Over My Head

Yesterday I received the results of my blood work from the doctor, after having a physical a couple of weeks ago. All pistons seem to be pumping just fine. My cholesterol score was 146. There were a lot of other numbers associated with very large words – for which I had no idea what they meant. All I know is that all of the numbers were within the normal ranges provided and the doctor wrote – “blood very stable.” That’s nice. Anyway, I had two random childhood memories yesterday and they were very clear in my head, which is so bizarre…..

  • I must have been about 9 or 10. My dad came home one day after having had his physical and I asked him how it went. He said the doctor gave him six weeks to live. Given my age, I had not completely perfected the art of stating or recognizing sarcasm. I sort of knew he was kidding because we were (and are) a sarcastic lot. I called him on it, but he said it again and I began to whimper. Both of my parents probably knew to not let the slippery slope get any steeper, so dad came clean. I still think the whole thing was pretty funny.
  • Along those same lines, and probably about the same age, I remember one weeknight during the autumn a police officer (friend of the family) stopped by the house to say hello to my parents. I distinctly remember walking around the corner and seeing a police officer standing in the living room, so I was a little puzzled. My mother than said, laughing, “they’re here to take you!” I then ran into my bedroom and closed the door. I obviously should have seen the cues, given my mother was laughing, but I guess I just missed it. Again, it was immediately nipped in the bud. 

Sarcasm! I learned it young……. 

Drugs Make Me Want To Sit Next To You

A couple of bits from the last few days:

  • Yesterday I received a mildly amusing piece of mail. The return address had the Entertainment Weekly logo on it and it said “Movie Screening Department.” Of course, I knew what it was. It was a pitch for me to subscribe to their stupid magazine – it’s really one of the worst ever, despite the fact that whenever I see one, I have to leaf through it. Can’t explain. But really, “movie screening department?” I mean, is that supposed to make me think this is an important piece of mail? I tried to figure out how they might have gotten my name, but that’s a pretty useless exercise since everyone sells everyone addresses now. It’s probably from the people at Interview Magazine, which I just subscribed to.
  • Oh – something I’ve been meaning to post for a while now. I walked into my bank and I stopped dead in my tracks because there was a song playing in there that simply had no business on a bank speaker, where you usually hear songs by Christopher Cross or ballads by Mariah Carey. It was Midlake’s “Head Home,” one of my favorite songs of the past 1-2 years. The funny thing was that I couldn’t place the song right away because the environment in which it was playing was so…..wrong.
  • I’ve been getting back into the The Geraldine Fibbers lately. The Fibbers were a mid-1990’s San Francisco band led by Carla Bozulich, a bohemian of sorts whose work today is most certainly more on the avant-garde side, but back then her band played some pretty accessible, well-crafted gothy alt-country. She was the girl who definitely wore black every day in high school and liked what a classmate of mine always calls “wierdo music.” Of course, I adore wierdo music. Here’s a great sampling of the Fibbers output, called “Get Thee Gone.”  
[audio:thee.mp3]

    You Are About To Embark On A Journey….

    ….a journey around the internet.

    • The person who did this must be a) independently wealthy, b) a total dork, c) both or d) an absolute unstoppable genius of the highest proportions.
    • Divorce cake. I don’t really think there’s much of a market to sell stuff to recent divorcees, but then again, maybe there is. I mean, something like 50% of all marriages go south, right? Those are big numbers. Years ago I remember having a conversation with a friend who was fresh off a divorce and we half-joked about starting a magazine targeted at divorced males. But really, who wants a magazine to keep that fresh in your mind? Hell, if you’re recently divorced, you have Maxim. 
    • OK, I know people who own guns and I feel confident that they are responsible enough to keep them locked up and WAY out of reach at ALL times when their young kids are around. I’m not crazy about it, but it is a free country. I’d prefer if it wasn’t THAT free, but what can you do? But how the HELL does someone justify giving their kid an uzi for a photo opp? Yes, the kid died. 
    • I wish Boston.com would just print the list on one page, but hey, you gotta make some money with those display ads, I guess. Either way, they’ve listed what they consider to be the Top 50 scariest movies of all time. I don’t expect you to click on all 50 windows, so don’t worry. They say that 1982’s “The Thing” is the scariest of them all. I’m no expert on scary movies because it’s not really my thing, but I can say that the scariest movie I’ve seen is probably “Silence of the Lambs.” How about you?
    • One of my boys has initiated an expedition to explore the upper regions of his nasal passages andat a press conference this morning, has named his two index fingers as the lead explorers. This is, of course, not shocking. It is the first of what I expect to be many expeditions into the gross for the coming years.
    • Speaking of the boys, whenever I get them up in the morning, I like to ask them questions that they won’t possibly be able to answer until they’re about 5. Things like “how did you sleep last night,” for which the answer is almost always “yes.” I also like “were you warm enough?” because they’ll always say “yes” or “no” and it makes me feel like they understand. However, the most puzzling one is when I ask them “did you have dreams?” They don’t ever respond to this question verbally, but both of them at the same time will pat their stomach when I ask them. This happens every time. Does anyone have any idea why both would do this? I’m trying to think of stuff that “dreams” rhymes with, etc, but I’m stumped. 

