​☕ The Mini-Fridge, The Milk Leak, and The Cookoos Nest

 

After a few weeks, I began the process of settling into my new room. I’d met most of the inhabitants, though matching a name to a face remains a work in progress (unless that name is Sal, Big Earl, or Davy, of course).

​The very first lesson I learned in this hallowed institution: bring your own toilet paper, soap, and towel—and guard them with your life. Forget any one item, and it magically achieves escape velocity. I’m sixty years old, yet I was forced to buy a shower caddy to lug my necessary supplies to and from the shower every morning. I didn’t have to do this when I lived in college dorms as a teenager, but here, in the retirement phase of my life, it’s truly every man for himself.

​I set up my room to make it feel like home, which apparently makes me a revolutionary. When I put up real shades and curtains, the other guys were stunned. Most rooms in this building rely on a pathetic pillowcase pinned up over the window for privacy. I put up pictures and even installed an old kitchen clock to tell time. These guys were amazed. Some, like Davy, don't even bother with sheets on their beds. And Harold sleeps on a camping mat on the floor because, he claims, a bed "didn’t fit" in his room. I guess that explains the permanent cold he has.

​I’m currently running a dry sink against the front wall—my TV is on top, silverware is in the drawer, and all my pots, pans, and storage dishes are tucked underneath. Cooking here is an expedition: I have to drag everything I need either down the hall to the Downstairs Kitchen, or up the stairs to the large, less-used kitchen. Since Big Earl seems to cook 24/7, I opt for the uphill journey. On the bright side, the upstairs kitchen has more counter space. I quickly became a connoisseur of paper plates and coffee cups to minimize dishwashing, buying sleeves of cheap 12-ounce cups from the restaurant supply place for a fraction of the supermarket price. This is my life now: strategic paper product sourcing.

​I live by the philosophy of buying everyday items on sale and storing them anywhere I can, whether that's under the bed or in carefully stacked towers in the corner.

​Now, for the fridge drama. The main kitchen downstairs has one refrigerator, and there’s a second one conveniently located just outside my room. I noticed the main one was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, and the second one was nearly empty. Naturally, I used the empty one.

​One by one, the other residents warned me: "That’s Big Earl’s refrigerator. Nobody else dares use it." I reminded them that the landlord said it was communal. So, I kept my food limited to half of one shelf, meticulously avoiding any territorial dispute with Earl’s massive tubs of leftovers.

​Then, the inevitable occurred. I came home from work, and Big Earl was waiting. Because I was trying to optimize space, I had laid a carton of milk on its side. Now, someone needs to explain the physics here: you can lay a bucket of paint or a can of soup on its side, and it's fine. But milk? Milk will always leak.

​Earl was furious. He made me clean out the refrigerator immediately!

​By the end of that week, I marched out and bought my own mini-fridge. I know if the landlord ever finds out about unauthorized appliances, my rent will probably shoot up, but so far, silence. I didn't enjoy having to kneel on the floor to get things out, so I grabbed some scrap wood from a neighbor's garbage and built a small table to elevate the fridge eighteen inches. Sal was utterly amazed, praising my handiwork for days.

​Sometimes, when I'm dealing with the absurdities of this cookoos nest, I wonder: If I'm the scatterbrain with A.D.D., then how do you explain everyone else living here? God, I need a cup of coffee!

​WTF: WHAT THE FIASCO!

<BACK  COMING SOON>

The Origin Story: How I Became a Fiasco

ADD A WTF MOMENT

​You go through life assuming your default setting is, well, normal. You figure being grumpy, scatter-brained, and one impulsive decision away from disaster is just... "who you are." You think, "I'm 35, overweight, and I can't find my keys, but hey, at least I’m authentic!" Then, one night, the universe steps in and throws a lamp at your head.

​For me, the thunderbolt of self-awareness arrived roughly 30 years ago, via an episode of Barbara Walters’ 20/20. I urge you, if you have access to the archives of confusing evening news television, look it up. It featured a guy my age, mid-thirties, who was essentially my personality twin:

​Grumpy: Check.

