the BLOGDOG blog!!!!: You can put lipstick on a pig…

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In the world of remodeling there are lots of surprises. Anytime you open a wall you find something interesting. I am not talking about the myriad of spiders and alien looking bugs that have never seen the light of day. The last frontier, while many think is the depths of the oceans of the world, is in the cavities of the stud bays. The dust is one thing, weird CricketSpiders are another...Those things just kinda creep me out…

I used to be more surprised, now I just think it is a standard operating procedure. If there is nothing surprising inside a wall, then I am surprised. The fun of demolition is in the interesting crap you find hidden in a wall. You can put lipstick on a pig or polish a turd and the pig is still a pig and the turd is still a turd. Sometimes I find a polished turd or a lipstick wearing pig…

One time I found a mini license plate from Iowa. Is it kismet? I was born in Iowa where the pigs outnumber the people 5 to 1. I am surprised that lipstick is not their biggest import. With that many pigs, there are a lot of turds. Whenever I hate my job I think of jobs I would hate more. Being an IowanTurdPolisher is prolly topping my list today. For that matter I would be loathe to wish for anyone to be an IowanPigLipsticker as well.

f-in’ with Norman…kinda like messin’ with Sasquatch…

With my minds-eye imagining device I have broken down this quandary in picture format, just so you know…

I once found a newspaper in a wall that I opened up. It was a sports page dated June 21, (I think) 1955. There was an article about a local pool player. Harold Worst. I knew his son Harold Jr.. I saw the younger Harold occasionally at a local dive bar known as the Pump House, AKA, the Pumper... I lost many a game of pool to the younger Harold. And drank a few cold ones as well as knocked back a few whiskey and cokes…. I have many a memory of the Pumper. (BTW, I gave the paper to Harold Jr.)

My father was a regular at the Pumper. Before his demise, he actually was a bartender there as well. I rarely went in to the Pumper when he was working. I regret not spending more time up there with him, but you cannot change the past. However, I did have more than a few with him there. And at his other haunts. He drank Stroh’s beer…I still drink one now and think of him…talk about lipstick on a pig, in the world of beer, Stroh’s is a wild boar.

My father and mother took me out for my twenty-first birthday. Needles to say I was a wee bit overserved. At one point in the night the drink of choice became amaretto Slammers, Amaretto with soda water that you slam on the bar top and suck down before the fizz stops. They are tasty. I do not to this day think of Amaretto without the slammer. I lost count after two, so at that point I was prrrretty unsober…

We continued at home with some 12 year old Pinch Scotch, which I received from Billy G. for my HS graduation and of course some Stroh’s. At one point the conversation turned to the Christmas tree. My father and I decided to set the Christmas tree up outside. In a snow bank just outside the front door… but it looked fine. Just fine. Well, it was fine until I awoke the next morning. The tree leaned more than a bit and the lights were all kinda globbed on the tree even with a HorrendousHangover, it looked like a big, unpolished turd in a fresh snow punch bowl.

My father was a character. He had flaws. We all do. He liked to drink… A lot. He passed this proclivity on to me. You have to take the good with the bad, and since we do not get to choose our parents, so we love them for who they are…if he were still alive he would not blame my love of the booze on himself, he would blame it on the JohnsonGene. He used to say that beer was a food group, required by the JohnsonGene. I may try to make the case for this statement but…Whatever.

Back when my sister and I were both single fro the second time my father had a great idea to fix up my sis with a guy at the bar knick-named Barney so he planned a party. No plan to fix me up but if you knew the bar-wenches he knew it was prolly a good idea to pass on that one…let’s just say he knew a few pigs…wearing lipstick.

Jay, his given name, in fact, looked eerily similar to Barney Rumble, so everyone called him Barney. I am not sure my father actually knew his real name. But my father wanted my sister to be in a relationship, so my father had a little party. And if you do not know this by now, there was a bit of drinking going on. And a bunch of grillin’.

Also part of the JohnsonGene is the proclivity to have a BBQ or as I like to call them IM2BBQ’s because I do not like to rely on a big plan to cook meat, I like to rely on the whimsical nature of my carnivorous cravings. Mebbe some day I will try grillin some tofu…RIIIGHT…Seriously?

You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig, you can polish a turd, but it still a turd, and you can put a Johnson in a dry county but he will still find a beer, shot of scotch, or some Canadian Whiskey…A Johnson will find and drink beer and grill food…you might as well put a skirt, knee socks, and lipstick on a quarterback…wait they do…unless he plays for the LIONS… Jus’ sayin’…

Back to the story…My sister and I were both single at the time. I was just fresh from the road and the Mildly Famous world tour Part One. My father had gathering of 30 or so people. One of the guests was my sister and one of the guests was Barney. My sister, in an act of protection, or preparation, in case Barney was a knuckle draggin’ total loser, brought along a friend. Mebbe she was concerned he was a pig with lipstick… or mebbe a polished turd…IDK…

It is only fair to let you know that my sister and mom had recently gone to Glamour Shots, where they put more than lipstick on pigs and above average looking women (read: my sis and mother) become very glamorous. My father was particularly proud of the picture he carried of my sister. He must have shown that picture to a bazillion people.

