Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004 Reader Mail Slot, Episode XXVI Trash is joining us for today's entry, for reasons that will soon become abundantly apparent. Earlier this month, I explained how Trash and I went to Los Angeles and she lived the life of a celebrity—albeit a celebrity with a relatively cheap hotel room, no appearances to make or work to do ["Like most celebrities" – Trash], and no idea of who people thought she was. And we received offers of help, like this one from Marissa: So - is there a photo of your wife that you can post so we can try to figure out who she looks like? Maybe in dark sunglasses and a baseball cap - like the movie stars wear to appear as "one of the people?" And bitchface. You forgot bitchface. In any case, you were ready to come to our aid. Or maybe that was just a pretext so you could see how hot my wife is. Either motivation is one I respect. And lo, I posted pictures of her not once, but twice. Trash's sister had a theory. She's known Trash long enough to remember that back in the 1970's, Trash bore more than a passing resemblance to a well-known child star of the time. And the constant deference that Trash received might be explained by the fact that that child star is now the president of the Screen Actors Guild. ["My sister is a bitch." –Trash] Pamie considered that unlikely, however. ["Pamie, on the other hand, is not a bitch." –Trash] Since I didn't ask permission to use Pam's e-mail, and I don't want to put her in the awkward position of having to publicly defend an e-mail that might have been intended to be private, I'll simply link you to this. So. Trash = not the Gilbert. Anyone else? Yes, you in Ohio. Reese Witherspoon? Maybe a little bit? At least, when she is lying on a bed in L.A., doing crosswords. - Jules I didn't see the movie in which Reese Witherspoon lies on a bed in L.A. doing crosswords, but several of you must have, because Reese got the most votes. However, you can see from the picture that that is impossible, for if Reese were to rest that pointy chin of hers on her hand, she would have no fingers left. Trash, clearly, does not have that problem. Angeline gets points for coming up with a comparison that Trash has actually heard before: In that recent picture you posted of your wife, there is a resemblance to Laura San Giacomo of Just Shoot Me fame....but I dunno, would people go really ape over Maya Gallo? ["Maybe if she'd quit before she was in Just Shoot Me. She was cool in The Stand." –Trash] Laura (not Laura San Giacomo – a different Laura) says: In the leaning-against-concrete-pillar photo, she looks like Linda Hamilton. So what's Linda Hamilton doing with that guy from They Might Be Giants? Linda Hamilton got almost as many votes as Reese Witherspoon. Trash tried to stuff the ballots so that Linda Hamilton would win, until I pointed out that this is not an election and the results are not binding in any way. ["I still don't understand why my two dozen votes don't count." –Trash] There were also a some guesses for Sandra Bullock, Mariel Hemingway, Claire Danes and Portia de Rossi (that last one being unlikely, since they were in the same place at the same time), but this one from Marissa (the same Marissa) is undoubtedly the most obscure: I think - and this is probably the only guess like this you'll get - that she looks JUST like Jacques Pepin's daughter Claudine! I see them on the weekend on their cooking show, on public television. Here's a good picture to show you the likeness. Here's another one -- too goofy. Oddly enough, Marissa is absolutely right. That is the only guess like that I got. So the mystery continues. While the pictures I posted may indicate some resemblance to the above mentioned women, I don't think the resemblance in any of those cases is strong enough for people to actually mistake Trash for them. ["Except perhaps Linda Hamilton." –Trash] Unless her "fans" in L.A. were all tourists who think that celebrities somehow look different in person, which Trash can tell you with some degree of authority that they don't. More on that Friday. * * * I'm sorry to bust in on Reader Mail like this, but this is really important. Yes, even more important than Reader Mail. If pressed, I'd say it may even be more important than the second-most important thing I can think of, which is, of course, me. Pamie's having another book drive. San Diego's libraries need books. They need long books, short books, funny books, dull books, books you could lose in your bed, and books that would shatter your femur. And they need them from you. Yes, you. You can spare some coin to buy books for a library in need, can't you? Pamie's even making it easy for you. Just go to this link to find out what to do. But you already know what to do, don't you? You know to buy books. For San Diego. Seriously. Just click here to find out how. If you can't do it today, there's a link over on the right that says "San Diego needs books." It'll be up there until you actually buy some books. You think I'm bluffing? Fine. My wife's a librarian, and you do not want to piss her off. 
* * * Today's best search phrase: "How to make cream the rabbit Chao." You know, if I knew what that meant, I'd probably be kind of worried. posted by M. Giant 6:58 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, June 28, 2004 The Linden Hillbillies If directions to your house include "turn off the paved road," you might be a redneck. -Jeff Foxworthy A couple of weeks ago, signs went up in our neighborhood that read, "No Parking This Block on Wednesday." Apparently it was seal-coating time. Because we are good little citizens (and because we don't want to get our asses towed), we parked in the driveway. The city, in turn, spread a layer of sharp, gunmetal-gray gravel all over every street within a ten-block radius of our house. We were glad to see that the are was getting repaved, not least of all because the block immediately south of ours has what is effectively a dismembered speed bump scattered across its entire width. After the gravel went down, the signs disappeared. We figured, "Oh, it's probably just an oversight. We should still park off the street, because we don't want our cars parked there when they come back to finish." So far, there doesn't appear to be much danger of that. At this point, we'd look forward to another batch of signs forbidding us to park on the street, because that at least would be a sign that the city hasn't forgotten about us. Or, if they haven't forgotten