TEAM LAST CALL

Actually, we're having more of a house-wide crisis. We've got a broken porch light, we've got a busted handle on our front door, we've got clogged spouting, we've got a major leak in our basement, and we've got insulation in the attic thats disintegrating faster than Britney Spears' sex appeal.

These things are tedious and aggravating, and we've been meaning to take care of them for several months now, but despite our best efforts, we can't quite seem to reach any of them from the couch. And if you think we're about to miss an episode of "Passions" just to replace some handle on the front door, so that our guests "don't have to walk around the back of the house" and "get dog crap" on their shoes and "track it all over our carpet," then you've got another thing coming.

If Team Last Call were a superhero, these problems would be like shoplifters - they're annoying, but none of them are really worth the attention of a crime-fighter of our caliber.

None of them, that is, except for one.

Every good superhero has an archenemy. Superman has Lex Luther. Spider-Man has the Green Goblin. George Bush has the word "nuclear."

And now, Team Last Call has one of its own: the upstairs toilet.

Our upstairs toilet has been running for several months now. I guess we'd better go catch it ha ha ha ha! Sorry.

But in all seriousness, that toilet has been the very bane of our existence. It's what we in the superhero business call "an evildoer."

The toilet troubles began with a little trickling sound coming from near the tank. It was irritating and persistent, like Ryan Seacrest, but it was way too little to pose a real threat. Like Ryan Seacrest.

But over time, that trickle developed into a raging river, with whirlpools and rapids and everything. It got to the point where we were afraid to come anywhere near the toilet for fear that we might be sucked into the current and deposited somewhere in the middle of the Susquehanna.

Before long, it became apparent that our toilet had been possessed by the devil. It developed this supernatural glow, and every time we got near it, it would start growling like a dog with rabies. Then it started doing this thing where we'd wake up during the night and the toilet would be sitting in the middle of our room, just staring at us, and every time we'd wake up it would be a little closer to the bed, until eventually it was sleeping beside us and hogging all the covers, which we really hate.

Then the toilet started getting just flat-out weird. Before long it was strutting around the house in its underwear like it owned the place, borrowing our favorite shirts without asking, watching all of our DVDs and then putting them away in the wrong cases, drinking the last of the milk and then putting the carton back in the fridge. And then it would walk around whistling "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" by Shania Twain as loud as it could, when it knows that we hate that song!

The toilet was evil. Pure evil. We didnt know if we should attack it with a sledgehammer or put it in a suit and tie and make it CEO of Halliburton.

We realize that we might be exaggerating the situation a little bit. It's sort of a bad habit of ours. But that toilet is the devil. In fact, we can hear it right now, just drip-drip-dripping away. Somehow, it knows that were trying to write an article.

You're probably wondering why we don't just march in there and fix the toilet ourselves. It's probably just a matter of a loose connection with the hose or a kink in the chain or something.

Frankly, we're scared. Besides, if we had any actual mechanical skills, we wouldn't be writing articles about toilets for a living.

The other option, of course, would be to call in a plumber. The problem there is, plumbers cost money, and in case we neglected to mention it before, we write columns about toilets for a living.

Besides, there's a third option we haven't explored yet: holding it.

Team Last Call has been holding it for weeks, and we think it's really teaching that toilet a hard lesson.

Because if you think about it, toilets are only as important as we allow them to be. They sit there all smug, with that little smirk that says, "Sooner or later, you'll come crawling back. You always do." They're just so conceited.

We say it's time we stop letting these toilets boss us around. We don't have to take their bullying sitting down, as it were.

It's time that we took the power back! Join me! Join me in the revolution! Together we can ... oh, man ... I'm sorry ... can I use your bathroom?

January is a time of hope, a time of new beginnings. It’s a time to reflect on the previous year – the lessons you learned, the friends you made, the memories you created. It’s also a time to think about how big your ass has gotten.

That’s right, it’s resolution time, that special time of year when we stop to take a hard look at our lives and realize that we are terrible, terrible people. Each year we tell ourselves that we’re going to turn our lives around. This is the year we’re going to start exercising. This is the year we’ll finally get around to scooping out the litterbox. This is the year we’re going to quit smoking once and for all. Or at least for a week. Whichever comes first.

