Toney and the boys are home today, still benefiting from the big super-sized Thanksgiving holiday, so this one’s going to be a challenge.
As I type, Toney is talking to the orthodontist’s office on the phone, the younger Secret is watching Elf in the living room, and the older boy is blasting “Humpty Bump” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at window-rattling volume and playing bass guitar along with it. Over and over and over again. Oh, and I’m “listening” to Let’s Active in the bunker.
So, it feels like I’m writing inside a Best Buy store, halfway between the home theater department and car stereos. Sweet sainted mother of Bonnie Franklin!
Our Thanksgiving wasn’t bad, it wasn’t bad at all. We went to Toney’s cousin’s house in Philadelphia, and there weren’t nearly as many people as I’d feared. We went to a cookout at their house during the summer, and it was wall-to-wall bombastic know-it-alls with annoying accents. But on Thursday it was a smaller, much more tolerable crew. Maybe a dozen people, including the four of us?
They had a traditional holiday spread, and everything was really good. Especially the turkey, and the post-eating clinic pie extravaganza. I never tire of a good pie extravaganza.
Before dinner I played Wii bowling for the first time in my life, and bowled a 179 right out of the gate. I had no previous Wii experience whatsoever, but I can see the appeal. It was a lot of fun, despite the slightly humiliating requirement of engaging in “air bowling” in front of an audience. The first few times I felt like a gigantic doucheketeer, but quickly got over it.
During dinner there was an unknown man sitting to Toney’s right, who never stopped talking to us. I mean, it was just continuous. He told at least three hundred mini-stories, most of which didn’t correspond in the least to what we’d been talking about one minute prior.
For instance… Toney made some passing comment about her job, and the dude launched into a completely unrelated tale about the time his car broke down on his fortieth birthday, while he was driving to a “gentleman’s club.”
The car just sputtered out and he couldn’t get it restarted. So he called “the three A’s,” and they towed the vehicle to a garage. A mechanic looked it over, and found nothing wrong. The car started on the first attempt, and he never had another problem with it.
It was his dead mother, he’s convinced, who derailed his plan to visit a “gentleman’s club,” from heaven. She never would’ve approved of such a thing, and intervened from the Great Beyond.
Yes, and this was in reaction to Toney saying she doesn’t have to return to work until Tuesday. What the? Plus, who calls it “the three A’s?” I almost sucked a full yeast roll down the pipe.
But he seemed like a nice enough guy — just a little kooky around the edges. In fact, the whole day was fairly pleasant, if you can believe it. Yeah, I’m as shocked as you are.
This one’s a little abbreviated, but I’m gonna stop right here. The noise! I can’t take the noise. It feels like the translucents are here, and one of them got mud on his “short pants.” But I did update on Sunday, so don’t miss that super-rare weekend update.
I’ll leave you now with a Question that popped into my head on so-called Black Friday. I somehow found myself in a Yankee Candle store, repeatedly inserting my nose into jars of perfumed wax, and giving my opinion of each scent. “Hmm… not bad,” I found myself muttering, before realizing what was happening and shrieking with horror.
So, I’d like to know what specialty stores you absolutely hate. Not big super-stores like Wal-Mart or Target, but smaller more focused places.
Yankee Candle makes me sad in my soul, and so does Party City. Toney understands the former, but doesn’t get the latter, at all. I can’t explain it either, but Party City is a horrible, horrible place. I literally get depressed when I walk in there, which is kinda weird for a place with “party” in the name.
I can’t tolerate those places that sell natural body wash, and that sort of thing, either. Good god, I’m tensing-up just thinking about it.
So, tell us what stores make your sphincter turn to concrete. Use the comments link below.
And I’ll see you guys tomorrow.
Have a great day, my friends!
First- no way!
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters!!!
I’m in the middle of the Eninen chronicles, freakin’ hilarious. It’s been a while since I’ve read them and I’m sitting in my office, busting out loud laughing and my co-workers are looking at me a little funny.
