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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I’ve got TiVo. If you don’t have TiVo, I don’t know why you don’t have TiVo. It makes watching TV bearable. It saves time, makes money for you, and runs on solar power. It’s the greatest invention since beer-battering. Or erotic finger puppets. Or rocks. I want life to be like TiVo, so I can rewind parts I’ve missed, skip the parts I hate, and freeze frame the parts with naked boobies. TiVo is good, TiVo is great. TiVo is the lizard king; TiVo can do anything.
However, I sometimes feel that I should experience life the way the ‘other half’ lives. It build character, or some shit like that. And there’s nothing particularly on tonight — usually, I’d watch the otherwise meaningless Monday night football game, but my fantasy football team has already gone down harder than Jeff Garcia at a Chippendales whirlybird contest. So, my night is free.
So, I decided to surf. One trip, all the way through the dial — from the boring PBS crap at the bottom to all those music stations I’m never going to listen to at the top. I got distracted, and circled back for some good bits, I did not resort to the saved shows. I spent the evening slumming, folks, and you’re along for the ride. Here are a few of the highlights:
8:52pm / CBS: Wow. Allyson Hannigan on that How I Met Your Mother show. In a parrot costume. With face paint. Man, I am not gonna sleep tonight.
9:12pm / Comedy Central: Hrm. Drew Carey has some new improv show, with animation this time. After three minutes, the funniest thing I’ve seen is his haircut. Drew looks less like a comic, and more like a bookish lesbian with a regular table at the local Sizzler. Yow.
9:21pm / FOX: Prison Break, eh? So it’s Oz mixed with 24, without the graphic violence or salty language. Or the hot blonde daughter chick. Well, that’s three strikes right there. Next.
9:33pm / PAX: Diagnosis: Murder. On PAX? No. Get out. Oh, and bonus — this episode features Regis and Kathy Lee in guest roles. This is the sort of shit they show terrorists to make them talk, you know that, right?
9:35pm / PAX: Commercial came on while I was typing. Will someone teach Wilford fricking Brimley how to say ‘diabetes’, for crissakes? Thanks, you’re the best.
9:47pm / ESPN Classic: Who’s Number One?, debating which was the best World Series. Pffft. I’m in Boston. Everyone under the age of eighty-seven within a thirty-mile radius of my television has the same opinion. I need to watch this crap for an hour? I don’t think so.
9:56pm / Food Network: Apparently, I just missed Unwrapped going ‘behind the counter at some of the most popular food chains’. I think I’ve seen plenty enough dead roaches and rat poop in my life, without touring the back room in the local McDonalds. Moving on.
10:02pm / FX: The Animal is on. You know, when our broadcasts finally reach whatever aliens are out there, they’re eventually going to intercept a Rob Schneider movie. Maybe even this one. And then — they’ll fly here and kill us all. And we’ll deserve it.
10:05pm / Lifetime: Look, everybody, it’s a miniseries called Human Trafficking. Wait, Lifetime with a movie about exploited women? Who’d have ever believed it?
10:11pm / Nickelodeon: Heh. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is on Nick at Nite. You think Will Smith ever wishes the warehouse holding the rerun tapes would just implode? Try watching the first half of Ali, then switch over to Fresh Prince for a while. That’ll leave a mark.
10:19pm / ABC Family: Hey, a Whose Line Is It, Anyway? rerun is on. And come to think of it, Drew Carey always looked a little like a husky lesbian. It’s not his barber’s fault; I just never noticed before.
Eh, that’s enough. I made it through the cycle; now I’m gonna cleanse my watching palate with a couple of Simpsons. And maybe a Family Guy. Man, how do people live without TiVo, anyway?
Permalink | 3 CommentsWe’ve all heard of Hot or Not — the premeire place on the web to stare at strangers and judge them based on their looks. It’s like a virtual singles bar, without the booze — but with about the same chance of getting laid at the end of the night.
