Corning the Suarez: 1999-2007

This weekend we say goodbye to a misunderstood friend, one who truly deserved better in this life. The catch phrase “corning the suarez,” so near and dear to my heart for eight years, must now be laid to rest. Some say it was dead on arrival, others claim it should never have been born. Oh, how I hate these naysayers and Negative Normans! When, on a bright autumn day in 1999, I was asked by a friend what I was up to and inexplicably responded, “Oh, you know, nothing much, I’m just corning the suarez,” I felt sure that a legend had been born, though even to this moment I have no goddamn clue where that phrase came from or what the hell I was talking about. But it felt so right---like a sudden breeze out on the ocean, or a summer romance with a beautiful girl, one who comes up with weird catch phrases out of nowhere. Since 1999, I have tried to use “corning the suarez” whenever I could, only to receive little more than blank stares and sometimes even hostile lapel-grabbings. I’m not quite certain when or where it may have happened, but I like to feel that at some point in the past eight years I have, in fact, corned the suarez. Am I to be considered mad for this belief? It is a phrase that means nothing, yet means everything. It is both a testament to linguistic futility and a searing indictment of all that we hold dear. I’ve given it almost a decade to catch on, and sadly, I know now that it never will. Yet I feel an unmitigated sense of triumph and pride, both because I was its perennially caring godfather in this unfeeling world, always there for it if it needed me, and because the phrase has spawned a bastard child which even now is wriggling its way out into society like a tapeworm who’s had enough of some fat guy’s stomach lining and wants to see what Paris is like. Yesterday, while in conversation with a friend, I was asked what I was doing after work, to which I responded simply, and without forethought, “Hadn’t considered it, man, but I’ll probably wind up just wicking the everglade.”

Get ready, world. A little corner of you is about to change for about five to seven years.

For celebrity testimonials, exclusive footage of corning the suarez's early years, and fan-written tribute songs, go to www.corningthesuarez.com.