Postcard: The Stoned of Venice
It was hot and it was crowded: Venice in August was just that far from perfection.
Entries Tagged as 'ends & odd'
Advice for the disgruntled
Yahoo! News/AP– George Sodini seethed with anger and frustration toward women. He couldn’t understand why they ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn’t slept with a woman in 19 years…For months, he also wrote vaguely about using guns to carry out his “exit plan” at his health club, where lots of young women worked out…On Tuesday, Sodini put his plan into action…He went to the sprawling L.A. Fitness Club in this Pittsburgh suburb, turned out the lights on a dance-aerobics class filled with women, and opened fire with three guns, letting loose with a fusillade of at least 36 bullets…He killed three women and wounded nine others before committing suicide.
George Sodini was not unemployed, sick, or even picked on. He was lonely. So what better way to get back at all the girls not banging down his door to get close to him, than to open fire on them? This is scary really, because these types of massacres were generally reserved for business offices and schools. Now you have to worry about going to the gym. [Read more →]
The pleasures of poverty
I’ve been broke most of my life, and occasionally poor. Being poor means you’re in danger of being evicted, you ‘fast’ because you’ve run out of food money, you walk 5 miles through a crack ghetto to save bus fare, you sell cherished books for pennies, you help yourself to left-over food in cafes; you end up sleeping on someone’s sofa and eating out of bins. Being broke just means you can’t afford anything nice; or you can have one thing but not another — so you can go to the cinema but then you can’t buy a new CD. Pleasures tend to be strictly metered. [Read more →]
Top ten things overheard at this year’s Fourth of July barbecue
10. “Wish somebody had told me this BBQ was BYO!”
9. “The DVD that Weird Uncle Frank rented certainly sounds patriotic: The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!”
8. “My hot dog has an engagement ring on it.”
7. “Come on upstairs; I’ll show you some fireworks!”
6. “Tell Lester to get on the other side of the volleyball net! He’s too fat to be jumping up and down directly over the septic tank!”
5. “Which is the burger and which is the charcoal?”
4. “Who chugged all the lighter fluid?”
3. “Alright, nobody light their cigarettes near Donald!”
2. “I think Grandma lost her dentures in the coleslaw again.”
1. “It’s deer meat! Couldn’t have been in the road more than a day or two.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Top ten features of the prison Bernie Madoff is being sentenced to today
10. Every night: free back rubs.
9. The prison laundry offers one-hour Martinizing.
8. His inmate number will be unlisted.
7. Every Saturday night, there’s a mixer with the nearby women’s prison.
6. The prison cafeteria features an open bar.
5. His cell features open bars.
4. Every inmate gets a choice of three premium channels.
3. His conjugal visits include a Jacuzzi.
2. Every summer, he’s allowed to stay at his beach cell in Avalon.
1. If things get too rough, Bernie and his buddies have a daring plan to go “over the hedge!”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Whither the little girl horses?
I’ve been invited to try brevity for a change in this space; and it seemed like a novel idea. So here’s a brief aperture on the past. Last fall, I was campaigning for Barack Obama in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. I was deep inside enemy territory, and I knew it. I was in a red state — Phillies red. Worse yet, the Phillies were in the World Series — a New Yorker’s nightmare. I’ve been a Mets fan (“ardent” would be a polite understatement) for about 45 years, which is two ballparks ago. Yet despite the threatening environs, I was so enthralled with the prospect of change that I let myself go. Approaching a house with a Phillies sign in the yard, I found myself saying to the occupants: “Go Phillies!” It may have cost me, but it helped Obama carry Pennsylvania. Now, however, I must get right with the baseball gods. So for the record, I said “Go Phillies,” and not “Let’s Go Phillies,” which would have had far graver implications, since I’ve been saying “Let’s Go Mets” all my life.
And just as crucially, I didn’t specify where the Phillies should go.
Charting habitually: nature or nurture?
