The moving into the new “creative space” continues this weekend. I had to pause for a moment to show off my “Ray Of Light” platinum CD, complete with my name on the bottom. “Presented to commemorate RIAA certified multi-platinum sales of more than 3,000,000 copies of the Warner Brothers Record cassette and C.D. ‘Ray of Light'”.
I know every radio station gets these, but this one at least has my name on it.
I made a promise to myself today. The next time Earl and I are househunting we are only looking at houses on dead end streets. Actually, as an aspiring civil engineer I’ve come to learn that there are groups out there trying to abolish the term “Dead End” on road signs because it’s too negative sounding. Apparently the city folks that are moving out to the country are depressed by reading signs that say “Dead End”. They prefer “No Outlet”, which doesn’t necessarily mean “dead end” but it’s happier sounding to them. I say get your ass back to the other side of the bridge where you belong and mind your own business.
But I digress.
Cleaning out the driveway has become an almost twice a day event this week. At last measurement (as seen by my handy posts in this photo above) we were just shy of three feet of snow covering our lawn. While the folks in my native northern Oswego County have over twice as much, I’m rather impressed with the amount of snow that we’ve been blessed with. The National Weather Service has just issued another Winter Storm Warning for our area, we could see up to two more feet of snow by late Sunday night.
It’s a good thing I don’t mind running the snowblower!
The reason I want to live on a dead end street in the future is so I don’t have to keep stopping to let every car pass in fear of hitting them with snow/rocks/grass/etc with the snowblower. In addition, I feel like I’m taking my life in my hands as these idiots in vehicles entirely too large for them to handle are bombing down our road like it’s the Indy 500. The roads are snow covered with a generous amount of ice underneath. There’s a bit of sand courtesy of the county highway department to help provide traction, but for goodness sake people, slow down! If there’s a game out there where you earn points for hitting people shoveling or snowblowing, I’m not playing as one of the pawns.
My school proudly proclaims that it has only closed for the entire day twice in the past twelve years.
We are a hearty lot.
Here in Upstate New York we have a car dealership that sort of exploded in the past ten years and has opened several mammoth dealerships all over the state. He carries every car brand imaginable this side of the AMC Pacer. I’m not going to name his dealership by name as I don’t want to lend a hand in free advertising on his behalf, but his trademark is that “it’s huge”, in the most gutteral, annoying, uneducated belch of words possible. He has pretty much become the Wal*mart of the auto dealer set.
He is as annoying as hell.
First of all, the public is constantly barraged with his image. Everywhere. There’s a huge billboard on Interstate 81 in Syracuse with the word “huge”, his ugly mug and his arms spread wide like some sort of manic bird. He has a clock up there and it’s never right. Since stationary images are never enough, Centro, the regional transportation agency, has sold advertising space to him. So naturally you would think that his picture is on the back and/or sides of the bus. Wrong. The buses are completely wrapped in his image, forcing riders that must ride the bus and care to look out the window to do so by gazing through his hairy nostril or around his hairy armpit. Those in the back look through his teeth.
It’s disgusting.
As I’ve mentioned countless times, I worked in radio for over a decade. I’ve always been a fan of radio. However, I will not listen to a station that runs his ads. I don’t care if they are playing a string of Kylie Minogue, Madonna and The Pet Shop Boys constantly, if you stop the music for one of his commercials, your station is promptly on the SL and it’s staying there until XM or Sirius falls out of orbit. Now he doesn’t buy one ad to run four or five times a day like most sane organizations. No. This guy purchases one or two 60 second slots per break (what we in the industry called stop sets) and then barks out his “huge” numerous times and talks to some announcer shill guy named Tom over the phone. Tom acts like he’s at the car lot and Billy is out finding new deals for his buyers. Cluephone boys, we know that Tom is in some cushy studio in Florida and Billy is actually at one of his many dealerships barking over a speakerphone, because we’ve also heard Tom on spots in New Orleans, Orlando and Atlanta and they weren’t with you Billy. How does that make you feel, knowing that Tom is chatting it up with other car dealers too? He’s a manwhore.
I have now come to the point where I will terrorize a driver with a car with the little license plate frame that tells the name of this dealership. It is beyond my comprehension why any self-respecting person would make the largest or second-largest purchase of their life with this idiot.
When Earl and I travel, I take a certain comfort in knowing that Auto Idiot #1 will be left behind and it’s safe to listen to the radio. But no, now he’s in Niagara Falls, he’s in Albany and god knows where else. I think the only way to escape him is to go to the other side of the Mississippi.
I wish someone would just tell this guy to shut up, pack up your money and get the hell away from us. We don’t find you cute. We don’t find you articulate. We don’t find you clever and we certainly don’t find you pretty.
Just go away. Please. Oh, the cluephone is ringing again. We know why you keep barking out “huge”. It’s to make up for the more important parts that aren’t so huge.
When Earl got home from work I announced to him that I hadn’t started supper but if he didn’t want to go out I could heat up some leftover goulash-bake type stuff that I made last night. It was long on noodles and short on sauce, but still acceptable.
His response was non-commital. At least no profanity was involved.