I hate Sonoma stores. You can buy the same shit at Wal-Mart for half the price. Or Target. Or Sears. Also hate ANY store that sells “bath and Body” stuff. I do my best to create a scene in one of those when my wife drags me in there. (I.e. gagging at smells or creating a ?my skin is burning” scene when she tries to rub some liquid on me). Radio Shack seems to aggrevate me somewhat too. It is just really crap, isn’t it?
On IPOD right now- “Whores”- Jane’s Addiction
Technically, I’m number three. I’ll take it.
I do not like shoe stores of any kind. Ditto with auto parts stores. Come to think of it, I pretty much hate all stores except the grocery store and sometimes REI. Gotta eat and gotta get outside.
Bath and Body causes a “full body shiver” as do “arts-n-crafts” boolshit stores.
The Gander Mountain store pisses me off because they are somewhat overpriced. But the worst thing is that I don’t have thousands of dollars to just go in and buy tons of beautiful firearms all at once without worrying about the mortgage.
Next thing ya know we’ll get a Sam Ash and I’ll really be financially ruined by a house full of guitars and amps and other little treasures…aaarrggghh…the precious…
I’m with Lee Harvey on the all-encompassing store hate. Pretty much anything encased in a mall is hate-worthy. But if I were to narrow it down I’ll say Hot Topic, for obvious reasons. Really the only store I enjoy going to is IKEA. Thank gawd for online shopping!
My dad also calls it “three As”, to my great annoyance. We’re from the Philly area too, so maybe it’s a Philly thing. Then again, he’s pushing 80 so it could just as easily be an old man quirk. Was Mr. Storytime an old timer? And if anyone cares, my dad also calls ESPN, “esspen”. That just about makes my head explode clear off my shoulders.
Top ten-a-roo!
I have played the Wii bowling several times but I gotta tell ya…. I got bored fast! However, when playing with a drunken group…the air bowling is quite amusing. Some how I just can’t picture Jeff and the whole Wii thing! Now, THAT would be funny.
Laundry-mats always gave me that dreaded homesick feeling. I haven’t had to use one since my yout’, thank heavens. Makes me feel sick and miss me mum!
I must say, the Wii bowling is what convinced my in laws that they HAD to own a Wii.
While they were here visitng, we ended up playing bowling into the wii-hours of the morning more than once.
I’d rather cut off a toe than set foot in Pier One Imports.
Pier Ones do indeed bite the big one, but my least favorite stores are Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Joann’s Fabrics, or any other type of giant “craft” store. You’d think 10,000 square feet or more of retail space would produce one thing worth looking at–but you’d be wrong.
Ditto on Michael’s and the other arts ‘n’ craps stores. Everyone that works there hoards cats and the customers all look like someone’s Aunt Mabel or Edna or somesuch…
Gretchen & Lee Harvey — I’m with you guys. I hate shopping and pretty much buy whatever I need online. When the ex would go Christmas shopping, I’d hit the nearest bar and drink until she was done.
Cranked up on iTunes: Flamin’ Groovies – “Slow Death”
Top 20!
At the risk of starting a chain reaction – Happy Birfday, Jeff!
Ironically I just came back from a Crafts2000 store. The gf needed 10 pounds of milk chocolate and that is the only place to get it in Parkersburg. It wasn’t bad until we got to the checkout and the woman in front of us had 10 gazillion small things, they were all the same but had to be rung up separately. I could feel some neurons starting to misfire. I hate waiting in line worse than anything.
Hallmark Cards shops send goosebumps up and down my spine almost immediately. Who the hell buys that stuff?
Also, any time there is a “festival” (usually outdoors) with arts & crafts that are nothing more than poorly made crap from home as opposed to poorly made crap from China, I’m likely to get a little agitated.
There’s a fine line between “arts”, “crafts” and a bunch of rusted metal all welded together. The town I live in has a collective boner for putting the butt-ugliest (and biggest) pieces of scrap metal on the front lawn for all to see.
But I digest…
Hardware stores top the list for me. Not big ones like Lowe’s or Home Depot (although they are fairly torturous too) but the little mom and pop places that still use cardboard paneling with holes and hooks to hang their products.
Oh, and Sherwin Williams – for reasons I can’t articulate.
