See You In The Funny Pages

What's up, blogkateers? What should I call my legions of adoring fans, anyway? Squeegee Nation? Squeegeeheads? The Dirty Half-Dozen?

Maybe I should put more thought into this. Or maybe I've given it too much thought as it is.

Well, whoever you are, this comic appeared in over over 450 newspapers across the country two weeks ago:



Now, local sports anchor Bob Lobel is filing a libel suit against Get Fuzzy creator Darby Conley.

The comic never actually says he's drunk, only that it looks that way. And he does look drunk half the time, as anyone in New England whose seen him on TV in the past few years can attest. People reading this in the rest of the country don't even know who he is, they probabally thought it was a made-up name. He could have just let it go, since most people would have forgotten about it five seconds after they read it, if they even read it at all. But now he's drawing all kinds of attention to the strip and himself.

A Google search for Bob Lobel drunk came up with 781 results. This one was among the more entertaining. I hope he realizes that in order for it to be libel, it has to be false.

My brother's going to his prom tonight with the Emo girl. Full report Monday whenever I get around to it.

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Scott the Fish

A poem that may or may not rhyme, depending on what region you're from.

While I was sailing in my yacht
counting all the fish I'd caught
to see if they were too small or not
and throwing them into the boiling pot
I came across a fish named Scott
Scott grabbed the fancy lure I bought
And twisted it into a double knot
And sounding not the least distraught
Yelled, "Put me back, you drunken sot!
For I'm the mighty fish juggernaught
And not as weak as you have thought
I'm much tougher than other fish you've fought
I may be small and I may be squat
but mess with me and you're bound to rot.
So heed this lesson you've been taught!!!"
So I cut his stupid fish head off. God I hate talking fish.

I wrote that a few months ago, after a long and ultimately unfulfulling online conversation with someone from another part of the country. It stemmed from a test to see if you were Yankee or Dixie, based on how you pronounce certain words. One of the questions was, "Do you pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' the same way?" I thought it was a trick question. How else would you pronounce them? Four pages of explanation later I still hadn't found out.

Since I don't feel like writing anything new today, here are a few highlights from that conversation. My comments are in bold.

Cot and caught. Explain that please. As far as I know, they both rhyme with "hot." Which is the one that doesn't? Do you pronounce the "g"?

How do you say "ought?" as in "you ought to do that?' With an "aw" sound. Cot is like hot, while caught is like ought.

I say ought the same as caught
I say caught the same as hot
I say hot the same as bought
I didn't know there were those who did not.

So you say ought as 'ot' and not 'awt'?

More like hot and hawt sound the same to me. I have no idea what "ot" would sound like. Oat? This doesn't really work in writing...

The o in ot is like the robot or the o in ox.

They're still all the same to me.

So...when you say awe, it sounds similar to hot? Remember the Alanis Morrisette song, "You oughta know"? you say cot like she says ought?

Yes. How do you say it, as in a real world reference like that song?

Cot sounds like cop with a t instead of a p or even like got.

I'm going to give this "cot" and "caught" thing one more try, only because I think I figured it out. All this time we've been trying to find out how I say these words, but we weren't getting anywhere because I say them all the same, with a short "o" sound. If an "a" is placed next to a "u" or a "w," it makes an o sound, such as saw and raw. I couldn't even imagine another way to pronounce it, until I heard some roudy and probably drunk people on the train ride home. So the midwestern types, do you say "caught" the same way someone with an extreme Boston accent would say "cart" (cahht?) As in, closer in sound to cat than hot?

Yes, like an extreme form of cart. Long vowel sound. And au and aw do not make an 'o' sound. How do you say the word 'maw' as in... I looked into the maw of a lion? if it is different than the way you say cot... that is the same way caught is pronounced. Or a crow... caws.

If I'm saying "ah," my mouth is open wide. If i'm saying "aw" it's smaller and more circular. That's why the dentist doesn't say "open wide and say "awww." I give up. They all sound the same. Thanks anyway.

If anyone reading this pronounces all those words differently, please do NOT try to explain to me how you say them differently in writting, because I'm just going to read it the way I pronounce it and it won't get us anywhere.

Anyway, the biggest difference in regional dialects is the use of the word "y'all." Y'all was created out of necessity for a word meaning the plaural of you. It can be confusing if you say "you" in a room full of people. There's no way for them to know if you meant you as a whole, or just one of them. So down South, they came up with "y'all." My dad says "yous," but that just doesn't sound right unless it's followed by "mugs". So I just say "you guys." Maybe it's from watching the Electric Company, reenforced by The Goonies.



That reminds me...just when I finally got Hulkster in Heaven out of my head, my cousin has me listen to a song about a midget. I'd never listen to hip-hop without getting coerced into it, but any song that samples Sloth is okay by me.

