Halloween Hodgepodge

"And ... Happy Halloween!" This is my favorite line from my most favorite scary movie of all time. And that is:

In my opinion, this is the best of all the films in the "Halloween" franchise, and that's because Michael Myers is no place to be found in it. In fact, it has nothing to do at all with any of the other "Halloween" pictures. The line is uttered by evil novelty mask magnate Conal Cochran (played flawlessly by Dan O'Herlihy) just before he activates the pieces of Stonehenge, which he stole ... yes, the whole thing ... that are embedded in the Halloween masks that he has brainwashed all the children of the world into buying through ingenious mass marketing techniques. Once activated, the teensy little Stonehenge pieces emit bugs and laser beams, which presumably kill all of the little tykes, but we never find out, because his sinister plan is thwarted at the last possible second by the films hero, Dr. Ben Casey.

This film is historic, in that it is one of only two movies that I have ever stayed up until 2 o'clock in the morning on a work night to watch. The other movie is Three O'clock High (check it out).

As an aside, many of you may not be familiar with Dan O'Herlihy, but if you are my age or older, you remember his brother Ed, who was the announcer for Kraft Television Theatre (Wednesday nights on NBC). He had a rich, beautiful voice, and there was no one on television at that time who could make you hanker for a big blob of Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese on your favorite snack cracker like Ed could.

Anyway, tonight is Halloween, and you've got lots of candy to pass out to all of the ghosts and goblins that come to your front door. And maybe when they're done, you have some left to distribute to any children who might show up. Hopefully you've bought enough, and you probably have, and more, because you want to make sure that you have plenty left for you so you can get a head start on the food binge that comprises the next two months. This binge will end on January 2. You will be 20 pounds heavier and hate yourself so much that you will have to double your tranquilizer dosage in order to keep yourself from committing suicide. That is unless you want to try for the prestigious title of "first suicide of the new year", which is second in popularity only to "first newborn of the new year".

Coincidentally, tonight is also the time to "fall back", which for all of you time rookies means that you set your clock back one hour at exactly precisely 2:00 am and not one second sooner. So, it's going to be a long evening and I hope you have enough rented movies, snacks and beer to get you through. So don't forget, or you'll be really pissed off tomorrow when you show up for church one hour early. Unless you're like me, and never go to church ... ever. Then there are no consequences.

One last note. I went to my handy Apple dictionary to make sure I was using the word "hodgepodge" in the right context. In fact, I wanted to make sure there actually was the word "hodgepodge" and it wasn't some word I made up, like "squink". I use that word occasionally ... example: that turkey pepperoni tasted squinky.

So, when you look up a word in my dictionary, they give you a definition, of course, and they also give you a sentence that your word is used in. Here's the sentence in my dictionary for hodgepodge: "Rob's living room was a hodgepodge of modern furniture and antiques".

Why, it's like they knew me.

Have a happy All Saints Day tomorrow.

The Digital Aftermath

June has come and gone. And with it, the switch from analog to digital signal television transmission. The meager accolades are over and the great tide of outrage has, for the most part, been silenced. Those without cable have settled for watching what they can get on their TV screens, and for most, it isn't much.

I live in a hybrid household. Downstairs, our television pulls in all of the cable channels we can afford, but in our upstairs bedroom, we make due with those few channels that we can pull in with our antenna. We've had to make some adjustments. At bed time, instead of Letterman and whateverthell ABC broadcasts after the local news, I watch as much of Conan as I can stomach. Poor Conan ... you either love him or you don't. And I'm one of those who don't, so I watch him hop around awkwardly for a few minutes, and then turn him off and go to sleep. He's such a tool.

Before the switch, I studied up on antennas to see which one would suit our needs the best. Unfortunately, the models that had the most optimal performance also cost more than the majority of new televisions and required zoning variances to erect. So I started looking at other alternatives, like "making your own digital antenna". Believe it or not, I drew on my master handyman skills; gathering scrap wood from the garage, screws and washers from the basement and wire hangers, which my poor wife had to beg for from the people she worked with. And after hours of blood, sweat, tears and a fuck load of bad words, my creation was ready for use.

Voila! (French for "how pathetic")

And it worked! Kind of. We ended up pulling in about 12 channels, 3 of which didn't zzzapp out continually. Jan was appalled by it's looks, but I thought it was a modern art masterpiece. Through several effective threats, she convinced me to hide it out of sight behind the TV, where it squatted until last weekend.

We were at a hardware store last Friday night, and Jan spied a digital antenna for under 20 dollars. She gave me one of "those" looks and we bought it. It gets a total of 5 channels, none of which go "zzzapp", so it looks like my coat hanger Frankenstein is out of a job. I wonder if anyone would buy it on e-bay?

