Because It's Preshow (Preshooooow!)

Funny, Reminiscing, Videos View Comments
Mar 132010

In 2003, shortly after I graduated from college (for the first time), I was hired to work at a theatre in southern Utah called Tuacahn.  I was hired to be a mud person in the production of The Wizard of Oz, and as third half-naked priest from the left in The King and I.  Because I’m so very Asian.

It’s a beautiful outdoor amphitheater that seats over 2,000 people.  Being set in the southwest, Tuacahn plays up its cowboy old-west heritage.  In order to help turn this massive theatre in the middle of nowhere into more of a destination experience, they also offer a chuck wagon dinner each night, where folks who have bought their tickets to see the show can get a meal and enjoy the scenery.  One of my other jobs at Tuacahn was to perform in the little Preshow performance that took place on a small stage up in the plaza outside the theatre during the chuck wagon dinner. 

The show was extremely hokey, and not a whole lot of fun to do (which could sum up about 80% of my career as a performer, if I’m being honest), and so, after about a month of doing the show, I decided that I wanted to make a Christopher Guest-style mocumentary about the whole preshow experience.  Of course, I didn’t have any filmmaking resources, so I bought a small consumer DV camera, and pirated a copy of Adobe Premiere, (which I had never used before in my life) and I started interviewing the cast of the Preshow each night after the Preshow performance, but before the main stage show started. 

It wasn’t long before word got around, and folks were clambering to take part.  You know how it is with performers.  As soon as they get a whiff of attention, they start cycling around overhead like vultures over so much carrion.  I was interviewing costumers, stage managers, and friends who were in town to watch the show as audience members.  About two weeks before the end of the summer season, during which I would be leaving Tuacahn to drive to Tennessee to work at the Black Bear Jamboree, I took the hours and hours of footage, cut it all together in about three days of work, fitting it in before or after the show. 

My biggest challenge is that I had only interviewed the 40 people in the casts.  I hadn’t really asked a lot of leading questions, nor had I staged most of what happened.  Everyone there knew it wasn’t serious, and they fed me with a lot of great material, but there just wasn’t a unifying thread to the whole thing.  I cut together most of what I needed, shot a bit of B-Roll, and asked the "assistant director" who did a lot of the interviewing to do a bit of voiceover work.  I was then able to craft a rough story out of the footage I had.

I wasn’t perfect.  I didn’t have good audio equipment, so the audio is noisy.  It wasn’t a controlled set, so people were always walking into the frame.  I wasn’t familiar with the editing software, and there are a couple of continuity errors or incorrect B-Roll, but when it was done, I was pretty proud of it.  More surprisingly, someone (not me) convinced the theater management to let us show the finished product during the closing night cast party.

I was one of the proudest moments of my life.  There were probably 100 folks at this party who watched it, and the film got a standing ovation at the end.  I decided then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker.  And like all of my big, life-changing decisions, I stuck with it for the 20 minutes it took me to drive from the theatre back to the hotel I was staying in for the night.  But I’ve always looked back on this little project with fondness.  It’s not perfect. It’s full of inside jokes that most folks wouldn’t get.  But it was something I accomplished that was well-received.  And as an artist, that’s always a great thing. 

I decided it was time to put the thing up on the interwebs for posterity.  I still have a DVD master of the thing, but the source tapes and files have long since disappeared over the years.  I just wanted to make sure that, if I ever had my house burn down, that I wouldn’t forever lose this thing.  So, I am proud to present, Preshow: The Mocumentary.

 

 

 

Part 2

 

 

Part 3

 

 

Part 4

 

 

Part 5

 

 

Part 6

 

 

Part 7

 

Posted by Matt at 2:00 pm

A Tale of Toilet Paper

Funny, Health, Pictures, Ramblings, Seriously?, Videos View Comments
Jan 242010

In November 2003, Shawn, Emily, and I had Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment in Sevierville, Tennessee.  Shawn and I had gone shopping a couple of nights before, I had done most of the cooking, and we ate ourselves sick.  We had to have our dinner before Thanksgiving, since we had to perform shows all day on Thanksgiving day proper.  In mid-meal, there was a knock on the door, and I got to learn, first hand, what Brown could do for me.  It was the UPS man with a box for me.  (I’m really fighting the urge to put a tasteless joke about a big package from the UPS man…and I’m failing.)  Anyway, inside this large package (ahem) was a little invention that changed my life forever.  The ever-blessed TiVo Series 2.

Since that day, I have never been without a TiVo in my life…except for that truly painful four months after I left hell Tennessee where I lived at home with my mom in Michigan.  It wasn’t the living with my mom that was painful, it’s that a) my parents to this day still don’t have a DVR, and b) my mother is incapable of correctly channel surfing when commercials are on.  She’s like a little kid who sees a bright shiny–she just flips to another channel and gets engrossed until a commercial comes on on that channel, then she’ll flip to a third channel, etc.  The woman has never watched an entire television show from beginning to end in her whole adult life.  It’s enough to drive me up the wall.  (HI MOM!)

