smacky and bucky

We're taking the radical step of actually staying in town this weekend. Maybe we'll return my brother-in-law's car. Maybe we'll catch a movie. Who knows?

Anything fun happening in the DC area?

What the hell was up with the ending of CSI last night? To which suspect did that last clue point? I know it can be a clever show, but I feel dumb for not knowing. I guess I have to check out the forums of Television Without Pity. Somewhere, among the snark, maybe I can find the answer. That's what I get for reading a book while watching, I suppose.

Dick Tracy doesn't believe Aldo is dead either. He's still in the "denial" stage. I'm lingering in the "anger" stage. I suppose I'll reach "acceptance" eventually, but I still feel like screaming out his name in the same manner Captain Kirk screamed Kahn's name in Star Trek II:

ALDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

When I got home after work, my wife told me the transmission place called and my VW was ready. We went over and picked up the car, after dropping half the bluebook value of the car on repair costs. Damn, that hurt. I asked the guy why he thought the transmission crapped out with only 42,000 miles on it, if it was the way it was driven by the previous owner, or a faulty part originally installed, or what? His response was that new transmissions suck. He said 80% of the work they do is on newer cars with an average of 50,000 miles on the odometer. He pointed to a Lexus in the lot that just had its third transmission installed at 75,000 miles. Well, at least luxury cars aren't immune to it.

I had forgotten how quiet the engine is in the VW, especially compared to my brother-in-law's car I have been driving since March. (Holy shit, has it really been since March? Wow...). When I got back home, I vacuumed his car so it would be clean when we returned it to him, then my car, since I was already there.

I told Laura the transmission is my birthday present, and she didn't argue. Besides, between her parents and my parents (all of whom spoil us every gift-giving holiday) we're already going to get a lot of stuff we don't really need. Our birthdays are nine days apart, so all the parents get together for a party to celebrate both. I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, because they're all very generous (Too generous. We've reached the age where it's embarrassing to open all those presents like we're six year olds), but it's more fun just to see all the family and share a weekend together. The gifts are secondary. (Wow, I sound so mature, but keep in mind that the early birthday present from my wife was Lego Star Wars 2 for Playstation 2, so I'm not exactly becoming Gandhi.)

Oh, final story: This morning a car was tailgating me, guy was being a real jerk. He finally pulled around me and swerved back into my lane. His license plate read (and I am NOT making this up) ALDO95. What kind of sign could this be???

I have a 400+ manuscript to get through today, so not a lot of time to blog during work hours (not that I would anyway. Ahem...)

I watched the pilot of Heroes last night, and though it started slow, by the end I was starting to get into it. It looks like a show that would be awesome on DVD, but if I and everyone else felt that way, the show would be canceled and never make it to DVD. Catch-22. Guess I have to watch it some more.

Also, I love this image from Gil Thorpe:

It looks like Flash Gordon is chasing you with a chainsaw.



And yes, the cop confirmed today that Aldo is dead. Son of a bitch.

In Aldo's case, it was.


Holy shit, Aldo is dead?!?

Let's back up a minute. Here's Saturday:

That's supposed to be a clever bumper sticker? Aldo probably read that on a soccer mom's SUV 5 minutes before his crash and drove off the cliff screaming "I regret NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!"

Now let's move forward a day (or roughly an hour in Mary Worth time) :

Okay, they subtly show you the time. It must be 10:10 the next morning. Meaning Aldo bled to death at the bottom of the cliff all night. I hope he had the strength to finish the bottle. Why is Mary facing the camera? What a shitty actress.

So it's the cops calling Mary about Aldo's accident. Why call her?!? Did Aldo name her next of kin on a card in his wallet? "In case of emergency call Mary Freaking Worth?

The news is sad, and Mary, realizing she threw away the best thing she ever had, weeps on Toby's shoulder. Toby, on the other hand, is filled with rage for some reason:


Toby knows it's too late for tears.


I'm still holding out hope that Aldo is alive. Perhaps he joined the witness protection program and he's off to start a new life, far from the "naysayers." God speed Aldo. God speed.

Aldomania 2006, old friend.

One of the fine filks at Comics Curmudgeon created this. A fitting tribute to our buddy Aldo:

The Wind Cries Mary Worth



Another tribute to Aldo: It's So Hard to Say Goodbye

Well, Aldo completed a full hour of drinking and driving before plummeting off a cliff. And you have to love how he lets go of the wheel but keeps a death grip on the bottle. Yeah!


