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November 30, 2006
-- Toney told me she thinks there are
"critters in the crawlspace," near the Surf Report bunker. She
was up extra-early this morning, and said she heard scratching and
scampering behind the wall that separates my office from the garage.
And as you might have guessed, I don't much care for that sort of thing.
The term "critters" is disconcertingly vague, and could
encompass a wide array of exotic animals and small woodland creatures.
And don't even get me started on "scampering."
I haven't heard a thing in here, but I'm unable to fully relax. I just
know it's only a matter of time before a chipmunk or a grouse or
something comes free-falling out of the drop-ceiling, and attaches
itself to my face. Remember that scene in National Lampoon's
Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase is running through the house
with a squirrel stuck to his back? Well, I do.
I'll keep you updated on this developing story. Sweet Maria. Aren't
rabies shots administered through the belly button? And every day for
two weeks straight, or some shit? Yeah, I can't have that.
Critters in the Crawlspace is a pretty good name for a band, though.
-- Toney's cousin was reportedly sitting at a stoplight in Philadelphia
a few days ago, on her way to pay her ailing mother's Sears bill (or
whatever). She was looking at the bill, not paying attention to the
light, and the guy behind her honked his horn when it turned green.
And just as she was moving her foot from the brake to the gas pedal, a
car came screaming through the intersection, running the red light on
the cross-street, and struck a pedestrian. The poor bastard went sailing
through the air "like a rag doll" and landed in a heap on
someone's front yard. Predictably, the car just kept going.
Everyone jumped out of their vehicles and ran to check on the injured
man, and he was supposedly unconscious with his eyes open(!). Blood was
pouring out of his ears and eye sockets, and I'm no doctor, but that
doesn't sound very good, does it?
If Toney's cousin hadn't been preoccupied with that Sears bill, she
probably would've been in the middle of the intersection when the car
came barreling through, and could very easily be dead today. And it
probably would've been a closed-casket funeral. Ya know?
That's the kind of thing that'll flat
shake a person up. I remember driving in Atlanta once, through a quiet
residential neighborhood, and a car came rocketing off a side street,
completely disregarding the stop sign, and whooshed past my hood
at a high rate of speed. I don't think the color came back to my face
until the following day, and I can't remember the details, but it's very
likely I had to just toss my undergarments (including t-shirt) into the
nearest dumpster; I have a feeling they were completely shot.
Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever found
yourself thinking, "Sweet sainted mother of Fantastic Sam! If I'd
left the house just five seconds later...." Tell us about
it, won't you?
-- Buck sent me this
picture today, and said it made him think of me. I'm not really
sure how to take that....
-- Last night I was skimming an article about Rod Stewart in the latest
issue of Rolling Stone (yes, you read that correctly), and came
across this puzzling sentence:
"He smiles, because Elton John, whom Stewart sometimes refers to
as Sharon..."
WTF??
-- I stole this
link from Mark Maynard.
It illustrates hate group activity in each American state, complete with
a whimsical map populated with jaunty little Klansmen icons, etc. Here's
Pennsylvania,
for instance.
As you can see, there is supposedly some kind of skinhead Nazi activity
going on up here in the northeastern corner of the state. I don't know
anything about that, but I did once see a woman standing in line at the
Gerrity's deli who looked a lot like Heinrich Himmler. Does that count?
What's happening in your neck of the woods?
-- I think that'll just about do it for today, children. In case you
should give a tiny seahorse-shaped craplet, today's my birthday.
Exactly forty-four years ago I came tumbling into this world (that's
right, tumbling), and it's been a pretty good ride. How I've
managed it, I have not a clue, but it's been a good time, so far.
And since it's my birthday, that means it's also Shawn B.'s
birthday. She and I were born on the same day in the same year, and
shared the Big Birthday Chair all through elementary school. We're
linked forever, regardless of how she may feel about that.
So, once again, happy birthday Shawn, wherever you are!
Oh, and this year I'm really going to do it. I'm going to use the $100
my parents send me, to have my prized Shane
MacGowan poster framed. I've had it now for about ten years and vow
to get it framed annually, and properly displayed in the bunker. But,
for a variety of reasons, it never actually happens. This is the year
all that comes to an end, my friends, and Shane will officially join the
Surf Report Collection.
Yep, Mom and Dad will be so proud I put their money to such good use....
-- To celebrate this semi-special day, I've taken the liberty of
breaking several copyright laws, and uploaded one of my favorite Phil
Hendrie segments to YouSendIt. It runs about thirty minutes, and
features Ted Bell, owner of Ted's of Beverly Hills steakhouse -- home of
the baked potato tree. The first 100 interested parties can download it here.
And I'll see you folks tomorrow. permalink
November 29,
2006
-- When we were in a Target store in WV
last week, Toney and I looked at outside Christmas decorations. I think
we generally hang a wreath on the front door, and that's the extent of
our efforts. The Secrets are always pushing us to string up lights, and
all that nonsense, but that takes money, effort, and the climbing of
ladders. So, screw it. I'll just pretend I don't go in for such
ridiculous suburbanite rituals, and sit on the couch instead; when I can
be both above it all and do nothing, I consider it a victory.
But we came across these strange-looking blue lights that were
shockingly bright, and really cool. They were cobalt, or some deal, and
I'd never seen anything quite like 'em. Hey, wonder if we could buy a
bunch of these babies and decorate the little tree in our front yard? I
said this in a rare fit of optimism, and actually meant it. Toney agreed
that it would look good, and I banked the idea deep beneath the scar
tissue of my brain.
On Sunday I was still feeling the pull of our little tree agenda, and
decided to ride over to the local Target and buy-up some of those
strange blue lights. Toney was with the oldest Secret, at swimming
practice, so the youngest youngling and I went on a mission. By God, by
sundown we'd have the best looking little tree in town!
"$11.99 a box?! What are we, the Vanderbilts here??" I
couldn't believe how expensive they were, but it's typical. Whenever I
like something, it's almost always the highest priced thing in the
house. Rarely do I become enamored with a product, then find that it's
some cheap crap straight off a Chinese freighter. Ya know?
I looked at the regular lights, the ones offered at normal-people
prices, but just didn't feel the magic. It had to be the weird ones, or
I wasn't bothering it all; there would be no half-stepping. I could
sense my blood pressure rising, and my right hand started to move
towards my hair, involuntarily. All the assholes crowding me in their
laughable pastel "workout" clothes didn't help anything
either. I was about to start throwing haymakers.
I called Toney, who was inside the pool complex at the University of
Scranton, and it was like this: "He-? I -an ---- he-- you. I-- --eak--
-p!" I think I literally growled like a dog in frustration, and the
baby blue "athletes" ceded me a little extra room, with
concern in their eyes. I was on my own here, and would be forced to make
the final decision. Everything rested on my shoulders, and I don't like
that.
I wondered if I could get by with just
one box? It is, after all, a very little tree. But deep down I
knew I was engaging in more of that "hopeful estimating" I'm
famous for, and not living in the real world. Reluctantly, I grabbed two
boxes of the expensive-ass things, and we made our way to the checkout
stand.
The Secret asked if he could get some candy, and I told him he could.
And as he contemplated his many options, I snagged a York peppermint
patty, that gayest of all candy bars. Don't tell anyone, but I love
those things. Every time I buy one, though, I look around to make sure
there's not someone from work there, to witness it. May as well slip
into a leather face mask, and a pair of assless pants....
I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and handed the eleven year old girl
my bank card. It didn't take long, the pain was over before I knew it,
and we got out of that madhouse.
And as we drove I actually started feeling good about it. For once I was
doing it the right way, and not cutting corners. I got the lights I
wanted, and plenty of 'em, and it would all pay dividends when we got
home. I felt as if I'd risen to the challenge, without the help of
"--ney," and did the right thing. I was feeling almost like an
adult. While polishing off a discus of homocandy.
When we arrived at the house I went immediately to work. I wanted
everything to be in place by the time Toney got home, so she could see
the splendor of our little tree that very same night. I got the
extension cord out of the garage, and ran it across the grass. I wished
it wasn't neon orange, but whatever. I then broke into the first box of
NASA lights --
-- and the string went around the tree one time.
It made a single pathetic loop, all the way at the top, and that was it.
When I added the next box (another $11.99!) it made a second flaccid
loop, leaving roughly 75% of the tree still lightless.
If I'd been Mr. Krabs my arms would've fallen off. I couldn't believe
it. And I walked straight into the house, closed the door, and made
myself a bourbon and water.
When Toney got home, she asked what the heck was going on. There was an
electrical cord stretched across the lawn, so orange it could've been
spotted by aircraft, the very tip top of a tree was decorated
with the Rolls Royce of Christmas lights, and I was slamming back
cocktails in the kitchen. All I could do was wave my hand in the general
direction of the front yard, and grunt a little.
The next day she went from store to store and found the same cobalt
lights, for $6.99 at K-Mart. They were on sale, marked down from the
regular price of $9.99. (Grrr...) She bought three more boxes, along
with a green extension cord, and went home and finished the job. All in
all, we now have more than sixty dollars in that so-called little tree,
and all the fun has gone out of it for me. Every last drop.
We shoulda just stuck with that old sandwich bag wreath, or whatever it
is. Sure, some of the "berries" fell off around 1997, but you
can't really tell from the street. I should've known better than to aim
so high.... Pass the poofter patties.
-- And I don't know how this happened, we didn't synchronize our watches
or anything, but Metten has a similar tale to tell. Right
here. Be sure to check it out, it's excellent as usual.
I'll see you guys tomorrow. permalink
November 28,
2006
-- On Thanksgiving, before the festival
of gluttony kicked-off, my Dad and I took the dogs for a walk. Next
door, in the driveway, was a man piling a stack of folded clothes into
the extended cab of a pick-up truck. My Dad greeted him, and the guy
walked over to us.
"She kicked me out again," he said.
My father, as confused as I was, chuckled and said, "Oh, is that
right?" We thought it was some kind of weird joke.
But it wasn't a joke. The man's wife had apparently told him to get out
(on Thanksgiving day), and he was loading up his crap and leaving. He
told us that it had happened once before, when my parents were in
Florida last winter, and he was "stupid enough" to come back.
This time, he vowed, the same mistake would not be made again.
As the man continued, I could tell he about to start crying. He said he
didn't really have anywhere to go, he didn't want to burden his son's
family, but that he'd figure something out. His voice was shaking, and
his bottom lip was quivering. Holy crap! The guy was on the verge of a
full-on meltdown.
I'm sympathetic to such things (I think), but don't really want to
witness it. Ya know? So I acted like Andy was pulling me in the
direction of a telephone pole (it was an award-worthy performance), and
extracted myself from the conversation.
Sweet sainted mother of Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown.
-- I saw that my parents now have a big star mounted to the front of
their house. I'd noticed that several other houses had it as well. I
asked my Dad what it was all about, as we walked, and he said, "Oh,
I don't know. One of those monkey-see, monkey-do deals, I think."
Wha'? Was he being evasive with me? Any ideas on this? What does it
mean? I've never seen such a thing up here in PA, but they were all over
the place in WV.
Why do I keep flashing back to the "party scene" in Rosemary's
Baby? Crap!
-- My Mom prepared the standard holiday spread: so much food you
practically have to climb beneath the table and hammer in extra supports
to avoid a catastrophic collapse. And, just so you know, I'm a big fan
of the extra-supports style of dining. An aunt and uncle were there,
along with the four of us and my parents, and we all ate until our
organs were threatening to shut down. Good stuff.
During the meal we started talking
about how Thanksgivings used to be at my grandmother's house, on my
Dad's side. It was a huge family, and there'd be dozens of people in
attendance. And for some reason(?!), they had a pecking order when it
came to dinner.
The men ate first, then the kids, and finally the women. By the time the
ladies got their turn at the table the meat was reportedly picked over,
and the vegetables and bread completely cold. So it would be a pile of
gristle with a slice of congealed gravy balanced on top, and dinner
rolls not warm enough to melt the butter.
I'm kinda surprised that everyone went along with such a questionable
scheme. Oh, I have a few uncles who wouldn't have a problem with it. But
my Dad's certainly not like that, and some of the women involved weren't
exactly delicate flowers, if you know what I mean. In fact, I know of
them very well.
"It's just the way it was," was the best explanation I could
get out of my parents. Heh.