about us, that they didn't simply run out of money and decide to abandon us with our streets coated with shrapnel. It was fine for a few days, but now it's growing tiresome. As Trash and I entered our neighborhood last night, she asked if I felt like driving around for a while instead of going home. "Sure." And the tires rolled onto a nearby block. KKKKHKHKHKHKKHKKHKKKKHHHKKKK!!!! "Never mind." I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't choose to live inside the city limits of one of this nation's larger municipalities so I could drive on roads comparable in quality to those enjoyed by the pre-Beverly Hills Beverly Hillbillies. Given the property taxes we pay in this town, maybe somebody could prevail upon the road department to finish what they've started. Or, alternately, to not start that which they do not plan to finish. I'm not sure what's the most annoying. Maybe it's the middle-aged guys in their shiny penis-mobiles, afraid to spur the ten thousand horses under their hoods to a speed higher than that of astral projection lest rocks chip their running boards. Maybe it's the fact that every time a car drives down our street it makes a sound like a dump truck full of gravel emptying its load on our front yard. Maybe it's the concern that those sharp little rocks are just going to be left there loose on the street until the first snowfall, whereupon the snowplows will deposit them on my lawn. There are signs that the road workers are still busy around here. A mineshaft has been sunk into the intersection of 46th and Chowen, and huge yet short sections of steel culvert have been scattered around the neighborhood, waiting to be buried. They're about twelve feet in diameter and four feet long, like gicantic, empty mushroom cans with the tops and bottoms cut off, so I have no idea what purpose they might serve. They'll carry a great deal of water for a very short distance, I presume. I'd drive my car through them, but they're not quite wide enough, so they just sit there and taunt me, impervious to the showers of gravel I spray at them as I drive by. Of course, it's easy for me to bitch about the condition of the roads in our neighborhood. Meanwhile, the relatively minute section of pavement for which I bear some responsibility—our driveway—has needed sealing for some time. How long, you ask? Let's see…we've lived here eleven years next month. So I'd say that the driveway has needed coating for…oh…let's say…about…eleven years. Give or take a month. But at least I didn't start it and then go off and leave it, okay? I do have to give the city credit for one thing, though. That really bumpy street a block south of us? The one that rattles our teeth every time we drive on it? They haven't touched that one. Today's best search phrase: "Botle made from PETE." Is Pete aware of this plan? posted by M. Giant 6:37 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Saturday, June 26, 2004 Keepin' It Real From Reuters: Rapper DMX was arrested at New York's Kennedy airport after he and a friend tried to steal a car and attempted to pass themselves off as FBI agents, officials said Friday. DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, 33, and a man police identified as Jackie Hudgins, 41, were charged with attempted robbery, criminal mischief and criminal impersonation because they pretended to be federal agents, airport spokesman Tony Ciavolella said. "Mr. Simmons and the other man stopped a man in his vehicle inside a parking lot and stated that they were federal agents," Ciavolella said. "They tried to force him out of his car with the intent of taking his car." The men were arrested by airport police after driving through a toll gate barrier, the spokesman said. Simmons and Hudgins are being held pending a court appearance Friday night, a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney's office said. Simmons hit rapper stardom in 1998 on the Def Jam Records label with "It's Dark and Hell is Hot" album that reached No. 1. Two other albums also became No. 1 hits. This guy's got three number-one albums and he's out at the airport stealing cars? I don't think so. The whole point of being rich and famous is having people to go to the airport and steal cars for you. Otherwise why bother? You might as well stay poor and obscure. Furthermore, what's up with that M.O.? I'm the first to admit that I'm nobody's idea of an expert on street cred, but what kind of thug tries to steal a car by impersonating an authority figure? That's not how you steal a car. Brandishing a weapon and saying, "Bitch, I'ma kill you"? That's bad-ass. Saying, "Sir, I need your vehicle"? Not bad-ass. The only possible explanation I can imagine is that DMX just got tired of waiting for a rental car. Which I can see. In Honolulu, we waited in line for an hour at the rental office. At LAX, we had to call the rental company to have them send the shuttle to pick us up. If it had occurred to us to simply impersonate federal agents, who's to say we wouldn't have done just that? But I'm not here to judge DMX. The American Way is that people are innocent until proven guilty. And since the man didn't lead police on a 35-mile-per-hour freeway chase, I'm not seeing proof of guilt. Today's best search phrase: "Big tit castle." It's good to be the king. posted by M. Giant 8:25 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Humpblog (6/23/04)/ For the past month, I've been ignoring that little blurb on the Blogger homepage saying that as a user, I'm eligible for a Gmail account. Everyone's all excited about this Gmail thing. Even Trash isn't immune. She sent me a message from her fancy new Gmail account, the thrust of which was, "Don't you envy my coolness?" I said, "Don't you envy the fact that my free e-mail providers don't mine my e-mail messages fro advertising opportunities?" She said, "They do, they just don't tell you." Thanks a lot. Even so, I didn't bother setting up my new Gmail account. Then one morning last week I woke up to find that the storage capacity of my Yahoo! mail had increased sixteenfold, literally overnight. Neat! Obviously they're feeling threatened by Gmail. So I signed up for my Gmail account today. I can't decide if I'm contrary or just perverse. You tell me. * * * I'm lucky enough not to be susceptible to headaches. I'm not immune to them, mind you; if I drop my caffeine dosage to zero from three pounds in the space of twenty-four hours or trepan myself on a door frame I'll pay for it. But cranial pain is generally not part of my daily routine. So when I had a headache last week that was severe enough to wake me up, it could only mean one thing: Brain tumor. But then Trash told me about all the people at her office who were having headaches, and the prevailing theory over there was that it was the result of recent and extreme fluctuations in barometric pressure. Which makes sense, I guess. That scene in Total Recall where Arnold's faceplate shatters on the Martian surface and his head inflates like a balloon doesn't look particularly therapeutic. I'm just glad the barometric pressure has stabilized. It totally cured my brain tumor. * * * Ready for the latest on my back yard? We've gotten lots of rain so far this summer. I'm just pointing that out lest you think I'm going to try to take credit for what has transpired. To refresh your memory, here's what it looked like two years, two weeks, and three days ago: 