I was walking up some stairs this morning and heard my knee pop, and I made up a joke:

Why did the man confuse the tree surgeon and the knee surgeon?

Because they both work on limbs.

Okay, so the knee surgeon actually works on joints, so maybe I should say:

Why did the man confuse the knee surgeon and Tommy Chong?

Because they both work on joints!

Which joke is better?

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Giving New Shows a Chance, Part IV

Last night I gave the new ABC show Six Degrees a shot. The premise is the Kevin Bacon game, but with a Hallmark Family Channel vibe to it. Our six characters are introduced: Three males (Latino, African American, and the white guy from Dying Young, who apparently didn't), and three females (white, whiter, and that ivory-skinned, albino-looking gal from Swimfan). The premise wasn't very interesting, actually. Or rather, it's been done so many times before in movies and other TV shows in the past decade that there's nothing new here. The flashbacks on Lost for the past two seasons have been based on the same concept that everyone is connected somehow, as a recent example. The characters are somewhat likeable (some more than others), but I won't be tuning in again. Sorry.

Don't drink and drive kids, but do enjoy Aldo antics from the safety of your home. Three awesome things to note:

(1) Aldo makes no effort to hide the bottle, no paper bag or wedging the bottle between his legs for him. Nope, Aldo holds it like he's doing a commercial for Johnnie Walker.

(2) Aldo takes long swigs with his eyes shut. His motto is "Hey, if you're gonna drink, drink." Like his stalking, Aldo never does anything half-assed.

(3) You have to smile when Aldo says (out loud), "This is more like it!" Who among us hasn't experienced that first soft glow of false confidence that comes from angry binge drinking?

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Giving New Shows a Chance, Part II

Last night my wife went to a "stitch-n-bitch" party (women knit, drink, and gossip), so I decided to give another new original drama a shot at earning a place in my heart. I chose Jericho on CBS. Skeet Ulrich drives into his old hometown (Jericho, Kansas) over an emo soundtrack. Turns out he's been gone five years and no one seems to know where. And he tells a different story to everyone he meets ("I was in the army." "I was in the navy." "I played minor league baseball."). I suppose there's a minor mystery there, as he shows a little medical training later in the show, which only rules out ballplayer. Gerald McRaney (Major Dad, Simon & Simon, Mr. Delta Burke) is Skeet's dad, and the mayor of the town.

Blah, blah, blah... a few more characters are introduced, and there's a mushroom cloud on the horizon at dusk. All phones, radios, TVs, etc. stop working. A school bus full of kids crashes in the middle of nowhere (of course it does) and Skeet, walking along bloody after a car wreck of his own (I assume. I left the room for a while and missed that part), arrives and gives medical attention to the injured and drives the bus back to town as a hero. The small-town cops, looking for the school bus, instead find a prison bus. The bus has a few dead guards in it, and so now we've got a group of armed escaped cons heading toward town, along with a cloud of radiation. Because just the radiation would have been boring.

Oh, and an answering machine message heard during the show confirms another bomb went off in Atlanta (The woman happened to call her child five seconds before the bomb hit: "Hi Bobby, how is everythi-- Oh my God, what's that?!? BOOOOOOM!")

So future episodes will deal with maintaining law and order (getting those cons back in prison), Hiding underground until the radiation cloud passes (I suppose in TV land it will only take about two days to pass by), getting power and water restored, and learning about the outside world (Did this happen everywhere? Are all major cities destroyed? Was it terrorism, war, or human error?)

It's not a bad show. I'd watch it if I saw it was starting, but I wouldn't hunt it down in the schedule. And if it stays where it is in the schedule, it will eventually come up against American Idol or some crap, which will likely kill it. I predict it won't last a season. Sorry.

Woo hoo! Aldo is barely out of the liquor store lot and he's already a quarter way through the bottle and muttering to himself.

Dawn at work (It is. The sun rises later and later now.) Put the iPod on "shuffle all songs" and let it go. Madness do One Step Beyond, leading into Sade's Never as Good as the First Time, to John Lennon singing Across the Universe, leading into Johnny Cash doing Streets of Laredo. Nice quiet morning in the office.