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A Quarter-Century, Plus One

Michele got me a sweet 5 megapixel digital camera for my birthday. I haven't had a chance to really test it out yet, but no more disposable cameras for me. I'll be playing with it all this week, so any pictures I put up in the future will be from the new camera. Maybe I'll even update the Pictures section with a few photos and the long-promised sketches and drawings. You can only look at that coloring book so many times.

I've now seen Revenge of the Sith three times, and I'll probably see it at least one more time in the theater. Not because I'm obsessed with it or anything, I just keep seeing it with different people. The first time, it was just me and Michele. Then it turned out that Mr. Schprock's daughter couldn't go, so he had an extra ticket.

I'm glad I went that second time, not only because I appriciated the movie more the second time, but also because on the train ride home I witnessed some classic crazy person shenanigans. For most of the trip, there was a white-haired man sitting quietly across from me. He looked to be in his sixties, with no distinguishing characteristics that I could see. He looked like everybody's grandfather. But that image quickly evaporated when he appeared to raise his eyebrows at me. At first I shrugged it off. We were at a stop and the doors were open, so maybe it was meant for someone behind me. But then he stood up and walked over to the middle-aged woman sitting next to me and asked, "Do you want me to take me shoes off so you can see my tooooeeeesss?"

That was a little weird, but then he started walking around the car, doing everything he can to make Dennis Rodman look normal. I knew as it was happening that I was witnessing a blog-worthy event, so I found a pen and wrote down his mad ramblings on a newspaper. The first three before he decided to bother the nice people on the other end of the car were:

Take this job and shove it!

Einstein's theory of reading a book!

Looking into the future through someone else's nose!

My brother Ryan hadn't seen the movie yet, so Michele and I went with him on Sunday. My parents were out when we bought the tickets, and we didn't know when they were going to be back, meaning Brianna would have to come with us. She's usually well-behaved in the theater, so that wasn't a problem, but I was a little worried that some of the darker moments in the film might be too much for her. But it didn't affect her at all. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

I know she's not completely desensitized, because the end scene in Gremlins when Stripe melts in the water fountain completely terrified her. As did the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazi guy's face melts off. I know this because I showed her both of those, not the whole movies, just those particular scenes, when she was acting up one time. I thought it was a pretty good alternative to physical punishment, but I still got in trouble for doing it anyway.

She really is a good kid, but sometimes she just talks too much. she usually comes running into the room and says, "Mommy! Mommy! I have to tell you something. It's important!" And then she says something like, "I saw a dog today, and it was brown." That's not important, important is, "my kidney just ruptured!" She said it at dinner at my parents' house Sunday, and I asked if it was really important. She said no, and then decided not to say anything at all.

But that was even worse, because my curiousity had been piqued. What was she going to say? I really wanted to know, and there was a chance I'd never know because I told her it wasn't important. Crap. It was killing me. I had to know.

I went down stairs and spent about fifteen minutes begging her to tell me what she was going to say. But she just kept giggling and running away. Oh, she's good. But I was determined to get it out of her.

She was watching Spongebob, as she had been for the past twelve hours. Seriously, It was on all freaking day. I don't hate Spongebob, it's just that I've seen all of them 8,000 times now, becase all she ever watches is Nickelodeon. While I was trying to get her to tell me what she was going to say, I looked up at the TV. It's the one were Mr. Krabs keeps the Krusty Krab open 24 hours. How many times can they show ...wait. This isn't the same one. Huh. I hadn't seen this one before. Brianna informed me that it was new, and that her and her mom watched it together on Friday night. I sat on the couch and started watching it. While I was watching, Brianna decided to tell me what she was going to say earlier, except I wasn't paying attention because I was watching the show.

Huh? What? What did you say? Aw, dammit! I'm dying here! I asked her to say it again.

"I said, I don't like strawberries, but I'm going to try those chocolate ones."

Have you ever felt satisfied and disappointed at the same time?

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Star Wars, Nothing But Star Wars

I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie, but there's a scene in Revenge of the Sith where Mace Windu's uplifting speech to the Jedi Council is interrupted when he is eaten by a shark.


I'm sorry. It's been six years now and I still can't forgive that movie. They made the sharks' brains larger and as a "side effect," they got smarter. That's not a side effect, that's a direct effect! It's like, "Hey this is weird, we made the sharks' bladders bigger and as a side effect, they don't have to pee as much!" What was the point of making their brains bigger, anyway? Morons.

I went with Michele to see Episode III last night. I bought the tickets online a few days ago, so all I had to do was flash my ATM card at the ticket counter and she handed me my tickets. That was the first time I'd purchased tickets that way. It was a little weird, because I didn't even tell her what movie or what time, or even how many tickets. The computer just...knew. Eerie. Anyway, Michele went into the theater to get seats while I stood in line at the concession stand, where the following exchange toook place:

"Hi. I'd like a medium white cherry slushy thing."