-- After dinner there was a lot of sitting around, and that was OK for
about ten minutes. After that, it got a little old. The Secrets were
bored all the way up to the cusp of a coma, and I wasn't far behind
them. Needless to say, there wasn't a drop of booze being consumed, and
the whole thing was quite excruciating. The situation cried-out for
alcohol, with a high piercing tone.
And the next day, on the front page of the newspaper, there was an
article about how West Virginia doesn't drink. Supposedly the state
ranks at number 49 for alcohol consumption per capita, ahead of only
Mormon-spangled Utah. The article attributed it to a strong Methodist
presence in the state. I think I blamed the Baptists last week, but
whatever. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I much prefer the Catholic puking-into-foliage style of holiday
celebration that's practiced here in northeastern Pennsylvania, thank
you very much.
And in case you couldn't tell, I am a major theologian.
-- The dogs, Andy and my parents' two yappers, were enough to make a
dead man come back to life and yell, "Just shut the hell up!!"
Continuous, sustained barking.... At least that's the way it seemed,
anyway. Every car that drove past the house would trigger another wild
barking jag, and every leaf that fell from a tree, I think. If someone
farted in a kitchen three doors down, one of them would hear it and
start turning back-flips in the grip of some powerful and primal
seizure-like fit. By seven o'clock on Thanksgiving day, I was ready to
slam my face through plate glass, I'm not kidding. It was like astronaut
training in there.
-- On Friday we got out of the house for a while. We took the kids to
some money-sucking joint, and let them ride Go-Karts. That was kinda
fun. The grouchy shockingly-long-cig-ash man who ran the place kept
yelling, "This ain't bumper cars! Stop running into each
other!!" Good times.
We also went to several stores, including Dick's Sporting Goods where we
saw two celebrities: the governor of WV and the football coach
from my now-defunct high school, Coach Good. The governor had his kids
with him, and an entourage. He was walking around smiling that fake
politician smile, and apparently doing a little shopping. Outside we saw
that he'd arrived in a Shania Twain tour bus. No word on Coach Good's
mode of transportation.
And I've got a few more items jotted down in my Big Notebook of Fun but,
frankly, I'm losing enthusiasm for the topic. Question of the day,
before I sign off: Was there anything in the mountain of Black Friday
newspaper ads on Thanksgiving that got yer blood to pumping? I saw
nothing, and that's unusual. Generally I flip through those things and
come across at least one item that gets me all worked up and ready to
storm the Bastille (or whatever).
But I went page by page through every advertisement, and found nothing.
It was all very low-yield. Not even a single CD, or DVD, or anything.
It's shocking. What about you?
Now here's
something the National Lampoon sent out last night, obviously hoping
we'd all link to it today. My natural inclination is to ignore such
blatant self-promoting efforts, but found myself actually laughing this
time. So there you go.
And today's Tuesday, so it's time for another dispatch from Around
Normal, over at Jason Headley Dotcom. Right
here.
I'll get back to the regular stuff tomorrow, boys and girls.
See ya then. permalink
November 27,
2006
-- We left early on Wednesday morning,
for our big Thanksgiving trip to West Virginia. Not as early as Toney
had hoped, but early nonetheless. Especially considering the fact I
was involved. I think we were on the road by 7:45, and getting me up and
moving in the middle of the night like that is nothing short of a
miracle. She should be commended on a job well-done.
I had the inside of my car covered, covered, with sheets and old
bedspreads, in anticipation of Andy and his big Freddy Krueger claws. I
had visions of him ripping open the upholstery, and skinning the
pleather off my console like a monkey peeling a banana. But he did OK, I
guess. With Black Lips Houlihan you expect the worst, and hope for the
best. I was pleasantly surprised.
He couldn't sit still, as usual, and kept shuttling between the backseat
and Toney's lap. But he didn't do any permanent damage. He shed all over
everything, which is something that happens when he gets nervous, for
some reason. At one point the sun was shining straight through the car,
and you could see dog hair just swirling around in a huge vortex;
each of us probably has a quarter of a border collie lodged in our
lungs. But at least he didn't tear shit up.
We got through I-81 (the ball-crushing part of the trip) before anything
horrible happened, and stopped in Cumberland, MD. It's almost exactly
the halfway point in our journey, and we had lunch at a fancy new Chick-fil-A
there. Yum. After we polished off our delicious meals, I told Toney I
was going to get a chicken salad sandwich for the road (I'm a man of
size, what of it?), and the youngest Secret wanted one of those terrible
wax novelty brownies they sell. Both trips to the counter combined:
almost $25.
Shit! That's some pricey-ass fast food. Those people have no respect for
the five
dollar rule, none whatsoever. What am I, Ted Turner?!
Somewhere between Cumberland and my parents' house, Andy shifted us into
neutral during one of his neurotic journeys between the front and back
seats. Suddenly there was a loud engine noise, and we started losing
speed. What in the Rowan & Martin hell?! For two or three panicked
seconds I thought the transmission had shit the bed, and we'd be
stranded in Upper Mule Scrotum, WV for the holiday. But it didn't take
long to figure out the problem, and correct it. I then hollered at Andy
for three solid minutes, causing him to eject even more hair,
like a million tiny rockets off his back.
We arrived at Chez Kay around 4:30, and
from there things get kinda blurry. I'm not going to attempt to keep the
rest of this in chronological order. I'll just give you the
"highlights," all willy-nilly. Pass the white gravy.
-- For reasons unknown, my parents have dehumidifiers all over their
house. There's not even a hint of moisture in the air there. Is
that something that happens once you reach the age of 65, a chronic
addiction to dehumidifiers? I'm just not clear on it. But we were all
coughing and creating boogers to beat the band. In the mornings I'd sit
straight up in bed, frightened and stricken with a horrible dryness.
Toney, who normally has curly hair, walked into the room on Thursday
looking like she was sporting a Cher wig. I mean, what the hell, man?
Aren't you supposed to leave just a little water in the air? It
was like the surface of Pluto in that house.
-- On Thanksgiving morning I casually mentioned, over coffee, that I
wanted to wash my car. I had to get rid of all that dog hair, it was
literally attached to the doors. I'm not kidding. I inspected it when we
arrived, and not only was it stuck to any exposed surface of upholstery,
but the inside of the doors were plastered with the essence of Andy as
well. And I can't have that.
By the time I finished taking a shower, my Dad was already soaping up
the Camry. His ears perk up whenever someone mentions washing a car. He
had some sort of complicated Mr. Clean apparatus out there that
apparently blasts a myriad of cleaning agents. I just don't know. But
together we knocked that baby out in short order. It reminded me of
those car washes in California, where a team of Mexicans converge on
your vehicle while you sip a latte, and the thing is completely detailed
within seconds.
As we worked a man in a pick-up stopped, and greeted my Dad. He jumped
out and ran around to the rear of his truck, and dropped the tailgate.
"Check it out!" he said, proudly, as a bloody deer head with a
pronounced "rack" tumbled out of the darkness. It was (is?)
deer season in WV, and the whole place seemed to be abuzz with
excitement. Men were everywhere, sporting the confusing combination of
camouflage and neon orange (see me! don't see me!), and smiling broadly
through unkempt facial hair.
The guy stood there and talked for a while, and seemed nice enough. But
I noticed he injected an "uh" into his speech, randomly. I've
encountered this before in my travels, and it's fascinating. He asked my
Dad, "So, are you planning uh to go to Florida again this year
uh?" It was an amazing thing to behold. And the next day, the same
guy stopped again, with another deer. He was clearly on a roll
uh.
-- As we washed my car, I noticed that the front passenger-side wheel
cover was all scratched-up. I hit a curb in Philadelphia a couple of
weeks ago, when we went to see the Beautiful South, but hadn't noticed
how badly I'd wrecked the hubcap. Grrrr....
After we finished vacuuming out the interior, with some hilarious R2-D2
deal straight out of the 1950's that my Dad dragged out of his garage,
he asked if I wanted to go look for a wheel cover. On Thanksgiving? He
said he knew a place that was probably open, one of those roadside
hubcap sheds, where the business is also somebody's house. If you know
what I mean.
And sure enough, the place was in full operation, and there were other
folks already "shopping" when we arrived. There were hubcaps
everywhere: hanging from the branches of trees, nailed to the side of a
trailer, lined up in great rows across the lawn. It was nuts. And how in
God's name were we to find the one we were looking for, in that
cluster-fuck of chrome?
We poked around for a while, and finally a man walked over to us and
said, "Hep ya?" He had a protruding forehead and eyes that
were apparently free agents; they seemed to just roll around in their
sockets with no relation to what he was actually looking at.
Banjoes began playing inside my head.
I told him I needed a hubcap for my Toyota, and pointed it out. He
apparently surveyed my car, even though it appeared he was looking at a
tool shed over in the corner of the yard. Without saying anything he
went inside the trailer, and we could hear a bunch of clanging and
bashing around. Finally, he emerged holding a filthy hubcap that
appeared to have spent considerable time at the bottom of a lake.
"Here it is," he said, with one eye pointed straight at us,
and the other ratcheted off to the left.
We looked the thing over, and it was in great shape. It just needed to
be scrubbed real well, and it would probably be as good as new. I asked
how much he wanted, and he said, without hesitation, "Twenty."
Holy shit! I asked if he'd take ten, and he looked over at my
Pennsylvania license plate, this time with both eyes at once, and
repeated, "Twenty."
Son of a bitch!!
After hemming and hawing for a few seconds, I reluctantly gave him a
twenty dollar bill. He pocketed it, smiled, and said, "Y'all have a
nice day." And maybe it was just my imagination, but I seemed to
sense a hint of "who's the retard now?" in his voice. As we
drove away I saw him putting another piece of wood on a fire beneath a
mysterious black kettle, and he looked to have a satisfied smirk on his
face.
And I'm all out of time here. I'll have to do part two tomorrow. Did
anything exciting happen on your Thanksgiving holiday? Tell us about it,
won't you?
And y'all have a nice day uh. permalink
November 22,
2006
-- You guys have yourselves a great
holiday. We're shoving off this morning for my parents' house, where
we'll partake of outrageous amounts of food and not nearly enough
drink. Because that's the way we roll on Kay family get-togethers,
I'm afraid. I think it has something to do with the Baptists. Or
whatever.
I haven't yet reached the point where I carry a hip flask during family
gatherings, and completely check-out, but estimate that I'm only about
two or three years from it. Yep, my inner barometer is telling me I'm
roughly 24 to 36 months out, from being crowned a full-blown "drunk
uncle." You know what I'm talking about, right? Those surly,
distant men (that don't literally have to be an uncle) who
continuously need to "check on something in the car," and
always smell like Old Spice and Early Times?
Wish me luck. I've got a lot invested in this.
When I was a senior in high school we took a school- sanctioned trip to
King's Island amusement park near Cincinnati, and a Reds game on the
following day. We were warned, repeatedly, that our bags would be
searched and no alcohol would be tolerated. Therefore, lots of booze was
transported via decoy shampoo bottles.
After an evening of horrors inside the park, we returned to the hotel
and got "settled in." Within an hour I was walking into rooms
and finding classmates taking blasts off bottles of Breck, and passing 'em
down. I hunkered down for an extended period with a couple of guys who
were enjoying a tall VO5 (for normal hair), and some spirited baseball
talk. And much later in the evening I stumbled into a room at the end of
the row, and encountered a girl completely passed out, smiling, and
cradling an empty container of Salon Selectives in the crook of her arm.
So I'm thinking I might go that route, once I get the call-up. This
might shock some of you, but I believe it's time for a complete overhaul
of the Drunk Uncle program. And ass flasks will be the first thing to
go. I mean, what is this, the Dean Martin Comedy Hour?
Anyway, we'll be driving today for a long, long time, and our dog Andy
has never been inside my new car. So far I haven't even allowed him near
the interior with his big Freddy Krueger hands. But I guess that's all
about to change. I'm planning to cover everything with blankets and
sheets, and will try to keep the damage to a minimum. But I'm not
exactly bubbling over with confidence here....
And yes, I'm aware it's only a tiny
leap from covering the interior of your car with bed sheets, to going
around the house and unplugging appliances before leaving on a trip. And
I know, intellectually, that it doesn't make any sense to believe your
electrical outlets will just suddenly burst into flame the moment
you back out of the driveway. But what's there to do? There's no
fighting nature. And if unplugging is the next mile-marker then, mister,
I'm ready for it. I am ready to embrace the unplugging!
Ahem. These frantic late-night Yuengling-fueled updates never really
work out, for some reason.