​Short-tempered: Double check.

​Impulsive: My middle name.

​Overweight: The universe gives you what you need.

​Day Dreamer: Currently mapping out a fully organized pantry in my head.

​Below-average student: Why study when you can daydream?

​Unorganized: My filing system is called "The Pile."

​The punchline? The guy was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.)—as an adult. I stared at the screen, jaw hanging, and screamed, “THAT’S ME! I’M NOT JUST A LUNATIC, I HAVE A REASON!”

​Naturally, my family reacted by doing what they do best: confirming I was a lunatic and ignoring me.

​I bring this up now, not for a pity party, but so you understand the underlying structural integrity (or lack thereof) of the mind that brought you here. The reason my life—and by extension, my living situation—escalated into a permanent state of What The Fiasco is rooted right here.

​A.D.D. is slightly different from A.D.H.D. I don’t jump noticeably up and down (I’m too tired for that); I just have the same scattered hard drive. It’s not a "child's disease," it’s a lifelong feature. Some people manage it by self-medicating—you know them as the guys chugging energy drinks, chain-smoking, or turning to... less legal remedies to quiet the noise. 

Others, like me for a long time, just pretend their chaos is a personality quirk. Billy Joel even wrote a soundtrack for it—that song about the "Angry Young Man" wasn't just catchy, it was autobiographical for half the population.

​If it seems like I’m constantly changing the subject, interrupting myself mid-sentence, or just generally making you feel seasick with my jumpy focus, well, there's your answer! That's my A.D.D. hitting the send button before the thought is complete.

Donald Trump is a classic example!   Hmm, did I say that?

​I’d love to elaborate, but as you know, that would derail the entire theme of the blog. Maybe when I run out of new fiascos involving Sal’s mail and Davy’s stench, I’ll write the prequel about my life before the age of 60.

​WHAT THE FIASCO!

Oh yeah by the way did I mention my name?  I'm Alan!

<BACK NEXT>

 

The Party Patrol (Tom & Dick) and The Sarcastic Colossus (Harold)

Meet the house's official Misfit Troublemakers: Tom and Dick. These two operate as a single, loud, slightly hazardous unit, united by their intense commitment to partying and their general disregard for the concept of "rules."

Tom, a retired 70-year-old steel worker, looks like a guy who should be quietly rocking on a porch, but he prefers anarchy. He had a stroke sometime before I moved in, and while he's physically functional, his speech has been reduced to a dense, indecipherable mumble. Talking to Tom is like trying to decipher an important message that was translated twice through Google Translate before being recorded onto a rusty cassette tape.

Dick, the younger of the pair, is an out-of-work painter/carpenter who owns a van that may or may not be street legal—it’s perpetually under "contention" whether it’s registered, insured, or powered by sheer, stubborn delinquency. What truly sealed this unholy alliance was their connection to Lenny and a shared, profound appreciation for the "partying lifestyle."

The Quiet Hour Fiasco

Almost year-round, these two would stake out a spot on the side of the house, setting up a homemade barbecue that, when the weather dipped, instantly transformed into a roaring, dangerous fire pit. The house rule is quiet after 10 PM. Most of us follow it—if only to avoid a lecture from Big Earl—but Tom and Dick treat the rule like a suggestion written in invisible ink. They’d be roaring outside my window, or carrying the racket into Tom's room right next to mine.

These nights inevitably led to a scuffle with the landlord's enforcer (Big Earl's official title), and naturally, the neighbors on the block regularly called the actual police to complain. The local police know them well, mostly from scooping them up after bar fights or for being loudly, gloriously drunk in public. They are a fixture of municipal mayhem.

---

Harold: The Six-Foot-Five Brainiac

Then there is Harold. Harold defies physics by living in the absolute smallest room of the house, yet he pays the same monthly rent as the rest of us. The man is a towering, sarcastic colossus at 6'5" and over 200 pounds, built like a retired refrigerator.