"We only have small and large. The other machine is broken."

"Oh...I guess I'll have a large, then."

I still have no idea what that could have possibly meant. Medium's not a flavor, it's a size. Was that guy the dumbest person on the planet, or the smartest? Think about it. I was so confused by what he said that he got me to upgrade to a large, even though I saw a stack of medium-sized cups over by the nachos (movie nachos...now with "real" cheese.)

I got my large Slushee and found Michele in the theater. There were still over twenty minutes until the movie started, which seemed like hours since there was only half a dozen of those Moviewatcher Network slides that kept cycling through over and over again. Leonardo DiCaprio's high school year book picture is now burned into my retinas. After the slides came the Pre-Show Countdown, which had a featurette about Cinderella Man. When Ron Howard appeared on screen the guys behind us screamed. "Gaaah!" It was priceless. Ron Howard is great, but he actually looks older than Tom Bosley now. And because of his excessive cap-wearing, his face from the nose down was pink and pale white from the nose up. "Gaaah!"

After a few previews, (Does anyone else think Stealth looks like an evil version of Flight of the Navigator? Just throwing it out there.) that familiar green Lucasfilm logo flashed on the screen. It was time for the show. The movie really is much better than the first two prequels (I know that's not saying much). But it does still suffer from some of the lingering effects of them. For instance, at the beginning of the movie, Anikin, Obi-Wan and R2D2 are fighting some battle droids. These things are supposed to be the cold, emotionless enemy. They should be frightening, but they're basically only there for comic relief. And they have ridiculous voices! Whoever did the voice casting for this movie should be, I don't know, told they're not very good at their job. That'd show them.

The worst is General Grievous' voice. Remember Boss Nass from Phantom Menace? That's pretty much what Grievous sounds like. It's a shame, because he's an otherwise cool bad guy. But at any given moment you're half-expecting him to call a truce and say "Maybe weesa beein friends," or maybe, "I am the bounty of Stop & Shop."

Maybe I'm just complaining because I've always really liked robots and it was a little insulting to give them idiotic voices and turn them into the bionic Keystone Kops. That being said, there was some funny moments in the opening there, even though I still say they were unnecessary. And after those scenes the rest of the movie really takes off. Keep an eye out for the Millenium Falcon after the rescue scene. I won't say too much more about it as far as plot, because I don't want to ruin the movie. That doesn't really leave me with too much to talk about, though.

I like the movie. I'm even seeing it again tonight. But there are still some kinks to work out. Most of them have to do with continuity. The technology in the prequels is cool, but a lot of it doesn't really make sense because these movies are supposed to take place before the original trilogy. When Padme is giving birth (you didn't hear it from me, but she has twins) there's a couple of hovering droids acting as midwives. That reminds me, did you hear about the time Elmer Fudd panicked when he was asked to help deliver a baby? He had a midwife crisis. Sorry. Anyway, the droids looked light-years more advanced then that greenish-blue medic droid with the old timey microphone for a mouth that gave Luke his new hand in Empire. The droids in the prequels should have looked more like the obsolete ones that were in the Jawa Sandcrawler or the scrap heap in Jabba's palace. I mean, R2D2 can fly in these movies! He does it again in this one, and nothing happens during the course of the movies to change that. You know, like if his rocket pack got damaged in battle or if he had to sell it on the black market to pay off 3P0's debts to Lou Bacca the Bookie. Oh yeah, most people don't know this, but 3P0 has a gambling problem. He acts all proper, but when no one's looking, he's down at the track or putting money on bare knuckle unlicensed boxing matches. But nothing like that happens. At the end of the movie, he still has the ability to fly. Maybe later on he forgets he could do that. Or maybe it works like Roger Rabbit.

Luke: Wait a second. Are you telling me that you could just fly out of here at any time?

R2D2: Beep boop beep boop beep

C3P0: R2 says, "Not just any time, only when it was funny."

When the clone troopers are on the Wookiee planet Kashyyyk, they are cleverly decked out in camouflage. While they look cool and it makes every bit of sense to dress in camouflage while you're stationed in the jungle, it doesn't make sense in this movie because later on in Return of the Jedi all the Stormtroopers are wearing bright white. That's sort of a step backwards, isn't it?

"Hey guys, instead of wearing these silly green and brown suits that perfectly blend in with the surroundings, let's all wear blinding bright white suits!"

"Great idea! That way, we'd be able to see each other a mile away! You're a genious!"

"Well, we're all clones, so technically, so are you!"

