AND...???

My monogrammed bathrobes arrived via courier last week. My usual set of 10 for the season. And as I pessimistically predicted when I switched robe providers, there has been a gaffe. My initials are AMD: Andres Mario du Bouchet. Ideally, I would go with AMdB, but the fact of the matter is, I still cannot find a robe provider willing to push that fourth initial envelope. You'd think in this day and age! But no matter. I've long grown accustomed to sporting about my sky pool with the initials AMD upon my terry-cloth ensconced pectoral. But as I mentioned in a sentence I once wrote in this very blog post, there has been a gaffe, and said gaffe is this:

the initials are wrong. On my new robes. The monogram reads 'AND' instead of 'AMD'. It was in that moment, upon opening my parcel of new robes, than I did indeed choose to precede the word "fuck" with the words "what the".

AND???

At first I thought my robe providers had decided to treat me to a bit of fun, and had spelled out a complimentary sentence using 10 robes containing a single 3-letter word on each robe:

HEY AMD YOU ARE THE TOP GUY AND THE MAN!

Or something along those lines? (witout the exclamation point at the end of course - that would be the ever elusive fourth character) But no. Each robe had AND monogrammed onto its fine, terry cloth breast. AND. "And what?" I bellowed, seething with incendiary rage at my new, and obviously retarded, robe provider. But even in that very moment, I knew I was on to something.

AND...

The word "and" is a connector. It connects what precedes it with what follows it, does it not? The past with the future? "And" suggests there is more to come. "And" pulls you along towards...more. And I do like more. I always have.

The misprint began to appeal to me. I recall now a bit of dialogue from one of my earlier films, back when I was still a young studbiscuit appearing in teen comedies like 'Shaggin' That!' and 'Surfnutz'. The film in question was called 'Dune Beavers III: Nads' Revenge', and my character, Chug, had a rather inspirational monologue towards the end of the picture that he delivers whilst standing atop a raft made of beer cans:

"Yeah, those guys have got the money. They've got the girls. They've even got your girl, Nads. And what have we got? I'll tell you what we've got! Harl. (beat) Yeah, that's right. Harl. It's uh...a combination of HEART and...KARL. Who we all loved. And what did Karl have? Uh. He had balls. So I guess, what we really have is Heartballs! So let's grab our balls and put our hearts into this race and BEAT THOSE YACHT-HOLES!"

Heart. Not Harl. I was supposed to say Heart, and then go right to the Yacht-Holes line. But I flubbed it (too many Zeus' Nutsacks the previous night, and perhaps a Scotch-Colada or two), and to this day, it is one of the proudest moments of my career. The Chug Heartballs speech. You hipsters appreciate those 'Dune Beavers' films ironically, but I...I think there is more to them. But that discussion is for another time. The point is - an error led to something grand. And so it will be, I suspect, with my mis-monogrammed robes.

AND!

Now, I strut commandingly across my sun deck, pressing my robed sternum against the steel railing that separates me and a drop that can only be described as precipitous, and I face the sky, the hills, the horizon, the sun, the moon, the stars, whatever is there, and I do bellow "AND??? And what? C'mon, life! AND? You've got my fucking attention! AND??? Is that all? C'mon! What comes after the AND?!"

And also, when I am speaking to someone I enjoy pointing to the 'AND' as a way of getting them to continue speaking.

Now, let's beat those Yacht-holes.