We watched Smith last night, the new Ray Liotta show about a family man pulling big heists with his team of diverse folks. We liked it. Interesting characters, snazzy plot, and it wasn't paced like an epileptic fit-causing video. There were quiet moments that also advanced the plot. I hope it does well against its tough competition (Law & Order SVU on NBC and Boston Legal on ABC). Also, the entire show was sponsored by the new Martin Scorsese movie The Departed. Jack Nicholson as the mobster. That's all you need to know (Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon for eye candy if you need it). The point is, since one movie sponsored the show, they played about five different trailers for the movie, then returned immediately to the show. Far less commercials than usual.

It's tough deciding whether or not to watch a new show. It's like resolving to date again after a bad break-up. You're hesitant after being burned so many times before. You don't want to open your heart just to have the other person leave, like Keen Eddie, Wonderfalls, and Thief. And that makes it a catch-22, because if you wait to see if the show will survive more than two episodes, then it will probably get cancelled because no one is watching. But if I don't give shows like Smith, Heroes, Six Degrees, or The Nine a chance, the networks will give up completely, and we'll have nothing but Dancing With the Stars, Survivor, Deal or No Deal, Kiss Donald Trump's Ass, and all the other "reality" programs I despise so much.

Did I mention the major deal I scored two weekends ago? My aunt and her friend go to yard sales every Saturday, and for some reason I was up and already had a cup of coffee by 7:30. My aunt stopped by and asked if I wanted to go along, and I said yes. Looked at lots of random crap I would never buy, but the last place had the bonanza. It was a box of books, no different than any other place, but this box wasn't full of the mass market bestsellers from five years ago and romance novels. The person filled this box with good stuff. I found ten novels by Kurt Vonnegut (including two hardbacks!), and Philip K. Dick's first novel Solar Lottery from 1955. Total cost for these eleven books: ONE DOLLAR! I'm rereading Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan now. I had read it in college, but his novels are so imaginative and crazy, recalling the plot is like trying to piece together the events of a wild party the morning after.

Wednesday Bonus Picture: I don't know if I ever said anything about our wedding (on Blogger. I think I did on mBlog before it closed down and ate all my posts...). We decided not to have a wedding cake, since they are usually oversweet and nasty. Instead, we had about 30 pies, all different kinds. Our center pie was key lime. Laura let me pick the topper, and here it is:
Mary Jane and Spider-Man

Yeah, I married the right woman.

When a woman like Mary Freaking Worth has shot you down (or gotten her friends to do it, really), there's no real good reason to wait to get home before you start drinking. And drinking it through clenched teeth? What a wonderful combination of sorrow and rage. Once Aldo finishes the bottle, here's hoping the rampage begins!

*************

It's not a good idea to wait 18 days to mow the backyard, especially if a tropical storm came through 16 days earlier. The grass was so high the mower kept shutting down, and I had to remove wet clumps of grass from under it, waiting for the moment the mower recreates the scene from Maximum Overdrive and starts up and takes my arm off. Luckily that didn't happen, but I inhaled so much dust, pollen, and whatnot, that I got a migraine that called for a three-hour nap. I managed to wake up and catch the new Aaron Sorkin show Studio 60. I'm sure it will get better now that all the characters are introduced, but with the familiar West Wing lighting, and the walking fast down the halls talking at 100 MPH, the dialogue could have been "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon..." (spoken as fast as possible) and it would have been your typical Aaron Sorkin show.

Aldo, fresh from his stalker intervention, (during which people he had never met berate him), decides to drown his Mary Worth sexless sorrows in the bottle. Remember folks, the last time he drank he passed out and his wife drowned in the bathtub. (Aldo never said if she was an invalid, or really old, so why exactly did she drown? Perhaps she was drinking too?)

We had a nice weekend. My friend came to visit with his wife and kid. The kid just turned one and is walking all over the place. Cute kid, smiles a lot. We walked across the street and gave apples to the horses. That sounds like a metaphor, but it's not. There's a horse farm across the street and we have an apple tree in our yard. From there, it's a short progression in logic (and in feet) to the horses.


This is the sort of crap you have to listen to after a woman has come to your apartment, drank beer with you, shared one incredibly horrible kiss, and asked to be walked home, skipping dinner entirely.

What sort of thoughts go through your mind after this walk of shame?


No man, she must be crazy! Count your blessings, cut your losses, go order some Chinese food and finish off that six pack.







My VW is supposed to have a good-as-new transmission in it this week. There's only one conclusion:

You know what's strange? In the first panel above, from Sunday, Aldo is entering the liquor store and there is no car parked illegally in front of the store. As he's leaving with his purchase in today's comic, there's a car there! If that's his car, how did it get there? Does this liquor store have valet parking? Or is Aldo just saying "Screw it" and compounding his lists of crimes by stealing a car? Maybe it's not parked illegally. It could be after 7PM. Either way, that car wasn't there when he went in.


