And this is why Peggy and Jamie are cool

It used to be that a trip to one of my brother or sister's houses meant a lovely dinner, maybe a bottle of wine and the ceremonial watching a Disney movie with the kids before eventually going to sleep.  This was never the case with my sister Peggy and her husband Jamie (remember him?  He was the guy that took his shirt off at the Bears game?). 

Krishni, Brad and I made the 100 mile trip out to Dixon, IL, to visit her family which happens to include 2 kids under the age of 7.  This is what we ended up doing:

I spent my entire Sunday locked in a desperate battle to rehydrate myself.  

What do you do with your Tuesday afternoons?

Typically, I wake up between 10 and 11--although, today I was in bed until I was forced to move at 12:06 because I had to pee--move out to the couch, apply for a few awful jobs online, and then pull up Netflix on my Wii.  I then spend the next few hours checking in at various blogs, pricing my dream Disney World vacation that I won't be able to afford until I have a job for a year or so and counting the minutes until dinner.  

Really, I should drink more.

The last few days I have been particularly pathetic because I tweaked my back again and it's been sort of difficult to move.  As such, I've knocked off quite a few movies while laying prone on the couch.  And since nothing genuinely blog-worthy has occurred, I thought I'd bore you with some thoughts I've had on a few of these movies.  I encourage you to be jealous of my current lifestyle while simultaneously feeling so, so sad for what I've become. 

1)  Who knew?  If you cast Irish and English actors to play Irish and English characters, the performances end up sounding Irish and English.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Michael Collins.  If you're not familiar with the film, I don't blame you.  It's a historical epic starring Liam Neeson as the titular character, the guy that pretty much created the Irish Republican Army as we know it today.  It is awesome and features some truly outstanding supporting roles played by Aiden Quinn and Professor Snape.  

 "And I will personally disembowel every last Snout and light their entrails on fire."

HOWEVER, the female lead--an Irish lass, keep in mind--was played by Julia Fucking Roberts.  You haven't seen an awful performance in a movie until you've seen Julia Roberts stumble through 133 minutes of an Irish brogue.  She almost single-handedly derailed the greatest Irish movie of all time, non-Ned Devine division.

"Look y'all!  I'm-a destroyin' this movie right now!"

If you haven't seen Michael Collins, I strongly recommend you do so.  Not only because it's a wonderful film about a man people should know about, but also for the duality of that hag's dreadful performance.  Oscar winner, my ass.  She should have gotten the opposite of an Oscar for Michael Collins.  Like, a "Rectum". 

Why do I bring this up?  Because two nights ago I watched another movie about the British fisting the Irish called In the Name of the Father.  

This time, however, actual British and Irish people were cast in the important roles.  

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conlon, a hippie in 1970's Belfast who is wrongly accused of an IRA pub bombing because--among other reasons--his alibi was "dissapeared" by British investigators, desperate for a scapegoat.  He, along with a few of his friends, family members and Father, are all imprisoned for the crime which, again, they didn't commit.  While in jail, his Father dies before the entire group is exonerated once the corruption within the British investigation is exposed.  The film is based on a true story, and like many "Based on a true story" movies, it managed to get some of the details right. 

Pete Postlethwaite was cast as Jerry's Father, Giuseppe and I sort of feel the exact opposite about his performance of how I feel about that chucklefuck Julia Robert's performance.  You may recognize Pete Postlethwaite as Father Laurence in the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo + Juliet...or as the guy that hunted the T-Rex in Jurassic Park: the Lost World.

This guy.

Seriously, Pete here is on my short list of favorite actors.  He's genuinely amazing and I cannot believe he lost an Oscar for his performance in In the Name of the Father to Tommy Lee Jones.  That loss isn't as egregious as some of the other Oscar upsets of the last 30 years but it's pretty bad. 

It's also too bad that he's pretty dead.  RIP, Pete.  

2)  I think I've figured out Harry Potter's most amazing power.