    Sweet, Wonderful You

    Sometimes I think I’m turning into a total sap. I had a hockey game last night – at 10:30pm – and Steph went out for a while, so I had 7pm-9:30 to myself. After doing all kinds of chores (dry and fold the kids laundry, put it away, get their lunch ready for next day, etc etc) I plunked myself down on the couch at about 8:30 and popped on the television. Now, you would think I’d head straight for the World Series, right? Kind of. I did flip it on and as a matter of perfect timing, got to see Chase Utley whack one out of the ballpark. But I can’t watch the World Series in that horrific excuse for a ballpark. Sorry. Time to flip channels or hit up the DVR.

    First off – this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live. Was nice to see Mark Wahlberg making light of the great skit they did about him the week before. SNL is pretty much good for 1-2 good skits + the news each week, so I got through it pretty quick. Then I ended up on channel 828, which is MTV/VH1’s HD channel. They had a 2004 Fleetwood Mac concert from MSG, so I stayed there for a second. I’m very much Jekkyl & Hyde on Fleetwood Mac. Some of it I love (“Monday Morning,” “I Don’t Wanna Know,” “Never Going Back Again,” “Crystal”) and some of it I really cannot stand (“Rhiannon,” “Dreams,” “Gold Dust Woman”). 

    So I catch the end of a wild Buckingham version of “Big Love” and the next song is one I dislike very much – “Landslide.” But since there isn’t anything else on, I keep it on, hoping the NEXT song might be Silver Springs or something good. Then Stevie Nicks gets to the part in Landslide where she sings “…children get older and I’m getting older too” and suddenly, like out of nowhere, I get sad. I’m thinking about how in just a year-and-a-half my kids are no longer babies, but walking, talking toddlers who are emerging as human beings. Why sad? I don’t know. The passage of time. It’s something I’ve spoken of before here. On one hand, I can’t wait to see how my kids grow, watch what they become interested in and hopefully prosper and become good, giving, loving people. On the other hand, I already miss their little 6 lb infant whimpers.

    I mean, it lasted like two minutes, until I found “Old School” on TNT, just in time to see 89 year old Blue pass out at the sight of two buxom sorority girls. 

    ….and on we go.

    I Got Nothin’

    I’m having a little writer’s block lately. Normally when this happens, I’ll start writing a lot about music. See last week’s posts. But work has been particularly demanding lately and of course, the twin munchkins continue to take a lot of time. It’s easy when they melt your heart five times a day. They’ve learned kissing lately, so they kiss each other, they kiss us, they kiss pictures in books and they’ll blow kisses to just about any animal they see. This is, apparantly, that time everyone tells me about when they say “that’s the best age.” I agree. One of my boys woke up early from his nap today and I brought him downstairs, where he cried for about 10 minutes, then simply feel asleep on me. Oh, that was nice. So nice. He got another 30 minutes and I cat-napped. Pleasant.

    Tonight I made risotto. The intention was to cut up onion, add some parmesan and then dump in a bottle of Pumpkin Pesto we got from the Stonewall Kitchen store when we went to Portland a few months ago. You can’t have risotto in the summer. That’s wrong.  So we waited. Now, here is where my wife rules. I normally would just take my chances and dump it all in there. She recommends actually trying some first before dumping it in. Good thing she did, because the stuff tasted like shit. It hurts to have a dump a Stonewall Kitchen bottle of anything, because that place is expensive. But we had to, because it was awful. So we did what any risotto lover would do – we just put a crapload more parmesan cheese in. Yum!