I think I'd better just wind this thing down.... I hope y'all have a
great Thanksgiving. If, on the off-chance, you should feel the need to
complain about anything, we're here for you. If, say, a brother-in-law
is really getting on your last snappin' nerve around the holiday
table, just log onto TheWVSR and cut loose with it.
Use the comments link below as your own personal therapist and/or
bartender. Because we're all in this together.
Now pass me some of that Pert, goddammit. permalink
November 21, 2006
-- Well, so far there's been no obvious
consequences from us guzzling turds all weekend. As far as we know the
town is still under a "boil alert," and we're not supposed to
drink the water unless it's been heated to a degree high enough to
kill-off the shit spores. And that's fine, but it would've been nice to
know about all this before three full days had passed. Ya know?
Last night at ten o'clock the phone rang and I wasn't able to get to it
before the answering machine kicked in. (I happened to be reading Entertainment
Weekly, thank you very much.) It was a recorded message updating us
on the state of the water main break that's been causing all the
problems.
Supposedly repairs have been made, and everything will be back to normal
soon. By Wednesday, the over-amplified person said, all customers will
have water service again, and local businesses should be able to
re-open.
I'm not certain, because the message was so loud and distorted, but near
the end I think she said, "Our dark, dark Dunkin Donuts days are
almost over, comrades." But, again, I'm not sure I heard it
correctly.
-- I've mentioned before how Toney and I operate on two different
schedules. She likes to go to bed early and get up early, and I prefer
to go to bed late and get up late. Of course, during the week I'm forced
to curb my natural inclinations and climb atop the dormancy platform
much earlier than I'd like, so I'm able to drag my over-caffeinated ass
into the bunker and tap out these ridiculous dispatches. But it's not
how I'd do things if given a choice.
And by "late" I don't mean that I get up on weekends at noon,
or anything like that. I'm almost always out of the sack by 9:30. But
Toney and the boys are usually three hours into it by then, and it
sometimes causes "issues."
This past Sunday for instance.... I got up and was having a piping hot
mug of diluted feces and flipping through the newspaper. I saw that both
Circuit City and Best Buy will be selling the new two-disc Oasis
compilation for the crazy-low price of $9.99, and was making a
mental note to go buy that bitch before we leave for West Virginia --
when I noticed that Toney was putting on her shoes.
I asked her what she was doing, and she
said she was going to rake leaves in the front yard.
What?! I'd just gotten up, I didn't feel like dealing with that crapola
yet. No, I need to eeeease into the day. What in the fluff 'n'
fold hell??
"I didn't say you had to do it," she answered, "I said I
was going to do it."
Grrrr.... I sat there for a few more minutes, a-sipping and a-flipping,
until the guilt became too great, and I finally went downstairs and
jerked on a pair of jeans. When I went outside Toney remarked again that
she didn't expect me to help, she just needed to get out of the house
for a while. "Noted," I said, all pissy like a teenage girl.
Then I proceeded to rake like a mental patient for the next hour,
looking stoically into the distance and saying nothing. It was very
important, after all, that this job be done right now, and the
fact that it was practically the middle of the night clearly didn't
enter into it.
Then it started raining, and the rain turned to ice. But I wouldn't stop
raking. It had to be done. I continued on with a determined
expression, in a driving ice storm, and didn't quit until the entire
front yard was leaf-free. Neighbors were doing double-takes in their
cars, and I saw at least one bust out laughing. But this was highly
important.
When I finally went back inside my hair was a solid dome of ice, and I
was soaked clean through my underwear. Toney was standing in the
kitchen, casually munching a still-hot blueberry muffin, and never even
acknowledged my pitiful state. She just asked if I had any preferences
for lunch, and said nothing about my rain-soaked clothing or the polar
ice cap on top of my head.
I'd seen her do this many times before with the kids, and always admired
it. But with me? Yeah, I didn't much care for it.
-- Since Christmas is right around the corner, I've been doing a little
work on the side to make extra money. Be careful where you click this,
because it's not really safe for work, but it shows how I'm insuring
that Christmas will be extra-memorable this year at the Compound. I do
it for the children.
Oh, and the moustache? That's fake, I keep it in the glove compartment
of my car. One of the artists in that class is the youngest Secret's
Sunday School teacher, and I don't want her to recognize me.
-- Of course I'm joking about all that, but I'm not joking about this:
Yesterday I received an email from a man who's writing a textbook
"to be published in Japan for students of contemporary English and
American culture." He's using entries from thirty American "bloggers"
as examples, and wants to feature pieces from TheWVSR(!). "We hope
to show the Japanese reader a view of ordinary life in the USAEnglish-speaking
countries and the use of English in everyday circumstances," he
writes.
Needless to say, I'll be extending my heartfelt permission. Because
America has no better ambassador than me wallowing around in
Scranton.
I forwarded the email to my friend Tim yesterday, and here's part of his
reply:
Wow! Using the life of Jeff Kay
to bridge international ties between the United States and Japan. You
can go ahead and wake me up now.
(AP) Tokyo-- In a stunning moment in
international relations, the Japanese Prime Minister showed an unusual
amount of sarcasm in the midst of treaty negotiations with North Korea,
going so far as to ask Kim Jong-Il to pull his finger.
-- And I really need to go to
work now.... Black Friday (so-called) will be here in a few days, and
the whole world will be locked into a full-on shopping frenzy. If you
find yourself falling under the influence, I'd be much obliged if you
could remember our Amazon links here. By entering the Amazon site
through one of our ads, then buying a ridiculous amount of
products, you'll be supporting our efforts here at TheWVSR -- and it
won't cost you one extra cent. Everybody wins!
So, don't forget us, OK? And if the ads don't show up on your computer
for some reason, here's yer
link .
I appreciate it!
-- Before I go, I have a question for you. Earlier this morning I was
blasting Rum,
Sodomy, & the Lash by the Pogues. That, of course, is one of
my favorite album titles; I believe it's a phrase lifted from a speech
by Winston Churchill. (What the speech was about, I can't imagine.) What
are some of your favorite album titles? I need to know, with a great
urgency. Use the comments link below.
And I'll be back early tomorrow morning with a quick little piss-ant
update.
See ya then. permalink
November 20, 2006
-- This is going to be a short week
here at TheWVSR. Most likely I'll only be able to update on Monday and
Tuesday, then we'll be pointing the Toyota hood in the direction of West
Virginia and flooring it.
Come Wednesday morning, it'll be time once again to kick-off our annual
Thanksgiving journey to the motherland, for several days of eating
ourselves right up to the cusp of a blackout at my parents' house,
power-farting through thick recliner velour, and all the holiday
traditions Americans hold dear. A splendid time is guaranteed for all,
or something.
I've been loading my iPod with Phil Hendrie, and might try out the
fancy-ass FM transmitter I bought a few months back. On previous
attempts it didn't seem to work correctly. There's a high probability it
was pilot error though, because I'm dumm. But if we're going to be in
the car for eight or ten hours (I have a feeling traffic is gonna eat
it), a little Phil might be just what the doctor ordered. A Bobbie
Dooley marathon would probably calm my shattered nerves during that long
stretch of I-79 where there's no cell service, and you may as well be
hollering "Please help us!? Dear God, my legs!!!!" into
a Dorito. I don't much care for the big honkin' NO SERVICE chunks of
West Virginia.
And speaking of cell phones, Fed-Ex tracking says my new one is
currently in Newark, NJ. It spent the weekend in Memphis, TN, then went
on the move Sunday afternoon. Supposedly it will be delivered to the
Compound at 7:00 pm tomorrow night. My nipples are erect with delight.
Is there anything more exciting than fresh gadgetry? I submit that there
is not.
Last night, with a sweaty bourbon in-hand, I went down to the basement
to find my copy of the best holiday movie of them all. As soon as
Thanksgiving is in the can each year, it officially becomes Homecoming
time! I wanted to have it ready it to go. So I rifled through the
massive Surf Report film library, housed inside the traditional K-Mart
under-bed storage cartons, and started getting a sinking feeling in my
gut. It wasn't there; I was sans Waltons.
Sunshine!
Grrrr.... The woman is notorious for using my DVD collection as her own
personal Amazon dotcom, without, of course, all the hassles of paying.
Last year I personally removed, with my own sausage fingers, our copy of
A
Christmas Story 2-disc special edition, from her purse. We
almost had a war over that one. I mean, what the hell?!
But, as it turns out, Sunshine hadn't
lifted our copy of The Homecoming, I'd just missed it the first
time through. She gets falsely accused of a lot of things around here, I
admit, but there's a reason, goddammit; this stuff doesn't just happen
in a vacuum. Anyway, the DVD is now safe and sound inside the bunker.
And when we return from our trip we'll start the process of watching it
two or three times before Christmas.
Because it's the best holiday movie of them all.
-- Last Thursday it rained here like something out of the Bible. It
poured and poured for hours, and the streets were transformed into
fast-moving streams. The wind was blowing, trees were toppling over all
willy-nilly, and lots of folks lost their electricity. Our recycling bin
is gone forever, apparently caught up in a gust of wind and probably
floating out to sea right now. Crazy, man.
Once it stopped going to town, we walked around the neighborhood for a
while and it felt really weird out there. It was too quiet, the air
seemed strange, and it was crazy-hot. And that was the part that creeped
me out the most. Earlier in the day it had been cold, but the rains made
it warmer. It was the day after tomorrow!
The next morning we heard lots of horror stories about flooded
basements, trees having fallen on parked cars, etc. But it quickly
became old news, at least as far as I was concerned. We hadn't had any
damage, and never lost our power. Pass the beer nuts.
But, as it turns out, that weird-ass storm did a lot more damage than
I'd realized. Several businesses still haven't been able to re-open
(including Krispy Kreme!), and all the schools are closed today. A water
main reportedly shit the bed somewhere, and it's causing all manner of
problems. And some of us are being forced to settle for Dunkin Donuts!
Will someone please hold me?
Now for the really disturbing part.... Toney was watching the
news last night and they mentioned that our town is still under a boil
alert. Don't drink the water, they say, unless you boil it first.
There's still a possibility it's not safe for human consumption.
Still?! We knew nothing of this so-called boil alert, and chugged the
stuff down all weekend. We made coffee with it, cooked with it, showered
in it, and the whole nine yards. And now we're told it's turd water??
Well, that's simply excellent.
All four of us feel a bit queasy this morning, our stomachs a little
upset. Do you think it's all in our heads? Please tell me it is. Holy
crap. We've been guzzling ass since Friday! And I'm not feeling so
hot....
-- Last night, while partaking of the golden elixir and trying to
pretend I hadn't repeatedly brushed my teeth with diarrhea, I decided it
was about time to update the Search Engine page again. So here
it is. The new entries are at the top.
Still, after all this time, I'm amazed.
-- I've received a very suspicious Smoking Fish sighting. Someone with a
fake email address ("notjeffkay".... no @ or domain name or
anything), sent me a note with an attachment a couple of weeks ago. I
clicked on it, and my anti-virus program went wild. So I deleted the
whole thing, and murmured much profanity under my breath.
Then it showed up again, but with a message that made me believe it
might actually be legit. Here's
the pic that was attached. The whole thing's quite baffling.
And that'll do it for today, boys and girls. I don't really have a
question, so just tell us about your Thanksgiving plans. Are you doing
anything interesting this year? Use the comments link below.
And I'll see ya tomorrow. permalink
November 17,
2006
-- We took Toney's car in yesterday for
its annual state-mandated inspection. And guess what they told us? Yes,
that's correct, they said it needed ball joints.
When I was a kid it was tonsillitis that was all the rage. Everybody was
having their tonsils out, it was the thing to do. And whenever I'd get a
sore throat, or even sneezed a few times, someone would always predict
that I'd be under the knife soon. I lived in fear of waking up with a
scratchy throat one day, and becoming the victim of trendy surgery by
nightfall.
When our kids were really young, it was ear infections. That was the
malady du jour then, and I have no doubt it's something different but
similar now. Those doctors were constantly itching to insert tubes(!?)
into the heads of our children, put them under sedation and wheel them
into an operating room, and the whole nine yards. Tubes, whatever they
are, were in high-fashion at the time, and I didn't much care for it.
Now it's ball joints. I don't think I'd even heard the phrase until a
few years ago (and I would've remembered because it's hilarious). Now,
it seems, the whole world is talking about ball joints. I hear it at
work, I hear it when I talk to my friends.... It's the rip-off currently
en vogue, I think. And it's starting to piss me off.
