Fear not, 3.5 readers. Jake Dashing continues to file his pop culture mystery reports.
I’m just so bogged down with all my work here at Bookshelf Q. Battler Headquarters that I never have time to edit and post them.
I really need to hire an assistant.
I head a rumor though that after being told to pound sand one too many times by Attorney Donnelly, Jake has set his sights on a lady detective who he shares some uh, let’s say, “personality traits” with.
Here the mystery woman is, with the Top Ten Things Your Girlfriend Might Say About You if She Were a Classic Film Noir Detective.
(Translated from English to Film Noir Speak.)
10. ENGLISH: Babe, you left the bathroom a mess!
FILM NOIR SPEAK: Another day, another dollar and another twenty-four hours closer to meeting my maker. I gave up on a perfect life long ago but call me crazy, I feel like even a gal like me has a right to five minutes of peace alone in the powder room.
Sigh. No such luck. I open the door and find the floor covered with enough water to float the Titanic, which is ironic, because the floor is also littered with enough towels to soak up the Pacific Ocean.
I need to think. I go to the sink and turn on the faucet, hoping a splash of cool water on my face will subdue my burning rage. No such luck. The sink is filled with a twisted concoction of whisker hairs, shaving cream, and toothpaste.
Just what ever gal wants. A furry viscous fluid waiting for her. Lucky me.
Thirty seconds with a washcloth would have spared my eyes from this sight. What’s the skinny on this palooka? Is he stupid? Rude? Was he born in a barn? Raised by hobos?
Is this some kind of bizarre power play? Leave a mess to see if the little woman will clean it up?
Or is he just that obtuse that he doesn’t notice things like this?
Speaking of noticing things, out of the corner of my eye I spot that the toilet is filled with more skid marks than the Indy 500 race track.
Men. Can’t live with ’em. Sorry. There isn’t a second verse to that old song and dance number.
9. ENGLISH: I love you.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Love. That and a plug nickel will buy you a cup of coffee, but at least you never have to worry about your java sprouting legs and walking away.
Men, on the other hand, have a bad habit of becoming gold medal marathon runners when you least expect it. There one day, gone the next, the only memories he leaves you with are his silhouette against the moonlight as he makes a beeline for the door and that old familiar throbbing in your ticker…
…ba-dump…ba-dump…ba-dump.
Then again, it could just be gas.
8. ENGLISH: I wish you’d take me somewhere nice.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: There’s a part of me that wants to dance. Not that I’m a spritely ballerina type mind you but the madcap irony of life is that the less you have of it, the more you want to embrace it. Rattling around in the back of my mind like so many marbles shot by the kid with the best aggie in school are images of myself as a wrinkled up old broad, wrapped up in a shawl, rocking away in my wheelchair, cursing myself for not having danced more in my youth.
I owe it to that old gal to trip the light fantastic fella, so either cut a rug with me or I’ll find someone who will.
7. ENGLISH: I baked you cookies.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Sweets. They’re one of the many cruel jokes played on us by the man upstairs.
Surely you’ve realized by now that the Almighty has a peculiar sense of humor, right?
Cookies are delicious, but too many and you’ll end up looking like the love child of Fatty Arbuckle and King Kong.
Making whoopee is an equally pleasant pastime, but pick the wrong person and you’ll end up with some kind of dirty social disease. You know, the kind that makes your privates shrivel up, turn green, and that’s only if you’re lucky.
Still, everything in moderation is the way to go, so here are some cookies. One a day makes the blues go way.
Two a day will make me go away.
Make your choice, Jack.
6. ENGLISH: Do these jeans make my butt look big?
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Sizes are like opinions. They vary greatly depending where you go, and they all leave you feeling like you’re going to explode.
In this case, I feel like there’s going to be an ass explosion. I’m not about to share my size with you, Nosebox McGee, but let’s just say I’ve always fit in the same number except for today, as I tried a new boutique where apparently it’s the company creedo that everyone should have an ass flatter than everyone thought the pre-Columbus world was.
I can tell you’re burning a hole in the back of my jeans with your lustful eyes, because like bathroom cleanliness, subtlety has never been your strong suit.
So make like a tipped over milk carton and spill, Jack. Is it round like a candy apple or does it look like it’s got its own gravitational pull?
5. ENGLISH: You forgot my birthday, jerk.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Time. Oh how that relentless son of a bitch enjoys teasing me. Taunting me. Yanking days off the calendar of my life with reckless abandon, leaving me with little more than fuzzy memories of cheap men and even cheaper vodka.
Eighteen. Twenty-one. All the best birthdays are gone now. What’s left to celebrate to celebrate now other than being one year closer to shaking hands with Mr. Grim Reaper himself?
Now there’s a celebrity whose autograph you don’t want.
Still, it’s perfectly normal for anyone with a pulse to feel a burning desire to be remembered. In the end, when all is said and done, when the last clump of dirt is heaped on our graves and the undertaker collects his due, all we are to the people we leave behind is the sum total of the memories they carry with them in their minds.
And apparently, my fella isn’t carrying many thought drops about me in his brain bucket.
I saw a bum shivering on a park bench this morning. Cold. Alone. Forgotten. Cared for by no one.
Whenever my man screws up like this, it’s hard not to see myself as ending up just ike that lowdown vagrant one day.
Cold. Alone. Forgotten. Cared for by no one.
Thanks a lot, Jack.
4. ENGLISH: Let’s move in together.
TRANSLATION: Space. I have it. You have it. Who needs it? Let’s live in the now and share the cow. My milk. Your milk. Who cares whose gullet it goes down when it all comes out yellow anyway?
Splitting digs is always a big step in any relationship. And sure, it might turn out to be the step that lands our feet on an emotional land mine that blows our psyches to kingdom come.
Then again, it could also be the step that leads us to the American Dream. A nice house with a front yard, a white picket fence, three kids, a dog, and our very own shared subscription to Better Homes and Gardens.
Mull it over, palooka. For as Custer said on the way to his last stand, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
3. ENGLISH: I forgive you for (whatever dumb thing you did recently.)
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: They say love is blind but in my case, she must have had her eyes gouged out with rusty razors because despite all the strike marks you’ve got against you, you’re still aces in my book, bub.
2. ENGLISH: We should get married.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Here we are, two dopes stuck on a big blue marble, our lives as insignificant as a couple of ants to the shoe of a random passerby.
Call me naive. Call me crazy. Call me late for dinner but I love ya, ya big lug. There, I said it. Write it down, rubber stamp it, set it in a frame and hang it on the wall for the whole world to see.
Sure, we could end up crashing in flames like the Hindenburg but we might just circumnavigate the globe like Lucky Lindy. We’ll never know until we flap our wings and take that leap.
There’s no one I’d like to take that leap with more than you, see?
- ENGLISH: I think we should break up.
FILM NOIR TRANSLATION: Alright, buster. Clean the wax out of your ears and listen up.
You and I are over. We’re done. Kaput. It’s like seeing the final credits roll at the end of a three hour Judd Apatow film. I feel depressed that I wasted my time yet elated that this bullshit is finally out of my life now.
Take a long walk off a short pier, palooka. Dumpsville just held an election and you’re the Mayor, the Alderman, and the dog catcher all rolled into one.
Aww, pipe down with the waterworks, see? Like my Aunt Edna’s underpants, a crying man is a sight no one wants to see.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known to the world as Mark Twain, is widely regarded as one of America’s finest novelists, providing wit and humor with such works as Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Bookshelf Battle 