Tobacco Avenue

So I’m on my way to the stone wheel industry trade show in Miami, and as I’m riding along on the movable sidewalk at the airport, minding my own business, my eye catches a billboard for GEICO and its really condescending tagline, “So Easy a Caveman Could Do It.” 

What gives?  Switching insurance companies is a no-brainer, and I’m really tired of the stereotype that we can’t figure out how to do so. 

I will admit, however, that the Sudoku book I bought later that morning has been incredibly complex to learn.  A real brain tickler, you might say.

After that little episode with the airport billboard (I am considering writing the boneheads in charge at GEICO to demand an apology, perhaps over a plate of roast duck with mango salsa), I sat down to wait for my plane.  I had about an hour to hang, so I planned to do some Sudoku and listen to my iPod. 

What, you don’t think cavemen have iPods? 

See, that’s just the kind of generalization I’m trying to counter. 

It is really, really frustrating.  Almost as frustrating as trying to fill in the 9×9 grid with numbers so that each column and row has the digits one through nine in them, and only once.  Argh!

Look, I want to work with you, I really do.  Let’s both agree on something.  Cavemen listen to iPods.  And switching to GEICO is easy.  I pull out a cell phone - yes, we have those too - and just call 1-800-947-AUTO.  Fifteen minutes later, and BAM! I’ve just saved 15 percent or more on car insurance.  You know what though?  I just screwed this thing up again.  I didn’t realize the 3×3 boxes can only conain the one-through-nine just one time each, just like the rows and columns. 

Not cool.  Not.  Cool.

The complexity of these puzzles really gets to me.   I mean, we were the first ones to walk upright.  To discover fire.  To - hello? - invent the wheel.  Modern marvels, right?  And yet, for the life of me, I can’t figure out the mathematical logic behind Sudoku. 

I’m just so sick of this.  It’s so hard.

Wait a minute.  That’s it.  I think I’ve come up with a tagline for the game.  “Sudoku: So Hard, Not Even a Caveman Can Do It.”  See?  That is a truthful statement.  Unlike how those guys at GEICO portray us.  Not to mention those advertising “creatives” who immediately typecast all cavemen in one fell, multi-million dollar ad campaign swoop.  Real creative.  Making a joke at someone else’s expense.

Yes, we are people too.  And we have feelings.

I’m going to get right on my Sudoku tagline idea right after the trade show in Miami.  I’ve got plans to go to a really chic rooftop party while I’m down there.  And a little birdy told me that Tina will be in attendance. 

Who knows, maybe we’ll get back together.

Subsequently following the fourth toking of a marijuana pipe today, two Richmond-area stoners pondered how funny it would be if popular restaurant Kitchen 64 were called Kitchen 64 Plus 5.

“Dude, like, ’cause just think about what 64 plus five equals,” giggled pothead Zach Frye to fellow half-baked stoner buddy Jerome Walker, who just squinted his eyes and laughed.  “Or like, if one of their creatively-named sandwiches was called The Mary Jane, and it had all this crazy-good meat on it.”

Walker, 21, replied that the humorous name for the North Side Restaurant as well as a sandwich named after pot “would both be totally dank.”  Frye, also 21, noted that he was totally waste-faced and said all he could do was blankly stare at the TV and contemplate the offbeat messages about society embedded within a “Veronica Mars” rerun. 

The two then discussed how funny it would be if downtown music hall The Canal Club were missing the “C” in “Canal,” then drove to a nearby 7-Eleven for, dude, one of those hot dogs with, like, all the chili on it and stuff.

A 4:30 a.m. fire yesterday on North Mulberry Street across the street from Retreat Hospital has renewed dialogue among area residents as to what, exactly, goes on at the Fan District medical facility.

“It was pretty scary, the smell of smoke woke us up, so we got outside quick and stood on the sidewalk near Retreat,” said Mulberry resident Sara Von Lunz, who watched her roof burn as she wondered what types of people are actually taken to the 227-bed hospital.  “Seriously, is that a place for the homeless or old people or something?  Like, say I was hurt in the fire just now, would they just take me across the street, or…I’d go to VCU [Medical Center], right?” 

Richmond Fire Capt. Jerry Sisson said there were no injuries in the two-alarm blaze, however, the department’s investigators are still looking into if, had people been injured, they could have been admitted to the city’s oldest hospital.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, someone in the Mulberry Street fire had third-degree burns.  Does Retreat have an ER for taking care of that kind of thing?” Sisson asked reporters, none of whom knew the answer.  “I guess we’d need to take the patient to a more advanced hospital like VCU.  ‘More advanced’ being my presumption, of course, because I really have no idea.”

