Big Ball's in Cowtown

I went to see George Strait in concert last night.

I can't say that I could listen to Country 99.5 24/7, but I could listen to George for a good chunk of time.

Country music has a pretty hokey rep in New England, and that's too bad.

Besides, guys look HOT in cowboy hats.

100,000 bottles of wine on the wall, 100,000 bottle of wiiiiiine...

Ok - the Wine Expo rolls into Boston this weekend.

You know what that means....

About 50,000 slam-drunk suburbanites stumbling through the streets of Bahstin!

I know because I used to work at a restaurant right by the Expo. One time a very polite drunk came up to me, requested a table and when I turned back to seat him, he had literally fallen straight down into his shoes - like a melted wicked witch, leaving behind his jacket in a puddle on the floor.

It's a fact, people go to the Wine show, get sh*t faced, then weave their way towards food in the vain, vain, vain hope of sobering up for the drive home via a massive dose of fried food.

This rarely has the desired result.

The reality is:

large amounts of alcohol

+

large amounts of grease

=

an urgent and raging need to poop.


And anyway, no one ever admits to getting sh*ttoed at a Wine Expo.
It's like admitting you enjoy a little glass of Manischewitz.

Man Humps Water

It's true.

There I am doing my slow laps at the pool, getting high on chlorine, bobbing in the wake of my fellow lane mates, when suddenly there is a great thudding splash.

Well, more like a sploosh.

Followed by a thud. Which certainly sounds weird in a pool.

I find myself getting bobbed into the wall, and the little pool wavelets now have little whitecaps.

WTF is happening?

SPLOOSH

thud

SPLOOSH

thud

I look over and there is a very big man in the next lane who appears to be dry-humping the water.

Or I guess you'd call it wet-humping.

He is grasping a blue float board and he is using both legs together - lifting them up and then smashing them down. Up and down, and up and down. And he is doing his laps this way.

A) It sounds painful

and

B) It looks like sex.

Sometimes it's hammer time, other times it's joke time...

A young punk gets on the bus.

He's got spiked, multicolored hair that's green, purple, and orange. His clothes are a tattered mix of leather and rags. His legs are bare and his shoes are in held together with duct tape. His entire face and body are riddled with pierced jewelry and big, bright feathers hang from his earrings.

He sits down in the only vacant seat, directly across from an old geezer who just glares at him for the next ten miles. Finally, the punk gets self-conscious and barks at the old man:

"What are you looking at you old fart... didn't you ever do anything wild when you were young?"

Without missing a beat, the old man replies: "Yeah. Back when I was young and in the Navy, I got really drunk one night in Singapore, and had sex with a parrot. I thought maybe you were my son."

Thanks for Chevroletasaurus!

I read the obits like a little old lady.

However, I would very much have liked to have met this man:



He was Jim Gary and you can read all about him here. In fact, it is required reading ok.

I especially liked the fact that he would move his works around the country on a flatbed and "(c)urious drivers often followed the dinosaurs down the road for miles."

He created art and beauty out of waste and junk, out of things that are out of sight out of mind for most people.

Who wouldn't love someone who "turned leaf springs into rib cages and generator fans into huge lash-ringed eyes. For the spinal plates of a stegosaurus, he used part of a garbage truck's compactor. For its tail spikes, he used Chevrolet shock absorbers. He also built smaller pieces, among them humpbacked turtles that began life as Volkswagen Beetles."



Thanks Jim!

Taxpayer Funded Craft Day

I got my jury duty notice today. No one likes to be on jury duty.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other. Gives me time to catch up on my crocheting.

Actually, heaven help the poor criminal whose jury I am on. Guilty people don't make it to trial, doesn't anyone watch Law & Order?

Duhhhh.

Overused Words in Real Estate Advertising

It has come to my attention that there are certain words that are being overused in real estate advertising. I believe that the overuse of these words are the real cause of the current market slouch.

1. STUNNING
If I read one more ad that describes a particular abode as 'stunning', I am going send the realtor responsible a flaming bag of poo.

To my mind, if an apartment is 'stunning', it needs to be pretty spectacular. And apartments are, well, stacked compartments of space. They don't really have the appropriate sweep and drama required of all things stunning.

It reminds me of when Tom Cruise called Katie Holmes "magnificent".

2. SPARKLING
Just because Merry Maids came in and swabbed the place down with a few squirts of cleanser does not render a place 'sparkling'.