Anyway, since that wonderful day 6 1/2 (!) years ago when I waltzed from the world of the commercial watchers into the much more sophisticated and urbane world of the television time shifters, I nearly never watch commercials.  If I can’t generate that satisfying little "bloop, bloop, bloop" sound and fast forward though 5 minutes of mind-meltingly stupid television advertising, then as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather not watch TV at all.

Every great once in a while, though, I run out of things to watch on my TiVo.  It doesn’t happen that often, but with the truly abysmal quality of most of the primetime television on this season, I will often find myself flipping the channel to Food Network or HGTV and just letting it play in the background while I cook, eat, or pack up my life for the 5,000th time into boxes and prepare to move once again not that I’m bitter.

It was during one of these times of television background noise that a certain commercial was brought to my attention.  And, my fellow Americans, It. Was. NOT. Okay. 

Perhaps you have seen this commercial.  It contains a couple of little animated bears hocking Charmin toilet paper.  They’ve, apparently, been in a whole series of commercials, and they look like this:

Cute, right?  Except in this particular commercial, a mother bear catches her young cub looking through a telescope at the ass of another bear who is sitting up in a tree and who, apparently , has toilet paper remnants stuck to said ass.  There are many, many things wrong with this commercial.  First, a voyeuristic child is using a telescope to spy on an adult going to the bathroom.  And apparently, is getting so up close and personal that he can notice mini TP dingleberries in the adult’s butt hair.  Secondly, the kid’s mother is RIGHT THERE.  Wake up, mama bear!  I don’t know about you, but if I had a kid who was so fascinated with watching the bathroom habits of the neighbors with a telescope, I’d have that kid in front of either a psychotherapist or priest so fast it would make his head spin.  But no, you just sit there and think it’s cute.  "Ah look honey.  Little cubby’s got a sick fascination with the neighbor’s toilet time.  Better call Dr. Freud!"

Apparently, this is not the only commercial where Charmin thinks it’s okay to go probing (ahem) through the annals (AHEM) of toilet paper posterior problems.  Thanks to YouTube, I have since seen a mother chasing her cub (who, by the way, has the most annoying giggle ever recorded) around the forest with a dustpan and broom to remove "leftover pieces of toilet paper."  Call me kooky, but somehow, I think that a hand broom and a dustpan aren’t really the best tools to take care of the problem of left over toilet paper.

And then there’s the commercial that spawned this screen capture, which I found by typing in the words "Charmin Bears":

 

[charmin+bears.png]

Yikes.  I don’t exactly know what’s going on in this picture, I’m pretty sure this is probably how most gay porn films start.  "Hey coach, do I look like I have any extra toilet paper on my butt?"

Here’s my question, though: Is this really a problem?  I mean, let’s be honest here.  I’ve got a very screwed up digestive system.  I visit the bathroom more times a day than anyone I know.  I can manage to go through a truly heroic amount of toilet paper in a week.  I’ve never had problems with leftover toilet paper sticking where it doesn’t belong.  And I don’t use Charmin.  I use Cottonelle.  Exclusively.  And I have for a long time.  And I got to thinking: who, exactly, are these commercials trying to reach.  What’s the intended audience?  I’m set in my toilet paper ways.  And I’m certainly not being swayed into switching by watching animated ursine fetishists.

Then there’s this:

 

Seriously, Charmin?  SERIOUSLY?  I’m sorry, but I’ve been using dry toilet paper for nearly 30 years now.  I’m not going to start buying what are, in essence, baby wipes, even if the moron you’ve got doing your product demo is so mentally challenged he can’t get toothpaste off his hand with toilet tissue.  For experimentation’s sake, I was able to get it off my hand in a single swipe, and my skin didn’t even taste like toothpaste afterwards.  What’s your problem, dimwit?

All of this contemplation about toilet paper got my mind going.  First, I needed to gather some information.  Then, I needed to parse and mull on said information.  Then I needed to take a good long look at why the subject of toilet paper preferences fascinates me so deeply and investigate the myriad of other things I could have spent my mental currency on that would have made a positive difference to the world or my personal life.  But instead, I wrote a quick post in the middle last week to get some information about toilet paper.  And I learned some interesting things:

