November 2006

Earl began our Thanksgiving feast preparations tonight by starting out with the cole slaw. He likes to make cole slaw from scratch, mixing various spices, mayos and vinegars with the cabbage and carrots. I usually watch from the sidelines, providing support as taster and kitchen help by cleaning up behind him. Occasionally I recite the line “cook’s not a t’all ‘appy!”. Despite his protests I believe he secretly enjoys the comedy.

After stirring the vat of cabbage and accessories he had me test. I looked at him and told him “it needs more arm.” This is a little inside joke we have. Picture it, September 1999. The little mini-mall in the former “Woolworth’s #1” in the downtown area. We have a fast food restaurant. I’m manager of the store and we have three employees. First up is whom we call “Gina Lolabrigitta”, pronounced as Brett Somers did on Match Game, and the hardest worker of the lot. A single mother at age 22, Gina worked hard and was easily depended on. Next up we have Jimmy, a cast off from the radio station I had worked at who said “thank you” regardless of the situation and spoke like Barbara Eden’s ‘Jeannie’ as he refused to use contractions. And lastly we have Josie, a 72 year old Italian woman who had worked in the aforementioned Woolworth’s as a waitress since she was 16 years old. They couldn’t get her out of the store when it closed, so we just hired her on, sort of like a light fixture. She was just there.

We were also shocked to discover that she liked to stir homemade cole slaw with her arm.

This is apparently a tradition in fast food restaurants and diners across our fine land. Earl spun tales of his days as a teen working at a local diner with a big Greek cook stirring the potato salad with his arm. I’ve seen waitresses stir iced tea and kool-aid with their hands, so I don’t know why I was surprised at Josie’s choice of kitchen wizardry.

Earl and I decided to pass on that secret ingredient for tomorrow’s side dish. But it’s always fun to reminisce about the good ol’ days.

Here’s an odd threesome for you to envision. Kelly Ripa, Rosie O’Donnell and Clay Aiken. How’s that for a mental picture? I find the latest cat fight in Hollywood to be a little interesting on several levels. Please keep in mind that I’m a fan of Rosie’s (especially her charity work, though I do enjoy her humor as well).

Last Friday, Clay Aiken was a guest host on Regis & Kathie Lee Kelly. (The last time I watched that show Kathie Lee was still Kathie Lee Johnson. Maybe not, maybe that was “Name That Tune”.) Anyways, this new chick Kelly, who isn’t Kathie Lee, was pretty much hogging the whole show, which could be her right as her name is in lights and Clay Aiken was just a guest host, but there’s room for debate there.

Anyways, Clay and Kelly were interviewing some actor in some movie about something and Kelly basically kept interrupting Clay when he was trying to ask a question. Long story short, Clay put his hand over Kelly’s mouth to shut her up and that is bad, apparently. I wonder how she would have reacted to a sock, but I digress. I don’t know who the genius was that thought Clay Aiken would be a terrific fill in for Regis Philbin, but perhaps I was missing something there as well. Health care worker to reality show contestant to hyperfamous singer to has-been to talk show host? The last couple of times I’ve seen Clay on television he’s been exceedingly smug, apparently medicated in some way and had shockingly awful hair.

La Kelly made the remark that we don’t put our hand over her mouth, especially since she didn’t know where that hand has been.

Now I’m not the brightest bulb in the world nor am the most sensitive clod on the face of the planet, but for some reason Rosie O’Donnell remarked on The View that she found her comment about his hand to be a homophobic remark. My eyebrows went up because as far as I know, Clay isn’t gay (wink, wink, wink). (wink, wink). No really, he’s not gay. (Wink, wink). Now stop it, he’s not gay (wink wink). So while Rosie is complaining about Kelly’s alleged homophobic remark to Clay, I’m wondering about Rosie’s outing of Clay, though he’s not gay (wink, wink).

So Ripa pulls a ripper and calls into The View, live on the air, and basically scolds Rosie for accusing her of a homophobic comment that wasn’t to a man that allegedly isn’t. And now it’s all over the blogs and the forums and whatnot.

I wish I could say that I couldn’t care less, but that obviously isn’t true because I’ve spent 10 minutes typing about it.

Earl and I are back home after the weekend in Boston. You’d think a big geek like myself would remember to bring along the AC adapter for his PowerBook, but no, I forgot it and the battery went dead last night right after I uploaded the pictures to yesterday’s entry. So we were completely without computing capabilities for almost a full 24 hours.

I did not experience the full withdrawal symptoms I thought I was going to. I did get a little sweaty though.

Last night we ended up going to Bertucci’s for dinner and then walking around the South End a bit. After a brief “disco nap”, we took the T to Haymarket and walked around Quincy Market and picked up some dessert and did some people watching. I love to people watch. People are so fascinating, even when they’re not trying to be fascinating. We then walked through Downtown Crossing and went to The Alley, where we ran into a couple that I knew one half from years and years ago. (How’s that for sentence structure?) He remembered me from my club DJ days and I remembered him from the same so we chatted a bit and hung out with his husband and he (they’re legally married – yay Massachusetts!). His partner is a fireman on the South Shore. The conversation was interesting. The eye candy was eyepopping and the drinks were good. I limited myself to one beer and then water or diet soda so that I could make the walk back to the hotel without being one of those street drunks.

This morning we did some obligatory roadgeeking by driving several different ways through the Big Dig before heading home. There is still one section closed and I believe it’s where the couple was killed several months ago when the ceiling literally came down on their car. I took a few back roads getting home, driving along Route 2 to Leominster and then driving south through Worcester and picking up the MassPike there. By the time we were reaching home it was snowing, but nothing major.

Tomorrow kicks off a week of on-call and the start of the crazy holiday schedule. I’m actually looking forward to it all.

The story is the same across the country. People are camping out so they can get a Playstation 3. If I were more of a geek, I’d do the same thing.

I commend these folks on their perserverance.