Oh, one last thing. I wasn't too impressed the last week's season premier of the Simpsons. I was thinking maybe after 17 seasons(!) it was just coasting. But last night's episode had a brilliant scene. Bart is playing the drums, and ends up pursued by the White Stripes, who want to kick his ass. This is done in the style of their video for The Hardest Button to Button. Here's the original video: White Stripes, and here's the Simpsons bit: White Stripes vs. Bart Simpson.

1) Entertain my friend, his wife, and their baby for a day.

2) Play some new Lego Star Wars game.

3) Win lottery/ rob bank/ sell house/ to get money to fix car.

What were we dealing with yesterday? Cars! (Seriously, click on the link. It's Gary Numan's video. Hot tambourine action! It's 3 minutes, 48 seconds of bliss.) My wife's car needed a new timing belt, which basically requires taking the motor apart to get to the belt to change it. Nice design, asses. We all know you're making it unnecessarily complicated so we can't change it ourselves. When I walked the few blocks to pick up her car when it was ready, The guy at Midas let me keep the technical pages they had printed for the job (They printed out step-by-step instructions on how to do it from a database we [normal nonmechanical folks] are not allowed to access. See? They all work together!).

But I did use the plural word cars, didn't I? Well, you may recall that I have a 2000 VW Beetle, a sweet little car, no trouble with it at all, only 42,000 miles on it for pete's sake! No trouble at all except for one thing: Sometime in the spring (too lazy to check blog archives and confirm date) the car started making a noise. A not pleasant noise I instantly knew was the transmission. The VW dealer simply said, "You need a new transmission. That'll be $4,000." Since the car is barely worth $8,000, I said, "Gimme my car," drove it home and put it in the garage. Luckily I have a brother-in-law with a few extra cars and I've been driving one of his for the last 3 (4? 5?) months.

With wife's car in the shop, she needed a way to get to work yesterday. She decided to take the VW (after I jumpstarted the battery and let it charge up) and take it to a shop near her office for a repair estimate (long story involving multiple house ownership, but there's no way we could pay $4,000 in repairs at this moment). Her mechanic sent her to a transmission shop. A secret transmission shop. This guy is good. He doesn't advertise. People just get sent to him. He took part in a contest to put together a transmission blindfolded. And places second! He said VW doesn't even train their mechanics to work on transmissions. They are only trained to replace them for $4,000. (As I suspected...)

The guy called after looking it over for 30 minutes and quoted us a reasonable price, and said he'd crack it open and actually replace the bad parts. What a revolutionary idea!!! Hey VW dealership, eat it!

After hemming and hawing about it, I finally took the wife's advice and we went to Circuit City and picked up yet another version of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD. Damn, I am Lucas's bitch! The bonus DVD with each includes the original theatrical version of the film on DVD for the first time, meaning no extra CGI, and Han shoots first! I also picked up the new Lego Star Wars game for PS2. The last one was a lot of fun, and this one includes all the characters we love (Han, Luke, Leia, etc.). (Plus, I read that you can import all the characters you had in the first game into this one, so I'll be using Jango Fett in the Empire portion.)

I watched the first three minutes of House last night, but when the intro ends with a child passed out on the front lawn with anal bleeding, you've lost me. There's entirely too much anal bleeding on that show, and I don't really want to see it, regardless of from whose ass it is coming.

So I switched over the the 2006 World Series of Poker on ESPN. The event started with over 8,800 people paying $10,000 each to play, and the field is down to 60 people on the show. (The event actually took place in July, so we already know who won the title and the $12,000,000 prize, which sort of takes a little of the fun out of it, as there's no point rooting for anyone, but knowing the winner means you can watch him through the course of the event and see how he did it.)

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Ever make out with a friend of the opposite sex in college? It usually ends like this:
Of course, when you're in college, you likely had a few drinks to get to the point where you'd make out with a friend, so it's doubtful you'd stop at one chaste kiss, unless the kiss was unbelievably bad. More likely you'd be having this conversation slightly hungover the next morning, while in the back of your minds, you're both screaming SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!

(Yes, I had a great female friend and we totally ruined it by hooking up when we were both feeling a little lonely [horny] and it was very awkward after that because neither of us wanted to start a romantic relationship with the other. Kids, don't be like Tommie in the above comic. Don't mess with your friends.)