  1. When it comes to toilet paper, there are generally two kinds of people:  Those who have a single brand that they stand behind with a religious furvor, and those who buy whatever happens to be cheapest.
  2. Those people who buy specific toilet papers only because they’re cheap are horrible, horrible people, and we can no longer be friends.
  3. Surprisingly, Angel Soft seems to be the most popular brand.  I don’t get it.  Compared to Cottonelle or the TP of the creepy bears, Angel soft just doesn’t compare. 
  4. One ply toilet paper is universally loathed, and the only people who think it is appropriate to buy, even despite it’s very low cost, are the people responsible for purchasing supplies for companies who obviously don’t give a rat’s ass (no pun intended) about the physical well-being of their employees.  In fact, my employer, whose name rhymes with Nicroloft, buys toilet paper that is simultaneously so thin that you can see your own fingerprints through it and so roughly processed that it will give you splinters.  I’m sorry, but if I wanted to rub wood pulp across my sphincter, I’d go outside, pull down my pants, and rub my butt up against a pine tree.  For someone who has to go to the restroom as often as I do, (warning: overshare ahead) I have actually had the toilet paper at work make me bleed.  Now, when someone says, "that really chaps my ass," I know first hand what they means.
  5. Toilet paper should always be hung with the leading squares coming up over the top of the roll.   ALWAYS.  If you do it any other way you’re wrong.  If you ever come into my house and turn the toilet paper over so it’s coming out of the bottom of the roll, you’re forever uninvited from my house.  Overhand only.

And finally, for the service of those readers who mentioned this in their comments, I would like to provide you a few rules about toilet paper etiquette which you must follow, at the risk of having your toilet paper privileges taken away forever.

  1. If you finish a roll of toilet paper, it is your responsibility to replace the roll of toilet paper.  Failure to do so means that there will be no place in heaven for you in the next life.  Fail to replace the roll and go to Hell.  It’s that simple.
  2. Replacing the roll means taking off the old paper tube, and replacing the roll completely on the dispenser.  It does not mean setting it on the counter.  It does not mean placing it on the floor.  It, under no circumstance, means simply placing it on top of the empty tube which your lazy rear end left in the dispenser.  Failure to fully replace the empty roll will result in severe beatings.
  3. Please, for the love of all things good an holy, PLEASE leave at least one extra roll in the bathroom at all times.  Do NOT keep all your extra toilet paper out in the hallway closet.  Because if I run out TP in your house, and there’s not an extra roll in the bathroom, I will walk out of your bathroom with my pants around my ankles doing that bent-knee wide stance waddle so as not to cause any smearing.  Then I will waddle into your living room, sit down, and start dragging my butt across the carpet like a dog with worms.  You have been warned.

Now you know.

So, what did my mental foray into the world of toilet tissue teach me?  First, that toilet tissue is very personal, and that the way I do it is right, and the way everyone else does it is wrong unless they do it just like me.  That being cheap when it comes to toilet paper will only end in heartache.  That it’s really hard to find a decent way to refer to your own anus as a "Brown-Eyed Susan" without making it sound forced.  That the Charmin bears are freaky, and more than a little creepy, and most of all…

I need to start TiVo’ing more television shows.

Posted by Matt at 12:41 am

Insanity, thy name is Matt

Family, Oh. My. Hecks., Philosophizing, Ramblings, Vacations and Road Trips View Comments
Dec 302009

I've often wondered how people manage to interact with me on a daily basis.  Because it has become blatantly obviously that I'm completely and totally insane.  What with the level of sheer crazy that I've managed to obtain over the last couple of weeks, I'm honestly surprised people have started talking to me in condescending child voices or surreptitiously avoiding my gaze (or presence) like you would a raving lunatic on the subway who is recruiting passengers for his long space journey to join the God Lukamis who lives on the planet Zimath.  I, of course, didn't always consider myself to be completely mental.  It's a condition that snuck up on me gradually.  But here I am.  Just recently, I found myself at a bit of a crossroads: I could either fight to maintain what little sanity I still possessed, or I could embrace my inherent mental unhinging with wild abandon. 

I chose the latter.

And what, you may ask, is the thing that pushed over the edge from (relatively) sane, (barely) normal, suburban corporate life into my Tom Cruise-level of crazy?  I can promise you, you're not going to see this coming.  Are you ready?

…

Here it comes…

…

In August, I'm going on a 5-day backpacking trip through the Wind River Valley in Wyoming.

Serious.  I'm going on a 50+ mile hike through the Wyoming high country.  You can see several photos and a narrative at this website (which is also the source of the above photo).

On the surface, this may not seem like the standard definition of insanity, but let me explain why it is:

  1. I haven't been camping since I was 15 years old
  2. I didn't particularly enjoy it then
  3. My idea of roughing it is spending a night in a Motel 6
  4. There will be no electricity
  5. Ergo, there will be no computers, cell phones, televisions, etc.
  6. I have absolutely no experience on this kind of trip
  7. I own no appropriate camping/hiking gear
  8. It will be an elevations between 10,000 and 13,000 feet
  9. I'm a lazy, lazy man
  10. This will require pooping in a hole in the middle of nowhere outside in the open

One guess as to which one of those concerns me the most.  (Hint: #10)