As one of the residents in the five homes evacuated in the fire, Furqan Poncella said his dog was still trapped inside his 106 N. Mulberry apartment, though the 26-year-old said he was slightly more preoccupied with the fact that he saw, with his own eyes, an ambulance drive out of Retreat with lights flashing.

“It was unbelievable.  I guess that confirms that it is a real hospital, with doctors and nurses and an actual ER in there somewhere,” Poncella said of the single-city block hospital.  “But, then again, the whole place is about the size of a Wawa, so maybe [the ambulance] was just getting refueled.”

“So maybe that means Retreat is a hospital fuel depot for VCU,” he added.

Walking by the early-morning fire, Chris R. Meyer said he had just been discharged from Retreat, explaining that his pelvic pains were treated quickly and comfortably by physicians; he was pleased with the quality of service offered in the hospital’s Diabetes Lifestyle Center; and, next time he woke up in a nearby alley passed out from the effects of seven bottles of malt liquor, he would be sure to first call Retreat for a bed.

The clock has just struck 4:30 p.m. at The Green Royals retirement home in Richmond’s far West End, and the line for supper - it’s country-style steak night - is already snaking around the corner.

Some 30 or so senior-citizens away from the warmed dinner plates, Harold Jennings Jr. holds his orange food tray tightly, his head peering over the shoulders of those in front of him, the fully-suited thin man anxiously waiting for the point when the group begins moving through the cafeteria line.

For Jennings, a former tax worker and widowed grandfather of five, the food is one of the many highlights of his 9-hour day. But he doesn’t call The Green Royals home for the assisted living or medical-care services.  Nope, the Navy veteran says, he is strictly here for the women - and the occasional unadulterated romp in an adjustable safety bed with disposable underpadding.

“The tail at this place is like none you could ever imagine,” Jennings said in a recent interview. “Take her,” he says, pointing to 92-year-old Emma Jean Graham, at the time preoccupied with making sure her green Jell-O is leveled securely on her dinner tray. “Legs and arms like just-salted slugs. Breasts like a pair of wet socks hanging on a clothesline. Dimes like Emma Jean are everywhere you turn.”

For Jennings, it is the swarming groups of tempting elderly women that give him a reason for living - and a reason for living here, the 87-year-old says.

“A lot of times when the [grand]kids come to see me, they’ll chuckle at the raised toilet seats in the bathroom,” he said. “Then I’ll typically look over at Emma Jean and give her a little wink, because we both know what those contraptions are really used for.”

“That is, if she is having one of the good days when she can remember that far back, or who I am,” he added.

Like that raised toilet seat, Jennings has found that much of the equipment and objects found in a typical retirement community can be used to his advantage in what he calls his “mission for being” at Green Royals.

He recalls a day in July 2006 when he’d overheard that resident Corrine Gillespie was given a motorized wheelchair for her 82nd birthday. Enticed by the possibilities of automatic and unknown movement in whatever way their writhing, wrinkling bodies hit the directional joystick, Jennings quickly sought out the woman, living in the East Wing at the time.

“In that situation, particularly, her being relegated to a seat wasn’t all that bad,” Jennings explains. “To tell you the truth, for the reasons I’m living here, she was in the right position to start with.”

Added Jennings: “God rest her foxy soul.”

Back at the dinner line, the man who flew 18 missions over Germany in 1943 scouts the dessert items and the woman he’ll try to pick up to “have social hour with” later this evening, just before bed at 8:15 p.m.

Before that, he plans to get in some “QT with the cuties” on the center’s Nintendo Wii later tonight to improve his coordination skills. This routine will continue over the course of several months for Jennings, unless his recurring incontinence problems interrupt his best-laid getting-laid plans.

“And if I don’t find a lady here, I joined a Bridge group last week that’s just me, Phil [Mooney] and the girls. I’ll bring the booze,” Jennings says, “and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on where that night will go.”

Gas prices in Richmond rose to an average of one pound of ground beef today, up from Friday’s high of a quart of milk, three bananas and a roll of generic-brand paper towels, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.