People wonder how the Empire could have been defeated by a bunch of ewoks. That's how. While we're on the subject, I've got to go on record as an ewok supporter. Return of the Jedi will always be my favorite Star Wars movie because it's the first one I ever saw in the theater. I grew up with that movie and I never knew the little guys were so reviled until the special editions of the original trilogy came out. I always liked the fact that these primitive little creatures were able to defeat the high-tech gadgets of the Empire. And even if they were only created to be marketed to kids, those two TV Ewok movies with Drew Barrymore were DARK. Or at least the second one was. A whole bunch of ewoks die in the first one, and the second one starts with the little girl's brother and parents getting killed. I haven't seen them in ages, but if I remember, the brother was a main character in the first one, so for him to just die in the next one was pretty shocking for kiddie fare. They could get away with a lot more in kids' movies back then. I wonder if The Secret of NIHM would still get a G rating if it came out today. I think the general feeling was that as long as the main characters where cute and fuzzy, it didn't matter how dark the subject matter was. Have you ever seen Watership Down? Holy crap!

During that fight on Kashyyyk, we finally get to see Chewbacca. It was great to see him up on the screen again, but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the trilogy either. In this movie, Chewie is in the Wookiee army. I don't remember if they gave his rank, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't just some grunt. He was definitely one of the higher-ups. Yoda even knew who he was. The problem with that is, when we see him again in A New Hope he's basically just Han Solo's sidekick. How did he go from being a major player in his planet's battle during the Clone Wars to playing second fiddle to a spice smuggler with seemingly no political affiliation? Maybe we'd know if we spoke Wookiee...

Two of the more questionable plot points from Phantom Menace are used together in this movie in a way that actually makes sense. I won't say what they are, but if you paid attention, at one point you'll sit back in you're chair and go, "Oh, that's what that's all about." I promise there really is a part of the movie like that, and this isn't some lame "riddle" like what are the three words that end in "gry."

Overall, the movie was great, especially the last half hour or so. It ends with a couple of familiar scenes and I left the theater feeling pretty good. But I still don't think it made any sense that Yoda and Obi-Wan decide to hide Luke on Tatooine, Anakin's homeworld. With his mother's family, no less. Worst. Hiding place. Ever!

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Hungry, Angry and Some Other Thing

One of the guys at work got this e-mail this morning:

A RIDDLE THAT'LL KILL YOUR BRAIN!

This is going to make you so MAD! There are three words in the English language that end in "gry". ONE is angry and the other is hungry. EveryONE knows what the third ONE means and what it stands for. EveryONE uses them everyday, and if you listened very carefully, I've given you the third word. What is it? _______gry?

He sent it to the rest of us, but I got impatient after a couple of minutes and looked it up. Mr. Schprock was determined to come up with the answer, and spent most of the morning trying to figure it out. He asked for a few hints, but refused to be given the answer outright. Too bad Joe has the day off today (did I just say that?!) or we could have tortured him with it, too.

If you're like me, just click here for the answer and move on with your life. Otherwise, guess away.

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Dude, You Owe Us Money

I finally paid off my Dell bill last month. $0.00 owed. That's what the statement said. While that's a great load off my mind, I was a little puzzled that there was still a return envelope in there. I don't owe any more, why is there still an envelope? Do they want a tip? Do they think I'll just keep paying them for old time's sake?

Speaking of old times, remember last year I found that creepy hut of death in Bare Cove? They found two bodies in the park last week. They were found bludgeoned to death in an old military bunker. I'm going to go hide under my bed now.

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And Now, A Word You Can't Use in Scrabble

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: A morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. Also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia.

I'm not really sure how some people can be afraid of a day. I mean, it's just a day. If you're going to be afraid of something, make it something genuinely creepy, like clowns or soft sculpture mannequins.



Look at those things. They look like shriveled up dead people. Yeesh.

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I Wish Hulk's Love Could Bring You Back Again

When I think about high school, I usually go into epileptic seisures. But once those subside, I think about all the cool people I used to hang out with that I never see anymore. I was in the Graphic Arts program, and while there was a revolving cast of characters passing through there every semester, by the time senior year came around, the only ones left were myself, Journey frontman Valerie, and Jim Vento. Vento came aboard senior year, so really only me and Valerie and been there from the beginning. Vento was a cool guy. He was like this big, friendly giant. And in those post-Vanilla Ice, pre-Eminem days, it was kind of funny to see a giant, hip-hop loving white boy. Actually, that's still pretty funny, Vento was always laid back, and he's one of only a handful of people I know that actually have an honest-to-God catchphrase. I didn't know real people had those, but every afternoon he'd stroll into class and say, "What's up, kids?"