So, what happened what this:  They say insanity runs in the genes.  I'm not sure exactly who "they" is, but "they" say that.  If "they" is correct, then I got my particular brand of insanity from my father.  Last summer, my dad, his Twin Brother™ and two other men went on a rather dangerous and difficult 8 day (I think), 85 mile backpacking trip along the Highline Trail in the Uinta Mountains of Utah.  He did this despite the fact that he is old enough to join AARP.  When dad got back from his trip, I spent a lot of time on the phone with him as he related his experience.  And my father is, if nothing else, a master storyteller.  He painted a picture for me that stirred my blood with excitement.  The trip was extremely difficult, but according to him, was a life-changing experience.  He described the nights with the skies so clear you could see the milky way stretch from one horizon to the other; of locations so remote, places so isolated that it was easy to forget that you weren't the last man alive.  He made me jealous.  I have never experienced anything like that.  The closest I get to experiences like that is when I take Luke to the dog park early enough in the morning that nobody else is out yet.

Also, this year, my little sister did something that was (to me) equally as impressive.  She hiked from one rim of the grand canyon to the other rim in a single day, a total of some ridiculous sum like 23 miles.  Her blog post about the experience got me going too. She managed to do something that was so difficult, but so completely rewarding.  It's almost like the two things go hand in hand.  Who knew?

So, when I went home for Christmas, dad showed me the pictures of his trip…and they were absolutely gorgeous.  And again I was jealous.  And then he did what he does every year: invite me to come along on the next trip.  I believe that he was fully expecting that, like every year since I was 14, I would make some smart-ass comment about staying in a Motel 6, and that would be that.  But his stories of the trail stirred something primal inside of me that has long been dormant/dead, and I got to thinking–"a dangerous pastime, I know".  I'm fairly certain that I took him off guard when I said that I wanted to go.

I think it's fairly unlikly that I will ever be one of those avid backpackers/hikers/outdoorsman.  Most of the time, I'd rather spend my weekend in my pajamas, sitting in front of my HDTV, and playing video games.  Or shopping.  Or going out to eat.  Or giving myself an appendectomy with a garden scythe.  But while doing those things (except for the appendectomy) are enjoyable, I feel like continuing to choose them over more participative activities is tantamount to throwing my life down the garbage disposal and flipping on the switch.  I'm young(ish), relatively healthy, and I want to experience life.  I have always assumed that I don't like backpacking, but I've never done it.  And maybe I'd really, really enjoy it.  Maybe I'll despise every second of it, and by the end of the trip, my dad will want to go all Abraham and Isaac on me up in the mountains because of my incessant complaining.  But I won't know until I've tried it.  There are enough things in life that I won't get to do because of time, money, fear, etc.  I don't want to give up what could be a life-changing experience (or a great new hobby) without trying it.

Plus, I just spent a butt-load of money on a new camera.  This seems like a truly excellent opportunity to do the kind of photography that most people don't even dream about. I mean, really, how often does someone (who isn't a photographer for National Geographic) get to carry a professional camera into the vast wilds for five days and snap photos like crazy?

So, I have agreed to go on a massive (for me) backpacking trip in August.  I get out of breath going up three flights of stairs.  My idea of exertion is making my bed.  This means that training started on Monday and will continue through August.  Training consists of:

  • Losing 20 Pounds (See Resolution #3)
  • Geting into Shape (See Resolution #6)
    • Cardio (Running, doing stairs)
    • Weights (Shoulders, Back, and Abs, especially…so I can carry a 45# pack)
    • Start eating real, natural food to fuel the process
  • Begging, borrowing, or stealing as much equipment as necessary.  I don't want to start spending hundreds of dollars on equipment until I know for sure this is going to be a long-term hobby for me.  I don't need another money sink hole in my life, thank you very much
  • Practicing hiking.  Start doing some day hikes on the weekends around the area.  Bring dog for company.

It's day four of the new routine, and I've already lost four pounds.  I've been running twice, except I can only run about a mile and a half, and now I have shin splints.  But I must persevere.  Because I'll be damned if I get out on the trail in August and I get my rear end handed to me by a couple of men old enough to get the senior citizen discount at Denny's.  I may be inexperienced, but I'm going to make sure that by the time August rolls around, I'll be ready.  Or I will have quit.  But either way, we'll know.

I'm really, really excited for this trip.  It hasn't even been fully planned yet, but I'm looking forward to it.  As I was telling my (insane) father, I'm scared to death of it, because it's so new, but it's also exciting.  I expect that it will be one of the more physically demanding things I've ever done in my life–going through puberty notwithstanding–but I feel like I really need to exert myself in a portion of my life.  I need something that will roust me from my ever-deepening rut and give me the motivation to get my act in gear.  I figure that there are few motivators more potent than the looming threat 50+ mile hike through the Wyoming high country with a heavy backpack and a couple of trash-talking geriatrics to get me headed down the right path.

And if I survive, I'll have a few amazing blog posts and (hopefully) thousands of pictures to share.

