NEVER SAY ANY OF THESE THINGS AGAIN!

I mean it!  Eliminate the following from your vocabulary at once!

INFURIATINGLY COMMONPLACE PHRASES:

“It is what it is.”

This means nothing.  Look at that sentence: It is what it is.  It is itself.  The thing we are speaking of is the thing we are speaking of.  Something exists, and we are talking about it.  The thing is the thing that the thing which is the thing is.  Hopefully, the fact that the thing being dealt with is a thing that is real is not news to anyone involved in this more than likely unfortunate situation.  In essence, “it is what it is” is a politely cavalier way of stating “This is a problem that I am unable to help you with, or at any rate the amount of effort necessary to help you is such that I am going to simply and apologetically acknowledge the fact that your unappealing situation is a sad reality, not in fact a dream or a figment of your imagination, and hope that you will go ask somebody else to inconvenience themselves for your benefit.”  This is what you say when your hands are tied, or when you neither want to help with nor accept any amount of blame for a set of circumstances.  Everything is what it is.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be where we are.  Next time you say this to someone, think about just how little information you’re conveying, and what a whiny little buck-passer you are.  Maybe you really can’t help, but there’s no reason to get all Zen about it.

“Mmmmbye.”

Several years ago I began noticing this weird trend people have of prefacing their phone call farewells with a barely perceptible humming prefix.  Mmmmmbye.  What’s this “mmmm” shit?  What’s so tasty all of a sudden?  I’ll tell you what’s tasty: the fact that you’re getting off the phone with this boring person who’s wasting your time.  There’s something sickeningly dismissive in that mmmm.  Mmmmmbye = Thaaaaaaaank God.  Mmmmmbye = Oooooooookay then.  Whaaaaaaaaatever.  That person on the other line probably doesn’t want to be on the phone with you either, slick, but they obviously need your help or why in God’s name would they have punched in the numbers that put them in the unenviable position of dealing with your condescending ass?  They’re called mmmmmanners, you fucking abortion botchup!  Use ‘em!

“I love them to death, but…”

Despite its supposed proclamation of undying affection, this glib qualifier has never once heralded an upcoming compliment, further praise, or anything even remotely positive.  It’s usually something more along the lines of: “I love them to death, but they are the sole cause of every single one of my problems, and my life would be a beautiful dream if they simply fell off the face of the planet, or, better yet, were brutally slaughtered in my presence, by me.”  There’s always a “but”, and it’s always a big one.  Not that I or anyone else can be considered an expert on what love is and what love isn’t, but people who “love them to death, but…” probably haven’t enjoyed a great many relationships where any kind of real love was involved, else they would not be equating it with constant duress.  That’s a shame, but don’t call your ill-advised, one-sided (at best) relationship with the burdensome friend in question “love”, let alone a love that shall continue to the grave, if not beyond.  This is a friend you’ve outgrown who has taken advantage of you a few too many times, and you’re not doing yourself or them any favors by professing to “love them to death”, when in fact their sudden unexplained absence, at least at the moment, would improve your day-to-day life to a considerable extent.  Either work it out with them and salvage/renurture the dregs of your destructive-albeit-occasionally-enjoyable friendship or realize that loving someone to death in this day and age has somewhere along the way inexplicably become synonymous with not really liking them all that much, then let the cold shoulder or restraining order paperwork commence.

“You gotta love…(insert innately unlovable item of discussion)”

Don’t tell me what to do.  I don’t “gotta love” Adam Lambert.  I understand the man can sing, and I wish him well, to the extent that I wish a begrudging modicum of happiness on any stranger who has been nice enough not to harm myself, my friends, or my family.  But I don’t “gotta love” him, much as it is not imperative that I love muscular dystrophy, the priest from “Deliver Us from Evil”, or bobbing for fetal pigs in a Hazmat can brimming with warm phlegm.  Jolly tone of voice or not, demanding that your listener love something is crossing a line, and will go a long way toward ensuring that they not love it, regardless of how appealing they may have naturally found Fleet Foxes to be before you cheerfully crammed them down their esophagus.

HACKNEYED TOPICS OF SUPPOSEDLY HUMOROUS CONVERSATION:

CHUCK NORRIS/NINJAS/PIRATES:

I am male and I came of age in the 1980’s.  If you are going to watch a Chuck Norris movie, I will watch it with you, and I will enjoy myself, particularly if you happen to be watching “Lone Wolf McQuade”, “Firewalker”, or “Invasion U.S.A.”  But that series of outlandish claims concerning all the otherworldly things he can do with his karate powers has been around since 2005.  Some of the “facts” were funny at the time, and Norris, by all accounts, agrees.  But it is no longer funny simply to mention Chuck Norris.  He is a guy who appeared in a series of entertaining movies in which he handily dispatched of enemies.  I fondly remember a time when his introduction into a conversation elicited feelings of delight and comfort.  That time has past.  You know what else you’ve ruined, everyone?  Ninjas.  We can’t talk about them anymore.  It is no longer funny simply to be a ninja.  To mention the ninja is not enough anymore.  What are you going to do with the ninja?  This goes double, if not octuple, for pirates.  You are not a pirate.  Stop talking like one.  It is not funny now.  Look at it this way: If you were actually in the presence of Chuck Norris, a ninja, or a pirate, would you be cracking jokes?  Not if you’re smart.  Pretend they’re always around!  Not only will this enrich your fantasy life, it’ll give the rest of us a break from your incessant attempts at a secondhand comedy routine.

FAMILY GUY:

I am not here to complain about “Family Guy”.  I think it’s a funny show, when it’s on his game, though it’s steadily going downhill and simultaneously appears on too many channels at too many hours of the day.  But most of us have seen most of the episodes, and awarding you with unearned laughter when you perform snippets from them verbatim is tiring.  We are trying to be nice, and we like the show, too.  But you had no hand in writing the script, nor has your performance improved upon the actors and animators who delivered its source material.  This type of thing is expected on the playground when you’re killing time before 5th grade Earth Science.  Otherwise, we’re now old.  Let’s just go back to talking about our weekends.

GETTING PUNCHED/KICKED/SHOT IN THE FACE:

People are forever humorously threatening to harm one another faces these days.  There’s a funny Bill Cosby routine where he’s talking about how once you perform a physically exhausting but well-received bit of slapstick for a child, they demand they you do it again and again, eventually culminating in Cosby gravely intoning “Get outta here, kid, or I’ll punch you right in the face”.  Still funny, and it’s the final word on lighthearted facial injury, to my mind, and that was back in the late 60s or early 70s or hell if I know.  It’s played out.  Time to harm another part of the body.  Suggestions?

“GINORMOUS”:

Neither “gigantic” nor “enormous” were adjectives that needed improving upon.  ”Ginormous” is the type of thing that inspires laughter at awkward family gatherings where people are desperate to laugh at anything in order to vanquish the deadening silence that lurks around every payoff-free anecdote and unwanted personal question involving employment.  Your aunt will ask you if you made it up, and she’ll start using it herself at work, saying “Isn’t that cute?  My niece taught me that!  Ha ha ha!”  It won’t end well for anyone.  On more than one occasion, a group of people on the elevator at my workplace have laughed at someone using the term “ginormous”, and the sound of us obliging the well-intentioned speaker with noises of delight and approval was straight out of a box of doomed chickens.   Please, let’s endeavor not to inspire these sorts of situations.

I’m just as guilty of any and all of it, and then some, so let’s work together to make the world a better and funnier place to be!  Or make your own list, and put “Cowardly assholes who take crude potshots at decent everyday folk from behind their pathetic, small-potatoes blogs” at the tippy top!  That reminds me: much as it pains me to say it, it’s probably time for some of us to cut back on the exclamation points.  Some famous writer guy – possibly Mark Twain, don’t feel like looking it up – apparently once said that using exclamation points is like laughing at your own jokes.  That’s exactly right.  Another winner, Mark Twain!  Bang-up work.  But I’ve always really liked people who laugh at their own jokes.  Hell, I married one.  What to do?  Honestly, I’m probably just going to continue overusing them, but I’ll try to do so with a little more guilt behind it.

Man, it’s impossible to air your pet peeves without coming off as a petty, intolerant jackass, isn’t it?  So do you own it or do you try to improve?  Or what?

SECOND BANANA CITY 2

I gussied up my blog a bit and I gotta say I’m feeling good about it.  It almost resembles a real webpage that someone might actually make.  I also had to transfer my old 2005-2007 Yahoo blog over to WordPress, as Yahoo 360 is closing up shop for good, and while I don’t expect it to get many visitors, still I wanted to preserve my old entries as they tended to have more of a “well, this crap happened today and here’s what I think about that” type of feel to them, and that’s a nice thing for ol’ Stover to go back and regard with fondness.  Like that time he bought “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash” at that gross VHS store in the mall.  I can’t chance that memory leaving my brain.  Anyway, if you’re hard up for kicks n’ yuks please feel free to check my old blog out here.

That business aside, some time ago I did an entry dedicated to more or less unsung supporting performances in movies that I wanted to give some love to, and reading the many enjoyable movie reviews posted over at Videoport Jones has inspired me to continue in that vein.  All it takes is money and looks to be a star, but you need real chops to stand out in a smaller, potentially thankless role.  The following are more of my favorites in this regard.

JAMES GAMMON as COACH LOU BROWN in MAJOR LEAGUE

“You may run like Hayes, but you hit like shit.”

It all comes down to that one line.  Foul or whiff an easy pitch (not that you ever play sports anymore, you lazy piece of worm-ridden filth!), chances are good some smart guy’ll drawl that line at you.  And you won’t mind a bit, because it’ll make you think of “Major League”, and you can’t think of “Major League” without experiencing instant mood improvement. 

James Gammon hadn’t been seen much by audiences before commanding attention as gruff but effective Indians coach Lou Brown and inducting that unforgettably tossed-off line into the playground taunt hall of fame, and although he’s shown his hounddog face in a good number of films since (including “The Apostle” and “Cold Mountain”, not to mention the fact that he voiced one of “The Country Bears”), and despite the fact that he’s a perennial favorite of playwright Sam Shepard, “Major League” will more than likely be the performance that Gammon is remembered for. 

Though I’m sure “The Country Bears” doesn’t appear on that portion of his resume that Gammon goes out of his way to point out to prospective casting directors, it’s apt that he was cast in that film.  “Ursine” is an adjective that well applies to this fine actor.  His voice is that of an animal speaking.  He growls every line like an ill-tempered St Bernard just waking up from a nap you’ve ruined, and for my money he’s the heart and soul of this underacheiving TBS Sunday afternoon staple.  A more dire (not to mention bizarre and potentially unfunny) comedy trio than Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, and Wesley Snipes could hardly be conjured present day, but this was well before such critically derided efforts as “Sniper”, “Two and a Half Men”, and “Going to Prison for Tax Evasion”, so nobody thought twice at the time. 

