Driving Through

I'm at Sonic, in Alabama, and I order a cheeseburger.

Disembodied Drive-through Ladyvoice:
What would you like on that?

Me:
What are, what can I, I'm sorry, I, ummmm, what are my choices, I guess?

Disembodied Drive-through Ladyvoice:
We have Ketchup or Mayonnaise, or you can go *beat* All the Way?"

Me:
Huh! Wow! What's All the Way?"

Disembodied Drive-through Ladyvoice:
All the Way is Ketchup, Mayonnaise, and…Mustard.

Huh??? All the Way is Ketchup, Mayonnaise, and Mustard??? What's All the Way about that? It's just one more thing, and the one thing isn't special, and usually just comes in a packet in case you change your mind. All the Way needs to be a Final Burger Solution, like In 'n' Out's famed "Animal Style" where they THROW ALL THE VEGETABLES ON THE GRILL - there's no coming back from that. You've gone All the Way.

Weird? Yes? But perhaps odder still is that when my All the Way Burger comes out, there's pickles and onions on it. I have a witness that at no time were either of these items mentioned in our discussion of what can and can't go on a burger. There was no failed English student, outsourced order taker, technically glitchy speaker to obfuscate meaning, cause culinary confusion, or just fritz out. There were three very clear choices, and I took the last one on the list, and pickles weren't involved. Neither was onions.

Peter

It was a dark and foggy morning...

A couple weeks ago I stepped outside, on my way to meet a friend for an early morning walk, and the neighborhood was covered in a pea soup fog. I ducked back into the apartment to grab my camera, somehow sensing that I'd come across something interesting on such a creepy morning. Not a block away from home, I run into this...

At first I couldn't clearly see what was on the ground. I thought perhaps it was someone sleeping on the sidewalk. But as I got closer and the fog parted I saw that that the shape was in fact a pair of large stuffed animals.
Nanook and Curious George.
Just laying there.
Abandoned.
I snapped the photo and edged closer.
They were both new or fairly new, in perfectly good condition.
What would make someone leave behind these animals?
"What" indeed.
I quickened my pace.
I started to run.
I risked a look back.
They both just laid there.
Abandoned.

Sorry AXE, Hai Karate beat you to the punch

Way before AXE Products for Men was on the scene, there was Hai Karate. As a 5 year old boy trying to figure out how to get chicks in Kindergarten, I saw the Hai-Karate commercials on TV and I realized that getting chicks will be no problem, just get some Hai Karate. Yeah, I'd have to wait 10 years before I started shaving, but I would eschew my father's Old Spice which only seemed to make girls lean out of windows and instead go for the gold of Hai Karate.

When I graduated from High School, a family friend gave me a toiletry kit which had inside, a Hai Karate gift set. You know, by the time I was old enough to use it, it was past its time.

I wish I had some Hai-Karate now.

Kurt

The Story of Chank the Troll

I didn't post yesterday because I was busy getting ready for the Big Show. This is the culmination of seven weekly volunteer sessions through the Young Storytellers Foundation, with fourth and fifth graders in a local LAUSD school. The mentors are assigned one to a student, and we help them write a 5 to 7 page screenplay, that is then acted out in the Big Show. When I say "help" I mean, we type out what they say, and put it into screenplay format. And we ask open-ended questions like, "And THEN what happens?" and "What does he say to THAT?" in really encouraging tones. It. Is. Awesome.

http://youngstorytellers.com/

Jenny
Mentor to Richard Garcia, who wrote The Story of Chank the Troll.

March Madness

For me, March Madness means muffled screams from Mom floating up the basement stairs. I remember hoping the neighbors didn’t hear because, even though we could have easily explained that she was down there watching college basketball and that she got really worked up about it, we still would have been looked at with suspicion.

I don’t share my mother’s passion for college hoops. I understand the game, I enjoy watching it when it happens to be on, but I don’t go mental for it. And I certainly don’t follow the teams well enough to be able to fill out the Championship bracket this time of year with any sort of expertise. But every year I can’t help but want to be a part of the group. So I fill out my bracket and send it to my mom and she sends hers back and Eric tracks them, along with the brackets of all his family and friends, in order to see who has the most points at the end of the tournament and that person wins exactly zero dollars. It’s all about bragging rights, even though we can never remember who won last year.