And here's what it looks like today: 
All right, I exaggerate. But not by much. I'd put up an actual picture, but I can't find the cable that connects the digital camera to the computer. What am I saying? With my mad horticultural skillz, I'll grow one. Be right back. Okay, Check this out: 
Not only is it seamlessly verdant, it's in desperate need of a good mowing. Sadly, my old-school lawn mower only has one setting: Moby. So I'm afraid that if I shear the grass down to stubble just as we're heading into the end of June, it won't make it until July. There is historical precedent for this. So maybe, just for this one year, we'll have what's called a "prairie conversion." Since it's being converted from a moonscape, I think it's an improvement. * * * While we're on the subject of pictures, here's a more recent one of Trash. This was in fact taken in Los Angeles, so it captures a moment literally within hours of being mistaken for someone famous. We're still trying to figure out whom. 
Today's best search phrase: "Shag carpet pimps." I now have a new dream job. posted by M. Giant 5:03 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, June 21, 2004 More Than We Can Say Big big thanks to everyone who wrote in last month with suggestions on how to cure Trash's laryngitis. Words cannot express her gratitude. Mainly because she can't enunciate them. No, I'm kidding. Actually, all of these suggestions came in while we were on vacation, and hence we didn't get a chance to try them. Her laryngitis was pretty much gone by the time we got home. Heck, it was almost gone when we were still on vacation. There was one day when she was sounding a little scratchy by bedtime. That might have something to do with the fact that we'd spent the day driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles at eighty miles per hour with the windows open and the radio playing while conversing the whole time. But then, I'm no doctor, so what do I know? But even though we never got around to testing these great ideas, as a public service I'm posting them for readers who may find themselves facing a bout of laryngitis sometime in their own future. If we can help just one person, it's worth the zero dollars it takes to keep this site up and running. Let's start with this missive from Zen Viking: I don't have to tell you, anyone who takes advice from Internet weirdos and puts stuff in their mouth as a result is just asking for whatever they get. Actually, let's not start with Zen Viking. Of course, the very term "home remedy" conjures up images of a shotgun shack somewhere in Appalachia, where every medicinal product comes from the still out back. So it's somehow fitting that the first contribution comes from J on the island of Manhattan: Park Avenue Throat Medicine: Smash three aspirin between two spoons, and put the powder in a small dish. Add a splash of Trash's favorite booze (Kahlua works great). Stir everything together, then add a big spoonful of ice cream, and stir again. The aspirin is an anti-inflammatory, the booze is a local anesthetic, and the cold temperature of the ice cream also reduces irritation. Which raises the question: how does one convincingly fake laryngitis so one can try this? There were also suggestions from further afield, like these from Anne: I live in the Czech Republic, so this will (perhaps) be your longest-distance cure. The local cures for all that ails you in these parts are: A. slivovice (this is brandy made from plums). It's usually homemade, but you can buy it stateside at shops like Trader Joe's (none where you are, I think, but plenty in California. [Sure, rub it in.] Think about stocking up! It's MAGIC! You could probably stay in the MAGIC CASTLE if you took slivovice with you...[And again, with the rubbing]) 1. Drink it in shots. 2. Lightly soak a kerchief with it and wrap it around your throat. --I am not sure whether the fact that step 1 will make you pass out (and if step 1 fails, the fumes from step 2 will do it) is really the cure: deep, painless sleep is always good. B. very finely chopped onion, covered with honey, eaten in small spoonfuls. --For some time, I thought this was the Czech way of making sure a kid was really sick, and not just trying to get out of an exam. Because you would really have to have the supressed tastebuds of sickness to get this down. That said, it does seem to work some kind of mojo on the whole dry throat/stuff nose/runny nose nastiness of colds and flu. It may also prevent re-infection, much as garlic wards off vampires and all living people as well. C. hot red wine with honey and cloves I think this works much like A: deadens the pain and gets you a good night's sleep. D. don't whisper. It seems counter-intuitive, but whispering is harder on the throat than the scratchy voice is. E. keep the throat covered A scarf or kerchief, especially when sleeping, seems to help. I'm really impressed that anyone in the Czech Republic ever got past A. And then there's this from DragonAttack, who I hope won't mind my outing her as a hippie supplement user: I'm going to assume that you guys aren't hovering over your email in California waiting for home remedies, but I'll send this today anyway. Echinacea! Go to the drugstore and get yourself a bottle of Echinacea. It's in the hippie supplement section (I like Nature's Resource brand, but I'm guessing there isn't a difference between that and others) and it is your best friend. I've used Echinacea as a cold remedy. I vastly prefer it to cough drops with zinc, for instance. Those things are like sucking on a penny. Now, from Martha, this simple, brief, yet