He broke my watch in ninth grade. We went on a field trip to Rocky Point, an amusement park in Rhode Island. We were actually supposed to go to Canobie Lake Park that year, but some people complained that we'd gone there for the past three years and wanted to try someplace else. So there was a vote in homeroom and the winning destination was Rocky Point. I used to go there every year with my family, but it had been a few years since my last visit and I thought it would be cool to check it out again. When the day came, less than twenty people actually showed up for the trip. Why did they pick that place if no one wanted to go? What's even more depressing, when we got there, the place looked like a ghost town. Two-thirds of the rides were closed. The House of Horrors, which I used to be too afraid to even walk by because of the decapitated viking standing on the roof, was boarded up and the cars from the ride were randomly scattered around the park. The headless viking was gone, too. (Check out this page for pictures and a history of the park and it's slow, painful demise.) On the bright side, there were hardly any lines. Vento was one of the few people that went on the trip, and we got on the Matterhorn, or the Avalanche, or some other Nordic-sounding name. Every amusement park has this ride. It's the one that spins around in circles while "The Immigrant Song" plays in a loop the whole time, then it spins backwards. Before you get in the seats, there's a little sticker that says that the smaller person is supposed to be either on the inside or the outside. I forget which, but whichever it was, I was on the wrong side, and Vento CRUSHED me. When it was over, I stumbled out and heard something fall to the ground. My watch had gotten so beat up during the ride that the pin holding it on the band fell out.

The only other kid in school with his own catchphrase was Tom Gillis. Contrary to what you may have seen in every single movie that's supposed to take place in New England, most people around here don't have overly-exaggerated Boston accents. Except Tom Gillis. He sounds exactly like that. Especially when blurting out his trademark, "Yeaaaaaah Duuuuuuude." He was in graphic arts for a couple of months. He wasn't one of the cool people I hung out with, though. He kind of sucked, actually. He was always trying to fight me. I don't know why, a light breeze could've knocked me over. It couldn't have possibly been because I was a smart ass that made fun of him all the time and laughed in his face when he hit me. Must have been some other thing.

Since there was only three of us in graphic arts, most of my friends were in other classes. Nick and Wah-Kee were down the hall in electronics, along with Jim, Mike and Jeremy. Mike was pretty cool, but then he started taking all kinds of drugs and lost his damn mind. The last time I saw him was a few years ago, when he asked me if he ever told me about the time he did a lot of acid and went into Boston. He asked about fifty times in the span of two minutes, and about as fast as that guy from the Micro Machines commercials. Drugs are bad. Mkay? Jeremy moved to Florida before we graduated, but his cousin stuck around. Jose had a bit of a crush on her, but I think I'll stay away from that topic to avoid any future retribution.

Jose was in drafting. Like Vento, he started out in the "regular" high school. I don't know what made him decide, "Not enough people hate me. I know! I'll join the Voc!" but I'll bet he's glad he did, or else he never would have met characters like Ed, who is engaged to a new girl every time we see him, and the enigmatic trio of Frank, Shannanannahan and Arb. Arb (an acronym of her first, middle and last name) was constantly harassed by Frank and Shanahan, perhaps a bit more so by Shanahan. It didn't take a degree in loveolgy to see that underneath all the name calling and bickering was a Moonlighting-level lust bubble about to burst into some hot, steamy, geek-on-geek action. Oddly enough, that same sexual tension seemed to be around any combination of two of the three; Shanahan and Arb, Frank and Arb, Frank and Shanahan...It almost seemed as though Shanahan needed Frank's approval before he could do anything, and it was not uncommon for him to finish his sentences with, "right, Frank?" He was like that little yapping dog from the Bugs Bunny cartoons that used to jump up and down and excitedly ask the big dog what they were going to do.

"Whaddya wanna do, Spike? Huh, Spike, huh? Whaddya wanna do?"

Frank was Spike, the big dog that always swatted him away. But who knows, maybe they're all living together now in creepy harmony.

They were all cool, though. These were my people. But then there's Meathead. Meathead thought the girls that sang MMMbop were hot. Meathead changed jobs like most people change their underwear, and used his money on weird things like a remote control car and a police scanner. That's Meathead for you. He found an underclassman to go to the prom with, and she only agreed because she really wanted to go, but couldn't unless a senior asked her. Instead of taking the standard limo, Meathead opted to show up at her house in his big red pickup truck. She was in drafting with Jose, so she told him about the night. He didn't help her into the truck, which is obviously higher off the ground than a limo, and then he closed the door on part of her dress. When they got to the prom, he barely talked to her and she ended up leaving with someone else. On the night the rest of us saw Analyze This, Meathead insisted it was going to be stupid and instead went to see Carrie 2: The Rage. He was extremely homophobic, although he curiously complained when Jose started dating that he wasn't spending enough time with him. When Jose bought his girlfriend a pair of diamond earings, he got upset that Jose never bought him anything nice like that.