HBO has been showing the last two Harry Potter movies on pretty much a constant loop for a month now.  It's cool.  I had some issues with the middle third of the series--don't even get me started on the stupidity of that dumbass Tri-Wizard Cup movie--but feel the franchise started it's comeback with the Order of the Phoenix entry. 

Harry can do some pretty awesome spells, none of which I can name here because I'm not that big a fan of the series.  Petronus?  Is that one of them?  Has something to do with a glow-in-the-dark Bambi?  Anyhoo, Harry has the mad ability to chase down a snitch, keep his little fanboy from suffering a complete mental breakdown while simultaneously banging the dude's sister and basically winning all the magic. He's awfully hardcore for a nerd. 

You know what else Harry does better than anyone?  He has the power to keep his glasses on, no matter the circumstances.  

Think about it.  No matter how sweaty he gets during battle, no matter how many stories he falls off a dragon into a lake, no matter how many times he gets hit by a spell and blasted through the air, his glasses always stay on.  I'm sure if I re-watched the movies, I could find an instance or two where he is getting up off the ground after a wall or something fell on him and he's searching for his glasses but I can't think of one off the top of my head.  

 "Ocular Gorlillatis Glueium!"

That is one powerful spell.  

3)  I saw Brave and, well, meh...

I guess I've come to expect something profound from Pixar.  I strongly believe the best movies of 2000 (Toy Story 2), 2009 (WALL-E) and 2010 (Up) were Pixar movies.   

Brave?   Well, it was a beautifully shot movie.  And don't tell my Mom--which will be difficult anyway because, you know, she's dead--but I've always liked Scottish music a little better than Irish music. And it was funny.  

But it was much more of a traditionally Disney movie than any other Pixar effort.  You know, princess doesn't want to get married, she whines to a witch, a spell happens that messes everything up, intelligent animals get involved in shenanegans and at the end, the princess bonds with her Mother.  

Don't get me wrong, it was good.  It just wasn't what I've come to expect from Pixar.  If anything, Pixar is is a victim of it's own awesomeness on this one. 

4)  Wes Anderson continues to be the best director making movies today.  

I get it.  His movies are not for everyone.  I know more than a few people--people whose opinions I trust--who continue to not like Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, not to mention The Darjeeling Limited, etc.  And his movies, despite a bright color pallet, tend to be a little bleak; they are movies about sad people often doing sad things.  

His latest effort, Moonrise Kingdom, is another such film, only this time the movie isn't just about sad people: Moonrise Kingdom is about two sad kids coming of age surrounded by sad people.  How he makes sequences of these movies seem so damn cheery, I will never know.  It's a gift.  

If you like Wes Anderson, I cannot recommend this movie enough.  If, however, you are bored to tears by his previous efforts, there's no changing your mind.  You'll hate it. 

5)  Lest you think my life isn't as sad as a Wes Anderson Character...

In the last two weeks I've also watched:  Twin Peaks, all 4 Futurama movies, The Bad News Bears, Goon with Sean William Scott (this movie kicked ass), The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi, the entire Gilmore Girls series, The Hunt for the BTK Killer, What Planet Are You From? featuring Garry Shandling, 21 Jump Street (twice!  In two days!), The American President and so many Supernaturals, I've lost count. 

Anyone want to hire me for something?  Anything?

I present the following story as an AWESOME public service

Did ya hear about the 4th of July fireworks display in San Diego last night?  About how the display--supposed to last 20 minutes or so--suffered a computer glitch and all the fireworks went off at once?  If not, read and watch this.  For those too lazy to click on a link, check this out:

An exploding whale's vagina

Look at that!  It's like friggin' Baghdad back during Desert Storm!  Only in California!  I'm going to stop using exclamation points now!

Apparently, San Diego residents were, in a word, "pissed".  I suppose it's possible that I might have been as well.  After all, if I took the time to take Krishni, Vladimir and Vladimiria down to the harbor, staked out a decent viewing area, and got the kids all geared up for a long fireworks display, only to have a freak pyrotechnics accident happen, I likely would have been annoyed.  I mean, it's not like San Diego has a public address announcer that can get the word of such a mistake out to an entire city's residents.  I would have been just as confused as the rest of the crowd.