eloquently forceful suggestion: Trash could try Throat Coat tea - it works for me. It must. Martha has no time to type! Her preferred method of communication is speech! Thanks to Throat Coat! We also heard from people whose preferred method of communication is arias, like Erin: This comes from an opera singer, so... -quit talking. It's fun to make weird raspy noises, I know, but quit it. -hot beverages good. Hot "throat coat" [there it is again!] or "throat formula" tea better. My favourite is from Yogi teas (ignore the scary religious spoutings on the teabag tabs) but there are other brands as well and they all have the same basic ingredients. -if she's coughing, a DM cough syrup will help stop the coughing and thus stop the laryngeal damage. Look for one with guafenesin (many spellings acceptable, it seems) which thins mucus. Robitussin makes a good simple one without additional harmful ingredients. Speaking of additional harmful ingredients, if she's on an antihistamine or decongestant, that will be contributing to the laryngitis. Hence the simpler cough syrup recommendation. -water, water, water. -she could try steaming - heat up a pot of water and bend over it with a towel over the head. Not fun, but good for you. Morning and night! -the best cough lozenges are Ricolas. Skip the Fisherman's Friends (too harsh for la voce) and the Halls (ditto). If you can find Thayer's Slippery Elm they're good too, but not as tasty and tooth-decay-inducing as the mighty Ricola. Good luck! Slippery elm? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. Instead, let's hear from Kristen: I really like your site and constantly suffer from laryngitis, although I don't think the two facts are related. [God, I hope not.] The trick is in the diagnosis--after all, "laryngitis" really just means "there's something wrong with your voice," which doesn't really help. If it's a wet, sore, icky, gross feeling, then get one of those facial steamers at Target or something and use it twice a day. Then cough up all the crap that emerges after 15 minutes. You also get the benefit of open pores! Any other kind of throat-badness I use a tea called "Throat Coat," [Okay, now I'm sold] which is an herbal tea you can get at most health food stores. It takes 10 minutes to brew and tastes like ass, but is soothing and lovely. I also noticed a drop in frequency after I started using Rhinocort to get my allergies under control. Hope this helps! And from Sheila, who has a great URL: Slippery elm bark (I know...yum, right?) is excellent for sore throats. [Excuse me, I was trying to pretend I'd never heard that.] Singers and public speakers like Thayer's Slippery Elm Lozenges, which are available at most health food stores. I also like Traditional Medicinals' Throat Coat Tea, which also has slippery elm and licorice root. [Aaaaand Throat Coat is ruined.] (Licorice root is also good for sore throats and lost voices, but can be hard to drink if you don't like black licorice.) Something else to consider - if it's persistent, it's quite possibly caused by an allergy. If you've had some rain and a high mold count, that could be it. Mold is a big contributer, but it can be any allergen. If she has a cough or is clearing her throat a lot, I'd check out a cough syrup with Guaifenesin (just don't ask me to say it) and a saline nasal spray. Hmm. Sheila spelled it "guaifnesin." Erin spelled it "guafenesin." And now I'm going to get Google hits on both. This is working out better than I expected. One more thing: you know what doesn't work? Having minor surgery, undergoing anesthesia, and getting intubated. Trash's throat didn't like that at all. But it recovered before I had a chance to try the onions and honey cure. Or maybe Trash was just faking recovery. Today's best search phrase: "Oceanic hokey." You put your tide in, you put your tide out… posted by M. Giant 8:55 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Saturday, June 19, 2004 They'll Hook You Up Trash underwent a little minor surgery yesterday. Everything went fine, and she's home recovering now. But it wasn't without its surreal moments. For instance, there was the day-before briefing she got over the phone on Thursday. You know, all the stuff a person needs to know before going in. "Don't eat anything after midnight the night before, and don't drink any more than a few sips of water after that." Okay. "Don't take any aspirin, either. Okay. "Have someone there to drive you home and be with you all day." Okay. "Leave your jewelry and valuables at home." Okay. "Wear loose, comfortable clothing." Okay. "And be sure to bring plenty of cash for the painkillers." What? What the hell is that about? Is she having surgery at Woodstock or something? Is some skanky-looking old hippie going to be wheeling a cart full or narcotics through the recovery room, swarmed by slow-moving patients wearing hospital gowns and leashed to rolling IV stands, while a jack-in-the-box bell version of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" comes pouring out of a speaker on the back? I was under the impression that the pre-surgery briefing's purpose is to reassure the patient as well as inform her. After hers, Trash was not only not reassured, but she had more questions than before. First: Why cash? Is this supposed to be under the table somehow? If I'm not supposed to get drugs here, should I be considering a different hospital? One that takes checks, maybe? Second: Why do I have to get them at the same place I have my surgery? This is a fairly well developed area, with plenty of perfectly reputable pharmacies, many of which do not insist on cash. Third: Why painkillers? You mean this is going to hurt? Afterwards, the nurse did send me down to an actual pharmacy in the hospital, where they accepted my health insurance and everything. Although I did hand over my copayment in cash. Just to keep the narcs off the trail, you understand. Today's best search phrase: "Des Moines faux finish." I don't know what kind of technique you'd use to get that room in your house to look exactly like Des Moines, but I wish you the best of luck. posted by M. Giant 4:25 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, June 16, 2004 Catching the 21A One of Trash's coworkers, BB, was kind enough to write a guest entry and thus give me a day off. So no Humpblog this week. Or maybe it'll be on Friday. Who knows? I'm as predictable as the wind, you know. And now, over to BB. My morning routine is precariously tight. I’ve got to catch the 21A