“Before long, Richmonders should not be surprised if they see a gallon of gas soaring to two packs of Keebler E.L. Fudge Double Stuffed cookies, or even an 8-inch DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza with all the toppings,” said AAA spokeswoman Kristeen Carswell.  “I personally paid a Gap drawstring skirt and half a pair of Steve Madden sandals to get to Baltimore and back just the other day.”

The ground-beef price jump was the largest of its kind since early April, when a gallon of gas averaged one-third of a DVD or two-and-a-half songs downloaded from iTunes.  AAA’s Carswell warned consumers to be wary of scams that offer a full tank of gas in return for a first-born child, noting such transactions are becoming all the more common.

Proving his sheer ultimate manliness above all other Richmond-born males, city resident Henry Chase Hager formally declared his dating prowess this weekend after marrying a daughter of the president of the United States.

Gallantly arriving in a black Chevrolet Suburban to a local press conference, Hager stepped onto a rolled red carpet and, as if in slow motion, removed a pair of black sunglasses from his face and cleaned the lenses with a corner of his two-button black suit, presumably bought at Brooks Brothers.  Hager, 30, then addressed all similar-aged men in Richmond.

“You boys keep going out to your Robinson Street bars, like I did; trying to pick up women, just as I once did; and continuously failing, which I obviously cannot do no matter how hard I try,” Hager said, pounding his chest with his fists.  “Should you need me, I’ll be…hmm, where will I be?  Oh, that’s right!  I remember now! On a honeymooon with Jenna Bush.“ 

“Boo-yah!” Hager added, kicking a foot into the air and pumping his arm as if to pull-start a lawnmower. 

Hager, who was quick to note that “my knockout of a wife Jenna looked better than your bride ever will,” told reporters that the Saturday evening wedding went off without a hitch.

“And did I mention the part where, over the course of five minutes, the president became my father in-law?”  Hager said, explaining that he and President Bush - “singlehandedly the most powerful person on the face of the planet, who is now related to me, which is completely awesome” - stayed up until the early morning hours drinking ice-cold beers.  “But of course, most of us will get to do that at some point in our lives.”

“And by ‘most of us,’ I mean ‘me,’” added Hager, son of the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.  “Is what I’ve accomplished over the weekend the ultimate act of love?  Maybe.  The ultimate act of toughness on a scale unparalleled, unprecedented and unequaled by any other warm-blooded heterosexual man alive today?  Now that’s more like it.”

See more X-Treme Paul Goldman here.  Next week: Will he be able to break the world’s land speed record?

Comforting themselves with a false sense of hope that the Richmond police chief is just up to another one of his well-planned jokes, area residents today said Rodney D. Monroe “must be kidding” about actually considering taking the same job in Charlotte, NC.

“That Rodney D., that’s probably what his stage name would be.  Always has been good for a chuckle,” said Nate Bigelow, who half-jokingly believes the crime rate would rise to pre-Monroe levels should the 50-year-old accept the Charlotte position. 

“Leaving for Charlotte.  Ha.  What a thigh-slapper,” Bigelow added, tapping his hands on his desk to mimic a comedic drum beat.

Monroe - who said he has never actually done stand-up comedy - has clearly stated in a strangely non-jovial tone that he would leave Richmond should the largest city in North Carolina offer him the $150,000-plus job.  He arrived on the Richmond job in 2005.

“Yes, if they choose me, I plan to accept to expand my professional and personal life,” Monroe said, absolutely straight-faced, without a hint of irony in his voice nor the traditional comedy club brick wall backdrop visible anywhere nearby. 

Virginia Commonwealth University sociology professor Lisa Weldon-Gaines explained that, considering Monroe’s body language and phrasing of his statement, the only people that local residents are kidding are, in fact, themselves.

“Would you take the job?” Weldon-Gaines hypothetically asked a reporter.  “More pay, a new experience, and a chance to shine in a city that, quite frankly, has its act more together than Richmond in terms of economic development and essential infrastructure.  This is a no-brainer for him.”

Local advertising executive Bekah Knapp called the Weldon-Gaines analysis of the chief “totally lame and retarded.”

“Monroe leaving is probably one of the funniest things I’ve heard all day,” said Knapp, 42.  “It’s almost as good as the one where he told us he’d drop violent crime in the city to its lowest point in a decade - then he turns around and cuts crime to the lowest point in 25 years.”

“I’m not going to let him pull my leg like that again,” she added. ”But see, that’s Richmond for you - everywhere you turn, it’s free comedy.”