Saturday. Proper!

I cleaned out the car this morning - some additions and subtractions to the blogroll (hey, I warned you). Will probably add a few more links over the next couple days.

I've now got at least one party to go to on Halloween (thanks Classy!), which is a huge relief. Guess we should probably rent our costumes soon because I have no suitable backup...

Kathy got me involved in this cool little project this week. For a class assignment her daughter Christina made a journal and wrote the first entry writing about herself and Portland. She then put it in the mail and sent to me (arrived yesterday). This afternoon I need to write a little about me and Chicago. Once done I send her and her class a postcard, put the journal in the mail and send it along.

Now, I want Christina to have the most kick-ass journal in her class, so I'm sending it across the Pacific (why waste time with this pansy-ass America stuff?). Aside from controlling the next person the journal goes to, after that it is anyone's guess. I hope it goes to cool places across Asia, Europe, South America , etc. I would have loved to have done this as a kid, although it probably would have never made it past Ohio.

Finally, my obsession with Little Superstar continues. If you thought his pop and lock was awesome, he can kick some major bad guy ass. And as this photo below shows, I think he's cross-eyed.Wait -- I guess now I do have a suitable backup Halloween costume!

Friday. Proper.

Not a lot going down today.

Excited that Sunday is October, which is my favorite month of the year. I’ll be celebrating daily.*

Fred and I are going as pandas for Halloween (like the one shown here). Laura is open for suggestions for her costume, since she will be hanging out with two pandas and would like to go as something panda-related. We don’t yet have party plans so if anyone has any good suggestions, let us know. It would be a shame to wear a freakin’ awesome panda outfit for Halloween and not have anyplace to roll.

* and by celebrating I of course mean drinking.

What Do Jelly Shoes, Southside Posse, Poppin My Collar and Burger King Have in Common?

Searching for the Cherry Ride on the Web but don't know what terms to use? Try the following:

• Someone recently found me while searching for "Hostess cupcakes slogans jingles"
• Also "'gay face' gaydar." (Which, btw, I think is a great name for a band.)
• Oh, and I'm still the #1 link for "ever since I can remember I've been poppin' my collar" - I get about 3 hits a day from that one. (Which is great, you know, because I'm so Street.)
• Doing a search on "woolworths - jelly shoes"? Yep, I'm about #6 on that list.
• How about "southside posse"? Again, you'll find me at #6.
• I'm currently #9 for "whats the ingredient that makes the burger king BK stacker so fatty and full of calories." I'm actually quite proud of that one as I do consider myself an expert on fatty BK foods (the answer, btw, is fat -- fat makes the BK stacker so fatty).
• And I'm ashamed to say that I'm both #1 and #2 for the search "you're momma's on crack rock" -- not because I'm embarrassed to be associated with such a fine song, but because of my incorrect usage.
• But perhaps my favorite, the one I am most proud of, is that I'm #6 in a search for "crocs are dumb."

ReckenRoll Today

Wingman turns 30 today, folks.
It is a great day for those of us in the Club.

We're even getting Members Only jackets (her idea).

Stop over and wish her a good one, wouldja?

I Just Want to be Corbised, Is That So Wrong?

Part of my job sometimes involves sourcing photographs from places like Corbis. If you are not familiar with Corbis, it is a stock imagery house where you can search thousands upon thousands of photographs and illustrations for the purpose of buying the rights for various reasons - marketing or advertising materials, presentations, etc.

The times where I have to search Corbis are the happiest times of my job. You see, I love Corbis and can admit that I am obsessed and fascinated with it. There are other stock imagery services (Getty Images, Istock for example) but Corbis is by far the best. The images are slick, the locations are beautiful and shiny -- It's a beautiful shiny happy world, this Corbis world. To spend any amount of time searching for images on Corbis just makes you happy and brightens your day. It's like taking a cigarette break, or a short walk through a garden on a sunny day. It's a fantasy world. It's like Ikea.

[Example above of the typical "people" photo you find on Corbis.]

The models on Corbis are also slick and beautiful and shiny. Seriously, try for yourself: type in "beautiful people" in the search field and Corbis will spit back thousands of photos of beautiful people, often in shiny beautiful places - the beach, a green field, a gorgeous home. It's like a Mentos ad.

[This photo I found by typing in "beautiful." He certainly is. But the liquid spilling down his face and chest? Let's not go there.]

