October 2007 Archives

I'm not sure how it happened, but I managed to go 30.5 years without seeing Poltergeist.  (Or technically 25 years since it came out in 1982.)  I finally saw it last night in the comfort of a spooky creaky building, where you could hear neighbors whispering in the adjacent units.

I love me some scary movies, and usually they're as scary as I let them be.  I decided to let this one scare me bad, so I spent of lot of it bundled up in my hoodie, hiding under a pillow, letting myself get freaked out.  But there was one nagging detail that kept me from fully surrendering myself to the fear....

And that detail is that Dr. Lesh, the lead old-lady paranormal expert who came to help them, looks exactly like Dorothy Michaels from Tootsie:

 

So when I got scared, I would just start thinking of Dr. Lesh breathily appealing to Dr. Ambruster about how she was a damned fine hospital administrator, and it just ruined everything.

Wearing my Magnum TA shirt on Wear Your Worst T-Shirt to Work Day got me re-thinking about my life mission to collect as many vintage wrestling t-shirts as possible.  I will photodocument what I have currently and post later, but tonight I got sucked into eBay, doing searches on:

• One Man Gang
• Nick Bockwinkel
• Rick "The Model" Martel
• Brutus "The Barber" Beekcake
• The Midnight Express
• The Midnight Rockers
• The Midnight Rocker Express
• And the one where I managed to hit the jackpot, Barry Windham....
  

I'll be bidding on it tomorrow to try to swoop in before it exceeds $0.30.  Until then, I would like to share a story with you about Barry Windham.  Now, I'm not much of a songwriter, but at age 10 or so my sister and I penned a tune to commemorate Barry's loss of the NWA Western States Heritage Championship to Larry Zbyszko.  It went like this:

Barry lost to Larry.
So he went on a ferry.
Where he met a girl named Carrie.
And they were to marry.
And they had a kid named Jerry.
And another one named Terry.
And another one named Gary.
And another one named Harry.
And another one named Perry.
And they named their dog after Larry.
And they were so very...
Fond of dairy...
Products.

Later I will share our R-rated rap about the Four Horseman.

Halloween. There were Smurfs.  Santas.  Beer. Ghostbusters.  Animals.  Luchadores.  Beer.  Evil dark lords.  Beer.  Star Trek officers.  Baseball players.  Different animals.  Beer.  Croatian brothers.  Thriller dancing.  Square dancing.  Snacks.  Head wounds.  Beer.

I did end up recycling my stewardess outfit, although the preferred term of the evening for me was "sky waitress."  Greatest hits:

• Being greeted by a covey of animals when I got up to Matt's.  Matt = Zebra.  Chris = Pig.  Jodie = Fox.
• Watching the Critical Mass people congregating in the parking lot below Matt and Chris's balcony, and more specifically, watching the drunk Critical Mass people trying to find private places to urinate in the big open parking lot.
  
• Watching this "Shame, Shame, Shame" video and this "Shame, Shame, Shame" video and dancing in Chris's kitchen.
• Dancing the Thriller dance despite not knowing the Thriller dance.  At every possible moment.
  
• Going to a pub, and having to inexplicably wait in line to get in...despite there being no line until we got there.
• Meeting Smurfette, which honestly ranks almost evenly with the time I met Cinderella at Disneyland:
  
  
• Meeting a real-life flight attendant who showed me the right way to gesture towards the 6 emergency exits.
  
• Giving out snacks to people.  (Ironically, Santa refused.)
• Randomly accidentally saying "laku noć" which is Croatian for "good night" instead of "thank you" when the waiter brought me my drink, only to accidentally be sitting by someone who was Croatian!?  Why do I always seem to find the Croatians wherever I go?
• Things get fuzzy here...just go look at the damn pictures and craft your own stories about what you see.  (And frankly  if you can come up with a story explaining why a sky waitress would be hanging out with a zebra, pig, and fox, I'd love to hear it.)

Laku noć,

halee

Colleen told me about a noble effort by the zombies of planet Earth to break a Guinness Book World record of the most simultaneous people to ever do the Thriller Dance.  A zombie squad had aligned themselves in Seattle.  Unfortunately I found out too late to give me a chance to get bitten by a zombie, become undead, and learn the choreography.  (However, if you're interested in learning the dance yourself, a nice girl named Ines has gone to the trouble of breaking the dance down into digestible [gnawable?] pieces in 40 short instructional youtube clips.)

