Drew Gallagher: A "Rocky" Start to the New Year
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
This holiday season I was touched when Academy Award-nominated actor Sylvester Stallone reached out to me to make certain that me and my little buddy were doing okay.
I happened to be in the shower when the Italian Stallion dropped in to check on our collective well-being. This was not as awkward as it may sound because Rocky Balboa was not actually in my bathroom to see how I was doing although I guess he could have addressed both of us in that particular moment.
No, Sly was reaching out via a YouTube advertisement. I like to listen to music from my phone while I shower, and YouTube is free to use, so I generally put on YouTube during my morning ablutions. YouTube is free only to the extent that YouTube is allowed to interrupt my morning playlist with advertisements which are typically for Liberty Mutual Insurance and feature an Australian flightless bird for some reason. On this day, however, it was Rambo checking in on me which was quite the contrast to the Kate Bush I had been listening to.
It took me a few moments to realize that it was actually the Tango and Cash star who was addressing me and a few more moments to realize that what he really wanted to know was how I was performing in the bedroom. Some might find this invasive, but I’m a Pennsylvania kid and once walked up the Philadelphia Art Museum steps and raised my hands just like the famed Rocky statue only to realize that the statue is at the bottom of the steps, and I just hiked up there for nothing. As long as Stallone wasn’t asking me to drink raw eggs for breakfast, I was willing to listen.
Stallone was quite generous in letting me know that I could now please my wife of 23 years for hours on end. I assumed (rightly) that he was not talking about me sleeping in the guest bedroom when I was snoring or doing the laundry without shrinking her running gear in the dryer. Rocky wanted me to know that me and my little buddy only needed to click on a link below the video for a 15-second trick that would change our shared life forever.
(It was not clear which one of us was supposed to click on the link, but I read a biography on Bo Jackson a few years ago where there is an anecdote about Bo and his little buddy playing ping pong without a paddle in a locker room. You might think such a feat does not compare to being an all-star in both the NFL and Major League Baseball, but his little buddy hit the ping pong ball twice! That, readers, is called a serve and volley.)
(And not trying to make this column into a book review for Jeff Pearlman’s excellent biography on Bo titled “The Last Folk Hero” [which I already reviewed in the November 5th 2022, edition of The Free Lance-Star], but there is another anecdote about Bo that is worth repeating. When Bo was playing for the Chicago White Sox in 1991, their team plane experienced mid-flight trouble, and there were flames shooting out of one of the engines. Backup catcher Matt Merullo related that many players on the flight started to say prayers believing that these were going to be their final moments on earth. But Bo Jackson was on that plane, ladies and gentlemen, and he sprinted up to the cockpit to help the pilot land the plane. I’m not sure if this moment inspired Merullo, but he did go on to hit five of his seven career home runs that season. My favorite part of the story though is that while players were begging their respective deities to intervene, Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk popped a beer and said: “Go get’em, Bo” as the two-sport athlete raced to the cabin. In that moment, I don’t know who was cooler—Bo or Fisk.)
But I digress. Back to me, my little buddy, and our new friend Sylvester Stallone. Many critics and movie-goers have questioned the brilliance of Stallone as an actor, but I became convinced of his overriding genius when he seemed to note my shower skepticism without being in the bathroom with me. How could he have possibly known that, while I was shampooing, I was thinking to myself that maybe getting unsolicited medical advice from the actor with the most Golden Raspberry awards in cinematic history was not prudent? Fear not, Rambo told me, he has evidence to dispel such skepticism.
Stallone then recounted a story from a friend of his who owns a male strip club in Texas. He said that all the male strippers use this 15-second trick every day and it allows them to please 6-7 women an hour while at work. At this point, it would have been nice to have Stallone there in the bathroom because I had questions about strip clubs vs. brothels in Texas. Granted, I have never been to a male strip club, but his friend’s business sounded a lot different than my vision of male strip clubs which are almost entirely based upon the movie The Full Monty.
I will admit that in this moment of truth I was a bit torn. I was certain that Stallone had the best interests of me and my little buddy in mind, but clicking a random tab on the internet that touts the sexual exploits of male strippers in Texas seemed like it might be difficult to explain to the kid working at the Verizon store if my phone froze because of it. I suppressed the urge to join Rocky’s Rock-Hard Army in that moment and instead toweled off, dressed, put a load of clothing in the washer, and then scrambled some eggs recalling a bit of Robert Frost:
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one that was not being hawked by Sylvester Stallone while me and my little buddy showered.”
I sincerely hope that does make all the difference.
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