I believe in chaos theory over Cinderella stories or the dominance of those historically great basketball programs like Duke or UCLA. I believe that no matter how many regular season games you watch, no matter how many stats you crunch, you can never truly predict the outcome of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament…it’s nearly impossible. Last year something like a million people posted their brackets online on ESPN’s site and only two, TWO people out of that million picked all the winners of all the games. No no no, studying college basketball teams is not how you win. There must be a different way.

Last year I pit school mascots against each other. The tiny, gentle jayhawks from Kansas surprised the hell out of me by besting the much larger and stronger tigers from Memphis. Sounds like an Aesop fable but it really happened.

This year I went with alumni fist fights. I spent three hours online researching each of the 64 schools in the first round; making notes of well known alumni from across various disciplines, taking into account worldwide fame and longevity, and allowing the most famous alum to rise to the top. Using the NCAA predetermined match-ups in the first round, I then imagined the alums (each at their peak physically) into a boxing ring and made them fight it out.

Here is my bracket:


For those who can’t read it, which should be all of you, let me just run through some highlights for you:

-Don Knotts was less-than-gentlemanly with Erma Bombeck
-Wink Martindale distracted Paula Abdul with something shiny, giving him the KO edge
-Hunter S. Thompson’s inability to feel physical pain allowed him to outlast Charles Lindburgh
-Gene Hackman took a bite out of bakery mogul Duncan Hines
-Madonna taught Strom Thurman a painful lesson
-Geraldo Rivera kicked Karl Rove’s ass, I think it was the moustache

I had Bruce Lee going kung fu crazy on Shaquille O’Neal in the final round, with finesse and speed beating power and size. Unfortunately my alma mater the University of Washington and LSU were both knocked out in the second round. One of these days I’ll hit on the perfect formula.

Next year I’m going with a College President swimsuit competition.

gretch

Are you over 40?

Well, apparently Elisha Cuthbert is and she is lookin' to hook UP, you over-40 motherf***er!

I'm curious if Elisha's PR people ran this one by her management team. Certainly this is a properly licensed use of her image, right? No self-respecting Facebook advertiser would use her face without her people's ok? And certainly not the hallowed name of Real Mature Dating. If Real Mature Dating starts acting like a scofflaw, what's next? Does the Sierra Club start shooting bears? Do The Brownies skip the Thin Mints and just start selling meth?

But maybe they're just trying to get the word out that Elisha is clearly looking great for her age. From this picture and indeed all the other recent pictures I've seen of her, she looks very much less than 40. I would even say she doesn't look a day over 26. So maybe her management team did clear this image, trying to get the word out about her age; her willingness to date, despite being married; and how slowly she is aging - all in advance of a huge "Live Life Like Elisha" campaign, where she will become the global spokesperson for a line of age-defying lotions, diet books, and videos that will change the way we think about - and indeed, the way we experience - growing older.

In the meantime, I'm just excited that I can sign up for the same dating site that Elisha is using. I'm hoping there's a checkbox you can tick to date her, or any of these other Real Mature Singles:

--Peter

That's Life

Life and Look were big deal magazines when I was a kid. Look was like Life but it had a lot less pictures as I remember. Look always seemed to me that it was for smart people, like The New Yorker or The Nation. Life was always the big picture magazine that even a small child could enjoy.

Look to me was read by beatnicks in the east village on 8th between A and B Avenues while Life was the happy magazine that was in every barbershop or coffee table in America.

We don't have any magazines like that today. Let's say that you rented a house for the summer and there was a stack of old Life and Look magazines, trust me, you'd read Life first.

The above photo of Life we had in our basement for years, well into the 1990's. It housed a bunch of different grades of sandpaper between its pages. I can still smell the pages, that stiff chemical smell of the ink. Good times.

If you look at a magazine rack today there are so many different kinds of magazines, not one that covers it all like Life did.

I don't know, but I imagine that there is a magazine out there just for stomach exercises. Of course you wouldn't get that in Life. You'd get candid shots that were like.. Life.

Perhaps next time I'll talk to you about the wonders of Popular Mechanics. "Build Your Own Submarine", come on!!!

Kurt

Best. Song. Ever.

Read the lyrics through. Then do it again.

It's Not Easy Being Green
Joe Raposo

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be

See? It's the secret to LIFE, is all, y'all.

