Category: entertainment

I Have Questions

  • In the show All In The Family, why is Edith always running? I have seen every episode and I have never seen her walk.
  • If you have a lisp, can you even say the word ‘lisp’?
  • Dogs hate it when you blow on their face but they stick there heads out car windows?
  • Why do I always touch the plate at a Mexican restaurant when the waiter clearly says “hot plate”?
  • I love San Fransisco but I just read an article that the city is looking to regulate all restaurants to ban all trans fats, add a 3% charge to all hotels and dining for the city’s socialized medicine, and make selling bottled water illegal. I can’t understand how a city that prides itself on diversity and individual choice can do the exact opposite? I am wondering when the former Soviet Union will declare San Fran their new home?
  • I get very uncomfortable when people are singing while making eye contact with me. I wonder why that is?
  • I am sure I can Google this but I would rather ask it to you; can you please explain to me why Hawaii has interstates again?
  • Math

Anyone have any answers? Or did I add to your list of questions?

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We Are Still On It!

You said it, dog! I have been slipping on Macabre Fitness but it looks like the final website will be finished by the next week. I just didn’t want people to think I have forgotten. Apparently if you have corporate sponsors for races and shoe retail companies advertising, they have more say in what goes on than I originally thought. But, whatever. The blog still belongs to me.

Speaking of the blog, I just posted a new one about music that should be in your MP3 player when rocking out a workout. Take a look and share your own music. I need some more tunes.

Macabre Fitness

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Where did You Go? Part 7

I think I am going to start making this a Friday event. I will not go as far as to make it official because I have a way of jinxing myself and next Friday I might get hit by a bus full of gunpowder leaving everyone here saying, “that son of a bitch is completely unreliable”. So I will try the best I can because I have generated a list of people that need to be brought back to the limelight. Unless they are dead. Then I will bring them back posthumously. It’s the least i can do. And away we go!

*snort snort…Weeeyuuuuu*

Holy crap it’s Roy Stalin in one of the greatest movies of the Cusack 80’s genre, Better Off Dead! His real name is Aaron Dozier and man did he play the guy that every dude loved to hate. I must admit I was a little envious of the ski teams matching jackets. I have a sleeping bag that looks just like that. Regardless, Aaron nailed the role as the perfect high school prick jock and he even took his defeat in the end like the poor sport he was. “Get Lost!”

You’ll never believe what Aaron Dozier is doing today, or at least a few years ago. He is the head coach for the Boston College ACC ski team! I guess life does imitate art after all! I wish I had an updated picture. I wonder if he can still handle the K12…..on one ski?

Remember Mr. Mom? I barely do and that is probably because I was the same age as the two kids in the tub when it came out. But I got an email asking whether or not a recent fiber commercial on TV stared one of the kids and it turns out he did. It is Alex, the kid circled, who is really Frederick Koehler. I remember this kid more than the other because he wasn’t bitching about his wubby as much. It commanded my respect, even though I was guilty at that time for peeing my pants at recess playing “Red light, Green Light.”

Fred has been working his ass off since childhood and has been in everything from TV shows like Full House and ER to movies like Pearl Harbor and Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (poop in pants 😦 ) He was even in a great made for TV movie called The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. But recently I keep seeing him in commercials like the said fiber commercial as a downtrodden employee. He does have that melancholy look, eh? But I bet anything this guy is the life of the party. Keep it real Fred!

Whatever happened to the UZI? Did weaponry in Hollywood go to the way of Colt? I remember when every bad guy rocked an UZI back in the day. How many guys where blown in the air, flipping and throwing their UZI’s on the show, The A-Team? I myself, had countless UZI water guns because it was the gun of choice. I wanted to be the Colombian drug runner in the neighborhood! Oh well, maybe the UZI can comeback one day. The Israelis really know how to make something cool, you know?