If I survive.

Posted by Matt at 11:27 pm

Matt the Mouth Breather

Funny, Health, Pictures, Ramblings, Rants, Whine View Comments
Dec 172009

http://s.bebo.com/app-image/7925722980/5411656627/PROFILE/i.quizzaz.com/img/q/u/08/04/09/gallery_Napoleon_Dynamite_1.jpg

I dislike the term Mouth Breather as a derogatory term for one simple reason:  I am a mouth breather.  I sit at my computer screen with my jaw slack.  I have to replace my pillows every six months due to copious amounts of drool.  I often look as though I am the slack-jawed love child of an unholy union between two backwoods cousins in West Virginia.  But I can’t help it.  I breathe through my mouth.

There are several reasons for this:

  1. I physically can not breathe through my nose without it whistling.  And which is more annoying?  A mouth breather, or a nose whistler?  I thought so.
  2. I have been sick with bronchitis nearly 1/4 of my life from the age of 0 until I turned 25.  I used to get sick every single time the seasons changed.  I used to be able to call up my doctor and tell him what medication I needed.  ("Hey Dr. _______.  This is Matt Armstrong.  Could you call in a prescription for 21 500mg pills of Erethromyacin?  I’ve got bronchitis again?  No Keflex doesn’t work for my anymore, remember?  Well, Zithromax worked pretty well last time, but this time it’s just the lung congestion.  I’m not sure we need something as strong as Zithromax.")  It’s hard to breathe through your nose when it’s constantly filled with snot.  And anyone who says that I should just blow my nose and I’ll be fine has obviously never experienced what it’s like when I’m sick.  If I were to blow my nose every time it got clogged up, I’d look like this:

    http://entrenoussoitdit.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/michael-jackson-nose.jpg

  3. I’m fairly certain I have a deviated septum or something, because I can’t get a full lungful of air when I’m breathing through my nose.  So even if my nose didn’t whistle like Robert Stemmons on a concert tour, I still couldn’t breathe through my nose because I’d suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen.  (And it’s not like I need any more brain damage than I already have, thank you very much.)
  4. One side of my jaw is about an inch longer than the other side of my jaw, so it sort of hurts to keep my jaw closed tight.  The fix: a very expensive surgery requiring splitting mandible on the short side of my jaw, extending that split, screwing the bones back together, and then wiring my jaw shut for six weeks.  While I can’t deny that that might make for a really killer weight loss plan, I’m fairly certain that my wonderful "insurance" coverage wouldn’t pay for that since my jaw being off center does is not equivalent to a sucking chest wound–apparently the only thing my insurance company actually will pay for.  (I’m really glad I pay so much money for health care that doesn’t cover anything at all. No.  We don’t need health care reform in the US…)  (Also parenthetically [I love parentheticals] this is why I can’t get braces to straighten up my nasty-ass teeth.  I’d have to get the surgery before I could get the braces, and I can’t get the surgery.)
  5. Sometimes, when I get really engrossed in something–reading, playing a video game, looking at porn beating up hookers, writing a blog post, I forget that I am educated above a fourth grade level, and I just let my face go slack.

So, in conclusion: yes, I breathe through my mouth.  I also managed to get an MBA with a 4.0 GPA.  So please, before you denigrate someone by calling them a mouth breather as an insult, think of those of us who wish we weren’t mouth breathers, but have to be.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wash my pillow cases.

Posted by Matt at 12:26 am

I told you that Pumpkin Pie was nasty...

Food, Funny, Holidays, Pictures View Comments
Nov 262009

image

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Matt at 9:29 am

Un-break my Fart

Food, Funny, Health View Comments
Oct 202009

It’s impossible to buy a plunger and look dignified doing it.

It’s 10:00 PM in one of those multi-purpose grocery/hardware/toys/clothing/everything stores, there’s only one checkout lane open, and the store is full of ugly single people who don’t have anyone to go home to, cutesy couples who think that late-night grocery shopping is fun date night material, and one very tired guy with a pint of ice cream that you know he’s getting for his pregnant wife.  And then there’s me, with a plunger and a bag of apples. 

"Why apples," you ask?  You’re so considerate.  Thank you.  Because they didn’t have Fleur de Sel Caramel Ice Cream (They’ve been out of stock for TWO WEEKS!!! GRRRR!)  But really, the main reason is that, even if you really only need a plunger, it’s just not okay to go to the store and get only a plunger.  No, because if you’re at the store, and you check out with only a plunger, the clerk at the store is going to think one thing: "What’s the matter Mr. Farty McPoopyPants?  Is sumfin da matter wif yer toilet?"  And even if, theoretically, that were true, that’s just not the kind of impression you want to leave when you check out at the store.  I mean, really, there are standards. 

Ergo the apples.