The last time I saw Meathead was the night George Lucas scammed us into paying to see Phantom Menace. Meathead was there with some other people, and got mad when we didn't say hi. But it was honestly because we didn't see him. There was a crowd; a lot of people were duped into seeing that movie. So we haven't really seen him since then. I kind of miss Meathead, actually.

For the most part, I still see everyone I used to hang out with in high school on a regular basis. And it's a good thing, too. I probably wouldn't have gone to college if it wasn't for Jose (not that college, anyway.) And if it wasn't for Nick, I would have never heard the softer side of Hulk Hogan. So, thanks, guys!

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Word To Your Mother

How many times do you have to do something before it becomes a tradition? For the past few years, my family has gone to Chili's for Mother's Day. We go around three o'clock when it isn't too crowded. We took my grandmother the first time. She ordered fajitias, but it turned out she thought she was ordering hard shelled tacos. Actually, she thinks anything remotely Mexican-sounding comes with a hard-shelled taco. So she was a little disappointed with the warm, soft pita bread sitting in front of her. I don't think she can eat a hard taco anyway. Her front tooth falls out every other week and she keeps paying a dentist to put it back in. That's bound to get expensive after a while, I think I'd either go to a better dentist or just wedge a Chicklet into my gums and pretend it's a tooth. Before we left, she wrapped a green jalapeno in some Kleenex and put it in her purse. She said she'd eat it later.

This year she didn't go because she just got over a cold and she didn't want to catch it again. But my mom still called her up to wish her a happy Mother's Day, which sounded like this:

"Hello, happy Mother's Day."

"Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?

"HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!"

So this time it was just my parents, my brothers, Michele and Brianna. Well, and me, obviously. While we were waiting for our meal, we got into a discussion about the rich history of the fried onion centerpiece/appetizer. Michele used to work at the Outback Stakehouse, which she says came out with the "Bloomin' Onion" first. Then Chili's unveiled the "Awesome Blossom," and the next thing you know everyone's got their own deep fried onion snack. My brothers and I decided that if we ever opened a restaurant, our version would be called the "Friggin' Onion."

We started talking about Glenn's upcoming prom. He's going with some girl he barely knows. He just went to a dance last week with a different girl, and he didn't know her, either. What the heck is that all about? It's all pre-arranged by his friends, like "This Mary. You Like Mary. She good dancer." I'm not sure how well that worked in print, but it was funny in my head. It just seems weird to find someone to go with just for the sake of going, but then I didn't even go to my prom. I spent the night playing Mario 64 and listening to an old Lynyrd Skynryd concert on WZLX. Anyway, he said he didn't really know her, but she's Emo. She's Emo? What the hell does that mean?



What followed was a lengthy conversation about Emo kids, but all I got out of it was that Emo stands for Emotional. It sounds more like a psychiatrist's diagnosis than a teenage subculture. According to Glenn, they actually don't appear to display any emotion whatsoever, except through depressing poems. He even had a drawing in his sketchbook of a "Tickle Me Emo" doll. As far as I can tell, Emo kids are just Goth kids who've discovered color. Kids these days.

I guess I had my own little depressing poem phase, but I offset it with doodles of bunnies and skulls in the margins of all my notebooks. But the thought of my youngest brother being days away from graduating high school just might set it off again. Glenn will be 18 next month. That is so depressing.

I remember one summer we were sitting in church near one of the air conditioning units and Glenn's nose started running. My grandmother sifted through her purse, looking for a tissue for him. She always seems to have a handful of tissues in there, along with a box of white Tic Tacs with one lodged in sideways so you have to bang it a couple of times to pop it free. She handed him a bunched-up tissue but before he used it, he opened it up to see why it was so lumpy. It was the damn jalapeno!

By the way, I've now had over 10,000 hits on this site since February. It doesn't seem possible, since there's only four or five people that ever leave any comments. So what's the deal with the rest of you? What, you're too good to write something? It only takes a couple of seconds to write "LOL" or one of those sideways smiley faces. Slackers.

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Potpourri For a Thousand, Alex

So much to say, so little ambition to write it all down. I suppose the best way to do this is the time-honored tradition of bullet points. Hopefully, they won't show up as weird symbols like whenever I try to use an actual apostrophe instead of a foot mark. (also known as the "dumb apostrophe," by people who like to come up with mean names for things.)

• By now, everybody and their unibrowed cousin Willard has written a review of The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy. So I won't say much about it other than that I thought is was great and I was able to follow the story despite having never read the books. Actually, I didn't really know anything about the story prior to a few months ago when the trailer came out. I knew there had been a TV version, which I was sure that I vaguely remembered. I heard fans of Douglas Adams' work talk about how funny the story was, and it seemed to starkly contrast the dark show that I remembered from childhood. It turns out that what I was thinking of wasn't the six part BBC program, but the old Canadian-made HBO series The Hitchhicker.



