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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Sunday, August 31, 2008 Passing on the Right We were visiting Trash's mom in Iowa this weekend, and on the way back home the weirdest thing happened. We stopped for snacks about ninety minutes from home, and when we got on the road at 3:30, suddenly everyone wanted to pass me. And I mean, it's not like I was going the speed limit, but I-35 seemed to be packed with people wanting to go 95 miles per hour. Trash noticed it too. "And it seems to be about you specifically," she said. If I was in the right lane, people would zoom past me and then cut right in front of me before I even heard their sonic boom. If I was in the passing lane, people would charge up behind me and then go to the right, as though the slower-moving car I was passing was less annoying than I was. More than one car even slowed down for a while and then let me pass them so they could pass me again. I asked Trash, "Did you, like, throw up on your back bumper or something? Because it's like there's something back there that everyone wants to rush to get a closer look at, but then they get up here and they're like, 'oh, hell no, I'm not following that.'" Trash denied anything of the sort, and the back of the car would indeed turn out to be clear once we got home. Then I speculated, "Maybe the coolest stuff is happening in Minneapolis right at 5:00 and they don't want to miss any of it." Trash then reminded me about that RNC thingy that's happening in St. Paul this very week. How could I forget, after the lengthy caravan of giant motor coaches we had seen heading north the previous day, trailing a massive blue cloud of diesel emissions, cigar smoke, and contempt? However many years ago we found out that our metro area would be hosting the RNC, we vowed to get out of town that weekend. Not that this is anything specifically against Republicans, mind you. We would have had the same reaction had the Democrats wanted to come, or the Olympics. We felt the same way about the Super Bowl, and the national AA thing, and the Edina Art Fair that happens a few blocks from our house the first weekend of every May. We're always like, "Head for the hills!" in advance, but then later it turns out that not leaving the house at all works just as well. And yet here we were, heading back into town for what's going on this week. And really, if they were Republicans on the road with us, I really did try hard not to read too much into their "I'm hell-bent on doing whatever it takes to get ahead at the cost of everyone else and if you don't like it go ahead and kill yourself trying to stop me" driving style, but it was kind of a challenge. Anyway, now we're just crossing our fingers over what's about to hit the Gulf Coast. See you on the other side. posted by M. Giant 8:46 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Ha! I love the title of this post.
By heh - you are so clever. I read you all the time, but have never left a comment.
By Thursday, August 28, 2008 Stung I don't remember how old I was the first time I got stung by a bee. I was young enough that I was still living in my parents' house in Coon Rapids, but old enough to react to the sudden pain that lit up the webbing between my right finger and thumb by sending up a blue streak of curses that was visible several blocks away. Fortunately my devoutly religious grandmother, who was visiting at the time, took it in stride. The second time was just a few years ago. Since Trash is deathly allergic to bee stings, we have a zero-tolerance policy around here and I was trying to eliminate a hive that had somehow gotten started under our siding. On reflection, perhaps I would have been better off just spraying the hive and then backing off instead of sticking around to try and bulls-eye every individual bee I saw. M. Edium's first time was tonight. We were at the pool and I was standing literally right behind him when he suddenly cried out, "Ow, that hurts my hand!" I looked and didn't see a wound, but then I saw the drowned bee bobbing in the water. I knew they died after stinging you, but I didn't know it happened that quickly. You'd probably expect a three-year-old to shriek in several different frequencies at once. Well, I'm not going to say that M. Edium didn't cry, because he did. But it wasn't the kind of mortal screech that would have come out of, say, me. I've long suspected that he has a high pain threshold. He's remarkably forgiving when he has to get shots. We found out he had a hairline ankle fracture last summer when he got up one morning and calmly reported, "I can't walk so good." If he falls or crashes into something, he'd much rather get back to what he was doing than sit and cry about it. I suspect that what upset him about the bee sting wasn't how much it hurt, but how long he had to wait for it to stop hurting. It's like he's used to having pain go away in the first minute or so after sustaining an owie, and then when it doesn't he feels ripped off. By the end he was crying not from pain but frustration. I'm also glad to report that he didn't display any signs of an allergic reaction, although if he had, he probably would have denied the symptoms of anaphylactic shock the same way he does the symptoms of being sleepy. He did say at one point that he wanted his mom, but not enough to actually get out of the pool and go home. No, that would have ruined his evening. By the time we did go home a half hour later, for dinner, I asked him how his hand was feeling and he said fine. Like it had never happened, even though I could see the angry red welt. That is to say, it looked angry to me, but M. Edium's attitude indicated that it was now actually a fairly congenial red welt. Who is this kid? That bee must have been like, "Shit, man, this yuppie-larva izzzz tough. I'm out." I don't think it's to the point where it's dangerous or anything, mind you. He has the typical preschooler fearlessness when it comes to climbing and such, but in general when something hurts he knows enough to quit doing it. Like, we're still going to need to keep oven mitts in the house. But it's a good thing we're not the type of parents who discipline our child by thumping him, because then we'd be really screwed. posted by M. Giant 8:31 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:NICU grads tend to react either really well or really, really badly to pain. Glad to see M.Edium is in the first group!