Even though I couldn't walk amongst the zombies (even though I sorta did on accident, more on that in a moment)...I did snoop on their correspondence to find out when/where they were descending upon the living to attack us with their dance moves.

I went downtown and quickly found them, mostly because one zombie was holding up a huge "PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ZOMBIES" picket sign.  At that point they were just milling around a common area.  A Jesus man quickly came over with his big sign, trying to capitalize off the captive audience...and the zombies soon began to attack him and try to eat his brain.  This went on for some time as I wandered around trying to take pictures of the various zombies, like this one voraciously eating...a cupcake?:

The head zombie was setting up the sound system, and when I heard the first few bars of the Thriller intro, I hurried to jockey myself for a good position for picture taking.  Everyone was pushing their way to the center of the plaza for a good view...or so I thought.  Actually, "everyone" was the zombies, and they were pushing their way to the center of the plaza to start the dance!  Shit!  For one moment it was like I really WAS getting attacked by zombies and had to sneak my way out of the situation.

The dancing was funny, though you could tell they were all getting tired because after the first 30 seconds or so they quit making growling/burping/hissing noises.  Go check out my flickr photoset ... if you dare!!

In Spanish, the word for retirement is "jubilación". 

I have been saying this for years, but I cannot WAIT to get old and retire to a nice active seniors community, and wear outrageously loud clothing and start carrying weird things as oversized handbags.  I don't know what came over my sister this week, but out of the blue she sent me an email with a plan for our collective retirements where she and I would share a unit at such a retirement community, and participate in the following activities:

• Knitting or crocheting
• Dominoes
• yoga / stretching
• swimming
• weight lifting
• backgammon
• Canasta
• Shuffleboard
• Field trips to casinos or horse races
• Getting hair/nails done
• Watching reruns of Dallas
• Watching reruns of The Golden Girls
• come up with a new hopscotch game that you can play with a cane
• bridge
• all the Wii games

We've found a place down in south Texas, which we'll live in during the winter. I'll be spending the next 30 years figuring out how to find a similar place in Sweden, where we'll live in the summertime.  I went ahead and added all this to my Google countdown clock:

If you'll recall, the CEO at my company gave me budget to throw a party, for no good reason.  So we had Wear Your Worst T-Shirt to Work Day/Come to the 4th Floor at 4:44PM to Drink Day on Wednesday.  I blew the budget on a Polaroid camera, prizes for the winners, and a birthday cake with 4 "4" candles on it.

The kids at work did good.  You can view the pictures on flickr, but here are my two favorites:

#1: "Happy 80th Birthday Norma" (Please note: this was the guy's actual grandma)


#2: "I Wish I Were Your Derivative So I Could Lie Tangent to Your Curves"

Hi.  This evening, I am faced with a dilemma.  I thought I would be coming home after work today, at which point I had planned to do some much needed laundry.  But then...I got invited to have some beers with some new/old friends, one of whom was just in town for the night.  Then I started feeling guilty about my regular Thursday night friends, so I came back up to the northside to drink some beer with them, too. 

So I managed to drink 3 pints of lager, and finish 0 loads of laundry.  This is a problem.  More specifically: I am out of underwear.  What should I do?

1. Hand wash some underwear in the sink tonight and hope like fuck they're dry by morning
2. Wear dirty underwear
3. Wear swimsuit bottoms as underwear
4. Wear tennis bloomers as underwear

I know what you're thinking, and no, "no underwear" is not an option.  I'm not a fucking hippie.

My dad is a curious fellow. If you know him, you know this because you've probably been on the receiving end of one of his interrogations. He has a wonderful curiosity and need to put the world into a context that he can understand. Lately he's been trying to get his head around Seattle, and Washington in general. For whatever reason, his main focus is on the ethnicity of the people. He asked:

"So...are there a lot of Eskimo-looking people around there?"

I would like to now attempt to follow the logic in my dad's mind:

1. Washington is the closest state to Alaska.
2. Alaska is entirely peopled with Eskimos.
3. Texas is one of the closest states to Mexico.
4. Mexico is entirely peopled with Mexicans.
5. There are a lot of Mexicans in Texas.
6. Ergo, there must be a lot of Eskimos in Washington.

