Barry, Barry, Barry...

If you follow baseball even a teenie bit, you have no doubt heard of a fellow named Barry Bonds who will likely break the all time home run record set by Hank Aaron. This is a vexing issue for many people because it's pretty likely that Bonds was juiced up, and by "juiced up," I mean that he was likely habitually using steroids.

That being said, today, espn.com reported that "Barry Bonds said he would give his game-worn gear to the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame should he break the all-time home run record. Bonds said he would only want to keep his shoes, bat and jersey from the record-breaking game and the Hall could have the rest of his gear."

So, basically, Bonds said that he was wanting to keep only the things that any collector would want to display, and the Hall of Fame could have the leftovers. Like his jock strap.

Zero Sum Games, or, Maybe I AM Crazy

My place of work has a fridge that is frequently restocked with various drinkable items on our floor. We employees get to partake of the aforementioned drinkables for free.

However, on the way to this fridge, I have to pass by the women's restroom. From time to time, as I pass this restroom, the door swings open and a female emerges. Now, I think most peoples' reactions to a sudden opening of a door would be to look and assess the situation, and I used to do just that.

However, the more that I thought about that, the more that I realized that it was perhaps uncouth to do so. After all, though the book is called Everybody Poops, I suspect that there is a reason that its follow-up book, I Just Got Done Pooping Minutes Ago, and I Would Like You to Know about It, Random Guy in the Hall, didn't sell quite as well.

So, I have taken to, whenever I notice that the women's restroom door is opening, immediately looking at the floor. This, however, poses its own problems:

1) I feel like I am being rude by not acknowledging other people's presence,
2) My sudden looking at the floor would almost certainly be construed as embarrassment, making me seem like an even more hermit-like figure on the 8th floor than I already am, and
3) If the person leaving the restroom is not a woman, and is in fact a zombie, I am going to spend my last few moments on earth being eaten alive considering how proper decorum has once again proven an inappropriate relic from the past.

This leaves me either with walking the long way to the fridge, appearing to be a weirdo, or appearing to be a pervert.

Sigh. Maybe I'm not thirsty after all.

That Rascal Raskolnikov, Or, Who Liked Match Point?

I watched Match Point last night, and it was very, very different from the image of it that I had in my mind. I understood that this was a Woody Allen movie, and I also knew that this one was not trying to be funny, but then I thought, how is that different from the rest of his movies?


This got me to thinking about other movies that were very different in my mind before I watched them. I'll start with Match Point.

1) Match Point




What I thought it was going to be: A touching, moving, sad movie a la Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor as star crossed lovers who just couldn't manage to get their relationship together.

What it was: A movie that either stole or homaged some ideas from Crime and Punishment about how living above any sense of morality is going to bite you in the end. Perhaps Allen got the "bite you in the end" idea from Soon Yi. In addition, Ewan McGregor was nowhere to be found in this movie; I guess the actor looks enough like him on the dvd cover to fool me, even though I'm certain the actor's name must have also been on the dvd cover, probably very near the picture of the actor, leaving me with no excuse for thinking that McGregor was in this movie. Also, that actor was pretty good, whatever his name was.

2) Man of the Year


What I thought it was going to be: An opportunity for Robin Williams, who is generally funny, to do some funny, broad, ridiculous acting and get people to like him again through the general buffoonery of his character. Basically, I thought it was going to be a funny movie that would appeal to the same people who like Mrs. Doubtfire.

What it was: There was some funny to this movie; it started out being a movie with some overly artistic camera shots featuring witty banter with Williams' associates. However, this movie was primarily about a bug in a new voting system, with people willing to kill people who knew about the bug. And not in funny ways, like by giving out exploding cigars.



3) Employee of the Month

What I thought it was going to be: A movie that prominently displays Dane Cook's horrible acting (see: Saturday Night Live skits involving Dane Cook), Jessica Simpson's, erm, assets, and the priviledge of seeing both of those things with a view time of no more than 70 minutes. Also, I figured some crude innuendo would thrown in for good measure.


