Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter

There isn't much to report but today I'm compelled to write a blog post anyway so what you're probably going to get is a rambler. I'm just going to keep typing and see what shakes out. I'm pretty sure that bullet points and blurting out whatever comes to your stupid mind are how Byron and Tennyson and did it.

Let's see... it's kind of late for all the happy new year well wishing stuff (consider yourselves well wished) and I wouldn't share with you my list of resolutions because I don't make new year's resolutions. I'm patently opposed to them, although for some reason I seem to come up with all of my brightest ideas to incorporate big changes and/or improvements to my life in early January. I keep these to myself until mid-February or so... just so they are not mistaken for new year's resolutions.

One of my bright ideas for life style improvements that I will not be implementing officially until mid-February, and is most certainly not a new years resolution, is the need to incorporate more exercise into my daily routine. I have recently been toying with the idea of rejoining my old gym and I just can't bring myself to do it. Not in January. What is more pathetic than a middle aged fat chick joining a gym in January? I guess maybe a fat chick never joining a gym at all, but still. Or now that I think of it, more pathetic than that is the fat chick who joins the gym in January and then stops going in early February and yet continues to pay for that shit well into the next year. Especially more pathetic when said fat chick already owns enough gym equipment to train the US Olympic.... um what? I was going to say women's basketball team or something like that just to be silly, but after taking a quick mental inventory I've realized that I probably realistically could train the curling team right here in my very own home. Have you seen those guys? What could they possibly need that I don't have in my basement this very minute. I'm pretty sure I have all the necessary equipment, which is to say a treadmill, two stationary bikes, a set of 3 pound weights (pink ones) and an industrial size push broom. Something to think about...

But enough about my semi-real plans to coach Olympic curling...

What else is new? Did I ever tell you about my best friend Amy's stalker? It's her ex-boyfriend from forever ago, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of old news. He's deranged and he lives in Los Angeles and for some reason is still upset about the fact that she broke up with him well over 15 years ago. Now that's a grudge. Anyhoo... he's just your average psycho ex-boyfriend stalker sending threatening emails and such. Amy has a restraining order and followed all the proper channels. Yawns all round. But what is very interesting and exciting news is that Amy's stalker must have gotten bored of her ignoring him and has recently been stalking and making prank phone calls and sending threatening emails to her ex-husband Assface. Saying all kinds of lovely, obscene things about Amy to him. It's delicious and not just because it makes Assface so very angry, but also because Assface doesn't have the same amount of common sense that God gave to hamsters and refuses to hang up the phone or put the stalker on his block-senders list. He listens and reads and sets himself up for a right huge hissy fit every time. Funny.

I think there is no better way to end a shitty rambling post like this one than with bullet points detailing the highlights of our trip to Columbus to celebrate New Year's Eve:

• Dinner at the swanky restaurant was a bust. It was a four course prix-fixe menu which at $45 per person seems very reasonable, but the food kind of sucked. We would have been better off to rent a room at Claddaugh and doused ourselves in beer and corned beef.
  
  
• Alas before Frenchie had the chance to get drunk enough to pass out while sitting up she and Nature Boy got a call from the sitter that their son young Jimmy Neutron was sick and they had to leave the festivities early. Bummer.
  
  
• The rest of us were able to rally until midnight and watch the ball drop with what remains of Dick Clark. Guilty laughter filled the room as Amy dared to say what we were all thinking - he looks a bit like Cha-ka from Land of the Lost. I'm not saying that he should be hidden away. Why should he? You go Dick! I admire his bravery and fuck it - he owns the goddamn show and he can host if he wants. More power to him. But how about some fucking subtitles? Nobody could understand a goddamn thing he was saying. I take that back. Seacrest and Clark were like psychic friends, simpatico, slurred speech and drowned out by a crowd of thousands cheering in the background, Seacrest seemed to understand every word:
  
  Clark: Aahhh mahh gah heeba Ryah!
  Seacrest: That's right Dick.
  
