An old favorite

Dunno what made me think of this today, but it is one of my favorite jokes. I've never seen it written out before, and there is a certain level of "acting it out" that may be missed, but here goes:

On the 30th anniversary of their wedding day, Ralph comes home early from work to find a surprised Sue doing some house work.

Sue asks "Ralph, what are you doing home so early?"

Ralph replies "It's our 30th anniversary, baby. Now run up stairs and get ready. A limo will be here to pick us up in a half-hour for our night on the town. We are going to the city where we are going to have a wonderful dinner at your favorite restaurant. Then we are going to go out dancing just like we did at our wedding. Then I've booked the Honeymoon Suite at the nicest hotel in the city where we are going to do it all night long...just like we did 30 years ago."

Sue can't believe her ears. This is exactly what she wanted for an anniversary gift. She runs to their room to pack and change for the big night.

The night goes just as planned. Wonderful limo ride into the city. Extravagent meal with Champagne. Hours of dancing until they were two sweaty rags!

After dancing, Ralph says "OK, ready hon? Back to the hotel and we are going to do it ALL NIGHT LONG. Just like we did 30 years ago."

Sue can't be happier. This is a dream come true.

In the hotel room. Ralph starts to undress. Clothes are strewn everywhere. Eyeglasses are thrown onto the nightstand. Then he says "Lemme take a quick shower, babe. You get undressed and get into the bed, and when I come out...all night long. Just like we did 30 years ago."

He jumps in the shower while Sue gets undressed and jumps into bed. She is so excited. All night long. "Wow" she thinks. "We haven't done that in 30 years...I can't wait."

Then she gets worried. "Wow" she thinks "We haven't done that in 30 years...I don't know if I'm in that kind of shape anymore."

So she starts to limber up. She's stretching and doing mild calisthenics right there on the bed. A couple of jumping jacks, some squat thrusts. You know...just to get the blood going.

Then she lays on her back and takes her left leg and stretches it over her left shoulder until it is almost parallel to her body. Just stretching an inch or two more, her left foot suddenly gets stuck in the headboard behind her.

Damn...she's stuck. And she's got no leverage to pull her foot out from between the slats. She lays there for a minute thinking of what to do when she decides to take her right leg and swing it up so that she can push off the headboard with it.

So she swings her right leg over her right shoulder and wham! Her right foot also gets stuck in the headboard.

It's at this moment that the shower ends and Ralph walks out of the bathroom. He looks at his wife on the bed and says:

"Honey. What the hell are you doing? Comb your hair and put your teeth back in. You look like an asshole!"

I HATE...

...the idiots at Best Buy.

Went down there yesterday to get XM Radio installed in Gia's car. We made the appointment over a week ago and specified that we were installing it in a 2006 MiniCooper.

Guy told us it would take about an hour.

So I pick up her car and get to the Best Buy about 15 minutes prior to my appointment. The dude in installations seemed pretty competent at this point. Filled out some forms, dropped off my keys and I was ready to do some shopping and grab a bite to eat. Just a little something to take up the hour, ya know.

I get a call on my cell from Eric (the installation dude) about an hour later. I'm thinking "Great...all done. That was a piece of cake!"

That's when he asked me where I put the keys to the Cooper.

I'm a little flabbergasted, so I respond "What? You haven't even started yet?"

He says he can't start until he finds the keys. I tell him that I put them right on the counter next to the XM box that the radio came in. I hear him rumbling around and then the tell-tale jingle of keys.

"Oh...I must have put them in the box after you left. OK, give me about an hour and I'll have it done for you."

Great. Now I get to spend another hour at the mall shopping for things I don't really need and/or want.

I somehow manage to wander around the mall without killing myself or anyone else for the hour and then I head over to Best Buy.

I walk in the installation bay and "Eric" tells me that I have a problem. Fuck!

He tells me that one of the FM converter cables that he needed wasn't in stock. You see with the BMW/Coopers there is a round jack that is needed as opposed to the square jack that he had in stock. I'm really not sure exactly what he was talking about, but it sounded like he had the wrong equipment.

I'm failing to see how this is MY problem at this point and I tell him just that. "Well, Eric...just hop into one of your Geek Squad vehicles out front and get me the part YOU should have already had in stock from one of your other stores. There. MY Problem solved."

He gives me about 4 or 5 reasons why he can't do that, but I'm not really listening. I'm just picturing him lying in a coffin right now.