Even the ugly people featured on Corbis are really beautiful people wearing makeup to look ugly.

[
Above is a photo from my search of "ugly people." It's almost like ugly people are not allowed on Corbis!]

An added bonus of playing with Corbis is when a random, mislabeled photo makes it into your search results. Like this image below -- it showed up while I was searching for "business success."

[WTF??]

As I said, I'm a bit obsessed with Corbis. I wish I was a professional Corbis searcher -- I wish all I did 8 hours a day, 5 days a week was search Corbis for images for people. It would be joyous. (Ironically, several years ago before I discovered what a magical place Corbis is, I was asked to interview for a PR job with them. I declined the opportunity because I had just moved to Portland and didn't want to move again to Seattle. I wonder what would have happened had I gone for it. )

The other thing about Corbis is that I'd love to be a Corbis model. I'd love to be in one (or several) of those group photos, making an impossibly happy face like these people below just so my photo could be used in some corporate annual report or keynote address at some annual convention.

[I want to be in this photo. Not sure why; I just do.]

PS - I'm name dropping Corbis' name so much in this post because I'm hoping some bored Corbis executive decides one day to Google or MSN Search "Corbis" to see what comes up and this entry will pop up near the top of the results. So Corbis, if you happen to be reading this, put me in touch with one of your photographers and hire me as one of your shiny happy models. I want to be a part of your beautiful world.

Ten Dance Moves I Wish I Could Do

In continuing my fledgling tradition of listing a bunch of useless facts about me and my life, I bring you 10 dance moves I wish I could roll:

1. The Robot
2. Cowboy Stomp
3. Samba
4. Layer Cake
5. Pop and Lock
6. The Helicopter (or as I would call it, the HELLA-copter, yo!)
7. The Chocolate Sundae
8. Cotton Eyed Joe*
9. Merengue
10. The Worm

[This is me and Krista, totally schooling all the other dance floor suckas at Automatic Slims, NYC January 2005.]

* OK I'm totally kidding about that one. I wouldn't be caught dead doing the C.E.J., no matter how many tequila shots I had.**

** OK fine. There was that one time. But that's only because I slammed those kamikaze shots in, like, five minutes and I hadn't eaten all day.

I'm in Love. Her Name is Veronica

A few weeks ago I got a bike off Craigslist, and its been the best $105 investment I've ever made. I've been spending much of my free time with her (her name is Veronica) and people may say we're in love.

It's been one of those situations where I wonder why I didn't get or ride one sooner or more often (I had and have a bike at my house in DC, but hadn't used it in years). But I've had a rather schizo relationship with bikes my whole life. As a kid I had one and rode it the same as most kids. By the time I got to high school I was way too cool* for one.

My senior year in college I read an article about these cross-country bike tours and I thought it would be a great idea to do one. So when my parents asked me what I wanted for graduation, I told them a bike and a cross-country trip. They looked at me like I'd told them I wanted to convert to Branch Davidian; here was their son who hadn't been on a bike in 9 years who now suddenly and out of the blue wanted to spend his entire summer riding one 3200 miles from coast to coast.

My encouraging family:
-- "You realize you you have to camp each night. Outside. In a tent." -- Dad.
-- "And also that when you get tired, you can't just hop in a car. That you have to keep riding." -- Mom.
-- "Have you ever seen the Rocky Mountains? And do you realize that the only thing getting you over them is your ability to ride a bike?" -- Brother
-- "Do you even know what a bicycle is?" -- Grandma
-- "You can't even change your underwear unaided. How you going to change a tire? You're worthless and weak!" -- my Super Friends Aquaman doll**

The long story short is that they let me do it, even though at that point I really hadn't been on a bike in 9 years and didn't know how to change a flat or do minor repairs in case of emergency (of which there were many). I found out later that my parents had bets as to how long it would take me to quit (I think Dad had me at Kentucky and Mom at Illinois). Philistines!!

So in May of '92 I packed my new bike, 3 pairs of shorts, 3 shirts, and some incidentals on a train to Williamsburg, Virginia and spent the next three months pedaling clear across the USA to Astoria, Oregon. It was an organized tour with 8 other cyclists from different parts of the US (and 2 Europeans) and I still talk to many of them today.