By
May I suggest M.Edium has quite a lucrative future in hockey?
By Bo speaks the truth -- it's seldom the very first sting that causes trouble. Anaphylaxis is a type of hypersensitivity reaction, so one must first be sensitized to the allergen (in this case, the toxin). So unfortunately there's not a 100% chance he will avoid Trash's fate. Still, he's a tough lil' dude, no question about that.
By Aw. AW! Poor guy.
By Ellie is the SAME way! The kid has taken some pretty rough looking tumbles. I sit back and wait for her reaction before I react. She gets up, dusts off and gets back to whatever it is that she is doing.
By Tuesday, August 26, 2008 Off Guard I heard someone on the radio this morning talking about seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, and mentioning that it all happens far behind a wrought-iron fence now so you can't get close enough to try to make the guards laugh any more. Actually, that was the case even way back in 1997, when I was there. There were a lot of things I didn't expect about London. Mulder's voice being kind of squeaky as a result of The X-Files episodes being stuffed into a forty-minute time slot. Having to walk upstairs to get to the "first floor." The fact that it takes like a half hour to change a damn guard. We were actually running a bit late for the noon shift change that day, and while were on the tube I was sort of fretting that we'd get there at 12:01 and miss it. Most people reading this probably realize how ignorant it was of me to think that. We did cut it close, and were in the back tier of spectators, but I don't feel like we would have missed any vital exposition or anything if we'd just caught the second act. I swear, having people show up to watch this every day over the centuries has just encouraged them to cruft the procedure up more and more. In another couple of decades they'll probably add fireworks, or maybe a donkey show. Actually, my favorite part of the whole thing was when one of the tourists in the front accidentally dropped her sunglasses between the posts of the fence. They hit the pavement of the Palace's front courtyard and skittered out of her reach. Even when she crouched down with her shoulder jammed through as far as it would go, her fingers fell millimeters short of being able to retrieve them. Eventually a suited MI-5 agent noticed her plight and kindly walked over, picked up the shades, and handed them back to her through the grate. Needless to say, I was bitterly disappointed. I thought the official policy should be, "Sorry, ma'am, they're the Queen's sunglasses now." I even imagined a whole table in Buckingham Palace littered with lens caps, hats, Tube passes, even the occasional fanny pack with a few quid inside. I mean, shit, the monarchy has to support itself somehow, right? As long as they're putting on this big free show for the punters, they might as well get some return on it. But of course this was 11 years ago, before the Tube bombings and 9/11. Maybe they can't allow strange items into the Palace at all any more, or maybe the wrought iron has been replaced by bulletproof Perspex. Whatever the case, as we were walking away that afternoon I couldn't help wishing that one of those bearskin-hatted guards could have heard me say, "They're the Queen's sunglasses now." I wouldn't expect him to crack a smile, but maybe it would be worthy of saving up to chuckle about after the end of his shift. posted by M. Giant 5:59 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:I haven't seen the changing of the guard at the palace, but I did see the changing of the guard at the Horse Guards. And there's no gate. You're right up close in the courtyard of the Horse Guards. And there are horses. Lots of horses. And not many people. I really liked it. So did my little kid buddies who were along for the event.
By
Next time, consider the equally long, but more entertaining Changing of the Guard at the Pakistan-India border, where the hammy guards barely restrain themselves from spitting on each other.
By
Yes, they still do all of the above, there's just more scary guards with guns milling around now. I wonder if they mock the other guards who wear the tall hats.
