Fyl’s watching a Star Trek marathon again, and between incessant spots for some incredibly irritating character named Gigi–that irony thing again–I’ve seen a commercial for beef jerky a few times in which some big dude batters a vending machine to get his bag of beef jerky. It had gotten stuck. He unstuck it. He strides off camera in slow motion, savoring the jerky.

I used to be the guy that people would call when the vending machine got stuck. Hey Brick, can you come down to the lunchroom, I put in a dollar and my chips are just hanging there, stuck. It was always a clerk or a pretty secretary. They’d flirt a little on the phone. OK, I’ll be right down. I’d show up, take hold of the vending machine, rock it back and forth a few times, let it drop again with a satisfying crunch, and the bag of chips would become unstuck. Sometimes I got squeals of delight. Sometimes I got applause. And once the prettiest lady in the whole building gave me a kiss on the cheek. I blushed like mad, totally blowing my big guy cool.

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