Forman Mills is the store that gives me the heebie jeebies. We got a gift certificate from there once, and ended up buying a shitload of socks, because the clothes were so horrific. Haven’t been back since.
I also hate shopping at factory outlet stores. Most of them have too much stuff and not enough space to get away from the oversized mouth-breathers looking to score a bargain.
Eh Jeff, did you not hear me mention the presents I leave in the jars at the Yankee Candle Shop? So glad Sharper Image is just a figment of the imagination. What kind of high tech kookery they were trying to sell?
I remember when my car died when I was living in DC. It wasn’t my mothers car, I paid cash for it. To bad I wasn’t going to a “Gentleman’s Club” though, it would have been worth the breakdown. I was taking my ex to the hospital for a checkup. 3 A’s came and towed me to a garage and they informed me that my alternator had went das kaput! Do you know how hard it is to explain to a pregnant wife that she will not be making her Dr’s appointment on time. To her, it was all my fault. I should have checked the altenator to make sure it was working properly. Oh, no cell phones back then either or I could have called for a cab and left her at the garage with all the other crap that eventually screwed up my life. Oh, I must be digressing again. Sorry!!!
Thanksgiving sucked big time. Raking leaves and went to catch Ginger before she took off after a skateboarding kid and slipped and fell on my right hand. No broken fingers but I must have bent the lower fingers back cause the SOB’s sent pains through my like a knife. So, have you ever tried to cook T-day dinner with half a hand. Not fun, not fun at all. Specially when it comes to stirring. Oh, and Ginger had a ball barking at the skateboarder as he grabbed his board and ran down the street. Bet he won’t be coming through my area again.
I suppose right along with “arts & craft” type stores are the scrapbook stores. How can you have a whole store devoted to scrapbooking? But the ones that really irk me are the Nail Salons and the check-casing places. Why must there be so many of them??
I meant check-cashing…in case u cared!
In the mall around here, there is a “Build a Bear” store! You go in and stuff your own teddy bear from parts they have there, then you dress it with their supply of very expensive clothing. What’s the point?
A bear that you can custom make? Big teddy-bear deal!
Kanawha Supply and Sloans used to make me want to decapitate anyone close by. That Kenny Jack was a motherfucker.
“Jo-Ann” and “Michael’s” arts and crafts and sewing crap stores. I can feel my bollocks contract more and more every second I’m in there.
Any gift shop connected to a restaurant or a tourist trap-forget it. Also “Claires” pisses me off to no end, but I have a tween daughter, so I am screwed.
I heard some “expert” on NPR today talking about college football, and he kept saying “NC-two-A” instead of “NC-double-A.”
They also compared college football to slavery at one point.
Good ol’ NPR.
Ironically here also…My wife and I just got back from a Hot Topics store. It was the first time I had ever been in one and well, it made me want to do more online shopping. BUT, it was the only place we could get a couple of World of Warcraft “Save the Murlocks” T-shirts! Yeah we’re geeks. Anyway, while we were checking out the chick at the counter talked for 10 minutes about NOTHING, and had some questionable suggestions. First time my wife and I have ever been invited to a threesome. Freaky…
I’d call a threesome a Hot Topic !
I hate shopping in general, so most stores are on my list.
However, I ADORE the weird stores that are filled with all of the “What the?” items. Especially the stores that contain items that expired 20 years ago…and aren’t made any more.
So if every fiber of the salesgirl’s being was vibrating with “Go fuck yourself!”, does that mean I was offered a onesome? Seriously, I dunno what Hot Topic you were at Sidney, but it sounds better than any I’ve ever been in!
One-religion book and paraphenalia stores. The ones that encompass “all walks of life” are okay, because the people in them are kooky, but in a nice, safe, mellow way. The ones that are all ‘Christian” scare me. I’m afraid they’re either going to Save my Soul (whether I like it or not) or run me out with a torch and pitchfork.
Bath and Body Works, which should be called “Itchy Body Jerks” because that is the reaction I have to using any of their products. If I want perfume, I’ll spray some on (and I do) but I don’t need it floating up in my poonanny and poo chute in the bathwater, tyvm. Let’s just say one bath in their bubbling bath crap made me envy the dog’s ability to scoot his butt on the carpet without shame. An hour later I was in the bath again trying to rid myself of the full-bodied itching, lest the neighbors believe I’d developed rare middle-aged-onset cerebral palsy.