Team Last Call thought long and hard about what kind of resolutions we should make for 2006. Yet despite our best efforts, we were unable to come up with a single thing. We live a relatively clean life. We have good manners. We wear really fashionable corduroy jackets. And let’s face it, we’re cute as a button. There just really isn’t much to improve upon.

So what we decided to do instead is to make a list of resolutions for other people. That way, we can still do our part this year to make the world a better place. And let’s be honest – you and your love handles could use the help.

It is Team Last Call’s hope that everyone can approach this column with the right attitude, which is the attitude of “Team Last Call is always right.” It’s not our aim to offend anyone. We hope we don’t come across as being judgmental or anything. It’s just that you have really bad taste, and we’d like to help fix it.

Resolution one: Get rid of your Hummer. As Team Last Call has touched on so many times before, driving a Hummer is for turds. If you don’t want everyone to think you’re a turd, then don’t drive a Hummer. It’s that simple. Turd.

Resolution two: On another car-related note, it’s time to take the silly spinning rims off of your wheels. Nobody thinks they’re cool but the guy who sold them to you, and that’s just because he works on commission. Surely there is some better way you could put that $2,000 to use. Like by feeding the poor, for example. Or by donating the money to the Women & Babies Hospital. Unless you hate babies. It’s OK if you do. If that’s the case, just leave the rims on. That way we’ll know for sure.

Resolution three: No more high-fiving in public. High-fiving is something that frat boys do after one of them lights a fart. It’s cheesy and primitive, and usually means that you were born with the mutant chromosome that makes you wear your hat backwards and listen to rap-metal. So basically, you need to find a new way to express your happiness. However, in the event that a high-five becomes unavoidable (ie. you just made out with Eva Longoria), under no circumstances are you to attempt a high-ten, which is never OK.

Resolution four: Listen to better music. As I write this, the number one album in the country belongs to Nickelback. Do you have any idea how disturbing that is? That’s like giving Vin Diesel an Oscar for Best Actor, or electing a ham sandwich as the next president of the United States. Actually, that might be an improvement … But anyway, we’ve really got to raise the bar a little bit when it comes to the albums that we Americans are buying. One good rule of thumb is that if the music is really, really terrible, you shouldn’t listen to it.

Resolution five: Stop having sex with Paris Hilton. If you’re one of the many, many people who have slept with the hotel heiress – and statistics show that most of you are – it’s time to stop. If we all work together to keep Paris from having sex, thereby cutting off her only real contribution to society, then maybe, just maybe, people will stop caring about her and she’ll finally go away. Together we can make a difference.

Resolution six: Stop putting chairs in the street to save your parking space when it snows. Not only is this obnoxious, but I can only throw your lawn chair up into a tree so many times before my arm gets sore.

Resolution seven: Stop watching NASCAR. I’m sorry, I know everyone’s entitled to the pursuit of happiness, but I think there should be a legal limit on how excited you’re allowed to get by watching cars drive in circles. If it’s the circular pattern that attracts you, you can bring a six-pack of Natural Ice over to my house and watch my dryer spin. I’ll only charge you five bucks, and you won’t even need earplugs.

Resolution eight: Clean up you’re grammar. Nothing gets under an English major’s skin more than when you don’t talk good. It’s real annoying. Plus, I’m sick of other countries saying us Americans aren’t edumacated. I mean, if we’re so dumb, then how come we got more bombs than you? Now who’s the dumb ones? You’s guys, that’s who.

Resolution nine: Stop going to wet T-shirt contests. These contests are tacky and sad and are like a breeding ground for high-fives, which were clearly outlawed in resolution three (see above). Plus, once you sober up, you’ll realize that most of the women who compete have mullets and horse teeth. Which is hopefully the meanest things I’ll say all year.

And finally, resolution ten: Read our Last Call column at least once a day. Four out of five doctors agree that not only can Last Call help to reduce the risk of heart disease, but it is also an effective treatment for STDs, which you’ll need after your little tryst with Paris Hilton. Also, tests have shown that reading our competitors’ columns results in the growth of excessive back hair. As much as we hate to say anything negative about our fellow journalists, we feel like you have a right to know.

Well, that’s about all the resolutions we’ve got time for. Drop us a line and let us know how your new lifestyle is working out. Good luck.