By Sunday, August 24, 2008 Inside Out Today I spent a few minutes on an ongoing project. It's something I've been doing on and off for a while, but I've recently decided to get back to it in earnest. It's not an exciting project, by any means. When we bought our house, our garage was insulated but not sheetrocked. What this meant was that when you walked in, the first thing you saw was silver paper backing with yellow fiberglass insulation behind it in every direction, in all four walls and the ceiling. I believed the first thing I said when the realtor first showed us the house is that it kind of had a Las Vegas feel. Over the years, all manner of vermin have made their homes in that insulation, storing giant stashes of stolen birdseed and what have you in there. So my parents suggested tearing out all the insulation and then putting in new sheetrock, to discourage the mice and chipmunks and neighborhood cats from doing whatever they do in our garage insulation. (We're aware that this would not discourage Squirrel Goodnut. We think he's had a key made.) They offered to come over one day and help me pull it all out and they would haul it off in their pickup. Which sounded fine to me, but I had the idea that I'd get a head start. On Sundays, if there was still room in the trash bin, I'd pull down a strip or two and stuff it in. At the very least the pickup would only have to make one trip that way. Like I said, I've started doing this on a more regular basis in recent weeks. Since we started recycling all our cardboard and plastic, I've noticed that there's a lot of extra space in our trash bin every week. I figured I might as well make use of it. But before then, I kind of skipped a few weeks. Or longer. Like, some weeks I would just forget. Others I would have too much other stuff to do on Sunday and just not get to it. Or it was around the holidays, and we had more trash than usual. Or we had just adopted a newborn baby, and our lives had been turned upside down. So, yes, this has been an on-and-off project for about six years now, give or take. But now I think I'm getting my momentum back. Especially since Trash had us organize and clean out the garage last week, I'm feeling more motivated to turn that space into something decent. In fact, another big bundle of itchy, birdseed-inundated fiberglass went into the trash this very day. At this rate, I think I'm on track to have new walls up in there at some point in my mid-fifties. You know, barring any unforeseen obstacles. posted by M. Giant 8:16 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
LOL! The funniest part is that it would only take about an hour with all three of you and the pick-up to toss it in. :)
By
Nah - just add another kid and you can avoid this for even longer!
By Thursday, August 21, 2008 The Kitchen Sink (Part II) Before fixing the sink, I really should have drained those potatoes. I'm not sure exactly how long it's advisable to leave them marinating in the water they've been boiled in, but three hours is clearly way too long. I could have drained them in the yard, or the flower beds, or even the toilet. But instead I concentrated on getting the sink drain cleared, and then I just used the sink. After a few minutes of watching half the water reluctantly separate from the potatoes that had become more or less one with the other half, I finall dumped them into the mixing bowl, then added the milk from the fridge and the butter I'd melted hours before (it needed a bit more melting). And then I fired up the stand mixer. Almost immediately, I could tell something was wrong. The beaters were colliding with each other, and after I shut off the motor, they were locked together so tight that I could barely even eject them. When I finally got them loose, one of them looked like a boat propeller that had been fashioned from a wire coathanger. But bending it back into shape was out of the question, because even when they've been twisted into what looks like the Arabic word for "HA-ha," those things is stiff. I went up and told Trash that while we didn't need to hire a plumber, we were going to need a new stand mixer, or at least new beaters. I had gotten it shut off before the motor burned out entirely, but as far as I know all that means is that we have a space-hogging kitchen appliance that will only ever be able to mix a bowl of ingredients by whirring loudly at it. So then I dug out the little electric hand mixer, whose beaters don't fit in the stand mixer but which turned out to be quite handy for half-liquefying the potatoes and then lifting the resulting spud-sludge over the beaters in a bulging cataract that left starch stalactites hanging from the unit, not to mention in other locations around the kitchen. I was hoping it would stop doing that given enough time, but after ninety minutes it was still going on and I was beginning to see spots. So I finally gave up and sampled the goods. They tasted like glue. I don't just mean they were overly sticky, although it is true that I've seen construction adhesives with less holding power. I mean that the actual flavor was vintage Elmer's. But maybe part of that was the fact that they were still room temperature. So I microwaved a bowl, and enjoyed a few spoonfuls of warm glue, which was much better. In the end, after four hours, a trip to the hardware store, and the demise of a very nice mixer, I wound up with a bowl of inedible mashed potatoes. But the good news was that I had about a metric shitload. As bad as the food was, I wasn't going to be complaining about the portions. I'm proud to say they haven't just been sitting sullenly in the fridge all this time, taking up a cubic foot of space. They were part of my lunch on Monday and Wednesday (I just couldn't face them on Tuesday). I discovered that the secret to enjoying them is the same as it is for enjoying rice cakes: just put enough shit on them that you can't taste the actual medium. Today Trash tried and failed to get through a bowl that had only one part shredded cheese to two parts potatoes, but I fared much better by adding a quarter-pound of precooked, crumbled bacon and a stick of butter. Super tasty, and way healthier than any old sandwich. posted by M. Giant 8:56 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:not that i am keeping track or anything, but i believe this is the second or third stand mixer that has been fried in your kitchen in the last four years. remind me come cookie baking weekend to keep you and Trash away from my KitchenAid!!!!