 

And it worked.  None of the three were noted founts of rollicking goodtime humor, fore or since, but damned if they didn’t click as a comedy trio.  I always liked the scene where they’re forced to clean up their act to meet Berenger’s love interest at an upscale restaurant (a moment that must be seen to appreciate the humor inherent in Sheen’s great “I look like a banker in this thing!” line).  The script ain’t Shakespeare or nothin’, but writer-director David S. Ward (“The Sting”) has a talent for snappy locker room banter, and the cast seems to enjoy the opportunity to deliver such colorful dialogue, which is generously distributed among the game-across-the-board cast.  “My kinda team, Charlie.  My kinda team.”

We all know Bob “Christ, I can’t find it.  The hell with it!” Uecker gives an Oscar caliber performance in this film (a dream movie concept of mine would be a comedy co-starring Uecker and Fred Willard [whose own prowess at portraying clueless/inappropriate commentators is equally well documented] as brothers; I think they could seriously be an unstoppable comedy team), but any true “Major League” fan knows it’s all about Gammon.  Unlike some of his co-stars, he doesn’t work for the laughs, just lets them arrive naturally whenever they feel like showing up.  The “inspirational speech” below sums up his role a lot better than I can:

“All right people, we got 10 minutes ’till game time, let’s all gather ’round. I’m not much for giving inspirational addresses, but I’d just like to point out that every newspaper in the country has picked us to finish last. The local press seems to think that we’d save everyone the time and trouble if we just went out and shot ourselves. Me, I’m for wasting sportswriters’ time. So I figured we ought to hang around for a while and see if we can give ‘em all a nice big shitburger to eat! “

Watch him smile and laugh after that “shitburger” line.  There’s no acting there.  He looked forward to delivering that line.  It’s truly funny to him.  (I tend to crack up myself at the “went out and shot ourselves” part.)  That’s a guy having himself a great time being in a fun movie. 

If I in any way felt like sitting down and wrenching a list out of my brain, James Gammon’s Lou Brown could very well be one of my top ten favorite 1980’s performances.  For Pete’s sake, let’s put him in a few more movies before he dies of terminal crustiness.

RANDEE HELLER as LUCILLE LARUSSO in THE KARATE KID

Oh, you like sore throats?  You like frozen toes?

The somewhat pornily named Randee Heller has very few film credits to her name, though she has seemingly appeared on every 70’s-80’s era television program ever produced, including but not limited to “Quincy, M.E.”, “Soap”, “ALF”, “Hunter”, “Night Court” (twice!), “Who’s the Boss?”, and “Murder, She Wrote”, just to name a few, and that’s to say nothing of the shows she appeared on that I’ve never heard of, a few of which are “The Bronx Zoo”, “The Fanelli Boys”, “Mama Malone”, and “240-Robert”.  I can see her being in demand on TV of that era, when there was greater call for garrulous aunt-like characters, ladies who work crappy jobs and can’t get their hair to look right but are always happy to see ya and won’t let you escape their kitchen without a homemade snack of some sort and a hour or so of lively chit-chat.

I absolutely adore her in “The Karate Kid”, and to my mind she rivals even good ol’ Mr. Miyagi as the best part of the film.  She epitomizes the harried but fun single mom, and the scenes of her barely enduring her son’s mostly harmless backtalk never feel forced or unnecessary.  Better still, and difficult for me to watch to this day, are the moments in which her Lucille unwittingly discovers the abuse Daniel is suffering from (and, admittedly, often asking for to some extent) at school; the floor drops out from under her playful mood in a heartbeat when her teasing request for her son to remove his shades so she can see his “baby browns” reveals a fresh shiner, and her immediate horror really hurts. 

Everyone remembers the scene where Daniel returns home from a particularly humiliating attack and begins taking it out on his none-too-fashionable bike, throwing it around and slamming it against and into a dumpster (all together now: “I hate this damn bike, I hate this bike!  I hate this friggin’ bike!  I HATE IT!”) after being forced off the road and sent tumbling down a nasty-looking hill by Johnny and his goons.  Lucille comes out to find out what’s going on, and it all comes to a head: in the hopes of making a fresh start, she has placed her son, the most important person in the world to her, in a miserable, violent situation from which she is powerless to rescue him.  After days of passive-agressive wisecracks, the kid gloves come off and a tearful and bruised Daniel accuses her of being unfair, forcing him to relocate and leave his old pals in New Jersey when it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

“You’re right,” she says.  “I should have asked.” 

It’s an easy scene to poke fun at in a way, with all the melodrama and the friggin’ this and damn bike that, but these few minutes ring true for a young viewer, and they stay with you.  In the bitter moments following someone picking on you or beating you up, there is a time when nothing could be more disgusting to you than your retarded toys, or your gay friends, or your stupid parents.  You hate your friggin’ bike; you wish you didn’t but you do, and no one can help, not even mom, whose attempts to do just that become somehow more offensive than anything your attackers could come up with. 

Another Randee Heller moment I like comes when she shows up at Golf N Stuff in her distinctly untubular station wagon to pick Daniel up from his date with the impossibly cute Elizabeth Shue.  “Hi kids!” she singsongs as she pulls into the lot, squinting with confusion and mild hurt feelings when Daniel’s “friends” respond with derisive laughter and unwelcoming comments.  She just wants to say howdy-do to the teens, maybe take them out for some root beer floats.  A bunch of bad apples, those Cobra Kai. 

I never realized it before, but the Cobra Kai badges on their gis kind of look like the Napa logo.  Anyway, anybody who endured any stage of childhood short of infancy during the 1980’s who doesn’t hold a special place in their hearts for “The Karate Kid” either didn’t get to see it till later or is lying to you about their age.  The film has no shortage of memorable supporting cast members – the inimitable Martin Kove as evil sensei John “Sweep the leg!” Kreese, Shue, Morita, the “they’ll have to take him out in a body baaaaaaaaag!  Yeeeeeeeeeah!” guy – but Heller brings it all down to earth just by being the mom of the friend whose house you like to go to most.  This is a performance that doesn’t get enough attention.  Hell, I couldn’t even find a picture of her bigger than a thumbnail.  Easily my favorite movie mom.

ANDREW ROBINSON as SCORPIO KILLER in DIRTY HARRY

“No, don’t pass out on me now cop!  No, no, no, no, no.  Don’t pass out on me yet, you dirty, rotten winker!  Do we understand each other?  You better answer me, if you want to know where the girl is. Okay? Now listen… I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to let her die! I just wanted you to know that. You hear me? I just wanted you to know that before I killed you!”

I have a lot of movies left to see using my remaining time on this earth, but I don’t know that any of them will feature a villain more genuinely upsetting and repulsive to me than Clint’s Eastwood’s brutal, unhinged adversary in “Dirty Harry”, played to the hilt by the talented Robinson.  I don’t even like to look at his face.  To see him is to despise him, and to hear him is even worse.  There’s real evil in that voice, and not the cool, attractive evil of a Hannibal Lecter or a Jack Nicholson Joker (though Scorpio’s not so far removed from aspects of Ledger’s take on Mr. Kerr), but heartstopping, encounterable, becomable evil. 

Scorpio Killer isn’t frightening due to any physical abilities or even cunning on his part – he gets his ass handed to him repeatedly, undergoing the most brutal beating I’ve ever seen in a movie in one horrible scene in which a burly African-American gentleman accepts a cash payment to pound his face into an unrecognizable pulp, an act of violence SK can later pin on Dirty Harry.  Having thrashed him for what feels like an eternity, the man asks Scorpio how much more of this he intends to receive.  Scorpio looks up, his face a jumbled, stomach-churning mash, and gurgles, “Every penny’s worth, you black bastard!”  His broken face coupled with that line represents five or six seconds of film that I instinctively turn away from to the day.  It really scares me. 

He will do or say anything (why, he’ll even call you a “winker”), so long as it results in destroying the lives of any and all in the immediate vicinity.  He lives only to hurt, and the terror and pain he sees in others provides him with a palpable pleasure that is both sexual and infantile.  An ugly baby with a giant boner killing everyone – how do ya like that?  Course you don’t; what’s to like?  We’re crying out for Clint Eastwood to fill his face full of bulletholes. 

His graphic, drawn-out death cannot come fast enough for even the most passive and peace-loving of viewers.  You want him dead, and you want front row seats when it happens.  Unfortunately, before his inevitable demise, he, of course, gains control of a school busload of little kids. 

“We’re going to the ice cream factory to see how ice cream is made!” he cries.  “Come on, sing everyone!  Sing or I’ll go home and kill all your mommies!”  

Well, that’s just about as manipulative as movies get, God love it.  After a few minutes of Scorpio slapping kids for fun and forcing them to cry-sing “Row Row Row Your Boat” at gunpoint, one needs to stifle an audible “hip hop hooray” when this image shows up in the killer’s field of vision:

Yeah, that signifies a future problem for Scorpio.  It’s no spoiler to say that Harry gets his man, but not before Scorpio accosts a little boy enjoying some quiet time at the local fishing hole by putting a gun to his head.  This is a bad guy done right, not someone you want to hang out with or quote at parties in a misbegotten attempt at coolness that fellow revellers will politely endure if you’re lucky.  Evidently, Robinson’s performance so ruffled 70s-era moviegoers that he received a number of death threats and eventually had to get an unlisted phone number.  Yet much like the aforementioned Ms. Heller, he either never received or declined to accept a great many film roles following this one, though again like Heller he’s sure done a lot of 80’s/90’s TV (“Walker, Texas Ranger”, “L.A. Law”, “Moonlighting”, et al.). 

“Dirty Harry” director Don Siegel did use Robinson again to good effect in 1973’s “Charley Varrick”, one of your all-too-few chances to see Walter Matthau play a deadly serious (though still amusingly cantankerous) tough guy.  Matthau’s a small time crook who stumbles onto a big time heist, and finds himself outrunning both local authorities and the mob, embodied here by Joe Don Baker, doing a bang-up job as a quick-to-pummel henchmen who goes by the name “Molly”.  I know, I know, “Mitchell”…be that as it may, Joe Don is damn good in “Varrick”,  funny and scary, and he beats the living bejeezus out of both Robinson (who’s actually one of the good guys here ["good" being a relative term in this film] and is a sidekick of sorts to Matthau) and a trailer in one standout scene.  Unbeknowst to this non-Trekkie, Robinson also evidently had a notable role on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”.  But a household name he’s certainly not.  A shame.  It’s no small feat to steal scenes from Clint in his prime.