at 7:06 or I won’t make my connection at 35W, which would mean the slow boat to Edina where I work. 90 minutes instead of 50 and lost productivity since I’m very much a morning person. Not only is there no time for breakfast at home, but if I were to eat, it would hinder my ability to run the three blocks from my house up to Lake Street. I never have time to walk, but if I leave at 7:00 I can get by with a jog. 7:01 to 7:02 means a regular run, 7:03 means I’m running at a sub-five minute mile pace before the screen door even slams. On those days, I run right in the street so I don’t have to waste time clearing curbs and everyone knows tar is more forgiving than concrete on the legs – plus it’s nice and smooth compared to sidewalks in the Longfellow neighborhood. My guess is there are about 20-25 households who make sure to be looking out their windows onto 45th avenue right around 7:00 so they can see me go by, dressed for work (nice shoes, sometimes a flapping tie, slacks, ironed shirt), but hoofing right down the middle of the freaking road. I would give anything to see one of my neighbors do this right off the bat every morning. I would leap out of bed and position myself at the breakfast table anticipating the daily 45th Avenue bizarre running event. The worst is when I don’t just have my bag, a soft-sided briefcase type affair with two broken zippers, but I also have a little Victoria’s Secret bag with my lunch, brunch, snacks and breakfast. Running technique is compromised with two bags and performance suffers considerably. Try it if you don’t believe me. Break into a fast run, then add a couple of bags and maintain the same brisk pace. See? Impossible. When I get to Lake, I glance quickly at my watch to see if I have time to run into SuperAmerica to fill my LL Bean marine grade stainless steel travel mug with blazing hot tea water. It normally takes about 28 seconds to drop my bags on the dirty floor next, pull the Black Awake Tazo tea bag from my shirt pocket, rip it open, tear off the tag, drop the tea bag into the cup and then that beautiful orange lever that says Pull for Hot Water, cap the cup, scoop up my tea bag packaging scraps, drop them in the trash, grab my bags and go baby go. However, I need my space and I need to have the mind of a Samurai -- if one little thing goes wrong, I am screwed. Somebody drops his doughnut-of-the-week and blocks my path while trying to retrieve it with a sheet of wax paper? Not OK and I don’t feel good about screaming, “Out of my way damnit!” right away in the morning. I fumble for my tea in all pockets and then have to resort to my auxiliary stash deep in the front pocket of my briefcase. 13 seconds lost. The SA stop is critical because if I don’t get my tea, there will be nothing to wash down my almond butter and jelly at my 35W stop. And the 35W bus stop without tea would be unbearably depressing with all that garbage swirling at my feet and the four lanes of traffic streaming by on their way to Southdale or wherever they’re going. One morning I botched it or almost botched it. I trotted across SA’s oil-stained cement and looked at my watch. 7:04:12. I’m just fine. Even felt cocky enough to stop and read the Pioneer Press headlines on my way out. Since I like current events, I must’ve gotten sucked in, cuz when I looked up there it sailed down Lake at 30+ miles per hour. Shit! Let’s go baby. I leapt past the firewood display and hit the concrete apron at a full sprint, compromised by the fact that my briefcase was, as usual in my left hand, but now I had my precious LL Bean mug in my right and there was no time to consolidate. My dress shoes made a dramatic and important sounding noise as they tried to get traction across the gritty cement. SA is on 44th and before I knew it I was blowing by the old Molly Quinn’s on 43rd now running full bore like Lola in Run Lola Run. But Lola just ran, I bellowed as I ran, “Wait! Hold the bus!” in an animal-like voice that frightened even me and probably woke a great deal of both the Seward and Longfellow neighborhoods. But buses are loud and the driver, who makes all the decisions, sits way up front another 30 feet away from me. Shit. Go baby go. This will never happen again – I shit you not – tomorrow I’m getting up by 5am. At age 39, I’m not as fast as I was even 5 years ago. But for a middle-aged guy in his work clothes, burdened by a bag and a full mug, I can really move out. Especially when the alternative is a royal hassle getting to work. I’d just about catch him as he would pull over to pick somebody up, then he’d pull away again like a dull, lumbering beast weaving its way down Lake Street. I, however, was moving with purpose like a svelte hyena pursuing an injured wildebeest. Of the wide variety of thoughts racing through my mind, one was “ If I could only leap onto the back bumper I could pound like hell on the side of the bus with my mug and maybe an alert passenger would hear me and suggest that the bus driver pull over to investigate.” Now I didn’t even recognize what part of Lake I was on after 5 rounds of cat and mouse where the bus would leave me 50 feet back only to leave me in a hot blast of diesel exhaust. Breathing hard, like I had just finished a series of quarter mile intervals on the track, I bagged it and reviewed my options. Thinking nimbly despite the lack of Black Awake in my system, I wiped the cold weather tears from my cheeks and started a modified hitchhiking routine. Westbound cars would pull up to the stop light right near Tires Plus, and I would simply walk into Lake street and inquire as to the possibility of joining them for a few blocks until we caught that 21 up there in the distance. After a raft of “No, sorry’s” and even people ignoring me completely, I met my man. My savior was a hefty fellow in a sagging Chevy Lumina with a back seat full of flyers to deliver. We didn’t talk much really. All he needed was the challenge to catch that bus and it was all business. He drove like Darrell Waltrip at Talladega in pursuit of that bus. “Come on baaaby!” I shrieked slapping him on the quadriceps, “Go, go, go baby! Go!” I kid you not. He cut the 21 off directly in front of Minnehaha Liquors – the bus did not even make it to Target. I thanked him, praised his driving, and waltzed onto the bus as if my brother-in-law decided to simply drop me off on his way to the office. Nothing more. I sat down next to a two-pack-a-day smoker and wiped the sweat from my brow. That was close. Today's best search phrase: "Calvin