By You need a real stand mixer. A massive Kitchen Aid with "Planetary Mixing Action." One beater that spins and orbits the bowl means no tangled beaters!! The newest ones even scrape the sides of the bowl as they turn. Well worth the money - one of those mixers will last the rest of your life!
By
I have two words for you: compost pile.
By Dude, you're making this way harder than it needs to be. Acquaint thyself with a hand-held potato masher: Nothing to plug in, nothing to fry. My favorite is shaped like a sine wave, but the round ones look fine, too. It's true that you have to work a wee bit harder to achieve the consistency of reconstituted instant potatoes, but if you don't mind a few lumps, SO much easier! Personally, I prefer to leave the skins on, too, especially if I'm using red potatoes.
By Monday, August 18, 2008 The Kitchen Sink This wasn't how I had planned to spend my weekend evening. On the weekends, Trash likes to make up large quantities of food to put in the fridge for my sustenance during my telecommuting week. Otherwise I just eat sandwiches for lunch every day, except for the days when I skip the sandwiches. One of the items she decided to whip up this past weekend was a batch of mashed potatoes. Convenient, easy to heat up, and a good use for a bunch of spuds that were going to start growing legs and walking out of there if we didn't use them soon. The peeled and quartered potatoes hadn't been boiling in the pot very long when Trash took M. Edium to Trader Joe's to pick up some milk, without which the dish couldn't be completed. While I waited for them to return with the final ingredient, I prepped the rest of the stuff that would be needed. I got down the stand mixer, excavated the beaters from the utensil drawer, melted some butter to mix in, and ran the spray nozzle and garbage disposal to rid the bottom of the sink of the layer of crud our dishwasher had just horked up into it for some reason. When I drained the potatoes into the sink, I didn't want them to pick up any of…well, whatever that was. This last item turned out to be a bit of an obstacle. After I had rinsed the sink, the water wouldn't go down; even having the disposal on just sent a roil of cloudy churn-water up into the other half of the sink. Clearly we had a clog. By the time Trash and M. Edium got home with the milk (and other stuff), I was already under the sink -- having cleared out all of the child-killing solvents we normally keep locked up in there -- and ready to go to work dismantling the plumbing. While Trash put away the groceries, M. Edium held the flashlight for me. That way I could always have a free hand to stick between him and the can of oven cleaner. I had mixed emotions once I got the trap segment loose and failed to discover the clog in there. Never have I been more disappointed not to see a disgusting bolus of damp organic matter. This meant the clog was behind the wall or even in the basement, which meant I was going to have to dig out the plumber's snake. M. Edium went downstairs to help me find it, and then back in the kitchen he helped me wriggle the springy end into the pipe as far as it would go. Then I put all the pipes back together, tested it out, and watched as both halves of the kitchen sink filled up and stayed that way. Apparently a toilet auger and a plumber's snake are two different things. Clearly I needed a bigger snake (which is what I had always been told in high school). While Trash started getting M. Edium to bed, I called Home Depot to make sure they had what I needed. They did, as long as I refrained from having "what I need" include advice on what to do if the snake didn't work. "Any other suggestions?" I asked. "No," he said. So I went to Home Depot, then got back home and fed all 25 feet of the new snake down the pipe, then put the pipes back together and ran the water. After watching it disappear, I went upstairs and told Trash it was fixed. Then I went downstairs and realized that the drain was full again, and I had to go up and tell Trash that it wasn't fixed after all, and would she have a minute to see if our neighborhood plumber makes weekend calls? She encouraged me to go down and give it one more try, so I did. I took apart all the segments one more time, snaked the drain one more time, put it all together one more time, and ran the faucet. I could hear the echo getting more and more highly pitched as the drain filled, and finally had to admit defeat. Just as I was putting all the poisons back under the cabinet while dreading the prospect of a kitchen sink-less Sunday, I heard this sad little "gloop" as the weight of the water in the drain finally pushed the clog clear into the sewer or whatever. The drain was clear! And now, at last, I could finally drain those potatoes that had been sitting in the pot of water for three hours. Yeah, I probably should have figured out a way to do that before this point, but I had my priorities. More on how this turned out later. posted by M. Giant 7:35 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:You are a major god among spouses. I'm inspired and will no longer consider myself blessed to have a plumber who takes my call on Christmas Eve. Because I shouldn't have needed to call him at all. I should have been as intrepid as you are!