Just the three for today.  I have a subpar boxed margarita to deplete.  Jeez, I can’t in good conscience leave you with that horrific image, so here, meet my new desktop wallpaper:

BLATHER AND SALES

Is the condition of truly not giving a shit the pinnacle or the nadir of human existence?  Is it the ultimate in aspiration, or a true sign of failing beyond any likelihood of redemption?

For no reason I can presently conjure, I was thinking about “The Matrix” at work the other day.  Maybe someone referenced it offhandedly in conversation.  I don’t remember exactly.  ”The Matrix” isn’t a very hip or now thing to talk about these days, and one wonders if it will ever become cool to talk about it again, but at the end of the first movie (which is the only one I saw, so I don’t know how much this concept was expanded upon in later installments) handsome man and multifaceted performer Keanu Reeves only hits his superpowers stride when he seemingly stops paying attention and just stands there like a doof, flopping his arms around and obliterating everyone without putting any thought or effort into it.  The movie is really little more than an excuse to check out some cool special effects and some interesting fights between people who in reality could fight no one under even the least demanding of circumstances, and I find it hard to believe that the Wiggywoggy Brothers meant it as anything other than that, but I do like the idea that after all that money spent and ponderous pontification flung, the end message of this megabudget late ’90s filmic footnote-to-be is “Stop trying”.

There are a number of ways to take that.  ”Stop trying”.  Okay!  I’ll stop going to work and lie around watching cartoons all day.  End result is my landlord kicks me out if I don’t starve to death first.  My wife leaves me, if she’s smart, and at this point my parents would probably be kind enough to take me in and shovel food in my mouth until I die of old age or bedsores, if that’s possible, or they put me in some kind of home, which would be expensive, so that would probably only last so long.  Then I end up outside, a homeless person.  One of those people I pass briskly on the street while pretending to be intent on reaching a landmark in the near distance, clenching my sphincter and tensing my jaw all the while, my stomach ready to ache at the inevitable “hey buddy”.  But if I truly am not trying here, then rather than galumphing around town I would simply lie down in the driveway of the hospice I’ve been booted from until someone, probably an orderly or a policeman, forcibly drags me away, or takes me to prison.  The thing is, how long are people going to carry you if you refuse to move?  If I stopped moving, where would I end up?  Is that exciting or horrible or what?

Either that or “stop trying” means “don’t worry about it”.  Go through your day and do your thing, giving little thought to how others are processing your words and actions.  I think this probably defines “success”, or at any rate could certainly serve as a viable path to same.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my entire life alternately seeking and repelling the approval of others, working mightily to get people interested while working even harder to make it appear as though I could take them or leave them.  Butting heads with a far less productive incarnation of myself, and all in the interest of people who have their own problems and aren’t terribly affected by my doings either way.  I hate everything I’m writing here but the fact remains that every day I fuck myself over in some small way, and where you’re all human like me you’re all doing the same thing from time to time.  If I took anything valuable away from my time spent flipping languidly through the Bible, it’s that we’re all made of the same shit.  (I believe that’s a direct quote from Leviticus).  We can buy different shirts at different stores and base our hairdos on different magazine shots but deep down we’re all manic depressive redneck movie star genius baby angel rapists, and, until a flaming boulder falls out of space and incinerates us all, we have to deal with ourselves, and much of the time we don’t seem to be properly equipped to do all that fantastic a job of it.

I don’t want this to come across as complaining.  I’ve been making a conscious effort to cut back on the bitching.  It can be an enjoyable, cathartic, and shamefully addictive pastime, but at best it’s the verbal equivalent of walking on a treadmill set to the lowest speed: It’s repetitive, uninteresting, accomplishes nothing, and it makes you look pathetic and stupid.  I do, however, feel that complaining in groups is, to some extent, a positive activity.  It can bring people together, and it can bring realizations to light that might take the edge off whatever’s getting everybody’s goat.  But someone just sitting around, sadly spouting or typing grievances and utterances of hopelessness is somehow more pathetic than, say, hitting yourself in the head with a rock until you die.  At least the guy hitting himself in the head with a rock is doing something about it.  Good form, guy hitting himself in the head with a rock.  That’s a bona fide means to an end, by cracky.

If you’re gonna complain, at the very least be funny about it.  For frequent good examples of this, please click on the “Devil May Care” link to the right of this entry.  My old friend Joe never laments a folly without somehow forming it into a ludicrous yuk.  A good portion of my time with Joe over the years was spent crying into our googolplex-proof drinks over one damn thing or another.  I bet if we were treated to a videotaped montage of these conversations, we’d start puking and crying and beating the shit out of each other.  This would end very badly for me; Joe is in much better physical condition than I am, and is good at fighting.  In any event, take a look at his blog if you haven’t already been doing so.  There’s a lot to look at.  You’re not doing anything right now anyway.

Does anyone in their thirties ever think that coming of age during the early nineties was a nice lesson in devaluing and underestimating yourself, others, and practically everything around you?  If blame can truly be placed on anything when it comes to quality of life, it feels to me like environment is a reasonable enough culprit, if not infallible.  The early 90s culture was rooted in not caring.  But not the potentially productive “like it or lump it” type of not caring.  The “nothing matters and everyone hates me so I’m locking myself in my room and listening to Alice in Chains all weekend” type of not caring.  I like Alice in Chains as much as the next guy (who I’m told likes them pretty well but has to be in the mood for them), I’m just co-opting them to make a point about the early 90’s seeming cool at the time but actually probably being pretty destructive for a lot of kids stuck in them.  It all seems to revolve around the music.  Does the country’s collective youth personality always have to be dictated by whatever songs by whatever bands have managed to fight their way into our radios, TVs, and computers?  I’m sure it’s not this way with all countries.  What shapes the kids of the countries who don’t live and die by bands and singers?  I hate the music I grew up with as much as I like it.  What else can I say that about?  McDonald’s.  Alcohol.  TV.  All very mood-altering things.  Being controlled is both liberating and stifling, opposing forces that can make you feel like nothing is happening and you’re that nothing.  The best course of action at that point is to watch “The Last Boy Scout” and take from that excellent film the best advice you’ll ever get from anyone: dance a jig!

Now here’s the part where I deflate all the preceding comments by using a lot of exclamation points and pretending to wonder where THAT came from, then showing a picture of a sheep watching CNN!

I am looking within myself for the secret!  I’ll keep you posted!  In other news, we’re probably going to some yard sales tomorrow, if the pickins look good.  I have some pictures of some yard sale trip stuff from a month or two ago that I keep meaning to post, so let’s do that now before it never happens.  Take a gander!

Check it out, we saw a gol’ dahn deer on someone’s lawn while driving away from a yard sale where I bought a book about hobos and a documentary about a retarded guy who really likes football.  This deer didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything.  He was walking through people’s yards without so much as a by your leave.  I learned from our encounter that deer don’t pay attention when you whistle or when you loudly intone the word “deer!” at them.  They probably don’t even know they’re deer.  I did find out, though, that fart noises catch their attention immediately.  You are looking at a picture of a deer trying to figure out who just farted.  This is not a deer that will tolerate crassness.  He may look in its direction with marked interest but he will not join in.  This deer thinks that farts are smelly and disrespectful.  He may have a point.  We’ll leave him to his lichens.

Church rummage sales are currently tickling our fancy moreso than the lowly yard sales.  There’s usually more stuff, the interaction between seller and vendor is way less awkward, reasonably priced baked goods and coffee are virtually guaranteed to be offered, and you get to experience the sure to be intriguing interior of a church you otherwise would never have entered.  It always smells weird and there’s always at least one person walking around that freaks you out.  Church rummage sales are the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow, and the shoat’s lower intestine all rolled into one fascinating animal.

Yeah!  You won’t find this at Target, ladies and gents!  I didn’t want to buy one solitary item on that table, but I did want to take a picture of it.

Just a storage container full of golden tumblers that caught my eye, familiar from the cupboards of older relatives who have passed on.

We bought a jacket (a great one), a Umaine shirt that bears the look and feel of 1983, and a mug that says “Florida” on it in enjoyable colors and fonts (we’re half-assedly collecting mugs from every state).  I think this woman said something funny but it couldn’t have been that great since I can’t remember it at all.  Work on your material, crone!

On to the next one.  It’s amazing how horrible power lines and traffic lights look.  Looks like they just threw a bunch of wires in the air, then all shielded their heads with their arms, hoping against hope that everything would catch on something.  It’s an electrical fire-induced 18-car pile-up waiting to happen.  The precipice of disaster: what better locale for a place of worship?  Anyway, there was stuff to buy in here.  What would it be?

Why, this.  The “Super Max”.  My best guess is this is a blowdryer/comb combo.  Comb combo.  Comb combo.  Whoa.  For women with eighteen pounds of hair who can’t be bothered to split drying and combing into two separate tasks, the Super Max is probably not such a bum deal, but I myself did not care to exchange monies for it.

The general goings-on.  ”Rummage” is definitely the word.  Just piles of stuff everywhere.  Root through it and toss it down wherever.  Painted on the wall is a timeline detailing the history of this particular church, which I think is kind of a classy way to keep track of how a building came to be and what it’s had in it.   The idea of the act of painting the timeline of a building on its basement wall is extremely relaxing to me.  It would be nice and cool throughout, you wouldn’t have to concern yourself with creativity or inspiration, and it would be very gratifying to stand back and look at the results when you were done, regardless of how well it came out.

On to another one in Hampden.  There were a lot of home-taped VHS there for purchase, mostly with stuff taped off 1988-era HBO.  I bought several.  I did not buy this one because somewhere I already own these films in other, better-quality formats, but the tape’s content was so solid I had to photograph it.  In the likely event that you can’t read the label, it’s “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”, “Crocodile Dundee 2″, and “Twins”.  Can’t beat that with a stick.

A piano with a bunch of shoes on it is my kind of commerce.

Not sure what we were thinking when we passed up this four-star deal.  What home would be complete without a scalped mariner nestled in a tiny basket?  I find it hard to believe I did not have enough money to buy this.  My past self enrages me once again.

Well, looks like this little old lady’s going home, and I am as well, home being bed.  Goodnight everybody, and thank you for reading my disjointed blog entry.  I think it’s supposed to be nice out tomorrow.  You should think about buying an ice cream cone.

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S AROOSTOOK VACATION: PT II!

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a very uninteresting motion picture; so much so that it’s driving me to actually compose a new blog entry less than 2 weeks after my last one.  That’s some powerful filmmaking. So without further ado, here’s the second half of our Aroostook County trip.  There’s a few more pictures in this one, mostly of old store signs that I found intriguing.  The end of the journal really peters out, as we took a different route home, one that turned out to have even fewer sights of note.  Either that or I was just sick of observing and reporting.  Anyway, don’t rent “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”.

9:13:  On to “Dazed and Confused” soundtrack.  Still enjoying the shoe tree afterglow.  Vacation officially validated by shoe tree.

9:18: Enter Houlton: Where the Action Is.  Woman stumbling around driveway in a Raggedy Ann sweatshirt.  

9:20: Houlton the most civilized community we’ve encountered yet on this trip.  Nearly every house is for sale, though.  Thinking we’ll eat at Elm Tree Diner unless it looks too horrifying.  Hope toilet not too grotesque.

9:23: Find Elm Tree.  Looks fine.  Back in a few.

10:00: Done.  Food perfectly fine.  Each got breakfast specials: eggs, bacon, toast, home fries, coffee for $4.99.  Can’t beat that w/stick.  Got pumpkin cream cheese muffin instead of toast, proved wise decision.  Waitress difficult to read, friendlier at cash register than at table.  Bathroom very clean, however could not seem to poop.  In spite of this, a contraption called a “Niloder” sprayed something at me.  Could not help but take offense.  Certainly worth the $13, all in all.  

10:09: Get gas.  Fuel prices again approaching cornholing levels.  Annie: “I frigging love maps!”

10:10: Pass “Tourist Information Station”.  Annie’s impersonation of what that might entail: “We got a Sears, ya know!”

10:13: Enter Littleton.  Potato fields becoming apparent and copious.  One in back of cemetary.  Yum, dead body taters.  Now playing a game called “Count the Potato Fields”.  Up to six.  Vacation!

10:15: Pass sign: “Trav & Mel’s Wedding”.

10:17: Spouse inexplicably excited by seated bovines.  ”I never get to see cows sit!”

10:18: Mutual decision reached to don sunglasses.  Should write story with protagonist named “Don Sunglasses”.  Wocka x 3.

10:20: Enter Monticello.  13 potato fields so far, give or take.  

10:28: Enter Bridgewater.  Reeeeealllly big potato field almost instantly.  Then another one.  And another.  Tired just looking at them.

10:31: “McCain/Palin” spraypainted on shed.  ”Tuesday’s Gone” ideal soundtrack for downtown Bridgewater.

10:34: Now surrounded on all sides by potato field.  Very few trees, feels like Montana almost.

10:36: Enter Blaine.  Didn’t even take him out to dinnah!

10:40: Enter Mars Hill.  Suddenly lots of buildings.  Pretty decent Main St in a rickety, paint-chipped kind of way.  Turning off towards Caribou now.  Now have “Malibu” by Hole stuck in head but “Caribou” instead.  Weird Al, take note.

10:47: What appears to be model of Saturn suspended on pole out of nowhere.

10:52: OK, now we just passed Jupiter.  This is some kind of thing.  Also, entered Presque Isle.

11:00: Main St of Presque Isle bricky and mildly compelling. 

11:02: Brief excitement upon spying “Bonanza” sign, but no dice, it’s a Chinese place now.  Pooey of them to keep the sign up.  

11:08: Massive karate dojo in middle of field.

11:10: Entering Caribou.  Thankfully that’s still legal in Maine.  Fa fa fa!

11:12: Very little in Caribou thus far except a wreath store and a “disc golf” course and a closed restaurant called “Farzi’s”.

11:22: Continuing on Rte 1 w/no agenda.  Beautiful day.

11:38: Enter Cyr Plantation.  Precious little to remark upon. 

11:45: Enter Van Buren.

11:51: Pass restaurant called “Tasty Food”.  Really wish I was even remotely hungry.  Actually looks like several good places to eat in Van Buren.  

12:02: Enter Grand Isle.

12:12: Possibly enter Madawaska.

12:14: Yup.  Madawaska.  Several years ago wrote sappy but well-meaning song about this town but have never been here.  Just liked the name.  Interested to check it out.

12:18: Adorable septuagenarian on tractor spotted.

12:19: Lawnmower store/motel called “Roland’s Rendez-vous”!

12:20: Sign advertising: “BBQ, Onions, Cow Manure”.

12:21: Man asleep in van in front of Madawaska Police Dept.

12:23: Madawaska main drag quite visually appealing.  A lot of signs that look from the ’60s.  Sadly most of this stuff is closed down from the looks of things.  Get out, walk around, take some pictures. 

(I swear I turned this picture right side up on some stupid program or other, but clearly it didn’t take; fart on a cock.)

(Sorry these two are so huge, but they can’t be fully appreciated any smaller.)

12:40: Enter Frenchville.

12:53: Enter Fort Kent.  It’s green, brown + white.

1:04: This seems to be the town proper of Fort Kent.  McD’s, “Jan’s Primitive Treasures”, “Jazz It Up Dance Studio”, “Quigley’s Building Supply”.

1:07: Get out on main drag and walk around.  Decide to get a lite-ish lunch @ “Rock’s Family Diner”.  Choice is between that and “Bee-Jay’s”.

(Rock’s)

(In hindsight, I sort of regret that we did not patronize “Bee-Jay’s”.  Any testimonials out there?  For the restaurant, please, not the sexual act?)

1:17: Each get hot dogs.  I get footlong.  Ketchup + mustard are under hot dog.  Disapprove of this.  Also, waaaaaay too much K + M in general.  Otherwise good, bun especially.

1:32: Then go to Miller’s.  V. similar to Reny’s.  Annie buys spiral-bound sudoku book.  I buy nothing.

1:43: Happen upon Good Samaritan Thrift Shop.  Two old ladies happily gabbing in French.  I recognize the word “hat” at one point.  I buy 2 VHS: “Switchblade Sisters” and some marital arts revenge chick flick called “Fighting Mad”.  Woman doesn’t know how much they cost.  ”Is it too much to ask for a dollar?” No, it is not.

(We kept seeing these guys alongside the road at various points in the Fort Kent area.  They’re recycling bins.  Extremely awesome recycling bins.)

2:04: Back on the road.  Taking Rte 11 in the opposite direction.  Listening to Wood’s Tea Company.  Pleasant Irish music.

2:16: Hilly!

2:21: Enter Eagle Lake.  Lake itself is quite nice.

2:24: Big hand-lettered sign on someone’s porch reads simply “Potato”.

2:45: Zzzz…

2:46: Entered Porter.

2:48: Entered Portage Lake.

2:54: Entered Nashville, surprisingly enough.

3:00: Enter Ashland.  Vividly burping mustard.

3:10: Ashland both vast and dull.

3:11: Entering Masardis.  Sounds oddly promising.  (It isn’t.)

3:29: Entered TWP 9RS.  

3:52: Enter Mt. Chase.  Listening to The Turtles.  Sleepy.

3:54: Bigass hill.

3:55: Enter Patton.  When you put your hand in pile of goo that used to be face etc.

3:59: Patton very rustic.  General store actually looks like it’s made out of dirt.

4:08: Now in Sherman.  Going to get on I-95 in a bit and that will be that for our relaxing day of deserted townships.

So, in essence, we drove four hundred and seventy-six miles to look at a tree covered in shoes and a street of abandoned storefronts, then buy hot dogs and a sudoku book.  Doesn’t look like much on paper, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves throughout.    

Get in the car and go somewhere sometime!  Places are cool and fun!

AROOSTOOK COUNTY: THE VACATION OF A LIFETIME!

Hi everybody!  Sorry I haven’t written anything in eight years!  I guess I just don’t give a shit!  Nah, that isn’t true, please like me. 

I done took me a little vacation last week, and it was great.  Completely by accident I picked the perfect week to take off weatherwise.  Every day was super nice out.  In the weeks leading up to this little mini-vacay, we had off and on tried to come up with somewhere interesting to travel to.  Somewhere nearby, but not too nearby, that we hadn’t been to, yet wasn’t too unfamiliar.  Those are difficult criteria to assign an ideal destination to, and needless to say we still had no idea where we were going two days before my vacation was to start.  Finally we decided rather randomly to try driving to Pennsylvania.  To my knowledge I’ve never been there (although the fact that I couldn’t remember if I’d ever been there or not frankly didn’t make the state seem like a promising contender for a luxuriant getaway), and we understood there to be Amish people there, and wouldn’t that be interesting?  On top of that excitement, there’s a pretty tasty/intriguing restaurant detailed in my beloved “Roadfood” book called Dutch Kitchen which looked like a promising place to stop and eat some weird beet salads amongst mustacheless bearded strangers.  Reasonably excited about our decision, we declared that to be the plan, took some Advil PM, and resolved to depart the next morning as early as possible. 

Well, you can thank this woman for the fact that you will be seeing zero pictures of Amish people in this blog:

For the lucky few who may not know, this is Suze Orman.  It’s pronounced “Susie”, but I like to call her “Sooze”.  She just feels more like a Sooze.  Anyway, I hate Sooze.  But not for any terribly intelligent reason.  In fact, she gives what is from what I can tell very sensible financial advice on her CNBC program, in which people call in to try to get her permission to buy fun things, and are immediately and sassily shot down.  “You are denied, girlfriend!” Sooze will tell you when you inform her that you would like to buy a paddleboat to use at your camp to have fun with your children.  And Sooze will be correct in telling you this, because you are awash in credit card debt and have failed to save any money for your retirement.  Putting aside her psychotic demeanor, she is promoting common sense, an invaluable trait infrequently championed.  But if there are two types of people I hate (in both cases because I invariably surrender to them), it’s people who tell you what to do and people who tell it like it is.  I want to do what I want, and lie about it thereafter.  Sooze will have none of that, girlfriend.  Keep your money in your 401k until you’re in your sixties; otherwise the government is going to take almost half of it.  Girlfriend. 

Even recounting it is killing me, but Sooze haunted my dreams the night before we were to embark.  “Why spend money you don’t have on a vacation you’re not all that jazzed about?”  “You’re going to fund this entirely on your credit card, aren’t you?  Well, fine, then I assume you’re going to pay it all back immediately after you get back?  WHAT?!  You are denied, boyfriend!  DENIED!” 

The alarm clock went off, and after some bleary-eyed lying around I tentatively and reluctantly voiced my Sooze-inspired concerns to my groggy wife.  I was pleased and relieved to find that she felt much the same way, though whether or not her new opinion was the result of a hypnagogic Suze Orman remains unclear.  Anyway, in shockingly short order, we both came to the conclusion that instead of going to Pennsylvania and murmuring unkind things about the hardworking Mennonites under our breath, we would instead drive to Aroostook County.  The fact that we would likely find nothing of striking interest was not an issue.  It was a gorgeous sunny day, we had never been there, the car was full of gas, the CD book was full of classic rock, and I had an unspoken-for week stretching long and lean out in front of me like the open arms of a long lost buddy.  We would drive to Fort Kent, languidly regard the barren potato fields that no doubt awaited us there, and drive back. 

As I am occasionally wont to do on road trips to pass the time and record fleeting minutiae for prosperity, I decided to take a pen and notebook along to record items and events of ostensible interest/amusement, while Annie drove and made comments throughout.  I usually try to be funny in the course of this activity, but my wife was in rare form and stole my thunder throughout, God love her.  Anyway, here are some notes and pictures of our journey to a notoriously featureless region of Maine.  In a nutshell, more words and fewer pictures than you would probably like.  Enjoy, poopfarts!

ALL TIMES APPROXIMATE.

5:41: Embark.  Add coolant to car.  Car leaks coolant.  Hear what I think is owl in background.  Pleasantly drizzly.

5:42: Run red light.  Impersonation of police siren not appreciated, per usual.

5:43: “Do not put that I ran a red light!”

5:46: Enter Bradley, a town I like for no particular reason.  Surprising amt of general activity/traffic.  Could easily be 2 PM right now.  Annie expresses interest in hearing “L.A. Confidential” soundtrack.  Locate CD and put in player.

5:48: Tracphone taking inordinately long time to accept minutes I’m trying to add.  Need to spring into 2001 and get cellphone.

5:52: Beginning trip listening to “Accentuate the Positive” by Dean Martin.  Can’t help but be a good omen.  Or a cruelly ironic joke.

5:57: Going east on route nine.  Means absolutely nothing to me but figure I should record the information.  Still raining half-assedly.  Seem to be a lot of Quonset huts in this neck of the woods.  Eddington.  Dog shitting on lawn.

6:02: There seem to be a lot of different genuses of trees in Eddington.  Much more than the usual pines/spruces. Annie asks what I’m laughing at, reply “nothing, just being dumb”; do not want to tell her I’m laughing at the word “genuses”.  Sign advertising “breakfast buffet” stationed in front of what would appear to the untrained eye to be a toolshed.  Huh.

6:05: Extremely pleasant residential area of Eddington.  Happy with trip already.  Happiness comes to abrupt halt upon entering town of Clinton.  Now hate trip. 

6:08: Woman on cellphone wearing camouflage repairing mailbox.

6:09: One of those light-up arrow signs in front of vibrantly blue home reads “Beware of Dogs” and lists a phone number under this message.  Should’ve written it down.  “So, I understand you have some pretty scary dogs?”

6:14: Not sure what town we’re in now but it smells like perm.  Ah, it’s Amherst.  Amherst smells like perm.  Lotsa trees n’ trucks.  Must be perm trucks.  Have not seen one home yet in this town.

6:19: Signs of life.  Homes are ramshackle, not quaintly so.  Amherst General Store sign: “ATM, Breakfast, Lunch, Lotto, Dinner”.  People like to tailgate in Amherst. 

6:22: Enter Aurora.  Change CD to “Queen’s Greatest Hits Vol II”.  May have just passed a restaurant called “Wakka’s”.  So that’s where he ended up after helping to defeat Jecht. 

6:28: Unfamiliar late-period Queen songs good accompaniment for nondescript woodland area.  Guitarist in Queen better than I’d realized.  Flawless Fred M. vocals tend to overshadow the other dudes.  “Under Pressure” now comes on.  Never a bad thing to hear.  Excited for the “give ourselves one more chance” part.

6:31: Enter Osborn Plantation.

6:31: Enter Twp 22 and then Twp 28 seconds thereafter.  They better stop pulling this shit, I can’t write that fast.

6:33: This is gonna be a funny trip.

6:34: Somehow we’re back in Twp 22.  The fuck?

6:35: Man, I don’t think I can adequately express my fondness for “Radio Ga Ga”.

6:36 Seriously, I don’t want it to ever end.  Pass horrifically eviscerated porcupine corpse.

6:37: Mutual satisfaction of destination selection expressed.  “Radio goo-goo” makes me chuckle every time he sings it.  Wah: it ended.  “I Want It All” now playing.  Fondly recall a time when this song did not make us think of trucks.  Enter Beddington and with it Washington County. 

6:40: Car clearly not psyched about the hilly terrain.  Car deserves it for the constant problems it has given us ever since we purchased it.  Would hire elephant to do car up ass if I could.  Enter Twp 29.  People do not live here.

6:42: Other people are getting up to go to work while we’re in Twp 29.  Suckers!

6:45: Motorists comfortable passing us over double line.  Annie: “I hate it when people feel the need to double-break the law when I’m not breaking the law fast enough”.  Enter Twp 30.

6:47: Twp 24!  Annie: “These trees are like abstract trucker porn!” (?!?)

6:50: Back in Twp 30 again!  Did they forget they already made this “town”?  Belies distinct lack of savvy in zoning dept.

6:53: Enter Twp 31.  Consecutiveness appreciated.  Bears striking resemblance to Twp 30.  All very Maine-looking.  Trees up the ying-yang. 

6:58: Annie: “This song makes me want to angrily jog in place!” (“Breakthru”)

7:00: “Cloud 9″ motel in no way reminiscent of its imagined namesake.  Enter Wesley.  Hyuk yuk.  

7:02: The Wesley “mini-mall” aptly described by wife as “dilapidated crackhouse”.  It really is that bad, I assure you; worse than you’re imagining.

7:04: Kind of a lot of stuff in Wesley.  A big blueberry establishment.  Houses.  Some green dome thing.  Weird towers.  Big pile of rocks.

7:07: Enter Twp-26.  Back to trees.

7:08: Enter Crawford.  Still trees.

7:15: Crawford is huge.  Sign reads “Ducks beware” in front of house.

7:21: Signs seem to indicate we’re in Alexander though no town line sign was noticed.  See two instances of trucks perched atop posts to serve as a sign for a mechanic business.  A “City Cab” passes us.  Seems unlikely.  Informed by wife, apropos of seemingly nothing, that one can pop a lot of trouble with the popomatic bubble.  

7:24: Entering Baileyville, which sign declares is “Village of Woodland”.  Not seeing how that distinguishes it from neighboring towns.  Pass “Nook & Cranny Restaurant”.  Suppose “Animal Crossing” theme too much to hope for.

7:28: Hitchhiker!  Sorry, dude.

7:29: Getting on route one now.  Orkin truck in our way and making left turn unreasonably difficult.  Pass “Holy Moses Heavy Equipment”.  Forgot that fine exclamation existed.  Someone has a “Kerry/Edwards” sign still hanging on their barn.  Word travels slowly out here.

7:32: Woodland Shopping Center pretty depressing but does have a video store called “Video 2000″.  Sounds like my kind of place.  Apparently we’re in Woodland then.  A green metal Quonset hut is evidently an establishment called “Stitch-It with Peggy”.  

7:38: Entering Princeton.  Queen CD over.  Follow late Queen with early Billy Joel but skip “Piano Man” due to no one wanting to hear it.  Too early for harmonica.  Always too early for harmonica.

7:43: Have never actually heard “Captain Jack”.  Did not realize it was about whacking off and picking nose.  No wonder he got Christie Brinkley to go out with him.

7:45: Very weird series of brick homes passed.  ”White Keep” spraypainted on deserted trailer.  Odd cozy threat prevalent.  Homes are all perfectly rectangular, even the brick ones.  Pass “Telephone Road”.

7:50: Video game noises in “The Entertainer” hurting brain.  Surprising how many BJ songs I’m unfamilar with.  Associate him primarily with “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.  Probably wasn’t ideal introduction.

7:53: Entering Waite.  Celebrate this by chewing strawberry Bubblicious.  Haven’t chewed bubble gum in awhile.  Jaw immediately fatigued.

7:57: Enter Talmadge.  Likely would never have known about Talmadge were it not for this trip.  Fairly certain I would have carried on somehow.  Pass unbelievable pile of metallic junk in front of three hollow out school buses.

7:59: Enter Topsfield.  My dad taught school out here.  Pretty desolate.  Lots of siding issues.  Neatly stacked woodpiles though.  I’m guessing Dagget’s General Store is routinely referred to as “Faggot’s”.  Town not completely without charm.  Lots of horses, all of which look like they get a lot of attention groomingwise.  Have seen 2 four-wheelers w/antlers mounted on the front.

8:06: Road starting to look like something out of “Excitetruck”.

8:10: Enter Brookton.  Abnormally friendly graffiti on rock reads “Welcome to Brookton!”

8:12: Sunlight hitting Brookton favorably.  Really pretty.

8:14: Heart attack ack ack ack ack ack.

8:16: Brookton maybe a bit too reliant on forked branches to hold up sagging power lines.

8:17: Entering Danforth.  Dad taught here too.  He never had much good to say about it, though I think it was more the long drive than the town itself or the people in it.  Still I’m sure he would laugh in my face if he knew we drove here on vacation.

8:26: Billy Joel thankfully through singing to us.  Downtown Danforth fairly diverting, so much so that we take wrong turn.  Or did we?  Bewildering layout.  Route designation sketchy at best.  Realize with dismay that I have to piss and shit.

8:30: Atlas consulted since signs nonexistent.  Park by church sign that reads “You Are Already Blessed”; good to know.  Listening to “That Thing You Do!” soundtrack.  Blackflies swarming car all of a sudden.

8:33: Enter Aroostook County.

8:37: Stop briefly at “scenic turnout”.  Scenic = trees.

8:40: Appears we’re in Weston.  Find much better “scenic turnout” and take some dumb pictures.

8:47: Back in car.  Fart somehow goes undetected by spouse despite smelling like low tide with hint of ham.

8:48: Enter Orient.  Nothing even vaguely Asian about it.  Encounter construction situation.  Flagger instructs us to slow down by performing the opposite of the “raise the roof” dance, otherwise known as the “verify the sturdiness of the flooring” dance.  He’s a natural.  In retrospect it’s hard to see why this means “decrease your speed”, and yet we knew exactly what he was trying to get across. 

9:02: Enter Cary.  Weather getting much nicer.  Farting starting to get problematic.  Weiner keen to expel urine.  Decision not to make water at scenic turn clearly wrongheaded. 

9:06: Enter Hodgdon.

9:09: WHOA!!!  SHOE TREE!!!

Boy, this is long.  Part two to come!

I WASTE YOUR TIME THEN EAT AN UGLI FRUIT

Que pasa, turkeys?  I have not one item of interest to discuss with you, but I’m not sleepy, so you’re gonna listen to me and my puerile gobbledygook.

So the new giant Cheetos: your thoughts?  Somehow I haven’t eaten them yet.  But I HAVE eaten the new Burger King French Toast flavored Cheetos.  They’re not actually called that (they go by “French Toast flavored snacks”, I believe; catchy!) but it’s totally what they are.  Burger King has made French toast flavored Cheetos, and I have spent some of Daddy’s hard-earned to procure and consume a bag of them.  In fact, I have done this twice, as I thought they were actually pretty good.  In fact, I would go so far as to say I have enjoyed all of the Burger King brand crunchy bagged snacks.

The Ketchup & Fries one tastes like the discolored crud that collects around the ketchup hole, and the Flame Broiled one tastes like walking into a Burger King and inhaling sharply and deeply through both your nose and mouth, but a lot crunchier.  Highly recommended!!!!!

I will try any new snack that comes out.  At the store the other day I saw honey barbecue flavored Cheetos, and rest assured that I will be putting those into my mouth soon.  Barring once-edible items that a human body has converted into something far less salubrious, if you want me to eat something, just let me know and I’ll give it a try!  How’s that for a deal and a half? 

Here’s some stuff I’ve been into lately.

Back when I worked in a video store, while shelving flickaroonies one day I overheard some goofily dressed young gentlemen discussing what they should rent for a movie, and one of the young men, who apparently had seen more films than the other two, kept enthusiastically insisting “That’s a goodass movie, dude!” whenever either of the other  guys picked up a DVD to look at.  That really stuck with me for some reason.  Anyway, if I may paraphrase whoever the fuck that was, slippers are a goodass garment, dude.  They’re comfy, warm, and easy to don and doff.  I am heartbroken to report that I do not own these Mario and Luigi ones, but apparently they’re only $10.99 so I might soon. 

Yeah, these really aren’t as cool as the Mario and Luigi ones, but frig it, they’re cozy and I like ‘em so if you don’t like it you can take a hike.  Right now I have two nice homemade pairs of slippers, one from my mom and one from my mom in law, and I have been wearing them constantly while galumphing around the house, picking objects off of surfaces, dumbfoundedly gaping at them, and placing them uncertainly on different surfaces.  I’m also getting back into bathrobes, and I have a pair of unflattering, vibrantly blue sweatpant cutoff shorts that I’ve been steadily working back into my favored apparel rotation.  These are the salad days, friends.

What else do I like?  Why, tea!  Yes, tea!  Hot water with a bag of fragrant sediment in it, that’s for 2009-era me!  I only want tea-likers in my posse henceforth.  When making someone’s acquaintance now, I’ve replaced the handshake with the tea opinion query.  Cut out the middleman, am I right?  We have several different kinds of tea to choose from at our house.  I am going to go take a picture of them.

This is an attractively structured little wall of tea, I should think.  Tonight we drank quite a bit of that “Chief’s Delight” in the lower left-hand quadrant of the tea bulwark.  It contains strawberry leaf, myrtle leaf, blackberry leaf, rose hips, and juniper berry.  It is very nice!  By all rights it should probably be in the upper left-hand quadrant of the tea bulwark, but what’s done is done.  I entreat you to patronize the hippie aisle of your local market and seek out “Chief’s Delight”.  You will be soothed, you will be satisfied, and you will repeatedly strike your open mouth with the flat of your hand and make offensive “waw waw waw” noises.  That’s right, YOU will do this.  You.  Atop “Chief’s Delight” is a perfectly good minty type of tea that’ll give you a nice little refreshing kick if you’re of a mind to receive it, and continuing clockwise we find dependable standby “Lemon Zinger”, a beverage that is rarely not a good idea, unless, I don’t know, you have a citrus aversion or a big old mouthful of sores.  I don’t know the deal with your respective current mouth statuses, so I can’t reasonably be called upon to accurately speculate on your reaction to “Lemon Zinger”.  It’s a good tea, bottom line.  Below that is Sleepytime tea, which I actually received as a stocking present for Christmas this year, a fact I am equally pleased and ashamed to report.  Really, though, why make fun?  You’re really gonna tell me that you wouldn’t be happy to extract an attractively wrapped box of comforting tea from a festively decorated sock?  Stop trying to be cool and enjoy life, you elitist swine!  Last and quite possibly least is “Morning Thunder”.  I believe this has taken the place of gone but not forgotten “Fast Lane” tea, something we used to toss back a lot in college when we wanted to feel the extremes of relaxation and delirium simultaneously.  In my mind I’m picturing there being a drawing on the “Fast Lane” box of a guy running down the street while laughing and drilling a hole into his head; I’m almost positive that wasn’t the case, but it would have been appropriate enough.  A great and interesting source of caffeine, sorely missed.  “Morning Thunder” has not proven to be a viable substitute, but points for trying. 

“I broke your television!”

My wife and I have really been enjoying “Futurama” lately.  It goes well with slippers and Native American tea.  I had always been aware of this show but for one reason or another never gave it much of a chance, and I’m not going to go on too much about it as I believe most of you are probably quite familiar with it.  If not, turn on Comedy Central.  It’s probably on right now.  If you don’t like it, I’ll eat my hat!  In fact, I’ll go you one further: I’ll eat the old man who lives next door alive.  Please like it; that old man did nothing wrong, and I’ll probably go to prison if I eat him.  Pictured above is Dr. Zoidberg, a cross between a Borscht Belt comedian, an inept physician, and a lobster.  I laugh uproariously at virtually everything he says.  He lost his medical degree in a volcano.  Anyway, if you’re like me and you’re a nincompoop who hasn’t given this fantastic cartoon the time of day, do your funnybone a solid and check it out!

In other news, this past weekend I conquered the Ugli fruit.  I’d never had one.  I went the whole nine yards and got out the cutting board for the occasion.  I don’t just whip that out willy-nilly.  This was an undertaking and I was going to give the formidable fruit its due. 

I wasn’t prepared for the sheer volume of inedible white crap, or “pith”, especially when one reflects on the >$2.00 asking price, but I remained abuzz with anticipation all the same. 

Here’s what you’re getting into, should you attempt to chow down on one of these babies.  It isn’t as terrifying as it looks.  In fact, I came away quite pleased with the overall experience.  The hardest part of eating an Ugli fruit is taking pictures of yourself while consuming it so you can post said pictures on your blog for the benefit of none.  Without further ado, then, those pictures:

Whoops.

There we go!  Say, that’s not half bad!

Down the hatch!  GLORF MFLUGG GLUMMPP!

Oh please more oh suckle suckle suckle!

I realize it looks like I’m digging into a Gremlin pod there, but truth be told overall it’s an inoffensive and pleasurable fruit.  I’d compare it to eating a mild orange out of a grapefruit’s shell.  Plus there’s lot of juice left over when you’re done, for which the fruit’s natural container makes for an ideal receptacle, and you don’t get that lingering stickiness on your face and hands like I find you do with an orange.  Only problem is you have to cash out your 401k to buy one.  They’re good but I don’t know if they’re two-bucks-and-change-apiece good.  It’s exciting to get a wacky fruit every now and then, though, I find.  I’ve got my eye on some plantains for next time!  If you thought this blog was exciting, just wait till you get a load of me and these plantains!  Good night!

UNPLANNED DISCOURSE ON PROFESSIONS OF NOTE

So I do a blog on bologna-puking, and suddenly I’m pulling record (for me) numbers of hits on this thing.  It’s nice to finally know what my public is looking for.  What vile byproduct will I intentionally besmirch my digestive system and subsequently my toilet with next?  I have it on good faith that the people who want to know number in the triple digits!  I picked up a package of something the local supermarket made that they seem to think is sushi, so chances are I’ll be crankin’ out another winner in short order.  I’ve been calling poops “winners” lately. 

Unfortunately not a lot has taken place in the few days that have passed since I last spoke to you people.  Writing about work is not an option; I retain nothing that happens there.  It’s all a blur, a head-hurting smudge that I occasionally seem to have some sort of indistinguishable effect on.  I am not uncomfortable there (high praise from me where the concept of work and jobs are concerned) but I am always overjoyed to leave.  I think it would be great to have a job you could blog about.  I really like writing about my day, and if you take a look at my old  (and in some respects superior) blog, you’ll see that used to be mostly what I did.  All there is is what happens to you during a day.  You should pay attention to it.  Isn’t that meaningful?  Write that down on something.  That’s a direct quote from the author of “Bolog?  Na!: An Exorcism” so you know it’s intelligent and worthwhile.

I bet a cop would have a lot to blog about.  I follow this guy on Twitter who goes by the name “philthethrill”.  He’s a cop who updates whenever he encounters something interesting.  It’s very compelling.  Can you even imagine being a cop, though?  I can’t.  It’s like you’re the boss of the entire town.  Everyone has to do what you say, except you’re just this guy.  Or gal, purportedly.  Women can work jobs, too, I guess.  Whenever I pass a cop, and my heart rate has returned to normal once it’s become clear that he either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care that I have a tail light out (I don’t know and can’t be bothered to learn how to replace it but I don’t want to give someone else some of my money to fix it; this is a problem I seem to be having with quite a few things at the moment), I get to thinking about the concept of cops, and the kind of person you would have to be to want to have that for your job.  Because that’s not a job you just bumble into.  Me, I go to school for awhile, then when that’s over I freak out and work for the first place that’ll hire me.  A cop’s one of those jobs you have to have in mind from the getgo.  You have to tell yourself that’s what you want to do, be a cop, and you have to do a lot of hard stuff to become one, and once you’re the cop you have to continue to do hard stuff until you retire or get killed.  You would need equal parts nobility and insanity, or, failing that happily dual-toned pie graph, 100% of one or the other, either of whom would make for a potentiallly annoying policeman.  Mr Goody Two Shoes or Mr Baddy Shoot Kids. 

Other than the dudes (or dudettes, sorry again, fairer sex whom I never take into consideration in matters not directly involving boobs) whose cop dads (or moms) made them be cops (or coptresses) as well, you have to figure that something extremely significant and upsetting needs to have happened to this individual in question who suddenly feels strongly enough about the behavior of the entire community that they find themselves walking to a police academy and taking tests and obeying orders that if all goes well will result in their being able to walk around in public with a device at the ready and in full view of onlookers that can cause the death of anyone they choose to point it at.  Same with the folks who want to be doctors.  All I can wonder is what organ do they have that I’m missing, or vice-versa maybe. 

Circumstance and conscious decision are not sufficient explanations for why anyone would ever want to be a cop or a doctor.  I find both professions terrifying.  If I were introduced to a cop and a doctor at a party, the first thing that popped into my mind would immediately be “Ah, I see!  You want to kill people, and you want to molest people and play with their guts, yet neither of you want to be imprisoned for these actions.  A pleasure meeting you both.  Honey, do you have the keys?  Our lives are in jeopardy.  Good night, everyone!  You’re in good hands!” 

The most extreme example of this prejudiced but (I feel) difficult to argue viewpoint is best applied to the male gynecologist.  This is a man who wants to stick things up vaginas all day and get paid for it.  If this is not true, then kindly explain to me why else a red-blooded male would study and apply for this sort of work?  I realize “it takes all kinds”, but I just have a hard time envisioning a guy sitting around thinking “You know, women really have a difficult time with their vaginas.  Always some sort of discharge or embarrassing itch, and then there’s all that period stuff.  Dammit, it’s about time someone did something about this.  I’m going to become a doctor so I can help all the women in the entire world with their vagina problems.”  Far easier to imagine a guy thinking: “You mean women will pay me to fist them?  Scholarship here I come!”  This isn’t even me being paranoid.  This is as cut and dry as it gets.  I mean, after awhile they all probably start looking about the same, so I guess maybe if your male gynecologist is somewhat elderly, you can at least be comforted in the tenuous knowledge that he probably isn’t getting as much of a rise out of your Pap smear as he might have back when he was just a little gynecologist.  At any rate, my guess and my hope is that male gynecologists are probably more and more becoming a thing of the past, which is as it should be, and we can heretofore leave the profession in the capable hands of the lesbian community. 

I’m saying that doctors and cops freak me out!  They’re crazy! 

My current job has pretty good medical benefits, so I’ve actually put them to use once or twice.  In the past I’ve hardly been to see a doctor at all, unless it was some sort of emergency (strictly gastrointestinal; a lifetime of remaining seated has rendered my odds for any type of physical injury virtually nonexistent), but when I do go, I expect molestation.  It feels inevitable.  Have I ever been molested by a doctor?  Certainly: In the past they have groped my testicles and inserted their finger into my anus.  If that’s not molestation, than pray, what is molestation?  Maybe I’ve been misunderstanding the term all these years. 

Helpful, point-proving example: Say you have a problem, and you hear that Mr. Willigans is excellent at helping people get rid of their problems.  You go to Mr. Willigans and ask him for help.  He says “Sure thing”, then pulls down your pants, grabs your balls, and sticks his finger up your butt.  Would you not feel used, outraged, broken?  Would you not think about this terrible moment every day for the rest of your life, fighting back tears, trying to ignore the roiling fireball of shame in your guts?  Would you not seek help from the police, who are insane, and would shoot you with their guns?  “I need to check your prostate” and “This is to check for hernias” sounds an awful lot like “Don’t tell anyone or your mommy and daddy won’t love you anymore” to me.  I have seen no physical evidence of the existence of “prostates” and “hernias”, ergo the only conclusion to derive from all of this is that doctors find me sexy and want to touch me naked. 

Really, though, all “joking” aside, these are terrifying professions, and it would be so hard for me to make friends with someone who had either of these jobs, no matter how much I might theoretically like their personality.  One can’t help but respect cops and doctors, and ”respect” is typically a word with nothing but positive connotations, but isn’t it just polite terror?

You start thinking about it and you can’t stop.  These people, these cops and doctors, these psychos and molesters, if they’re doing their jobs properly, are here to keep us from dying.  That’s their job.  That’s NUTS.  Our lives are all in each other’s hands,  nobody really knows anyone, and everything we have to do is terrifying. 

Hey, the cookies are done!  Yay!  Goodnight!

BOLOG? NA!: AN EXORCISM

As of yesterday I am no longer going to be able to eat bologna.  Not because I’m concerned about my health, not because I’ve been looking over our budget and in these tight economic times bologna is simply not an expense we can afford, and not even because I don’t like it.  My chief reason is because last night I found myself with a hankering for a good old-fashioned bologna sandwich, made the effort to drive to my local supermarket and purchase the necessary ingredients, came home and ate part of it, began to feel slightly off, and proceeded to spend the remainder of the evening vomiting a total of nine times into the toilet.  I also crapped twice, which smelled not at all of earthy human fecal matter but like 100% pure bologna, which could only lead to more vomiting.  Eventually I became delirious and began crying.  It was a truly repugnant evening, one that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, except for perhaps the inventor of bologna. 

I’m a pretty reckless guy when it comes to food, and I readily accept most bodily consequences when it comes to my “diet”.  Recently I viewed a Louis C.K. stand-up routine that literally caused me to fall onto the floor with helpless, skull-clenching laughter, and I’d like to co-opt his description of his eating habits for my own: “I fill myself to capacity, and I blow it out my asshole”.  Spastic defecation doesn’t bother me all that much.  I can sit on the toilet and grunt my guts out all day.  No problemo.  Just give a magazine or the Nintendo DS, and I’m good for the duration.  All right, there was one instance where I ate chicken fettucini alfredo at the Macaroni Grill and ending up having diarrhea for three days straight before actually going to the ER and undergoing a haphazard butt irrigation courtesy of a commendably calm Chinese man.  That wasn’t cool.  Both chicken fettucini and Macaroni Grill in general are on my Do Not Eat list due to that.  But what I’m saying to you, foods, is that you have to do something really bad to me to get me to stop eating you, provided I think you taste good in the first place.  I’m a reasonable man.  I’m no stranger to the forgive and forget train of thought.  I think Gandhi was a heck of a nice guy.  All I ask, foods, is that you, I don’t know, not send me to the emergency room?  Not make me puke NINE TIMES?  Nine times, bologna!  I counted that shit! 

I really, really do not enjoy throwing up. 

My hatred for throwing up far exceeds my fondness for bologna, though I must admit the lowly sandwich meat was good to me in youth.  My brother Justin and I delighted in lending our otherwise pedestrian sandwiches a classy air by fashioning ersatz crudites of them, cutting one whitebread bologna or PB&J sandwich into eight little triangles and daintily consuming them, no doubt with extended pinkies.  Justin dubbed them “fingers and thumbs”.  For several years, well into high school, this was the only way I would eat a sandwich, fingers and thumbs style, and bologna was a frequent component of this dependable snack. 

Manys the time I would open my parents’ fridge and, due to sloth or a lack of more pleasing alternatives, would simply extract a slice of bologna from its packaging and eat it sans bread or condiments, often folding the meat and biting holes in it to make a functional and genuinely frightening, if acne-providing, Friday the 13th Jason mask.  I ate cold pieces of bologna all the time, and never came away disappointed, let alone dazed and caterwauling bile into a toilet. 

If there happened to be shredded mozzarella cheese in the fridge, and quite often there was for some reason, I would get fancy and sprinkle some of that cheese in a line along the center of the bologna slice, apply a line of mustard atop the cheese, and roll it up into a nice little enchilada.  Muy caliente!  Makes me wanna dance the lambada, senoritas!  I ate that garbage all the time and I damn well liked it.  Never again. 

Bologna that actually came from the deli and not prepackaged by Oscar Meyer was always preferable, because you got the privilege of peeling that outer layer of casing from around the bologna with your teeth, and then you had a pink stringy pig cord suitable for forming a gross bracelet out of or whipping your dining companion with before popping it in your mouth and whisking it away to its intended destination. 

I’d remembered deli bologna as being the height of cold cut tastiness, and it was from the deli that I purchased my ill-fated compressed hog swimsuit areas last night.  It didn’t taste how I remembered it, yet not in any way I could be called upon to describe.  At once different and same, right and wrong.  The remainder of the evening, blissfully, remains a blur.  All that remains is a general sense of not enjoying my weekend, then shuddering in bed while my wife comforted me while simultaneously watching DVR’ed episodes of “The Bonnie Hunt Show”, which proved a relaxing background to lapse into a bologna-barf coma with.  I feel confident had she been privy to last night’s discomfort, Bonnie Hunt would have considerately applied a cold cloth to my forehead and the back of my neck while cooing motherly sounds of sympathy and encouragement. 

So it remains to be seen how this will affect my ability to eat hot dogs, let alone Vienna sausages (another occasional childhood snack I used to like sometimes), and pork products in general.  Bologna, when you get down to brass tacks, is just a big flat circle of hot dog, though unlike franks bologna is rarely eaten hot, and never as far as I know with ketchup, mustard, and relish.  But it shares with hot dogs that dank snap, that lazy zest, an irresistible stink of a taste that well complements the always pleasant act of  eating outdoors.  My feeling is that hot dogs and bologna are just different enough beasts that I think I’ll be able to suck down a dog or three before long, although I can tell you that I’m not going to want one anytime soon.  My relationship with bacon or sausage shouldn’t be affected; despite hailing from the same source, neither taste like bologna, and stake their roots in an entirely different (and, let’s face it, superior) meal.  Bologna is one of those foods that belongs squarely on your lunchtime plate.  It is a lunchmeat.  Perhaps the fact that I was attempting to eat it for supper was what caused all the problems.  No, I’ve had it for supper before.  This was a belated loss of innocence, or in any event a reminder that there are once-comforting experiences that can never, and should never, be reaccessed. 

If and when I father one or more children, will I permit them to eat bologna?  That’s a really good question, and one I’ve been wrestling with ever since I finished that last paragraph.  I can only imagine that I will, mainly because I foresee myself being walked all over by even the least demanding of offspring, but it won’t be easy to keep my mouth shut about the inevitable eventual aftereffects.  Is it better to devise a clear-cut bologna timeline for my child in the interest of sparing him or her from a similar ordeal, or to let the chips fall where they may and hope for my child either a lifetime of bologna-eating uninterupted by puking or an outright distaste for the cold cut?  Neither potential outcome seems likely, given my genetic makeup. 

I have a lot to learn, and the road to knowledge is long and strewn with unappealing obstacles.  But something I now know for a fact is that I am never going to eat bologna again. 

Adieu, old friend.  And fuck off.

I HAVE A DILLY OF A DING-DONG.

My wife is watching “Lost” and I don’t wanna do the dishes or take down the Christmas tree so my only recourse is to wring a limp blog out of an all-but-empty brain.  I did end up taking a few asinine pictures during my uneventful mall trip a week ago.  Let’s regard them.

Before we even went to the mall, I had some time to kill so through the Oriental art of origami I decided to fashion a cool gun out of the smooth paper strip thingy that you peel off the Netflix envelope when you’re ready to send your movie back.  I put very little thought into it but as you can see the results are breathtaking.  Look how threatening it looks when laid alongside the knife I use to cut cheese.  In hindsight I should have taken these along with me on my mall trip so I could mug old people for their Social Security pittances.  

I felt the knife was hogging the spotlight in that last photo, so here’s one of just the gun.  Even still, you really had to experience the Netflix gun in real life to fully grasp its magnitude.  My wife is going to be nonplussed that I posted not one but two pictures of this.  For one reason or another I couldn’t seem to get her very excited about the Netflix gun.  Man, I need a new camera; why have none of you purchased me one?

These dogs live across the street from us.  They’re awesome and I wish they belonged to us.  They pretty much just stay in their own yard and don’t hassle anyone.  We got to pat them once and their fur was luxuriant to the touch.  

All right, now we’re at the mall.  This is some picture I took of an advertisement that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  This kid has some mighty lofty plans!  I advise that we stay out of her way and let her do what she needs to do!

Here is something for children to sit on while being mechanically jerked forward in a vague approximation of a circle for three minutes to the accompaniment of a tinny rendition of “I Went to the Animal Fair”.  I don’t know how to turn the picture right side up; don’t you think I tried?  

So remember that “Movies America” store I was looking forward to browsing in?  Yeah, well, here it is.  Either they’re experimenting with a new redecorating motif that, I have to say, looks to be pretty goshdarn underwhelming, or they’ve closed, no doubt due to the overzealous and downright threatening store manager whose sales technique more or less consisted of running around the store jamming VHS copies of “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling” up people’s butts and shrieking “BUY THIS OR I’LL KILL YOU!”  Oh well, easy come easy go.  Wonder what they did with all those tapes.  :(

One thing I did learn during this otherwise knowledge-free mall trip was that old people aren’t screwing around when they go to the mall during non-peak hours to exercise.  They’re there to get in shape!  You got to get the fuck out of their way!  This couple passed me many, many times, briskly, and would no doubt have shoved me to the floor or into Bath & Body Works had I presented more of an obstruction to them.  I would guess that these folks are there every morning, clopping down the aisles without a care in the world.  Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture of him in action, but whenever the old guy would pass a kiosk manned by someone he knew, which was often, he would snap his fingers at them and say “Yoo-hoo”, and the kiosk employee would animatedly reply “Hey Mr. Whateverhisnamewas”.  I found it charming.  The mall in the morning is the place to be for old codgers.  A ton of them were in the food court, eating McDonald’s and shootin’ the shit.  It looked like a pretty good deal.  I eavesdropped a little on one of the tables in passing, and I swear to you they were heatedly discussing Norman Schwarzkopf.

We made spaghetti a few days ago and evidently Annie photographed it.  It was good, better than this picture would suggest.  Looking at that spaghetti is making me a little queasy now.  I think the green beans come off well, though.  We very rarely take it upon ourselves to cook a meal but we made this one together and it was enjoyable and rewarding.  Who knows what responsibility we’ll tackle next?  Why, perhaps we’ll even pay a bill.  

That’s it for the mall pictures.  I know, pretty slim pickings, but they’re better than a finger in the eye, ain’t they?  Annie was able to find glasses that look exactly like her old ones did, and the glasses place made them fairly quickly, so I went back to work for a couple hours, which of course sucked but they were busy so I was happy to provide some much needed assistance for a few hours, and what little remained of the workday blew by.  

I remember virtually nothing about what might have happened on Thursday or Friday (it really is as if the days never showed up at all), but on Saturday we decided to get out of the apartment and gad about the town.  Went to the library and took out seven or eight books (all of which sucked within seconds of opening them), had some mediocre Chinese food (not a complaint, mind you; mediocre Chinese food is still delicious), and took in a matinee of “I Love You, Man”.  For once the audience, by and large, did not flap their yaps during the movie or check their despicable cellphones every two seconds, and we were all able to enjoy a harmless and funny film.  

But when we got home and prepared to ascend the death-defying staircase that leads to our apartment, we had THIS waiting for us:

Who made it, and what could it mean?  It’s unnerving, is what it is!  As if we don’t have enough problems, now Andy Goldsworthy is stalking us?  It’s no doubt some form of hex, and we can only await the dire misfortune that is sure to befall us at any moment.  Despite its not uninteresting structure, I’ve knocked it apart and scattered the rocks.  If a new “sculpture” appears in its place my plan is to jump into the river and drown myself.  Stay tuned!

MALL INSTEAD OF WORK TOMORROW!

My wife smashed herself in the face with a basketball at the gym last week and I have to drive her to the eye doctor and glasses store in the mall tomorrow, which if all goes according to plan will enable me to miss a goodly portion of the workday.  Though her misfortune resulted in the destruction of what were widely regarded, not without reason, as the lone pair of eyeglasses on God’s green earth perfectly suited to her adorable face, still I am quite pleased with my wife for braining herself with playground equipment, as I would way rather go to the mall than go to work. 

 

Not to toot the horn of the Bangor Mall (it’s your average charmless, slapped-together eyesore of chintzy corridors populated with stores that don’t sell anything you need or want), but I’ll cop to feelings of fondness for it, like I imagine you do when it comes to the mall you grew up getting dragged to by your friends.  I look forward to wandering around the mall on an early Wednesday morning, when it’ll probably just be me, young moms with strollers, and maybe a few senior citizens getting some exercise.  I am excited to go to B. Dalton and gloss over the coffee table books languishing on the remainder table.  I eagerly anticipate going to Spencer Gifts and regarding their array of overreachingly offensive tee-shirts, novelty pills that purport to encourage erections and arousal fluid, and plastic obese men that pull down their pants and pass wind in your face when you press a button.  Sometimes it’s fun to go to Hot Topic and just stand there, processing your feelings.  I may go to a shoe store and walk around, simply because I like the smell of shoes.  I will get to buy a foofy coffee and walk around drinking it while I do all of this; that will improve the experience even further.  I will probably go to GameSpot and talk myself out of buying a Wii game, either out of thrift or more likely because I will not want to talk to the guy behind the counter, who will try to get me to subscribe to a costly and unreadable magazine, and who will smell like taurine and pewy armpits.  I will not go into the following stores: JC Penney, Sears, Macy’s (although we will probably enter the mall via their befuddling and terrible establishment), Pac Sun, Lane Bryant, Build-A-Bear, Deb (despite the fact that I bought a pretty nice sweater there once), or Radio Shack.  In spite of its deafening music, vapid patrons, and overall gayness, I may briefly go into Abercrombie and Fitch because I once bought the best-fitting and hardiest jeans I have ever owned there and ever since I misplaced those jeans (who loses jeans?  me, that’s who!) I’ve been every so often lackadaisically pondering the shelves of A&F to reclaim them, with little success.  I’ve also heard that A&F is now hiring shirtless men to stand around and be shirtless and, one hopes, to approach people with a beaming, friendly smile to ask if they need any help or if they have any questions, such as “where’s your shirt?” for example.  That seems like it might be sexy, I mean funny, whoops.  It’s possible, though not probable, that I will go to GNC and look at a drink called Redline that is supposed to make you crazy and should only be imbibed if you are about to lift a bunch of weights, which it turns out I am not about to do, yet I like heavily caffeinated drinks and have been unable to stifle my curiosity in spite of several online testamonials advising readers to stay away, stay far away.  I will probably have to make a stop at Movies America, the last remaining vestige for the Bangor area VHS consumer, though it will be a severely truncated visit if the creepy guy who walks around asking people “why aren’t you buying more stuff?” is working there tomorrow.  Yes, he really asks that very question, verbatim, and it is impossible to tell if he is joking.  Furthermore, all of the people besides myself who are still buying VHS tapes are horrifying and insane., so that doesn’t help my comfort.  Well, I’m sure I’m leaving out a lot of fun things that I plan to do tomorrow at the mall while waiting for Annie’s eye appointment to be done, but there’s a few for starters and for no good reason. 

The difficult task of the day will be finding the perfect replacement frames for Annie.  Her glasses were good friends to her and she is pretty stressed out about the very conceivable lack of selection we may be faced with tomorrow, though I would imagine she is looking forward to being able to see again, and I’ve no doubt that through a solid bout of heavy duty browsing we can find her some frames that are every bit as good if not better than the old ones.  I recently had to get new glasses myself, as I had not changed my prescription since, oh, high school I believe?  Getting new glasses is an ordeal and a half.  It’s very tiresome taking off and putting on one dumb set of frames after another, squinting like a doofus into a mirror and repeatedly reaffirming the fact that you’re one silly-looking son of a bitch, especially with these three-to-four-hundred-dollar plastic things scrunched onto your nose. 

Eyes are pretty faulty organs, and I’d like to take this opportunity to complain about them at length.  The one good thing about having glasses is that the lenses provide a helpful barrier against crazy people who want to walk up to you and stab you in the eye with a pencil.  You unfortunate souls with perfectly functional eyes can call me a poindexter all you like, but don’t ask me to lead you to the emergency room once your ocular guts are dangling off the end of that crazy homeless person’s expertly honed Mead number two.  My point is your eyes are basically right out there pleading to be haphazardly punctured.  Even taking unsound, office supply wielding transients out of the equation, on your daily jaunts you could easily run afoul of a errant pointed object or even a careless bird, and bob’s your uncle, you’re the cyclops from “Krull”; ta-ta eye.  Never leave bed is the moral.   

It plagues me that my eyesight is so bad, and that it has become considerably worse over the past few years.  As I said, I went to the eye doctor myself a few weeks ago, and the prescription I was given afterwards looked absolutely nothing like my old one.  My right eye may as well be a gobstopper for all the good it’s doing me.  I just found a website that seems to claim to be able to correct vision via some type of relaxation sessions, reducing ones dependency on glasses.  I cannot be called upon to retain or pay attention to a lick of it, but take a gander if you like.  It can’t be any crazier than anything else.  I might look at it later once I’m done typing this thing and if my wife insists on watching “Charlie Rose” tonight, thus leaving me devoid of suitable entertainment (she taped her old glasses together seemingly for the sole purpose of watching “Charlie Rose”).  Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be very gratifying to be interviewed by Charlie Rose, but his show makes me extremely tired, though perhaps I ought to be blaming that on the hour at which PBS historically chooses to broadcast it.  At any rate, be it noon or midnight, it’s soothing to the max.

He’s beautiful!  I’m talkin’ about a Charlie Rose!

Anyway, that’s about it.  I just wanted to take this time to tell you all that I’m going to the mall tomorrow, and to post pictures of an eye diagram and public television talk show host Charlie Rose.  I may take the camera along tomorrow and take a bunch of electrifying mall pictures to share with you, but I make no promises, as often I find that I do this thing where I say I’ll do something and then I don’t end up doing it.  A strange and compelling habit that quite honestly I haven’t been getting a lot of positive feedback on.  Well, to each their own, I say.  Good night, all!