Ha Ha, You Missed!

Most of you probably don't know I was fired from the TV show DAMAGES yesterday. And by "Yesterday" I mean "December 23." And by "December 23" I mean "2 days before Christmas." Most of you wouldn't know because unless you were one of the duplicitous scumbags involved in my "reassignment," you'd have no idea.

I could bore you with the details, but the Cliffs Notes version is I left early to drive Leni home Tuesday night (she couldn't drive because of the painkillers she was on from her Appendectomy Friday) and they were angry. And they hated me anyway. And I guess my absence offered them the perfect opportunity. Or excuse. What have you.

But the funny thing is that getting fired from DAMAGES is like having them choose another Captain for the Titanic. Or having Peggy Sue decide to go to the Sugar Plum Dance with Tommy Schneider instead and then later on helping him fill his prescription for Valtrex. Sure you might be angry at first but later on, as you're sitting at home on your couch having a Gin & Tonic, you think "Jesus, I sure dodged a f**king bullet there, didn't I?"

Sure they could have waited to tell me over the weekend, or called me to ask what my version of events were before making a decision, but why bother? The show is called DAMAGES, after all. These are people who have made a career out of being two-faced, which must be difficult when one face is uglier than the next. The producer who had me fired looks like a hotdog that got left in the sun with nose hair sprinkled all over him. Like, take a skeleton and the biggest nose you have ever seen, and glue the nose to the skeleton, then wrap the skeleton in an old man's ball sack, and put it in a V-neck sweater.

So to all of my friends on the show: Rose, Martin Short, Tate, Brian, Karl, Joe B. and Joe O., Mary, Ed Murphy, Janine, Tara, John Romer, Marcos, Tut, O'Shea, and everyone else, I will miss you. You gave me reasons to smile each day and that was more important than you know.

To 2009? You have 6 days left. You better have something else in your pocket other than this or I will be truly, truly, disappointed.

R

Really, 2009?

I'm too tired to write jokes. And for those of you who kind of missed what happened over the last few days, Leni throwing up every half an hour for all of Thursday and most of Friday wasn't the stomach flu. It was Acute Appendicitis. And while her appendix hadn't burst, it was horribly infected and angry. So it had to be taken out Luca Brasi style.

Now, I survived Colic. And like anyone else suffering from PTSD, I've already started to block out the worst of the memories and drink prodigiously. But as our December 31st deadline to move off of City Island is closing in, the days we are actually able to pack and be efficient are few and far between.

So why this, 2009? Why send Leni to the hospital? Because if it looked like I had too much spare time, I have a 6 month old. I might have actually been unconscious.

The icing on the cake, though, I have to admit, was giving me the flat tire. And I'm sorry I ruined things for you because if I hadn't discovered it last night, I would have found the tire this morning after they discharged Leni, thus leaving me little time to resolve it and race my post-surgery/highly medicated wife home before the BLIZZARD overtook us.

But well done to you. You obviously put a lot of thought behind this particular weekend.

Now leave us alone.

R

Seriously, Just Give Me The Effing "T" Already

I could cry.

For the last 6 months, Roxy hasn't had a correct Birth Certificate. This is because the type of $2/hour jackass who got their pointer finger stuck in their nose just as they pressed the "S" and got confused reading all of those letters in a row is the same type of person who reviews our Application for Correction each time and takes 7 weeks to drag their deformed and grotesquely oversized head over to the mailbox to let us know they were, once again, denying our request.

Check out the artistry of this one (and remember it was blank when he began):
Who writes like that? Amputee Turtles? Like if you put a pen in the mouth of a Turtle and duct taped him to the end of a Jiffy Mixer attached to a drill, you'd still be able to center the letters. I'm surprised he didn't Scotch Tape half of his juice box to the back of it just to make sure he got it all on there. Or write "bilLy" for the Return Address.

So here it is, your guide to what happened in its most succinct form. And for something that makes me this angry, this is as succinct as I can be.

REJECTION #1 - July 7th
What they wanted: Father's Info
What we provided: Copies of my Passport and Driver's License
Why it was rejected: They needed Leni's Passport and Driver's License after all.

REJECTION #2 - August 18th
What they wanted: Mine and Leni's Info
What we provided: Copies of BOTH of our Passports and Driver's Licenses
Why it was rejected: The signature on my Driver's License from 1993 doesn't match the one on my Passport from 2006.