(I suppose now is the time that I should insert a disclaimer that the remainder of this blog post will be about poop.  You can enjoy the obviously high-minded and scientific discourse, or surf on over to http://dailysquee.com to fill your head with pictures of cute animals instead.)

Apples are the perfect ruse because if you check out with a plunger and apples, the clerk won’t think, "It’s 10PM at night and you’re getting a plunger…obviously it’s for your up and coming Halloween costume."  (The clerk inside my head can be very sarcastic.)  Instead, the clerk will simply think, "This man must have needed apples for a last minute baking project to bring to a work office party.  And how nice that he could get a plunger at the same time–he’ll probably use it to help his little brother from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Foundation build a science project for the school fair involving a baking soda and vinegar volcano.  What a good man.  I would have thought otherwise if it were just the plunger, but since he has apples, I’m absolutely certain that there is not some hideously unfortunate plumbing issue requiring immediate attention."

The simple logic of it is really quite astounding.  The clerk needn’t think about about how the plunger may be used.  He needn’t be disgusted by having an unprovoked mental image impinge upon his psyche.  He needn’t know that my body is having it’s second straight day of a violent and bowel-wrenching reaction to a desperate attempt to eat healthily by incorporating fruits and vegetables into my diet that haven’t been wrapped in pastry, blended into ice cream, and/or deep fried first. 

(As a side note: It was all I could do not to stop at DQ to get a mint oreo blizzard on my way home from the store just to settle my stomach.  Then I realized how terrifying it is that a mint Oreo blizzard would, in fact, settle my stomach, and I continued on…thoroughly disgusted at myself for getting to the point where a fast food milkshake with cookie chunks could be considered an appropriate replacement for Pepto Bismol.)

And best of all: the theoretical "hideously unfortunate plumbing issue requiring immediate attention" resolved itself without any intervention from an upside down rubber bowl on a stick.  So, now, I have a plunger. And I don’t need to clean it.  And I need to figure out where to store said plunger so as not to give the impression that I am C. Everett Poop, Pooper Man, The Poop Nazi, a hula-poop, Poop Doggy-Dog, Poopie Goldberg…(I could keep going, but I’ll stop).

And speaking of poop (were we speaking of poop?), one time in college, I had a roommate named Shawn who had the unfortunate habit of farting loudly and on purpose…a habit he mistakenly believed was humorous.  He also had the unfortunate habit of dancing hip-hop.  One day, in the living room of the apartment, he was choreographing a routine for the halftime show of a Utah Jazz game, and he said, "Hey Guys," lifted up his leg, and farted loudly.  Then he immediately said, "Uh-oh" and ran into his bedroom.  His farting gag had gone horribly awry, and as a result, not only had he pooped in his pants, but said poop had also run down the back of his leg and had even gotten into his shoes, which were, after Shawn took a shower, thrown away.  (I’d like to take a moment to mention how glad I am that I didn’t share a bathroom with Shawn while we were roommates.)

But this is about me, and my digestive issues.  So anyway, now I have a plunger.  I didn’t have to figure out how to clean it after usage.  And best of all, now I’m not quite so full of s*#$

Posted by Matt at 10:37 pm

You Know You're Getting Fat When...

Funny, Health View Comments
Oct 192009

I had a realization forced upon me today.  I’m getting fat.  Nonsense, you say.  How is that even possible?  You’ve always been so slim and fit. 

Well, to be quite honest, I don’t like your tone.  Nobody likes sarcastic remarks.  You can just keep your snotty comments to yourself, thank you very much.

So this morning, I went to a yoga class for the first time in an effort to get some use out of the $50 a month I’m spending on my gym membership.  (This is the third time I’ve gone to the gym since I got the membership in May, thus averaging in a per-visit cost of $100).  Also, I went in an apparently vain attempt to begin my process of slimming down just in time to gorge myself sick for Thanksgiving/Christmas/Ramadan/Hanukah/Kwanza/Tet/New Years Holiday Corridor.  I didn’t hate it, which, as a person who considers typing 50 words a minute to be strenuous exercise, is a big thing for me.  I even almost felt refreshed.  I came home, ate a healthy breakfast of Fiber One cereal (they’ve stopped showing the annoying commercials, so the boycott has ended).  I took a quick nap, and then went to go take a shower, before which I decided to, um, see a man about a horse, as they say. (That means "poop.")

As I dropped trou, and sat down, I heard a crunching sound, and a sharp pinch on my Rush Limbaugh-sized ass. 

That’s right folks.  I sat on the toilet and snapped the toilet seat in half.  And it wasn’t one of those flimsy little plastic seats that bends if you look at it cross-eyed.  This one was made out of wood.  (Well, fiberboard, to be exact.)  And my bulky backside broke it with its bare butt-hands.  (Man, that is some awkward alliteration.)  I can see the headline now: Bulky Behind Breaks Bathroom.