  
• I might be a terrible person.
  
  
• Fuck it. Dick Clark had a stroke and his face looks funny and it's hard to understand him. Big deal. Host the show my old friend, but maybe have someone smarter than Ryan Seacrest translate for us.
  
  
• I spent New Year's Day with 2 of my very best friends in the world, Amy and Dan. We went to see Avatar, but not in 3D for fear that I would get motion sickness and throw up as I have been known to do when I get caught up too tightly in the action.
  
  In the middle of the movie I had a full on, nearly peed my pants, silent laughing jag when Dan came back from his second trip to the bathroom during the film and whispered to me, "I've been to the bathroom twice during this film and just now realized that both times I was in the women's bathroom."
  
  Apparently he just thought it was one of those really nice, all stall men's restrooms. Sure.
  
  
• My new favorite breakfast food in the whole wide world is pho and my favorite place to get it is here. We stopped by on our way out of town where I quickly slurped it down and then grabbed a bahn-mi to go for my lunch later on. Who knew that the girl who never even tried canned tuna fish until she was 20 would love Vietnamese?

That's all I've got. You still there? Thanks for sticking with me.

Impolite and Evil

Yesterday after my cheap shoe and personal care item shopping spree I finally had a chance to catch up with my best friend Amy - it was heaven. What with her busy schedule wrestling 2nd graders to the ground and my back pain and job related depression we haven't had much of a chance or been in much of a mood for our weekly standard (and trust me - necessary) 2 hour long, cackling sea hag phone conversations. In fact it had been weeks.

We had a lot of catching up to do - mainly her to me, because most of my activity lately involves being horizontal and moaning and not in a good way. Amy had not only been on spring break with her entire family, including her evil mother, at their family beach house in Charleston last week, but also had ended her trip early because her daughter Lil' Baby Lion (LBL) had to be back in town in time to officially become a Catholic.

Yes. Amy's ex-husband Assface had decided several months ago, from out of seemingly nowhere, that suddenly it was extremely important to him that LBL become Catholic and start going to church with him at the ripe old age of 13. Amy was surprised by this revelation, as during her entire 15 year relationship with Assface he had never once been to church or shown any interest in it. She consented however after discussing it with LBL who said she didn't give a crap one way or the other as long it would get her crazy-ass father off of her back about it. Lovely. I'm sure that's just how Jesus would want it.

Anyhoo... last weekend LBL was baptised, confirmed, and took her first communion, or as MDH put it, dunked, fed and slapped.

That's all well and good, but the real dirt was that LBL had begged poor Amy to please not leave her alone with Assface's entire family, who had come all the way from Vermont to witness the occasion.

So at the request of her daughter Amy went.

Amy took great pains to make sure that she looked like a million bucks. Blown out hair, impeccable makeup, fantastic ass-hugging outfit, high heels. The works. (You should know that normally Amy, although she is very cute, dresses like she just got out of bed; too big jeans, t-shirts that she caught from out of a cannon at a sporting event, sneakers, etc.) She said that nobody in Assface's entire family would even look at her, let alone talk to her, but it was fine because it gave her the opportunity to get her eyes full and report back to me about how crazy and horribly behaved they all are.

Best of all (to me) was that one of my more serious ex-boyfriends was there with his ugly ass wife so I got to hear all about how ugly she is and how fat and disgusting my ex-boyfriend has gotten. Just knowing that this ex-boyfriend is a good friend of Assface should tell you that he is an economy sized douche bag who was particularly cruel to me.

My favorite highlight of the event, as reported by Amy was a conversation that she had with the priest, Father Funk (no joke). At the end of the evening as she was saying her farewells (to those that would speak to her) she asked Father Funk if he was going back to Assfaces's place for a small gathering to which everyone but she had been invited.