REJECTION #3 - November 16th
What they wanted: Presentation of the Original Copies of our Passports/Licenses
What we provided: In person, Leni and I brought Roxy, our Passports, Licenses, and all of the paperwork we had been given.
Why it was rejected: The photocopies the person who WORKED at the Department of Vital Records took of our Passports when we gave them to him said, later on while reviewing the case, that they were copies (which perfectly encapsulates who we are dealing with here)

Keep in mind we received that last one yesterday. So if I wanted to name my daughter Obediah Winterfalls Kazoo Bubble Urkey Sandwich, I could have that changed and official tomorrow.

I just can't change it to Obediah Winterfalls Kazoo Bubble TURKEY Sandwich. I'm S.O.L. in that respect.

Guess Who Spilled Her Box of Beads...

This was Day 2, by the way, of her sorting them. One. By teensy tiny one.

Great Deals Ain't All You Can Get At TJ-MAXX

Here are some other captions to think about:
1. Uh, maybe we ought to skip Aisle 5.
2. You wanna start here or at BJ's?
3. Just what kind of place is this?
4. Who's first?
5. Boy, I'll probably get most of my Christmas shopping done right here!

Yeah, Screw You, Lady!

We're moving at the end of this month, and in the hopes of renting out the house, the landlord has decided to start showing it several times a week (which is so awesome, I can't stand it - because they asked us to "keep things neat"). So on Saturday, while Leni and Max were out shopping, I spent some quiet time at home watching Roxy celebrate her 6 month anniversary by drooling on the floor and biting things, waiting for our 2 o'clock.

When the Broker finally showed up with a couple (a man and his Beard), I was knee deep in wet-wipes and a poopy diaper. I tried to be as accommodating as I could be, attempting to wrestle Roxy into submission so I could get her onesie snapped back up.

"Oh, my goodness, look at you!" the Beard, I mean Wife, said.

"You guys are just in time..." I laughed in that does-it-look-like-I'm-enjoying-myself kind of way.

They asked if it was a boy or a girl. She was in all blue, and she's really quite bald, so I didn't mind the question. "Girl."

"Hi there, sweetheart! What's your name?" the Beard continued.

"Roxy," I said.

"Roxy? Oh, wow. You're going to have to grow into that one, huh?" she said.

So that was nice.

Gnarly Convo, Dude!

This is what I put in my hair:
And this was my conversation with Max this morning:

Max: Surf hair?
Me: Yeah.
Max: Surf hair?
Me: Yes, Max, Surf Hair.
Max: Why is it called "Surf Hair?"
Me: I don't know. I didn't name it.
Max: Is that why you use it?
Me: Is what why I use it?
Max: Because you want to look like a surfer?
Me: No, I don't want to look like a surfer.
Max: Then why do you use their hair gel?
Me: Because they don't make a product called "36 year-old Setdressing Stepdad Hair" so why don't you finish up whatever it was you were doing and go to school?
Max: Fine.
Me: Fine.