I spent a bit of time recently cruising around Hot or Not. A few people that I e-know started up a scoreboard as as a sort of contest. ‘Fabulous prizes’ were (facetiously) offered for pics garnering the highest and lowest scores for each gender. Being the strategic sort of hideous disfigured troll guy that I am, I figured that I’d shoot for the bottom of the spectrum.
I succeeded. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. Nobody ever said winning was pretty. Also? No fabulous prizes — like, for instance, my dignity back — appear to be forthcoming. Not so much worth it.
It has, however, gotten me thinking. The whole 1-to-10 rating system? The one used on Hot or Not, as well as classy, charming sites such as Bangable?, Rate My Poo, and Rate My Kitten.
(What? They’re kittens. No, really — baby cats. It’s not kinky. Stop looking at me that way.
It really is poo, though. I wouldn’t go there, if I were you. Perv.)
Anyway, it occurred to me that judging people on a 1-to-10 scale isn’t terribly interesting. For one thing, you really don’t use the ends mich. I mean, to rate a perfect ’10’, a girl would have to be hot. Like, napalm hot. And in my house. And made of beer, or something. And to deserve a ‘1’… well, I don’t know. A ‘1’ is just mean, you know what I’m saying? I’ve seen some ugly people on that site — wrinkly people, beady-eyed people, piggy-nosed people, Dumbo-eared people, me — but no one that rates a ‘1’. Not in my book, anyway. A girl getting a ‘1’ would have to be pretty damned horrific. And with a penis. Like, growing out of her face somewhere. Yow.
Mostly, though, all this shallow evaluation of peoples’ looks reminds me of the good old days back in high school and college. Back then, we had much cooler ways to rate people. And we were horny, disgusting little piggies, so we used our systems all the time. Just for instance:
The Binary System
The simplest of all systems — ‘yes’ for yes, and ‘no’ for no. Only it didn’t work very well for this one friend — he was the piggliest disgusting perv of any of us. So there was only ever one answer.
Me: Her?
Him: Yeah.
Me: How ’bout her?
Him: Definitely.
Me: That one?
Him: Oh, yeah. Twice, if there’s time.
Me: How ’bout her mom over there?
Him: Yup.
Me: The grandma?
Him: Yeah.
Me: The dog? That squirrel? The mailbox?
Him: Yes. Yes. And ‘hellooooo, mailman‘.
Me: Dude. Can you just… go stand way the hell over there somewhere?
Him: Whatever. How you doin’?
Yes, apparently I hung with Glen Quagmire in my younger days. That’s how I rolled back in the day. Giggitygiggitygoo.
The Hurts So Good System
I can’t say exactly how many separate ratings were in this system. We started innocently enough, saying ‘ouch!‘ when a pretty girl walked by. But that was too easy. Next, it was ‘yeowtch!‘, which was better, and ‘owie‘, which was not quite so good. Soon, we were calling for ‘ambulance!‘, and ‘medic‘, and — during one rather memorable trip to the beach — ‘get the paddles, I see a white light, it’s a heart attack — CLEAR!‘
In hindsight, I probably should have waited for her rather large boyfriend to get out of earshot. As it happened, I almost needed those paddles, after all.
The Heavenly Body System
This one was easy. Nine planets — no, the tenth wasn’t discovered yet, but yes, we knew about Pluto when I was a kid, thank you so much for asking, doucheweasel — and the closer to the sun, the hotter. This led to conversations like:
Piggy Me: Dude. Mercury at ten o’clock.
Piggy Friend: Mercury? Please. Venus, at best. More like Saturn.
Piggy Me: Bah, you never liked redheads.
Piggy Friend: Yeah, but how about that girl?
Piggy Me: Pffft. I wouldn’t do her with your dick. Or ‘Uranus’.