After he has given me all my options, none of which were choking him to death, WE decide that I have to go to one of the other stores and pick up the part in question and bring it back to HIM so HE can finish the installation.

FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

But what am I going to do...so I do it.

I will say that he must have recognized the murderous look in my eyes when I got back, because he did finish up the installation in about 5 minutes.

Still. It took about 3 and 1/2 hours for a job that should have been done in about 45 minutes. I fucking hate Best Buy!

Am I bleeding?

Because I just got tagged. By Kat.

Really not a fan of these thingies, but what the hey...here goes:

A- Available or single? Um, how do I answer this since they mean the same thing. I am neither Available nor Single. Methinks there is something wrong with the question. C'mon people...think about it.

B- Best Friend? I've never really believed in the concept of a "Best Friend". I'm lucky enough to be blessed with many, many great friends so let's leave it at that.

C- Cake or Pie? Neither...no sweet tooth. How about potato chips?

D- Drink of Choice? Depends on the occassion. Arizona Green Tea is yummy for those daytime hours, and I drink an awful lot of water. Beer - Guinness. Whiskey - Red Breast Irish Whiskey. Wine - any Amarone (red) or Gewurztaminer (white). Tequila - the good stuff. Cocktail - a variation on the Vesper. Hendrick's Gin with Lillet Blanc and an orange peel. James Bond used a lemon peel and added vodka to his in Casino Royale. But he's a girly man.

E- Essential Item? Baseball cap.

F- Favorite Color? Green or NY Yankee pinstripe Blue.

G- Gummi Bears or Worms? Worms, I guess. If they are sour. I like-a the sour.

H- Hometown? Yeah, like I would tell you.

I- Indulgence? Good Whiskey and bad porn.

J- January or February? Ugh...neither.

K- Kids? Nope.

L- Life is incomplete without? Baseball and Gia.

M- Marriage Date? We'll get back to you. Probably sometime in the spring of 2008 (or Autumn).

N- Number of Siblings? 5. 4 Sisters and 1 Brother.

O- Oranges or apples? Apples, I hate peeling oranges.

P- Phobias/Fears? Swimming in the ocean. Rats.

Q- Favorite Quote? "In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, "Ow, I hurt my leg. I can't run. A lion eats me and I'm dead." Well, I'm not dead. I'm the lion, you're dead!" - Dwight Shrute (Ok..ok. It's not really my favorite quote, because I don't have one. It was just something I cut and pasted from IMDB. I just thought it was funny. Sorry.)

R- Reason to Smile? Syd and Sammi. Two of the most awesome cats on the planet.

S- Season? Autumn, or Spring...or maybe Summer. Yeah. One of those.

T- Tag three people - let's not and pretend we did.

Um...was it supposed to end with "T"?

Out with the old...

...and in with the new. Blogger, that is.

Seems to have gone on without a hitch.

Thinking about mucking around with my template as well. Picking a new format, moving things about...that kind of thing.

Can anyone speak from experience? Is this sort of silly playing around worthwhile, or will I be spending most of my time getting pissed at the process? Hmmm?

Any advice would be much appreciated as I am still a relative newbie at this shit.

Tomorrow: (drumroll please) NEW POSTS!!! LOTS TO TALK ABOUT!!! MORE CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!

Golden Globe Alert!

I hate the Golden Globes with a passion. Here is my post from last year explaining why:

False Golden Idols

By B.E. Earl

01/19/2006 8:28 PM EST



Hey kids! As you may have figured out, I'm a bit of a film fan. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I like to watch the annual award shows to see who takes down the big prizes each year. I was a little bored the other night watching the Golden Globe Awards when I decided to find out who/what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is. If you are not familiar with the group, the HFPA is the organization that determines the nominees for each award category and subsequently votes on the winners for the Golden Globes. But who are they? I mean it never made much sense to me. Are they Hollywood press reporting in foreign countries about the entertainment industry? Are they foreign press working in Hollywood? Who are these people that the media focuses so much weight on around award season? Surely it must be an astoundingly large number of critics and reporters from around the world weighing in on the best that Hollywood has to offer. Hundreds if not thousands of dedicated men and women working tirelessly to hand out awards that are the pre-cursor to the big daddy of all entertainment awards, the Oscars. Right? Wrong!

The HFPA is a non-profit organization of somewhere around 90 international journalists based in Hollywood whose purpose is to disseminate information about film and television to a world-wide audience. 90 JOURNALISTS! Are you kidding me? These 90 men and women are the only voices and votes for an award as seemingly important as the Golden Globes? Now don't get me wrong. The HFPA does some fine work. In 2005 they donated $1 million to various arts and cultural programs around the world in an effort to further the advance of the film and television. They also donated $250 thousand to the Red Cross. That's very nice.

