Hard as a Rock

  • by Drew

I’ve been watching a lot of shows about Pawn Stars and police stings lately. I’m not sure why – aybe because they hearken back to a simpler time before ubiquitous breast implants and popularity contests that charge their “judges” top dollar to vote by phone, disguises these money makers as talent seeking enterprises.

Among the commercials I see while watching my fake-u-mentary-but-I0can-pretend-it-ain’t-reality-TV-television is one for a Hard Rock Cafe party rehab place. I don’t know if this is one of those famous or infamous los angeles detox rehabs or if it is just a stunt, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. Is this really a rehab? With all those bartenders and bikinis? Is this about the “guests” or the staff. But wait…please don’t answer. I really don’t think I want to know. I’m just going to go and see if I can find out if those pawn shop guys ever unloaded that Civil War cannon. I hope they were able to make a few bucks!

Ride ’em Cowboy!

  • by Drew

All this talk about birthdays has me remembering a couple years ago when the family took me to Texas Roadhouse for my birthday. I love this place, and they’d just opened up in Kingston. We presented a free appetizer birthday couple and one thing led to another. Ultimately, I had to ride the birthday bull.  don’t know if that’s what they call the thing, but I like how it sounds so I’m going to call it that: Birthday Bull. (Now it’s a proper noun…who says there’s no such thing as evolution.)

Anyway, the bull is a sawhorse of sorts with a big saddle on it. And judging by some of the other victims…I mean birthday revelers… I have seen over the years, it is now surely sticky and half-price margarita encrusted with a thick layer of margi-salt and peanut dust. Still, it was fun. I sat on the saddle with burning cheeks and the whole staff yee-hawed for me.

In retrospect, though, it would have been cooler if the thing had a motor. Or maybe a little track and a mini cow like that calf-roping practice machine on Pawn Stars. Then I could load up on hgh supplements and protein powder shakes and rock that buckin’ bronco till the cows come home. Or until the calf gets roped. Really, either would be fine with me.

The Drop Zone

  • by Drew

I frequently work at home, but on the days I go to the office, the last minute or so of my drive gets a little…challenging. My office is on the second floor of a shopping plaza, a big shopping plaza. There’s a grocery store and a Chinese buffet place and a big chain pharmacy and a bunch of shops and such. You can get subs, bagels and coffee, liquor, etc. You can even do some banking and pet supply shopping. And all the way at one end is a day care place. a huge day care place.

To get to my office I park in the back of the building for easy access to the stairs. The thing is, to get to the back, I have to drive around the side of the building with the day care, and while most customers of the ground floor businesses park in front of the building, the day care parents park in the back. I say parents but I should say Moms and housekeepers because the Dads, I almost never see Dads. Maybe one in a hundred droppers-off is a Dad. Or man servant of some stripe.

Anyway, the clusterf*ck behind the daycare is astounding. At least 80% of the women exceed 300 pounds, they all drive SUVs (and not little crossovers – I’m talking the Big Mamas…appropriate, I know) and they have no care whatsoever for the people entering or exiting the parking lot. At least at their size, eye wrinkle creams are not an issue because that flesh over the skull is way too stretched for crow’s feet.

So, I have to drive through a corridor of these monolithic vehicles driven by business casual giants with a cup of coffee in one hand a cell phone in the other, and with responsibility for their offspring squarely resting on the shoulders of a professional child care establishment, they are ready to race forward with their day.

And boy do they ever…race forward, I mean. Actually, backward. See, with all the crap in their hands and at their ears they don’t seem able to steer in reverse, or even glance in their rear view mirrors. So when I round the corner of the day care facility and pass through the parking lot area, I find my self swerving to avoid being slammed by some Big Mama’s rear end. Actually, multiple big rears. Seriously, it’s like a freaking car slalom. Me in my little Toyota against the big bad gas guzzlers.

And the self righteousness of these Moms is pretty staggering. I’ve gotten honked at, more than once, by women backing out of a space. Since when is the person driving down the parking lot lane expected to stop for every car that wants to back out?