A bonus for your birthday: Worst Thanksgiving dinner conversation ever: A guy I knew had his girlfriend announce in front of the entire family at the Thanksgiving table during the pie round that she was breaking up with him because she was pregnant by some other guy. It put a damper on the festive mood for sure.
I love Let’s Active. I used to see them all the time down in Raleigh in the early 80’s. I had the biggest crush on Sara Romweber. Just bought the “Every Word” tribute album the other day, some interesting interpretations. When I’m feeling particularly nostalgic, I’ll put on Let’s Active, Love Tractor, Pylon, dB’s, R.E.M. and the Connells and just jangle pop the hell out of myself.
I hate tourist shops that sell visitors to my pleasant land the idea that people in Scotland go about wearing tartan, listening to horrible accordian music, eating haggis (on shortbread), drinking whisky, and the idea that we all live in fucking ‘Brigadoon’, when in reality if you step back outside onto the street, its more like fucking ‘Trainspotting’!!
Big time.
@BTB – no sign of nude, drunk Polish girls kicking straw beds yesterday, but I’m already planning a city-break to Warsaw next year!
I hate Big Lots. That place just skeeves me out! The Evil Twin loves it, though, so I find myself in one every now and then and I just want to get home and shower afterwards.
@ Gretchen- My wife and I were (are) seriously freaked out about the invite of a threesome. The chick actually said…”You guys are a cute couple, I get off in 30 minutes, how about hooking up and letting me show you how I can do you both at the same time.”
I don’t think she was talking about killing us.
Internet shopping from now on!!!
no particular store name….but those little kiosk places in the malls that sell knives, swords, ninja stars, and cell phone covers…..they are encouraging the wack jobs of the world!
Happy Thanksgiving
The “As Seen on TV” stores.
Sidney…call me old fashioned but I don’t really see the downside of that conversation.
I hate those small town auto parts stores. Mainly they exist to deliver parts to auto repair shops but carry a small quantity of merchandise like washer fluid and car fresheners. Problem is everyone buys that kind of shit at Walmart so anything you find has been sitting on the shelf for the better part of 10 years. I can feel the dust clinging to me. My brother worked in one such place and I felt like I was in a time warp when I walked in there.
I don’t know if Fingerhut’s still exist, but the name was enough to turn my stomach. I agree with the christian book store comments, they exist in some parallel universe. After a long spell of not visiting malls, I’ve gone to three recently. I’m happy to report that the decline is in full effect. Previously high rent spaces are now occupied by stores with names like “Nubian Princess”, slot car track arcades (is this 1970?), used dvd shops, I even spotted FIVE separate Steelers souvenir stores in a Pittsburgh Mills mall. Shitty, pushy kiosk vendors choke the aisles, is this a fucking bazaar or what?! The Mills corporation, in their desperation, is even selling advertising space to “sponsor” their neighborhoods. You can smell the necrosis from the turnpikes. It won’t be long until that perennial Floridian cockaroach, the Indoor flea market replaces your sickly local mall. Rejoice, the best kosher pickles you’ve ever fished out of a 50 gallon barrel will be available in every food court across America.
Ian – the ONLY way I would eat haggis would be on shortbread.
Malcolm – I am with you about the Hallmark stores. I can’t stand those places. I just feel so JUDGED.
There’s a kiosk in the local mall that specializes in threading to remove unwanted facial and arm hair. It is run by an Indian family who apparently think that ALL women need their services. Every time I pass, the person on duty will yell over to me as I try to sneak past on the opposite side and ask if I’d like to try it. Uh, first, I’m a white woman with no visible facial hair and very little body hair. I get my eyebrows waxed every six months or so, whether they need it or not. Second, I’m not about to sit down at their chair practically in the middle of the town square to have some stranger, usually a 20-something-year-old male, remove any stray hairs that might be plaguing me. I mean, what woman in her right mind…? The kiosk also sells flat irons, which they always try to sell me as well. The only way my hair can get any straighter is if I stick my finger in a light socket.