Yes, we were idiots. And that’s just a taste, I’m afraid. There was also:
The Seven Dwarves System: ‘Man, you think she’s ‘Grumpy’? She’s not even ‘Bashful’. Hell, she’s barely ‘Dopey’, fool.‘
The Seven Deadly Sins System: ‘Yo! Two ‘lusts’ and a leggy blonde ‘envy’ walking this way. Look sharp!‘
And my personal favorite, The Bill of Rights System: ‘Daaaaamn. That girl’s just got a ‘freedom of speech’ face, but her body’s got a ‘right to bear arms’. Bam!‘
Okay, I may have made that last one up. And the Snow White thing. We were pigs, though. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to convince you any further of that, eh? Dammit. Why you gotta get all ‘Jupiter’ on me?
Permalink | 3 CommentsI tend to overthink things, just a bit. As a rabid, tongue-wagging smartass, that’s really never a good idea.
For instance, the other day, something occurred to me. Assuming you don’t have kids — or have a separate car that you use for work — how often do you see the passenger side of your car?
Me, I see mine once a month, maybe twice. It’s facing away in the driveway, it faces the back of the garage at work… unless I make an effort to walk around to look at the other side, anything could be going on over there. Rust. Spider webs. An interstellar wormhole. The charred remnants of Chevy Chase’s career could be smeared on my passenger doors right now, and I wouldn’t even know it.
So that got me thinking. Other people have to be in the same situation, right? All those cars in my work garage, for instance, with passenger sides facing mostly away from the door. Those folks don’t see the other sides of their cars either, I bet. So, the obvious came to mind:
‘I should really find a big magic marker and write naughty things on their cars.‘
Because that would be fantabulous. Imagine that snarky secretary down the hall driving down the highway, bopping to Cher or Celine Dion or Spice Bitches or whatever sugary pap she listens to. All the while, anyone to her right could look over and see:
I DIDDLE DACHSHUNDS FOR SPARE CHANGE
Or how about the boss, who’s always coming down on you, and calling you ‘lazy’, and threatening to fire you if you “don’t stop clacking away on that damned web site of yours”. Hypothetically, of course. Now, wouldn’t you think just a bit better of him if his Lexus was scooting home with the side festooned with:
MY NUTSACK SMELLS LIKE SWEDISH FISH
I know I would.
I even started thinking about decorating cars of people I don’t even know. Just because it’s fun. That guy who runs the garage and parks right up front?
YOUR WISH IS MY TUTU STRIPTEASE
The pregnant lady that apparently works in the next building over?
ASK ME ABOUT MY DELICIOUS UNBORN FETUS
The asshole who always double-parks along the wall, in just the space I really want?
SPHINCTER FOR RENT — BEEFY LATVIAN TEAMSTERS APPLY WITHIN
Oh, the joy. The entirely theoretical, purely virtual, completely unacted-on joy.
But that’s when the other thought occurred to me. I’ve never been the sweatiest gigolo in the hot tub, so to speak. So I’m probably not the first person to dream up this idea. And we’ve established that I’m both a smartass and that I never see the other side of my car.
Uh oh.
So now I spend my time worrying about what people are probably writing on my car. So I check it constantly. Before I go to work, I look. In the garage, I look. Stopped at a light, I get out, run around the car, and look. I can’t stop. I’m obsessed. I haven’t slept in three days, and I’m starting to go a little wacky. Er. Wackier. You know what I mean, dammit.
I think I’ll put an end to this, once and for all. I’m gonna go out right now — yes, at midnight, in my Aquaman Underoos with the footies; you know the ones — with a paint brush and a can of Sherman Williams and paint on my passenger side door:
YOU’LL NEVER WRITE ON ME, DOUCHEPOODLES! HA HA HA HA HA!
Meh. I should just stop thinking things altogether.
Permalink | 4 CommentsSaturday night, the missus and I struck off with another couple for a hot night on the town. Which involved a pizzeria dinner, a few beers, and home by eleven. Yes, we’re old and married and lame. I know. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Anyway, while dining at said pizzariffic establishment, we conversed about several subjects. And I learned many things from my dinner companions. For instance:
#1. I learned that my friend watches the show Numb3rs.
