It is hard out here
Rock steady, Freddy, Betty and Teddy and Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers
How cold was it?
It was so cold this morning I was chattering so much I was named an honorary host of “The View.”
Man it is cold. In Beverly Hills, women are injection their lips with a combination of collagen and anti-freeze.
Man it is cold. In Beverly Hills, women with Botox in their face are having their cheeks break off.
Get it?
A 72-year-old man is attempting to qualify to for the Daytona 500. Who is going to be his sponsor, Metamucil or Aleve? Depends.
He does pretty well when he isn’t screaming out “Hey, this is a neighborhood, slow down.”
Amazing
There is a company, Internet Strategies, that instructs people how to use the Internet. In fact, they are so good, they can actually teach people how to get on the Internet without seeing a picture of Britney Spears’s vagina.
She showed them
The reigning Miss New Jersey USA had to resign because she is pregnant; and they say there is no talent section at the Miss USA pageant.
Go figure
Happy Birthday to Muhammad Ali who is 65. His friends and family gave Muhammad a motor home. For some reason, airline travel just hasn’t been convenient for a guy named Muhammad.
Look ma, no hands
England’s soccer star David Beckham has signed to play for the L.A. Galaxy for $250 million dollars. That is the most money anybody has received without having to use their hands since Al Reynolds married Star Jones.
That was tough to watch
The premiere of “American Idol” was last night and, at times, it was agonizing, embarrassing and frustrating. And that was just from seeing Ryan Seacrest pretend to flirt with the hot women.
Bun in the open oven
Rumor has it that Britney Spears is pregnant again, four months after having her last baby. OK, that’s it, time to put some panties on, Britney.
Even rabbits are saying, wow, give that poor thing a rest.
Rehab shmehab
A Sacramento radio show was pulled off the air after a promotional stunt resulted in a woman dying of water intoxication. Upon hearing this, a drunk Lindsay Lohan said; “I told you that stuff could kill you.”
Do the math
A man in Illinois set the world record for riding a stationary bike for 85 hours straight; that is actually 170 hours in riding-a-stationary-bike time.
To give you how slow time passes when you ride a stationary bike, after riding a stationary bike for 85 hours, the guy was actually one year younger. He went back in time.
That is the most effort anyone has put in that has gotten them nowhere since John Kerry ran for President.
It’s a French thang
French President Jacques Chirac cannot decide if wants to run for another term. Chirac might just quit, retreat and surrender the election, which of course, in France, would get him re-elected by a landslide.
Bitter Sweet
Monday there was a very touching Golden Globe acceptance speech by “Ugly Betty” actress America Ferrera. That had to be a bitter-sweet moment when she got the starring role of “Ugly Betty.” That’s like a guy getting the lead role of a sitcom called “Little Penis Larry.”
Since you asked:
My God, “30 Rock” is getting funnier. The corporate big cheese, Alec Baldwin’s Ted Donaghy has switched places for the day with lowly page Kenneth and he gets one of the stars of the show the wrong salad. When he asks the star if he wants another salad the star replies;
“OK, I’m supposed to treat you like I treat Kenneth, right? Of course I want another salad, you idiot. That or bring me a time machine so I can go back and slap your mother for smoking crack when she was pregnant with you.”
Then he asks the-standing-in-the-doorway Kenneth if that was too much and Kenneth assures him it was just how it normally goes.
And Tina Fey’s Liz finds out she is a hair. Trust me, see the show.
Can you remember when you turned into a hair? (In “30 Rock” the hair is the cool guy and the head is the bald dork)
I can.
For the longest time I thought I was a shy head masquerading as a cocky jock hair. Even when I was the starting running back on the freshman football team, after the Saturday games all the other kids on the team would go to parties but I just wanted to sit in my room and watch old black and white movies and eat candy.
One Saturday night, my Dad walked in and asked if I was OK with not going to parties. Truth was, I was fine with it. At that time, I didn’t want to grow all the way up. Just being in high school and playing football and competing in track was plenty on my plate. Bless his heart, Dad was visibly worried I was turning into a dateless nerd like my older brother. He wanted me to go to parties.
(Parents, let that be a lesson to you: be careful what you wish for. Three years later and three non-injury near-totaling car wrecks, nine girlfriends and one wild fight with a rival school's football team that resulted in the police arriving and one serious case of alcohol poisoning later, Dad got much more than he asked for)
But for then, most of my freshman year, I was content to eat Marathon Bars, Snickers, drink Seven Up and watch "Creature Features" on WGN.
Then I went to my first cool person party that spring.