Who doesn’t love this guy, Brain Backer (Mark “Rat” Ratner) from the great 80’s movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High ? I always had a connection with his character in that movie. He was a self conscious dork that relied on his suave but selfish friend for tips on how to land a date with a crush. Even though his friend was a jerk, I did agree that on a date you should always play Led Zeppelin, “Physical Graffiti”. Works for me!

Brian Backer was in some really great 1980’s films like, of course, Fast Times’ as well as The Money Pit, Meatballs and Moving Violations but in 1987 his agent sold him out to Police Academy 4 and he was forever cast the way of TV sitcoms. Actually to be fair, Brian won a Tony for his performance as Woody ALLEN on Broadway. I guess that is an achievement. Oh well, you will forever be known as “Rat” who got sloppy seconds from your pal at Ridgemont. And for that, we love you Brian.

Last for today, but certainly not least it’s Keith Gordon, one of my all time favorite actor/director/writers ever. This guy bleeds talent and has been a true backbone for Hollywood cinema. Most people recognize Keith for his role as Jason Melon in Back To School or as Arnie Cunningham in Stephen King’s Christine but I know Keith Gordon as Doug Fetterman in Jaws II. That movie made me never want to go sailing again and his role as the nerdy bookworm let me know that even the smart guys can be eaten. That was a weak statement, I know.

You won’t find Keith in front of the camera anymore and that’s a real shame. And it’s not because he lost his hair. No, he is writing and directing now and does a damn fine job of it too. His political and antiwar themes rub people the wrong way at times but it does provoke thought. And really at the end of the day, isn’t that what we want? I watched A Midnight Clear and was really impressed how he made such a powerful film that not only captured everything Kurt Vonnegut had written but it inspired me to be a Vonnegut fan. Now that’s a movie when it inspires reading!

Go to Macabre Fitness right now! I want you to see a movie! Serious cat says so!

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Happy David Bowie Day!

I’m starting something and I need your help. This time of the year is really short on holidays and I end up falling into the “too excited for Halloween too early” dilemma that happens every August. So I am going to combat that by revising the calendar and adding my own holidays to get excited for. Today is David Bowie Day. Is it his birthday? I don’t think so. I just declare that today, the eighteenth day of 2008 to be international David Bowie Day.

(the worst drawn party hat ever)

So this is where you come in. I want you to pick a day on the calendar and create your own holiday other than your own birthday. I will put it into my Outlook calendar and it will remind me a week before the day arrives. Then I will write a whole post dedicated to your holiday and we can all celebrate together.

So for now, you can listen to my favorite David bowie song, “Ashes to Ashes”. And tonight I am going to rock the Labyrinth and poke fun of Jarrad’s hilarious horse riding outfit, minus the horse. Happy David Bowie Day!

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Emeril’s Tie

Over the course of my life I have had a few interactions with certain celebrities and for the most part they have been fairly good experiences. I always walk away feeling a little surprised that these said celebrities were normal people like me. I can’t understand why I would think that every celebrity burns stacks of money in their furnace or hire poor immigrants to be human footstools but unless they prove me wrong, that’s the assumption I make. Anyway, today’s story is about an odd encounter I had with Emeril Lagasse.

A few years ago I worked at the Alliance Center (pictured above) as a corporate project manager and I must say, I hated it. I am not what you call “corporate material” by any stretch of the imagination. Everyday consisted of going to the same meetings with the same people raising the same concerns and answering the same questions with the same answers. You know you have a bad job when you take breaks through out the day just to ride the elevator. The one good part about the job was I had some perks at the restaurant on the lobby floor because their account was under my project portfolio. The restaurant was ‘Emerils’ inspired by none other than the famous Emeril Lagasse himself.

Since I had a few perks at the restaurant, one including a big discount on a bar tab, I became pretty good friends with most of the staff there. I am a firm believer that people in the food service industry are the greatest American we have. No where else can you find harder workers who have to take shit on a daily basis from the cock suckers of the world. If you are ever at a restaurant and you are snotty to a server for no reason I swear I will stab you in the leg with a soup spoon. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, well over the course of discussion one night the bartender told me they were working double time in preparation for the emperor himself to arrive, Emeril Lagasse. They hated him. Apparently he was a real ass to all the chefs and servers but he is the man so they sucked it up. And since hurricane Katrina shut down his main place in New Orleans he would be staying in the ATL for quite some time.