An adventure of a lifetime, filled with scary moments (I almost got hit by a Camry that ran a stop sign, was literally run off the road by an RV, got a beer bottle thrown at me from some rednecks in a pickup truck), amazing experiences (having never been west of the Mississippi until then, I'll never forget seeing the Rockies and the Pacific for the first time or some of the people I met) and a tremendous sense of accomplishment when I finished. I also jumped into a rushing river and saved the life of a young girl who was drowning because nobody else would/could/wanted to put down their video cameras. (But that is another story.)

But when that summer was over I began grad school and pretty much couldn't be bothered to bike again (the irony of spending every day for 3 months on a bike is the great convenient feeling you get from hopping into a car when you need a 6-pack) and it all spiraled down from there.

But now it is the opposite. Living back in Chicago there is a great freedom in being able to bike anywhere and not have to worry about parking (I've biked to the bars in my Saturday night finery!) or waiting for the bus (I ride my bike to/from work every day even in the rainy weather and it only takes me 15 minutes, which is quicker than public transport). And some days it is the only exercise I get since my record of getting to the gym or the pool has been somewhat spotty.

* btw, I was so far from cool in high school, but even I recognized that riding a bike to school was just not cool, man. Not cool at all.
** So I had an Aquaman doll that I had occasionally had intense motivational conversations with. So what??

Freaky Friday

Sweet Jesus this is one of the most fucked up freaky things I've seen on YouTube. I first saw it on Curtis' site, then a bit later on Gawker.

Is little Electric Boogaloo a child? A midget? What is he? I'm freaking out.



If this was my child I think I would probably throw him out the window, once I got over the initial shock of having a kid so frickin' weird.

How long until he's on Leno? Any bets?

This Week in Spam

Clementine: Umm, no but thanks. Can we assume you're an octogenarian? That's just gross. You should probably talk to someone about this.

ID School: Have you seen my fucking bedroom? 4 blank walls, a broken bed and a trash can. Move along.

Random

1. Thank you Blogger for fixing the comments debacle between beta and non-beta users. I take back every bad thing I said about you in the last two weeks.
2. I wish my MSN Spaces friends would just get Blogger accounts. It would just be easier.
3. Every once in awhile, my site meter makes me laugh, particularly when I see how people get to my site. For example, I'm the #2 listing for "youtube barry manilow (bermuda triangle)" on Google.

Finally, and a bit more seriously, there is a person out there who I don't know at all (she's commented once on my site) but has me at the top of her blogroll (I think because it is in alphabetical order). I am flattered and grateful anytime anyone puts me on their roll.

But the other day I was reading her site and her entry that day was a tirade against her boss who she clearly doesn't like. Nothing wrong with that per se, but she called her boss a "faggot" twice. This is where it gets tricky, no?

I think most all of us use derogatory terms among our friends (I use the "f" word among my gay friends sometimes and lord knows I've called female friends "bitches" to their faces, so on and so forth) and sometimes you'll hear a comedian use a racist/sexist/homophobic term for a reaction (most often resulting in a humorous outcome).

The point being, neither me nor my friends have problems calling us these names because we know each other well enough to know our intentions by using such terms: the irony (and humor) of me calling a gay man a faggot is because I myself am a gay man; the irony of me calling a friend a racist term comes from the fact that I am not myself a racist. Etc., etc.

Maybe this person has a bunch of gay friends and uses the "f" word all the time in a manner not meant to offend her audience, and maybe I've become an eavesdropper among her circle of friends and don't know her well enough to assume the worst. I am no prude, or PC-ist, or overly-sensitive person so my first inclination is to let it slide.

But then there's this other side of me that wants to email her and write "Btw, I'm guessing you don't like homos based on your use of the word 'faggot' to describe a guy you don't like. As a 'faggot' myself, you may want to take me off your blogroll since you must not really like me all that much. Or better yet, please remove me from your list since I don't really want anything to do with you or your site."

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking everything per usual. Maybe the person in question, who I think reads me on a regular basis, could respond and let me know her thoughts.

10 Random Things Said to Me This Weekend

In place of my usual "What I learned this weekend" posts, I thought I'd shake it up a bit and share with you actual comments said to or asked of me this weekend.

In almost all cases they're perfectly normal, but taken out of context, some of them are just weird. Funny when you think about the strange conversations you can have over the course of a weekend. If anyone wants to share some of theirs from the weekend, feel free.

