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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Please, folks, don’t take it personally, but I’m just no good with names.
Seriously. We cool, we tight, and all of that. You know I love you, and I’d be happy to buy you a beer, any time. (And probably soon, to make up for not having your name handy when we run into each other.)
So please accept my apologies in advance, because it’s going to happen, sooner or later, and quite likely early and often. It’s this mental block I have on people’s names. I can’t help it.
But I want you to be prepared, for both our sakes. So do us both a favor, and don’t be offended or put off when I call you one of the following ‘name substitutes’ that I commonly use when I’ve temporarily misplaced someone’s moniker. And remember, this is only a partial list:
| For Him | For Her | For Both |
| Rufus | Sunshine | Skippy |
| Flubbo | Cupcake | Scooter |
| Poop Deck | Mamacita | Pork Chop |
| Sanchez | Bunny Hop | Sporty |
| Choppers | Party Girl | Lampshade |
| Corky | Brunhilda | Ziggy |
| Mr. Wiggles | Pocahontas | Funzo |
| Porterhouse | Esmerelda | Bobo |
| Putt Putt | Smiley | Noseface |
| Cactus Pete | Weezy | Grinny Pants |
| Denzel | Yolanda | Porcupine |
| Ray Ray | Li’l Sistah | Tricky |
Wow, that’s quite a list. I had no idea I had so many names for people. So tell me, did I leave any out?
Permalink | 6 CommentsWe hired a new person in my office recently. Today was his first day.
Man, oh man. Is he in trouble.
He finished up orientation around eleven thirty this morning. We grabbed some lunch together, and then I asked if he had ‘a few minutes’ to chat about what we’re going to be working on in the coming months. That’s ‘few minutes’, folks. Few. Minutes. Hee.
Three hours later, he left my office, cross-eyed and twitching. And not because of some screw-with-the-new-guy, squeal-like-a-pig hazing adventure, either.
(We wait at least a week for that around my job. That lulls ’em into a false sense of security, you see. Most of ’em never see it coming.)
No, our new friend was simply overloaded with facts and minutiae and our overloaded schedule of organizational meetings. (Four hours a day’s worth, whether we need ’em or not!)
(And frankly… we don’t. The bosses don’t care. Poopyheads, dammit.)
Anyway, I almost felt sorry for the new guy after all of that, even if I was the one who tortured him for half the afternoon with a bunch of ‘upgrade this’ and ‘enhance that’ and ‘roll the other thing out ASAP’.
(That’s ‘A-S-A-P, by the way. We’re not gonna pronounce it ‘aysap’ around here, you got it? That shit’s gonna get somebody bitchslapped. ‘Aysap‘. Hell is wrong with people, anyway?)
All right. Where the hell was I? Ah, the new guy. Right.
The thing is, I hope I didn’t scare him off completely. He left soon after our little chat to get a picture taken for his photo ID. Or so he said, at least. I’m wondering whether he didn’t really hop out for a couple quick brews and a resume update. Hell, if they’d done the same to me on my first day, I’d have probably leapt out the window and ended the hellish nightmare right then. Of course, if I’d thought of the beer-and-resume thing, I’d have done that, instead. Much less painful, and far more hoppily delicious. Beer makes everything better.
I guess I’ll find out tomorrow whether we still have the new guy, or whether we need to start another search. I suspect he’ll come crawling back for more. (And in the form of a two-hour nine am meeting tomorrow, too — talk about throwing him to the wolves.) He’s a smart guy, though — he’ll do just fine, once the eye-glazing shock wears off. I’ll just have to resist hitting him again with a big bunch of workspeak, until he recovers enough to get his legs under him.
On the other hand, he is a smart guy, like I said. Maybe he won’t come back, and we’ll have to hire a replacement. That means I’ll have to go through this afternoon’s spiel with someone else. Yeargh. Maybe I’ll have a go at throwing myself out that window in my office, after all. Can I at least defenestrate before that meeting at nine? Some things really are worse than a horrific, bloody death surrounded by shards of glass and bits of your own exploded skull. Seriously.
Permalink | 1 CommentWell, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had a very nice, quiet, relaxing Monday off.
A-wha’? What’s that you say? You didn’t get Monday off? You had to schlep into work, just like any other poopy old Monday? Well, then clearly you’re not living right, my friend. Or at least, you’re not living in the right place.
For you see, oh overworked one, today is ‘Patriots Day’, a very special, very somber, and completely made-up holiday that is observed every April here in Massachusetts. And only in Massachusetts. You won’t see Patriots Day Hallmark cards in your local drugstore. You won’t find it on a list of federal holidays. And the day gets no special note on the ‘365 Days of Simpsons’ desk calendar sitting in front of me right now.