Man Vs. Baby: Disney's A Christmas Carol Review

[We enter the conversation already in progress]
Me: Sideburns.
Roxy: Sideburns?
Me: Sideburns. Sideburns, Gollum, and General Zorg from The Fifth Element.
Roxy: In a three-way...
Me: Or whatever. A Cuisinart. A Centrifuge. Like, a Cuisinart in a Centrifuge having a five-way with the Sideburns, Gollum from Lord of the Rings and General Zorg.
Roxy: In a wool scarf.
Me: That's right. Any situation that could combine all of those things into that creepy little goblin Bob Cratchit.
Roxy: We are talking about Gary Oldman's "character" in the film, but to a greater degree we're actually beginning an indictment on the abuses of using Performance Capture Technology.
Me: Right. It's Gary Oldman, but Awful Gary-wait-a-minute...What did you say?
Roxy:When?
Me: When, when. Now, when. What did you just say?
Roxy: What?
Me: [exhales loudly] Did we or did we not have a conversation about you sounding smarter than me?
Roxy: When did I sound more intelligent?
Me: [reads] "...an indictment on the abuses of using Performance Capture Technology?"
Roxy: It does beg the question why one would choose to employ an artistic medium evoking the human experience when you are, in actuality, replacing it with an inadequate facsimile thereof...
Me: ...
Roxy: What?
Me: If all your jokes are all Baby Genius-y and my jokes are about wieners or General What's-His-Bucket on a centrifuge people are going to think I'm a freaking moron.
Roxy: [pause] That's not why people think you're a moron.
Me: Excuse me?
Roxy: I mean, no, people wouldn't think you're a moron for that. I don't think.
Me: ...
Roxy: Oh, come on. Don't pout. I'll stop.
Me: ...
Roxy: I promise. Say whatever you want. I won't say a thing. I don't know why that's funny, but, go ahead.
Me: [pause] You really promise?
Roxy: I just said I did.
Me: Well, for starters, Jim Carrey did, like, the voices for 11 different characters. Except I don't think Dickens intended Scrooge to be visited by the ghosts of The Effeminate Cable Guy, Rubberfaced Has-been, and that guy who laughs at you after you die in Nintendo's Kung Fu.
Roxy: [chuckles] They do say "Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly."
Me: They who?
Roxy: They? Oh, um, who said that? Let me think...I think it was Grover, actually.
Me: Grover.
Roxy: Yeah, Grover.
Me: Grover.
Roxy: I could be wrong. I think. Either Grover...
Me: From Sesame Street...
Roxy: ...from Sesame Street...
Me: ...or...
Roxy: ...or Jonathan Swift, I guess, writing in the, uh, Horatian style.
Me [angry]: You're reading Horace.
Roxy: ...
Me: ...
Roxy: The cow goes "moo?"

3.0 From The Russian Judge

Roxy has been learning how to crawl. I say "learning" but there really isn't any way to teach her how to crawl because she's too young and besides if there were a way to teach her things right now she would already be using the toilet and making Gin and Tonics. Though I guess I should specify that she would be performing those tasks separately.

Let's go to the videotape:

Now Proven to Rot Your Brain

BrickBreaker. Do you play this terrible game? If not, click here. Go do something that won't take your brain cells on a boat ride and oar them to death Talented Mr. Ripley style. And make sure you watch that video.

The rest of you? Have a seat. You are all going to suffer. Even those of you floundering on Level 12 barely able to break 1180 (although, really, isn't there a game of Spider Solitaire somewhere missing you?). BreakBreaker doesn't evolve. It gets harder for a bit, plateaus, and then actually gets easier. After that, it just staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays the same.

34 levels, then back to Level 1. This time it's faster, and therefore harder, for 34 more levels, then back to Level 1. Then tedium sets in, annoyance, more tedium, lack of surprise, regret, that feeling of sameness, the feeling you have right now reading this, and then you're back at Level 1. It does slow down again, but by that point you should have enough lives to keep going, and going, and going, until eventually you can't be stopped and eventually star in Old Dogs with Robin Williams (and you'd be John Travolta for that part of the joke).

It took weeks to get 300,000. And another month or two, I would have reached 1,000,000. But the game freezes after that (check out the message boards), so what's the point? But really, you should be wondering what the point was before you got to the end of this blog entry.

Now, Who Wants A Photo With Santa?

Annnnnd We're Back!

Sometimes things need to disappear for a while, that way when they come back, you're really glad they did. Stuff like Luke and Laura from General Hospital, Terrence Malick, or an ex-girlfriend you thought about every once in a while until you ran into her and thought "Time to do some sit-ups, Fatty." Sure it can suck sometimes if we're talking about some Herpes-Outbreak-latency-period-type thing or a Knight Rider re-boot but that's not the direction I'm headed here.

So even though we still can't offer unitards in the I Am An Idiot Store like the ones you see up above, we will be offering the same level of humor and freshness you have come to expect from us...

Though, just to clear up that General Hospital business: I had a lot of older cousins. Female older cousins. Stronger female older cousins who were body builders and experts at Grappling. Young women who forced me to watch General Hospital at plierpoint (we lost the knob and needed a pair of needle-nosed pliers to change the channel); pig-tailed ruffians who held my eyelids open as Robert Scorpio tried to help Luke find the Ice Princess (a large, uncut diamond) and rescue Laura from the tropical island before Cassadine used his freezing machine to finish off Port Charles.

Or something like that.

Or, better yet, something like this:

I Suck

If for no other reason than the title, I'm taking this week off. I could list the reasons, but I think the header will suffice.

I'll be back starting this Monday, the 7th.

R