An older guy on the track team, who was really cool, invited the entire track team to his cool-person party. As I was a 13-year-old freshman, I rode my bike to the party and hid it in the bushes so nobody would see.
Somehow I even finagled a six pack of Old Style beer and I remember halfway through my first beer thinking there was no way possible that I was going to drink the whole can, let alone the entire six pack.
The house was a really nice one in Wilmette, right across from the Bahai Temple by Lake Michigan http://www.photography-plus.com/project/Bahai.htm and the basement, resplendent with modern furniture, pool tables and pin ball machines, seemed like Hef’s grotto to me.
All of us freshman track dorks huddled together as we marveled at the cool juniors smoking, drinking, laughing and generally being worlds cooler than we were. As the night progressed some of the boys and girls coupled up and started making out. To me this was the fall of Rome. It seemed like a week ago girls had cooties. The one and only gorgeous Becky Prince, whom I had lusted over endlessly in church (sorry god) was on the couch making out with a tall skinny distance runner with another skinny distance runner - Brian Palmer can verify this - on the floor sucking on her toes.
(Cue: “Three Dog Nights version of Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”)
Emboldened by my second beer, I got up to play pinball. One of the upper classman’s dates, a really pretty short girl with wavy long brown hair wearing jeans and a grey cashmere sweater and she was slathered in way too much perfume that made her smell approximately like heaven, asked if she could play pin ball with me. Gulp. Uh. Yeah. Sure. I guess so. I was having a very huge Tom Hanks in “Big” slumber party moment.
At the time I was concentrating on actually beating her at pin ball when I started to notice she seemed to be bumping into me a lot making it really hard to play. Then she grabbed me and kissed me. Not just a kiss, but we were standing in front of the pinball machine, dare I say it, making out.
Like it was yesterday, I can remember swimming in her strawberry lip gloss, flowery perfume, thick silky hair and soft sweater. This, my friends, was good.
Now, the problem here - besides the circus that had now arrived in my blue jeans - was the guy who took her to the party wasn’t just three years older – and at 13 to 16, that difference is huge enough - but he was a real big strong guy all on his own. And hairy as hell. Sure enough, he stormed over and asked her what she thought she was doing. She said something like scram. Frozen with overload, I didn’t say anything.
Luckily he didn’t blame me, he focused his jealousy on her. She ended leaving with him because he had a car and I had a bike, but not until she and I did a lot more serous making out, yessireeebob.
(Cue: Circus music)
God bless her, whoever she was.
As I crawled back into the bushes to unlock my bike from the tree, strapping my four extra beers still in the plastic six pack holder to my belt like hand grenades, as Bill Murray would copy years later in “Caddy Shack,” I could still smell her lingering perfume and I remember thinking, wow, I can be a cool kid. Why not? Somebody has to be. Why not me? After all, I, as a lowly freshman, had just gone to my first upper classman party, scored some beer and made out with a hot Junior girl. That's a big night. That's a lot compared to eating Good 'N Plenties and watching "Frankenstein."
To put the cherry on top of this night’s Sunday and to cement my new hair status, I found out later that the one and only Becky Prince put out feelers to ask me to that year’s Junior prom. The fact that I couldn’t drive put the kibosh on the deal. But even being considered to go to the prom as a freshman male, let alone with one of the hottest women in school, catapulted my social standing.
Truth is that if I went to the prom with Becky Prince I might have died from nervousness. And I probably would have been stampeded by the circus in my pants. Also I'm not a toe sucker by a long shot. Fact is, I don't much like feet. But, for Becky, I would make an exception.
But there was no looking back, I had turned from mostly a head to mostly a hair in one party. Not a total hair, but mostly a hair. Let's be honest, we all have a little head still in us.
Well, maybe not Brad and Angelina, but the rest of us.
P.S.
My good friend and former UCSB decathlon great, John Serrano (with two r's) a rare and greatly appreciated regular a.L.b.b. reader, astutely pointed out how this story closely resembles every single John Hughes film ever made, which, in case you wanted to know, were filmed in our near my home town of Winnetka.
In the name of total candor, however, I have to say that I was mostly the Emilio Estevez jock in “The Breakfast Club” with a touch of Judd Nelson’s character via the long hair and being a smart-ass. But no way in hell was I as cool as “Ferris Bueller.” That was a whole other league of a “hair” cool suburban Chicago kid.
Speaking of John Huges, the church where Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern get married during the 1988 Huges flick "She's Having A Baby" was our church, the beautiful white colonial Winnetka Congregational Church. My parents ashes are buried in the bucolic garden.