By
Among the many, many things I've been waiting to say and have not, I can now add "disgusting bolus of damp organic matter". That completely made my day.
By
My husband and I both have no chops in the home maintenance area, and are preparing to start living in our own home, rather than an apartment, for the first time. I'm really, really hoping that my perennially cash-strapped friend who understands how physical objects work and likes power tools will be susceptible to the lure of sweet cash money on weekends. Because I shudder to think what would happen if we tried to fix these kinds of problems on our own.
By Friday, August 15, 2008 On the Air II Now that I telecommute I don't shave, shower, or mousse nearly as often as I used to, so when I do all three in one day, it must mean I'm going on TV. My spot on the local ABC affiliate's live afternoon show had been rescheduled a few times when Wednesday rolled around, but since I hadn't been bumped again from the 3:00 show as of 1:00, I figured it would be best to get ready. I picked a different outfit from the one I wore on the local NBC affiliate, just in case anyone watched both shows. And also because I didn't want to go on TV with a broken zipper again. You didn't notice that the last time, did you? I was running about ninety seconds late when I went out our back door. Unfortunately, those were kind of a critical ninety seconds. They were the ninety seconds in which the mild summer shower turned into a full-on squall. I remembered that Trash's car windows were open, so I ran around to the front to take care of that, and by the time I got back to my car the minor wrinkles in my shirt that Trash had warned me about were literally the least of my worries. They had been more or less eliminated by the simple process of the shirt becoming saturated. Yes, even carrying an umbrella, I was soaked from head to toe. And after spending two whole minutes on my hair, too. The storm made me even later, as I had to pull over for a minute to wait out the blinding rain, fogged up windshield, and some threatening buckshot-sized hail. And also to attempt to dry my pants using the defogger setting. Which didn't work and only got my belt tangled up in the shift lever. I did beat the storm to the studio; in fact it wasn't raining a drop when I got there, almost fifteen minutes late and only a half hour before air time. The very chatty guard at the front desk had me sign in, and then someone came to conduct me down a hallway past any number of technical-looking rooms to the basement studio area and the green closet. Normally it's called a green room even though it's not really green, but I refuse to call this tiny space a room regardless of broadcast traditions. It was so small and crowded I couldn't even tell what color it was. More interesting was the cinder-block hallway outside, where literally decade's worth of celebrity guests had left their autographs. I saw the names of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (although the handwriting for both names was suspiciously similar), Uri Geller (who I assume signed from across the hall), and Rudi Valli ("micraphonically yours"), to name a few. I also learned that the show apparently used to be called Treasure Chest, back before it was Good Company or even Twin Cities Today, the latter of which is as far back as I can remember. Of course, some of those signatures dated as far back as the early 60s. Some might have been even older, but Myrna Loy's was too faded for me to read the date. This was all quite a handy distraction from my nervousness about going on the air with moist trousers and flattened hair. I did notice that this production goes with a little more preparation than the one at the NBC affiliate across town. I met both hosts before air time to talk about the segment, the producer gave me a printout of a loose synopsis, and there were even video clips to go with it. I kind of regret not exploiting the opportunity to get some Space Ghost Coast to Coast or something on local TV, but I had my own concerns. Afterward, they told me the segment went well, even though I could hear every one of my stutters and pauses and poorly chosen words rattling around my cranium the whole time. The hosts were very nice and shook my hand as they saw me off the set during the commercial break, and I was out of there. And I got clear before they asked me to sign the wall. I think it was a near thing, though. 
posted by M. Giant
9:48 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
We DEMAND a Web link to a clip. DEMAND, I say!