His answer was surreal, as though he was some foppish-femme character in a movie from 1937, "No. I'm just going to go home and have a nice hot toddy", he pipped. To which Amy used every ounce of strength left in her body not to reply "Oh, you've got a boyfriend?"

Son, You Got a Panty On Yer Head...

Recently I heard this woman on NPR talking about an essay she wrote for the New York Times called "It's Not You, It's Your Books", the gist of which is that people have literary deal breakers in their relationships.

Being a native of Central Ohio I never really had a literary deal breaker in as much as I couldn't tolerate the company of someone who loved Ayn Rand or hated Dostoevsky, it was more like I was thrilled if the dude had a job, didn't have a mullet and could read at all, period. It was an extra super-duper double coupon bonus (and I didn't care what genres were preferred) if he happened to list reading as high up on his list of things he enjoyed doing.

Holding out for an avid reader totally paid off in the end because my husband (even though he doesn't enjoy fiction the way I do and is more into history and politics) is so brilliant it makes me want to weep with joy.

I am totally biased about reading, maybe unfaily so, but I have this thing like if you don't read then you must be stupid. Not that I'm some genius (my lips move when I do simple addition and I may even go blank and begin to drool) and I have certainly run into many people in my life that have proved this theory wrong. I used to work with a guy (at the construction company) who was functionally illiterate (like couldn't even fill out his insurance forms), but had an amazing photographic memory and could eerily recite shit that he had overheard word for word.

So it's fine not to be a reader, chances are I probably would have had sex with you anyway although I most likely wouldn't have dated you publicly or introduced you to my friends.

The concept of the literary deal breaker is how I knew that my best friend Amys marriage to Assface was as doomed as doomed can be when, not even one full year after their wedding, Assface proudly and pompously announced that reading for pleasure was a complete waste of time.

Amy was floored.

I probably mentally nicknamed him Assface right then and there.

Imagine the shock and horror of my poor darling Amy at this news. Like finding out you're married to Joseph Stalin or Jesse Helms or Roy Cohn. Fuck, name any historic killjoy.

Not that she hadn't noticed in all that time that he didn't care for reading. But he was a student and she just assumed that he didn't have the time. It never occurred to her that he or anyone on the planet could actually be anti-reading. What the fuck?

As I was saying, I didn't really have a literary deal breaker so much but I did have a movie deal breaker.

I loved the movie Raising Arizona so much that I saw it twice in one day. I went to see it at the theater the day it opened with my friend M. She and I both worked in retail at the time and had Fridays off so we went to the movies a lot on Friday afternoons. Matinee prices. We were young and poor.

Raising Arizona was the fucking funniest thing I had ever seen in my whole young goddamn life. M and I laughed so much we missed half the movie so we decided to shell out for it again at the next show.

It was too good not to share so we went to the pay phone in the theater lobby (because back then "car phones", as they were called were only owned by oil tycoons, real estate barons and Hugh Hefner) and called in the reinforcements, her boyfriend, my best friend, her sister and all our other friends and demanded they meet us at the theater immediately for our second viewing. We called as many people as we had change in our pockets to call.

A little later in life when I met Dan and Nature Boy I knew we would all be great friends because they loved Raising Arizona as much as me. To this day we all make references to and quote from this movie to each other. Some highlights include:

Not unless round's funny.

Sometimes I get the menstrual cramps... real hard.

Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

Let me sneak a little peek-a-loo!

I'm crapping you negative.

These things aren't as meaningful or as funny typed out here on my blog, but trust me Raising Arizona is all kinds of funny.

When I was a young singleton, and some man-boy was poking around looking for a date and he either refused to watch it, said it wasn't funny or didn't get it - he was immediately ruled out and the connection was instantly dead. I felt like if you didn't get that movie than you would never get me.

Flossing was my other deal breaker. That tidbit is somewhat unrelated to the subject of this post but a reminder to all you young (and old) single people out there of the importance of dental hygiene.

