Just Ask Me #1 - Tiffany

In response to Tiffany’s questions:

1) Who’s least irritating: John Tesh, David Hasselhoff, or Yanni?
You’re asking a classical composer this? This is a thought-provoking question. Tesh is a Born-Again, so he’s right out, except that at least he’s musically literate. Haven’t heard very much of Hasselhoff, but he does speak (and sing) in German. Yanni was ok as long as Linda Evans was standing next to him. But then, I can’t stand to watch him do that stupid Malibu Barbie Beach Blanket Bimbo Butt**** hair-flipping motion. My score?

• Tesh - Positive mark: Can actually write music on paper. Negative mark(s): Born-Again. Looks like Dudley Do-right. Writes early 21st century “Up With People” hack music.
  
  
• Hasselhoff - Positive mark(s): Fluent in German. Has a good voice. Negative mark(s): Plastic “Gone Hollywood” image. Probably waxes and tans his vocal chords. Sings quasi-disco hack music.
  
  
• Yawn!i - Positive mark: Linda Evans. Negative mark(s): Dumped by Linda Evans. Malibu hair-flip. Mental mind massage hack music.
  

My Choice for LEAST irritating musical hack: Antonio Salieri.

2) Which book do you believe should never ever (ever, ever, ever!) be made into a motion picture?
The History of Door Hinges by Rusty Skroux. No, seriously, Elective Affinities by Goethe (oh no…I’m seeing visions of Merchant-Ivory (or Kenneth Branaugh) getting a hold of this one!).

3) What’s the corniest pick-up line you recall using?
In a bar, to a woman wearing a T-shirt with my first name on the front in a script font (it was some rock singer’s name, not specifically mine): “Did you know you have my autograph on your chest?” Corny, but it worked. We were together for four years.

Just Ask Me

Ask me 3 questions, no more no less. Ask anything you want. Then, if you have a weblog, copy and paste this paragraph into a new entry so that other people (including myself) can ask you 3 questions.

Dick's Little Problem

Seems like our buddy, Dick, is getting a mixed message from party guest, Doris. Is she wordlessly trying to proposition him, or did she overhear the conversation Bob’s wife, Madge, had with her friend, Betty, about Dick’s, well, Little Problem? Or maybe this party simply needs a little livening up and Doris is simply saying, “Don’t be a wiener, Dick. We want hard booze, not soft drinks!” Hm. Could this ad be sending out a subliminal message? Something to think about on a Saturday night.

I'll Never Get Used to It

This place scares the crap out of me!

As a native Californian earthquakes are my natural disaster of choice. With an earthquake, you have no idea it’s coming, and when it does your heart rate increases a little for two or three seconds and it’s over. With a tornado you have countless days of tracking the weather for a good three months, watching those bright red circles travel across the Doppler image and praying they don’t make it to your county. When they do, the sirens that have been secured to extremely tall concrete poles go off, bringing back all your childhood memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I didn’t have a bomb shelter then, and I don’t have a storm cellar now. If the sirens go off, we’ll have to tuck all seven of us (4 adults and 3 teens) in the downstairs bathtub with a mattress over our heads and wait either until the sirens go off, or until our house gets picked up off the ground around us. Give me a good old fashioned earthquake any day!

Marvin Rocks!

Here’s another vintage ad telling guys just what appeals to the opposite sex:  cheap beer, and you tooting some bad harmonica accompaniment at her Mozart recital. Yep, gets her every time!

Dear Alton & Ellen

After my son and I came home from the pub on Saturday evening, I sat down at my computer and got involved in a Yahoo Messenger chat with my friend, Debra. We really are like a brother and sister… and when we’re together, either in person or online, we’re about 10 and 12 years of age. That’s pretty great for me, since I had no real childhood to speak of, and as the bumper sticker reads, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!”

Anyway, we were chatting away, using the Doodle IMvironment toy, and we came up with this drawing of Ellen Degeneres and Alton Brown (she drew Ellen, and I, Alton).

We’re huge fans of both Ellen and Alton (Debra and I each own an AB apron), and I was fortunate to catch them together on TV a while back when he was a guest on her show. We decided we’d like to ask them to autograph our drawing, but we’re not the kind of people who would actually send it to them unsolicited, so if any of their people are out Googling their names and find this, I hope they’ll email me and ask for the original, which I have printed out. I’ll be happy to send it, and it would really make us happy… and who in this world can’t use a little more happiness? We’ll even include the return postage.