And that’s why Patriots Day is the greatest holiday in the history of holidays, ever. It’s exclusive — most people outside of New England have never even heard of Patriots Day, much less get to observe it. It comes at just the right time — if, like me, you don’t get ‘Easter Monday’ (speaking of fake holidays) off, then the spring is a wasteland of full-on, fist-clenching five-day weeks. A Monday off in April is huge. But best of all, Patriots Day is a fully pressureless holiday, and there are damned few of those around.
You see, Patriots Day is about… well, really, that’s the beauty of it. It’s not about anything. Oh, I’m sure there are people out there trying to promote patriotism with it, or the New England Patriots, or Mel Gibson period flicks. But nobody’s seriously trying to make a big deal out of it, you know? It’s just a day away from work — there are no gifts involved, no cards, no candlelit ceremonies or special costumes or candy gobbling of any kind. You sleep in, you get up, you poke around the house for a few hours, and then you call it a night and start the week on Tuesday. I’m in heaven, folks.
(Don’t hate me because I’ve been in my pajamas all day, okay? I don’t makes the rules; I just uses ’em to my advantage when I get half a chance.)
Truth be told, there actually is a reason for Patriots Day, but perhaps not the one you’d first imagine. But in fact, Patriots Day exists because of the annual running of the Boston Marathon. I’m guessing it’s a civic safety precaution — the drivers around here are so bad and so grouchy on a normal day, if you made them route around a marathon trail for even one day, all of Boston would launch into mob violence. The Big Dig construction in the city has been bad enough; downtown was nearly torched by pissy motorists more than once over that fiasco.
Anyway, knowing the real reason for Patriots Day just adds to the fun. And again, there’s no pressure to actually do anything to ‘observe’ the holiday — who the hell is actually gonna watch a marathon, anyway? I caught some of the footage (heh; ‘footage’) last year on TV, and it was excruciating. Here’s approximately what I saw:
Left. Right. Left. Right. Closeup on one sweaty guy running behind a group of others. Announcers give us details of his life history as he runs. Left. Right. Born in blah-blah. Left. Right. Trains with whos-his-face in the winters. Left. Right. Enjoys classical jazz and slow walks on the beach. Left. Right. Left.
Pan to a group of women. Sweaty. Haggard. Pained. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Announcers explain how one of them has caught up to the bunch at the fifteen mile mark or so, and may still be travelling nearly imperceptibly faster than the others. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Announcers posit that one of them — closeup on her drippy face while we talk about her — likes to make her move ‘early’. At around the twenty-four mile mark. In other words, nine miles and a half-hour from now. Won’t that be exciting? Clip. Clop. Clip.
It was at that point that I started drinking heavily, and had a much more enjoyable Patriots Day. And I’ve pretty much vowed to never watch the race live ever again, so long as I live. That way lies madness and chafed thighs. Meh.
Of course, the other cool sports-related thing about Patriots Day is that the Red Sox always play at home for the marathon, and start the game before noon so the fans can spill out of the stadium and cheer on the Kenyans who take the first twelve or so spots every year.
(Yeah, don’t bother correcting me if someone from non-Kenya won this year. Or last year, or every year, for that matter. No disrespect meant to any other nation that pumps out world-class distance runners, but for me, marathons will be always dominated by Kenyans.
Apparently, at one point, I cared enough to learn that Kenyan runners were really, really good at running marathons, and now I don’t care so much any more. So I’ll just stick with the information I have, thanks. Too many other priorities in life ahead of ‘learn more about marathons‘, I’m afraid. I’m a bit behind the times, perhaps, but I’m sure these things are pretty static in nature, right? Like politics, which I completely lost interest in a long time ago, too. By the way, how is that ‘President Carter’ guy doing, anyway?)
Anyway, an 11am game is pretty cool for me — if nothing else, it gives me a taste of what life would be like on the West Coast. Get up at ten, take a shower, maybe grab some cereal, and bam! — there’s a game, right there on the tube. You’ve barely had time to get out of your jammies, and those crazy kooks on the other side of the country are already dressed up and playing sports. What a country, eh? What a big, long, wide country.
Okay, that’s about enough for now, I think. I had a great day and all, but tomorrow is a work day, even for me. So I think I’ll wrap up this first commemorative Patriots Day blog post, and hit the sack. And hey — I never really got properly dressed today, so getting ready for bed is gonna be a snap. Man oh man, Patriots Day kicks ass. Think we can get them to run a race every month downtown? I could get used to this shit. Good night, folks!