By Tuesday, August 12, 2008 Body of Work I'm on TV again for the first time! Check me out on Twin Cities Live today (Wednesday) at 3:00 p.m. on Channel 5. Do I have to say Central Time? I think if you can get Channel 5 you pretty much have to be on Central Time. If there's an online clip later, I'll try to hook you up. I might even watch it myself this time, depending on how I think it goes. * * * Back in April, when M. Edium spent a couple of trial hours at what would become his Montessori, he left with a picture of the Space Shuttle on its launch pad that he had colored. He gave it to me, and I took it to work and hung it on my cubicle wall until he demanded it back. I miss it. It was and remains a special thing to me. Then on his first full day of school, he had some coloring-book pages in his locker to bring home. We oohed and aahed over them appropriately. Same thing the next day, and the next. I had the idea of maybe starting to collect them in a binder, with dividers between each week or month, and we could one day flip through it and trace the subtle stages his artistic evolution, like when you have a Simpsons DVD marathon and watch Homer's face get more and more ovoid. Now I'm just glad I didn't say that out loud, because needless to say that binder did not, nor will it ever, materialize. With five or six different coloring projects coming home every day, four days a week, for over three months now, it's difficult to get excited about each individual one. It's not like I could tell you which is my 327th favorite or anything. We couldn't possibly keep them all on the refrigerator. We couldn't keep them all in the refrigerator. It doesn't help that they're all on different shapes and sizes of paper. I swear last week he brought home a swath of orange construction paper shaped like a bra. And they're piling up a bit, I'm sorry to say. There's a rapidly filling manila envelope on his desk, and a loose stack in the kitchen, and a stash that we're saving for his birth family. When I pick him up at school, I sometimes tend to leave them in Trash's car, which makes me a bad dad and a bad husband at once. Meanwhile, Trash encourages him to pick one to give as a gift when we have visitors, or we visit someone, or the UPS guy comes. which means his work gets to spread out to more refrigerators than just ours, but by this time next year there's still going to be enough to paper the house. Right now the deepening palimpsest on the fridge includes his first cut-and-paste project, and another Space Shuttle picture that represents a leap forward in terms of staying in the lines. And stuff is going to keep coming. Nothing for it but to get another fridge, I guess. posted by M. Giant 9:47 PM 9 comments 9 Comments:I hear you, brother. I’ve got three kids pumping this stuff out. But do keep an eye out for the gems among the dross. Every now and then, you find a primitive masterpiece.
By
One of the parenting-type magazines once had an article about the pile of "art." They suggested having the kids pick their favorites each week, month, or year to keep, then toss/recycle the rest. The keepers could then be posted in the garage or in a basement, which would be designated as the child's gallery.
By Ohhhh, it's so hard to throw that stuff out. But with two kids with a combined 6 years of Montessori and 3 years of elementary school --I call uncle.
By Somewhere on a shelf at my parents' house, there are several large manila folders. Each folder represents one year of preschool or school (well, for a while...there isn't a folder containing my high school term papers or anything), and my mom kept the keepers and presumably retired the rest to a trash can when I wasn't looking. It's nice to have a few, but no one misses the ones that didn't make the cut.
By Get yourself an accordian file folder and toss the ones that won't fit on the fridge in there. That way it can live somewhere convenient and you can sort through it once a month to pass out the good stuff to other family and when it gets too full, you can toss the not so great stuff. My grandma made me this HUGE envelope thing, like 3' x 4' to stash all my work in. It got moved to the basement and we dug it out when I was in college once. It was neat to have and didn't require much effort on my parent's part (which, you know, is the key to anything like that ever actually getting saved- heh!).
By I remember those days. Unfortunately, my older daughter was able to keep track of every one of the 3,492 pieces of artwork she brought home each day. If even one item disappeared, she'd launch an investigation--there was no sending any of it off to live in the trash can. When my younger daughter hit preschool, her favorite activity was cutting up old magazines into itty-bitty pieces. While she wasn't obsessed with keeping every single scrap, she had a nasty habit of filling her pants pockets with her creations. No matter how vigilant I was, we always ended up with a mess of soggy, shredded magazine clippings in the laundry. Yuck!
By Take photos of the really good stuff. I do that, and feel guilt free about throwing it away after it's spent a reasonable about time in the "gallery" (fridge). Of course, as mentioned above, sometimes there is a masterpiece. Keep that.