Where do they get the funding for their charitable work, as well as the funding needed to run the non-profit organization, you may ask. Well, they receive a sizable licensing fee from the networks to run their annual event...the Golden Globe Awards. They also receive licensing fees from various cable networks for allowing them to report from the red carpet. Hm-mm. So let me get this straight. The HFPA (all 90 of them) collect licensing fees from an award show that they run in an effort to award excellence in a field that is already swimming with too many awards. And they give out those awards in the award show that they sponsor, which in turn provides them with the revenue that they need to keep handing out awards the following year? Holy self-sustaining strokefest, Batman! And I thought I used to get confused with The Terminator and all it's time-line questions. Wait...how was John Connor born if he needed to send his own father back in time to be with his mother in the first place, and, and...system failure!

This is bogus, my friends. It's just another session of mutual masturbation that the media machine that is Hollywood has fashioned out of thin air. It made me sick to read about this, and if I ever see another weepy, blathering idiot of a winner (like Felicity Huffman this year) crying about how this is the greatest night of their lives I may actually vomit on my television screen. "You really, really like me...all 90 of you! You really, really like me!" Actually, it's possible that only 25 of the members liked you, honey. Or whatever number of voters that is needed to beat out whomever came in second place. What a piece of crap award this is!

Once again, I applaud the charitable work that the HFPA does. But they could easily raise that much and more by just asking all the nominees for a little some-some in an effort to elevate their public relations profile. You telling me that Harrison Ford can't come up with a good chunk of the million donated last year all by himself? And let us not kid ourselves. Most of the money isn't going to help poverty and starvation in Africa, or to help relief efforts in India. No, most of the money is handed out in the form of financial grants to cultural institutions to help further their own causes. There is some good stuff in there, but most of it isn't of the do-or-die type of relief.

You can find out more about the HFPA on their website www.HFPA.org, that is if you can stomach it. Me...I'm done with this award show in the future. I always thought that some of the choices were a bit odd (C'mon...have you seen Geena Davis in "Commander in Chief"), but I always thought there was some kind of integrity about the awards themselves. I don't know what goes into the voting for the Academy Awards, and I'm sure it ain't perfect. I just don't know if I have the heart to do any research on that right now. Sigh.

Oh, and if you were wondering why we placed a picture of the stunning Scarlett Johansson (decked out in stunning scarlet, thank you very much) at the top of this article, it wasn't so that we could make some blatantly obvious double entendre about the Golden Globes and her outfit. I just think she's got some nice hoo-has.

Scrabble-fest

OK...so after work today, I called Gia to let her know that I was coming over in a half-hour or so to go out to dinner. As I hung up I started thinking about Scrabble and how much I would love to play it tonight. Some kind of World Championship Scrabble match was on ESPN2 earlier, and I guess it created an itch.

So I began thinking about places I could stop off to by the game since I don't have it and I was pretty sure that Gia didn't have it. K-Mart was on the way...hmmm. Toys 'R Us was a bit too far...lemme think. That's when the phone rang.

It was Gia.

This is exactly what she said: "Hey...I was thinking. Do you have Scrabble? I could really be into just staying in tonight with some take-out Chinese and a nice game of Scrabble."

Can you believe that shit? And she didn't even see the stupid Scrabble show on TV earlier!

We may actually be the same person somehow divided into two. That's how in-tune with each other we have been lately. A bit sickening, eh?

She won (by the way). 233-228. Yeah, we both suck at it...but we were watching TV at the same time, so we weren't at our best.

Still adapting...

...to life with an iPod.

But I heard three great songs, in a row, on the radio the other day and somehow remembered all of them so I could purchase them on iTunes. They were:

1. Get Myself Arrested - Gomez

2. Beercan - Beck

3. Perpetual Blues Machine - Keb' Mo'

You may wonder, as I wondered, what glorious radio station would play 3 wildly eclectic songs like this in a row.

Well, my friends, it was one of NYC's local public radio stations out of Fordham University WFUV-FM. It's 90.7 on my radio dial, but they also stream on the internet. It is really the one and only place that I go to in my search to hear new music.

Public radio is not dead! It just needs a little help from all of us, so support your local sheriff...and public radio station.

Good advice

Courtesy of The Green Parrot Bar in Key West.