and Hobbes peeing on Strat." Obviously this would be a karmic home run, but what surprises me is how many other results there are for this phrase. posted by M. Giant 6:08 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, June 14, 2004 Sleep Tight Trash and I had budgeted about a day and a half to make the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Late in the afternoon of the first day, when the relentless winding of the Pacific Coast Highway was starting to make me a little dizzy, we stopped for dinner in Big Sur. That stretch of Highway One—or more accurately, that tangle of Highway One—was somewhat reminiscent of some of the roads in the Black Hills, winding around the waists of hill after hill. One difference is that if you're in the Black Hills and there's an ocean on your left for any length of time at all, it's time to pull over and take another look at your map. The other difference is that in the Black Hills, the random roadside restaurant you have dinner at is not likely to be very good. The one in Big Sur was. Considering how good the food and the service was at this place, we thought it might be worth investigating the motel across the road. Since we were clearly in a nice neighborhood and all. We were well over halfway to San Francisco by now, so we figured we might as well crash for the evening. While Trash waited for our food, I ran across the road and reserved a room. Not a motel per se, but a cluster of tiny little duplexes, the place looked adorable. And again, given how good the restaurant across the road was, how bad could it be? So we finished our meal, drove the rental car across the road, paid for our room, and checked in. We really need to get more into the habit of checking out rooms before we pay for them. There was no television. There was no telephone. And both electrical outlets were two-holers ,which made our battery-less laptop even more useless than the lack of a phone line already had. I went to the office and explained that we couldn't stay here after all, because none of the outlets would work for us. Our host reached into a drawer and handed me one of those adapters that let you plug in a three-prong plug into a two-prong outlet. Oh, thanks a lot. Now we have to actually sleep here. Trash blamed me for our predicament, which was totally unfair, aside from the fact that I was the one who had insisted we stay there after Trash suggested we move on. I tried to put a good face on it. "It's like camping," I said. "But with walls." "And no campfire, and no music," she pointed out. "We have all of the bad of camping and none of the good." Which I thought was a little drama-queeny of her, as we hadn't even seen that many bugs in the room yet. There was a little sign in the room explaining that if we had an emergency that required the use of a phone, we were welcome to walk down the road to the gas station/convenience store next door. My emergency was that my wife was about to kill me. Instead of using the phone, I came back with a deck of cards and an assortment of snacks with the sell-by dates hand-written on their labels next to heavy ink scribbles. "We'll play cards for a while and go to bed early," I suggested. I think this was at about 6:30. It's not entirely accurate to say that there was no music. There was a clock radio in the room, but the combination of its age and our geographic isolation rendered it incapable of picking up anything but staticky opera and a handful of AM talk stations whose reception was so fuzzy we couldn't tell which wing they belonged to. After a half-hour of indistinct soprano warbling, Trash insisted I find another station. Ten minutes of turning the dial a tenth of a degree at a time yielded nothing but a few frequencies with marginally louder static. But eventually I found a faint oldies station. 107.98765165198462168749 on your FM dial, if you're ever in the neighborhood. The problem was that as soon as I put the radio down, the station would disappear. It would only pick up the signal when in direct contact with a powerful antenna—i.e., my person. So Trash and I spent the evening playing cards while I held the clock radio under my arm like a snack-dog. Every once in a while, we'd lose the signal and I'd have to shift its position ever so slightly, presumably to make contact with a part of my arm that still had the proper charge of ions or something. Throughout, the volume knob was digging into the inside of my elbow. Trash: "Why don't you put the radio down?" Me: "Okay!" Radio: "I guess you'd say…what can make me…KKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHKKKHKKHKKKKHHKKKKKHH…." Eventually we gave up and turned the radio off. By then my arm had so many imprints of the volume knob in it that it looked as if I had been accosted by an octopus. We did indeed go to bed early, and we were packed up and out of there by 7:45 the next morning. Which is early for us, even when we're not on vacation. Yet ours was the second-to-last car out of the parking lot that morning. And the office wouldn't even be opening for another fifteen minutes. We debated briefly over whether we should leave our room keys in the room with the door locked or unlocked. We decided on the latter, because it wasn't like somebody was going to walk in and steal the TV. I felt a little cheated, considering what we'd paid and what we'd gotten. Then, that night in San Francisco, I broke out the laptop again. The three-prong adapter was still attached to the power cable. And we'd paid in cash. Revenge is sweet, as long as you're not too picky about the portions. Today's best search phrase: I get referrals from the phrase "Paige Davis naked" all the time. But today, I got a variation on the theme: "Why is Paige Davis naked?" I dunno, man. I'm not the one doing the search. posted by M. Giant 5:07 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, June 09, 2004 Humpblog (6/09/04) After Friday's entry about Trash being mistaken for someone famous, people wanted to see a picture of her for themselves so they could try to figure out who Trash might conceivably look like, even if from a distance or in poor lighting. So here you go.  