One of the side benefits of the digital switch was that I was able to establish an e-mail dialog with the engineering departments of two of the local television stations. The first, our ABC affiliate, had been telling us loyal viewers for months that we had "better be ready" for the digital onslaught. But when the time came, it turned out that they were the ones who weren't ready ... with their tinker toy digital transmitter. Ha, ha! So, I started to e-mail them, basically asking them what their general fucking problem was. At first they were polite in their responses, but as I escalated my withering opinions of their technical prowess, they became increasingly irritable until they finally told me to fuck off.

I had a better rapport with the second station, Channel 6 (The "U"!). After the switch, I e-mailed their engineers about the picture quality of their reruns of "Frasier". The following is a synopsis of our conversations over several weeks.

Me: Hey, your Frasier reruns look like podcasts!

The "U": What R U tking about?

Me: You know, the picture quality is like a podcast. Haven't you ever seen a podcast?

The "U": Hve U chkd ur connections?

Me: Stop spelling like you're posting on Twitter! My connections are fine.

The "U": Sorry. Then maybe you need new glasses. Hee, hee.

Me: Very fucking funny. Seriously, go home and watch it on your own televisions!

The "U": We can't. We're working when Frasier is on.

Me: You guys should put together a stand up routine. So you're not going to do anything?

The "U": There's nothing wrong!

Me: Morons.

The "U": Takes one to know one.

And I never heard from them again. And it's a pity, because I think we could have become best buddies.

I miss them.

Two Week Evaluation

Today marked the end of the first two weeks of my new job. I had promised myself when I started, that I would make no assumptions or judgements about people, places or things related to my employment until I had at least 10 work days under my belt. So, this afternoon before I left, I took 15 minutes to evaluate and consider the basics.

Things: I have a cubicle all to myself, which in itself should rate an "A". In the past, I was forced to share a cubicle with another person, and in a 7 by 5 foot space, I can see why prison inmates get a little testy after a while. I managed to scrounge up a chair that doesn't absolutely kill my back, and have ample desk space to spread out. Supplies aren't easy to find, but I've mounted a few before and after hours raids on a number of abandoned cubicles, and have come up with enough stuff to keep me away from Office Max for the near future. My phone works, as does my computer. Although it gets something akin to agita about mid-day and begins wheezing and hooting until I restart it. Then it's good to go for the rest of the day. I'd have someone come look at it, but it's one of those things that won't recreate itself when someone other than me is around, so instead of looking like an asshole, I'll just put up with it.

Rating: A-

Places: The site I work at is huge, with well over 5,000 employees working in a number of buildings on about a section of land. The building I work in is a large, one story affair. It has been recently gutted and refitted with tasteful carpet and furnishings. I can park very near to the door, the inside is neither to hot nor too cold and the restrooms are so nice that even my dear mother would be proud to take a dump in them. If it had a cafeteria, it would be perfect, but unfortunately, you have to walk outside and across a parking lot to get to the building with the cafeteria. By the way, the food at this place is to die for! And inexpensive!

Rating: A-

People: The places and things where you're working can be without reproach, but if the people who surround you are a bunch of psychotic assholes, it doesn't matter. I worked at this particular site and in this particular group a number of years back, and when I left, I would say that I liked 90 percent of them. And that's actually pretty good. So I didn't anticipate any problems in this regard, and aside from a few people I've encountered so far, I'd say they're a pretty good group. There is one guy who talks like Yakov Smirnov with adenoid problems and seems to annoy the people he chooses to visit, but he works in another area and only visits my neck of the woods a couple of times a day. And there is young woman who sits on the other side of my wall who continues her phone conversations with people after she has hung up and seems to tell them all of the things she wishes she'd said during the actual conversation. Plus, she likes to call her mother and discuss the texture and odor of her infant's poop. But if this is as bad as it gets, I'm in good shape.

A good friend reminded me this week that I need to hold off making judgements on the people I work closest with until I know who I can trust. And this is very good advice for anyone. I like to think I'm good at first impressions, but in reality, I don't think I've got a stellar track record in this regard. And, on the other side of the coin, I want to conduct myself so that other people think favorably of me.

It's probably to early to tell, but I'd give the people I work with ...

Rating: B+

I still miss the things I had when I wasn't working. The freedom to sit up as late as I wanted. And the choice of getting up early in the morning because I wanted to, not that I had to. Most of all, I miss the freedom to do whatever I wanted to during the day.

But when that check hits the bank every Wednesday morning at 9 am, whatever freedom was lost is easy to overcome.

I hope I'm working for a long time to come.

Compressing Time

One of my running, self-depreciating gags revolves around me getting old. There are others, such as I'm stupid, inept and hapless. But "old" seems to get the most mouth time. Now, I know I'm not old in the traditional sense. In fact, I still think I'm relatively young until I'm snapped back into middle-age reality, usually by pictures of myself. I had my picture taken for my work badge this last week and when I looked at it, I thought "What the fuck? Is that me?" And I do actually belong to AARP, but that was only so I could get the old people's discount at motels when we traveled last summer. I guess they give those out because they think that old people aren't going to mess up their rooms, but if Jan and I were what they expected in terms of "check-out room tidiness", then they were sadly mistaken.