• I went on a little goodwill tour of a few blogs the other day, and on Moo Alex, there's a link to Yoda's blog, which just might be the best thing ever. My favorite one is about Mace Windu's stubble. Go read it now. I'll stay here and whittle something.

Back already? Well, I couldn't really get a handle on the whole whittling thing, so I just covered an old Happy Meal toy in Sterno and set it on fire.



• Tomorrow, MIT is holding the first and only Time Travel Convention. The idea is that people in the future will have heard of the event that took place on May 7, 2005, and if time travel ever becomes a reality, they would travel back to that day to attend. The official website says technically, there only needs to be one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. Amal Dorai, the event's coordinator, said, "The chance that anybody shows up is small, but if it happens it will be one of the biggest events in human history." It's going to rain this weekend. That's kind of a downer, since if this actually works, then every time someone goes to the Time Travel Convention they'll have to bring an umbrella.

• Speaking of potpourri, for the longest time, I used to refer to the crushed red pepper as "that potpourri-looking stuff." The waitress always knew what I was asking for.

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David Alan Grier Screwed my Aunt!

My mom's brother Mike moved to California in search of fame and fortune. He did end up in one episode of Hill Street Blues and even had a few lines, but that's about it as far as fame goes. His wife Tracey is a model/photographer. That's a pretty good gig, actually. You can never be out of a job because you can always just take pictures of yourself. I think she said that in those ads for Quarker State with Leah Remini, when they cut to a close up of hands holding the bottle, those are her hands. That kind of makes me wonder just how bad do Leah Remini's hands look that they have to replace them with the hands of a woman in her forties? Does she have webbed fingers or something? Anyway, Tracey was a contestant on Hollywood Squares a few years ago. She called to let us know what day it would be on, and I'm pretty sure we taped it, although it's probably been taped over by an episode of Passions by now.

I think she was a little nervous at first. She agreed with every celebrity, no matter how far-fetched their answer was. I remember practically yelling at the TV, "Disagree! Disagree! Gilbert Gottfried doesn't know anything about quantum physics!" It cost her the first round, but she came back strong and won the second. She even got the "secret square" and won a trip to Hawaii. Or Paris. I don't know, it was someplace I've never been. With the score tied, they moved on to the third round. My knowledge of this show dates back to the John Davidson days, and in all that time I can count on one hand the number of times that the third round ended with someone getting tic-tac-toe, or whatever they called it on that show. It usually ended with a buzzer, and whoever had the most squares would be the winner. So time was of the essence. Tracey and Mr. X were neck and neck, taking turns with the lead, until Tracey picked David Alan Grier. The crowd cheered and he started pandering to them, shouting, "Heeeey! Hoooo! Heeey! Hoooo!" And then he started rhythmically clapping. For God's sake, man, just let Tom Bergeron ask you the question! Plus you know he has to get in his requisite joke answer before giving the real one, and that's going to take some time. Things didn't look good. After he ate up the clock a bit longer, he finally got to the question. But it was too late. The buzzer rang, and Mr. X had one more square on the board than her. David Alan Grier's comic shenanigans cost her the game. Damn you, David Alan Grier! Damn you!!

So anyway, that's the story of how David Alan Grier screwed my aunt.

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Whatever Doesn't Kill Me...

It has now been officially one year since I realized my lifelong dream of never living in Quincy would not come to pass. What's worse, I kind of like it here. It's a little unsettling, actually. Before moving to Wollaston beach, I used to hate Quincy, although I'm not really sure why. It might have something to do with how narrow the streets are. People park on both sides of two way streets that are barely three cars wide. It wouldn't be a problem if the streets were one-way, or if people would actually use their freaking driveways. I don't understand that. It's one thing if you don't have anywhere else to park, but I go by houses that have three cars parked on the street and none in the driveway. These people should have Nicole Richie shipped to their home as punishment. Can you imagine if Ted Kaczynski had thrown Paulie Shore in a box with bubble wrap and mailed him to someone? That would have been a lot worse than getting a bomb.

I like where I live now. It's not as close to the highway as my parent's house, though, so going anywhere usually takes longer. But overall we've got a nice little place with an ocean view. And furniture that needs to be paid for before the ridiculously high interest rate kicks in. So we drove to the Jordan's in Avon Friday night to make a payment at the store. It's not that long of a ride, but there was an extra newspaper (well, the Boston Herald) in the car so I picked it up and started to read it. Ten minutes later it felt as if my head was in a vice and tried as hard as I could not to throw up everything I'd eaten since 1985. I could feel every single little bump in the road, and with every one the headache and nausea got more intense. Michele said it was from reading in the car, but I've read in the car several times before that without incident. No, it had to be something else.