I would also like to somehow export the mental image my father has of these supposed Eskimos running wild through the streets of Seattle. I like to think he's envisioning a lot of very short, smiley brown little people running around in fur parkas with a club in one hand and a dead seal in the other, looking for places to park their dog sleds, and stopping other Eskimos on the street to rub noses and say hello.

I am apparently going to the Van Halen Reunion show in December!?  I don't really know how this happened.  I was just sitting there, minding my own business...when I get an email from my crazy cousin in Dallas who loves Van Halen so hard and is so disappointed they're not playing in Dallas. So she's coming up to Seattle specifically for it, and will pay for my ticket if I let her stay at my place!

To do list prior to Van Halen show:

1. Get my name legally changed to Van Halee
2. Sew myself an evening gown made of Frankenstein-patterned fabric
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Load up on brown M&Ms to throw at the band during the concert
4. Watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot 700 times

Am I forgetting anything?

It was the stupidest thing ever.  I got lost coming home yesterday...riding the same bus I ride almost every day.  I still don't entirely understand what happened.  I think part of the problem was I was reading a book I found last weekend at my parents': "Breakdancing: Mr. Fresh and the Supreme Rockers Show You How to Do It!" 


I remember buying this book at the book fair in 5th grade.  My opinion then, which I still agree with, is that is it impossible to learn how to break dance from a book, no matter how many cool silhouette diagrams it has, or how many times they tell you how fresh you're gonna look. 

So I was completely immersed in passages like...

"If you're really serious about this, then if you want to be fresh, you'll have to give yourself a Breakdance name.  Your name will come from something special different about you or your dancing, like: Supreme Rocker, King Tut, Mr. Fresh, Li'l Fresh, Lady Lust, Smash, Crash, Rubber Band, Crazylegs, Freakazoid, Mr. Nice, Kid Loose, Easy E, Crazy Spin, and Mr. Way.  When you give yourself a name, then you'll have something to put on your sweatshirt."

And...

"One more thing.  Gloves are fresh.  Breakdancers almost always wear one or two white gloves when they perform.  It shows off your hand moves, which otherwise might not be noticed.  There are dancers who wear black gloves, but you don't see Breakdancers wear colored gloves.  Next time you rock, try it with white gloves.  You'll amaze 'em."

And therefore I must have completely missed it when we passed my stop around 58th Street.  And when we passed the stop at 61st Street.  And 65th.  And 70th.  And 75th. Around 80th Street I looked up and realized I had no idea where I was, and it took me several blocks to see a street sign to realize I was about 20 blocks past where I was supposed to be!?  By that time I was at 85th Street...so I hopped off and crossed the street to catch a bus going back the other way.  But the next one wasn't coming for 10 minutes, so I decided that rather than stand there being cold, I would just walk down a few blocks/stops until the bus caught up with me.  I don't know if it the blocks are very short or the bus is very slow, but by the time I got down to about 65th it still hadn't caught up with me so I just walked the whole way home.

Moral of the story: When riding the bus, remember to look up from your breakdancing book occasionally so you don't miss your stop.

Yesterday I was walking around downtown, which consists of a lot of walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light...walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light...walk-walk-walk a block, stop, wait for the crosswalk light, and so forth.

At one crosswalk there was a mommy pushing her little toddler boy in one of those plastic fake car/motorcycle kid's toys, the kind with the long metal rod sticking out the back with the ergonomic handle.  You know, the one that makes the kid feel like he's really driving the car/riding the bike, only his mommy is really pushing him?

He was all decked out in his little coat and helmet, and as we were waiting for the sign to change to "WALK", he had his little hand in the air as if to authoritatively tell everyone behind him, "People, it is not safe to go.  Stand back."  It was cute and a few of us noted that to his mom.  She said, "Just wait.  When it turns, he will give the thumbs up sign."

He sat there looking at the crosswalk signal with great intensity, and the nanosecond it turned, his tiny little thumb popped up.  They went down towards the red "DON'T WALK" sign at the next intersection, where his hand shot up again.

Today is October 10.  That's 10/10.  By no accident, this is also the day the metric enthusiasts of the world celebrate Metric Day.  Damn it, every single year I intend to make some "Happy Metric Day" greeting cards to send out to everyone, particularly my metric opponents. 