Don’t even get me started about pickup at the end of the day when all the after school kids have been added to the mix. It’s truly devastating. Thank goodness the plaza sports a liquor store.

Dr. Happy’s Good Time Kickaboo Joy Juice

  • by Drew

Talk about a bummer – the baby slept over at Grandma’s for the first time ever. Not just the first overnight at Grandma’s, but actually the first time ever that she’s been anywhere without Mommy and Daddy. I was, needless to say, rather psyched. I was ready for a kickin’ night of sleep, but there was a disruption. Thus, the bummer.

Maybe I’m just used to waking up all the time when the baby cries, but last night…man, my arms just kept falling asleep. Seriously, I woke up in the middle of the night with my arms all pins and needles. My elbows were aching, serious joint pain. What was that all about? Was I laying still for too long? Too much rest?

Could it be time for glucosamine chondroitin msm? Then again, the classic remedy might be in order – good old G&T. Yup, gin and tonic. It’s the quinine. It relieves joint swelling and it is a primary ingredient in tonic water. Thus, the name, right? Tonic indeed.

Fire it Up!

  • by Drew

I’ve been fascinated by outdoor fireplaces for years, chimineas in particular. I’ve experienced a few, though, and in most instances I wasn’t too impressed. The big problem has always been smokiness. Too much smoke in fact. But anything that had an approimation of a chimney seemed to be at the forefront, performance-wise.

Last week I finally found a decent looking chiminea and decided to go for it. Part of my motivation was that I had promised to do a backyard camp out with the boys and it seemed a pretty easy and safe way to get the s’mores on.

We did it again tonight. Not the campout, just the s’mores, and man I love it. I’m really looking forward to cool Autumn nights toasting anything from marshmallows to my toes, sipping a glass of wine and…just hanging out. Oh yeah.

Detox

  • by Drew

Are you familiar with rapid detox? The concept is to get someone off opiates in a matter of hours, as opposed to days. And by this I mean to help the person get over the physical addiction to the opiate. All that great withdrawal footage in movies? A thing of the past. It seems the procedure is done by an anesthesiologist and allows the individual to more or less sleep through the worst aspects of withdrawal.

Of course, removing the physical addiction is only a piece of the puzzle, the psychological addiction is surely as bad if not far worse. Ever tried to quit smoking? You know what I mean. even weeks, months or years after you last butt, long after the nicotine is out of your system, the urge is still there.

I’m not usre how I feel about this whole thing, though. I mean, think about it. Two great TV shows, The Sopranos and Breaking Bad have important episodes that center around old school rehab center. If the treatment and such is handled in a matter of 5 days…I don’t know. Where’s the drama?

When I grow up

  • by Drew

When I grow up I want to be a wholesaler. I don’t know, necessarily, what I want to wholesale, but it sounds good. Maybe I good sell wine. Or maybe comic books. Maybe I could sell very fancy shoes for puppies, tiny little shoes, made to order in Italy. But maybe not. It might be too confusing. I mean, people are used to buying pairs of shoes, not 4 shoes. Would I sell them as double pairs? Or quads? Maybe there would be front pairs and back pairs, like boots and gloves. It would work in the winter, sure, but what about the summer? What if you wanted flip flops to take your dog to the beach? It brings you right back to the quad problem. I mean, unless you wanted flip flops in back and a sort of pail and shovel thing for the front paws. But what if the dog developed a limp and I got blamed? Before you know it I’d have to all on my sword (not in the literal Chinese lead paint baby toy CEO manner but more in the figurative “I have a sex addiction and it’s not my fault” manner of the modern mega-church preacher). I don’t know, maybe wholesale isn’t for me.

Body art?

  • by Drew

I have nothing against tattoos. I have  a number of friends who are inked, and many, if not most, have something going on. I mean, thoughtful, creative, colorful expressions of self. And that’s cool. I’m all about that.

I, personally, remain unmarked. I’m not a needle wuss, I actually don’t mind them at all. Partly it was something of a committment beyond what I was ready to consider back before mortgage, marriage and parenthood (in that order). Now it seems a little frivolous…I mean, at my age… But to be brutally honest, the main reason I’ve never seriously considered getting inked is that I’m hairy. Yup, chubby and hairy. There is really no reasonable spot of flesh on my body that is not so covered in hair that a tattoo would require regular shaving. And that, like back waxing, is a relationship I just can’t see myself entering into.