His look is unique: a distinct horseshoe-pattern bald spot surrounded by hair that generally points straight up, and pants that appear to have shrunk four inches in the wash, perpetually preparing him for a flood.

Harold is a retired veteran living on Social Security and a tiny pension. He is one of the few here capable of throwing on a backpack and successfully completing the mile-long Slog of Agony into town on foot. He fancies himself an intellectual—he reads constantly and clearly believes this somehow makes him smarter and better than the rest of the riff-raff he shares walls with.

This intellectual superiority often expresses itself in dark, cutting sarcasm, which doesn't exactly make him popular, though bless his heart, he tries to socialize.

Despite his enormous stature, Harold survives almost entirely on canned goods sourced from local food pantries. His tech situation is a classic "Fiasco" compromise: he has a Smart TV, but only the crappy local HD internet feed he scavenged off the community share table (the one that only gets 4–6 channels). However, he had the foresight to grab a second-hand DVD player. This tiny piece of tech genius allows him to rent videos from the town library and escape the house's perpetual chaos through classic cinema.

WTF: WHAT THE FIASCO!

<BACK NEXT>

Raul: The Less-Than-Super Unhandy Man

Meet Raul, our site "superintendent"—a job title that suggests competence and authority yet applies to him like the word "clean" applies to our Downstairs Kitchen. Raul is, in fact, our Less-Than-Super Unhandy Man. He lives on-site, not in some dignified superintendent's apartment, but in a rather large, permanent camper trailer parked deep in the backyard next to a storage shed.

You'd assume living in the epicenter of the WTF: What The Fiasco grounds means he's constantly identifying and fixing problems. You would be hilariously wrong. Raul is merely the last, most useless link in a Byzantine chain of command. Before he can lay a hand on anything—even to change a lightbulb—we must first navigate a bureaucratic process to get the landlord's attention. The man is not a super; he's a highly paid witness.

Take, for instance, the legendary Sump Pump Incident.

The sump pump, designed to keep the basement from turning into an aquarium, drains directly onto the cracked concrete patio, which had been designated as our communal BBQ area. Predictably, the water pooled in massive, stagnant puddles before slowly—very slowly—seeping into the cracks. During one memorable summer cookout, this setup provided us with entertainment in the form of hordes of biting bugs hatching directly from the patio cracks and immediately joining the party.

The obvious, low-cost solution would be to extend the drainpipe a few feet to the street or the fence line.

The actual solution, delivered one year later, was to REMOVE THE ENTIRE PATIO.

Yes, instead of fixing the drainage, they simply eliminated the problem surface. Now, our once-cracked BBQ area is a field of mud. We are literally grilling in the dirt. One enterprising resident had to make a makeshift trench to guide the water toward the fence. And, naturally, the original pile of cracked concrete slabs—the very slabs that took a year to remove—sat in a growing pile for another six months before they were finally moved to a dumpster, where they have remained as a sort of monument to bureaucratic futility.

WTF: WHAT THE FIASCO!

<Back Next>

Carter The Digital Nomad

Carter, our resident 60-year-old computer nerd, lives up on the second floor, a digital king in a chaotic castle. You can spot him bombing around town on his little electric razor scooter, perpetually glued to his trademark knit wool hat and burdened by a backpack full of charging cables and dreams. His office is any coffee shop desperate enough to offer free Wi-Fi.

When he's working from home, we all know it. Not because he's typing loudly, but because he clomps down the stairs with his colossal noise-canceling headphones just to step outside for a smoke break. The backdoor has become the sacred social/smoking spot, a chaotic haven free from the surveillance of Big Earl, who monitors the front with the intensity of a cold war satellite.

Because my room is strategically located at the bottom of the staircase, I am blessed with the audio experience of Carter dragging his 50-pound metal scooter up and down the antique stairs twice a day. It sounds less like transportation and more like an old-timey jailbreak.

It’s interesting to note that of the 20 grown men living here, only half even have a functional vehicle (and yes, that counts Sal’s permanently deceased white van). The rest rely on old fashion petal Bikes or costly Ubers. 