So, I called the office, explained to them that I was going to need to get the toilet seat repaired because I’m a lardo, then I consoled myself by eating 10 Oreos in quick succession.

The yoga is really going to pay off.  I can tell.

Posted by Matt at 12:09 am

Parenting tips from Matt

Funny, Pictures View Comments
Oct 052009

image

Posted by Matt at 10:26 pm

Le Freak, C’est Chic

Funny, Rants View Comments
Sep 302009

I’m generally not a terribly jumpy person.  I had that stomped out of me by my father, who decided early on that the best way to help his children to grow up well-adjusted adults, capable of contributing to society, was to lurk around corners and doorways and leap out to scare us to the point of forcing a change of undergarments.  (One time, he snuck into our room while we were brushing out teeth before bed, and hid in the gap between the wall and my brothers bed, then waited until the lights were out and we had calmed down, then reached up over the bed, grabbed my brother, and let out a terrifying bellow.  Then laughed until he nearly made himself puke.  Yeah…explains a lot doesn’t it?)

Anway, as a result of thoroughly non-traumatizing upbringing, I have learned to keep my cool in several startling situations.  There are only a few things that freak me out, like Carrot Top (Strawberry Shortcake on steroids and botox), or eating raw tomatoes by themselves (it’s like eating acidic snot).  But there is one single thing that freaks. me. right. the. HELL. out.  One single thing that can cause me to poop my pants, puke, and scream like a pre-pubescent girl simultaneously.  This one thing can make me renounce God and beg for his mercy in the same breath.  What is this unholy demon that freaks me out?

Spiders.

(I was even going to post a picture of a spider, but the pictures I found on BIng’s image search disturb me too much.)

So, there’s a thoroughly horrifying reason why I hate spiders the way I do.  The year was 1982.  I was four years old, and then, much like now, I rarely slept through the night.  I had arisen in the middle of the night to get a drink of water.  It was 2:35am.  I had traipsed down the stairs in my red footy pajamas that I had far outgrown, and that had the feet cut off.  I padded softly across the orange vinyl flooring of our kitchen in Hyrum, Utah, got my drink of water, and was heading back toward the stairs to go back to bed, when I saw a HUGE spider on the kitchen floor.  It wasn’t tarantula huge, but the body was at least the size of a quarter. Back then, I didn’t turn into a quivery pile of jelly at the sight of a spider, so I simply picked up a shoe sitting by the back door and smashed the spider.

What happened next would forever change the course of my life.

The spider that I had sent directly to Hell (do not pass go, do not collect $200) was, what I have since come to believe, a Wolf Spider.  These charming little creatures carry their babies on their back…and the foul beast I had just dispatched was, shall we say, “in a family way.”  Unfortunately, in throwing mama from the train, I had unleashed a hoard of small, furious baby spiders.  These little back dots of evil scattered across the kitchen.  They climbed the walls, they climbed the cupboards.  They climbed the milky-white legs of a young red-headed boy wearing red footy pajamas with the feet cut off because they were too small.  They were EVERYWHERE. 

It was 2:35 AM, it was so dark, and I was covered with baby spiders, each, I’m certain, entirely focused on exacting their revenge for my brutal murder of their beloved mother.  That one single episode is single-handedly responsible for everything that has ever been wrong in my life.  It caused me to declare bankruptcy, back my Grand Marquis into the car of the local baptist minister when I was sixteen, and study musical theater in college.  It is solely responsible for my screwed up love life.  It even prescribed prescription painkillers to Michael Jackson.

Well, tonight, I was once again reminded of that fateful night, lo, those many years ago.   I was closing the curtains in my living room to prepare to get ready for bed, when something fell from the curtains and onto my head.  As I am lacking most of my hair on the top my head anymore, I could feel it scuttling across my scalp.  It then leaped down the back of my shirt, crawled down my back, and fell out the back of my shirt onto the floor, where it managed to run faster than 70 miles an hour underneath my chaise to meet up with his evil friends to laugh at my expense.

I’m not too proud to fully admit that I. LOST. IT.  I ran to the door, grabbed a shoe, and threw my chaise lounge across the room in a feat of strength I didn’t think possible to dispatch the foul creature.  (I gouged the laminate floor in the process).  I then killed the spider, took off all my clothes, went out onto my patio completely naked (thank goodness nobody was walking by just then) grabbed the insect spray, and coated my curtains, my walls, my baseboards, all the windows, and the doorframe in liquid spider death.  Then I had to take a shower.  I seriously shook out my towel before using it to make sure it didn’t have any spiders in it, and had to check all of my clothes as well.  I did manage to keep from screaming like a 14-year-old gay boy at a Jonas Brothers Concert, but only just barely. 

Now I’m sitting on my bed, typing this blog post, and trying to convince myself that I don’t need to take off all the bed sheets, inspect them, shake them out, spray them with poison, and then put them back on the bed. 

Man, I really hate spiders.