-- Since we were out and about extra-early yesterday, it would've been a
shame not to have breakfast at Waffle House. Right? Right.
I was careful to steer clear of the gut-crushing booth, the one where
there's not nearly enough clearance for my thick torso, and we settled
in for a fiesta of fried delights. Then I heard what sounded like a
piece of machinery attempting to run without a drop of oil in the
engine. It was a horrible grinding noise, loud and sustained. The hell?!
Had the ball bearings fallen out of something in there?
No, it was our waitress's voice!
I don't know if it was just decades of bourbon and filterless cigarettes
that did it to her, or if her voice box was destroyed in a catastrophic
industrial accident, or something along those lines. But it was like
nothing I'd ever heard. And I'm from West Virginia.
Holy shit, I'm going to have to go back
in there with a tape recorder, I'm not kidding. I nearly wrecked my own
voice, attempting to imitate her for the rest of the day. It's
unbelievable.
-- As we were paying, a boisterous and robust woman came cascading into
the restaurant. Once again. Toney sorta knows this person through the
school or whatever, and it seems like we run into her everywhere we go.
She dominates every conversation and talks really loud. She usually has
one of those bluetooth devices stuck in her ear, and I find that to be
hilarious for some reason. I suspect she receives auto-alerts from
Krispy Kreme through it, whenever there are hot donuts available.
Anyway, I've noticed this woman always seems to be continuing a
conversation with my wife, not starting new ones. Know what I mean? She
doesn't begin with "Oh hi, how are you?" She just goes right
into it, as if they'd already been talking for a few minutes.
Yesterday, I swear it's true, she came bounding over to Toney and the
first word out of her mouth was "and." Who starts a
conversation with the word and?!
Have you ever encountered such a thing? It's bizarre.
-- I went to Best Buy Wednesday night to buy a CD by the band TV
On The Radio. I saw them on Letterman a few weeks ago, and
they sounded pretty good. Best Buy has their
new album on sale for $7.99, and I decided to give it a shot.
Someday soon I'll give you (and Buck) a full report.
As I was walking into the store I saw that a full-on nerd village had
been erected beside the main entrance. There were tents and canopies and
kerosene heaters.... It looked like they had a community happening out
there, with leaders and protectors and the whole deal. Huh. People
waiting to buy Playstation 3, I assumed. What a grand gang of douches.
I asked the cashier when PS3 was going on sale, and he said Friday
morning. This was Wednesday night! How long had they already been there?
I just chuckled and left with my hipster purchase in-hand.
Then I stopped on my way back to the car to snap this
photo with my cell phone camera. You'll notice that it's even
more out-of-focus than normal. That's because I got a little spooked at
the last second. What if they realized I was mocking them, and I got my
ass kicked by a gang of angry virgins with super-human thumbs?
Why, you guys would never let me hear the end of it.
-- Speaking of cell phones, our Verizon contract ended yesterday and
I've already re-upped with them this morning and ordered my new phone.
It's the most exciting time of the year! I went with this
one, and I'm hoping it will be delivered before we leave for
West Virginia next week.
I thought about just going to the Verizon store in Wilkes-Barre, but you
get an extra fifty bucks off if you do it online. So I'll just sweat it
out and hope it arrives on time. I don't want to go on the road with my
boring old phone again. It wasn't boring and old last week, but it sure
is today. Know what I'm sayin'?
Plus, the kick-ass camera in the new phone will allow me to take cruel
mockery to the next level. I'm almost giddy with excitement!
-- Believe it or not I have more of this crapola, but I'm all out of
time here. The question of the day is in relation to the Best Buy nerd
village.... Have you ever camped-out to buy anything? Like concert
tickets, or something like that? I haven't, not once. What about you?
Tell us about it, won't you?
Have a great weekend, folks. I'll see ya Monday. permalink
November 15,
2006
-- As I was leaving my job yesterday, I
think I saw Larry Tate from Bewitched. He was working in a
mysterious part of the plant where they do unknown things with unusual
items, and was wearing one of those lifting belts or whatever they're
called. Chances are, of course, it wasn't him, since it appeared to be
Larry circa 1966. But it sure looked like him.
There are roughly 2000 employees where I work, and I see celebrities
there all the time. Just a couple of months ago, for instance, I'm
almost certain I saw Dr. Henry Kissinger repairing the motor on a
forklift. Who could've predicted such a thing? I also run across quite a
few folks from high school, and people I knew in different cities. And
the weird thing? None of them have ever aged since I knew them.
Then there are the smells. No, I'm not talking about my old office,
located across the hall from the bathrooms. I mean the chemicals and
solvents they use in that place, to do God knows what. As I walk to the
cafeteria I generally pass through multiple pockets of distinct funks,
and some of them remind me of things. Like the Dunbar Bowling Alley.
There's a huge room in that place, the size of several football fields,
that smells exactly like the Dunbar Bowling Alley. I always
expect to look over and see Steamboat serving someone a slaw dog and a
large orange.
Yes, it's a veritable wonderland, my workplace. You know, as long as you
don't allow reality to get in the way. But back to Larry Tate for a
moment....
Years ago my brother and I were at a bar in Greensboro, NC, called Fuzzy
Ducks. They had a deal where you could buy an outlandish yellow mug for
five bucks, or whatever, and they'd fill it up with beer for you "for
the rest of your life," at a dollar a pop. So you'd see people
in the parking lot get out of their car, grab a filthy and ridiculous
plastic drinking vessel from the greasy-ass spare tire well in the
trunk, then enter the fine establishment with a big shit-eater plastered
across their faces. Ready for action!
Of course the beer they gave you was the cheapest swill known to man,
and you'd always wake up in the middle of the night freezing because
you'd succeeded in farting the sheets and blankets clean off your bed.
But the stuff was cheap and gave you a buzz, so there you go. I'm almost
certain I still have a couple of those battle-scarred mugs boxed-up in
the basement somewhere. If I ever unearth one, I'll snap a photo for you
folks.
Anyway, my brother and I were there one Saturday night and a band was
playing on the patio. They were some power-pop outfit who traded in
bass, guitar, drums, three-minute songs, and bad attitude. Just the way
I like it. We were sitting on a picnic table enjoying the show -- when
we spotted Larry Tate.
This time it was the Larry from the final seasons of Bewitched,
opposed to the younger Larry I saw yesterday. He was well into his
fifties, but had what appeared to be a college co-ed sitting on his
lap(!). And she was no hag, believe me. I nudged my brother who almost
did a spit-take when he saw what was going on. The girl had her left
hand plunged down the back of his pants(?!), and a tongue stuck in his
ear.
We'd already polished off quite a few outsize dollar beers, and began
hollering our support. The band was extremely loud, and my brother and I
started yelling, "Way to go Larry!" And as the action
got hotter and hotter, we screamed even louder: "YOU THE MAN,
LARRY TATE!!" We were getting carried away, just shredding our
throats as the band worked to drown us out. For some reason we found
this to be hilarious.
Then one of the songs abruptly ended, and all you could hear was this
belligerent "--AAAARRY!!!" coming from the rear of the
patio. Every head turned and saw me and my brother sitting there
hollering like mental patients, with tears of laughter rolling down our
cheeks.
It's a wonder they didn't strip us of our "Big Yellows."
-- Speaking of North Carolina, check
this out.
-- And I saw this
linked at Drudge this morning. Did I read that thing correctly? I went
through it twice, and am pretty certain I got it right. Yet I still
can't believe it. I didn't commit the murders, but if I had, here's
how they probably would've gone down.... Incredible.
-- Surf Reporter Andrew sent me this
interesting little tidbit yesterday. How in the stir-fry hell did Google
generate such an ad at TheWVSR? How did their software conclude that it
was relevant to what we do here?! And what's with those praying hands
above it? I've never seen that, have you? Freaky, man. What does it
mean?!
-- Here
are a couple of fresh Smoking Fish sightings, captured for the ages by
Joe. Thanks, dude! The rest of you guys keep your eyes open out there.
Because, as you know, our logo, he gets around.
-- Finally, from the Stealing Clive
Bull's Topics desk, have you ever owned, as an adult, a shirt
or other piece of clothing that featured a design dedicated to a TV
show? You know, like a t-shirt with The Fonz on it, or something like
that? Or, have you ever adopted a fashion straight off television, like
those hilarious Miami Vice "suits?" Tell us about it,
won't you?
I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow at work. Actually, a floating
holiday.... (How cool is that?) We've got a load of errands we need to
take care of before leaving town next week on our annual Thanksgiving
trip to West Virginia. So, I'll try to update in the morning, but don't
be surprised if I don't. My days off are usually more hectic than
regular workdays.
In any case, see ya soon. permalink
November 14,
2006
-- Since the elections last week, I've
pretty much divorced myself from current events. I've been staying away
from news on TV, only listen to music, Phil Hendrie, and Clive Bull at
work, and go directly to the Best Buy ads in the newspaper, skipping
everything else. It gets to be overwhelming, all the lying shitboxes
regurgitating the talking points of their Democrat or Republican
overlords, just spewing forth so much turd-spangled sewage. And when it
reaches that point, it's nice to retreat back into comfortable ignorance
for a while.
Last night Toney and I watched last week's episode of Friday Night
Lights. Our DVR buddy captured it for us on election night, and
polling data was streaming across the bottom of the screen the whole
time. I could feel the draw cord in my sphincter being tugged, ever so
gently. Once, during the final fifteen minutes of the show, local news
broke in with something dull and ate up a big hunk of our mediocre
drama. Bastards! Why can't they just let me be stupid?!
Over the weekend I found myself breaking out the Seinfeld DVDs,
and man, those hit the spot every time. I've also watched the first
three games of the 1975
World Series,
which is even better than I could've imagined. I mean, I know how it's
all going to turn out, yet find myself genuinely getting into it. I've
been having Toney or one of the Secrets put the discs into the player
for me, so I don't know the final score. (They print it right there on
the DVD itself, and all over the boxes.) Then I settle back and commence
to hollering at thirty year old sports.
And speaking of that, I'm having a little trouble with Joe Garagiola.
When I was a kid he was my favorite announcer. He was enthusiastic and
silly, and obviously loved the game. His fifteen minute show The
Baseball World of Joe Garagiola, which aired before Monday Night
Baseball, was not to be missed. When he was behind the mic, it made
every game a little bit better.
But watching him now, I'm not so sure.... He doesn't seem to have the
analytical skills of the other announcers, and it felt like Tony Kubek
was always stepping in to rescue him from some crackpot
"observation" that led to an intellectual cul-de-sac. And his
little homespun sayings often made no sense whatsoever. An outfielder
might dive for a ball and make a spectacular catch, and Garagiola will
say something like, "Boy, that was just like a Chinese man eating a
picnic lunch in the top of a willow tree, wasn't it Tony?" TF?!
I still have a warm spot in my heart
for him, though. He was the man, back when baseball was still baseball.
Pass the chaw.
Phil Hendrie has been doing
these short little podcasts for his subscribers, and the last two have
made me a tad uncomfortable. The earlier installments featured him
simply talking about things that are going on in his life, along with a
few stray comments about pop culture, etc. It was like an audio version
of a blog, sorta kinda. But the last two have been full of racial slurs
and profanity. Apparently he's trying to take things in a different
direction?
In one he's playing a character, and says the N-word, as it's known,
about a hundred times. It was mildly amusing for about, oh, sixty
seconds, but it went on for eight or nine minutes(!). The guy was
Southern (of course), droning on about something or other, and kept
interrupting his speech by yelling at his son to turn off "that
n---- music." The "son" answered, "But Dad, it's
Simon and Garfunkel." By my calculations, the thing was too long by
roughly 97%.
The latest edition is dedicated entirely to anal sex, with all manner of
coarse language. I didn't much care for it either. It's nice that Phil
no longer has to deal with the FCC and corporate censors, but that
doesn't mean he has to go full-blown Junior High School with it. Ya
know? Repeatedly saying fuck is not an acceptable substitute for
humor. I think Gandhi said that.
Here's
a photograph of me listening to Phil Hendrie's latest podcast.
Eventually, I'm certain, he'll get his sea legs and start delivering the
genius again. In the meantime, of course, I'll continue to view his
radio archives like a tuberculosis patient looks at his iron lung. Or
whatever.
During my self-imposed exile from the "real world," I've also
discovered My Morning Jacket. I'd read positive things about them, but
for some reason believed they were a garage band from New Zealand. No
joke. It turns out they're actually from Kentucky.... I ordered their
album Z
through yourmusic dotcom, and man, that shit is excellent. I've been all
up in it, for days now. It reminds me, at the same time, of Wilco and
Neil Young. How come you guys didn't tell me about them? I'm holding you
all personally responsible.