However, if it was just me and Krishni and an enormous amount of adult beverages, perhaps the ensuing explosions would have blown my nuts off with awesomeness.  

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed that display. 

4th of July

I grew up in Lisle, Illinois.

Population: Who gives a fuck

Lisle is a little white trash town adjacent to several rich towns:  Oakbrook, Hinsdale, Naperville.  We are like the red-headed step-child of the west suburbs (perhaps an unrelated side-note:  the autocorrect on my iPhone consistently changes "Lisle" to "lose").

In an effort to boost tourism while simultaneously giving a great big middle finger to Naperville, Lisle created the "Eyes to the Skies" festival in 1982.  The festival--held on or immediately around the 4th of July every year--includes a carnival, local and "national" bands, deep-fried foodstuffs, a parade, fireworks and--the point of the whole thing--dozens of hot air balloons that fly in every morning and evening after a day of, well, ballooning, I guess.  

There's also this thing:

The festival went through some financial troubles in the late 80's before a group of concerned citizens took over the planning of the event and really kicked it into high gear in 1992.  Since then, Eyes to the Skies has grown annually and according to their website, now boasts over 150,000 visitors each year.  Also:  "The Eyes to the Skies Festival has been selected six times as One of the Country’s Top 100 Tourist Destinations by the American Bus Association."  

So...good for us, I guess.

My family moved to Lisle in 1978, the year of Mike.  My Dad built our house on an acre of land that, at the time, was totally undeveloped.  This acre happened to be sitting directly accross the street from the stretch of land that would eventually become the Lisle Park District.  The Park District being the eventual location of Eyes to the Skies.  It was pretty sweet.

However, since we were the first family on the block and since only two families joined us on that stretch of Yackley Avenue in subsequent years, that stretch of road continued to be dangerously underdeveloped by the city of Lisle.  We didn't even have a sidewalk until the early 90's and there was a sizable drainage ditch next to the entrance to our driveway.  This drainage ditch was the source of annual hilarity.

You see, I've always hated crowds.  And heat.  And just about everything about Eyes to the Skies except the fireworks.  Handily, since the park was just across the street, all we had to do to watch the big, bright explosions in the sky was to drag our lawn furniture from our back yard to the front yard.  Each year, we would slather ourselves in bug spray, bring a cooler filled to the brim with beer down to our chairs and watch the fireworks from the comfort of our own yard.  It was magical.

And then each year after the fireworks, we would gleefully sit and watch 150,000 people file out of the festival, walk past our house in the dark, and fall in the drainage ditch.

In addition to Lisle dragging their feet on installing a sidewalk, they never bothered to install street lights along that stretch of Yackley.  As such, it was dark along our street.  Like, "pitch black dark even with a moon and on an overcast night you don't stand a chance of successfully walking if you're not paying attention to the ground in front of you" dark.  Sidewalks are, what, four feet wide?  If people--typically teens since older folks like to walk on the sidewalk--were walking in a group and spilling over onto the grass along the concrete, the ground would suddenly give way, sending the teenager tumbling down about four feet to an iron sewer cover where he--it was always a "he"--would curse and struggle and eventually climb out of the pit while still trying to look cool.  

And since we were always a little drunk by this point in the evening, we would howl and point and generally make that kid feel extra small.  I never said I was a good person.  

This sequence of events happened so frequently, we never, ever left our seats until the crowd had fully filed out of the park.  Honestly, it's a genuine shock that the city of Lisle--or my friggin' parents--were never sued because of this annual treat. 

My family eventually downsized our house and moved to the other side of the park district where we happily still have an excellent view of the fireworks from our front yard.  Unfortunately, no one is ever in mortal danger of falling and breaking something simply for my bemusement.  And since my Dad is renting his house, it's not like we can just dig a pit in his front yard.  

Or can we?

Happy 4th of July!

Catcher in the Fries

My all-time favorite baseball player is Carlton Fisk.  