Charts and schedules motivate me, sometimes ridiculously so (as I am about to show). Often the intrinsic payoff for accomplishing a task pales beside the fulfillment I feel placing a clean check mark within the lines of that little box on a “to do” list. How can this be a bad thing? During completion of the objectives on a list I have a sense of control; afterward, an indisputable visual proof of progress. [Read more →]
Top ten signs your home could use a spring cleaning
10. Your “dust bunnies” have all been devoured by “dust ferrets”
9. Mickey Rourke thinks your place looks “nasty”
8. The Health Department has declared your living room eligible for FEMA funds
7. After a mudslide swept through your house, it actually looked better
6. The “lace curtains” seem to be catching an unusually large number of flies
5. Your place received The Good Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval
4. Your bathroom has hot and cold running rats
3. Your “bean bag chair” is made of accumulated lint
2. You wipe your feet on the mat before stepping outside
1. When you open the refrigerator door, the light makes all the food suddenly stop moving
Twitter Time: Some things I found on Twitter today
Okay… I am absolutely addicted to Twitter. Every time I talk to someone that is active online, I talk to them about Twitter. I love the fact that it forces people (myself included) to edit themselves to 140 characters. If you are one of the few people who still doesn’t know what Twitter is, just click on the the word Twitter — anywhere in this first paragraph — and you’ll see some explanation from around the web. [Read more →]
St. Patrick’s top ten complaints
10. Never received promised commission on green beer
9. Still awaiting remake of Darby O’Gill and the Little People
8. Every St. Patrick’s Day, when they dye the Chicago River green, it just looks like pond scum
7. On his day, number of people fraudulently claiming Irishness just to get a kiss
6. Only saint whose name is associated with massive hangovers
5. Compared to Saint Nicholas’s helpful elves, St. Patrick’s leprechauns are nothing but a bunch of troublemakers
4. After you’ve heard “Top o’ the mornin’” a few million times, you’d kill for a simple “Hello”
3. When St. Patrick’s Day revelers get sick on green beer, they look like Linda Blair
2. Hasn’t had his Blarney Stone kissed in years
1. Snake bites
Top ten leprechaun complaints
10. Not tall enough to ride on Space Mountain
9. From the back, often being mistaken for Tom Cruise
8. Too many people asking, “Hey, where’s Snow White?”
7. Never cared for green beer
6. Too many people thinking that nasty Rumpelstiltskin is one of them
5. Found the title of the movie Little Women to be very misleading
4. Frequently kidnapped by people who think they’re garden gnomes
3. Complete lack of female leprechauns makes reproduction a bitch!
2. Job market sucks for the vertically challenged (well, it sucks for everybody, but the vertically challenged especially)
1. Hate being classified a “fairy”
Do drunken strangers deserve rides home?
I consider myself a very nice guy. I’ve helped old ladies cross the street. I’ve tried to get connections to hook friends up with jobs. I’ve even given stranded motorists a little cash without asking for anything in return.
But I try to avoid giving drunken strangers rides home. A couple of weekends ago, I got cornered into it.
Around 3 AM, I was hanging out at a fine establishment when an inebriated gentleman told me his friends had ditched him and he needed a ride back to his home in Stamford, about 10 minutes away. I happen to live in Stamford, but I felt uncomfortable putting some random dude in my car. He could have a knife, a gun, anything! So I told him I was going in the other direction, and he ignored my sensible suggestion of calling a taxi.
About a half hour later, I took off from the bar solo, having driven myself. I was on the road leading away from the bar when I received a phone call from my friend. We’ll call him “Q.” Here’s how the brief discussion went down… [Read more →]
Pay to pee: Ryanair may offer one more reason to borrow a pound note
As multinational corporations have expanded the variety of fees, charges, and incidental methods for slipping their fingers into your pockets, maybe you’ve naively thought that a few common courtesies would remain beyond their reach. Perhaps you’ve assured yourself that no company with a firm grasp on reality would cross certain boundaries and that a few simple courtesies would continue to be offered free of charge.