I recognized immediately that it was a joke, and the way I knew it was a joke is because babies can't hold their liquor. Not only that, but they're terrible at video games and it takes them forever to work their way through a piece of beef jerky. And that's why, for my friends and me, having a baby is simply not an option. A baby would threaten everything that we, as a group of young, spirited and most of all, flatulent males, hold dear. By which I mean Guys Night.

Because everybody knows that Guys Night and babies do not go together.

First of all, when you're in the middle of a heated competition to see who can fit the most M&Ms up his nose, you can't afford to lose your focus because some baby is shrieking his head off in the background. Just because the baby decided to poop his own pants doesn't mean that he should ruin the night for everyone else. I mean, look at my friend Patrick: he pooped his pants hours ago, and is he sitting in the middle of the floor crying about it? No! He's outside grilling burgers and throwing horseshoes like a real man!

And secondly, no one, and I mean no one, can defeat Sauron's army of orcs and banish the One Ring into the fires of Mordor with a baby in his arms. I'm sorry, but there's just no way you can execute Aragorn's Wrath of Numenor attack move with one hand - not to mention the Orc Bane! I mean, please! While you're at it, why don't you just march into Shelob's lair without activating the light of Erendil? Loser.

So needless to say, when my friend started flapping his lips about babies and fatherhood and responsibility, I didn't buy it for a second. Between playing rock and roll and watching football, most of us barely have enough free time to change our socks each week. Making one of us responsible for the welfare of a whole other human being would be like putting someone who can't even pronounce the word "nuclear" in charge of the deadliest military force on the planet.

I tried to explain all of this to my friend, but he kept insisting that he and his wife really were going to have a baby. I felt bad for him, because I could tell that he really believed it. It was cute, in a little-kid-leaving-milk-and-cookies-for-Santa kind of way. So I just let it go, figuring that sooner or later my friend would realize that having a baby wasn't even in realm of possibility. It would be like a pig flying, or Nickelback writing a good song.

A few months passed, and I didn't give the issue any thought. But then, by early fall, I started picking up on a few signals that made me suspect my friend was right about having a baby. Just little things, like how he painted one of his rooms blue and set up a crib. And how his wife started waddling when she walked, and how her belly puffed up like she was trying to smuggle Emmanuel Lewis around under her shirt. And how someone threw her a baby shower. And how she totally had a baby.

When I first got news of the baby's birth, I felt a little conflicted. I was excited for my friend, but I just wasn't ready for a baby. I needed time. But did my friend ever stop to consider my feelings? Did he have the decency to consult with me before having a baby? No. Evidently, I'm not even part of this equation. Evidently, anyone can just run off and make a baby whenever he feels like it, without any regard for how its going to affect his friends and/or the integrity of their booger-flicking contests.

And that's when it occurred to me that the booger-flicking contests might be a thing of the past. Maybe it's time to grow up. Our whole group of friends is hovering around the 30-year mark. We are old. We have passed our prime. We are like shriveled old raisins floating numbly in the breakfast cereal of life. It's time to accept our fate.

Full of melancholy and regret, I trudged into the hospital to see this new baby, this living symbol of the mundane adult life that loomed on the horizon.

I found the hospital room, rapped on the door and pushed my way in to meet baby Owen.

And there he was, a baby boy, a picture-perfect baby boy with glistening eyes, a wispy patch of hair and these impossibly small hands, his tiny fingers wrapped around his mother's thumb, his little heart bravely thumping away inside his tiny little frame, all warm and fragile and miraculous. He was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I knew immediately that I had to have one. Babies are like iPods - you have to actually hold one in your hand before you realize how meaningless life is without them. They're even better than Guys Night.

There are definitely a few logistical problems I need to work out before I get a baby, like how I'm going to keep my Jack Russell from eating it. And I need to find somewhere to keep it. But then again, babies aren't that big, so finding storage space shouldn't really be a problem. I'll just clear off a shelf somewhere.

And then I guess I kind of need to run the idea past my wife. I definitely need her on board if this baby thing is going to work out. Either that or I need to get my own uterus.

Until I get it all sorted out, feel free to send any extra babies you've got lying around the house to the Fly Magazine office, attention Team Last Call. It would make for a really great Christmas gift, and I'm pretty sure babies are tax deductible. Unless they're not. I don't really know.

Anyway, Happy Holidays from all of us here at Team Last Call.