Not pictured:  His gigantic balls

Carlton Fisk was an old-school, hard-assed baseball player who unfortunately played the first half of his career in Boston but thankfully played the last half of his career for my beloved Chicago White Sox.  Sure, he might be most famous for his clutch, off-the-foul-pole home run in game 6 of the 1975 World Series:

but to me, he will always be a hard-core baseball junkie who ended up catching more baseball games than any other man in baseball history.  His knees must be like jello now.

A few years ago, the White Sox had "Carlton Fisk Day" at Comiskey.  Before the game, they dedicated a life-size statue to him on the center field concourse.  

The statue is cool.  It's a fine, bronze testement to one of the most popular White Sox players of all time.

Now, while I was unable to attend that game, I was lucky enough to be present at "Carlton Fisk Replica Statue" night a few weeks ago.  During a bachelor party.

My good buddy Jimmy Freund is joining me in the exclusive "Married to a woman who can do much, much better" club.  A few Saturdays ago, a dozen or so of us went down to Comiskey to drink entirely too much beer and eat fatty foods all day.  While the party never got out of control--I was home by midnight--we did tie one on pretty good.  

At the end of the night, we found ourselves at Daily Bar and Grill in Lincoln Square for some much needed dinner.  At the table, we were joined by our new buddy Carlton Fisk.  

He was new to the group and didn't really know anyone at the table.  Thus, at first, Carlton was a bit shy.  

He seemed nervous.  He kept hiding being a beer bottle before warming up to us a bit.  He eventually moved out from behind that Budweiser to join us until something spooked him and he hid behind the ketchup for a while.

However, as things tend to do at bachelor parties, the liquor started flowing and Carlton really hit it off with us.  

In fact, when the waitress came by a short time later to check on us, he was the first guy to jump at another round of drinks.

It didn't take him long to warm up to us.  Pretty soon he was laughing, telling jokes and he felt comfortable enough around us to order the most disgusting thing on the menu: a big ol' plate of chili cheese fries:

He was laughing and telling us stories about the 1975 World Series and all the tail he used to get in Chicago in the early 80's.  We are enjoying his performance so much, we almost didn't notice when he upped the ante on us and sparked up:

Carlton was clearly in it to win it.  In fact, he suddenly claimed that he "won" Jimmy's bachelor party.  We're not even sure where he got it but he suddenly put on his "Championship belt" and demanded that we all kneel and respect his triumph.  

Then, after slapping the waitress on the ass for the 13th time in the night, he said he had to "take care of something" and proceeded to rub one out at the table.  Who knew little Carlton Fisk was into auto erotic asphyxiation?

Clearly, the night had taken a turn for the weird.  I almost felt sorry for him when he started to vomit into his own glass.  

It turns out that that sudden shot of humility brought Carlton back to reality.  After that, he was all fun and games again.  Dude does a mean Dumbledore impression:

He then ran around the table asking guys if they were "The Gatekeeper"

Things got pretty meta when he posed for a picture next to a picture of himself.  

At this point, things were winding down on the evening.  Carlton, however, would have none of it,  He wanted to keep the party train rolling, suggesting we go all Roman and have a toga party orgy with the waitress and a group of ladies at the next table.  He was prepared.

Our group had golfed earlier in the day then followed that up with a series of 22 ounce beers at Comiskey followed by bar hopping...we were wiped out.  But Carton wanted to keep going.  We were quite impressed by his stamina.  Honestly, we didn't know from where he was getting all his energy.  

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  I was exhausted and I calmly explained to Little Fisk that it was time to go.  He was pissed because he was going home with me and not the waitress but he said he understood.  We finally placated him by crowning him "King of the Bachelor Party":

He and I hopped in a cab and headed back to my wife.  Carlton woke up the next day feeling like shit, as you might imagine.  Don't worry about him; he says he learned a valuable lesson that night about moderation and is back at work, standing guard, ever vigilant over our wireless router

His time to shine will come again.  Oh yes, it will come again. 