1. “Where you going so fast, sugar pants?"
2. “Did you change your name to ‘Will’ because of 'Will & Grace'?”
3. "Can I reach behind you and plug this in?”
4. “I don’t know why I listen to you. You always give me bad advice.”
5. “You were not just giving me a funky eye, bitch!”
6. “Sorry, I thought you were the water rat.”
7. “Have I shook you down for $150 yet this month?”
8. “I’m going to cut this off, or else you’ll have a mullet.”
9. “You look like you’re fast. Maybe you should go ahead of me.”
10. “Are you wearing Grandma’s jacket?”
    

100 Portraits

I've started a new photo album on my Flickr! page called 100 Portraits. I'm going to collect photo portraits of all my friends and family, which will require me to dig through old photos and upload them to Flickr.

Since most of the photos I have from '98 through '04 are on disks in a box in a storage facility in Virginia (and not on Flickr), this could take some time. Right now I've only got 20.

The other issue is that I'm realizing that I don't have "portrait" type photos (ie a shot of just that person as a solo subject and not in a group) of many friends or family. I may just need to fly around the world to collect some.

[Fiona, London 2005]

Revenge: Fighting Spirit*

I lived in Portland for 10 years. I love Portland. I miss Portland. However, every once in awhile I read a story like this and it makes me glad that I don't live there anymore.

There is a large group of people that live in that city (and the state of Oregon) that would:

1. hire someone to kill their ex-wife
2. bring lots of evidence (i.e. identification and a fucking journal!!) to the very place you plan to kill someone, so that if your plan gets fucked up, the cops could easily discover you and/or the other people involved in the crime
   
3. be large enough (5'7" and 260 pounds) to be capable of strangling someone with their bare hands

* I'm listening to Madonna as I'm writing this, and while her song really has nothing to do with this post, I find it rather appropriate.

Happy Friday Night

I am very happy this fine Friday eve for five reasons:

1. Pilar is rockin' the new Mac OS X. Meeow!
2. Weather today is beautiful
3. I'm listening to the new Shawn Colvin
4. These Bang & Olufsen earbuds are incredible. Seriously. I will never use regular ear buds again. Its like flying coach your whole life and then flying first class. I'll never go back.
5. I bought Arrested Development (RIP) Season III on DVD. Proper!

I said Proper! people.

True Dunkin' Donuts Confessions

My love for Dunkin’ Donuts is my secret/not-so-secret shame and pleasure. Here to perform some of my true Dunkin’ Donuts confessions are the Cherry Ride Players.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Things I Like/Dislike This Week

Things I like (this week):

1. Swearing*
2. My new awesome Bang & Olufsen earphones!!!!!
3. Tingling sensations
4. Netflix (I pretty much don't go out anymore in the evenings because of it)
5. The weekend forecast:

Things I dislike (this week):

1. Carson Daly, esp. now that he's all skinny
2. The fact that there are no Taco Bells in Chicago. Where the hell are the Taco Bells?
3. eBay. eBay should just be an auction site. I don't like how you can just buy stuff off there now without having to bid for it. That's not right.
4. Frescatas and Coolattas. How fucking stupid. Even if I loved either one of those things, I would never order one because of the name (not to mention the fact that the Frescata has artisan bread, and we all know how much I hate artisan bread!!)
5. My completely insane office landlord, for asking me to park my rented cargo van "further down the street." Of course I said no. So now I believe I might be taking an extended swim in the Chicago River at some point in the next few days. If I suddenly stop blogging over the next few days, you'll know why.
   

* Note: this is really no different than any other week.

What I Learned this Weekend (Special Tuesday Edition)

1. As much as I fantasize about it, I could never work at Starbucks. Because if I had to make a "sugar-free nonfat extra hot nonwhip raspberry latte" I would probably tell the person who ordered it to fuck off and go to back to the suburbs.
2. I don't need to eat pasta ever again. (Seriously mom & dad - let's ease off on the pasta for the weekly Sunday dinners. Chinese might be nice for a little while.)
3. Not sure I can follow through with this whole "growing my hair out for winter" thing I'm trying to pull off.
4. Are we really still wearing those "Live Strong" yellow wristbands? Really?

This one isn't something I "learned" this weekend, it's just something I beg everyone to watch, as it is definitely a great moment in stereotype-shattering gay pioneers in the media (if for some reason the link doesn't work, go to Best Week Ever scoll down to Friday's weekly recap and click on the weatherman story from Thursday. Seriously, you won't regret it.).