I personally have a lot of things to be grateful for this year – my family and friends, my Chihuahua, my millions of dollars, my TV show, my porn career …

Oh, wait! I’m sorry, that’s Paris Hilton’s list.

My list would include things like my family, my friends, my iPod whichever of my pets is not the one pooping in my slippers, and Eva Longoria. Plus my wife. But if I had to rank all of the things I’m grateful for in order of sheer awesomeness, at the top of my list would have to be the pineapple chicken wrap.

I discovered the pineapple chicken wrap about a year ago at a local sandwich shop, which, out of deference to our advertisers, I will not name in this article. Let’s just say that it starts with an “S,” ends with a “Y” and rhymes with “Shmandwich Shmactory.”

It’s hard to overestimate the kind of impact the pineapple chicken wrap has had on my life over the past 12 months. It’s taught me how to laugh, how to love and, perhaps most importantly, how to eat lunch for under five bucks.

And so, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to take this time to pay tribute to the wrap, the most beautiful and wondrous of God’s creations.

It’s an ambitious endeavor to try to capture the power and the glory of the pineapple chicken wrap in words. Its beauty transcends language. Attempting to describe it in a single thousand-word column is as futile as trying to summarize Tommy Lee’s entire sexual history in a haiku.

The overwhelming deliciousness of the pineapple chicken wrap is nearly too much for the human mind to comprehend. It’s like staring at the sun with your brain. It’s just one of those baffling concepts – like how scientists can grow a real human baby in a test tube, or how Ben Affleck keeps landing acting roles – that no one fully understands.

The pineapple chicken wrap breaks down to a list of simple ingredients – juicy pineapple wedges, grilled chicken, Swiss cheese, sweet honey mustard, ham. But the pineapple chicken wrap is much more than just the sum of its parts. It has that same intangible quality you can see in a major-label band; together, the members can accomplish things that none of them could have accomplished alone. Unless the major-label band you’re talking about is Nickelback, which defies logic by somehow being even less than the sum of its parts. The members have the collective IQ of a pair of underpants. And that singer really needs to get rid of his perm. It’s hair-ible. (Nice one!) But that’s neither here nor hair. (Again!)

If the pineapple chicken wrap ever ran for president, I’d vote for it. I think it would have a pretty decent chance of winning, too. Not only is it good-looking and delicious, but it could out-debate the current president on just about every topic I can think of.

In addition to being a natural leader, the pineapple chicken wrap is something of a spiritual touchstone. It spreads peace and joy wherever it goes, like the pope, but without the cool hat. Whenever I enjoy a delicious pineapple chicken wrap, I am filled with serenity. I am tranquil. I am at one with nature. I am accepting of my surroundings, even when those surroundings include coworkers who insist on listening to Nickelback.

Don’t tell my wife I said this, but if the pineapple chicken wrap had legs, I’d probably try to marry it. We’d go on romantic vacations together, travel the world, build a house, start a family. And if it ever got fussy, I’d eat it.

If I were stranded on a desert island and could only bring five things with me, those five things would be, in this order: my iPod, my new corduroy jacket (so I can look fashionable when I’m rescued), a pineapple, a chicken and a wrap. I’d want my wife on the island too, so make that six things. And our little Jack Russell would be there. And a plasma-screen TV. And a computer with a high-speed internet connection. And a powerful record executive who wanted to give me a lucrative five-album contract and unlimited access to the company jet.

What? It’s my article …

In the past, some of my readers have accused me of exaggerating in my columns, of “embellishing” the “truth” just to get a “cheap laugh.” To those “people,” I have this to say: Yeah, totally, I do that. But this is not one of those times. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious about anything in my entire life. Except my new corduroy jacket. It fits just right around the shoulders and has a slimming effect that I just can’t find in other fall-weather jackets. I stole it from my wife’s closet.

But I’m serious about pineapple chicken wraps too. Deadly serious. I’d tell you to go purchase a wrap right now if I could, but I can’t, since it would anger our advertisers and jeopardize my job. So instead, I’ll just ell-tay you to go urchase-pay an ap-wray right ow-nay. Wink, wink.

Happy anskgiving-Thay!

Between you and me, my wife didn’t really take turning 30 all that well. And when I say “didn’t take it all that well,” I mean she freaked out like a vampire caught in the sunlight. Shrieking, thrashing around, trying to bite through my neck – the whole deal. It was like living under the reign of Caligula, but with fewer beheadings.