And I've got 49
Up coming from Netflix, and Police
Squad! arrived yesterday. I just polished off another Bentley
Little book,
and started a biography of the late
great Doug Kenney.
With all these things combined, I've been able to effectively block out
the life-sapping drip drip drip of the 24-hour news cycle, and
the high-douche world of political punditry.
With any luck at all, it'll take hold and eventually I won't know anything
of value. Wish me luck. permalink
November 13,
2006
-- Saturday's trip to New York went
reasonably well. As I mentioned last week, we stripped our itinerary
down to the gristle: a museum visit and lunch. It doesn't get much
simpler than that. We sometimes set our goals too high, and come away
feeling guilty and unsatisfied when we can't accomplish everything. But,
as it turned out, even the adapted agenda was too much. The museum and
restaurant were too far apart, we ran out of time, and everything
devolved into low-watt turmoil.
But it wouldn't be a day trip without it, right?
We like to leave our car at a park 'n' ride on the New Jersey side of
the Lincoln Tunnel, then take a commuter bus into Port Authority. It
only costs ten bucks (or so) and I recommend it highly. No crazy-ass
traffic, no prison-rape parking fees.... it's clean and easy. OK, not
exactly clean, but definitely easy.
Even though we've been there multiple times, we almost always get lost.
It's a tradition at this point, and we've come to expect it. There's a
part of the journey where MapQuest always lets us down. It tells us to
"bear slightly to the right" at a certain exit, and there are,
like, four or five options. Invariably, we go the wrong way and comedy
ensues. ("Bear slightly to the right?! What in the bucktoothed
shit does that mean?! IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!") But this
time Toney used Yahoo Maps, or whatever it is, and it was so much
better. We just rolled into our destination, like we actually knew what
we were doing. It was so easy I almost felt guilty about it.
We toyed with the idea of taking the train to the museum, but were a tad
intimidated. Toney walked up to an information booth at the bus station
and asked if they had a subway map. The woman said, "No," then
turned her back and started in on what appeared to be a tuna melt.
Friendly! Screw it, we finally decided, we'll just jump on a city bus.
One wrong move and we'd end up in Spanish Harlem, with TOURIST written
across our backs. And I can't have that.
It took forever. We had to go thirty-some blocks, and literally
could've walked there faster. Traffic was packed in tighter than
yesterday's cheese-lover's pizza, and the dude had to stop at every
other corner it seemed. Needless to say, I was running my hands through
my hair, repeatedly and with a heightened sense of purpose.
Eventually we made it to the museum, of
course, but we'd already lost a big hunk of valuable time. I was
starving, even though we'd had a big breakfast, and told Toney I wanted
to hit one of the street vendors for a filthy hot dog. The Secrets each
wanted one too, and Toney bought a pretzel, so we had an impromptu
picnic on the front steps of the American Museum of Natural History.
Along with about five other families.
As we enjoyed our delicacies (yum!), a fight almost broke out in the
street. I have no idea what happened, but a man jumped out of a truck
and started screaming at a pair of Japanese guys. Man, he was pissed
about something. The two Asians instinctively huddled behind
their photography equipment and didn't have much to say. Finally, the
irate motorist just threw his hands in the air, looked to the sky, and
said, "What a couple of dunces!"
Dunces? What is this, 1945? A wave of nervous laughter rippled through
the hot dog contingent, and it was over almost as quickly as it started.
There was a massive crowd inside the museum lobby. Literally hundreds of
people were in line to buy tickets, and it was a demoralizing sight to
behold. We shuffled over to the end of the line, and as we stood there
Toney spotted some kiosks in the rear of the room. Huh. She walked over
to investigate, and it appeared you could buy tickets right out of the
machines. And that's what we did. I slid my ATM card through the slot,
it sucked $44.00 out of my checking account, and four tickets printed. I
don't know why so many people insist on standing in those lines. Can any
of you locals help me out with that? It's a real mystery.
The museum itself was fun. Clearly parts of it haven't changed in
decades, but I like that sort of thing. There are great
blast-from-the-past halls there that feature all manner of exotic
animals, all taxidermied-up and posed in "natural" settings. I
suspect we were looking at the exact same things shorter and skinnier
people looked at in 1938. On the rear walls are really cool hand-painted
murals showing a jungle scene, or whatever, and those so-called dioramas
were my favorite part of the place. Here's
a sample; none of my pics were worth a damn.
The dinosaur section looked much more current, like a regular museum,
and that was really cool as well. I'd never actually stood beside
full-on dinosaur skeletons before. Some of those guys were pretty big,
weren't they? Who knew?
Without really realizing it, we spent hours inside that place; it just
keeps going on and on. And by the time we left it was going on four
o'clock, and looked like it would be dark soon. The restaurant we wanted
to visit is in Greenwich Village, sixty or so blocks away. If we'd
attempted to ride a bus all the way down there, it would've been a
midnight snack instead of dinner. So we decided to go back to John's
Pizzeria instead, then head over to Port Authority and get back on
the road. The Secrets weren't very happy with that decision, but that's
the way it goes sometimes. Quit yer bitchin'.
We walked through Central Park for a while, and it was a beehive of
activity. Folks were strolling hand in hand, two men wearing Mets caps
were passing a baseball, horse-drawn carriages clomped past.... The gold
and brown leaves were blowing all around, and it felt like we were
suddenly plunged inside a romantic comedy starring Billy Crystal. Good
stuff.
We couldn't remember if John's was on 44th or 42nd street, and were
proceeding with a pronounced lack of confidence. Finally, on 44th, we
passed a security guard standing in front of a parking garage, and I
started to ask him about it. I said, "Excuse me, is John's
Pi--" The guy just kept looking straight ahead, and interrupted me
by pointing purposely to the left.
Thank you sir, it was nice talking to you.
The pizza was really good. Again. I think we've been there four or five
times now. We always plan on going to other places, and end up back at
John's. But the food is excellent, cheap (for NYC), and convenient to
the bus station. So there you go.
After we finished polishing off a large sausage and onion, a small
pepperoni, and a pitcher of root beer, they brought us our check.
$42.00. I tucked my much-abused ATM card into the little plastic slot in
the check portfolio, and handed it back to our waiter. "I sorry
sir," he said, "Our credit card machine not working."
What?!
It was certainly nice of them to give us this little nugget of
information after we'd finished eating. I had enough cash, but
what if I hadn't? I gave the guy some grief about it, and insinuated
that we couldn't pay if we couldn't use a credit card, but quickly gave
it up. Why bother? What's the point?
But seriously, what if we'd only had a Visa card? There have been plenty
of times in the past when I'd been in that situation. What would have
happened? And the place was packed Saturday evening, how many
weren't able to cover their tab, I wonder? Crazy, man.
It was almost dark by the time we got back to the car, and the
interstate was chaos. There were taillights as far as the eye could see.
We pointed the hood in the direction of Pennsylvania, put a Talking
Heads CD in the player, and hunkered down for a long trip home. But
almost as suddenly as someone snapping their fingers, we were the only
car on the road. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone, I'm not
kidding. One second there were cars all around us, then not another
vehicle could be seen in front of us or behind. Just like that. Bizarre.
Now you're pretty much up to date on our big trip to the city. Most of
the pics I took during the day sucked a big bent one, but here
are a few that were salvageable. I'll try to do better next time.
And the question of the day.... Have you ever found yourself in a
restaurant situation where you're unable to pay the check? Maybe a
credit card is declined, or whatever? What happened? And, on a related
note, have you ever attempted a dine 'n' dash?
I can't remember me ever doing such a thing, but it seems highly
unlikely that it never happened. A friend once walked out of Shoney's on
the Boulevard in Charleston, and the manager chased him. My friend,
apparently believing he was James Bond, dove into the Elk River
and tried to escape. Heh. Wotta douche.
What about you? Tell us about it, won't you?
And I'll see ya tomorrow. permalink
November 10,
2006
-- I don't really have much to report
this morning. Work is work again, and it's eating into my goofing-off
time, which is starting to piss me off. I wish I had a union
representative, so I could call and complain. I really do.
And home life is chaotic, as always. The Secrets are running wide-open,
with school work and school activities and whatnot. And the oldest is
back in swimming three or four nights every week. I don't know how Toney
keeps up with everything. You practically need a schematic, and that's
not a joke.
Yesterday at work I walked downstairs to the vending machines and
purchased a 100 Grand bar. I have a small problem with those things,
because the manufacturer changed the name without explanation. For all
my life they were $100,000 bars, then one day I wake up and they're
suddenly called 100 Grand. What the hell, man?! It's enough to knock a
husky-man's world off its axis.
But I perused my options through the greasy forehead and nose-print
covered plexiglass, and there wasn't much to choose from. Abandoning my
principles, I finally sighed loudly and punched in the letter and number
that would deliver me one of those bastardized 100 Grand deals.
And as I was returning to my office, I passed the receiving manager in
the hall. He looked at the candy bar in my hand and said in a normal
conversational tone, "Do you really think you need another of those
things?"
I'm sure you'll be excited to learn that I watched a couple of Netflix
movies this week. One that I thought I'd like, but was disappointed by,
and another that I figured would be kinda lame, but turned out to be a
lot of fun. They were Nacho Libre and Poseidon. You can
connect the dots on that, if you want.
The oldest Secret said he mentioned to a kid at school that he'd seen Nacho
Libre, and the kid answered, "I don't watch movies with
Mexicans in them." Just thought you'd want to know.
Yesterday was Toney's birthday, and today is the youngest Secret's.
Tonight we'll have cake and presents for the boy (he already had his
FINAL big-time birthday party at the pumpkin patch, you might remember).
Then tomorrow we're off to New York City, to fulfill Toney's birthday
wish.
Our NYC agenda is simple and
uncluttered: a few hours at the
museum, a late
lunch, then back to Scranton. Sometimes we're guilty of attempting
too much in too short a time, and come away feeling disappointed. Maybe
we're starting to learn our lesson? Unlikely, but possible. In any case,
tomorrow will be dedicated exclusively to dinosaur bones and orange
chicken.
I ordered the new 2-disc REM early
years CD
from Amazon recently, and the accompanying
DVD
from an individual at Amazon Marketplace. I went the Marketplace route
because I saved seven or eight bucks. Both were delivered yesterday, and
guess where the DVD came from? That's right, Argentina. I watched a
little of it last night, fearing the worst, but it seems to be legit,
and plays and everything. If it's a bootleg, it's a quality bootleg. And
that's good enough for me.
The CD is excellent, but it led to a slight misunderstanding here at the
Compound today. I'd been playing it all morning, before wandering into
the upstairs bathroom for a much-earned sit-down. Toney passed by the
door as I was in there, and heard me yell, "And this one goes
out tooooo the one I love!"
Yesterday morning, as I was reading Buck's
diatribe about my occasional forays into half-baked music criticism,
and how I sometimes go "on and on" about bands nobody's ever
heard of, I realized I was blasting "Kilimanjaro"
by The Teardrop Explodes. Heh.
So I guess I should now refrain from cranking off a caffeine-fueled
1500-word essay on the band's importance to my "developmental
years?" Is that what I'm hearing? Man, what a pisser; I already had
a page full of notes, with multiple cross-references to fast food meals
and everything.
But something good did come from the exercise. While listening to
the CD again, after so many years, it led me to seek out the band's Wikipedia
page, and caused me to find this inspirational quote from their
leader Julian Cope:
Cope has gone on to a successful career as a solo artist and writer.
When asked if the Teardrop Explodes would ever get back together, he
said: "Would you ever return to having your mother wipe your
asshole?"
Could somebody hand me a tissue, please, I'm getting a little
emotional here....
Speaking of Buck, he sent me one of those "comedy" emails this
morning that had been forwarded between about a hundred people, each
with an all-caps note at the top: THIS IS FUNNY. He told me to pay
special attention to "number four."
Ha! I took the liberty of copying this thing into one of our world
famous Surf Report templates, and here
it is. I am deeply offended.
And I don't really have anything else to say this morning, except that
Toney and I are completely and utterly hooked on Ice-T's
Rap School on VH1.
So I'll leave you with that. Have a great weekend, boys and girls.