What it was: A movie that prominently displays Jessica Simpson's horrible acting for 103 grueling minutes. Seriously, the government would be in a lot less international hot water if they just made the folks we're holding at Guantanamo Bay watch this movie. I mean, if I've never committed war crimes, and I would be willing to confess to said war crimes that I didn't commit after watching this movie, I'm sure they would too. Nah, it's too cruel and unusual, even for terrorists. That being said, Dax Shepard was kind of funny.


p.s. I inadvertantly watched three Dax Shepard movies in the last couple months. The other two are Idiocracy and Let's Go to Prison, both of which are very funny, but very innapropriate. For anyone. Ever.

College Memory

Professor (during a small off-topic conversation during class): What type of flowers can you get a girl when you go on a date?

Classmate 1: Roses?

Professor: Good. What else?

Classmate 2: Tulips?

Professor: Excellent. Anyone else have an idea?

Me: Carnations?

Professor: (Insert, in my opinion, excessive laughter here) What are you? Cheap?

Me: (Flushed)

Thought for the Day

When you own a gay bar, do you set out to own a gay bar? Or, do you set up a bar, and one day you look around and say to yourself, "Huh. Looks like I own a gay bar."

Ka-Ching

So far, I love the government in April. They should give us refunds every month.

Now, I suppose that it could be argued that we get refunds every month in the form of filled potholes, water sanitation, and the shipping of homeless people to Bahrain, but still, I'd like to have some more filthy lucre.

Mmm. Filthy.

This Was My Dream

I oftentimes can't remember what I dreamt, but last night, I had a dream so vivid and remarkable, that it actually managed to journey from my unconscious to my conscious mind.

And here it is.

I, and three young women and one young girl from the show that I was just in, were together in a house. It wasn't any of our houses, mind you, but I'll get to that aspect in a second. This house was fairly labyrinthine, in that moving from room to room was a lot like following the line at an amusment park: the turns were very angular and there was only one way to go without turning around. Further, much of what we saw as we were walking through this house was behind a mesh covering, much like most of the things that you see in line at the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

Now, for some reason, at the top of our lungs, we were all singing the Aerosmith song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," which is the song that was popularized by being played approximately twenty-seven million times in the late nineties and by being the love song in the movie Armageddon.

As we continued singing and walking, we realized (or, I guess, intuitively understood as there was no real reason to believe that we were where we were until a bit later) that we were making our way through Aerosmith's house. This really hit home to us when we passed by a couple of beds, one of which was occupied by Joe Perry and the other by Steven Tyler. Steven Tyler was in fact so impressed with our collective rendition of his song, that he gave us a big thumbs up.

Other than that the details are a little shaky. I remember deciding to go to head tone instead of chest tone for the one of the high parts (the "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah!"), and I felt shame in the dream as I thought that I had sounded ridiculous, and this fact was emphasized when one of the women gave me the stink eye after that note.

When we got to the end of the song, we all looked at each other as if to say, "What now?" And then I woke up.

I think my dream means that one day, soon, Steven Tyler will approve of me, and women will hate me. What else could it mean?

My Girlfriend Is Funny

"See, I look at traffic laws more like opportunities to be polite. People and the police should be honored when I obey them."

I Am A Thought Criminal

I came up with an excellent idea maybe a month ago. Actually, I can't remember if I was the one to originally think of this, or if it was somebody close to me. I find that this issue of origination is apparently frequently open to interpretation in my noggin'. For the life of me, I can't figure out why, as most of my day to day thoughts are a variants on four subjects:

1) When I'll be eating next,
2) When I'll be sleeping next,
3) When I get to hang out with my girlfriend again, and
4) Just how many staples I could get into my jugular vein before I passed out from blood loss/whether I could count said incident as a work related accident, and get paid while I'm in the hospital.

Nevertheless, the awesome idea that may or may not be able to be attributed to me probably struck me right around the time that I watched Casino Royale. I remembered that I had seen very few of teh other Bond films. This seemed like a shame as Casino Royale was so much fun. Therefore, I thought that it would be terrific to devote a weekend to watching all of the Bond films sequentially. Just the sheer quantity of movies would surely require nearly two whole days of no sleep.

However, after speaking with some friends and remembering what the second thing is that I tend to have on my mind, we decided to go with breaking the Bond viewing action up.

So, tomorrow night, I'll be watching From Russia With Love, and whatever the devil the first Bond movie is.

