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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
So, has anyone else out there been watching ESPN in the last, oh, I don’t know — three months or so? And if so, have you seen that commercial where some guy, unshaven and balding and shuffling around in his bathrobe, has just gotten up and finds that ‘GameDay’ has invaded his house, in the form of mascots and cheerleaders and tailgaters in his yard? You seen that one?
If so, then you know how it starts — aforementioned shuffly robed baldy guy is first greeted by a southern blonde cheerleader chicky, who hands him a steaming cup of (presumably) coffee and throws him a hearty,’Morning!‘
It’s at that point that the guy looks past her, and sees his television on, and the mascots running amok — later in the spot, he finds the tailgaters and assorted hangers-on in his backyard, grilling and hooting and painting each others’ various body parts.
(Yeah, I know I just recapped the entire frigging commercial. And that if you’ve seen the spot, then it really wasn’t necessary. And if you didn’t, then you probably already know you don’t give a damn, and now we’ve both just spent thirty seconds of our lives that we’ll never get back.
Don’t be a weenie. I’m making a point over here.)
My point is: sure, from a ‘hey, we’re marketing for our college football show thingy, and this is a pretty clever way to do it’ standpoint, then yeah, it’s a fine commercial. I got no beef.
But — but! — from a ‘what would really happen’ point of view, I think somebody needs to point out the obvious: there is no way, no way in hell, that if a half-awake, approaching-middle-aged, unshaven guy like the one in the commercial is confronted by a perky blonde chicky in a cheerleader uniform first thing in the morning — if that were to ever miraculously happen — there is no way that he ever discovers the people in his living room, or the goobers grilling weenies on his lawn, or sees anything even approximating football for the next few hours, at least.
Seriously. As an often only-half-awake, approaching-middle-aged, occasionally-unshaven guy myself, trust me on this one. ‘Perky cheerleader in the kitchen’ trumps all that other shit, in spades. Certainly, the relative usefulness of said cheerleader might depend on your current state of in-a-relationshipness, not to mention exactly which half of you is actually awake at the time.
(But hey — she’s offering coffee, too, so there’s an awfully good chance that you’d be able to pull together any parts that might still be lagging behind, as it were. If she had a ham sandwich in the other hand, it’d be pretty goddamned close to heaven, frankly.)
Anyway, back to the point — a guy in that situation might or might not be in a position to ask the girl to ‘Gimme some ‘T’! Gimme some ‘A’!‘, but I’ll tell you this for a fricking fact: his first instinct is not going to be ‘look over her shoulder to see who’s watching TV in the next room’. No. Unh-uh. Decidedly not.
I guess that’s all I’m saying, really. I can identify with the guy, to a degree, and I simply can’t get over the ridiculous shit that ESPN is trying to get away with. I’m like a drunken fool (I said, ‘like‘, dammit!) in a movie theater, yelling at the screen: ‘It’s a cheerleader! In your damned kitchen! Wha? No! Don’t go into the living room, dammit! She’s — you’re — dammit! Is there no one left I can live vicariously through?!‘
Meh. It’s a fine commercial, as far as it goes, but I wanna see the ad they didn’t make; the one with the pom-poms and the baby oil and the ‘spirit hand splits’. Why would our favorite network lie to us this way?
Permalink | 1 CommentSo, I was just reading over an old post of mine. Actually, it’s probably my very most favoritest post — they’re not all gems around here, by any stretch, but this one still makes me giggle like a ticklish teenager on ecstacy.
(Okay, maybe not that much. Still — I dig it. Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. There’s no politics or recipes or quotes from scripture in it, so if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for… yeah, I’m gonna be pretty damned useless to you. But thanks for stopping by. So sorry.)
Anyway, back to the post — which, coincidentally enough, I wrote exactly one year and one day ago; spoooooky, no?
So, I was reading through it — it’s about my (non-)appearance on Wheel of Fortune, if such things float your particular brand of watercraft — and I realized, to my great chagrin, that only half the original post was there! I could read about the first round, and the second round… but round three and the bonus round were nowhere to be seen! What the fuck?
My best guess is that when I moved over to this site from Blogger, the post import had some kind of size limit. And I’m a wordy mother fucker. I’ll throw a couple of thousand words around about a trip to the grocery store or a children’s show I’ve got no damned business watching.
(Or about some post I wrote a year ago, apparently. This was supposed to be a short post, dammit. Curse this diarrhea of the fingers!)