Now... on the other end of the spectrum I had another movie deal breaker in that I knew that if the interested party claimed to love any number of the Police Academy movies, Porky's, or anything having to do with Steven Seagal or god forbid Chuck Fucking Norris, not only would never work but I might have just run away screaming.

Anyhoo... if you have never seen Raising Arizona, what the hell is wrong with you? Rent it immediately. I realize that it's 21 years old now, but I think it is every bit as good as it was when it came out. I plugged in this scene for you that I found on YouTube. I never realized how much punch the Cohen Bros. were able to pack into a 7 and a half minute scene. There is not a millimeter of film wasted.



What movie, book or music is/was YOUR dating deal breaker?

The Assface Chronicles - A Clarification

I would just like to clarify my statement in example #1 below about why Assface is a big clot because Amy isn't around to prevent him from doing nutty things anymore.

I would like to say that wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase are both fine things to be doing if you are gainfully employed and on your way to or from work.

It is also fine to do if you are unemployed and on your way to or from a job interview.

But if you are wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase and you are, like Assface, both unemployed and doing something non job interview related ie, proctoring a piano competetion in which other parents, even the employed ones, are wearing t-shirts and jeans, then you are a giant douchebag.

Assface has been to these competetions before and as far as I know his vision is fine and he was able to look around and see that it's a pretty casual affair and that you might come off like a big douche if you wore a suit, let alone carried a brief case.

What would an unemployed douchebag like Assface be carrying around in that briefcase anyhow?

I like to think he must be carrying around his and Amy's divorce papers in there. And maybe some Little Debbie Swiss Rolls.

The Assface Chronicles - Screen So Soft

Last night I talked to my best friend Amy on the phone for a long time. We don't get to do that very often these days as she is the mother (and new step mother) of 3 unruly and obnoxious teenagers. Talking to her for any length of time is glorious and certainly I always take whatever time she can give, but last night was an extra 2 hour after school special. I was over the moon.

First of all she started off her conversation with me as she often does by declaring her ex-husband Assface to be an even bigger dickhead than he was the last time I spoke to her and then she tells me of his crazy antics and I agree with her that yes, indeed somehow he has become a bigger dickhead than he was before. Only last night I analyzed why he keeps becoming an increasingly large clot and here is my theory and a list of examples:

1. Assface no longer has Amy to stop him from doing asinine things like wear a suit, carry a briefcase and generally behave like a self righteous stiff when proctoring their daughters piano competition at OSU so that everyone mistakes him for a judge.

2. She is no longer around to pull him away when he has overstayed his welcome when visiting friends and trust me he needs it. The man is missing the natural ability to tell when he is boring the snot out of people in addition to being too thick to take polite hints that people would like to go to bed, thus resulting (we heard stories thru the grapevine) in slamming doors and situations escalating to near violence (being brusquely escorted to his car by the elbow) and tearfully told in plain English (after many hints were dropped) that he must leave.

OK. I made up the part about the elbow escort, but all the rest is true.

When they were still married I always took the direct approach with Assface, having learned of his handicap early on and even then it didn't always work.

Me (smiling, with one eyebrow raised: ALLrighty Assface GET OUT OF HERE...

Assface: 010101010101

Me: I mean it dude - VA MINOS - Adios Muchacho... On yer way...

Assface: 00011110000101001

Me: I'm shutting the door now. I have to go take a shit so please leave.

Assface: 000011100011110001

You get the picture. By the way Assface speaks in a low, inaudible monotone that is remarkably similar to what I imagine binary sounds like.

3. He no longer has Amy around to give a list of 25 good reasons why you don't allow your daughter to have a sleep over at the neighbor's who have the police and social services visiting 3 times a week and then act surprised when your child ends up with head lice.

There are lots of things that he still does that Amy was never able to talk him out of when they were married like wearing black socks with shorts and spraying every surface of his home with Skin So Soft in the summertime for it's supposed bug repellent properties.