Mm. Sean Connery goodness. I can't wait

Uhm

Over the course of the last couple days, there have been multiple loud, crashing sounds coming from the elevator shafts.

Should I be worried?

Touche Karma, Touche

Last night I had an audition that for a couple of shows that are looking to promote local actors that are a part of a local acting organization. As I looked at the posting online, and went over the email correspondence for the audition, nothing was said about the necessity of bringing headshots. Further, as I am a part of the aforementioned organization, that organization has my headshots on file, and the audition was across the hall from that organization's offices, I figured I was safe to not bring them.

Can you guess the first question that I was asked when I got there? That's right, it was something to the effect of "So, did you bring headshots?"

Crap.

I immediately thought of saying something about how I was confused about whether or not I needed to bring them, but as I looked around, I saw that EVERY OTHER PERSON there was holding 8 x 10 glossy photos of themselves.

Crap.

The audition monitor then, while trying to be nice, kind of looked at me like I was barely functionally retarded. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Just So You Know

This is going to come out sounding like it's pompous, but I am not overly concerned. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person. I'm not exactly a genius (which I measure by the fact that I'm not curing cancer in my spare time), but I'm not exactly a dullard (which I measure by the fact that I don't constantly laugh at the fact that I have toes) either.

Because I consider myself reasonably intelligent, sometimes somebody else will do something to me that makes me think less of their intelligence.

Example: This morning, I walked into work carrying a book with a rich and beautiful story and an intriguing and thought-provoking set of characters. Someone asked me what I was reading, and I told her.

She (with minor disgust): What? Didn't you see the movie?
Me (trying to gauge and respond to her unspoken criticism): Yes. I guess the movie was probably too sissily romantic for someone like me to watch, but I thought it was ...
She: Romantic? I thought that movie was boring. (Laughs) I thought that movie was boring.

Response to She: First, let me say that your repeating your point twice doesn't really add that much to the conversation. I'm not sure if you were saying it for emphasis or not, but I suspect that you weren't. Second, if someone is reading the book of a movie that they've already seen, that probably means that they found a depth in the movie that they are looking to expand upon, and they hope that the book will provide that added depth. Thirdly, insisting that a movie was boring to a person who is reading the book will probably make you look like you are functionally retarded, and just barely so at that.

Sigh. Maybe I am pompous. I'll have to work on that.

An Open Letter to the Whole World

Dear Everyone,

Please do not use this:

If you do use it, the mere act of taking off your shirt at the end of the day will produce a smell so horrible that you will wish for the glorious ease of death.

Love,

AC

Myspace Ads

I just saw this ad over at Myspace, and I thought it was hilarious.

The ad may as well be subtitled, "Men, Making Women Suffer Since Before Suffrage."

Note to Self

When you go home for Easter weekend, and you remember that a friend of yours has taught you how to do a circus trick that looks like this except that one of the bodies is reversed so that the heads are pointing in opposite directions as opposed to the same direction,

and you decide that the best things to do is to recreate this scene with your brother, you will more or less succeed, and it will be pretty cool.

However, because you opted to be the base (the one with his feet on the ground), for the next few days following said circus-ery, your legs will feel like you spent the entire weekend kicking butt and taking names, but you will have neither names nor remembrances of butts to console your aching, burning thighs.

Be advised.

An Addendum

I mentioned that I needed and purchased deoderant in my last post. I needed deoderant because my last deoderant had an anti-perspirant in it, which was causing my sensitive armpits to rash up. As you may have guessed, when I used "sensitive" in that last sentence, I didn't mean that my armpits liked to sit around, drink read wine, and talk about how much they liked The Notebook. No, I mean sensitive in the way that if they rash up and I decide to move my arms, I could swear that the flesh beneath my arms was being grated off by a cheese grater.

So, I bought new deoderant (sans anti-perspirant), and this morning, I slathered it on my armpits, eager to see if my body would have any kind of reaction to it. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to just use a little bit to test it, but I'm an all or nuthin' type of guy. So far, no rash has appeared.

Unfortunately, the "fresh" scent of the deoderant is driving me crazy. I have never felt so much like puking at the office than I do right now, and I am effectively left with no recourse as there are no showers here (except for a theoretic one that I have heard legends about in the basement), and, even if I could find this mystical shower, I have no towel with which to dry.