About an hour and a half earlier, I was sitting at work, looking at a tin of Foosh Energy Mints that Michele bought. There's only twelve per tin, which should probably have been a good indicator of their potency, but I just thought the people that made them were cheap bastards, so I had three of them. Now, I can't say it was the mints that made me sick, or the reading in the car that did it, but certainly the combination of the two factored in somewhere.

Oh yeah, and it turned out that we couldn't make the payment at the store because a third party company deals with all purchases made with the charge card.

Two days later, my constitution was again tested, this time by the movie Catwoman. Nick brought it over Sunday night, along with Big Trouble. Nick actually saw Catwoman in the theater when it came out, and his take on it was basically, "However bad you think this movie is, it's worse than that." But Catwoman is important. A few years ago, we watched Gigli, and I think it made me a better person. The same goes for Catwoman. If you can sit through it without deciding midway through that you're going to go take a bath with your toaster, you come out a stronger, better person.

I was a little disappointed that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, though. Don't get me wrong, everything, I mean everything from the script to the acting to the cheesy CGI shots, stank to high Heaven. How did they even get away with calling it Catwoman, anyway? No Selina Kyle. No Batman. No Gotham City. Instead, Halle Berry plays Patience Phillips, a graphic designer who is murdered after she uncovers a dark secret about a face creme. That's pretty lame, but if you check online, you can find some information about the original script, with Ashley Judd playing Catwoman. I found this on a site dedicated to Catwoman:

"Ms. Judd was apparently not happy with the working script penned by Kate Kondell, where Judd would have played Patience Price, a pet groomer whose mother was killed by a wealthy tycoon who stole her idea for a new design of dishwasher."

A pet groomer. Whose mother was killed. By a wealthy tycoon who stole her idea for a new design of dishwasher. Almost makes the makeup that eats your face sound intelligent. It's not, though. Face-eating makeup is still a stupid, stupid idea. And we have Sharon Stone to thank for that. Well, her character anyway. She had been the model for her husband's line of cosmetics for years. But he decided to go with a younger model to promote their new line, which supposedly reverses the aging process. Now, if that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense to use an older model to show how well it works? Anyway, she wants revenge. Or something. But let's get back to Patience.

Early on in the movie, she sees a cat out on the ledge of her apartment, so she follows it out to try to save it. Once she's out there, a crowd of people gather around, thinking she's going to jump. A detective pulls up and tries to talk her down, and hilarity ensues! Well, not really, but she explains to him that she was only up there to save a cat and he apologizes for jumping to conclusions and offers to take her to dinner. But before they go out, her employers flood her out of a giant drainpipe for overhearing something about their new make-up. It seems as though she won't be going on a date with the detective after all, but then the cat she saved (or at least a really sorry looking CGI version) appears with all his buddies and breathes new life into her. The next morning, the newly undead Patience wakes up on a shelf in her apartment and discovers she has amazing new catlike abilities, like purring when she talks and playing basketball really well. A crazy old cat lady tells her that Midnight, the GRAY cat she saved earlier was actually the reincarnation of the Egyptian Goddess Bast and has chosen to bestow upon her all the powers of a cat (including an attraction to catnip and an aversion to rain, there may be a deleted scene where she coughs up a hairball). This is the movie's way of explaining why we haven't been watching the exploits of Selena Kyle in Gotham City for the past hour. She's not the Catwoman, she's just a Cat Woman, and there's been hundreds of them throughout history. Oh, okay then. Using her new abilities, and the most ridiculous costume imaginable, she decides to find out who killed her and why.

Of course not all of her methods are legal, and her dumb as a stump detective boyfriend can't figure out that the woman he's dating is the Catwoman he's looking for. Yeah, I know no one ever figures out that Superman is just Clark Kent without his glasses, but Halle Berry has a rather distinctive skin tone so it really shouldn't be that hard to figure out, especially since her costume is so skimpy. She doesn't even try to disguise her voice. Maybe he doesn't realize it's her because in all of the CG shots her skins isn't the same shade as the non CG shots.

Anyway, a bunch of stuff happens and she eventually gets to the big fight with Sharon Stone, who tells her that terminating the use of the makeup will kill you, but continued use of it will make your skin hard as marble. Well that's just stupid. But I guess they put it in there to build this fight up. It won't be so easy to defeat her now, since her skin is like marble, right? Suprisingly, no, she still went down pretty fast.

Like I said earlier, I was expecting this to top the current worst movie I've ever seen, but sadly that title remains uncontested. Maybe if they had gone with the dishwasher story, but as it is, the worst movie I've ever seen is still House of the Dead. It's got scenes from the arcade game spliced into it all over the place, for crying out loud!

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