I’m exaggerating, of course. There were at least as many beheadings.

Death and carnage lay all about. On the scale of natural disasters, my wife’s birthday ranked somewhere between the black plague and the giant meteor that killed all the dinosaurs. It was a full-on crisis, just a few horsemen short of the apocalypse. The only reason you didn’t hear about it on the evening news was that it got edged out by round-the-clock coverage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ engagement. But it still got more coverage than the death toll in Iraq.

It’s been several months since my wife’s birthday, and I’m honestly still a little nervous to broach the subject. That little vein in the middle of her forehead is just now starting to swell back to its normal size.

When I first told my wife I was going to be writing about her birthday for my next column, her head started spinning around in circles and blood came out of our walls. Then she started talking backwards Latin and flinging large pieces of furniture around the room with her mind. Our poor little Jack Russell still hasn’t stopped shaking. Of course, that could just be because he’s a Jack Russell. And because I fed him a bag of espresso beans.

I realize I’m probably coming across as mean and insensitive. I mean, what kind of jerk talks this way about his own wife? This kind of jerk. Because the truth is, my wife thinks this kind of crap is funny, which is why she married me in the first place. Well, it was either that or my love handles and enormous forehead. I’m not really sure.

Actually, that brings us to the real reason why I’m writing about my wife’s 30th birthday: our marriage. Frankly, I’m starting to get a little worried about being the man my wife needs in her life now that she’s becoming a mature woman. Because 30 is the mark of adulthood, of responsibility. My wife is growing up, getting all reflective and sophisticated, yet I continue to be a mental toddler – which is good in that it qualifies me to be the leader of the free world, but bad in that it makes me an immature, bumbling idiot.

Assuming for a minute that it wasn’t my enormous forehead that reeled her in, the best thing I’ve got going for me is the ability to make my wife laugh, and I’m concerned that I might not always be able to do that the way I can now, short of taking off my clothes.

The fact is, I will never, ever stop laughing at flatulence. I’m a 29-year-old man who can be reduced to tears just from someone pretending to pass gas. The old hand-in-the-armpit, the old mouth-in-the-elbow – they get me every time. I’m an addict. I’m a toot-aholic. I’m hopeless.

So what if – I can hardly even bring myself to type this – but what if there comes a day when my wife no longer appreciates a good fart joke? Because unfortunately, my ability to produce them in bulk is pretty much my only marketable skill. The jokes, I mean.

What if my wife just plain outgrows me? What if her needs change? What if she starts to desire a different kind of man, one who knows the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver and can find the little thinger on your car where the oil goes without having to ask for help?

I did manage to grow some chest hair recently, which I think is a positive step towards manliness, but for every “good” hair I grow, an “evil” one pops up in places you don’t even want to know about. It’s a losing battle.

My wife is now spending large quantities of time “taking stock of her life” and planning out things like her career and her future family. As in, she’s planning on making actual babies, like the kind with the sticky little hands and scabby little knees that are always vomiting and pooping and getting lollipops stuck in their hair.

This presents a problem, in that I am nowhere near being prepared for parenthood. I have enough trouble changing my own underwear, let alone someone else’s. I still can’t even say the word “nipple” without giggling uncontrollably.

I need to do some growing up, is what it comes down to. And I need to do it quickly, before my wife’s biological clock starts chiming. I don’t want her to do anything rash just because I’m not good at things like “handling responsibility” or “remembering to put on pants.” I run to the mailbox every day to make sure there isn’t a package addressed to my wife from David Crosby.

Deep down, I know I can handle a child. I’ll be fine as long as I can just manage to stay at least one full day ahead of the baby developmentally. At least until it turns 7 or 8 and starts running around the house making fart noises, at which point I will be stuck in a perpetual state of shooting milk out my nose.

The day my wife outgrows my immature potty humor will be a dark day indeed. But I will cling to the hope that we will never see that day. I will keep the faith. I will not yield to the darkness. I will pass gas into the face of despair.

Meanwhile, I’m going to do my best to do some growing up of my own. Yes, I’m going to be a new man. A mature man. A responsible man. And I’m going to start right now by fixing the toilet upstairs that’s been running since June. Can you hand me that screwdriver? What? Oh, sorry. I mean wrench.