Then again, perhaps we’ll soon reach the point of no return, where every human act — even taking a whiz if you’ve had a little too much to drink — will become directly subject to some minor transaction fee.
Think I’m exaggerating? Check out Ryanair’s potential plan to charge European customers a pound or so to use the loo. Granted, cities like New York have already employed a similar strategy. But, let’s keep in mind that none of the five boroughs are enclosed spaces thousands of feet in the air.
Maybe, after all, those companies don’t have such a firm grasp on reality. Too bad there’s not a Bethlem Royal Hospital for corporations.
Obama honors the legacy of Lenin
For several months now, our television has been displaying those “closed caption” subtitles even though we don’t want them. We just can’t figure out how to turn this feature off (we’ve tried all the obvious stuff on all of the menus, but nothing works.) It can be annoying, especially when I’m watching my beloved UFC (mixed martial arts) on Spike TV, because the subtitles run across the top of the screen, inevitably cutting off the head of a fighter at just at the moment he gets clobbered with a spectacular spinning back fist. So when Joe Rogan yells, and the screen displays, “WOW! Did you see that punch!”, I tend to yell back at the screen, “NO! I DIDN’T!”
But there’s a benefit to closed captioning: the hilarious errors that the computerized transcription system generates. Tonight, for example, on the 10:00 news, there was a feature on President Obama’s tribute, earlier in the day, to Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Except that, at the moment the announcer said, “today, President Obama honored the legacy of Lincoln,” the closed-caption subtitle read, “today, President Obama honored the legacy of Lenin.”
I suppose that this could have been something other than a computer error. For example, there may be a real live person who’s responsible for typing in the transcription, and he could have been spelling-disabled (which reminds me of the joke: “Two dyslexics walk into a bra…”)
Another possibility is that the transcriber is unhappy with what he considers to be the socialistic implications of the Wall Street bailout, and, in the grand tradition of the Boston Globe staffer who inserted the headline “Mush from the Wimp” over an otherwise sober editorial about Jimmy Carter, was committing a nasty little political grafitto. If the latter is the case, I suspect he’ll be getting a bit of a spinning back fist of his own from his bosses tomorrow morning.
Would you move to Boogertown, North Carolina?
I came across this post and had to share. PunIntended.com has a list up of seven towns with bizarre names. My big question — would you move to a place called Boogertown? Some of my favorites:
1. Ding Dong, Texas
2. Boogertown, North Carolina
3. Conception Junction, Missouri
4. Satan’s Kingdom, Vermont
There is one road in my town called Stoner Avenue. I’d rather my kids grow up on the next block, assuming the house of my dreams isn’t over on Stoner.
Ever come across any strange streets or town names? Would love to hear them.
Mummers, not bummer
As a wise man once said, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” So there I was on a brilliant sunshiny January morning dancing up Broad Street wearing an over-sized satiny dress with about 2,000 similarly dressed whack jobs, looking for all the world like Dean Wormer’s worst nightmare, when it occurred to me that nowhere but in Philadelphia can so many guys look like frat brothers from Animal House on New Year’s Day and consider it a way of life. What would Philadelphia be without the mummers? Another city certainly.
Mummers are the bad boys of the western world. The Deltas in an Alpha culture. Been that way since the Romans called it Saturnalia. Kings dressed as slaves. Men dressed as women. City folk dressed as farm boys. The best fool became the wisest man. It was an extended solstice festival, like Christmas through Carnival. And any bozo who dragged it out past the end of March was labeled an April fool.
Philadelphia takes care of all that in a single day, or thereabouts. And that single day identifies Philadelphia to itself. The world may not know mummers but we do. This past New Year’s parade clocked in at a record six hours and 30 minutes. It was a cold glorious day. Brilliant winter light shined on Broad Street as if the sun was a spotlight at the Navy Yard. And yet the crowds took a hike. The fans and first timers remained and had a great time. What’s not to like? A wonderful parade on a beautiful day. But there was nobody there. I’m talking nobody-deep on the west side of Broad and Pine when the ninth string band passed.