By
Oh, the oddly sized/shaped paper art is the WORST! I once made the tragic mistake of tossing out what I thought was a wee scrap of orange construction paper, upon which was (I kid you not) one small, black magic marker dot. Turns out that teensy, tiny scrap paper was "the baby bug" of a series of bugs that Kiddo had been diligently working on creating. There was an entire bug family, all on their own individual, sized-to-fit pieces of orange construction paper. And I was the Baby Bug Killer.
By (Oh and I forgot to mention that there was loud and passionate mourning for the death of Baby Bug, so much so that I attempted to replicate the "dot on orange scrap of paper" and tell her I'd "found" Baby Bug a short while later. Unfortunately, I neglected some key detail to the "placing of the black dot" on the paper and/or the cutting out of the tiny square, because she took one look and said "That is NOT Baby Bug" and would have nothing to do with it. Kids!)
By Friday, August 08, 2008 He's back. I was working on my Burn Notice recap tonight while Trash watched the opening cermonies downstairs. Suddenly I heard her giving the kind of whoops of joy that one doesn't emit until the actual competition has begun. In fact, I think the last time I heard that kind of noise from her was when Kerri Strug stuck her crippled landing in Atlanta in 96, and maybe not even then. Obviously, I had to go down and see what was up. When I got there, she couldn't even speak. What she was saying sounded like gibberish: "Peter Vagger Hogenbaggen!" she cried. But it wasn't gibberish to me. "He's back?" I said in amazement. "I thought '04 was his last Olympics." "Me too! In fact I was watching the athletes from the Netherlands and I was all sad because no Peter Vagger Bagger Dagger this year. But then there he was! Pigger Vlogger Hooter Bugger! I'm totally watching the Olympics this year, if Peter Woggen Boggen Doggen is in them." Note to NBC: get Pieter van den Hoogenband as a color commentator for the next few games after his retirement, and you'll have a loyal viewer for life. posted by M. Giant 8:02 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:I asked a co-worker if Peter van der Lederhosen was in the Olympics this year, and he knew exactly to whom I was referring.
By Oh my God, I miss Trash so much right this minute that I may burst into tears.
By Who cares how to say his name - have you seen this man? I mean, have you seen him?!?! OMG. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating stroopkoeken.
By He's Peter Van Der Haagen Daszen at our house.
By According to Wikipedia, his nicknames are VDH, The Flying Dutchman, The Dutch Dolfin, and "Hoogie." I like The Dutch Eel much better.
By Reminds me of the eleventh Wild Cards novel, where the Great and Powerful Turtle can't remember von Herzenhagen's name, so he refers to him variously as von Herzenberzen, von Harglebargle, von Hagendazs and von Handydandy.
By Wow, is Trash in that book? Because that really does sound like her.
By I'm so glad that you remembered the Dutch Eel. The '04 entry was one of my favorite of all time, and I was hoping for a revival.
By Tuesday, August 05, 2008 Triple Pimp Let me just put on my purple suit and my fishnets, because I'm going to be pimping myself now, a lot. Onetwothreepimp! One: That's me in the book section of the Boston Globe. The writer said a lot of nice things, up to and including referring to me as a "TV critic," which is rather generous. Well, column inches are at a premium, and it's not like I'm a "full-time professional wise-ass" anyway. Yet. Two: I'm hitting the Twin Cities airwaves again, probably next Tuesday on Twin Cities Live. It's on channel 5 at 3:00 p.m., I think. And I'm getting the sense that I'll be on reasonably early in the show. Clearly I've got all the details locked down, right? More later. Funny thing is that when I started telecommuting, I decided that I'd only shave on days when I had to be on camera or make an appearance somewhere. I'm blaming my piss-poor beard on that. Three: I went upstairs the other night to find Trash signing me up for this thing called a Twitter account. She told me that I'd just have to post there 2-4 times a day . "Oh, no, is this another thing I'm going to have to write for?" I whined. But she knew just the right thing to say to get my buy-in: "Just post whenever you have a stupid thought," she said. "Oh, okay." I said. "I have stupid thoughts all day long." And so I do, as those who follow me have learned. It's kind of fun not to have to wonder if I need to pad out every throwaway gag that goes through my head into a full-blown entry or just let it go to waste. And I don't need to wonder which is worse. Now I just need Trash to figure out how to set up my Twitter widget or whatever on this blog and then, you know, do it for me. In the meantime, you can find me over there as "mgiant" appropriately enough. Find out if I'm bluffing about stupid thoughts or not. posted by M. Giant 8:14 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
This is such an exciting time for you. I think I speak for all your anonymous internet readers when I say, GO M.GIANT!! (That's not "Go M" since that would be way to close to the University of Michigan fan-speak and I am a proud graduate and fan of another Michigan-based Big 10 school).