Now, I’ve got no real issue with this. It’s not like I’m the TV police (although, keep reading; a couple of learnings further, maybe I am). I watch a lot of crap and nonsense on television, certainly. But I can’t watch Numb3rs. Lord, I’ve tried, and I just can’t do it.
See, first there’s the name. Numb3rs. Why the ‘3’, CBS? Honestly, now — what’s up with the l33t 5p33k? You’re the old fart network. You know it, I know it, we all know it. NBC’s still feeding pap to the Baby Boomers, ABC finally got in the game with the reality shows, and FOX has the teeny boppers. The smart ones, anyway, who know better than to watch UPN. Jesus, were we so numbnutted at that age?
Anyway, cutesy title aside, I can’t stomach the show. And I like shows that follow the formula, too — the find a mystery, gather clues, piece together the puzzle sort of shows. You know, like Law and Order, or House, or Blue’s Clues.
But the writing on this Numb3rs show is unwatchable. Unwatchable, I say! Look, I get it — the kid’s good with numbers. When clues involving wind speed calculations and fluid dynamics and the Pythagorean theorem come up, you’re going to call the kid. That’s what we couch potatoes call ‘the entire damned premise for your whole suckass show‘. So don’t beat us over the head with it. You don’t need dialogue like:
Detective #1: Hey, Joe, lookit this. I think the murderer left it.
Detective #2: What is it? It that a… back scratcher?
Detective #1: Nah, I don’t think so. A shoe shiner, maybe?
Detective #2: No, wait. It’s one of them abacus dealies.
Detective #1: Oooh. An abacus. That’s, like, a math thing, right?
Detective #2: Yeah, yeah — some math doohickey.
Detective #1: Well, jeez, Joe, I don’t know nothing ’bout math.
Detective #2: Yeah, better call in the kid. It’s a math thing.
For the love of Euler, just get the fuck on with it already!
And if it’s not that, then they’re waxing poetic about all the ways math affects our lives, and how smart the mathemeticians of old were, and how if you don’t have a certificate degree in advanced calculus, you’ll never get laid again, and — look. If I wanted to learn, I’d watch Sesame Street. I don’t. I want to see a cop show, and maybe see a hooker stuffed into a dumpster. Cut the chit-chat, and get Columbo in here. I got no time for this bullshit.
#B. I learned that my friend thinks my favorite beer is ‘too hoppy’.
Now, again, I can’t fault him for this. First of all, he can drink what he likes. And we happen to agree on one of the best beers in the world. Plus, he hangs out with me, so he’s obviously a man of great substance with discerning tastes.
(Never mind that he wore shorts that night so he wouldn’t have to put on shoes. That’s another story.)
So, nothing against my friend here. It just leaves more of the very best beer in the world for me. And that’s a good thing.
But I would argue the point that it’s even possible, people, for a beer to be ‘too hoppy‘. Now, I’m not going to lie to you — the Hop Devil is an extremely hoppy beer. If hops were lemons, you’d be puckered up like a hairy-moled grandma at Christmastime after one sip. But that’s what makes it so darned tasty. ‘Hops’ equals ‘good’, in the same way that ‘money’ or ‘health’ or ‘strippers’ do — you simply can’t have ‘too much’.
That’s my story, anyway. But don’t you believe it, folks. If you run into a beer that’s ‘too hoppy’, you just stop drinking it, drop that delicious brewski into a mailbox addressed to me, and try something else. I’ll take care of those for you.
#Last-but-not-least: I learned that another friend went to a party… and played a Golden Girls drinking game.
Holy mother of all that is incontinent and wrinkly… people DO that?!
Again, I’m in no position to judge, really. I can understand drinking to a television show. I’ve done it, myself — to The Grinch That Stole Christmas, and Blue’s Clues (it’s good for everything!), and even The Smurfs.