Permalink | 2 CommentsLook, I gotta be honest. I just don’t get it. I’ve tried — I feel like I’ve given it a real, legitemate shot, and I just don’t get it. I don’t see what all the fuss about Spongebob Squarepants is all about.
Maybe I’m just old and crotchety. (Or just old and crotchy; that’s possible, too.) But I’ve watched lots of cartoons in my time — and still do, frankly — and there’s some good shit out there. Family Guy, the Simpsons, Samurai Jack, Home Movies — all of these and more know how my fancy likes to be tickled. Um, so to speak. Ahem.
So I don’t think that I’m just a generally humorless old fart, devoid of any appreciation for the animated and absurd. Hell, I used to watch Ren and Stimpy and the Angry Beavers religiously, and some of that shit made no sense at all. None. Those writers were sprinkling crack on their morning cereal, you know what I’m saying?
And I’ve given Spongebob a chance — I’ve sat through more than one episode, all the way through. I’ve seen the pants, and I’ve heard the silly song, and I’ve seen that crab or lobster or whatever the hell it is that has the restaurant, and… y’know, I really don’t remember much more than that. All I recall is watching these things and asking myself afterwards:
‘What in the name of Fritz fricking Freleng did I just sit through? Are they serious with this shit?‘
Honestly, I just don’t understand. And it’s not just a cartoon, either. If it were just a show, popular with the kiddies and that was it, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. I don’t lose sleep at night wondering whether there’s anything to this whole Teletubbies thing, for instance.
(Though I’ve watched it a couple of times, too, and that shit is whacked. But at least I can see the attraction there — that show is a pothead’s wet fricking dream. Can you imagine watching the Teletubbies stoned off your ass? That’d be like the ultimate — like seeing the face of the bong god or something. Yikes.)
But this Squarepants guy isn’t just the ‘star’ of a show — he’s the basis of a whole marketing phenomenon. Dolls, T-shirts, merchandise and swag of all kinds. Why, I was reminded of this topic today when I saw a Spongebob-shaped helium-filled balloon bobbing among its more traditional latex brethren in a birthday balloon bouquet. Now come on, people. Spongebob balloons? Have you actually seen the show? Does it really rate custom-shaped balloons?
I dunno. Maybe there’s something I’m missing. Or maybe I’m just getting old, losing touch with what’s cool with the kiddies this month. Still, I prefer to tell myself that it’s really a simple matter of geometry. The main character’s a fricking sponge. Of course there’s gonna be merchandise — how hard could it be to design a lunchbox after him? He’s shaped like a fricking lunchbox! I shouldn’t be surprised.
Hmmm… actually, all of this gives me an idea. Maybe I should come up with a cartoon centered around something even easier to build from. Something with a main character shaped like a basketball, or a snow globe, maybe. That swag would practically sell itself — and (apparently) the actual dialogue and plot and story lines of the show don’t mean a thing. I think I’m on to something here — look for the Adventures of Swirly the Snow Globe coming to a television near you — and a balloon, and a set of collectible plates, and… well, a snow globe, naturally — very, very soon. Scootch over, Spongebob — you’re about to get Swirlied! Oh, yeah.
Permalink | 9 CommentsYou know how it’s easy sometimes to confuse words that sound similar, but have ever-so-slightly different meanings?
Yeah. I do that, too.
Lately, I’ve been doing it with ‘foresight’ and ‘foreskin’. It’s turned out to be just a tad inconvenient. Even worse, I often don’t realize right away when I’ve done it. Just this afternoon, my wife and I had this conversation:
Her: Wow, I could really go for a beer.
Me: Well, then, it’s a good thing I had the foreskin to pick up a couple of six packs on my way home.
<!– long uncomfortable pause –>
Her: You had the what to do what, now?
Me: I said, it’s a good thing I had the foreskin to… oh. Damn. Hey, shut up. Ya big alky, anyway.
So now we’re both sitting here, drinking beer and watching the Red Sox beat up on the Yankees. It should be a fun, relaxing Saturday afternoon. And I guess it is, really — except that every five minutes, she’ll lean over and ask:
‘So, how’s that foreskin doing?‘
Or:
‘Do you have the foreskin to know that I need another beer from the kitchen, dear?‘
Dammit. I hate when that happens. On the other hand, if she’s not careful, then she might just get a little more ‘foreskin‘ than she bargained for. Yeah. That’ll learn her. Giggity!
Permalink | 3 Comments
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