By
Congratulations on your FANTASTIC press tour!
By Word, Bunny. Great minds and all that. Sparty on.
By Saturday, August 02, 2008 Day Tripper (Part Two) So here's what happened, and why I'm at E! in the first place. The Penguin publicist who's been working with my book has sent it out to all sorts of media types, and one of those is a casting person at the entertainment network who digs my work and wants to see if I'd be a good addition to their stable of "pop culture experts" who serve as talking heads on their specials. I guess they're always looking for new faces, because you never know when Michael Mustow might have a deadline or something. Plus there's that panel table on Chelsea Lately, which is apparently an insatiable maw to be constantly fed. I might hear back in a month that they have a use for me, or it mught be longer than that, or it might be never. We'll see. It was fun either way. My day continues: 4:20 p.m. On the way into the meeting room, my host runs into Joel McHale and introduces us. Joel McHale is even taller than you think, and very nice. "He works for your favorite website," my host tells Joel McHale. "You work for the Onion?" Joel McHale asks me excitedly. No, his other favorite website, we tell him. 4:55 p.m. After spending some quality time sitting in a chair and talking while positioned between a video camera and a backdrop curtain that's the exact same color as my shirt, I'm cut loose for the day and told they'll be in touch when E! needs an on-air talking head who is…uh…me. That was fun. 5:45: p.m. The Borders at Sunset and Vine is the hardest place to find my book since Barnes and Noble didn't have any at all. It's in a narrow, unlit aisle, on a top shelf so high that Joel McHale would need to stand on tiptoe. I take the three copies to a desk and offer to sign them. For a moment, she thinks I just brought them in to stick on their shelves. If I thought it was that easy, I would have done it a long time ago. I consider hitting one more book store, but I've got dinner plans and at this rate the next place will have my book in the bathroom, with the pages ripped out and wrapped around the toilet paper spindle. 6:30 p.m. I'm standing at the bar and directly in front of me, by prearrangement, is Pamie. Directly behind me, by coincidence, is John Henson. Somehow, through a superhuman effort of will, I manage not to loudly say, "Look, Pam, it's Jim Henson!" Pam will end up buying me dinner for this. So that's Joel McHale and John Henson sightings in one day. I suddenly feel the need to go back out on the street and score celebrity sightings of Greg Kinnear, Hal Sparks, and Aisha Tyler as well. Collect all five! Apropos of nothing, there's going to be a movie premiere up the street later. I've already seen a surprising number of Kardashians there, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. 1:20 a.m. Tuesday I realize that aside from a few brief, fitful naps on the plane here, I've been awake for over 22 hours and it's starting to catch up with me, along with the beers I had with dinner and the glass of Couch Baron's wine I had in his apartment with him and Pooh (did you know CB moved to L.A.? He's Beverly Hills-adjacent now). I was glad to be offered an exit row window seat at the ticketing desk, but now I learn that passengers in the exit row are required to be awake, with their eyes open, during takeoff and landing. Twice I have to be told this, because I've got nothing to read and I'm not allowed to have my laptop out, which means I keep dozing involuntarily. In my current state, it strikes me that this is the cruelest, most arbitrary rule I've ever heard of. As the plane finally rotates upward at the end of the runway, my last thought before conking out is that this'll be the first time in over a decade that I've flown east into the sunrise. I should stay up and check out the view. Yeah, right. ?:?? a.m., time zone unknown Eh? Window…pink…pretty…zzzzz. 7:30 a.m. Central Home from my day-trip, 26 hours later, I go to arrange the bedcovers to I can crawl in between them. M. Edium's portable DVD player slides out from its hiding spot between the sheets and lands cornerwise on my left second toe. It hurts enough that it takes me almost a full minute to fall asleep. I have mixed feelings about missing the earthquake by twelve hours, but it's good to be home. posted by M. Giant 2:29 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:If I thought I had a shot at meeting Joel McHale, I'd write a kick-ass book too. I laugh just looking at that guy.
By Friday, August 01, 2008 Just a test to see if my blog is a little broken or a lot broken. posted by M. Giant 8:44 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:I couldn't get it to load an hour or two ago, but it seems to be working now. What happened?
By Blogger and sitemeter are at war. It's happening to a bunch of other people too.
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