Up

Because of a super-good deal on tickets, my wife took Thing 1 to the Demi Lovato / David Archuleta concert at the Gwinnett Arena tonight (for those not in the know, the former is a teen singer/actress heavily featured on Disney Channel programs, the latter owes his fame to American Idol…no clue if he won or not). After a heated game of Rock Paper Scissors that may or may not have involved an actual pair of scissors being pulled, it was determined that my wife would take her (her BFF and the BFF’s mom went with).

I was left with Thing 2 for the evening. If I had driven Thing 2 to the hospital with a compound fracture, part of her femur sticking through her leg, and having to hold her while the doctor popped her dislocated arm back into the socket, I think I still would’ve had the better end of the bargain.

I decided to take Thing 2 to a movie, so we went and saw “Up,” the latest Pixar movie. Question: Am I the only person in America that had no idea this was a 3D movie? The last time I saw a 3D movie in the theaters was “Treasure of the Four Crowns,” which even at the age of 10 I knew was an enormous piece of shit. Obviously, the technology has come a long way. We were given our complimentary 3D glasses (which looked like cheap Ray-Bans, sort of), loaded up on popcorn, candy, and soda, and went into the theater. Upon walking in, we doubled the amount of people that were already in the theater, so we were able to take the perfect seat.

10 minutes into the movie, Thing 2 missed the cup holder with her kids’ sized Sprite, and dropped it right onto the floor. She looked VERY nervous for a second, until I leaned down and whispered, “don’t worry. Free refills. Let’s go get you another one.” So off we went, missing the two minutes where Ed Asner modified his house with balloons. We got her another Sprite, and a handful of napkins, and reclaimed our seats. Amazingly, she was able to sit through the entire movie without requiring a bathroom break. Thing 1, when I first took her to a movie solo, needed one. But, it was “Miracle,” which was about 45 minutes longer, and she held out until the game against the Soviets was almost over. I literally carried her, while running, to the bathroom and got back before the game ended in that movie. Thing 2, however, made it the entire 96 minutes, plus the previews and credits. Gotta love a kid that’s a camel.

There was one sort of emotional part in the movie, but it had nothing to do with the film itself. I had a flashback to when I was Thing 2’s age. My dad would take me to see lots of movies, just him and I. That’s where I saw the Disney classics…Pinocchio, Peter Pan, etc. We also found a way to get together and see all three of the Lord of the Rings movies. Of course, in a solitary lack of judgment, in the summer of 1977 (the same year he took all of us to see Star Wars), he took me and my two older brothers (I was 5, they were 11 and 14) to see Animal House. My younger brother had just been born, so I blame lack of sleep on his part, he probably slept through the whole thing. But, going to see movies was a big part of my childhood, and one of the things I loved doing with my dad. So there I was, for an hour and a half tonight, more like my dad than I’ve ever been (I’m not counting the times my daughters learned to say 4 letter words from me).

So, this movie could’ve been as big a piece of raw sewage as “Treasure of the Four Crowns” (it wasn’t, it was actually pretty good), and I still would’ve lifted up that armrest, put one arm around my daughter, and enjoyed a movie with her. And, while Thing 1 is going on and on about how awesome Demi Lovato is, Thing 2 and I will forever have the inside joke of being able to yell “Squirrel!” and have it be instantly funny.

Commuter of the Day 6/26/2009: Dueling Vanity Plates

Cue the banjos.

So what's worse? The guy that is clearly nouveau riche who is so proud of his new BMW that he just HAS to tell the world, for an extra $50 in vehicle registration fees, that he owns one? A fact that we can clearly see from the BMW logo 12 inches about his vanity plate? And not only that, put his initials on it, so that he can show his friends that "This is MY Beemer, I'M KING OF TEH WURLD!!!!1111ELEVEN1111!!!!"



Or, the douchenozzle who is so panicked over the idea of parking next to 5 Honda Accords exactly like his, that he has to put his name on his vanity plate. The adult version of his mom sewing his name into his underwear right before he heads off to summer camp. Either that, or I was following former Journey, Divinyls and Bruce Springsteen bassist and current American Idol judge Randy Jackson.