With my only other option being left wet and naked, I am only left with the option of throwing up in my cubicle, which I can only imagine will elicit the following conversation:

"Hey AC, are you okay?"
"What?"
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just some deoderant problems."
"Hmm. Smells to me like some ODER-ant problems. High five!"
"I'm not going to give you a high five."

At which point, the puking will continue. On the upside, at least this shirt will smell like a fake pine forest for many, many years.

Stream of Consciousness in the Detergent Aisle

Last night, I was a little bit hungry, so I ran over to the grocery store for a couple of those delicious frozen pizzas that are always on sale and are always delicious. However, as often happens to those of us who don't make weekly trips to the store, I found myself remembering other things that I needed that I may as well pick up so that I don't have to make another trip in the near future. My internal monologue was going something like this:

"Mmm, pizza, that'll be delicious...what goes with pizza...I need something to drink...Sprite Zero?...Fresca...I wonder if I were to purchase Diet Orange Sunkist and I were to add a hint of vanilla vodka if it would taste anything like Henry Weinhard's Orange Cream soda...that would probably taste good...would it smell good?...I need detergent...detergent smells good...I need deoderant."

And so, ladies and gentlemen, for a brief period of time, I was a character in a Sylvia Plath novel.

God Bless Things I Find on Wikipedia

I need to move to one of the following states: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming.

Why is that you ask? I need to move there because these states charge no income tax on the state level. Sure, I will have to continue to pay federal income tax, but, because I live in stupid California, I am apparently paying 9.3% in interest tax like a re re (because members of the mentally handicapped community apparently like to pay high income taxes).

Further, I once heard from some family friends that Alaska even pays its citizens to live there. While it's not a whole bunch (I believe that they said that the state pays about $2,000 per person per year), I would assume that people that substain themselves primarily on whale blubber (as far as I can tell) don't care much about the physical comforts in life.

And while we're on the topic of state stereotypes, here are the things that I would look forward to in each of the other states:

Florida: Humidity, old people, and hurricanes, together at last!
Nevada: Free drinks and gambling! Can life get better? I submit that it cannot!
South Dakota: Had I a sister, I could marry her at Mount Rushmore with minimal condemnation from the other townsfolk.
Texas: I could be President of the United States.
Washington: I could live somewhere that provides me no immediate stereotypes!
Wyoming: I could be faced with the inanity of the chart over here (it's about half way down the page), that claims that 6.05% of the the state's Hispanic residents are white. How can this be? Are they lying ("Sir, I can see that you're white...")?

In summary, sucks to your asthmar, California! Get your hand out of my pocket, because I don't like you that way.

Ah, Lent!

Once a year, there is a magical time when well-meaning people deprive themselves of things that they enjoy in an effort to feel closer with the Almighty. This is known in most circles as getting up out of bed early on a Sunday morning and going to church on Easter Sunday, because we all know that God's only really watching that Sunday anyways. Every other Sunday He just catches the reruns.

I kid. He's watching you now and taking notes.

But seriously, with Lenten season running down, let me be the first to say that I just simply cannot wait until Sunday when I can go back to the thing I gave up for Lent: clubbing baby seals. Of course, by "clubbing baby seals," I mean drinking sugary soda. I sometimes question the correlation between fizzy sugar water and love from the Almighty, but it is at those times that I quietly pat myself on the back, and say, in soothing tones, "Shush, shush, it'll all be okay."

This brings me to my real topic of the day: my girlfriend. You see, a few weeks ago, my girlfriend did something that was actually quite loving. She bought a six pack of my very favorite specialty soda, Henry Weinhardt's Orange Cream, and said that I could have one when I came over for dinner. In my excitment over the prospect of something so delicious entering my gullet, I hopped in my vehicle, and hurriedly made my way over to said girlfriend's house. It was only once I reached her domecile that I realized that it was still Lent, and that there was to be no joy in Mudville that day. Well, at least not any joy that came from a sweet tasting nectar of the gods.

Mmm. Sunday's going to be delicious.

Just Five More

With only five more shows left to go of Fiddler, I can't help but think that I'll miss it. It will, however, be awesome to just be able to rest nearly any night of the week.

Mmm...Rest. I'm looking forward to that. 96 performances is a freaking lot.