Green as she can be,

Jenny

Could really go for a pint right about now

Driving down Fairfax I see a couple news vans have scored spots right in front of Molly Malone’s. A man wearing a green plastic bowler hat crosses Wilshire. Further south, the parking lot of Tom Bergin’s is already overflowing. It’s 9:15am. I smile to myself. It’s St. Patrick’s Day.

I can’t help but think of St. Patrick’s Day 1999. I somehow managed to land a bar gig at Cooper’s Alehouse just north of Greenlake, despite having zero bartending/waitress experience. Cooper’s became my home away from home in the scary un-tethered months between graduating from college and packing up the Civic to search for fame and fortune in L.A. Before I left Seattle for good I ruled that bar. I was able to pull pitcher of Mirror Pond Pale Ale while splitting a black & tan with my eyes closed. My favorite smell became that of the walk-in where I changed kegs with Rex at the end of the night, a mix of strong hops and marijuana. We had 26 rotating taps and I could talk like a lover about each and every one. But when St. Patrick’s Day 1999 hit I had only been working there for about a week and a half, I was greener than a four leaf clover. A deer caught in headlights would have been scared for me. The rowdy crowd hit the door at 4:00pm and didn’t stop even after we fudged bartime past the 2:00am cutoff. They were loud and drunk and wet and drunk and loud and rowdy and drunk…but more than anything, they were happy. On this night there were no fights. There were only friendly slaps on the back and hugs and swaying at the bar while singing out-of-tune. After the last drunk had been pushed out the door, Kevin, Rex and I just stood there staring at the pints of Guinness in front of us. I was exhausted and I could barely stand…and I wanted to do it all over again.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!
gretch

I almost started crying when I found these pics of Cooper's online...

All bike and no play...

So, I'm biking on Saturday. Biking pretty far. That's LITERALLY how I roll these days. And it's tiring. Very. And toward the end of the ride I see them. A young couple followed by (I can only assume) their two children. These two girls were around 9 or 10, adorable, dressed the same, and clearly straight out of The Shining. What the hell are these parents thinking? Why would you turn your children into the Asian version of two perfect children clearly destined to lead some way-smarter-than-his-mother boy on a big wheel down the interminably long hall of a creepy off-season resort hotel into an elevator filled with blood? Was there a two-for-one on those Pollyanna dresses? Did they take the kids to a beauty school where the students had only made it through Style One: Kit Kittredge, American Girl?

All I know is I was tired. And it freaked me out.
--Peter

Role Models Part 2

I forgot about these other important role models too.

Forgive me...

Kurt

Role Models

Besides my Dad, I have some pretty great role models. Guys that have taught me right from wrong, how to handle pressure, and how to control a green woman coming at you with a knife.

From Capt. Kirk, to Batman, to James West, to John Steed, to the guys from UFO (which I promise you will be turned into a major motion picture one day), they all helped to make me the man I am today. The kind of guy that holds the door for ladies, says "... no you first, " and is sometimes mistaken for gay because I am both polite AND witty. I say to you all, "Thank You!"

Kurt

I can't stop washing my hands this morning...

According to dreammoods.com, “To see a baby in your dream signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies symbolize something in your own inner nature that is pure, vulnerable, helpless and/or uncorrupted. If you find a baby in your dream, then it suggests that you have acknowledged your hidden potential.”
Great! But what if in the dream that baby is pooping into your hand?! Answer me that dreammoods.com, if that is your real name.



It can't be good, right?

gretch

Do You Know What YOU Want?

There’s a commercial with Jessica Alba, where she is striding purposefully through a lushly decorated house, and you can hear her voice, telling us, “Do you know what you really want? I do. I want my foundation to match my skin tone.”

Is that true, Jessica? So, you’ve thought over all the things you might want, and you chose this? What did you tell the sick babies? How did you explain it to the battered spouses, or those folks in the ICU? Seriously? But thank goodness, at least when you grant an audience to people there in your ivory tower, your foundation will match your skin tone. Because what could be worse than that?

There’s a part of me that wants to hug Jessica Alba - poor kid, nothing bad has happened to her yet, so she’s in for it. If this is her biggest concern, I mean it, this poor thing is a freaking idiot. Or if she does know it’s ridiculous, and is too afraid to make demands for changes, that’s sad too.