So we went out for dinner. We went to a restaurant that we hadn’t been to in about a year, it’s a local place called “Casa Too Mucha”. They serve Tex-Mex food with a dollop of Italian and Lenten Friday Fish Fry on the side to keep the natives here happy. We used to be regulars at the place; we’d walk in and the co-owner/hostess would beam at us, give us a hug and have us cut ahead of everyone else in line (declaring loudly that we had reservations when we really didn’t, she said we were a “standing”) so that we could sit in the (whispered) “special customer section” upstairs. Said special section was “kid free” by her choosing and had nice looking male servers. She knew how to keep her gays happy.
Unfortunately, during one visit we had a particularly bad experience with a lot of variables in one equation: we ran into an unpleasant acquaintenance who is still an ass, we had a server that completely bungled our order and to top it all off, the substitute hostess sat us downstairs amongst the common folk by jamming us in a corner. I don’t know what they do in the Catskills, but no one puts Baby in a corner.
So I had a silent hissy fit and placed the restaurant on the SL for a bit. Tonight I decided to forgive and forget and Earl responded with a “Thank God”. Being Wednesday the restaurant was relatively quiet with no need for the selected section upstairs and the pace was much more relaxed. The food was delicious and the smiles were once again beaming.
When the co-owner/hostess came over to visit us, she earned two huge points from me. First of all, she offered to make me strawberry shortcake for dessert because she remembered that I enjoyed that. Yay! Secondly and most importantly, she commented on my mustache and how it looks awesome and that I should “keep it forever”.
Now that’s the way to this bear’s good side.
Ironically, it’s the second comment I’ve received on my mustache today, the first being at school from a younger, full-bearded student who nodded in my direction as we passed in the hall, “Nice bars, dude.” He sounded genuine about it.
When I mentioned to Earl that I rather appreciated the attention I get about my mustache, regardless of whom it’s from, he said “I’ve been telling you that since the last time you wore a mustache like that, but you don’t listen to me.”
I’m listening, I’m listening!
Vanity 1 Humility 0
O.k., I’m going to just come out and admit it. I use this song for working out and the male model as a body to aspire to. I am convinced that with a few extra crunches, some major cardio and cataracts on all parties involved, I might have a body as good as this guy’s someday. Sonia looks like she’d be pretty fun to hang out with as well.
Enjoy.
Earl and I never miss “Heroes”. We both love that show and we we’ll even stoop to watching it in ‘real time’ (instead of breezing by commercials with the TiVo) if there’s a chance that the TiVo might hiccup and not record it. I find it to be a well written, visually exciting, intriguing program.
That being said, I’m really hoping that this Nikki/Jessica storyline ties into something soon because quite frankly I’m really getting tired of it. The previews for next week’s show does give us a little hope but unfortunately NBC has a way of blowing the previews way out of proportion to the actual episode. Last night we watched in real time, or else I would have insisted that we boo-boo-boo-booped our way through the Nikki/Jessica part.
I’m just saying.
I must have lost my ability to multitask or something. When I sit down to work on homework, I must have relative silence. I can’t have the television or radio on, I can’t have the cat sitting on my lap and I certainly can’t be talking on the phone or chatting with others online. There used to be a time when I could do homework while riding the bus to school, but I’ve since lost that ability.
I’m noticing that the younger generation is very adept at multitasking. I sit next to a guy in math class that listens to his iPod for the entire class. Since it’s a math lab and there’s no lecture going on, it doesn’t really offend the instructor, but I don’t know how he can sit there and work out algebraic equations while listening to music. The numbers and letters do enough of a dance for me without adding music to the equation.
There’s also this trend of whispering during class lectures. Today in sociology I had two guys to my right (one of them sitting in my staked out seat, by the way, next time I get my seat back I’ll pee in it to mark my territory) carrying on a whispered conversation and eating Doritos and to my left I had two girls text-messaging over their cell phones and whispering amongst themselves. What happened to the days when we listened to the instructor? Would it have been rude of me to stand up and yell “shut up!”? Dare I sit in the front row of class next time?
Perhaps because I’m older I’m a little more serious about my education this time around. Or it could be that because I’m older I just can’t keep up with these young whipper-snappers.
I was watching an episode of Match Game on YouTube this morning and came across this prime hunk of beef.
How I miss the mustaches of the early 1980s.
Over the past month or so I’ve settled into a new routine for getting chores done around the house, keeping up with my school work and running household errands such as getting money from the ATM and grocery shopping. One thing that I’ve fallen in the habit of doing is watching television while working around the house. I have a set television schedule that I’m adhering to:
8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. “The Nanny” on Lifetime (if I’m awake)
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. “The Golden Girls” on Lifetime (it’s a must in order to retain gay card)
10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. “Leave It To Beaver” on TVland. Is it me or was Tony Dow quite hot in the later years of this show?
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. “I Love Lucy” on TVland.
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. “Green Acres” on TVland. I think this is one of my favorite shows of all time.
Naturally I’m keeping very busy with my chores and I just keep the television on for some noise in the house. I would never sit down just to watch television. No siree, I’d never do that. Especially when we’re running so low on bon bons.
Actually, I would, bon bons aside.. I’m loving “Green Acres” all over again and it’s my “musn’t miss” show of the day. The only vexing thing about it is that it’s during one of my classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll have to remember that when I schedule my classes next semester. I’ve always loved the show and have always considered it to be one of my favorites, but there are so many subtle quirks of the show that I enjoy. How many other shows were there where they stopped dialog to let the credits roll? The little gags in the show are priceless. I just love it.
Thank goodness TVland hasn’t added “Bewitched” back to the schedule, I’d never get anything done.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
