I used to race toy cars down the driveway—Hot Wheels, Matchbox and the like. Gravity makes great toys. Newton knew this, right after that lemon fell on his head, the first thing he does is go and make a fortune off of “Newton’s” cradles selling them to kids claiming he invented the forces involved. Anyway, I had my few underdog cars—the beat-up, crooked, novelty cars—and I would always race them against the new stuff, the hot stuff. Usually it went as expected, and that was fine, but every now and then the pavement would fare just right and the little car that could would become a champion. The neighborhood kids didn’t get it, and mom would tell me to just throw the broken cars out, but like they always say: when life gives you lemons.

This attitude towards toy cars no doubt grew in me as I reached the age for real ones. There was something about a reliable used Toyota Camry that just irked me the wrong way. Two years and two old BMWs later, I had ingrained in me traumatic memories of heat gauges, unable to take my eye off them even as a passenger. Weird German car parts haunted my nights like a late-for-school dream. I’m sorry Mr. Radiator but I forgo—no please anything but the heat, please don’t . . . One hot summer day, during my college years, the artsy hoe from philosophy 101 was blowing me in the back seat of my 1970 BMW 02, and it didn’t feel like it should have. The parallel lines of my orgasm and the car temperature gauge crossed at the wrong time in my mind and I was left gasping for air, anxious, limp dick, sweating all over the leather. My therapist thought it was funny, but there was nothing funny about it. One day, tired of paying for his worthless sessions, I stole his notebook and left him for good. It was filled with weird doctor scribbles that I slowly deciphered sitting in the sunbaked car before driving home. You want to know what they said? “Life very impotent after ‘lemon laid.’”

Performance anxiety is killer, especially without a shrink. It can catch you anywhere in life, and it tends to seep into weird situations, like ordering coffee from the cute girl at Dunkin Donuts or singing happy birthday when not everyone is joining in. The pervasive level it reached all came to a head in this weird dream I had. In it, I was the freshest, newest star on Saturday Night Live. It was my first day and I was holding a little paper itinerary, desperately trying to be at the right set at the right time. Everyone else was Tina Fey. You might think, that sounds kind of fun. Well, you’d be wrong. Think about it: Tina Fey is known for making fun of herself, there is a whole show about it, you look at her and say wow, I’m more comfortable about being me. Now imagine there are hundreds of them watching you, making faces, scolding you, grimacing when your one-liner doesn’t hit, when you have to look down to read the joke off your paper, when you’re late to the next set and the show is LIVE FROM NEW YORK! During the music break a majestic choir of Feys rose up from the studio audience and sang in crimson light contrasted by darkened sets and a now grim cast. I couldn’t take it anymore, I was on the ground crumpled, crying pitifully, why won’t she relate, why can’t she understand? But then the true Fey stepped forward, from the homogeny of the choir. She knelt down and held me in her arms kissing the top of my head as only a mother could. I reciprocated by holding her breasts like a son probably shouldn’t do, but it was okay, it was Tina Fey, she thought it was funny. At the same time the choir was rising, swelling, and they sang: “when Liz gives you Lemons, grab them, don’t let them get awaaaaaay.”

Not to imply I completely rid myself of impotency after the dream, but jerking it to 30 Rock really seemed to help out. That being said, I had to go to quite some lengths to find the episodes. This was back in the day where you had to be resourceful when pirating. The internet wasn’t quite big enough to have everything yet. On top of that, for some reason people didn’t know how to spell, or spelled wrnog on purpose, Limewire file names littered with everything but the actual content. It didn’t stop me though, I made my own program to search for each possible anagram of each character or word that was even slightly related to the show. It was through these searches that I found lots of interesting unrelated files. Recombinations of Jenna Maloney gave me gigabytes of quality maryjane_x_spider-man porn, and it was through Pete Hornberger that I learned about God, his brethren, and finally repented. Most importantly I found my favorite band of all time, Blind Lemonz, and like they say:

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I don’t understand why I sleep all day

And I start to complain that there’s no rain

All I can do is have a drink in the shade

And it rips my life away

Lemonade.

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