You see, he's just delivering these things because that's his job, he's a postman. And when he smiles or waves at me, that's because he likes his job. Not because he wants me to be his friend.
And despite what you've been told, your dog is not your best friend. Oh, he'll act like your best friend, especially when he's hungry or when you've got the clicker and he wants to watch The Bone Ranger on Spice Channel. Oh, yeah, he'll have you buying into that man's-best-friend horseshit until it's three o'clock in the morning and you need someone to pick you up from a party, and then suddenly man's best friend is screening his calls. Dukey, you're a little motherfucker, all right?
But when you're truly in the company of good friends, you're more comfy than Ed Begley Jr. in an electric car on his way to the recycling center with a trunk full of empties and a solar-powered auto-suck.
And if you have trouble making friends, now you can meet people on the Internet. This is great. You think you are talking to a cute, recently divorced blond coed, when in reality you are pouring out your sexual needs to a fifty- year-old cross-country truck driver named Skeeter who's wearing a camisole and panty hose.
I think the very best way to tell if you can be friends with someone is whether or not you can make each other laugh. I've got a friend who made me laugh so hard one day last week, milk actually came out of my nose. And I haven't had any milk in over two years.
But no matter how strong your relationship is, eventually you'll encounter the biggest hurdle a friendship can ever possibly face. Someday, no matter how much you pray it won't happen, no matter how much you do everything in your power to prevent it, no matter how much you fight it with every fiber of your being, eventually your friend is going to be successful.
Hey, you all know what a friend is. A friend is someone who can watch twelve straight hours of the Cartoon Network Jonny-Quest-a-Thon without uttering one word then get up and leave and not even say good-bye to me.
A friend is someone with whom I can go to a restaurant and spend the entire meal on the cell phone talking to my agent.
A friend is someone with whom I can lock the automatic car windows, let loose with a taco grande carpet bomb fart, and still get a high-five off him.
And, finally, to me, a best friend is someone who can keep a secret, someone who likes sports, someone who'll let me store some of my personal effects at his place, no questions asked, someone who doesn't judge my mood swings, no matter how extreme they get, and most important, someone who will drive me around in a white Bronco as I hold a gun to my head.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Cops
Boy, I don't envy cops. A cop is a person who leaves every day for work and doesn't know if they'll ever make it home alive. In other words, they're just like any other person trying to earn a living in L.A.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the glamorous and exciting image of cops we have from TV shows and movies gives you as accurate a picture of reality as watching a Bill Clinton press conference dubbed in Swahili while you're high on amyl nitrite poppers. Or, for that matter, a Clinton press conference under any circumstances.
Now, before I criticize how other people do their jobs, I always ask myself, "Could I do it?" And the answer here is no, because the job of cop can be more foul than George Kennedy without his BreathAsure. Hey, I just don't have the temperament. The first time some Chiclet-brain I pulled over for a traffic ticket gave me that "Hey, I pay your salary" rap, I'd be too tempted to flip him a quarter and say, "Here's a refund, fuckwad," and then I'd drag his ass out of the car and start beating on him like he was a Hitler piñata at a Mossad picnic. Yeah, if I were a cop, I'd go through stun guns like Bing Crosby after noticing his kids weren't playing with their new toys on Christmas morning.
Cops day to day have to deal with more violence than Tina Turner did when Ike lost the Grammy. And they have to deal with the same violent criminals over and over again. The greased pneumatic tube that we laughingly refer to as our legal system has criminals back on the streets before the arresting officer can finish the K-2— sized mound of paperwork on their original arrest. It's frustrating for the cops. It's like when I make jokes about Newt Gingrich being a big fat asshole. Just when I think I'm done with him, he becomes an even bigger, fatter ass crater and I have to do even more jokes about him.
By the way, did you know that cops in England don't even carry guns? All they have are those wooden sticks. And do you know how difficult it is to toss a bullet up in the air and then use a stick to smack it into a criminal? Pretty difficult.