Thanks for All the Fish (or, Why I Didn't Like My Neighbors)

The other day I was telling someone (was it you, Rich? Fred? Laura?) the story of my weird neighbors in DC. Since then it has been on my mind and since I have nothing else to write about today, I'll share.

But before I begin, there are three things you need to know about me in order to understand the full impact of this tale:
1. I don't like fish very much (to eat).
2. I especially don't like dead fish that still have all their eyes and scales and bones and shit. The site of such fish will certainly induce stomach-churning, mouth-covering nausea. Of the highest order.
3. I was broke most of the time I lived in DC* so every $20 in my pocket was pure gold, man.

Back in DC, Phillip and I had weird neighbors. The type of neighbors you didn't want to talk to unless you absolutely had to. We would run from the car on the street to the front door just to get inside before they would come outside to say hi (which, btw, they always did).

For me, the biggest problem was (in addition to them just being plain weird) that I couldn't understand what they said when they talked. On the one side was a low talker, the other a mumbler. They could be telling me about their dead pets and I like an idiot I would nod my head and say "Mmmm, yeah. Great" as I scrambled to unlock the door. "See you later!"

Constantly feeling bad about my behaviour, I tried to be a better neighbor. I saw an opportunity for this one night when my neighbor struck up a conversation with me one September evening as I walked home from work. He began telling me of his weekend plans, which consisted of him and his buddies renting a boat and going fishing in the Chesapeake to catch their favorite fish. Now I am not sure of which fish it was, but it was one I had never heard of (something like the Spot Tail Shiner or Atlantic Croaker or some shit like that). I could really not care less.

So being the friendly neighbor that I was trying to be, I asked more about it. "Oh they're delicious!" he gushed. "We bread and butter them and they're the best fish you've ever had!" Then he asks me, "Would you like me to bring you some?"

Again, being the friendly neighbor just trying to fit in say, "Yes that would be nice." Knowing full well I was not likely to eat any kind of breaded and buttered fish from the Chesapeake (you couldn't catch me dipping a toe into the Chesapeake, let along eating something that swam around in it) and besides he would probably forget about it come the weekend anyway.

Fast forward several evenings when my neighbor is knocking on the front door. I fight the urge to quickly turn off the tv, hit the lights, and dive onto the floor as to not be seen by whomever is knocking (this was our typical reaction when we would get a knock at the door -- trust me, ours was not one where friends would just "just stop by to say hi because they were in the neighborhood") so I answer and he's standing there with this big plastic bag. I then remember our conversation and think "O shit. He's brought over fish."

(This btw, is NOT a photo of my neighbor. Not even close. Especially not him catching
one of these fucking Atlantic Croakers.)

And indeed he did. He excitedly pushes me into the kitchen to show me the fish he's caught for me. He opens the bag and there I see a bunch of dead fish. Whole dead fish. Scales, eyes and everything. Instinctively, my hand comes up to cover my mouth. And just as I'm thinking "Please, God, don't put those carcasses onto my kitchen counter" he goes ahead and takes one out and lays it onto my kitchen counter. He explains that he's taken one out because he wants to show me how to de-scale and de-bone it.**

Or at least I think that's what he's saying. I wouldn't know exactly because there's a whooshing sound in my ears, my eyes are welling up and there's vomit somewhere near my uvula. (Phillip, I would find out later, was just up the stairs eavesdropping on the conversation, laughing his ass off. Sonuvabitch.)

He is going into detail about how to prepare the fish (pictured above). "Mm-hmm!" I'm saying with my hand over my mouth, trying to sound excited. And of course, these fish are "fresh from the boat" and have not been refrigerated in any way. There's a smell permeating the kitchen now that hasn't been present since the sewer backed up during that huge rainstorm in August. Even the dog has gone upstairs. The room is now officially rotating.

So after a few minutes he's done with his lesson and takes the fish off the counter and puts it back into the plastic bag with the others. He then mentions how fun it was, but how the boat was sure expensive.

"Mm-hmm!"