Where's My Xanax?

Over the past week I’ve watched myself go from blissful to panicked, enraged to submissive, energized to depleted, and shaky to strong. Why? In an emergency 2-second decision Nettl and I took custody of the kids. My once quiet haven of incense, bubbling fountains and Mozart andantes has, literally overnight, turned into a video arcade, movie theater, co-ed scout camp, emotional service station, psychiatric couch, telephone exchange, and a vast field of hormonal land mines.

I have no experience with girls. As a parent, I mean. Both of my kids (now in their 30s) are of the male persuasion and I find myself retreating to my computer, hoping we made the right decision. I know we did, actually. No child is going to live in fear on my watch, regardless of what that demands of me.

Last Friday I sat here at this very same desk, on a day very much like today, looking forward to the kid’s spring break visit. One week. Big deal. When the kid tornado hit us and flip-flopped us around only to set us back down in unfamiliar territory, my son and I flew under the beds like a couple of electrified cats. We’re coming out now, looking around, and realizing that everything’s all right. School is still in session and we have our quiet daytimes.

I’ve been a Hausmandl for the past year–a job for which I’m well suited–but now my workload has increased monumentally. Just cooking for seven people is a daunting task, especially when three of them are at the peak of their growth cycles. And let’s not even mention the “I know all about it” eye-rolling routine. Part of being a teen is actually believing you have the answers for everything and that adults are just plain stupid. My greatest consolation is that in the next five to seven years these kids are going to be amazed at how much smarter their mother and I have gotten.

The hardest part is that until we move into a larger house at the beginning of August, there are seven of us in a 3-bedroom house, and that includes my semi-invalid elderly mother for whom I am both caretaker and (in her opinion) personal valet. My job this weekend is to make a family room/kids’ den out of the finished garage I just cleaned. A TV and all the game systems will go out there, as well as a futon couch and an air bed, worktable, toys, collectors dolls, empty Capri Sun packages and rolled up Hershey’s Kiss foil wrappers. I may actually get to watch Good Eats, MXC, and Mythbusters again.

What, No Relish?

“Simply a hot dog” with mustard on a roll. It’s not surprising that the wife of our late president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, should have served this popular American sandwich at their Hyde Park picnic for the King and Queen of England. It’s her favorite for all her picnics.

I’m devastated. And to think that for my entire life Eleanor Roosevelt has been my favorite woman in history, barely beating Helen Keller. What’s disturbing about this is not that, according to this vintage ad, she liked hot dogs. I don’t even care that she served them to British royalty, although one has to wonder what His and Her Majesties did about that. I’ll bet they ate it with a knife and fork. What I can’t get over is that Mrs. Roosevelt’s favorite hot dog meal lacked so much vision, creativity, personality! No relish, no chili, no kraut… my dreams are shattered.

And as if all that isn’t enough, she even served them on yellow Dixie paper plates with what appears to be stringy guacamole and black and green olives. I hope that green mess isn’t supposed to be coleslaw with cheese on it. That would destroy me entirely.

Page 23 Revisited

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 23
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the sentence on your blog

“To hell with posterity!”
Henry Miller Interview, 1962, from
Conversations With Henry Miller
by Frank L. Kersnowski & Alice Hughes

Nothing Says Sophistication Quite Like...

Oh, yeah! Nothing impresses the chicks quite like party-quart bottles of Schlitz! Here’s the perfect way to get cheap Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn wannabes into the sack. Tonight could be the night. This Bud’s for you, Bob!

Just Ask Me #2 - Chocomoose

In response to Chocomoose’s questions:

1) What would you do with the rest of your life if you were immortal?
I’d be a whole lot gentler and more patient with myself about achieving my life goals.

2) If you had to live without either chocolate (or you other favorite vice if chocolate is not your bag) or wine, which would you give up, and why?
Chocolate, because I’m really not fond of chocolate; wine is my drug-of-choice.

3) If you won the lottery, who would be the first, and who would be the last person you would tell?
I’d tell Nettl first. Last would be my scum-wad, Springer Trash, asocial, shit-for-brains, user brother and his gold-digging, conniving, 3-toed tree sloth of a wife.