In Absentia

One of the things about unemployment that no one ever tells you about is that it is sooooo boring.  Sure, it sounds nice to wake up at 11 every day and not really move or shower until the later part of the afternoon, but there really is only so much TV you can watch without going a little stir crazy.  As such, I find there isn't an awful lot to blog about that my devastatingly sexy readership of 7 would find remotely interesting.  If I made an effort to give daily updates on my couch sitting style and hygiene, it would not only be incredibly boring but also sorta disgusting.  "Haven't showered in 3 days.  Watching Sportscenter again.  Have eaten nothing but tacos."  That's just not good reading.

However, when I start getting texts from friends complaining that I haven't blogged in a few weeks--thank you very much, Mary Kate--it's time to dust off some ideas that have been rolling around in my lately-not-so-creative brain.  Over the next couple of days, be on the lookout for some seriously random blog entries.  We can share in these moments together.

Lawn Care Overkill

Of all the things in the world my readership won't give two shits about me complaining, this probably tops that list.

So, I was trying to sleep at 12:15 this afternoon (before you get all pissed off at my freedom, keep in mind that I have no money and I've spend the last three days in a melancholy funk watching Gilmore Girls and wondering if I'd ever work again.  It hasn't been fun.).  The last few nights, I hadn't slept well so I chugged a bunch of Target-brand Nyquil at about 2am in an effort to finally get some rest.  Damned if I didn't sleep hard-freakin'-core.  So hard core, that when Krishni woke me up this morning to make pancakes, I went back to sleep at 11:30.

However, shortly after I did so, the leaf-blower guy showed up.

I guess this is as good a spot as any to say we hate our management company.  We live in a condo so we have to pay silly association fees so that our "lawn" will be mowed and our sidewalks will be shoveled in the event of snow.  Unless of course they don't feel like coming out and we do all that shit ourselves.  Anyhow, once a week our eastern-European property manager will arrive and instead of raking the leaves and twigs that have fallen on the various 5' x 12' plots of grass, he will enthusiastically strap-on a back-pack type leaf-blower and go to town for an hour.  Every Tuesday morning at 8 am, we're awakened to the jet-engine sound of a guy too lazy to buy a rake.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwww..."

He'll fire that bad-boy up for 10 seconds, let it idle, fire it up again for 5 seconds, let it idle, fire it up again for 10 seconds, let it idle...on and on until every last helicopter seed has been blown onto the street. 

These used to bring such joy to my childhood.  Now all these little fuckers can go to hell.

Ok, so I get awakened once a week by a lazy, leaf-blowing asshole.  No biggie, right?  Well, with the advent of summer, our management company has hired a team of these guys to come every Friday morning to our property and go to town on our tiny little plot of grass.  Which brings me to this morning.

It rained all day yesterday and it was still raining this morning while I nodded in and out of sleep.  I didn't care.  I love rain.  Rain kicks-ass.  However, it does not kick ass when the crack landscaping team arrives to leaf-blow the shit out of our 5' x 12' plots of grass.  If there was ever a time for a rake, this was it.  Wet grass?  A leaf-blower aint gonna work.  But damn did this guy try.  For over an hour, he stood directly outside our bedroom window revving and idling, revving and idling, revving and idling.  AND, when he was sweeping the sidewalk, he took his leaf-blower off his back and left it running on the ground outside our building.  Because, apparently, he wanted to be murdered by that sword my Godfather bought me when I was 12. 

But that's not all!  The crack lawn team--thinking this alone couldn't be enough to drive me to murder--brought along an industrial lawn mower that they probably use at Wrigley Field to mow our "lawn".  Now, keep in mind that our little stretches of grass are roughly 5' x 12', with a tree in the middle of each plot.  Not a lot of room to maneuver an industrial mower.  Check it out:

Smile, Pedro!

How much overkill is that lawn mower?  It's half as big as the plot of land he's mowing! He would struggle with that thing to get it onto each little plot, then sort of bump it up against the building twice, struggle to move it to the other side of the tree, bump it up against the building again and move on to the next plot of grass.  And while you may not be able to see it, that is an incredibly loud engine on the back of that thing that ROARS in our courtyard. 

Seriously.  Fuck these guys. 

I'm having some wine.