Geez, how many times can you whack a bear, even a trained bear like Molly, until primordial instinct takes over and she just mauls and eats the guy? Guess we'll find out.





What, it's not enough that your neighbors stood up to Aldo Stalker and told him to leave you alone? Now you say "Aldo, wait!"? What the hell, Mary? This may be a case of someone secretly loving having a stalker. Excuse my language and the mental image this will evoke, but Aldo could be up for a pity lay.

Whew! Returned after ten days out of town. Eventful vacation:

Topical storm (depression; whatever category it was) Ernesto hit the coast of Virginia harder than expected. We got on the road around 3pm on September 1, but the rains started almost immediately. Worse, power was knocked out almost everywhere. No power = no working gas pumps. We were on fumes when we finally found a small Shell station in the middle of the country that still had power, and waited 20 minutes in line to get to the pumps. Then about 30 minutes further up the road a giant oak tree fell across the highway, blocking traffic in both directions for another 30 minutes while road crews used chainsaws and bulldozers to clear the road. We arrived at the river at late dusk in pouring rain. No power anywhere for miles around.

Candles, lanterns, and dinner from the grill.

Saturday was a slate-gray day with showers and a high tide five feet above normal. Watched the dock rise, fall, and twist in the water. By Saturday evening, we had twelve people staying in two houses, with three of Laura's sisters each with their respective spouses. A generator was set up, with electric cords running between the houses, just to run the refrigerators and water pumps (no electricity also means no power to pump well water, so we needed the generator to bathe and flush toilets). Two games of Scrabble by lantern.

Sunday, more of the same, with the rain finally ending late Sunday evening. Still no power.

Monday, rain appears over, sun actually tries to come out, but is quickly beaten into submission by clouds. I take the kayak out and look at broken docks and debris in the water. While napping on the couch, I wake to a lovely sound: the air conditioner turning on. Power returned at 3 pm Monday. Close up the windows and lower the AC to get the humidity levels down.

The rest of the week was normal vacation: reading, watching movies, taking naps. The water was a bit chilly for swimming, but I perservered. I have a few more stories, but I've also been away from work for a week, so I need to get to it.

Laura and I are going to avoid the TV this evening. We both remember September 11, 2001 quite clearly, and agree that there's a fine line between remembering and reliving, and we don't want to wade into the deep end of this anniversary.

We went to McCormick and Schmick's for dinner last night to celebrate our anniversary. Seafood for me, chicken for Laura. After dinner we swung by Tower Records, which recently filed for bankruptcy a second time. It's a pity, because I love browsing there. They still have an amazing import section. Darn kids today buying everything in MP3 format on their computers. No one is buying CDs. They were having a sale: Buy any four items (CDs or DVDs) and the fifth one was free. I ended up getting four CDs and a DVD, all import stuff that isn't carried on iTunes.

After we got home, I added 122 songs to my iPod and packed for our vacation. It looks like it will be a wet few first days, with a forecast of up to 5 inches or rain by Saturday morning, and the place we're going is currently under a tornado watch, which will hopefully end before we hit the road after work. I've packed a bunch of DVDs and books to keep me busy.

Speaking of books... two nights ago I finished The Dark Tower, the final volume of Stephen King's Gunslinger series. I was curious, so here's how it breaks down:

(1) Gunslinger: 300 pages
(2) The Drawing of the Three: 464 pages
(3) The Waste Lands: 590 pages
(4) Wizard and Glass: 718 pages
(5) Wolves of the Calla: 931 pages
(6) Song of Susannah: 544 pages
(7) The Dark Tower: 1,050 pages

Total: 4,597 pages

I believe that's the longest I've spent reading the exploits of a set of characters, with the possible exception of The Hardy Boys books when I was a kid. But I don't think the entire Hardy Boys series approaches the same number of pages. I won't spoil anything for anyone stumbling across this and thinking of starting the series. I somehow managed to avoid learning the fate of any of the characters in advance, which is amazing with internet access. For those interested, I finally did a search and the series has an official website: The Dark Tower. It looks like it will be fun to explore.

On my last day of work before vacation, I have to leave you with this:

Today's Mary Worth has everything but the sound effect of Aldo unzipping his pants. She's letting him into her apartment (where she keeps all her underthings, Aldo!) but I still feel it's all part of the plan. I do feel the plan is about 5 seconds from going off the rail completely, and someone is going to end up in the hospital!