You should visit the US Metric Association's Metric Week page for metric quizzes and games to celebrate.

And you should take a look at the map below for a view of non-metric countries to mourn the US's inability to keep up with the greater global community:

In my previous entry about Halloween costume options, there was a picture of Jack of Jack in the Box.  I spent forever hunting for a screencap of him with his wife Cricket and their son Jack Jr. to better illustrate the point of that slide, but to no avail.

However, I stumbled across something even more awesome. Jack's myspace page at www.myspace.com/jackbox.  Complete with the requisite emo self portrait in front of a mirror:

A week or so ago, I went over to Matt's to present my powerpoint on potential options for costumes this year.  I would like to share that presentation with you:























So, apparently Matt already dressed up as Teen Wolf several years ago. (Although for the record, some people accused him of dressing up as Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters.) I'm 90% sure I'm just going to be the stewardess again...only I'm going to do it up extra good this time and hand out tiny packets of peanuts and pretzels, along with tiny bottles of liquor.

I've been a bit out of pocket and incommunicado (and incognito?) for the past week, which sure isn't helping boost my readership to more than 2 visits a day.  I ended up going back to Texas unexpectedly, but completely expectedly.  Well, the unexpected part was "when."  The expected part was "why," which was that my grandma was declining quickly.  She was in stage 5 Alzheimer's, and hadn't been responsive in a while.  She passed away on Monday.

So I went back to Texas Wednesday in time for the rosary/vigil that night, then the funeral was Thursday morning.  It feels kinda wrong to say it, but it was really great to get the entire family together.  She has 23 grandkids (aka my first cousins) and all of us made it except 2, which is a 91.3% completion rate.  I honestly don't know if all of us have EVER been together at once like that.  It was very loud.

Grandma, I will never forget...

• The day you came over to our house wearing panties on your head, which when you explained how warm they kept your head, made perfect sense.
• The day you locked your keys in your car and Dad went over to help you look for the spare set, only for you to remember that you always kept the spare pinned to the inside of your bra.
• The day you came over to me and Staci at mass in your fancy little hat and shouted "LABOR DAY GREETINGS!!" to us in the silent church.
• How you would always say "Well, I swan..." which I never really understood.  I think it was like an ultra Southern way of saying "Well, I swear..." or "Well, I do declare..." but I have no idea.  But I say it, anyway.

Halloween is coming up.  So in preparation, it's time to start watching a bunch of horror flicks.  I rented the 1950's original version of "The Bad Seed" starring Patty McCormack because John Waters told me to.  It's about a little girl named Rhoda who is inherently evil from birth, and by age 8 has already murdered 3 people.  But she's all sweet and cute and deceptive about it.

I don't usually get into old black and white movies, preferring films that are a little more contemporary with things like 3D zombies, car chases, and rollerskates.  But there is something to be said for these older movies where the actual story and the writing is what's important, not the special effects or camera angles or soundtracks.  And my word....they talked so different in the 50s, has it really changed that much??  There were times when the characters sounded positively British!  And they kept throwing out vocabulary words that I had never legitimately heard used out of people's mouths:

• Excelsior - I thought this was an exclamatory word, like "Excellent!"  No.  Excelsior was old timey packing fluff that they must have used before the age of styrofoam packing peanuts or airsacs.  It's basically a big bird's nest.  It just looks like straw, and maybe some cloth fibers and maybe some sawdust.  It's also highly flammable.  So my advice is that if you use excelsior to create a little bed that you nap on beside the incinerator, which in turn is in a cellar that locks from the outside only, do NOT piss Rhoda off.
  
  
• Adroit - Rhoda's mother accused her of "being very adroit at lying," and I had to get the damn dictionary out.  I could tell it meant "good" or "skilled," but I had to make sure it didn't have some etymological relation to "android."  It doesn't.
  
  
• Well, I'll be a middle-aged mongoloid from Memphis - This is not in the dictionary.  Dude, I can't even believe that this was actually in the movie!  I could feel John Waters smiling when I heard this line.
  
  
• Hortense - This is not a vocabulary word, but an actual lady's name?!  Seriously, Hortense?

So you should watch this a yearn for a time more innocent, when little girls would still curtsy before they killed you.