(Yeah, I know. ‘Ewwwwww!‘ My bad.)
Anyway, as you can imagine at this point, when I have a real live, actual topic to blather on about, I can go on for quite a while. Including a while longer than MovableType will allow, when plopping posts from Blogger into a new site. So — I’m guessing — my very most favoritest post got chopped in half. Bitches!
And then — then! — nobody told me about it. So it’s been sitting there since March, or whenever I set up shop here, crippled and incomplete. A half a post. An unfinished symphony. Drivelus interruptus.
So, I fixed it. I searched the original down on my old Blogger page, and copied in the rest of the post. And not to try to send you folks diving into the archives or anything, but now that it’s actually fully fricking available, I’ll tell you this:
If you’re interested in reading the post that I’m most proud of in my nearly year-and-a-half of slinging sass on this site, then feel free to have a look at ‘Can I Buy a Damned Clue, Please?‘, seen here in its entirety for the first time in… I dunno. Months. Maybe ever. Goddamned computers, anyway. Why does no one tell me these things?! *sigh*
Permalink | No CommentsFrom both the ‘Did I Really Write That?’ and ‘Activities That Are Probably Far Less Entertaining Than You’d Initially Believe’ departments:
I got a hit from a Google searcher a few minutes ago. And tracking backwards using his query terms, I found that I’m the #2 Google hit for:
I’m not quite sure how to feel, frankly. First of all, the post in question is the one — the only one; a sort of ‘farewell, but come visit the new digs’ type of post — that appears only on my old Blog*Spot site and not here.
(And maybe it says something about my state of mind at the time that it’s the only place where little people of any kind are mentioned in the same breath as Everyone’s Favorite Party Game [That We Like to Pretend Always Turns Into a Sweaty, Wanton Orgy But Never Actually Does]™.
Maybe that says I’m whacked. Maybe moving is just tough on you. But probably both.)
Apart from that, though, I find myself filled with questions about the whole thing. Deep, troubling questions like:
Has no one else out there ever typed those three words in that sane order? Ever?!
(This more specific search would suggest ‘no’, by the way.)
And if not… ooh, that’s not good. That means I might be the only guy who’s ever contemplated the phenomenon of ‘midgets playing twister’. Mommy, I’m scared.
Come to think of it, have I really contemplated it fully? I think not. I’m still not sure how such a game would work, with people who can’t fully cover the entire playing surface — which would seem to be a prerequisite, if I understand Twister correctly. Would they play on stilts, with broomsticks in their hands, maybe? On a miniature board — some sort of multicolored placemat, maybe? Would they just make all the spots ‘red’, to make it easier? Enquiring minds are mildly — and freakishly — interested, dammit!
Finally — and I suppose this answers an earlier question: who searches for that kind of thing?! It seems like I should feel better that someone else out there has thought of the same thing… but instead, it’s just creepy. Now there are two of us — quite possibly the only two in the world with this one wigged-out, bizarre thread in common. It’s like hearing that someone else out there uses flyswatters as a ‘marital aid’. Or finding somebody else who once accidentally pictured your grandma in that scene in 9 1/2 Weeks. Icky.
(Those are just examples, of course. *ahem* Not anything that I actually have, uh… yeah. Never mind.
But seriously, nobody would use a flyswatter to get their freak on. Even if you leaned in that particular creepy direction, it’s obvious you’d go for the bug zapper, instead. I mean, why ride a bike when there’s a Ferrari sitting in the driveway? It’s pretty simple, really.)
All right, what the hell was I talking about? Bug zappers and grandmas always get me a little distracted. And thirsty, but I think that’s different. I don’t know what it all means.
Anyway, back to the Twister midgets. I forget what my point was — I’m just a little creeped out, is all. I guess if the guy who made the search — and yeah, I’m pretty much assuming it was a guy — ever comes back, I can ask him why he was searching in the first place. And what he found. And what other sorts of creepy crap he does. Hey, maybe we were separated at birth. Freaky.
Permalink | No CommentsFolks, I’ve got nothing tonight. Nada. Zilch. Zipperooni.
Chalk it up to a long, hard day at work. Or the four hours and change of sleep I got last night. Or maybe the throbbing, raging hangover I woke up with this morning.
(And believe me, folks — if you’re going to wake up to something ‘throbbing’ and ‘raging’, you don’t want it to be a hangover.