Make-up counters in dept. stores also piss me off. So many backhanded compliments flying around in an attempt to make a sale. No, I don’t want my makeup done because you look like a hooker. At 42, I’m allowed to have a wrinkle or two. I expect it. And if you spray me with that nasty perfume-of-the-day, I’ll scream chemical sensitivity and make a scene until you bring out the hazmat team.
I hate big chain hardware stores, Best Buy and the beer aisle in the grocery. Mainly because I don’t do home repairs, buy gadgets or drink beer. Of course I’m married to a man who loves this junk. Almost makes me wish I enjoyed clothes shopping so I could make him hold my purse for a while in retribution.
oh one thirty on the coast, 43 degrees and falling but no rain tonight. Forecast for dark and cold, continuing dark and cold until the four Lakewood police officers are laid to rest, and maybe longer.
I play cribbage with the Sherriff’s Deputy across the street on Sunday nights. He’s one of two Scene Reconstructionists in the Dept, and had to spend eight hours in Forza’a with the bodies of three officers at the table and one at the door. The Dept didn’t remove the bodies until something like 1700. Not sure why they had to wait nine hours, but I guess they know what they’re doing.
My neighbor is one tough guy, but a human can only take so much. He showed at 2100 and wanted to play, so we played for four hours and didn’t talk about the scene. I am part of a law enforcement family, but, as it happens, didn’t know any of the officers killed. If you have extra money, as most of us don’t, feel free to visit Forza’s website and donate if you’d like:
http://www.forzacoffeecompany.com/
I really didn’t intend to talk about that. I type fast, and I guess my brain needed to get that out. I’ll go outside and have a smoke and come back and post what I thought I intended to post.
I know the world is dangerous and sometimes tragic, but those cops weren’t bullies or badasses; they were just getting ready to pull their Sunday shifts and get back to their families by dinnertime. They didn’t make it. May flights of angels sing them to their rest.
American Apparel is a nightmare. I know Hipster bashing is pretty Passé, but it’s constant stream of Pitchfork Media’s latest top hits of the 00’s drives me insane.
Oh five-forty-five on the coast; Padraig commandeered the computer chair, and there’s not a suitable substitute in the office, so it was a long smoke.
With regard to retail likes and dislikes, I agree with everybody but Lauren. I have shopped for Christmas presents for the better part of fifty years. Malls didn’t exist when I started, and I was sixteen when the first local mall was constructed. It was soulless then and it is soulless now. For a civilization that built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Ebbits Field and the Empire State Building, the shopping mall has to be the nadir of architecture, design and function.
I shop at “mom and pop” stores: businesses with addresses and sidewalks and doors which are owned by people who live in my county or an adjacent one. Every time I have to go to a Lowes or Home Depot, I develop a longing in my heart for the Proctor Hardware Store, which had wood floors and carried every tool, nut, bolt and screw a homeowner could need. There were five or six other hardware stores in Tacoma, WA which were more or less equally fine places to shop.
The same goes for gift shops, clothing stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, plant nurseries, and every manner of retail business. There are a very few left, and, with the exception of Amazon (because there no independent booksellers left in my town), I shop at these “mom and pop” stores as exclusively as possible. The thousand bucks or so I spend at Christmas never sees the inside of a shopping mall, and neither do I.
It is 42F on the coast and my heart aches and Padraig is pissed and wants his chair back.
Live and be well…jtb
jtb-Thanks for the link. Let your neighbor know that this tradgedy has affected people from all over the country and they are in our prayers. Hats off to the Seattle PD for taking him out, no more parole or pardons for that animal.
Quick note to Ian…
I am, of course, disappointed at the dearth of drunk lassies nakedly kicking straw beds, but gratified that you looked for them. You might keep one eye open, since a girl who believes such an activity might guarantee a husband might not have her calendar in order.
Of course, I’ll be vigilant on my side of the pond, but you’re much closer to the likely epicenter of such activity.
Happy day-after and happy trainspotting.
my best…jtb