I can’t say why I’m still surprised by the crap the advertising industry tries to put over on us. My heart sank a little when Susan Sarandon tried to credit another foundation, L’Oreal, maybe? For her gorgeous grandma skin, and she claimed it was because of the secret ingredient, called Botafirm. Really? Is that the scientific name for it? Botafirm.

There are problems with foundation, I’ll grant you. The foundation of our society is obviously going to hell in a handbasket. The world could use a little Botafirm.

Jenny

Jester’s Last Day

The Court Jester felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest as he struggled to pull on his boot. Just moments earlier the assistant to the second serving wench had woken him – the King wanted to see him immediately. She didn’t know specifics, but the assistant told Jester that she heard something about the King being angered over a joke made about the French monarch. “But that can’t be,” Jester said to himself. “He loved that joke! His Majesty laughed so hard that chicken came out his nose, and I even heard him repeat it to the Earl of Gloucester, although his delivery was all wrong.” Realizing he was trying to put the boot on the wrong foot, Jester threw it aside in anger.



“You know what? Screw that guy, he doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about!” Jester began to scroll through all the arbitrary and ugly behavior the new King exhibited recently. Who could forget when the King had Sir Bertrand beheaded after the knight decided to part his hair on the opposite side. Lady Carol had been drawn and quartered for asking if the King wanted a refill on his ale, and the cook had been burned at the stake for not using enough rosemary, yet no one raised an objection. The King fell victim to a common mistake made by those in power…he confused his subjects’ fear for respect.

Jester didn’t even know why he was still at the court. It was supposed to be a short-time gig, to get on his feet and work towards his real dream…to become a master sword maker. He thought back to the small scale swords he’d been working on in his tower room during the slow times. They could use a good polish, but the form was there. And they showed off his style and ability, he would show them to the castle blacksmith just as soon as he was given the opportunity. But it became more and more clear that everyone saw him as a joke, and that’s all he would ever be.

He’d show them! Some day he’d get his chance, working for the opposition, making beautifully crafted weaponry that would win awards and bring the court to their knees. Jester would laugh at the King’s pleas for forgiveness.

Walking down the dark hallway, Jester shook himself free of the daydream. “I’m such an idiot, that’s never going to happen. If they only knew a semi-trained monkey could do my job I’d be out of here, I should count my blessings.” The kingdom had been left at the brink of collapse after the last run in with barbarians from the North, yet Jester remained well fed and protected. There were thousands beyond the castle walls who barely had enough to eat, much less a retirement plan, the contributions to which were matched at a generous rate from the King’s coffers.

“He’s the boss. I was wrong to tell him a joke…a joke so funny he had to repeat it to his stupid friends. No. No. He’s the boss. I was wrong. I should be grateful. Just put on a happy face.” And with that, Jester pushed open the door to the throne room. He was going to take responsibility for his mistake with a smile of appreciation.

Jester stood, floppy hat in hand, at the foot of the King. “Your Majesty, I am infinitely sorry for any offense I may have made.”

“How dare you look me in the eye!” The King bellowed, spitting through his teeth.

The feeling within Jester was nothing short of miraculous. It was as if a spell had been broken, a key to a long forgotten lock had been turned. Jester felt free and tall and strong.

“Go fuck thyself. I’m out!” Jester beamed. He blew a kiss at the stunned monarch, turned on his heel and strolled toward the door, giving an archer stationed at the door a high-five on his way out.

Three days later, Jester was replaced with a trained monkey who never told a single joke about the French monarchy.


Never let ‘em bring you down,

gretch

Best Before or Use By?

I threw away at least 14 things out of the freezer on Wednesday. Stuff that had expired in some cases two years ago. I know that that happens and I am cool with that. We all forget that we have a box of frozen spinach in the freezer and we end up buying another one at Bristol Farms.

But here is my point, and I do have one. Could they make it easier to find the expiration date on the labels? You practically have to be Indiana Jones to find the hieroglyphics on the packaging that tells you when the stuff has gone or is going to go bad. And I do mean hieroglyphics. The expo date is sometimes written like this WE9IVACL,XVJNoieif LXCJ08027 OPFJ: which of course means August 2nd, 2007 and it is written in print that is one shade down the Crayola Spectrum from the color of label, and to add insult to injury, they print it in 9 pica condensed!

