"It Really Ain't No Love, It's About This Paper, Man"

"See, Man ain't like a dog. Now, when I say 'Man,' I'm talkin' 'bout 'Man' as in 'Mankind, not 'Man' as in 'men.' Men, well we a lot like a dog. You know, we like to piss on things. Sniff a bitch when we can. Even get a little pink hard-on the way they do. We territorial as shit, you know? We gonna protect our own.

But Man. He know about death. Got him a sense a' histry. Got religion. See, a dog, man, a dog don't know shit 'bout no birthdays or Christmas or Easter Bunny or none of that shit. One day God gonna come callin', so, you know, they goin' through life carefree. But people like you and me, man, we always guessin'. Wondering, 'What if?' You know what I mean?

So when you say to me, 'Hey, I don't think we should be doin' this,' I gotta say, baby, I don't think we need to be doing this neither. But we ain't gonna get no move on in this world lyin' around in the sun, lickin' our ass all day. I mean, we Man. I mean, you a woman and all, but we Man.

So with this said, you tell me what it is you wanna do with yo life."

---

I remember those little green receipts. Almost like money. Not quite money, but just as good if you wanted a toaster.

In an effort to attract customers, the grocery store employed this marketing strategy that allowed you to redeem your store receipts for gifts.

Knives. Toasters. Blenders.

The more you spent at the store, the more points you earned -- like earning ski ball tickets to trade in for a plastic whistle at the arcade. The difference was, you didn't actually have to put any money in the machine.

My Mom drove me out to that grocery store on Saturday nights. I'd hit the parking lot -- a little miniature hustler -- asking people for their green receipts, while Mom would sit in the car and smoke a cigarette with a friend and laugh about how easy it all was.

Sometimes, the people would tell me they were going to use them. Most of the time, they would just give them to me. Some looked perplexed as they handed them over; others passed them along with a knowing smirk and what in reflection seemed like a little bit of pity -- not pity as in "oh geez, look at this poor kid," but pity as in "this kid's going to grow up to be the worst kind of used-car salesman."

If the store crew that night was friendly, I'd grab a few receipts from the little trash baskets underneath the check-out counters.

When I was done, we'd head back to the apartment and Mom would add it all up.

"$68.12. $15.07. $100.44. You know, $203.72 more and we've got that blender."

We didn't necessarily need it. How does anyone absolutely have to have a blender? It was more that the opportunity was there to get something at the expense of manipulating a system.

We got that blender. And we got that set of knives (and a couple other sets for everybody else).

We got that toaster, too. We needed that a little more. Or at least I did. I made food with it when there wasn't anything for dinner.

---

You know how there's these movies that you can't necessarily say they're the best movies you've ever seen -- or even in your Top 10 -- but somehow you can recite more lines from them than you can remember how many times you've seen them?

I'm horrible at self-promotion. I couldn't sell a free bottle of drinking water to a thirsty man stranded on a raft for 10 days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But the next time I've got a job interview, I'm going to make sure I watch "Hustle & Flow" one more time.