On the other hand, you probably don’t want it to be anything else, either. Throbbing or raging, perhaps, but not both at once — that’s just creepy.)
Of course, the hangover is all my fault. ‘Hey,’ I told myself, back before it was completely laughable, ‘I’ll just go down to the Comedy Studio to catch a quick show. Just a couple of sets, and a quick dinner, and I’ll be home by eleven. No problem!‘
Right. No problem. The show ended at ten. I got home at two-thirty, and into bed sometime after three. And then up at eight, for no better reason than being horizontal started to seem like a really, really bad idea. Oof.
Anyway, the point is, I’m all poopered out. Looks like I won’t be up in time for that fantabulous Red Sox parade planned for tomorrow morning, either. And what a shame — there’s nothing I like better than standing in the cold with five million drunken, sweaty guys screaming, ‘Yankees suck!‘ for three hours. Really. I live for that shit. No, honestly.
Eh, it’s just as well. I’d rather sleep than parade, anyway. Or be paraded at, or to, or in front of. I don’t know how these parady kinds of things work, frankly. It seems like an awful lot of standing around outside, with an obstructed view and in a fog of other people’s b.o., waiting for people to ride by in cars, or on floats, or some other such thing. Sounds cold and shrivelly, if you ask me. I’m sleeping in. The Sox can ‘Go!‘ while I’m drooling on my pillow. Maybe I’ll TiVo it, and save it for later. That’s a plan. Woo Sox.
Meanwhile, though, I gotta hit the sack. I’m not getting any less exhausted sitting here at the ‘puter, and my pillow isn’t gonna drool all over itself, you know. I’ve got responsibilities here, and I’m getting to ’em right now. I’ll see you kids when my eyes will stay open on their own again. Nighty-night.
Permalink | No CommentsSo, tell me, then — because I apparently don’t know the right answer:
When you’re in a lunch meeting with your bosses and co-workers, and one of the smartasses across the table nods and says, dripping with innuendo:
‘Hey… that’s a fine-looking banana you’ve got there.‘
Is the most proper, job-preserving reply to:
A) nod politely, and make a mental note to line his desk chair with SuperGlue later?
B) lob the ball back into his court by ignoring him completely, thereby daring him to shout, ‘I said, ‘Nice banana, dude!’‘ across the crowded table?
C) smile sweetly at him and say, ‘Yes, yes it is. Would you like a bite of my banana, then? There’s plenty to go around.‘?
D) frown at him snarkily and say, ‘Nice talk, dude‘, leaving the non-gutter-minded around you wondering what the hell just went on?
E) reply, ‘Well, at least it’s not a cucumber, bitch‘… also leaving the non-gutter-minded around you wondering what the hell just went on?
F) slyly nudge your neighbor and say to the smartass, ‘I’ll bet you say that to all the guys, don’t you, you little vixen?‘?
G) do some other, crazy bit of nonsense, like fling the banana at him and skitter out the door like a monkey?
See, I’m just asking because I can absolutely tell you that the answer is not:
H) loudly proclaim, so all can hear you, ‘Oh, you think that’s a banana? No, no — I’ll show you a banana, baby!‘
It’s probably also not wise — what with the stodgy old codgers and codgerettes around — to find yourself ‘on a roll’, and follow that up with anything like… oh, I don’t know, let’s say:
I) ‘Why don’t you come on over here and peel my banana, huh? It’s ripe, and it’s juicy, and just oozing with —‘
At that point — should you accidentally wander down that path, that is — someone beside you would most likely throw up a hand and say:
‘Hey! Not another word! You nasty pervert!‘
(I mean, theoretically, of course. Not that any of this ever actually happened. I’m just saying.)
(While I’m at it, though, the person stopping you would theoretically be a woman. And one who never liked you, anyway, and who you suspect is always stealing your fruit cups out of the office fridge. Theoretically. Bitch.)
At this point — this now highly theoretical point — you’re pretty much cooked. You’ve been called out, taken the bait, and now the whole theoretical room is now theoretically staring at you with less-than-theoretical disgust. There’s little you could possibly do to come back from this.
Except:
J) pull another, even larger banana from your lunch bag and say, as innocently as possible, ‘I was going to say, ‘potassium’. ‘Oozing with potassium’. What’s wrong with that?‘
Which is why, my friends, I always carry an extra, jumbo-sized banana with me at all times. Starting tomorrow. Theoretically. Bah.
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