Hells yeah, even I was impressed by the glam and I am not from Montucky, so having a fling with a sister is definitely out of the question. I am not sure if Glamour shots can polish a turd and really do not need to know this, but I am throwin’ it out there…

Still and all, the pic did her a more than fair portion of justice. My mother looked glamorous as well. To be fair I have always thought that my parents were attractive, and know that I have been favorably blessed by being of their genetic contributions. Well, except for during the late 70’s and early 80’s when I thought having a ‘fro was a fashion statement…OMGWTF was I thinkin?

It turned out that my sis and Barney hit it off. My sister left her friend to fend for herself. It may have been one of the worst things that ever happened to my sister’s friend. I was there and entertaining the crowd with a mix of songs from my repertoire; some covers and some originals. I was having a great time. (As regular readers know I am an applause junkie…) A single woman, at a party, was fair game for the mildly famous, world traveling applause junkie that I was. Once a pig always a pig…

This little soiree was actually the first and last time my father actually really listened to me play. He was kinda drunk so he actually was kinda impressed. I did not know how to play any of the songs from African Queen, or he may have been REALLY impressed.

At one of my many breaks between sets I actually said to my sister’s friend, “Ya wanna go for a ride in my Luv Machine…~~who is wearing the lipstick now, LITTLE PIGGY~~? I had recently purchased a Toyota van, a bit downsized from the big Chevy. As much as I know she was impressed with my well rehearsed lines, she respectfully declined, but I could see she thought I was the bee’s knees…This friend of my sister happened to be Roxy.

Roxy and I were married shortly after this party. Well, it was nearly a year later after I ran on back to the Keys to winter after taking Roxy and the kids down for a little Keys vacation. I sent them back to Grand Rapids on a train, which I have never lived down, and continued on with the Mildly Famous world tour part two.

As I waved goodbye at the train station, I could not help but feeling a little like a polished turd. When I found out that the train broke down about 100 yards from the station and they were sitting there for over an hour, mebbe closer to two, I really felt like an unpolished turd. By the time they finally got moving again, I was well entrenched in the Island atmosphere again…a happy pig…I wrote about fifteen new songs that never seemed to get recorded…one of which is titled “Smilin’ Islands.” Someday it will get put on CD…or not…I digress…

My sis and Barney were hitched shortly after that. My father died about month later. There is no polishing that turd. I was devastated. It was a beautiful spring day. It was a great morning. Well, until I got the call from my sister that my father had died. Ouch. That stings a bit. We never stop missing the ones we love.

He was a lot of things, my father, he was a drunk for sure, but he was fiercely loyal and caring. I inherited many traits from him some good some bad, but all the same, I would not trade who I am or who he was… He never got to see the fruits of his matchmaking labors. As I always say life is short…and ya never know when your number is gonna be called. You can put lipstick, a dress, even a thong and a skimpy little Vickie’s Secret babydoll, on that pig and it is still a pig.

In the past few years, I have been blessed with a bunch of great customers and a few aliens. I wrote about some of the aliens a few blogs ago. I seem to be getting more than my fair share of them lately…as we all know aliens see the world entirely different than the human race…I know coming from a Were-Blogger and admitted vampire, it may seem a tad bit racist, but hey, “the world needs ditch diggers too.”

When people want to remodel a bathroom, the best solution is to gut it and start over. Take out everything and get down to bare studs. Money is always a concern so to keep the price down; many people think you can save some money by re-using certain aspects and or fixtures. I must say that that kind of alien thinking costs someone a bunch of money. Usually it is the contractor in the cost of hours and hours of labor. A turd with polish is still a turd…

A new tile floor will rarely match exactly up to the existing base tile, unless you want to spend lots of money, which BTW is the reason for this ridstupidousness in the first place. In this world you get what you pay for. That old vanity, site built 5 decades ago will never paint up as pretty as a new one, painted or stained in a controlled environment.

The walls with ten plus layers of paint, most layers done by an untrained PaintSlappy, will never look like new construction. Painting while many people think is easy is an art. It is only as good as the paint you use, the existing canvas, and the person applying it. If you put lipstick on a pig it is still a pig.

The old toilet will not ever be as shiny and new as the one just out of the box. removing anything and re-installing it at a later date is just asking for a blemish, mark, or scratch, cuz you can polish a turd ~~mover~~ but it is still a turd…

The industry standard, in the construction trades is to view the job from 6 feet away. I really hate to have to use this line. It feels kinda greasy. However, any lipstick smear that you see at 2 inches from the surface is not industry standard.

An item purchased at a discount home improvement store is going to be a polished turd. However, the polish will prolly be a very thin veneer. There is no way that polish on a turd is going to make the turd anything but what it is.

Natural stone, tile, and wood, are NOT plastic. They have character and character means flaws. It is not a perfect world. They do not have the luxury of being made by robots in the controlled environment of a plastic factory. And BTW, plastics still have flaws. The world is not perfect…nothing is…and money determines the course of events in way too many aspects of this world…

For some reason there seem to be a lot of Friday products and Monday products in the mix. Quality control is still about the bottom line. And protecting the shareholders. Quality…not so much…

You get what you pay for. Just because it says it is a Moen, does not mean that it is of high quality. If you bought it at a big box store there is a reason it is there. The quality of the fixtures at the big box store is for some reason not as good as the ones you buy from a plumbing supply house. I wonder why it is that way. It could be something to do with the old get what you pay for idea…Jus’ Sayin’…

The fact of the matter is you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. The world is full of unrealistic expectations of what a coat of paint can do. Remodeling is like Glamour Shots, but you cannot be a pig to begin with. You can polish a turd but it is still a turd.