What do you think? I hope you can figure it out, because we were all completely stumped. * * * Saw the new Harry Potter movie last weekend. I have to confess, I wasn't entirely sold on the idea of Alfonso Cuaron directing this one. I mean, sure, Y Tu Mama Tambien was great, but is a Harry Potter movie really a good place for long-winded narrative voice-overs in Spanish? I was glad to see that he left those out. And also the threesome. I'm not convinced that would have been appropriate. * * * Have you figured out who Trash looks like yet? Sorry. Don't mean to pressure you. I'll give you another minute. * * * Overheard on the DC Metro last night, via a librarians' mailing list that Trash belongs to:: "Yea, I'm going to go pay my respects on Thursday night. After all, he was the first president I was ever aware of as an adolescent." Unintelligible. "He'll be lying in state in the Capital." Unintelligible. "Yea, Thursday night. Right after Happy Hour." * * * I’m going to let you in on a little secret. That's not actually a picture of Trash at the top of this entry. My apologies to anyone who might have been taken in by my little ruse. Here she is for reals.  More pictures here. I should point out that several people are depicted in the photographs in that entry, and that my wife is neither the geeky-looking guy, nor the attractive Asian woman, nor the infant on the kitchen table. Just so we're clear. Today's best search phrase: "Graduation cap bangs." Finally, Google's purchase of Blogger has a concrete effect on my life. posted by M. Giant 4:30 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, June 07, 2004 I Have Met the Enemy You'll never believe who stopped by the house yesterday. I stepped out my front door and walked around to the back to clean out my car. I'd already noticed a car full of people parked in front of the neighbors' house, but since I didn't know them, I figured they were there for the neighbors. Then the guy called out to me. I stopped and turned, and he met me in the driveway. "I used to own this house," he said. Sweet gelatinous Christ. I was face-to-face with Dr. Jellyfinger. If I were any kind of a man at all, I would have punched him in the face in front of his womenfolk, ordered him off my land, and threatened to come after him if I ever heard so much as a rumor of his picking up a power tool ever again. But no, I 'm a Minnesotan. I'm expected to stick my hand out, give a welcoming smile, introduce myself, and invite him and his family in for a drink. To my credit, I didn't do any of that shit either. He'd stopped by once before, almost ten years to the day. I hadn't been there at the time. It was when we were building our deck onto the back of the house, the refrigerator was broken, and the cat was working on her simulation of paraplegia. He'd knocked on the door, asked to look around, and Trash had let him in. "You should have told that asshole to fuck off," I've told her any number of times in the intervening years. Yesterday he asked me if he could look around. I said, "Fuck off, asshole." Well, not out loud. If I'd said out loud all the things I'd been thinking during our brief encounter, we'd still be standing there. Just looking at him filled me with rage, gazing into that idiot face suffused with pride of workmanship, no clue behind those piggy little eyes that everything he touched in that house was, at one time or another, the biggest headache in my life. I wanted to walk him through and point out to him, in agonizing, unsparing detail, all the things he'd wrecked that my dad and I have had to fix. But here's how it went instead, with my unspoken portion of the conversation in italics: Him: "I used to own this house." Me: "Oh." Run, you fuckstick. Run and hide while you have the chance. Him: "I sold it a long time ago." Me: "Yeah, my wife and I have lived here for about eleven years now." Most of it cursing your name. Him: "You mind if I take a look around?" Me: Fuck, yes! "It's kind of a mess in there right now." And if you step inside, I don't know if I'll be able to talk myself into letting you out alive. Him: "Oh, well, can I just take a look at the yard, then?" Me: Hmm, now we're joined by two Spawns of Jellyfinger, Bride of Jellyfinger, and Mother of Jellyfinger. Not enough room to bury them all back there. "Sure." Dr. Jellyfinger takes in the back door we had installed a couple of years ago, the beautiful curved deck I built with my father, the expansive stone patio we laid with my parents, the stunning landscaping that Trash and my mother did last summer, the beautiful circular pine bench that Mom and Dad built to encircle the base of the tree. He says, because I don't already have enough reasons to hate him: Him: "Wow, that tree got really big. I planted that tree." Me: Must…control…fist…of death… "Really?" Him: "Yeah, it was just a little sapling then. Now it shades the whole yard." Me: "Yes." Motherfucker. "It does." Kill you kill you kill you kill you KILL YOU! Things get a little blurry after that. My thoughts cycled between 1) awareness that I was not armed, 2) what it would take to remedy that situation before he escaped, and 3) how much difference it was going to make in a minute or two if my mortal enemy didn't stop grinning at me in that oblivious manner. Him: "I did the whole basement, too, you know." Me: Kill you! Kill you! Kill you! As they left, barely a minute after arriving, Mother of Jellyfinger nearly commited suicide with this remark: Her: "The basement was pretty." Me: You belong in a home. I wonder if Dr. Jellyfinger will be back in another ten years. And if we'll still be there. If so, I hope he comes alone this time. I'll be able to skip the italics if he does. Today's best search phrase: "John Batman pay a price of 40 blankets, 30 axes, 100 knives, 50 scissors, 200 handkerch." I suspect that unless John Batman is buying something like the Yukon, he's getting rooked. posted by M. Giant 7:48 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, June 04, 2004 Ready for Her Closeup We didn't have nearly as many celebrity sightings as we expected to in Los Angeles. I don't think Portia de Rossi even counts because if Pamie hadn't pointed her out to us we would have blown right by her, oblivious. We also saw a guy on La Cienega who looked like Larry David from the back, but as he was behind the wheel of a 1988 Corolla, we thought it unlikely. We'd even made reservations for lunch at the Ivy. In fact, it was our first order of business after arriving Saturday. One of Trash's coworkers, who coincidentally helped coach me for my interview with my current boss, asked us to have lunch there to see who we could spot. She'd been there herself and had a very nice conversation with Sharon Osbourne in which absolutely no hams were thrown. But when we were at the Ivy, there was only one celebrity, and everyone's attention seemed