And then comes the kicker:

Neighbor: "So why don't you give me twenty and we'll call it even..."
Me: "Mm-hmm!" (clearly not paying attention to what he's saying since at this point all I can think about is what an idiot I am for not turning off the tv and diving onto the floor)
Neighbor: "...'Cuz that's about $50 worth of fish you got there."
Me: "Sorry, what?"
Neighbor: "Well, between the cost of the boat we rented and the amount of fish I've caught for you, let's just call it an even twenty."
Me: "OH!"
Neighbor: "..."
Me: "Oh, I see. You need me to give you $20!"
Neighbor: "If you don't mind."
Me (to myself): You motherfucker!
Me: "Sure, no problem. Ummm, I actually don't have $20 on me at the moment. But here's $5 and I'll come by tomorrow to give you the rest."

So to add insult to injury, the next day I had to go over there to give him the remaining $15 (which could have gone to food I might actually eat. Or alcohol) for this pile of fucking scaley, boney, nasty-ass Chesapeake Bay fish carcasses with their eyes bugging out that I didn't even want in the first place but said yes to because I was trying to be a nice neighbor.

The fish layed in their plastic bag of a tomb in the back of our freezer for months, because I was afraid he'd catch me throwing them out, or that one day he'd walk past the garbage cans, smell something fishy, open our garbage cans (which happened all the time on our street) and see them laying there and he'd come after me.

And for weeks after when he'd see me he would always ask "How you like those Atlantic Croakers, huh? Pretty good, huh?" "Oh, yeah. Totally! Yum!" (rubbing my tummy for full effect, before quickly trying to open the door to the house.)

And still a few weeks later he offered to cook me a rabbit for Thanksgiving. Which surprisingly I declined. But that is another story....

* this is due mostly to a soul-sucking mortgage that, I once calculated, seemed to account for the first 30 hours of my 40-hour work week. By about Thursday at 4pm each week, I was "in the black" and that money I made for the remainder of that day and Friday could go for food, parking tickets, and alcohol - the three other things I spent my money on when I lived there. But I digress...

** Is there a more vile word in the English language than de-bone?? I think not, especially when it has to do with performing said act on your kitchen counter.

So Sayeth Cherry Ride

My blog is like the English language - constantly evolving (or rather, since I think of myself as a language and grammar snob, should say "devolving").

Or maybe my blog is more like a shark -- to stop is to die.

Either way, the point is I'm constantly doing shit to my blog to make it look different (ha - I almost said better), like adding new links or adding posts on a regular basis.

I like to keep it fresh. Keep it real (as the cool kids used to say about a decade ago but I'm trying to bring back for a second wind). Take for example my blogroll. Now, I don't want to be one of those annoying bloggers who is constantly adding new sites and has a blogroll of about a hundred blogs. [C'mon -- it isn't like you're actually reading all of them on a regular basis! Unless you don't have 1) a job; or 2) a life.] I think one must exercise some discretion and not just throw any old blog to his/her list. So I'm starting to reach a point where some blogroll editing might be in order.

There are some of you listed on the right side who don't blog on a regular, or even semi-regular basis. I'm not talking about the people who blog about once a week; I'm talking those of you who seem to have taken the summer off [which, is like, the absolute BEST time to blog!!].

Let me get to the point: If you want to stay on the blogroll, you need to put a little effort into it. Post every once in awhile. Or maybe leave a comment if the thought of writing an entry is too much commitment to handle right now. Many in the guilty party are friends of mine - awesome people who I like to spend time with who make me happy and all that. You are and will always be my friend, but the question before you is: Do you also want to be my "blog friend'?

Because a blog friend is someone who shares with me a love of blogging. If your last post was in June, you don't love to blog (or maybe you do and your dead or something, which I wouldn't know about anyway because you didn't blog it to let me know).*

So please don't take it personally if in the next week or so your blog disappears from the column on the right because you've lost interest. There's nothing wrong with losing interest of course, that's totally cool. We can and will still be friends, we just won't be blog friends, and that's completely OK.

And on a completely different tangent - fuck off Blogger people and fix my fucking photo posting function already.

* To give you an example, "J" is one of my truly best friends. But he's not a blog friend because not only does he not blog, but he thinks blogging is "gay."**

** It should also be noted that "J" himself is a homosexual, so I'm not sure where the insult to me is supposed to come into play, but anyway.

I Will NOT Blog About Baby Suri

I am going to resist the impulse that 90% of the blogging universe has succumbed to by NOT blogging about Suri Cruise on the cover of Vanity Fair.

There are more important things to talk about, right?

I am just not going to do it. Period.

Nor am I going to post the below picture in which she looks like an Eskimo.