So, it’s not for me, but it works for some people. The thing is, lately, I’ve been seeing some seriously bad work. SERIOUSLY bad work. There has always been way too much flash on the chunky trailer girls and their 90 pound boyfriends (with those wispy starter mustaches and trucker caps) but I’m talking about something altogether worse. The names of children and boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses on necks and wrists and other overly visible spots is not really that endearing to me. It’s up there with memorial t-shirts for deceased children in my book. Just not very original.

But to each his or her own. I won’t judge. If you want to have the names of your children written in script down your boob, that’s your prerogative. Although I suggest you plan better than this one woman I saw who had three names on her left boob and one on her right. It appears she was cataloguing her offspring on lefty, and then she ran out of room. Maybe number four was a bit of an oopsie, so I guess we should give her a high five for getting him on there somewhere. What a mom.

The disturbing trend, in my mind, is the really wretched work I’ve been seeing. Did Walmart start selling home tattoo kits and no one told me? I was on line at the store the other day and I saw a young woman buying prenatal vitamins, folic acid, and assorted creams and powders. What was most noticeable to me, was the tattoo on her arm. She was sleeveless, so it was very clear. It said ANN. All caps, written in a thin line that looked like pencil. There were 8 or ten lines drawn away from the name. Kind of like how a little kid draws the rays of the sun. It looked, in fact, like a little kid had written it. Shaky handwriting, sun rays looking a little bit like Sunday comic stink lines.

Who puts this on their arm? It was hard to believe it was real ink, but it was. Don’t you need some sort of training or certification to be a tattoo artist? Don’t you at least need to show photographs of past work or something? Maybe she was some dude’s first try or something, because this was pathetic.

Oh, and the funny part. It wasn’t her kid’s name or her girlfriend’s name or her mom’s name or sister’s name. How do I know? Her companion, another young lady, used her name several times while they chatted online.

Yup, Ann had ANN tattooed on her arm, apparently by a second grader with poor penmanship. What is this world coming to? How much Cisco did she have to drink? My girl is lowering the bar for white trash ink the world over.

Sigh.

Suddenly Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) peeing on a 24 seems a hell of a lot more clever than it did a year and a half ago.

Tummy Tuck

  • by Drew

Hey, while we’re stripping oil from the undercarriages of heavy liftters, what about taking a look at some phosphacore reviews. Alright, maybe not the best option, but bellies are an issue. Seriously. To quote my second grader, “I don’t want to sound mean, but…” there’s a lot of big belly-age going on.

Now, I know I’m not one to point the pudgy finger. I’ve got my share of extra pounds after all. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the arena of excess belly fat – in guys who used to be the slim muscular types. It concerns me, seriously. I know a bunch of these guys very well, and I know they get a reasonable amount of natural exercise in their every day work life. No, they’re not jogging or doing pilates, but they’re also not sedentary. Shouldn’t we be concerned that people who have relatively active occupations are displaying that particularly unhealthy frontal beer belly?

Hypertension, here we come.

Eating for 4

  • by Drew

Speaking of the late great Mr. Welles brings to mind a few great quotes…or, paraphrases maybe, because it has been quite a few years since I took a legit film class. But there were many. Many, indeed, and I used to actually think that these anecdotes made me interesting to the opposite sex. Of course, now I know better. Ask my wife…I barely ever ramble on about this stuff.

That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Anyway…things he said:

  • I’m not very fond of movies. I don’t go to them much.
  • I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.
  • I started at the top and worked down.
  • I don’t pray because I don’t want to bore God.
  • My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

 

That last is a favorite knowing how he blew up late in life. I don’t even think glucomannan could have stopped this guy. His regular dinner? Two steaks, rare, and a pint of scotch.

And I read somewhere that he actually put on weight for Touch of Evil. Wooo-hooo. No meat and potatoes for this bed and breakfast man…just meat and meat. And booze. And meat.

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