I was staring at these packages flipping them over and over saying, "Where is it? It's like a law that it has to be there, unless you got it at the 99 Cents Only Store."

So I created a lot of space in the freezer which is good. Those three corndogs in there will be thrown away in two years as they don't have a expiration date on them. And I guarantee that someone here will buy a box of corndogs and the cycle will begin again.

Break the cycle.

Kurt

Mmm bop, ba duba dop

If you’re anything like me, you’d be more than a little surprised if Pandora: The Music Genome Project pulled up a Hanson song for you. Hanson. Yeah, “MmmBop” Hanson. My Pandora stations include The Dandy Warhols, Wilco, Peter Bjorn & John and Andrew Bird, so how in the hell would Hanson show up? Delta Spirit’s "Trashcan," that’s how. It still doesn’t make sense since that song totally rocks, but that’s neither here nor there. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy the Hanson track from their 2007 album I can say that I was tickled to see the brothers are still together and making music. And check it out…they’re (mostly) hot…



Ball’s in your court Jonases…but I’m puttin’ my money on the Hansons.

Snap.

gretch

Discovered by a mom....

"Discovered by a mom" seems to be the new "I should know, I'm a doctor." Have you noticed? Moms are out there now, discovering simple remedies for weight loss, whiter teeth and skin peels. I'm just wondering what advantages a mom has in the miracle-invention category. Because they seem to be all over the facebook ads, all of a sudden. Airborne, the miracle air-travel-without-getting-sick remedy was invented by a teacher, y'all! So you know it must be.....what?

Some aimless google searching for phrases like "invented by" brings me to this point. While there have been many female inventors throughout history, most of the sites dedicated to this kind of information have nothing whatsoever about whether or not these women were moms. This suggests that it's only lately become fashionable to be a.....wait for it.....mompreneur.

I only wish I'd thought up that portmanteau word, but I cannot tell a lie. It was made up - one can only assume - by a wordsmith, of either gender, who may or may not have children. I wish I could be more clear, but as with many important trends, not everyone is on board just yet.

Jenny
(who was also brought to you by a mom!)

Plugging in...

I’m rockin’ a pretty wicked headache as I begin to write this. Hopefully the Aleve I just took will live up to the claims on its packaging and fix me with only one tablet. I don’t usually get headaches. I’ve been meaning to get to Macy’s to pick up some new pillows, and maybe my too-squishy pillows have something to do with why my head feels like this. Sure, that’s the easy explanation. But I’m pretty sure the headache is a direct result from plugging into the Matrix yesterday.

Quick back-story, I try to have 2-3 books going at all times because I like to have options for nighttime reading. Here is what’s stacked by my bed…
The Geography of Bliss – genre: Travel Writing/Nonfiction. One man’s hilarious and insightful search for where and why people are the happiest.
A Clash of Kings – genre: Fantasy. Lord of the Rings if there were more humans, no hobbits, and a couple extra dragons.
Spring Snow – genre: Japanese/Literature. A melancholy boy with long eyelashes is mean to some girl (I only just started it).

Within a 24-hour period I read portions of each of these three titles, all from very different genres and at varied points within each of the books…and all three authors used the phrase “cheek-by-jowl.” WHAT?! I’ve never read that phrase anywhere before, much less reading it in three different books on the same day. Weird, right? Believe me, it’s weird. Twice is a coincidence. Three is borderline freaky (which I believe was the original title for Three’s Company). An obvious glitch in the Matrix.

Convinced this was the Universe’s way of trying to communicate something to me, I made sure to keep myself open to anything and everything yesterday. And three times (there’s that “three” again) throughout the day I had what I can only describe as psychic experiences, immediately confirmed in each instance by the individual about whom I was having a premonition. The final instance set my neck hair standing on end. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it, and if there was some specific message I was supposed to get, I totally missed it. But it was there.

I can’t be alone in feeling that some days we are more connected to the swirling mists of the One Universal Consciousness. There’s too much out there that can’t be explained. There’s probably enough for another X Files movie even. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open, and a full supply of Aleve in my desk drawer, from now on.

And as I remembered while talking to my mom on the phone earlier, I did have a dream about Keanu Reeves last night. Whoa.



I let you know as soon as I download Kung Fu lesson,

gretch