I'll see ya Monday. permalink
November 9, 2006
-- Grade school gym class mostly
consisted of running around the "multi-purpose room" and
hollering, if my memory holds. Oh, every once in a while they'd break
out the balance beam or the parachute, or some other novelty
item. But it was mostly just running and yelling, I think.
The parachute was pretty cool. We'd all stand in a big circle, holding
the edges of the thing, then lift it high in the air to create a giant
bubble. Then we'd run underneath and shriek like mental patients. Or
we'd lay it on the ground, let the teacher put a bunch of rubber balls
in the middle, then shake it as if our lives depended on it. This was
called "making popcorn." Heh.
There was a rope in our gym (AKA the lunch room, AKA the auditorium),
and when we got to fifth and sixth grades we were expected to climb it.
Being both afraid of heights and in possession of pipe cleaner
arms, this never really worked out for me. I'd basically just hold onto
the rope, and lift my feet off the floor. Next!
But I remember some of the hotshot boys climbing all the way to the top,
then doing pull-ups on the ceiling beams. That still makes me a
little queasy, thirty years later. And I also feel a bit guilty about
the things I wished would happen to those guys while they were up in the
rafters showboating. Yeah, it's a good thing I didn't have the powers of
Carrie....
During gym we'd also have to square dance every once in a while. An old
man with one darkened lens in his glasses would show up with his
portable public address system, and do the calls. I always
"danced" with the same person, a girl with red hair named
Reed. For some reason I can't come up with her first name this
morning.... But she'd always get pissed at me, because I sucked and
would constantly trample her feet.
And when ol' Dark Lens would order us to "swing your partner,"
I'd get her going so fast centrifugal force would kick in, and she'd be
practically horizontal. She didn't much care for my lack of seriousness,
but kept dancing with me anyway. I was too stupid to understand any of
it.
Lens always had a semi-retarded girl from our class serve as his
"maestro." Her name was Paula M. and he put her in charge of
the record player. After he gave out his instructions about the next
dance we were to do, he'd turn to Paula and say, "Maestro?"
Then she'd drag the needle across the record and a big SCRAAAAATCH!
noise would come blasting out the speakers, causing the entire class to
cover their ears and make expressions of high distress. Every. Single.
Time.
Once, when our teacher and Lens were
both out of the room, a kid named Keith L. grabbed the microphone and
yelled, "Swing your partner up against the wall, stick it in, balls
and all!" We laughed and laughed and laughed, but I came away
thoroughly confused. Balls and all? Is that right??
When we got to Junior High, everything became even more complicated. We
had to "dress" for gym, which meant changing clothes in the
locker room, and everything that entailed. No fun, no fun whatsoever. We
were required to shower after class, and the coaches would go around
making sure our hair was wet, as proof that we'd done it. Needless to
say, most of us would go into the shower room and just stick our heads
under the water without ever removing our clothes.
But a few people followed the rules, of course. And it was not a pretty
sight. I remember some big ol' Baby Huey doofus in there with a freakin'
solar system of nickel-sized zits on his ass. Blechh. And I
remember walking toward the showers one day, and a big rough and tough
guy who was always running his mouth came barreling around the corner,
completely nude.
And he had the smallest penis I've ever seen.
Luckily, I haven't encountered too many of those things in my time, but
that one takes the cake. I'm laughing just thinking about it. There
wasn't even enough for it to hang, if you know what I mean. It just
stuck straight out. It looked like he had a bird's nest with three robin
eggs in it, stuck to his torso. A pitiful excuse for a wiener....
Of course there was also a guy in there who took things in the exact opposite
direction. He'd strut around, actually pointing at it. Most of us were
huddled behind our locker doors in our tighty whities, and this guy was
doing penis-based performance art. And I'm here to tell you, it was a
larger-than-life production. Mercy.
Both ends of the spectrum: equally disturbing. Call me crazy, but I'm
not really a fan of the extreme penis.
There was also some bullying in the locker room, of course. Some kid was
standing in front of the urinal one day, and someone shoved him down for
no reason. His dick retracted back inside his jeans, but he just kept
on peeing. His clothes, from the waist down, were completely
saturated with urine. And because it wasn't me, I found this to be
hilarious.
There were also rampant reports of guys sneaking up behind people in the
showers, and pissing on them. Yet another reason to just stick your head
under the water, and get out of there.... If I'd been peeed on by Boobie
Washington, I probably would've had to leave the state, and undergone
years of intense counseling.
By the time we got to high school, it was almost over. We were forced to
do some sort of President's Fitness something or other, where we had to
demonstrate that we could do a minimum number of pull-ups, sit-ups, etc.
Then we could choose gym as an elective. Or, as in my case, not
choose it.
I've already told the story of me doing the sit-ups portion of the
President's test, when I accidentally farted. There were two or three
girls standing there watching, and one spat, "That's
disgusting!" before stomping away. My friend Tim was holding my
feet at the time, and I think I parted his hair straight down the
middle. You should've seen the look on his face at the time of
detonation. Hilarious.
After I passed the President's test, I never looked back. Screw dat. At
that point gym became an elective, and I elected to go with Rock/Pop
Music Survey, Consumer Math, and something called Singles Survival
instead.
And it's that last one that provided my final gym-related high school
memory. Singles Survival was basically home ec for boys. Supposedly it
taught us how to cook meals, sew buttons on shirt, do laundry, and that
sort of thing. They'd just packaged it in an acceptable manner, so they
could get boys to sign up for it. Whatever.
This has nothing to do with the story, but Rocky was in there at the
same time I was. And he switched some guy's sugar supply with salt. The
dude had no idea, and proceeded to make the world's worst cheesecake.
Man, that guy was pissed. He'd been so proud of his creation.
Anyway, my partner and I (this sounds mighty gay, doesn't it?) had made
an apple pie from scratch. Oh, it was a thing of beauty, and featured
actual sugar. We put it in the oven, but it wouldn't be done before the
period ended. The teacher gave me a note that I was to give to my next
teacher, allowing me to leave class for a few minutes to check on my
delicious project.
My next teacher? That's right, Coach Kuhl. As is always the case with
coaches, he also taught several history classes. And I can still
remember that long walk up to his desk, with that sweaty note in my
hand, to ask if I could be excused for a few minutes -- because I
needed to take a pie out of the oven.
The man gave me a look of utter disgust, and just waved his hand at the
door. As I left the classroom I looked back and he was staring at some
papers on his desk, shaking his head as if he'd just encountered
something profoundly sad.
And that's that. You're all up to date on my gym memories. It was an
exhilarating journey, wasn't it? I don't really have a Question of the
Day, but Buck does. Right
here.
See ya tomorrow. permalink
November 8, 2006
-- This might come as a surprise to
some of you, but when I was in school I hated gym class. When I
finally reached a point in my sub-par public education where "phys
ed" became an elective, I elected to steer way clear of that
swirling pit of assholes and armpits, and went with other valuable
options instead. Such as Rock/Pop Music Survey, Singles Survival, and,
of course, Office Aide.
See you in hell, Coach Comer!
This morning my brain is fried-up like a skillet of grandma's scrapple,
and I've decided to just briefly relay to you some of my gym memories
that jump immediately to mind. This will certainly not be a complete set
of gym-related fucked-upnesses, and probably won't even be very
well-executed. But what are you going to do? I'm barely upright here.
-- During Junior High they occasionally rolled a big-ass trampoline out
into the middle of the floor, and we were required to jump on it, do
flips, and engage in all manner of nonsense. But it wasn't the the
jumping I hated, it was the "spotting."
When we weren't on the trampoline itself, you see, we had to stand along
the edges of the thing and make sure nobody came rocketing off and
exploded their spinal cord on the hardwoods.
I didn't care for that. And if one of those big bulls had ever come
hurtling in my direction, I almost certainly would've stepped aside and
let them continue on their journey. Like I'm going to be able to catch,
in my arms, freakin' Paul Spradling free-falling from the rafters of
a gymnasium. Oh, those guys probably didn't know it (or maybe they
did), but they were completely on their own....
One day some kid was jumping on that bouncy platform of concern, when he
suddenly sprang forward and smashed his face on the canvas. We all
chuckled, but instantly stopped laughing when he stood up looking like
Gene Simmons. He had impossibly-red blood gushing out of his mouth, and
running down his neck. The dude jumped off the trampoline and ran
outside, where he commenced to hawking up the big chunk of tongue he'd
just bitten off.
Shit!
-- In high school we were required to
wrestle. Some new high-pockets gym teacher showed up, all jacked-up on
wrestling, and insisted we be exposed to the "sport." He
showed us some moves, and went through the whole thing, then paired us
off with people roughly our own weight.
I had to wrestle a guy called Ziggy, and when it was our turn to, um,
compete, I basically just laid down. I tried not to be too obvious about
it, but put forth very little effort and let the guy pin me. And just
like that, I was out of that little tournament of homo-eroticism.
Excellent.
Some guy named Edens was wrestling after me, and didn't lay down at all.
Man, he was going after it! And as he thrashed about, we all heard a
loud CRACK! It sounded like somebody snapped a tree branch in
two. And the dude started hollering like a wild Indian. He jumped to his
feet, and his right arm looked like it suddenly had two elbows in it.
The shit was all ratcheted off to one side, bent at an angle unfamiliar
to most humans.
High pockets got him out of there, and to the emergency room, and rest
of us just silently walked back to the locker room, our faces whiter
than notebook paper. Even the black guys'.
-- In Junior High we had to line up so the coach could verify
attendance, then he'd often blow his whistle and let us do whatever
activity we wanted. (Teaching at its finest!) On one such day I ended up
playing a pointless game called Four Square. I was at the first square,
where the serving was done, when some kid came running over and ordered
me to move.
I'd been having trouble with this asshole for a few days. I barely even
knew him, but he'd started needling me and giving me shit for reasons
unknown. I told him to get out of my face, and he shoved me.
That's when something inside me snapped, and I was overcome by a
blinding white-hot rage. I reared way back, brought my fist all the way
up from Cincinnati, and blasted the guy right in the face, below his
left eye. Man, I'd never hit someone so hard in my entire life. There
was a loud smack, like in the movies, and the whole gym went
silent as the kid sat there blinking wildly, with cartoon birds circling
his head.
The gym teacher grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me to the locker
room, where he yelled for a really long time. After class ended, and
while kids were getting dressed, he called everyone over. He had them
circle around, then ordered me to assume the position. I was
forced to put both hands on top of a desk, while the coach whacked my
ass with a big wooden paddle with holes drilled through it. He gave me
three or four good licks, while my classmates laughed and cheered him
on.
Good times.
-- Also in Junior High, there was some homo from England who suddenly
showed up out of nowhere. How a kid with a thick British accent ended up
in 1970's West Virginia, I'll never know. But he was there, and he was a
prick.
One day we were playing volleyball, and I hit one into the net. Prince
Albert, who seemed to actually give a crap, came running over and
started screaming in my face about it. He was hollering all sorts of
apeshit belligerence, in front of the whole class, and I felt that
familiar old Four Square rage bubbling up again. I was still holding the
ball, and as the guy continued yelling I hurled it at him at close
range, hitting him full in the face. Jets of blood shot out of both
nostrils, and he began howling like a bloodhound.
Again I was dragged to the locker room, and given a raft full of shit.
And to my surprise, a bunch of kids in the class told me afterwards I
was out of line. I figured I'd be received as a hero, but they all
turned on me.
Junior High School just sucked and sucked and sucked, and continues to
suck to this day, deep inside my battered psyche....
And we'll see how it goes, but I might finish off my list of violent and
brutal gym class memories tomorrow. I only made it through about half of
'em. I haven't even taken you guys inside the locker room yet.
Do you have anything to add to this subject? Use the comments link
below.
And I'll see ya tomorrow. permalink
November 7, 2006
-- We received a catalog in the mail a
few days ago from Sam's Club. I figured it would be full of jewelry and
kitchen gadgets and luggage, and other items designed for holiday
gift-giving. And those things were certainly there, but also a few
surprises.
Like a Cessna jet, for instance, on sale for $2,734,600. "True
340-knot (391 mph) speed, cabin class seating for six, single-pilot
simplicity and a good half-continent of range...." Just don't
forget to have your membership card with you while paying.
On page 21 they list several DVDs you can order from them, including Barnyard,
then on page 23 there's an offer for the "Ultimate Super Bowl
Weekend Package For Four," for $71,000.
There's also a $27,000 necklace, a travel package to see Tony Bennett
live in London listed at $44,000, and a $33,000 aluminum wine vault that
houses 1500 bottles and features a computerized inventory system.