We are a mile from the blessed hub of civilization—downtown, the train station, and the bus stops. It's not a bad walk... until you realize that a "mile" turns into a Slog of Agony when you’re hauling laundry detergent and two weeks' worth of groceries back in the freezing cold and snow. It's the reason Sal performs his ritualistic hand-washing of clothes, and why Davy has chosen the far superior, low-maintenance option of simply never washing his clothes.  

The Streaming Fiasco

In this post-cable era, living east of NYC with only three or four free TV channels is a complete farce. Streaming on Roku is our chosen, affordable savior. When we gather out back, non-smokers and smokers alike, the main topic isn't philosophy or finance—it's “What free streaming channels did you find this week?”

Carter, the savvy digital fox, survives by cycling through premium channel free trials, binging content, and canceling precisely 29 days later. It's a glorious, fiscally responsible ritual you can usually repeat every couple of years.

But even streaming requires internet—and good internet at that. My initial, sweet $40-a-month deal was a blissful reprieve from the $200 bills my "normal" friends pay for cable/internet bundles. Of course, that deal evaporated, and the price hiked to $80. My genius, however, was in the capitalist solution: I now charge two neighbors $20 each to siphon off my Wi-Fi, netting me a $40 subsidy. Score one for the New Fiasco!

The biggest issue with streaming is live sports, it requires a premium subscription or a cable contract that costs $100+ a month. We can't watch anything on the four major networks, except for news and re-runs. It's ludicrous.  MLB streeming channel  does do a 3 - 10 minute mini fast cast.   This is how I watch the world series, or I can listen on the radio like my great grandfather did. 

Speaking of ludicrous: Davy just got a new TV. He keeps bugging everyone to "hook it up." He doesn't grasp that he needs to buy an HD antenna, a cable subscription, or my subsidized internet to make the shiny box work. But honestly, even if we could explain it, no one is volunteering for the job because walking into his room requires gloves and a military-grade gas mask.

WTF: WHAT THE FIASCO!

<Back Next>

 

Davy: The Resident Olfactory Hazard

If you were asked to cross a homeless Santa with a very stubborn pine tree air freshener, you'd get Davy. He’s our very own aging hippie, identifiable from a block away by his constant companions: a faded bandana, a beat-up guitar, and an unforgettable aura.

Davy subscribes to the extreme minimalist school of personal hygiene, which is to say he hasn't had a meaningful encounter with soap, shampoo, or a shower head in, well, years. He runs on a strict biannual clothing rotation, changing his ensemble only when the season absolutely demands it—and we all suspect he just pulls the exact same unwashed outfit from last year out of his crusty trunk. He views clothes as a secondary skin layer, sleeping in them nightly. They are merely a vessel for his unique, powerful scent profile.

The man knows he stinks, too! His counter-offensive involves spraying cologne, which doesn't cover the smell so much as it creates a chemical weapon fusion—a pungent, floral-sweat-and-old-socks cocktail that attacks anyone in the hallway around his room. Since his stinky sanctuary is right next to the second first-floor bathroom, dodging the "Davy Zone" is a high-level resident skill.

Davy sleeps with his radio blaring and his door cracked open. It’s unclear if this is a defensive measure to ward off the monsters that might live inside his crust-cave, or if he's issuing a challenge, daring any poor soul to enter the room that smells like a forgotten gym bag full of expired patchouli oil.

When he walks, he has a pronounced wide-legged, bow-legged swagger. This may be a conscious style choice, or it may be because his shorts are permanently starched by years of unknown crust. Honestly, it’s probably both.

But the moment that truly defines Davy came just a week into my residency. While trying to ignore the Stench of the Ancients from the adjacent bathroom, I overheard his call to a doctor’s office:

Davy: "Yeah, hi... I need an appointment. It's about these... knats in my pants."

Knats. In his pants. WTF! The man lives in filth so profound, entire micro-ecosystems are setting up shop in his clothing. And yet, he's a resident here. Just another day in the house that asks, "What The Fiasco?"

<Back   Next>