Posted by Matt at 11:15 pm

Stinging Criticism

Health, Oh. My. Hecks., Pictures, Ramblings View Comments
Jul 222009

 

So, I got stung by a bee on Sunday—for the second time in less than a year.  Before that, I had never been stung by a bee.  The first time I was stung, I was standing out in the middle of the imageparking lot, talking with one of my neighbors, with my dog sitting next to me.  Out of the middle of nowhere, this douchebag of a bee just stung me on the back of my leg.  I wasn’t moving anywhere.  I wasn’t doing anything.  He just stung me.  He was just like most of the musical theater people I went to college with: he made me feel something for a brief moment, then left me annoyed and irritated for three weeks afterwards.  Apparently, I’m mildly allergic to bee stings.  DBB(Douche Bag Bee) stung me, I slapped him dead immediately, and very quickly pulled out the stinger he oh-so-graciously left protruding from the back of my calf.  Nevertheless, I spent the next three weeks with my leg sore, red, and itching like crazy.  It wasn’t so much with the fun.

Well, this last Sunday, I went walking with the dog down around Idlewood Park next to my apartment.  It was around 2:00 in the afternoon.  All of the sudden, right about the time I reached the two big pine trees in the middle of the picture below, I felt a very sharp pain on the underside of my arm…just about where the edge of my t-shirt sleeve would fall.  I didn’t see the culprit, but I knew the sensation…it was a bee sting.  DBB #2! This time, however, I couldn’t find the entry point, and there was no stinger there.  I figured I must have been stung by a wasp, since wasps have straight stingers, and they don’t stay stuck in the skin.  It certainly wasn’t pleasant, but I’m only a mild wuss, so I didn’t care too much.  In fact, I had totally put it out of my mind.

 

The next day, around 3:00 in the afternoon, I noticed that I was starting to itch something fierce on the bottom of my arm.  I looked, and sure enough, I had a big, fiery, red patch about the size of a slice of American cheese on the bottom of my arm.  It was quite warm to the touch, and stung, itched, and burned like crazy.  I figured, “Huh.  A slightly delayed reaction to a bee sting.  That’s weird.  I took some Benadryl, put some Hydrocortisone cream on there, took a couple of Advil, and went about my day.

Let me diverge from my story for a moment to express that I missed a calling in life as a Pharmacist.  I made some pretty darn killer over-the-counter drug cocktails.  Need treatment for a cold?  Flu?  Hysterical Pregnancy?  Spattergoit?  I can’t make you an OTC drug cocktail that will ease your pains…usually without killing you.  I’m like a St. Mungo’s healer, but without the whimsy or British accent.  I’ve taken enough medication in my life that I have become quite adept at adjusting doses, combining ingredients, and finessing OTC drugs to suit my purposes quite nicely.  Since I went from the age of 25 until about six months ago without having any health insurance (thanks a lot, cheapskate employers!) I couldn’t afford the $120 for a doctor and then another $80 for the prescriptions.  So I made due with $30 and a little ingenuity from Rite Aid.

In any case, by Tuesday morning, the patch of irritation had spread from the point of my bug bite/sting, all the way down to my elbow, and wasn’t letting up at all.  By this morning, the rash had spread from the bug bite to halfway between my elbow and my wrist.  Knowing my luck, a couple more days, and the rash would have made my entire arm fall off at the shoulder.  If I had thought that allowing that to happen would mean that I could go on disability for the rest of my life, I would have considered letting it happen, but alas, I can do my job one-handed.  It would slow my typing speed down from 90 WPM, but it would be an acceptable hit.  The biggest problem is that it was my right arm, and, being right-handed, I would have had to learn how to function as a lefty.  And my handwriting is already sloppy enough.  Besides, I promised myself that when I graduated from my MBA program that my learning days were over forever.

So, I finally broke down and went to the doctor.  He thought that, not only was I likely mildly allergic to bee stings, but that this particular sting had probably also gotten infected.  So, how here I am, back on antibiotics.  Cephalexin.  Also known as Keflex.  This was the pill that I took during more than half of my elementary and secondary school days as treatment for Bronchitis.  Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan helped Middlebook Pharmaceuticals bigwigs make more than a few of their yacht payments because of me, I’m sure.

I’m also on a fairly strong steroid cream to help with the itching.  I’m hoping that, if I use up my steroid cream I’ll start to look a little like this:

P.S., I look pretty hot in that picture, right?  I think I’ll just need a couple more weeks in the gym, and I’ll be there even without the steroid cream. Maybe then I’ll be able to crush all the bees.

P.P.S.  This experience makes me wonder why having the sex talk is referred to as “Talking about the birds and the bees.”  I mean, sure, if you get stung, you swell up for nine months, but somehow, I don’t think that’s what the originators of that phrase had in mind.

Posted by Matt at 10:56 pm
Older Entries
© 2010 One Off Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha