Last night, trying to sleep, M and I heard a faint beeping noise. It was pretty steady and high pitched. We have very thick walls between our home and the neighbors. We never hear babies crying or dogs barking or anything else exciting. This was different. I went outside to see if this was coming from next door or maybe outside. Sure enough it was coming from the empty unit to our left and it sounded like a smoke alarm. I don’t know what these people do, and they seem nice enough. They keep some odd hours. They’re home during the day sometimes and gone at night, taking separate cars. Anyway, last night, while alarms were going off in their house, no one was home. The owner is on the condo board, so I went to ask some board members if they knew how to get in touch with them – no luck there. You’d have thought I was soliciting money for the kegs n legz fund based on their reactions though. So the house next door might be burning up and they’re not home, what should be done? We called the fire department, who arrived promptly and decided to look around and when no visible smoke was available, declined to break down the door to find the cause of the alarm. They asked that we keep an eye open for smoke and go back to whatever we were doing. Ok, I’ll go to sleep with a fire next to my head. Sweet. Turns out it was most likely a dead battery or something similarly lame. Another unnecessary awkward interaction with our fellow homeowners. I guess it’ll be a big laugh at the next block party that we skip. Good to know the town has a decent (sub 5 minute) response time. Sorry we rousted you, fellas.
I ate an ‘Angry Whopper’ recently. I don’t eat a lot of fast food anymore. I eat a lot of what people would consider healthy/hippie/yuppie foods, vegetables, whole grains, low or no sugar, minimally processed stuff. I’m not a zealot. I don’t preach to others. I ate whatever I wanted for years and I was fine. It just happens that I tend to feel better overall when I stick to these kinds of foods. I was excited to eat the Angry Whopper. I love the Whopper Jr. In general, I prefer Burger King to other fast food places. The flamey taste and creative sandwiches keep them in my good graces. The Angry Whopper commercials promised pissed off onions raised on fear and animus. The man on TV ate one and then poured ice in his mouth afterwards. There were jalapenos on the Angry Whopper. I asked for recommendations from the counter staff and a helpful teenager vowed for its feistiness. Another wouldn’t eat it because of his bleeding ulcers. Why a teenager has bleeding ulcers, I have no idea, but no Angry Whoppers for him. I was hungry and wanted to dance with six bucks worth of snorting, Roger Clemens with liniment everywhere, roid raging Angry Whopper. It was fine. The onions were sleep deprived instead of angry. I saw jalapenos, but couldn’t feel their sting. The brown sauce had some snap, but I wasn’t rushing for the ice machine. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. A truly enraged whopper would probably give Daisy Mae a heart attack and the King would be out on the street. It wasn’t as disappointing as the spicier but less biologically friendly spicy baconator, which I didn’t want to finish, but I had high hopes here. I have plans for a truly malevolent burger to be released this summer. To be continued…
I had an existential crisis at work recently. I’ve written about the Wii that they bought for us and the ‘team building’ and camaraderie it’s brought. I have to say that it really does bring people together that normally wouldn’t interact and for that it has served its purpose. The most popular game for it has become the bowling. The guitar heroes were a little too heroic and scared off the less intense players, so most people gravitate to the less intense, but more competitive bowling. It allows for a bit of one up-mans-ship and you can bang out a frame in 20 minutes or less. I’d played at Thanksgiving and then Again at Christmastime at an off-site location and got the hang of the bowling a little earlier than the others and soon I was dominating. I had the coveted ‘pro’ status and the blinged-out ball that comes with it. I rolled through the first few rounds of the company tournament, crushing my opponents and talking tons of trash. Then I lost. My game stopped working. I have no idea what happened. I lost in the finals to a chump, a part time player who can’t break 200. My fans were shocked. Now it’s like I got off the juice and showed up at camp 30 lbs lighter and a step slower. I can’t get the big snap on my break. I’m averaging 140 and my pro status and ball are long gone. Whatever I had, it’s gone. I’m trying to rebuild myself, Steve Austin style, to be bigger, faster, better, but it’s not working. I’m looking like the early 90’s Greg Norman, minus the vineyards and mega yacht and sleek blonde locks. Maybe I can scrape together a few strong sets and catch a break or two along the way, but I fear my Wii bowling championship days are behind me. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ‘lost’ something I had. I don’t know what’s next, but the slow inevitable decline has begun. Get me my lounger, sweatpants and comb-over.
If you have a chance, and didn’t see it, try to check out Lil Wayne on the 2/10 edition of ‘Around the Horn’. ATH is a sports oriented talk show where topics of the day are argued about in a round robin format. The host scores the argument and gradually the 4 sportswriter participants are eliminated and the last man (or woman) standing gets 30 seconds to speak their mind. If you don’t know, Lil Wayne is a New Orleans based rapper with a few Grammys to his name. Born in 1982, he’s been a paid performer since he was 15 and had been arrested multiple times for possessing large quantities of drugs. I mention his youth and criminal record not to disparage the man, but to point out he was going up against several middle aged men who write professionally for major newspapers and have won awards for their reporting. Lil Wayne also recently received an Aston Martin from his father for either being nominated for 8 Grammys or being clean of Lean for 30 days. What’s lean? Lean is a drink consisting of Codeine-laced cough syrup/sizzurp (this is important!), Sprite (or other fruit flavored soda), and a jolly rancher or two, you know, for extra flavor. It’s not a performance enhancer in the A-Rod sense, probably more in the Michael Phelps neighborhood. Anyway, while I was listening to ATH on a podcast, I was curious about Mr. Wayne’s sports commenting abilities. I know he wrote a few blogs for ESPN, so he had to have some credibility, but how would years of touring and lean affect Weezy? I guess they didn’t. Lil Wayne was well thought out and made some excellent points and even though the event was rigged, I enjoyed listening to him more than some of the resident experts on that show. So if you’re reading this and saw a guy in a bright yellow jacket laughing hysterically to himself on the train this morning, it was probably me. As an aside, I read that the owner of the Phelps bong tried to sell it on EBay for $100,000.00! Amazing. The police did end up confiscating it. I guess South Carolina is a little different from Northern California when it comes to this sort of thing…
I’ve seen a few movies recently, although none were really worth commenting about at length. I’ll try for a sentence or two… ‘Appaloosa’ - Entertaining Wild West shoot ‘em up. Renee Zelwegger without the scrunchy face. Vigo Mortensen without any embarrassing steam room fight scenes. Good stuff. ‘Barcelona’ – Two guys in 1980s Barcelona want to get some Spanish girlfriends. Kind of weird. ‘Volver’ – Penelope Cruz and a bunch of other people in Madrid have some family issues and deal with them in their own special way. Entertaining, with subtitles. I do appreciate how foreign movies sometimes deal with subjects that would get an American movie a NC-17 rating, but since there are subtitles, the censors probably fall asleep or assume most Americans can’t read and let all sorts of wildness slide. ‘He’s just not that into you’ – Once again my corollary about girl movies having no men’s room lines came true. This was better than most romantic comedy fare and had a few legitimate laughs in it. There’s a lot of truth in here too, which I appreciated. ‘Half Nelson’ - The guy from ‘The notebook’ decides to teach high school history and smoke some crack along the way. Not uplifting, but thought provoking.
I made a new toy for the monkey bars routine. I had an old deflated basketball that I filled with sand and covered with tape and now serves as a medicine ball of sorts. I was surprised at how much sand went in there, considering that I bought a 50lb bag (which wasn’t very big, but was suitably heavy). Most of the sand ended up in the ball, which was 3-5 times heavier than most regulation medicine balls. Coming in at a hefty 36lbs, this is not appropriate for most medicine ball exercises which consist of throwing the ball to someone else (have you even thrown something weighing close to 40lbs at someone?) or doing athletic movements with the ball. The weight isn’t really a setback though, since the unconventional shape and surface require strength and movements that I hadn’t used previously. I’m very happy with it so far. I say so far because I know I’m going to drop it on my face one of these days and seriously regret the ‘if a little is good, a lot must be better’ approach I took to making it. I know it’s a little old school, but I’m not going to be growing any handlebar mustaches or sporting any single shoulder unitards like a circus strongman anytime soon. Eugene Sandow can rest peacefully. I am considering using another 50lb sack of sand as a heavy bag to pick up and carry around, but I need to construct something that will hold together if and when I drop it. I suspect the paper bag it comes in isn’t up to the task.
Last but not least, I’m going to be an uncle. The younger male sibling has announced his intentions to populate the world with his progeny. I’m happy for him and the rest of the world. We need more stable, intelligent children to compete with the California octobabies. This will mark the 20th!! child whose parents are friends/relatives/coworkers I am on friendly terms with. You want a kid, become my friend by March 1st and chances are you’ll be claiming another dependent for your 2009 taxes. I should start a facebook group and charge admission.