Notoriously, Assface once spent over an hour obsessively spraying every inch of the screens of the screened in porch of their old house with Skin So Soft before a BBQ. For those of you unfamiliar with Avon's line of products, Skin So Soft is a spray-on oil conconction - for human skin.

I don't really know if it kept the bugs away, but it rendered every doorknob unturnable, caused every guest at the party to slip upon the oily surface of the porch floor and Dan and I to giggle incessantly (and to this day) about the supple, touchable nature of the porch screens and forever think of the substance as "Screen So Soft".

And Now a Story About Assface...

My best friend Amy had a day in court with her ex-husband Assface today. They have been divorced for over a year, and yet the court battles continue. Their court dates, as I'm sure is the case with many divorces, are costly, frustrating and laborious. She called me while she was driving to the courthouse. She seemed calm and collected and said she would call me and let me know how it all shook out.

I don't normally loathe people, but I loathe Assface more than any other person on this earth. He is a mean spirited little weasel who makes two people I love very much, Amy and their daughter LBL, miserable. It often seems he goes out of his way to do so.

I didn't always loathe Assface. In fact I used to like him, back in the salad days when they were dating and first married. He was kind of weird, but I didn't worry about that too much because Amy is weird, and really for that matter who isn't weird? Certainly I can't point too many of my own fingers at people for being weird. I'm typically a big fan of the weird, being a total freak myself.

Mainly I liked him because he seemed to think the world of her. He laughed at all her jokes and could never seem to take his eyes off of her. He was in love with her made her happy.

Isn't that all you need to know about your best friend's choice in a partner?

After they were married I began to notice all kinds of little things about him that added up to nutty and mean. Not a fabulous combination.

I was able to ignore the nutty meanness for awhile as I didn't really have that much interaction with him anyway, other than when he answered the phone when I called. I always made an effort to engage him in some bit of conversation before asking to speak to Amy. Eventually even having to talk to him for those brief moments when he answered the phone became awkward and for a time, during a phase he went through that Amy and I refer to as his "Hello Period", down right bizarre. The last thing on earth that I wanted was to dislike her husband, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

During his "Hello Period", whenever Assface answered the phone he'd say, "Hello!", all bright and cheery like. I'm sure you're thinking "so what Lady?" Here's what:

Ring! Ring!

Assface (bright and cheery): Hello?

Me (bright and cheery): Hey Assface! How's it going?

Assface: Hello?

Me: Hello?

Assface: Hello?

Me: Hey? Can you hear me?

Assface: Hello!

At this point I realize that there is nothing wrong with the phone, he can hear me just fine and thinks he is making a funny.

Me (laughing): Very funny Assface. C'mon now, please? Is Amy there?

Assface: Hello?

Me (sort of fake chuckling): Seriously. Assface. Is she there? Is she busy? Can I talk to her?

Assface: Hello! Hello! Hel-lo! Hello?

Me (fuming on the inside, but still trying to sound sunny): Allrighty. Jokes over. Please let me talk to Amy.

Assface: Hello?

and so on...

It may have been funny if he'd done it once or twice, but this continued for weeks and the only way it stopped was if Amy happened to enter the room, hear his asinine "Hello?" bombardment and snatch the phone away from him.

I might have taken it personally too if Amy hadn't told me that he was doing it to everyone. His mother, her mother, the insurance guy, everyone. Nutjob. He thought it was HI-Larious. Amy, of course was mortified and began to bust her ass whenever the phone rang, in a race to answer it before he could.

It ended the day I responded to his "Hello?" bombardment with this:

Me: Listen to me you hollowed out little freak, either put Amy on the phone this instant and stop acting like a fucking brain damaged parrot or I will drive over to your house and stab you in the eye with my car keys! You're making it very difficult for me to continue to like you and you are making your wife miserable.

My relationship with Assface was on shaky ground ever since.

She called me later this evening, while I was in the middle of typing this post. She won. He owes big. Hurray. Go buy yourself a Big Mac, honey.