How cold was it?
It was so cold this morning I was chattering so much I was named an honorary host of “The View.”
Man it is cold. In Beverly Hills, women are injection their lips with a combination of collagen and anti-freeze.
Man it is cold. In Beverly Hills, women with Botox in their face are having their cheeks break off.
Get it?
A 72-year-old man is attempting to qualify to for the Daytona 500. Who is going to be his sponsor, Metamucil or Aleve? Depends.
He does pretty well when he isn’t screaming out “Hey, this is a neighborhood, slow down.”
Amazing
There is a company, Internet Strategies, that instructs people how to use the Internet. In fact, they are so good, they can actually teach people how to get on the Internet without seeing a picture of Britney Spears’s vagina.
She showed them
The reigning Miss New Jersey USA had to resign because she is pregnant; and they say there is no talent section at the Miss USA pageant.
Go figure
Happy Birthday to Muhammad Ali who is 65. His friends and family gave Muhammad a motor home. For some reason, airline travel just hasn’t been convenient for a guy named Muhammad.
Look ma, no hands
England’s soccer star David Beckham has signed to play for the L.A. Galaxy for $250 million dollars. That is the most money anybody has received without having to use their hands since Al Reynolds married Star Jones.
That was tough to watch
The premiere of “American Idol” was last night and, at times, it was agonizing, embarrassing and frustrating. And that was just from seeing Ryan Seacrest pretend to flirt with the hot women.
Bun in the open oven
Rumor has it that Britney Spears is pregnant again, four months after having her last baby. OK, that’s it, time to put some panties on, Britney.
Even rabbits are saying, wow, give that poor thing a rest.
Rehab shmehab
A Sacramento radio show was pulled off the air after a promotional stunt resulted in a woman dying of water intoxication. Upon hearing this, a drunk Lindsay Lohan said; “I told you that stuff could kill you.”
Do the math
A man in Illinois set the world record for riding a stationary bike for 85 hours straight; that is actually 170 hours in riding-a-stationary-bike time.
To give you how slow time passes when you ride a stationary bike, after riding a stationary bike for 85 hours, the guy was actually one year younger. He went back in time.
That is the most effort anyone has put in that has gotten them nowhere since John Kerry ran for President.
It’s a French thang
French President Jacques Chirac cannot decide if wants to run for another term. Chirac might just quit, retreat and surrender the election, which of course, in France, would get him re-elected by a landslide.
Bitter Sweet
Monday there was a very touching Golden Globe acceptance speech by “Ugly Betty” actress America Ferrera. That had to be a bitter-sweet moment when she got the starring role of “Ugly Betty.” That’s like a guy getting the lead role of a sitcom called “Little Penis Larry.”
Since you asked:
My God, “30 Rock” is getting funnier. The corporate big cheese, Alec Baldwin’s Ted Donaghy has switched places for the day with lowly page Kenneth and he gets one of the stars of the show the wrong salad. When he asks the star if he wants another salad the star replies;
“OK, I’m supposed to treat you like I treat Kenneth, right? Of course I want another salad, you idiot. That or bring me a time machine so I can go back and slap your mother for smoking crack when she was pregnant with you.”
Then he asks the-standing-in-the-doorway Kenneth if that was too much and Kenneth assures him it was just how it normally goes.
And Tina Fey’s Liz finds out she is a hair. Trust me, see the show.
Can you remember when you turned into a hair? (In “30 Rock” the hair is the cool guy and the head is the bald dork)
I can.
For the longest time I thought I was a shy head masquerading as a cocky jock hair. Even when I was the starting running back on the freshman football team, after the Saturday games all the other kids on the team would go to parties but I just wanted to sit in my room and watch old black and white movies and eat candy.
One Saturday night, my Dad walked in and asked if I was OK with not going to parties. Truth was, I was fine with it. At that time, I didn’t want to grow all the way up. Just being in high school and playing football and competing in track was plenty on my plate. Bless his heart, Dad was visibly worried I was turning into a dateless nerd like my older brother. He wanted me to go to parties.
(Parents, let that be a lesson to you: be careful what you wish for. Three years later and three non-injury near-totaling car wrecks, nine girlfriends and one wild fight with a rival school's football team that resulted in the police arriving and one serious case of alcohol poisoning later, Dad got much more than he asked for)
But for then, most of my freshman year, I was content to eat Marathon Bars, Snickers, drink Seven Up and watch "Creature Features" on WGN.
Then I went to my first cool person party that spring.