3. LOFT

According to dictionary.com, a loft is:

1. 1. A large, usually unpartitioned floor over a factory, warehouse, or other commercial or industrial space.
   2. Such a floor converted into an apartment or artist's studio.
2. An open space under a roof; an attic or garret.
3. A gallery or balcony, as in a church.
4. A hayloft.

So NO any apartment with another apartment above it is NOT a loft, no matter how white you paint it.

3. MOTIVATED
It would appear that every seller is motivated. Well duh. A seller is hardly going to be unmotivated. In reality a motivated seller is the seller who will take the first offer at or above the asking price. So the person asking $525,000 for the 500sf studio on Beacon Hill is not going to take $425,000 cash no matter how motivated they are.

And I speak from experience when I say that they are definitely not motivated about an offer of $150,000.

4. GLEAMING
As in hard wood floors. I don't care what other word is used (glossy, shiny, slick, radiant), but the phrase "gleaming hardwood floors" has to go.



Oh yeah, and if it's molding, it's dentil, NOT dental.

Desperate Housewives

Ok two things about Desperate Housewives.

1) Teri Hatcher is annoying AND funny looking. There is too much space between the bottom of her nose and the top of her lip.

2) The women of Desperate Housewives don't like each other much. And all of them don't like Nicolette Sheridan.

The Golden Globes

Ok so watching the Golden Globes is like reading UsPeopleNationalEnquirerStar all at once.

Drew Barrymore wore a startling bright green thing that made her look like a jolly green giantess with great big nipples. Seriously, they had to zoom in on her face in order to avoid a great big FCC fine.

Geena Davis showed up in an outfit that made her look like a Bloody Mary.

Pam Anderson really is a dumb dyed blond. And why was she wearing so much clothes?

Mary Louise Parker liked Chris Rock alot more AFTER she won. Uptight or what!

Unlike the Oscars, the award show is like a great big famous people dinner. Awards are presented while celebs eat and drink which is why a lot of waiters occasionally end up on the TV. Everyone can get their five minutes of fame on this night.

I can wait until a little later when everyone starts slurring their words....

What did she just say???

I work in retail.

Most of the time, customers are great, funny and interesting, and I really enjoy it. And sometimes I cannot STAND working in retail. How people really are is revealed in how they interact with the people who have to wait on them.

For example, a woman came in to return an item that she evidently didn't like. In fact in her words she wouldn't feed it to a Nazi.

Huh?

Surely she just didn't say that...

But yes, she did.

So yes, there is a plain cheese danish in this world that is not even fit to feed a Nazi and apparently we sell it.

She could also have just said she didn't like it. We would have gladly given her something else. But instead she had to invoke the Third Reich.

Some people....

Angie is a better match for me than me!

Currently I am down with love.

But I am ever hopeful that Cupid's own WMD will one day pierce the strip of jerky I call a heart.

In the meantime, I use the Love-o-Meter to gauge the relationship potential of prospective mates.

It is a tool I highly recommend as it is clearly based on complicated science.

My own results:

Me + Angelina Jolie = 95.5%
Me + My Little Pony = 95.5%
Me + Myself = 95%
Me + the Golden Gate Bridge = 91.5%
Me + George W. Bush = 85.5% ( uh oh)
Me + William Clinton = 85%
Me + Tom Cruise = 77.5%
Me + Osama Bin Laden = 75%
Me + Superman = 68.5 (what? less than Osama? That's SO wrong....)
Me + Van Halen = 68
Me + Brad Pitt = 38%

Holy Cold Out Batman

Yesterday at this time in Boston it was 47 degrees (8 celsius).

Today at this time it is friggin' 16 degrees (-9 celsius).

This kind of cold makes people a little stupid.

Scraping Football Scurf off my tongue.

Ok, so football season is over for me.

Let me first say that I still feel love for the Pats.

But what a wreck of a game last night.

Then again, after the season they'd had, it was pretty great that they got as far as they did.

Why I am going to be late for karaoke!

Oh yeah by the way,

GO PATS

Uppi Pai

After a brief, but beloved, stint as a manicurist, I am now back at the Bakery.

One thing that I am trying to get everyone back in the habit of is to label everything that goes into the fridge.

And almost more importantly, date it, because after all who cares WHAT it was after six weeks and a pale green-blue bloom has blossomed.

This past week I came across something labelled: uppi pai

Let me first explain that my fellow kitchen magician speaks no English except for: "heybabyhowyoodoin"

But his Brazilian Portuguese is first rate!