Usually we just buy, like, Oreos there.
-- I watched the first game of the 1975
World Series
on Sunday, and it was great fun. I already knew the Reds would lose, yet
still found myself getting into it and hollering my displeasure at
various points. Don Gullett pitched a good game, but the bullpen let him
down. Stupid Clay Carroll....
The announcers were acting like Yaz was a walking, talking relic from a
forgotten era in left field. And exactly how old was he at the time?
That's right, 36. Jim Rice was hurt, but Fred Lynn was there looking
like the reincarnation of Joe DiMaggio (Joe had already morphed into Mr.
Coffee), headed for immortality. I think he works at Sears now.
And of course there were all my beloved Big Red Machine heroes: Bench,
Morgan, Rose, Perez, Concepcion.... Each batting against that freaky
Luis Tiant, twisting and turning and sometimes pitching almost
underhanded.
I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. I was twelve when the
games were played, and saw every pitch when it was broadcast live. On
Sunday I could feel that old childhood excitement being reawakened
again, from somewhere deep beneath the scar tissue.
For the rest of the games I'm going to
have Toney put the discs in the player for me, though. They print the
scores right on the boxes and the DVDs themselves. If I don't know the
outcome of each individual game, it'll be even better, I think. I might
even throw food.
During the middle innings Curt Gowdy read a promo for a new program
debuting on NBC in a few days, called "Saturday Night, Live From
New York." George Carlin would be the host of the first show, he
said, and Paul Simon, with special guest Art Garfunkel, would be
appearing during the second week.
Heh, sounds pretty stupid.
-- Toney's birthday is in a few days, and a couple of weeks ago I asked
her what she wanted as a gift. She said she'd like to spend a day in
NYC, take the kids to the Museum of
Natural History to see the dinosaur bones, then have dinner at Sammy's
in Greenwich Village (I almost said the West Village, but don't
feel I've yet earned the right to use such insider lingo).
Wow, it sounded like she'd already given this some thought! So don't
tell her, but she's getting her wish. I've got some money socked away,
and we're going to do all of those things on Saturday, later this week.
Should be fun... for everybody except Andy.
-- Here's the signature file one of Toney's friends uses at the bottom
of her emails:
-Feenie
*Devoted, beautiful wife of a hard working executive
*Mother of three wonderful, bright, good looking kids
*Daughter of a loving father who looks great all the time except on
weekends.
*Senior domestic engineer of the Boxley residence
I changed the woman's first and last name (to that of a freaky chick
from Junior High), but nothing else. Have you ever encountered such a
thing?! I mean, seriously. Talk about being pleased with yourself....
And I don't want to be mean here, but I know this person and believe she
just might be stretching the truth about a few things. If
you catch my drift.
I don't use sig files, not even at work. When people put their title
beneath their name, it makes me involuntarily shout, "Big fukkin
deal!" And why in God's name would I want to advertise my telephone
number? The fewer assholes who call me during the day, the better.
Do I sound bitter?
What about you? Do you use a signature file, maybe a quote from a book
or a movie or something? Tell us about it. And have you ever run across
a file that made you laugh, cry, or scream profanity? We need to know
about that as well.
-- This is really scattered and haphazard today. I wasn't going to tell
you this, but between the Cincinnati Reds stuff above, and the NYC item,
Toney and I took the youngest Secret to school, voted, then had
breakfast at Waffle House. We've been all over town already!
During our meal we had to move from one booth (boof) to another, because
the table was eating into my gut. The waitress asked if there was a
problem, and I said, "Only with my fat ass." Then I ordered
scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns with cheese, toast, and sweet tea.
I know that probably shatters the illusion of me sitting down at the
computer this morning, and pouring out my soul with tears cascading down
my cheeks. And I'm sorry about that.... But I think it helps explain
away some of the half-assery, and decided to confess.
Luckily for all of us though, we've got something new and good from old
friend Buck. Right
here.
I'll try it again tomorrow, and make a special effort to focus. Promise.
See ya then. permalink
November 6, 2006
-- The
Beautiful South went on at ten o'clock or so, and played for almost
two hours. They were as fun as ever, and this time we staked out prime
real estate way up front, and were standing fifteen or twenty feet from
the band the entire night. It was a blast. As I knew it would be.
On Thursday night, after I'd learned the band would be in Philadelphia
48 hours later, we reviewed our babysitting options, and were coming up
empty. Under normal circumstances the boys could've spent the night with
a family a few houses up the street from us. Toney knows them (I don't
know anyone), and the oldest Secret is friends with their youngest son.
They wouldn't have had a problem watching our younglings for an evening.
But.... they're experiencing some fairly serious family
"complications" up there, so the timing wasn't good.
Toney is friends with the mother of another of the oldest Secrets'
partners in crime, but the woman doesn't believe in sleep-overs for some
reason. So that was out, as well. We considered asking the teenage
daughter of another of Toney's friends, but we'd never used her before
and didn't feel comfortable going off for so many hours with a stranger
in charge. For all we know, she could be a budding Courtney Love. And
fuck dat.
By the time we went to bed on Thursday, we were pretty much resigned to
the fact we wouldn't be seeing the Beautiful South this time 'round. And
maybe I was tired or something, but I'd accepted it and wasn't overly
irritated. It was just one of those unfortunate things.
Then came Friday. I wrote about it here, and got myself all
ratcheted-up. And as the day continued, it just got worse. By noon I was
bouncing off the walls, calling Toney every few minutes and imploring
her to be creative, to think outside the shitbox. Surely we could work something
out. We even briefly toyed with the idea of taking the kids to the show
with us, a clear sign of desperation.
Hey, maybe the Secrets could spend the night with Steve and Myra, my old
friends from WV? They live 75 miles in the exact opposite direction of
Philadelphia, but beggars can't be choosers. It was a long-shot, for
sure; Steve and Myra are busy. He's a college professor, involved
in all manner of campus activities, and she's a medical doctor,
frequently on-call, etc. Plus they travel a lot, and I knew it probably
wouldn't work on such short notice. But dammit, I was ready to throw the
Hail Mary pass.
And to my surprise,
Steve said he'd do me one better, and come stay with the kids at our
house. He was only planning to watch a football game on TV that
night, and do some school work afterwards. He could just as easily do it
here, he said. And just like that: problem solved. I think I actually
pumped my fist in the air, like a douche.
I went online and bought the tickets. They were $25 each, but a pair
cost $68.12 after Ticketmaster got finished with us. But who cares? They
could've put a 1 in front of that price, and I woulda paid it. This was
going to be great!
The opening act, Smash Palace, was scheduled to take the stage at 9:00,
and we finally found a parking space in a nearby residential
neighborhood around 8:30. There are plenty of parking lots near South
Street in Philadelphia, but it costs something like twenty bucks to
leave your car there on a Saturday night. I'm sorry, but that makes my
sphincter wink... I was exceedingly pleased with myself when I found us
a parking spot for free.
We went to the Will Call window at the theater, with our required
documentation. The website said I'd need to show photo ID, the credit
card I'd used to purchase the tickets, and a printout of the transaction
receipt with confirmation number. I had all my paperwork in order, and
approached the guy behind the glass.
"Name?" he said.
I told him, and he started flipping through an accordion file.
"Here you go," he said, as he passed the tickets through the
partition to me. Not a single ID checked, no confirmation numbers
confirmed.... And I'd come so prepared. Wotta rip-off.
We made a beeline to a bar a few doors away, a place called Blarney's.
I'd been there on multiple occasions, but it was Toney's first time. We
sat at a table and drank delicious pints of Sierra Nevada, and
bludgeoned a basket of onion rings into submission. The first ring I put
in my mouth exploded with molten liquid, and it felt like a hole had
been burned clean through my tongue. I was hollering like a retard at a
rodeo, and it still feels tender today. Sweet Maria.
But it was fun, like old times. Toney and I don't get the opportunity to
go out as a couple much these days, and we had a good time just sitting
there drinkin' and talkin'.
We somehow ran up a bill of $35 there in an abbreviated length of time (shit!),
and around 9:30 we made our way to the theatre. Smash Palace was already
onstage, and sounded pretty darn good. Their name was vaguely familiar
to me, but I couldn't come up with any details. Turns out they're an
'80s power pop band, reunited and rockin' again. I wished we'd caught
their whole set.
I bought us two Yuenglings from the bar, in miniature cups, for $10, and
we wriggled our way through the loosely-packed crowd near the stage.
We'd vowed to get as close as possible, since we both fear this will be
the last time we ever see the Beautiful South. It wasn't too difficult
to get really close.
Oh, this was going to be amazing.
And it was. The band was as fun as ever, and were seemingly enjoying it
as much as the audience. Their new female singer has a lot more stage
presence than the previous one, who had a great voice but about as much
charisma as a stack of folded bath towels. We've seen them four times
now, over fifteen years or so, with all three of their female vocalists.
The new one is almost as good as Briana Corrigan, the original. Almost.
Some guy (I assume) in the crowd kept farting during the show, and I
couldn't believe it. What kind of person gets themselves packed into a
crowd, then just vents their digestive tract all willy-nilly? Perhaps it
was a disgruntled smoker, protesting the club's new No Smoking policy? I
don't know, but it was disgusting, and everybody kept looking around for
the culprit. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I became convinced they all
thought it was me. I was worried that I was being thought of as The
Farter by my Beautiful South brethren, an innocent man accused.
While Paul Heaton
spoke to the audience between songs, a guy beside Toney yelled out, real
loud, "You're fucking brilliant!" Then everybody
cheered their agreement. I looked over and the dude was about 50 years
old, with salt and pepper hair. He looked like a pharmaceutical salesman
from the suburbs, getting all crazy on a Saturday night. Heh.
They played an eclectic mix of songs from their whole catalog, with some
real surprises thrown in, and a splendid time was had by all. Near the
end of the show stagehands rolled out these huge-ass balloons, which
were batted around by the audience until they each popped. We were
standing directly beneath a cluster of lights, and people kept jacking
those balloons straight up, making the lights shudder and shake. It's
only a matter of time, I told myself, before one of those bastards comes
loose and renders someone Mylar. I kept looking at them shaking,
completely nervous. When the last balloon popped, it was like a giant
weight lifted off my shoulders.
After two encores, the lights came up. I looked at my cell phone and it
was a few minutes after midnight. Two solid hours of Beautiful South,
with us standing fifteen feet away from them. And in Europe they
sometimes play stadiums. Amazing.
The parking ticket we found on my car didn't even put me in a bad mood.
I mean, what's $26 in the grand scheme of things? Sure, the sign said
two-hour parking during certain hours, and didn't say a damn thing
about Saturdays. But whatever. I'll just send them a check. Fuck it.
It's a small price to pay.
Here
are some pics I snapped with my terrible cell phone camera (in just few
short days I'll finally have a phone with a real camera), and an
mp3 of one of my favorite Beautiful South songs, "Good As
Gold (Stupid As Mud)." Copyright laws are for suckers, right?
So that was my latest concert, what was yours?
I'll see ya tomorrow. permalink
November 3, 2006
-- I don't even want to think about it.
That's my goal: just put it out of my head. Grrrfuckinrrr...
Yesterday afternoon I clicked over to the Beautiful
South website, just to see if there was anything of interest
happening. I don't go there very often, because my only access to the
band is via new CDs (which must be purchased for hyper-inflated import
prices). And since they only recently released a new album, and I
already forked over an obscene amount of money to purchase it, what's
left to know?
Forgive me, but I don't really care if some radio station in Ireland is
playing their new single four times per day. That's not really
information I can use here in Scranton.
But sometimes they have links to interviews with the band, so I check
things out every few months. Yesterday I absentmindedly clicked on the
LIVE SHOWS link, expecting the usual lineup of pending concerts in
obscure European cities with no vowels in their names, but that's not
what I got. No, I found out they're in the United States. Right freakin'
now.
The Beautiful South is our band. Mine and Toney's, I mean. We've
seen them three times over the years, and they don't come to this
country very often. Three times is pretty much a miracle. In fact, they
usually don't even have an American record label -- like today. They're
superstars the world 'round, but nobody's ever heard of 'em here.
Somehow we got hooked years ago, and own everything they've ever
released. When we travel we play their CDs in the car, and they're
always blasting around the house. Toney's iPod is filled, simply filled,
with their songs, and I've got a load of 'em on mine as well. Our kids
have grown up on the stuff, and it might sound ridiculous, but we feel
connected to the Beautiful South.
