You know those rotisserie chickens you can get pre-cooked from the grocery store?  I love those things and probably average one a week.  I heat up a little brown rice and vegetables and combine it all in a bowl like pig feed.  I know this sounds healthy, and it is, but it’s only once a week.  The rest of the time it’s fozen pizzas and graham cracker Double Stuf Oreos.

By the way, once I’m done with a rotisserie chicken and only the carcass remains, I stuff that fucker into my garbage disposal and flip it on.  I get some bizarre feeling of power from doing this and I thoroughly enjoy it.

Hold your comments on how it’s not good to stuff an entire chicken skeleton into the garbage disposal.  First, I don’t care.  Second, I’ve been doing this for over eight years in my condo and nary a problem has arisen.

Here’s the food tip – instead of picking up the chicken, get a roasted turkey breast.  Most grocers don’t carry them, and you may have to call around.  Even at the big chain that does them here in Chicago, only a few of the stores regularly have them.  Turkey breasts are more expensive than the chicken  – about $11 or so, but totally worth it.  You get more than twice the meat, and it’s the healthy parts.  Plus, turkey tastes better than chicken, and unless it’s Thanksgiving you don’t get the real stuff very often.

So today, my big accomplishment was to locate a cooked turkey breast.  I called around and found a store that had two.  Normally they won’t hold them for you, because, let’s face it, the deli counter women have better stuff to do.  They’re busy with all that weird pre-made potato salad crap that I can’t believe anybody buys.

But today, for the first time, someone held one for me.  I was pretty excited.  Cooked up the brown rice (currently out of vegetables) and combined it for a nice 4pm lunch.  Then, since our band played last night and I didn’t get home until about 2am, I passed out after this turkey feast.  Woke up around 8pm.

It’s now 11pm, and I probably shouldn’t eat turkey this late, but I know I will.  Oh yes.

Did I really want to blow a few hundred bucks on a lead apron?  Seems like an expensive experiment.  I mean, I only have had that thing on me for three minutes at a time.  Maybe at minute four it starts to feel constricting and scary.  Who knows?

So, I took my search to Ebay.

More of the same, really.  Expensive aprons, and shipping is a killer.

Until I found IT.

Let’s zoom in a bit, shall we?

Not “a stain”, but “some staining”?  That’s more than one stain.  Good that there’s no rips, I guess.

Oh man, do I have some questions for C. Wang, M.D.  What’s the C. stand for?  Did you go bankrupt?  And, if so, I’m guessing it’s because you didn’t wash your lead aprons.

I have another, more interesting thought – Dr. Wang loves boobs.  He decided to become a radiologist, and my theory is that he got in so he could look at cans all day.  As a result, he started doing breast exams that lasted a little too long.  Plus, he would grin the entire time.  He was brought up on charges, sent to jail, and shivved in the shower by a large Mexican.

And now I’m going to buy his nasty old vest.  But I have a few questions, which I sent over to the seller.

• What is the heaviness of the vest?  I want to make sure it’s no pussy 5lb’er.  I need a heavy vest.
• What kind of stains?

Here’s another story that I’m sure many of you can relate to (and yes, I know you aren’t supposed to end sentences with prepositions, but it still works conversationally so I don’t care).

I used to be a juicing freak.  No, not steroids.  I’m talking about making freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juice.  I’ve owned four different juicers over the years if that clues you into my obsession.

It’s ironic that I juice since I often eat fast food and hardly exercise.  But anyway.

I had never thought of juicing a beet before.  One of the guys I worked with, Kevin, told me they were great for your liver.  Since I was a pretty awful booze-bag, this seemed like a good idea.  If you haven’t seen a raw beet, they’re kind of intimidating.  They’re really hard and big.

Trying to cut into a beet is not easy.  You need a decent knife.  Also, do it in the sink, because your hands will look like you just committed homicide.  It will freak you out.  If you get any of it on your clothes, you may as well toss ’em.  I cut beets with my shirt off and my chest hair would end up looking like Ralph Malph’s head.

Okay, let’s move this story along.  Actually to the end.  So I juiced a beet and mixed it with spinach and six other vegetables.  Yes, I know – this is riveting storytelling.  An hour later I went to the water closet.

Now, if you know what I’m going to say next, YOU KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO SAY NEXT.

I nearly fainted.  If you’ve never experienced what I’m talking about, I’m sure you have a pretty good idea.  Beets do a very interesting thing to your insides.  I really have no idea what, but man is it intense.

Because when you go to make number one, it will test your ability to not pass out.

We’ve all giggled about how asparagus makes your pee smell.  And by the way, I would amend that with “makes your pee smell AWESOME” – it’s like a little magic trick you can do with your body.  God, that’s fun.

Beets do something fun too, but you have to know in advance.  And somehow, my entire life, nobody had clued me into this craziness. Maybe less people know because beets sort of suck?  Nobody really hits the raw beet aisle over asparagus at the grocer.

I was trembling and I called Kevin.  “Hey man, do beets, uh, make things red?  Because I may be dying.”

He was laughing when he told me, “Same thing happened to me!  I freaked out!  Yes, they turn your pee red.  Wait until you see what they do to your shit!”

He was totally right.