A Good Ass
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics which I turned over to a colleague, Wayno, in January of 2018. Wayno does a weekly blog post, too, and I highly recommend it.
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A GOOD ASS
Good Monday to you, Jazz Pickles. I’m just noticing it’s also Valentine’s Day. My beloved Olive Oyl has consented to be my valentine for the 9th consecutive year and I’m happy about that, even though I did not get her a gift or plan anything special. But that’s not why the theme of this essay is asses.
We just returned from a few days in Mexico City where we attended a big art expo. We love Mexico City and visit a few times each year if we can. It’s like a more beautiful version of New York City—at least the parts we visit—and the people are friendlier even if you can’t understand a word they say. My Spanish is getting better all the time but is at that awkward place where native speakers can understand my questions and comments but I cannot understand their response. As in most large, bustling cities, in Mexico City they tend to speak more rapidly than the small town where we live, so it is doubly frustrating. Asking them to speak more slowly never works so rather than fight it, the next time a waiter rattles off a paragraph of Spanish in less than three seconds, I’m going to reply in Spanish, “Could you please speak more rapidly, I don’t have all day.”
Rather than bore you with a review of the art shows, galleries, and restaurants we went to, I’m going to talk about my butt. I’m not normally one to speak publicly about my body as much as, say, Kim Kardashian probably does, but in this case, doing so may help others.
I’ve always been a small, lean person in pretty good shape, athletic and strong for my size (my ego asked that I put that in there), and though I’ve never been one of those guys with a bumpy, action-figure body that belies the fact that they’ve spent more time lifting heavy things than doing almost anything else, I’ve pretty much regularly worked out at a gym for my entire adult life. But in spite of all of that, I have to confess that I have an almost non-existent butt. In short, my gluteus has never been what you’d call maximus.
Accordingly, sitting on hard surfaces has always been impossible for me to endure for very long and it’s getting worse by the year. What little “glutes” I was given have gotten tired of separating my skeleton from wood, metal, and stone all by themselves and seem to have just given up trying. This isn’t a problem at home because we have furniture that wasn’t designed with forcing an enemy combatant to “talk” as quickly as possible in mind; that is to say, our furniture is comfortable. I think the chairs in cafes and restaurants these days, however, were possibly designed by the CIA.
The last time we were in Mexico City I was miserable. Every place we went had cruel chairs. Some were a small, flat, plank of hardwood, others were a metal crisscrossed grill with a thin flap of fabric over it meant to resemble a cushion the way a brightly-painted, metal ballbearing might resemble a gumball. Don’t be fooled by either.
Upon returning home, I was determined to find an answer to my butt-less dilemma. I searched the Internet for small, portable cushions but all were too large and conspicuous to drag around with me all day; I don’t want to look like a special-needs case, after all, like I’d lost my buttocks in Afghanistan or something. Coming up empty, I then searched for “padded shorts” thinking a lot of people doubtless have the same problem. But the closest thing I could find was bike shorts with gel bubbles in the crotch and butt area. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but I figured I’d give it a try. I call them my “bubble shorts.”
They arrived in time for our trip and I wore them daily. After four days of it, I can say that in one aspect my review is five out of five stars. But in another, I’m giving them just one star.
When I first put them on, I was a little aghast at how much extra stuff it felt like I had in my pants. Because the shorts are made for serious cyclers who lean forward on a seat the size of an upside-down taco shell, they actually include more padding than I need. I just need a couple of small English-muffin-size gel cushions under my sitz bones, or whatever they call those things in yoga classes. But these include more pads that go further toward the front. At first, it felt as though I had a folded copy of the Sunday New York Times between my legs—not the modern, smaller kind but the big ones from the 1900s. It was pretty hard to get used to.
I once read of a woman with a floppy dress who was caught shoplifting a portable TV by holding it between her thighs. I felt like I was walking the way she probably was when she was caught.
I figured it would loosen up in time and I’d get used to it but after four days of walking many kilometers around the city, it was no better. One reason is that the shorts are made of Lycra, so wearing them under a pair of jeans becomes toasty pretty quickly. Fairly soon, the Sunday New York Times began to feel more like a labrador puppy. Definitely don’t wear these if you’re trying to increase your sperm count. From that perspective, these would be considered birth control shorts. So in terms of all-day, wearable comfort, I give them one star out of five.
HOWEVER, when it comes to providing a comfortable barrier between me and the instruments of torture that masquerade as chairs in restaurants, I can’t give them less than five stars. To my great satisfaction, after an hour or more of sitting with friends at various cafes and restaurants, I was only mildly uncomfortable instead of struggling to retain consciousness as I usually am.
Now if I could just find a similarly reasonable workaround for the absurdly loud music that many venues force on their customers these days, I may actually look forward to going out. Every time I complain about volume, people tell me “they do it for the young people,” but I’m not sure I buy that. I used to be a young person—I was even in a New Wave band for a number of years—and I still hated loud music when I was trying to talk to friends or meet new people. It’s a biological fact that loud noises make mammals nervous; why, then, do so many people seek it out? Am I completely wrong in my presumption that going to bars and restaurants is an attempt to relax and enjoy the company of others? Or do most people go to bars and restaurants for the same reason they attend slasher movies; to briefly feel that their life is at risk, then feel profoundly relieved that they escaped unharmed? I’m sure I’ll never know.
But back to my butt: If there is an entrepreneur out there who is looking for an untapped market, skinny-butted old men is a lucrative one, I think. They have money to spend on comfort and nature is creating more customers every day. If anyone should decide to design and market a pair of cool, cotton shorts with strategically-placed, English-muffin-sized gel pads, please let me participate as a design consultant. I’ll even send you a cast of my ass to use in your R & D department. I think for this reason and probably only this reason, I have a pretty good ass.
Now let’s look for comfort of a different sort by perusing Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week, shall we?…
Someone wrote to tell us that calico cats are always female. What made that person think this one isn’t? SEXISM perhaps?!!
It just occurred to me that the reason young men wear big, baggy, rodeo clown pants may be to hide their bubble shorts. Hmmm…
One reader this week thought this was a cartoon about a vasectomy. Which, in this case, might be called a “tater-tot-ectomy”.
While dogs can understand a language they cannot speak, I can speak a language I cannot understand. (Spanish, as I mentioned in my opening essay above.)
I can’t help but wonder where his crosswalk button is. Wayno’s post this week is particularly thoughtful, I think, so be sure to catch it when you’re done here.
I can see the headline: FLORIDA MAN EATEN BY GATOR KEPT IN TOLLBOOTH HE WAS LIVING IN.
That signals the end of our combination cartoon cavalcade and product review today, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for hanging out until the labrador puppy escaped the sauna. (You won’t understand that line if you didn’t read the essay above.) If you enjoy that we do this without paywalls or ads, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. Thanks for being such jazzy pickles, folks!
Until next week, take a moment from time to time to think of the buttless.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
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