(Oh, don’t look at me that way. How do you spend your Saturday mornings, eh? Ten bucks and a shot of tequila say mine are more fun. Yeah.)
But drinking to the Golden Girls implies watching the Golden Girls… and where the hell’s the fun in that? Hell, I could barely keep my breakfast down watching that crap sober; how am I supposed to hold in the hurl after a few dozen adult beverages? Not possible.
Honestly, when I first heard about this, I couldn’t think of even one less appropriate pairing of ‘enjoyable activity’ and ‘television show’. But I’m not here to let things go, people — oh, no, no. So, I gave it some thought, and came up with these:
Wow. That was a lot to learn on one Saturday night, eh? Maybe if I’d have hung out in more pizza joints, I wouldn’t have had so much trouble in college. Lesson learned.
Permalink | 6 CommentsSo, I finally gave in and took the car to the garage yesterday.
(I know, I know — I said I wouldn’t. But dammit, you try looking into those puppy dog headlights and saying, ‘no‘ to that car. It’s not possible. It’s not like she’s a fat ugly Hyundai or something.)
Actually, I took the car to the dealer. The eeeevil dealer. You know the kind; hell, maybe you’ve got a local eeeevil car dealer in your town, too. The kind that grin at you when you walk in, because they know they’re just about to stick. It. To. You. But. Good.
The only time we go to the dealer is when that annoying little ‘Service Engine Soon‘ light comes on. Anything else — a broken tail light, a dent in the fender, bees nesting in the glove compartment, that sort of thing — and we take our vehicular reaming at another garage, thank you very much. At least they buy you dinner before they bend you over and whip out the grease guns. Figuratively speaking, of course. About the dinner. Bah.
Anyway, this dealer garage dealie blows hippos. And every time that damned light comes on in the car, we’re out another few hundred bucks. Because it’s never something simple. Oh no — that would be too easy. A malfunctioning sensor, or an easy-to-get-at-and-replace valve — these sorts of issues are out of the question entirely. Sure, the grease monkeys mention the simple stuff when you call them up:
‘Oh, yeah, bring the car in. It’s usually just a shorted bulb, or a frayed wire. No problem.‘
Then you take them the car, and they call back and say:
‘Well, gee, we looked into it, and actually, it’s your transmission. Apparently, the car didn’t come with one, so we’ll have to build you a new one. From scratch. And we have to order the parts. From Romania. And it’s East Romania, so it’s going to be a little pricier.‘
Dildos. Actually, this trip involved three calls — count ’em: one, two three; backwards: three, two, one; now in Spanish: uno, dos, tres; and finally, in Roman: I, II, III — because the problem apparently kept getting worse, and worse, and worse, as the day went on. Me, I think the mechanic had money on a few ball games, and kept losing, so he upped the charges to pay off his bookie. But I’m cynical that way. Maybe I was just paying for his kid’s braces, or his grandma’s new lung. You never know.
At any rate, they found one problem — a ‘simple little thing‘, they said — and called about that. Then, when they ‘got in there‘, they found a couple more issues. And finally, when they tried ‘cleaning the pipes‘, one snapped or split or magically insta-rusted or something, so they had to install a new one. From scratch. And they had to order the part. You see? You see where this is heading? Douchebags.
(Actually, to be fair, they didn’t order the part from Romania, just New York. But it was East New York, so it was a little pricier. Le sigh.)
If that doesn’t convince you, here’s the best proof I’ve got that the garage is — say it with me now, kids — eeeevil. The total charge this trip? $666. That’s right — six hundred and sixty-six dollars. They should just call the place Beelzebub Motors, shove a flaming pitchfork up your ass when you bring your car in, and get it over with. At least there’d be no question then. Hell, I’m not looking for an honest garage; that’s crazy talk. I just want truth in advertising; is that too much to ask?
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