One wants to tell the world that he's driving a BMW, because clearly that's not obvious. The other guy wants to tell the world his name. Both spent money to send this message. So, there are no real winners, except maybe the State of Georgia, whose vehicle registration system has that much more money in its coffers.

Bartering

I get my hair cut once every 3-4 weeks. Yesterday was the day for me. My barber is a woman, in a barber shop of all women. She is a good enough barber that I actually followed her from her previous shop to her current one, something usually only done with women and stylists.

Once a year, I barter with her for a haircut. She gives me a free haircut in return for me bringing back a gift from my annual trip to Wisconsin (which is in 2 weeks). That gift would be in the form of beer. So yesterday, we conducted the negotiation. Many beers in the US are regional or even local, so there are hundreds of excellent beers that will never see Atlanta unless carried here by a traveler.

Me: Do you want Moose Drool?
Her: No, it’s no different than Newcastle, which we can get here. What’s that one you got me last time?
Me: Bitter Woman IPA?
Her: (face lighting up): YES! THAT ONE! And any decent wheat beers you might see. You know what I like.
Me: Consider it done.

Very rarely will I react to a woman saying, “you know what I like,” without responding with something dirty. But, when exchanging beer for a free haircut, it’s all about business.

Seen Outside the UPS Store

I wonder how that conversation goes down, when the Fedex guy is dropping off/picking up at the UPS store. Is it like in the Warner Bros. cartoon where the sheepdog and the wolf both clock in, greet each other politely, and then spend the next day trying to kill one another?

Or is it short and sweet?

UPS Guy: (nods to Fedex guy) Fucker.
Fedex Guy (nodding back) Fucker.
UPS Guy: See you tomorrow.
Fedex Guy: Rot in hell.

I Hope That's Not A Dick in a Box

As some of you know, I am a writer of sorts on a completely amateur level (meaning, I don't get paid, and never will). My writing consists entirely of drinking a beer, writing my thoughts down on that beer, and posting those thoughts to this website, a project of a friend of mine and I going on 13 years now. 13 years, and 1330 beers later (with about 6 of us doing all the writing...approximately 900 of those are mine).

On a rare occasion, a brewer or a beer marketing firm stumbles across our website, and decides this would be a cheap and easy way of marketing their product, so they contact us and offer up a free sample. We've had some pretty good brewers send us their beer, which always amazes me because we write reviews like this:

Mow the lawn on the hottest day of the year in flannel pajamas. When done, pour the sweat from your nutsack into a bottle, slap a label on it, and as Emeril would say, "BAM!" You have Bud Light.

Honestly, if I was marketing a beer, I don't think I would want to run the risk, even if I knew I had a flawless product, of letting my product get into the hands of someone so immature they would use the word "nutsack" in a beer review. Or, there are our reviews for Iron City Lager. I disliked that beer so much, I asked an Australian for advice on insults.

Now, for every review that dances across the thin line of Satire and Libel, there is one that inspires sycophantic praise that would simply make you feel embarrassed for me. So, maybe those are, by some freak chance, the ones these marketers are seeing. And, when they do, they somehow feel compelled to send me the best kind of beer on earth: Free Beer.

Unbeknownst to me, my friend that does all the production work on the website had been in touch with one such marketer, and he had given her my address as well when she offered to send us beer. So, it was with great surprise when I opened my front door to go out to get the morning newspaper and saw this box sitting outside (we often enter our house through our garage, so the box arrived the night before without our knowledge). I brought the box inside and took a boxcutter to the tape, praying I wouldn't find something horrible, like free samples of Christian music. Instead, upon opening the flaps, I saw this:



Sure, it looks like a box of beer coasters and a letter, but the key point here is the (hippie recycled) shredded cardboard packing. When you have that in a box, unless it's a joke birthday gift, that means there's precious cargo inside. I reached deep inside (I should've looked at the shipping label, for all I know this came from Australia and it was full of Redback spiders), and felt glass bottles. There were four of them, so I also figured it wasn't the ashes of deceased relatives (you never know what my mom will send in the mail). I pulled them out, one by one, and found these:



I always say that it's important to have a hobby. And as you can see, some hobbies can yield much cooler results than other hobbies. Well, warm at first, but after time in the fridge, cooler.