But, whether or not I consider myself old, there are certain changes that occur to one's thinking about past events. Things that may have seemed to happen a long time ago when I was in my 20's, now seem to have taken place fairly recently.

Last night I was watching a commercial for the movie "Amelia". Okay, most people are familiar with the Amelia Earhart saga from their history books or other sources. A great mystery of the 1930's. Maybe the biggest mystery of the first half of that century.

Earlier in my life, I used to think that it was an ancient occurrence, like the Civil War or the sinking of the Titanic. But when I thought about it, her disappearance around Howland Island in 1937 had happened only 15 years before I was born.

Now think about that. If you're in your 40's or 50's right now, does 15 years seem like such an incredibly long time to you? I'll bet you can remember at least one event, no matter how trivial that happened in 1994. For me, it was moving from my old office into new digs and my son starting the 5th grade. To me, that seems like a short time ago.

I suppose you'd have to consult an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that the more time you get under your belt, the brain starts compressing learned memories and behavior to make room for all of the extra shit that you're going to stuff into it. Kind of like your computer hard drive compressing files so that it doesn't freeze on you. Your brain is wadding up your experience so that you don't overload it and blow a fuse.

Just think how I'll perceive things 20 years from now? Maybe the Civil War will seem like a recent event.

That's "heavy, man".

That was a catch phrase from the 6o's. Which of course was only a short time ago.

What's My Line?

Last night, I stopped at Dominicks, one of the premier grocery stores in this area, for one of their Friday night specials. A super humongous refrigerated pizza. Seriously, this mofo is big and surprisingly good, with a crust that goes "sniiicccckkkzzz" when you cut through it. And best of all, it's only $5.99!

Hopefully, someone from Dominicks will read this plug, and I'll be free pizza'd for life, but something tells me that's not going to happen.

Anyway, I snagged my pizza and headed for the checkout line. This particular Dominicks never has but one "full service" line open. The rest are all self-serve, which I refuse to buy into on general principles. If you're going to make me check and bag my own groceries, then let's see a discount, say at least 10% in return for my trouble. And if any of you grocers out there are interested in this idea, then you can enter into a licensing agreement with me under my "Discounts for Viscounts" program (Slogan: Where you feel like a British nobleman ranking above a baron and below an earl). Check it out on the internet if you don't believe me.

So, I wheel into line and in front of me are two women, who I figure are mother and daughter. They closely resembled a re-animated Eunice Shriver and Rose Kennedy, with the long drawn faces, horse teeth and LL Bean barn wear. They only had about 10 items, but 6 or them were bottles of wine. And, unfortunately, Gurnee, Illinois has some weird ordinance where you have to buy liquor in the liquor department only, and not in the general check-out. Yeah, I know, you've got me ...

Right away, I knew check-out was going to take a little longer than normal. So I just stood there and said to myself "wait for it". And sure enough, the checkout lady told them that they'd have to buy the wine in the liquor department. After a few seconds of huffing and puffing Eunice pulled the wine bottles out of the cart and shoved them all at Rose. I thought to myself "wait for it"... and Rose dropped two of the bottles on the floor, shattering them.

I like the bouquet that wafts from a nice glass of wine, but the bouquet turns to a rotten alcoholly stench when it's mixed with floor dirt. As expected, gasps and apologies were voiced and mops, brooms and dustpans appeared to clean up the mess.

Eunice gave Rose her credit card to pay for the groceries and padded off to the liquor department to pay for her booze, what was left of it, and presumably to pick up another couple of bottles to replace the broken ones. Rose, unfamiliar with the ceremonial swiping of the card, took a while to get it right. When the signature line appeared, her hand hovered over it with the stylus and hesitated. I told myself "wait for it". And sure enough, Rose babbled to the cashier that she couldn't sign her daughter's name and went dashing off to the liquor department to find her, leaving me and the 40 other people behind me cooling our collective heels.

Several minutes passed and Eunice reappeared with Rose in tow and signed the electronic receipt. Then she stood there, putting all of her things back into her wallet and then back into her purse.

At this point, I'd had about all of this horseshit I could take and I bumped Eunice with my cart, forcibly. Eunice shot me a dirty look and I said "Move". After one more dirty look, the family Kennedy departed the line and left the building.

I'd like to think that later that evening, Rose and Eunice sat in front of a quiet fire in their wing back chairs in the drawing room of their mansion in Lake Forest, tut-tutting about their simply awful experience at the grocery store that afternoon.

And then they pulled the cork on their fifth bottle of wine.