I know why, of course. Who would bring their family out to watch a parade that might not happen? Or if it does happen there might be a work stoppage? Or if there is a parade it might turn violent if the fat, drunk and stupid parts of both cultures act up. So the bad press about the mummers-City Hall conflict cooled off the size of the crowd as much as the cold day. And boy what a great show they missed. But one thing is for sure, the mummers are as big a part of Philadelphia as any sports team and the thought of a New Year’s Day without a parade is as unthinkable as a spring without the Phillies or an autumn without the Eagles. And the powers that be ought to accommodate that reality into the annual budget instead of acting like the mummers can be put on double secret probation.
Photo of Clark the Mummer by Chris Dwyer. Photo of Fat, Drunk and Stupid by Clark DeLeon.
Wake Up from the Weekend Hangover!
I am so exhausted from this weekend. Literally hung over — without the benefit the alcohol would have provided the night before. Thanksgiving was a calm day with 13 adults (and seven children, between the ages of two and ten) over for dinner. Twenty people is actually a relatively small gathering for us; plus, the kids don’t really count. By 10pm everything was cleaned up, the extra tables and chairs were back in the basement, and the kids (my two, plus a sleepover buddy) were out cold. I can’t even claim cooking exhaustion since everyone brought a dish, allowing my husband and I to worry primarily about the set-up, the 20 lb. turkey, and the stuffing.
The rest of the long weekend was not overly involved but, for some reason, I still felt spent. So now, Sunday night, I am sitting at my computer thinking of all of the things I should be doing but can’t bring myself to do. The emails I have flagged. The facebook invites I have pending. The holiday shopping I need to do online. The new business I have to find. The list goes on! But sometimes you just have to say screw it and ignore all of those nagging things. So, instead of feeling guilty about avoiding my to-do list I gave myself permission to aimlessly surf. And it was worth it.
Check out this 3-minute trailer for The PenIsMightier that I found on Buzz Feed. It woke me up from my sleepy state and made me laugh. In case you, too, are feeling the holiday hang over, this video on the “epic struggle of straight-edge rulers and the mighty pen that brought freedom to pencils” will give you a jolt.
Cold Weather Pleasures: The Good, the Bad, and the Gloppy
Activity One: Make Lamb Stew, Rake Leaves, Eat Lamb Stew
Details: On late autumn/early winter day of November 12, while wife and daughter are at rehearsal, make from-scratch lamb stew in totally disorganized and improvisational fashion, using no recipe. Rake wet leaves in front yard, and drag to curb. Eat stew.
Ingredients:
Two large lamb chops, salted and broiled until very rare, then cubed
12 tiny potatoes, halved
5 small turnips that have been in refrigerator for month, cubed
5 stalks of celery, chopped
2 large white onions, cut into large chunks
7 carrots, peeled and chopped
7 large bags of wet leaves [Read more →]
Holiday Crafts with Tampons—Seriously!
There is an entire site devoted to tampon crafts. Really! It is absolutely ridiculous — but yet so fantastic. How do people have time to do this sort of thing? I wonder, did someone in this house recently go through menopause, leaving boxes of different kinds of tampons to get rid of?
My favorite design is this simple ghost for Halloween. I bet most men out there wouldn’t even realize it was a tampon (Guys, feel free to correct me if I am wrong). And for those of you wanting for go green this holiday season, check out the Christmas lights that have no need for electricity.
Seriously, would you ever?
Hat Tip to White Trash Mom for finding this site!
Let’s Take a Flying Leap Into the Freedom New World
I was at an enormous Asian supermarket called Super H today and I saw, among all the shelves of miso, tofu, and kim chee, a new kind of iced coffee from Japan called “Let’s Be Bitter.” (There’s a companion brand called “Let’s Be Mild.”) Although I resisted the impulse to buy either variety, I was inspired by the names to dig up some old files of strange and astonishing “Janglish” I collected the last time I was in Japan. All of the following are real, as hard as some of them may be to believe: [Read more →]