Glaucoma Discussion

I had my annual eye exam this week, to get a new prescription for contact lenses, and the glasses I wear as a backup (I take my lenses out each night, and wear my glasses until bedtime, and then wear the glasses first thing in the morning until after I shower, where I then put on my contact lenses).

Eye care technology has advanced enough, apparently, that eye doctors are able to tell in their exam if there is a risk factor for glaucoma, at which point they will then test for it by blowing that high pressure puff of air INTO MY FUCKING EYEBALL! Thankfully, the doctor saw none of the risk signs and decided there was no need for me to suffer through the aforementioned sadistic procedure.

While staring at the lights that he was waving around, my mind wandered, and I got to thinking how much fun it would be to have filthy, dirty sex in the eye doctor’s chair. And, since I have the attention span of a kitten, I got to thinking….if I had the choice between suffering through the glaucoma test where they shoot a blast of air into my eyeball, followed by the best sex imaginable, or not having the glaucoma test at all, getting my eyes examined, paying for the service and leaving, which one would I do?

It did not take long at all to decide that I would prefer not having a glaucoma test. If sex was involved, I would gladly give blood, see the dental hygienist, or sit in traffic for 2 hours listening to political talk radio (3 things I hate to do, but have done). But I would gladly pass on the sex if it meant not getting a glaucoma test.

Road Rage on a Clean Street

Yesterday, while driving to work, I was caught behind the one thing that could possibly be worse than a school bus.....a street sweeper. It was going about 15 mph in a 35 mph zone, slowly moving, its brushes cleaning crap off the road.

This road, which is 2 lanes with a double-yellow, has a lot of traffic in the way I was going that morning, as it heads roughly to the interstate that takes you into Atlanta, but not a lot of opposing traffic. So, it's very easy to pass if you are going around a bike, a horse-drawn carriage, or someone on a wheelchair (what are things that move faster than a street sweeper, Alex?). But, the double yellow line was freaking a lot of people out, apparently, because I was about 8 cars behind that street sweeper, and despite there being PLENTY of opportunity to blow around it, it never happened. The street sweeper is not moving at blistering speeds, so using simple math*, passing should be easy.

Unfortunately, the first couple of cars in this Train of the Damned were treating the sweeper as though it was a school bus, carrying precious cargo. In reality, it's carrying non-potable water and 1 or 2 city employees. But, that did not matter to the first couple of cars. They were going to follow this street sweeper if it was the last thing they did, regardless of all of the honking behind them.

Eventually, the street sweeper came to a 3-way intersection. The driver of that vehicle knew exactly what was happening behind him, and he was clearly trying to stay as far to the right as possible, giving people room to pass, but no good. With the first 2 cars not passing, the subsequent cars were not willing to pass 3 vehicles to get around. But, when we hit that intersection, the driver made a move to the right in the sudden gap, and the first couple of cars got the hint and quickly passed. Every car behind soon followed, looking like one of those mass escape scenes in "Victory" or "The Great Escape".

The truly insane thing....the first two cars, completely unwilling to man up and pass a street sweeper on a double yellow, tore off into the distance, going at least 50 in a 35, hurrying to their destination. They can drive like a bat out of hell now, but when following a slow vehicle, they were pussing out. I thought Georgia was well-steeped in NASCAR culture and would've made that pass 3-wide, on a curve. Yesterday, I was wrong.

*The Simple Math (I'd like to thank my dad, who was, literally, an astrophysicist, for inspiring me to break out the calculator on this one:

It is a simple fact of physics (or calculus, or something) that if the driver you are following is going 10 mph, that driver is only driving a ridiculous 14.66 feet per second. If these people are driving a Town Car (which all old slow people drive), that vehicle is 18 feet long, so they can’t even go the length of their vehicle in 1 second.

So…..if you are second in line behind them, back off to give yourself some takeoff speed, and get that sucker to 35mph, you can cruise at 51.33 FPS, 3.5 times their speed, and literally pass them in about a second from the time you cross the line, to the time you cross back, surely enough time to avoid oncoming traffic. You then repeat this process until everyone has passed this car. This is why every car should come pre-programmed with a Metallica guitar solo, to give you the fortitude to make such a maneuver.

And I did this math recently for a friend who was following a Town Car. I have no idea how long a street sweeper is, so I'm not about to do that kind of math.