to be fixed on her. There were stares and whispers and amateur paparazzi snapping digital photos of her. Guess who I'm talking about. No, forget it. You can't guess. It was the woman sitting across the table from me. Yes, several people had mistaken Trash for someone else. Someone famous. Unless Trash is way more famous than she lets on. It didn't end at the Ivy. That night at dinner, she went to the ladies room to find a line of three women waiting to use the facilities. Star-struck, they insisted she go first. "No, that's okay," Trash demurred. But they wouldn't take no for an answer. And so they enjoyed the frisson of listening to a supposedly famous person peeing. They stopped short of asking her not to flush and heading in after her with an empty water bottle, however. Same deal at breakfast the next morning, with her as the subject of indiscreet points and excited sotto voce conversations. And at brunch at the Newsroom the following day, across the street from the Ivy. Stee suggested that maybe the interest in her was simply curiosity over who the mystery woman was with the guy from They Might Be Giants (i.e., me), but that doesn't explain everything. For instance, when we were leaving the hotel on Friday night, Trash came around the corner as another guest was entering his room This conversation began before I was even in his line of sight: "Hi! Hi!" he stammered excitedly. "Hi…?" Trash answered. "You guys going to dinner?" "Um, yeah…?" "Where?" "We don't kno—" "You want some suggestions?" At this point, I took over our end of the "conversation," because Trash was busy staring at him in frank, blank confusion. "No, we're meeting friends, and they're picking the place." "Oh! Okay! Well! Bye!" "Bye…?" "Bye! Bye!" By this point we were convinced that Trash was being mistaken not for an actor, but a producer or studio executive. Pam guessed that the dude at the hotel was someone who had recently had a meeting or a pitch with Trash's mogul doppleganger, and is now convinced that a) his career is over, b) he made a total jerk of himself (which, okay) and/or c) that producer or studio executive is a total bitch. Of course, we still had absolutely no idea who Trash was being mistaken for. We kept hoping someone would approach her to ask for an autograph so she could say, "Sure! And who shall I make it out from?" Or she could throw her spurious weight around somewhere, demanding of some flunky, "Do you know who I am? Then could you tell me?" But we ended up going home without ever finding out. I always did think my wife looked like a movie star. Now I just wonder which one. Today's best search phrase: "Camp game pudding 'up my nose'." Now I'm really glad I never went to camp as a kid. posted by M. Giant 7:47 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, June 02, 2004 We Won! So I may have brought up the subject of the Kieran's Pub Quiz once or twice over the course of my run here. It's usually all about how much we lost by, or how far down the rankings we were. This is not one of those entries. You know why? Because we won! Yes, the team consisting of Trash, Zen Viking, G. Grod, Linda, and myself finally won a long-overdue victory. By, like, a lot. And at the next Pub Quiz, we'll claim trophies that will be engraved with our team name. The team name that won it for us, if you ask me. It's a name inspired by the prizes at the quiz. The first-place team gets trophies and gift certificates. The second-place team gets bottles of wine. The third-place team gets dick. Thus, tonight's winner was our team, "Third Place Dick." A crashing misnomer, if I do say so myself. Linda's got the full score sheet, which she said she'll post--along with more details--at some point. Other Pub Quiz teams, consider yourself 0wN20r3d! posted by M. Giant 8:31 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Humpblog (6/02/04) We gave our house-sitter last week specific instructions regarding watering the lawn and our many outdoor plants and flowers. I'm glad I thought to wrap it up with the sentence, "Of course, on days when it rains, you don't need to water at all." Because by all reports, it rained almost every day we were gone. There's nothing we Minnesotans appreciate more when we're on vacation than hearing about shitty weather back home. But this time there's an extra bonus, because the rain has nurtured the grass of my previously barren backyard to an Amazonian level of fecundity. The downside is that the front really needs mowing, but I don't know when or if it's going to be dry enough. It's already to the point where cutting the grass with my old-school, motorless, M. Giant-powered lawnmower is going to be a workout comparable to bench-pressing a yak. But it's worth it in light of the transformation my back yard has undergone. Used to be I would turn on the sprinkler to make grass grow. Next time I turn on the sprinkler, it'll be in order to find it. * * * Last week was my first visit to San Francisco. It was Trash's second. As we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles, we passed a vineyard. During her last trip to the Bay Area, she and her grad school buddies toured a winery. Last week, we're driving up the highway and Trash points out the vineyard off the right shoulder. "There's Cabernet, and Merlot…" I was impressed. "You can recognize the different kinds of vines?" After a one-day tour? Which was three years ago? Zooming past them at seventy-plus miles per hour, no less? "There are signs next to them," she explained. Oh. What? I was keeping my eyes on the road. I should have realized it was something like that. During that winery tour a few years ago, Trash didn't spit out her samples like you're supposed to, so her memory of that day is a little patchy. Even if she hadn't confessed, I like to think that I would have been onto her when she claimed to spot Shiraz a few minutes later. * * * Last week I got this hoax warning in my e-mail from my former coworker, T-Rex: Hi, I hate hoax warnings, but this one is important. Please send this to everyone. If a man comes to your front door and says he is conducting a survey and asks you to show him your ass, DO NOT show him your ass. This is a SCAM!!!!!!! He only wants to see your ass. I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap!! Pass it on. * * * Today's best search phrase: "Sad hot dog cooker." As if there were any other kind. posted by M. Giant 4:19 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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