May | 2015 | ugh!

Archive for May, 2015

I Hate Me, part 510,521

Still laid up with my foot. Watched the entire series of Breaking Bad in six days along with a bunch of other movies. I still don’t understand Mulholland Drive and I couldn’t find the original Wicker Man on Netflix. I also read a bunch of books including a really interesting one on The Grateful Dead (So Many Roads) , I’m a sucker for band bios regardless of the band. There’s a chapter in the Dead book on their giant concert in Englishtown NJ in 1977. Even though I was 15 and I knew my parents wouldn’t let me go, I had a chance to sneak out with my friend, his older brother and his friends but when it came to buying the tickets I ended spending my money on Black Sabbath-We Sold Our Soul for Rock n Roll. I caught a lot of grief from my friends brother who referred uniformly to anything that was heavier than the Allman Brothers as “Pink Zeppelin and the Fur Lined Jockstrap”.

Anyhow, not much going on. The only thing I came up with was some names for frozen yogurt stores ( there’s a chain around here called “yo-mon”, which annoys me every time I see it):

YO-GERT: Frozen yogurt stand in the gift shop of the Gertrude Stein museum outside of Pittsburgh Pa.

YOYOYO-GURT: Frozen yogurt kiosk at the Duncan Yo-Yo factory commissary in California

My foot looks like Christopher Lee’s creature from Frankenstein

2015: 05/26
CATEGORY: I Hate Me
TAGS: frozen yogurt
grateful dead
2 comments

I hate me, part 563,539

I’m laid up for a couple of weeks because I had an operation on my foot for hammer toe. When I went to the doctor for a diagnoses and he told me I had “hammer toe” I responded in my best MC Hammer voice, “Hammer Toe!”. My doctor is a serious looking guy, like a guy who would play a doctor on a T.V. show and his response was a wan smile due to A) since the early 90’s I’m sure he’s heard that a million times when he diagnoses it , B) it’s not funny and C) my emphatic MC Hammer impersonation probably sounded vaguely racist. The procedure was a success (so good that I ended up with an extra toe! Now I have six on my right foot) and after, as they were preparing me to rejoin society, I was offered crutches or a walker. A walker seemed a little much so I went for the crutches. Not a great idea as I consider crutches and chopsticks distant relatives and I’m pretty terrible with chopsticks. So there’s been a lot of laying around interspersed with death defying feats of tottering around on crutches. Also, my wife is a goddamned saint, by all rights she should have smothered me in my sleep like the Chief did to Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest.

My newest fashion accessory, the shoe hat. Please check out my kickstarter page.

2015: 05/21
CATEGORY: I Hate Me
TAGS: crutches
hammer toe
operation
1 comment

I Hate Me, part 531,902

A couple of notes from Record Store Day, that I wrote and then lost and now found.
1)
Phone call, night before RSD (note: until the line was done there’s a 1 piece per title policy):
Hey…Can I bring my mom, she’s too sick to really move but if I was in line and she showed up when it was my turn, could I buy doubles on stuff
So…you want to use your sick mother, who can’t move to buy doubles on stuff so you could sell the second copies?
Nononono! no…I’m just sayin’…could she come in with me even though she can’t move and stuff…can’t wait in line…just kinda show up when it’s my turn…cause I want two’s on some stuff…cause they might be worth somethin’…someday…I’m just sayin’, could I?
No man, you can’t do that.. that’s not fair to everyone else in line…if you tried something like that you might…you might suffer some harsh justice from the others in line.
No…I’m not gonna do it..I’m just sayin’
No
“click”

2)
11am on RSD the line has been going smoothly since opened at 9am. Middle aged guy with two little kids in tow steams in through the back door
If you’re here for Record Store Day, there’s a line out front
okokok…I just wanna see if you got something..Neko Case-Fox Confessor
Yeah…we got a couple in (I look ) there’s one left.
Lemme get it…that’s all I want.
You gotta wait in line, it’s not fair to everyone who’s been waiting.
Yeah…but I want it…I don’t wanna wait
Well nobody wants to wait…but there’s a line of people who have been here all morning…not fair to them
Not fair..I want it…I’ve been waiting for it…for like two years (one of his kids pulls on his arm)…daddy’s busy!
You can’t cut the line, man… look, call the store at about 1, that’s when the line should be gone. There’s a good chance we’ll still have it.
guy storms out
Not fair…not fair…that’s all I wanted…not fair.
He never called back and it didn’t sell for the rest of the day.

not fair

2015: 05/14
CATEGORY: I Hate Me
I LIKE RECORDS
Uncategorized
TAGS: record store
record store clerk
1 comment

James Bond 13 original themes

The cover on this James Bond collection (which came in 1983) seems like they’re trying to combine the different elements of Sean Connery and Roger Moore but they ended up with a rendering that looks like a mean Dick Van Dyke. Dick Van Dykes only Bond movie A Dollop of Affability did poorly at the box office.

2015: 05/11
CATEGORY: humor?
I LIKE RECORDS
Uncategorized
TAGS: dick van dyke
james bond
2 comments

A history of smoking

My cousin dropped off a bunch of photos of my family I don’t think I’d ever seen. This is my dad and I, it’s not dated but I think it’s from 1963 and I’m one and a half. I think he’s smoking a Parliment, he smoked them for awhile. He smoked 3 packs a day. He tried a pipe when I was young, which I think coincided with either mutton-chops or an English Sgt. Major’s mustache (the kind that need mustache wax), I guess he was going thru a phase. He later smoked Benson and Hedges, then Merit, Merit Ultra Lights and then inexplicably wound up smoking Vantage Ultra Light Menthol’s. When my brother and I asked him what he wanted for Christmas or his birthday he would say “A 1928 MG or a carton of cigarettes”. He never got the MG.