Weeks past and my job really took a turn towards the busy side so my beer days took a hit and the chance to meet Emeril left my brain. That is until I past him in the parking garage. He really is a lot shorter than I thought. I mean he’s not short like qualifying for a handicap sticker but short enough to play keep away with his hat indefinitely. Regardless of his height, he was the most famous chef in the world and the dude did drive a really nice Mercedes. I couldn’t help but notice that this was one of those cars that had to be the same price as a nice house. I also noticed there was a tie was sticking out of the passenger side door. That’s when my stupidity took over, as usual.

“How cool would it be to have a tie that belonged to Emeril Lagasse?” Actually in hindsight, that’s pretty dumb. Who would believe or care whether I had a tie that belonged to Emeril? It’s not like I could invite dinner guests over and bring them into my closet to look at Emeril’s tie in a glass case. I’m not even a big fan. But that wasn’t going through my head at the time. The only thing that was, was this, “tie..tie…tie..tie..”

So I watched Emeril and the lady in the business suit walk across the drive towards the building and then I started to work on the tie. I pulled with all my might but it wasn’t happening. I guess that is why you pay $100,000 for a car because that door was vacuum sealed and wasn’t giving an inch on that tie. I should have remembered that when I slammed my own tie in the door a few weeks ago. My memory isn’t what it used to be.

Well, the tug of war was turning out to be a stalemate so I did the dumbest thing one could do in that position. I tried the door handle of the Benz. Wouldn’t you know it? The fucking alarm went off. I went out of body the second that “BLEE BLEE BLEE” alarm sound rang out in the echoing garage because I have a vivid memory of me standing there, hand on tie and other hand on door handle. Emeril and the lady he was with stopped in their tracks and looked back to see me there, evidence in hand, wide-eyed, looking directly back at them. They slowly started to walk back towards the said vehicle with me, trapped like a raccoon in a garbage can, obviously guilty of something.

I tried shouting over the alarm at them, “BLEE BLEE BLEE …YOU SHUT…BLEE BLEE..YOUR TIE IN…BLEE BLEE… THE..BLEE BLEE …CAR”

Emeril, with a look of both confusion and annoyance, tilted his head to hear what I was saying as he fiddled in his pockets to find the keys and stop the alarm. Finally he hit the alarm button on the key chain and asked, “what’s going on now?”.

God I wanted to run but I assumed that would have just led to a possible termination, police chase and a spot on “World’s dumbest Criminals IV”. So I collected myself and in a shaky voice and a red face I said, “You shut your tie in the door and I tried to get it out for you but I set off the alarm. Sorry about that.”

Emeril looked at the tie sticking out of his door like the tongue of a dead dog and said, “Oh…”. Then came the long awkward silence. I picked up my briefcase and went to gracefully exit. But before i could take a step he looked at me, smiled and said, “thanks”.

I didn’t know how to take that. Was he being funny? Was his agent calling the cops as we exchanged awkward glances? Will I be a story on his show as he kills dead time between sauteing the sauce and adding the “BAM” to whatever he is cooking? Am I about to receive a punch in the nose from his disproportionately sized grabbers? Nope. He extended his hand and introduced himself as Emeril Lagasse and asked my name.

After our introduction he invited me to dinner that night on the house. Wow, and here I was trying to steal his tie. What a shitbag I am. I gracefully declined, saying I was honored but I had to drive to Augusta to see the girl I was dating at the time and that was at least 4 hours with Friday night traffic. He said the invitation was open anytime and we went our separate ways.

I got in my car, hands a shakin’. That could have been bad on so many levels but it taught me a valuable lesson; If you are going to steal a celebrity’s tie from their car, wait until they have left the area.

Be sure to check out Pammy’s story over at MacabreFitness!

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