long life?” he declares midway through the message. “Eat a pickle.” He then explains in a tone of awe how plain vinegar can keep a pickle in suspended animation for years. For the first two minutes or so of this weirdly eloquent message, I was convinced the dude was talking in some kind of esoteric code that I’d need to crack in order to prevent world annihilation. Or something. But nope. He’s just passionate about pickles, and he laments the fact that nobody seems to offer up the homemade kind anymore. Good news, Peter Piper. My own wife happens to be the Pickle Queen, which sounds dirty, but isn’t. She cans so many different varieties of pickle, I frequently trip over them when I’m down in the basement searching for spiders and such. You want pickles? I got pickles, yo. Also spiders.

The LaFlamme Studio

A sharp-eyed reader has found an old flyer from 1931 in which a place called The LaFlamme Studio was advertised at 265 Lisbon St. I know nothing about the proprietor of this place, but it’s oddly satisfying to know that LaFlammes have been infesting downtown Lewiston for nearly a century. You people never had a chance.

Enjoy your salad

When vandals broke into the Lewiston armory earlier in the week, they apparently got right down to spray painting walls and floors. What did they spray paint specifically? Genitals, mostly. The classics never go out of style. You can find spray-painted genitals, if you’re into that sort of thing, in every other downtown alley and on the side of every bridge from coast to coast. And you know what? Almost nobody does it well. To me, all crudely drawn male genitals end up looking like salad forks or, if drawn in the other direction, like short men in tall hats. Of course, there’s also the possibility that I’ve given this way way too much thought.

Silent Night

A British psychologist says that listening to continuous Christmas music could be bad for a person’s mental health. Duh, you think? I know a guy who heard Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” twice in the same day. Went mad, lopped his own ears off and then ate them with cinnamon and cocoa. True story. Probably.