An older guy on the track team, who was really cool, invited the entire track team to his cool-person party. As I was a 13-year-old freshman, I rode my bike to the party and hid it in the bushes so nobody would see.
Somehow I even finagled a six pack of Old Style beer and I remember halfway through my first beer thinking there was no way possible that I was going to drink the whole can, let alone the entire six pack.
The house was a really nice one in Wilmette, right across from the Bahai Temple by Lake Michigan http://www.photography-plus.com/project/Bahai.htm and the basement, resplendent with modern furniture, pool tables and pin ball machines, seemed like Hef’s grotto to me.
All of us freshman track dorks huddled together as we marveled at the cool juniors smoking, drinking, laughing and generally being worlds cooler than we were. As the night progressed some of the boys and girls coupled up and started making out. To me this was the fall of Rome. It seemed like a week ago girls had cooties. The one and only gorgeous Becky Prince, whom I had lusted over endlessly in church (sorry god) was on the couch making out with a tall skinny distance runner with another skinny distance runner - Brian Palmer can verify this - on the floor sucking on her toes.
(Cue: “Three Dog Nights version of Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”)
Emboldened by my second beer, I got up to play pinball. One of the upper classman’s dates, a really pretty short girl with wavy long brown hair wearing jeans and a grey cashmere sweater and she was slathered in way too much perfume that made her smell approximately like heaven, asked if she could play pin ball with me. Gulp. Uh. Yeah. Sure. I guess so. I was having a very huge Tom Hanks in “Big” slumber party moment.
At the time I was concentrating on actually beating her at pin ball when I started to notice she seemed to be bumping into me a lot making it really hard to play. Then she grabbed me and kissed me. Not just a kiss, but we were standing in front of the pinball machine, dare I say it, making out.
Like it was yesterday, I can remember swimming in her strawberry lip gloss, flowery perfume, thick silky hair and soft sweater. This, my friends, was good.
Now, the problem here - besides the circus that had now arrived in my blue jeans - was the guy who took her to the party wasn’t just three years older – and at 13 to 16, that difference is huge enough - but he was a real big strong guy all on his own. And hairy as hell. Sure enough, he stormed over and asked her what she thought she was doing. She said something like scram. Frozen with overload, I didn’t say anything.
Luckily he didn’t blame me, he focused his jealousy on her. She ended leaving with him because he had a car and I had a bike, but not until she and I did a lot more serous making out, yessireeebob.
(Cue: Circus music)
God bless her, whoever she was.
As I crawled back into the bushes to unlock my bike from the tree, strapping my four extra beers still in the plastic six pack holder to my belt like hand grenades, as Bill Murray would copy years later in “Caddy Shack,” I could still smell her lingering perfume and I remember thinking, wow, I can be a cool kid. Why not? Somebody has to be. Why not me? After all, I, as a lowly freshman, had just gone to my first upper classman party, scored some beer and made out with a hot Junior girl. That's a big night. That's a lot compared to eating Good 'N Plenties and watching "Frankenstein."
To put the cherry on top of this night’s Sunday and to cement my new hair status, I found out later that the one and only Becky Prince put out feelers to ask me to that year’s Junior prom. The fact that I couldn’t drive put the kibosh on the deal. But even being considered to go to the prom as a freshman male, let alone with one of the hottest women in school, catapulted my social standing.
Truth is that if I went to the prom with Becky Prince I might have died from nervousness. And I probably would have been stampeded by the circus in my pants. Also I'm not a toe sucker by a long shot. Fact is, I don't much like feet. But, for Becky, I would make an exception.
But there was no looking back, I had turned from mostly a head to mostly a hair in one party. Not a total hair, but mostly a hair. Let's be honest, we all have a little head still in us.
Well, maybe not Brad and Angelina, but the rest of us.
P.S.
My good friend and former UCSB decathlon great, John Serrano (with two r's) a rare and greatly appreciated regular a.L.b.b. reader, astutely pointed out how this story closely resembles every single John Hughes film ever made, which, in case you wanted to know, were filmed in our near my home town of Winnetka.
In the name of total candor, however, I have to say that I was mostly the Emilio Estevez jock in “The Breakfast Club” with a touch of Judd Nelson’s character via the long hair and being a smart-ass. But no way in hell was I as cool as “Ferris Bueller.” That was a whole other league of a “hair” cool suburban Chicago kid.
Speaking of John Huges, the church where Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern get married during the 1988 Huges flick "She's Having A Baby" was our church, the beautiful white colonial Winnetka Congregational Church. My parents ashes are buried in the bucolic garden.
posted by Alex at
2:51 PM
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