Toney, who has pretty much washed her hands of music, has said many
times that there are only two shows she'd attend at this point. The
first would require a dead person (Joe Strummer) to rise from the grave,
his old band to reunite, then go out on tour. I hate to be a pessimist
but I'd say the chances of that happening are fairly abbreviated. The
other, of course, is the Beautiful South.
And they're going to be in
Philadelphia tomorrow night, 130 miles from us, and we can't
go. There's just not enough time to make logistical arrangements with
babysitters, etc. So I'm trying not to think about it, and pretending
it's not true. If I'd only gone to their site a few weeks earlier, we
probably could've worked it out. Or if I'd not gone at all, that
would've been OK as well.
It's a sad state of affairs. And here's a quote from Toney, said without
even a hint of humor : "Don't even think about going with
Steve." Westerberg and the Eels and Steely Dan.... those are OK I
guess, those are perfectly Steveable, but not the Beautiful South.
That's our band.
-- We've got a little snow here this morning. Not much, but it's on the
grass and the roofs and whatnot. It's exciting. When I let Andy out to
blow urine last night, it was coming down and really pretty. Hard to
believe I'll soon be cursing the stuff, and hating it with every fiber
of my being.
-- Here's an update on the new external hard drive I bought last
weekend: still in the sack. Stay tuned for further developments.
-- Did you notice the fancy-pants new advertising on the homepage this
morning? Yeah, it's National Lampoon-controlled. I have no say in the
matter, they just pump it in. A few weeks ago they sent out a mass email
to all Lampoon "affiliates" thanking us for the great job we
did promoting the DVD release of Benchwarmers. Big fat checks
would be forthcoming, watch your mailboxes, blah blah blah.
TF?? I didn't know of any such ads, and hadn't even heard from NL in
months. I assumed their humor network experiment wasn't going very well,
and weren't securing many advertisers. But I was wrong about that,
they're kicking ass. I saw a list of their clients a few days ago, and
it's pretty damn impressive. I just wasn't being included for some
reason.
I sent a note of inquiry (a bucketful of bitching), and they sent
the code to add to my site with no explanations. Maybe I slipped through
the cracks? I don't know, but it doesn't exactly make me bubble over
with confidence. I feel like the kid in grade school who only received
valentines because the teacher threatened everyone.
-- Peaches Records and Tapes alum David sent me this
a couple of nights ago. He said it's from a "toy coffee pot"
one of his friends bought for his 3-year old son. Good stuff.
-- You know how some people get stuck in a certain era? They continue to
sport the hairstyles of past decades, and wear clothes that were
questionable even when they were in fashion? For reasons unknown, they
just stop. Well, Toney and I always yell out the year when we see
someone like this.
Last weekend we were in a local pizza joint, and a woman came strolling
in with fried-up hair, blonde from a bottle with black roots, and an
acid-wash denim jacket. I hollered 1986! And at the exact same time
Toney yelled 1984!! The woman looked at us with a puzzled expression,
then continued on.
-- Where did the term "so long" come from? I know it means
goodbye, but why? It doesn't make any sense.
-- This
is a terrible cell phone picture, but I took it in a Hallmark store near
here. It's all one piece, a statue sort of thing featuring an American
soldier with an angel looking over his shoulder. My only complaint: no
bundle of fiber optics that majestically changes colors.
-- I turned on Clive Bull a few days ago and a female caller was saying,
"You know what I don't like about men? It's when they do a number 2
and -----" Then the connection died, and I was left looking at my
computer, blinking real fast. It took roughly three seconds before I
yelled, "Noooooo!!!!" Now I'll never know her
complaint. It'll be forever hanging out there (so to speak), unresolved
and haunting. Any ideas what she was about to say?!
Man, I tried to empty my notebook this morning, and almost made it....
The few odds and ends left over will just have to keep until next week.
You guys have a great weekend.
See ya on Monday. permalink
November 2, 2006
-- A few days ago we were in Sam's, the
exclusive club we belong to, and there was a corpulent young lady there
passing out samples of gravy. Needless to say, it was an offer I
couldn't refuse. She put a gob of instant stuffing into a tiny shot
glass-sized plastic cup, smothered it with steaming liquefied meat, then
passed it to me. And it was damn good.
Sensing interest in her product, the fleshy career-girl quickly launched
into a sales pitch for my benefit.
She held up a large container filled with what looked like playground
sand, and told me one cup (or whatever) makes a gallon of gravy.
She said that most people use an old plastic milk jug, pour in the sand,
top it off with tap water, and instantly they have a gallon of delicious
beef, turkey, or chicken gravy. It's so simple anyone can do it, she
said, and it even has authentic "bits."
I was mildly offended by the fact she felt the need to play the even
retards can do it card, but that wasn't what I was thinking about as
I walked away. No, I was contemplating the repeated coupling of the
words gravy and gallon.
Maybe I'm behind the times, but I couldn't think of a single situation
where a person, under normal circumstances, would require 128 ounces of
turkey gravy all at once. I really couldn't. Maybe if we were running a
shelter for the homeless, or something like that.... But this woman
seemed to be pitching it to the Average Joe. Are Toney and I the ones
out of touch, yet again? Should I be ashamed to admit to you folks that
we don't stockpile gravy in bulk, here at the Compound?
As I strolled past a display of faggoty men's underwear, and tried to
ignore the disturbing photo of a man on the front with what appeared to
be a baking potato stuffed down the front of his britches, I kept
thinking about that gravy. And the gallon milk jug. And what the
benefits might be.
I mean, we're planning to drive to my parents' house for Thanksgiving.
Maybe we can mix up a big batch of the stuff before we leave, and have
it in the car for the long journey? Whenever one of us gets hungry
(thirsty?) we can just grab the jug and take a big hit off it?
And if I were still going to the gym (ha!), it would be great to fill a
sports bottle with a light chicken gravy, and sip it while working out
on a treadmill. Ya know?
I believe I'm starting to warm to the
idea.... Can you think of any additional benefits of maintaining an
inventory of outsize containers of gravy at your house? I have a feeling
I'm only scratching the surface of the tip of the iceberg here. Help me
out, people.
Oh, and what the fuck are "bits?"
-- I know this one's kinda short, but I'm almost done here.... Before I
go, I'd like to alert you to this
great Weird Al video where he's channeling Bob Dylan and speaking in
palindromes. The man's a genius, I tell ya. The new
one, "White & Nerdy" is excellent too.
And were you aware that after next week's episode of LOST, it's
going off the air until February 7?! I wasn't, but apparently it's true.
ABC is promoting next Wednesday's installment as the "Fall Season
Finale," which I'm almost certain is a phrase they pulled straight
out of their asses. There's no such thing as a fall season finale,
who are they trying to fool here?
Man, what a kick to the luggage....
Finally, I was listening to a Phil Hendrie bit yesterday that made me
think of Buck, if you can believe it. It featured one of my favorite
Hendrie characters, Korean War veteran Lloyd Bonafide, who was agonizing
over a neighbor he's convinced is a hooker. As any regular Surf Reporter
will know, this is a scenario straight out of Buck's world, who
frequently writes about his dealings with a "loose"
neighbor.
The file is too big to feature directly at the site, but I uploaded it here.
It'll remain there for seven days or 100 downloads, whichever comes
first. Give it a listen if you're so inclined, it's freakin' hilarious.
And that'll do it for today, children. You guys have yourselves a great
Thursday, and I'll see ya tomorrow. permalink
November 1, 2006
-- Yesterday was no good. ....The hours
I spent at work anyway. Sure, we all complain about our jobs, and prove
Loverboy right again and again, but there are degrees. And yesterday was
way up at the top end of the Peter Gibbons scale. It was enough to make
a man purchase five Powerball quick-picks instead of the standard
three.
My mornings are dominated by reading and reacting to the pile of email
that's stacked-up since I left the office the previous night, usually at
the hands of people in California bitching in a different time zone.
Then I have to get ready for the conference call, The One O'Clock
Ballbuster. My role is to compile and interpret a load of data,
summarize it all in an Excel spreadsheet, and distribute to every
Ballbuster participant prior to each day's call.
Usually this process takes me roughly an hour. I've been doing it so
long, I've got it down to a science. In the early days it would drag out
for three, sometimes four, hours. I'd be a complete basket case before
it was done; it sucked a whole corral of donkeys. But practice
makes perfect, they say, and I'm now able to knock that shit out in
short order.
Most of the time, anyway. Remember how I said I had trouble writing
yesterday's update? Well, that "trouble" continued for me at
work. I just couldn't get the rhythm going, and twice had to delete
spreadsheets and start over. I was sprinting to the finish line, playing
Beat the Clock, and just a-stressin'. I barely made it, and was bug-eyed
and running my hands through my hair by the time I was finally able to
hit the SEND button.
As they say back home, it was boolshit.
After choking down yet another dry-ass turkey and cheese sandwich at my
desk, it was time to start working on my "self-evaluation." My
boss sent me the forms at least a week earlier, but I waited until the
very last second before I even opened the attachments. Everything was
due to him no later than October 31, and that's the day I first looked
at it. Just like high school....
Have you ever been subjected to a self-evaluation at work? Man, what a
gargantuan waste of time. Our forms are six or eight pages long, and
under normal circumstances it takes hours to complete them.
Applying for a mortgage is a breeze compared to this annual chore. And
it's pointless, as far as I can tell. It's like walking out into the
middle of a field, pulling down your pants, and blowing diarrhea
straight into a strong headwind. It pisses me off just thinking about
it.
But, of course, I take short-cuts.
Every year I ask my boss's assistant to send me my previous year's
report, and basically copy and paste it (with a few tweaks here and
there) into the new report. And that's what I did this time. By the time
I was finished, I had a reasonable facsimile of last year's evaluation,
based on the previous year's evaluation, which was loosely inspired by
the evaluation from the year prior. Time well-spent.
And anyway.... shouldn't these kinds of things be done by our bosses?
What's the deal with this pussified, I'm OK you're OK, self
esteem-boosting, polyester suit human resources seminar crapola? A
self-evaluation! The whole thing just makes me laugh. Like anybody is
going to tell the truth. Hilarious.
As I work, of course, I need to have something playing in the
background. I turned on woxy.com,
but the first two songs I heard were slow dirge-like suicide tunes, so I
X'd out of it. I went here
and looked at the current talk radio menu, chose a couple of items, and
promptly sent them back to the kitchen. I finally opted for the 80s
Alternative channel at AOL
Radio, and played that until the first Depeche Mode song came on
(roughly four minutes), then clicked over to the Big Band and Swing
channel. I just couldn't get comfortable.
In times of emergency I usually have the Phil Hendrie archives to keep
me company. But yesterday I had no access, there was only a Coming Soon
notice at his site. Thankfully, it's up
and running again this morning. When I get to work I'll
cheerfully send them $6.95, and will have my security blanket back.
While I worked and grumbled about my evaluation, an email from the HR
department in California dropped into my inbox. It said they show I'm
completely maxed-out on vacation days (50!), and that I haven't taken
any of my "floating holidays" this year. Because they
apparently don't have confidence in their own records, they wanted me to
fill out even more forms, and fax them back -- before
October 20. And this was being ordered on October 31.
I looked at the forms, and they were asking me to confirm every vacation
day I took in 2005 and 2006. Then I was to swear that the information is
correct, sign it in blood and acknowledge that I could be put to death
if an error is found. Or something like that.
I felt like I was trapped inside an episode of Green Acres. What
in the thin and crispy hell?! I don't remember what I did yesterday,
how in God's name can I tell them what vacation days I took in 2005? I
could feel my eyes returning to their previous Pat Sajak settings, and
my right hand involuntarily moving up to the top of my head. I wondered
what would happen if I just turned my computer off, and walked straight
out the front door.
But I finally cobbled it all together. Beside my signature I put an
asterisk and wrote "All information reported is to the best of my
knowledge." I faxed it (eleven days late), sent my evaluation to my
boss, drove home and commenced to drinking heavily.
By the time the first trick or treater arrived I was smiling like a
retard and moving a little slower than normal. One little boogermeister
insisted on reciting a long Halloween-themed poem to me, and I could
feel myself drifting. If he'd gone on for one more stanza, we might've
had a situation at the Compound; there's a very good chance I would've
ended up head-down inside decorative foliage. But everything turned out
OK.
How was your Halloween? Our old friend Buck has a few things to
say on the subject, right
here. What about you?
See you guys tomorrow. permalink
|
The State of My
Fat Ass
November 2006