But back to the good old U.S. of AK-47. And how about a mention for the most unheralded cop of all—the police dog. Super group of selfless little pooches, there. Working long hours all day looking for drugs and not even getting a chance to sniff a nice butt, and when they go home to the doghouse, they're under too much stress and strain to even be able to eat their kibbles or mount their bitch. Thank you, dog cop.
This is not to say there aren't some bad two-legged cops out there. For instance, when the police kick open the door and catch you and your wife fixing the camshaft in the methamphetamine lab, why do they always scream, "Freeze, motherfuckers!" Hey, a simple "freeze" will do, guttermouth. My wife is in the room and the kids are sleeping in the back. Show a little respect for the family unit, please.
But these are quibbles. Ninety-nine percent of the time, my allegiances lie with the men and women in blue. The rights of the criminals should never supersede the rights of good, decent, hardworking people. As far as I'm concerned, the rights of the criminal begin and end the moment a criminal is caught in the act.
Sometimes I yearn for the simpler days, when cops didn't have to be so politically correct and touchy-feely and compassionate. Like Kojak. He was just a crazy, bald son of a bitch who didn't give a shit. Like when this couple from the Midwest whose daughter moves to New York and becomes a prostitute gets murdered, and they're in the station house sobbing and Kojak walks in and says: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was Mom's apple pie, the Fourth of July ... SHE WAS A HOOKER!" Telly, we hardly knew ye.
Now we've gone to the other end of the spectrum, where the police have to drive alongside the armed fugitive, placing themselves and innocent civilians in harm's way until PCP boy runs out of psycho gas. It's true. One phenomenon currently taking place in the city of Los Angeles is the fully televised high-speed prime-time chase that all the local television stations insist on carrying in its entirety. Hey, Airwolf, blow the fucking tires out and put Frasier back on, okay?
Sure, I think cops can be brutal sometimes, because it is a brutal world we live and make them work in. But while we are sleeping in our homes, they are out on the dirty boulevard trying to make it safe for us in the morning. And for all you ACLU members out there without an A-C-L-U-E: When you hear a noise outside your house in the middle of the night and you fear for your life and call 911, just be glad it's cops who show up at your front door and not Alan Dershowitz, because, believe me, if it was Dershowitz, you'd end up more fucked than a tour group in Amsterdam led by Wilt Chamberlain on Spanish fly.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
About the Author
Dennis Miller first gained national acclaim as the anchor of Weekend Update, the news parody on "Saturday Night Live." He is the host of the Emmy Award-winning talk show "Dennis Miller Live," now in its fourth season on HBO. He and his wife live in Southern California with their two children.
Table of Contents
Preface. 4
The Single Life. 5
Generation X. 7
Animal Rights. 10
Family. 12
Ethnicity. 14
Are Movies Getting Worse?. 17
The Armed Forces. 19
Smoking. 21
Acting. 23
Sobriety. 25
Violence in Media. 27
Hype. 29
The American Education System.. 31
Bad Driv
ers. 33
Computers. 35
Mothers. 37
Immigration. 39
Bad Habits. 41
Lawyers. 43
Fashion. 46
Bad TV.. 48
Feminism.. 51
Washington, D.C. 53
The Royal Family. 55
Abortion. 57
Bill Clinton, Second Term.. 59
America's Obsession with Beauty. 61
Parenthood. 63
Modern Psychology. 66
Elections 2/16/96. 69
Sportsmanship 3/15/96. 72
The Prison System.. 74
The Death of Common Sense. 76
L'Affaire 0.J. 5/10/96. 78
The Pursuit of Happiness. 80
Spouses. 82
Lying. 84
Art. 86
Child Rearing. 88
White People. 90
UFOs. 92
The Afterlife. 94
Gun Control 96
The Fall of the Middle Class. 98
Friends. 100
Cops. 102
About the Author. 104
Ranting Again Page 14