This baby is clearly black market.

The Circle of Life

[cue the Elton John song]...

I'm very sad because one of my favorite blogs, The Daily Dump, is shutting down. I'm in shock. It's kinda like when you're a kid and you ride your bike every week to the neighborhood candy store, and then one day you ride up and see a big fat "CLOSED" sign and all the windows are dark and the merchandise is cleared out. Reading the Dump was quite literally a highlight of my day. I wish Dan well in his next adventures.

But life is, among other things, a series of opening and closing doors, no? It's a give-and-take, a yin-and-yang. I have a friend getting screwed over by her job, while another is starting an exciting new one; one friend struggling through the first few days of school while another is close to finishing his PhD; friends living the dream of being ex-pats in Europe, while another is stuck in a place he doesn't want to be.

Anyway, the point is that everything is cyclicle including the blogosphere. The Daily Dump might be closing down, but I'm thrilled that my friend Katie, my Wingman extraordinaire*, is jumping from MSN Spaces to carve out her own little piece of the Blogger universe. She's still getting her site up-to-speed, but to all of my blogging friends (all 6 of you), please stop by and say hello. She is and is going to be really awesome.

(And hopefully my friend Darci who is also awesome won't be far behind in making the switch from Spaces to Blogger either.)

* After I excitedly told her that I'd met Jessica Alba in a shoe store on Carnaby, Katie had only one question: "What shoes did you buy?" Only Katie [or maybe JB] would be more concerned about the shoes than my brush with celebrity.

What I Love/Hate This Week

What I love (this week):

1. Eskimo Joe
2. Teen Witch
   
3. My Godzilla desk toy
4. Charo and those Geico commercials
5. Gin Rickeys
   

What I hate (this week):

1. Co-workers who are friendly outside of work but become miserable jerks in the office
2. Tan shoes with dark pants
3. People who yell "Get on the sidewalk!"/"Get off the street!" to cyclists (actually I hate them all the time, not just this week)
4. "Artisan Bread" (whatever the hell that is) and fast food joints that promote it
5. "Hip Hop Rebels" especially if they're whities
   

Summer May Be Over...

... but I'll always have my memories of Ugly Old Guy in Speedo lounging on his lawn chair on the walking path along Lake Shore Drive (between Oak St. and North Ave.) lettin' it all hang out for everyone* to see. What a douchebag!

In other news, this new Blogger Beta is starting to piss me off. Unable to leave comments on many friends' sites. Get it together, Blogger folks.

* The day we found him, there were probably a few hundred people walking that path. Literally hundreds of people saw his old shriveled junk.

What I Learned this Weekend

One thing I love about 3-day weekends is that I can write a "What I Learned This Weekend" post and the weekend isn't even over yet! I know I've gone off on this before, but why o why do we not have 3-day weekends EVERY weekend??

1. The Blueberry Fest in Plymouth, Indiana is the largest annual summer festival in Indiana, attracting around 400K people over the long weekend.
   
2. 400K Hoosiers can't be wrong can they? O yes they can.
3. Forget the Dunkin' Donuts. The Funnel Cake is what all the hip kids will be eating this fall.
4. I miss Paige, former hostess of "Trading Spaces." She needs to come back 'cuz that show ain't the same without her.
5. This whole "jogging as quick/easy way to get back in shape" is not what it used, or is cracked up, to be.
6. It may take a few beers to realize this, but Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" mini-rock opera video is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of 80's cinematic art ever created. Seriously, they should put it in a time capsule, so that when either aliens or explorers from our post-apocalyptic society find it 500 years from now, that video will show them everything they need to know about life (not to mention music, fashion, hairstyles, attitude, the complexities of father/daughter, gender, and geo-political relations, and the plight of the urban private dancer*) in America in the late 20th Century. It's that good, people.

* OK, maybe not so much "geo-political" part, but the rest of it is so totally true!

Proper!

I'm off to Indiana to hang with Cooter.

Maybe light something on fire.

Remember that MC Hammer Pepsi commercial, where at the end of a long grueling concert jam on stage he chugs a Pepsi and grunts, "Proper!"? That's exactly me this afternoon except instead of a concert it's work and instead of a Pepsi it's a liter of Gin. But the "proper" part will be exactly the same.

Enjoy the long weekend!

PROPER!!!**

** PS - I'm totally bringing this expression back. Who's with me?