Anyway... as it turns out, "uppi pai" is how a person from Brazil who doesn't speak English spells "whoopie pie"

Now, I am bringing in chocolate-filled whoopie pies and call them "yippee pies".

I can admit I am sort of excited to see how this turns out phonetically from a Brazilian.

Whoa! What am I thinking! Whoops!

I know that it is SO inappropriate, but whenever a police car goes whizzing by me with all the sirens and crap flashing, in my head I hear my friend Kimmie doing her version of NWA's "F*ck tha Police"

"Fu*k tha police and he said it with authority"*

Like I said, inappropriate.

please note that the actual lyrics are: "f*ck tha police and Ren said it with authority"
man, the Eighties ROCKED!

This is why we don't need ANOTHER "task force"

Ok, so as I mentioned yesterday, a woman's dog was zapped to death on a city sidewalk.

Don't believe me, read the story here for yourself: Dag Zapped

Seemingly this has happened 3 times since 2003, though that is only the reported ones. Evidently many others just got zizzed.

As a result, NStar (the local electric company) "formed a taskforce" last year and found 60 live covers in 120,000 units.

Hmmmmmm.

When the higher-ups in Boston form task forces, I get nervous.

It's just that to me it seems that whenever the city doesn't really want to resolve a problem, they form a task force to talk/analyze/research the issue to death.

So far my favorite task force has to have been the "Task Force on the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project"

The most incredible report came from this task force , and it "included strong recommendations to strengthen federal oversight of the Boston project and require fiscal responsibility from the CA/T project leadership"

Riiiiiiiiight.

This is the same report that said that the project was going have cost overruns of about 1.7 to 1.9 billion dollars. Which would bring the total cost to somewhere over $13 billion dollars.

$13 BILLION DOLLARS FOR A CRAPPY COUPLE OF TUNNELS AND THE SAME (IF NOT WORSE) TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE???

It boggles the mind that $13 billion dollars was spent on about 300 acres of a state that is about 5,284,480 acres in size. Which is a titch over $3 million an acre. Those planned greenspaces better look terrific!

So, yeah, the city can create a "task force" to investigate the electrocution deaths of dogs in the city, but first all dog owners should invest in doggie booties ASAP.









yeah, I'm bad as I wanna be yo!

Forget Evacuation, how about electrocution prevention

Today a woman was walking her doggie, when he stepped on a metal cover and was electrocuted to death.

WTF!!!!!

And this isn't the first time it has happened.

One more reason to NOT walk around barefoot in Beantown.

Just one more danger to remember when you are fleeing during an evacution, so don't forget to grab a sturdy pair of shoes on the way out!

Awwwwwww craaaaaaap

Ok ok, I know that I cannot be the only person who was secretly hoping that the Steelers would lose today. (sorry Amy!!!)

But really, a game against the Colts would have been SO much better for my blood pressure than a game at Mile High against the Broncos.

(and Diana, keep your Broncs pride to yourself ok, or no more chai for YOU!)

Although I will say that the Steelers played a GREAT game today in Cincy.
Especially seeing as how Bengal fans are

a) f*cking LOUD

and

b) litterbugs.

Couch Potatoing Movies of Note

From the looks of the crap I write in this here blog, one might think that I've never watched a movie filmed after 1989.

Which is only partially true.

But I mean really now, they don't make them like they used to.

Take the movie Real Genius for example.
A damn funny movie with dialogue you hardly ever get anymore.

[Chris Knight is trying to hit on Susan, a beautiful woman he finds in Professor Hathaway's house]
Chris: So, if there's anything I can do for you, or, more to the point, to you, you just let me know.

Susan: Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?

Chris:Not right now.

Susan: A girl's gotta have her standards.

Now that I am old enough, I am SO going to use that line!

And another thing!

Yesterday I watched as a man verbally assaulted a woman in the street, while a whole bunch of us watched.

Okay, okay, let me explain.

The man in question pulled his shiny Jeep Cherohonkee into a bus stop while he ran into the supermarket.

Along came an meter maid who tagged the car.
(note that he was ticketed only, not flagged for a tow)

As she is tucking the ticket in and walking away the guy comes out and sees the ticket.

And boy does he fly off the handle.

He starts shouting at her, a fountain of foul language erupts from this fellow, and all pedestrian traffic slows to a stop. We can't help watch this human wreck.

And then he caps the whole tirade off by screaming to her that he sucked her son's pee-pee.

Huh?

Ok, dude, that makes YOU look bad.


And besides, when else in your life can you be so defensive about blatantly disregarding the rules.