Better Than Being 6 Feet Under…

Now that we’re all stuff with turkey and have worn ourselves out running from store to store on Black Friday, I give you something to fill the dreary Wednesday nights in December. I don’t watch a lot of shows religiously, just Mythbusters, Entourage, 24, the Simpsons…and this jem.

Pushing Daisies. If you haven’t watched this show. I highly recommend it. It’s fastpaced, fun, bright, with a darkside of humor. It’s like of Tim Burton took a lot of happy pills and created a TV show. Now we know Tim Burton does with film, so check this out. However, I must pay credit where credit is due. This show was NOT created by Tim Burton but by Bryan Fuller (Heroes) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black). Production was stopped, I assume by the writers strike, last year, and it only recently started again about a month ago.

Apparently, critically acclaimed, it’s about a guy (hot!) that owns a pie shop. He’s a pie maker at The Pie Hole! And he can wake the dead. Comes in handy when trying to solve murder mysteries. And though there is a common threat of storyline in the background, every episode is a new murder mystery. The colors are bright, the story lines hilarious, and each character has a distinct personality that creates a crazy cast. It’s like an animated film, for adults. Plus, I absolutely love how fast they talk! Now, for a shout out to my personal fav. character, I give you-Olive Snook!

Thanks to abc.com for the pics!

Yes, amazing, I know. Wednesdays, 8/7c on abc.

Giving Thanks

I think to many people Thanksgiving is a holiday that was developed for people to take time off, for Hallmark to make more money (but really, who sends Thanksgiving cards?), and for everyone to generally act like the big lazy Americans we are stereotyped to be. However, I personally don’t believe in that. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but the holiday does give you an opportunity to look around you and say, “Damn…my life’s gooood.” Because, if you’re reading this blog, your life is good. You have a computer, internet, my wonderful wit and charm…it’s all there for you to enjoy. Thanksgiving might be based on some strange legend about how the Pioneers of this great country stopped the infestation of a new continent and broke bread with their enemies (the Native Americans) or maybe it was to celebrate the life that they had created that was finally sustainable on a new and interesting land where we had things like potatoes, corn, tomatoes, pumpkins and other things that they had never seen before, but are now the very basis of our Thanksgiving feast.

To celebrate the feast that is laid before us at Thankgiving dinner, my father begins the meal with the first Thankgiving prayer. Where the pilgrams in the gold-buckled shoes, gave thanks to God for the wonderful food that was at the table. They gave thanks to the weather, the strength of their courage, the power God gave them to create a community from blood, sweat and tears. And, they gave thanks to God for protecting them from the ravages of the savages. Thank goodness for that. Because if it hadn’t been for those dirty savages, who KNOWS what would have happened. Seriously, we’ve never made it past this point in the prayer. It’s hard to get past your mix of serenity & peace being interrupted by something (now) so blantantly incorrect, yet so humoursly put. Today, you’d never hear W say at his Thankgiving prayer, “Y’all, I just want to thank God for the military for keepin’ the ravages of the savages at bay.” Ah, well. I digress.

My Thanksgiving will, thankfully, be full of family, friends, friends of friends, and great food made by MomBee, who will slave all day in the kitchen making us the second best meal of the year. Second only to her traditional English Yorkshire pudding & Roast Beef that we get for Christmas dinner. I don’t think I could go a year without either of those meals. THANKS MOMBEE!

The last thing I’m thankful for? That this isn’t happening at the White House this year, or next year, or EVER:

Seriously, did you think it was going to end after November 4th? You have a lot to be thankful for!

Because according to John Tesh, the average person will gain 9 pounds in the next month

Seriously, I swear that sometimes his “tips” are not so helpful. Now I just fell like a gigantic lump of lard. Who needs to hear that? How about…”Just a reminder, that one serving of turkey you just had, yeah…that was 500 calories. I sure hope you didn’t have breakfast this morning.” Thank you, John Tesh.
But, on a more serious note, this is the time we all list things for which we are thankful. (Trying not to end my sentences with a preposition…should be something you’re thankful for). Aaannnddd, since I haven’t written about my mother lately, I thought I’d write some homemade traditions that come with the time of year. Everyone has great family traditions. Whether it’s systematically throwing out Aunt Alda’s crack-your-teeth fruitcake or singing Kum-by-ah next to a warm fire, they’re all special.

My personal favorite tradition is watching the Macy’s parade. No, this isn’t getting the family up all nice a quite and sitting around the TV, cheering with the balloon of Big Bird calmly floats by. This is me, by myself, maybe with HubbyBee, curled up in my own personal blanket, screaming at the TV for a solid 2 hours. My family used to watch with me, but they’ve started giving up. BigBrotherBee got tired of arguing with me, and getting cat scratches with I stole the remote from him when he refuses to change the channel to one that’s NOT on a commercial. Seriously. I get a list of all 3 channels the parade is on, and move between them during commercials. The screaming part starts about 10 minutes in, when the magic has worn off, and I can’t seem to get Meredith Vieira to SHUT THE HELL UP. Seriously. Between her and Matt, I just want to fly to New York, take their microphones and beat them over the head with them. Have you ever watched the whole thing? You get to see maybe a third of the parade, because they’re always interviewing some C-grade TV actor during the whole thing. If I had money, or was related to Ted T., I seriously would PAY the network to show the parade, uninterrupted and maybe with little banners across the bottom saying, “This program brought to you by Ovaltine…how about a nice glass of chocolaty Ovaltine, today! Or try, Ovaltine HOT.” Then my family could come back to watching the parade, and not try slipping me drugs in my morning coffee.

This year I’m hoping they still have the Turkey float that has the big, ginormous eyelashes that wave. I think that thing is over 80 years old, and I love it. Then we’ll see Santa, signaling the beginning of the holiday season. I am seriously like a kid, just waiting to see the parade up close and in person. One of my personal goals in life. After that, I’ll proceed to have a lovely dinner with my family and stuff myself. My personal goal this year is something like 15,000 calories. I should have that cleared up by the time we make it over to InlawBee’s for dinner #2.

Conversations of the masked planner

Today was a working lunch. And to say that we actually worked the whole time…ok, maybe not. But we did have one of our rare lunches where we actually talk business, talk about our clients and wonder what it would be like if our clients didn’t request utterly ridiculous things that are logistically impossible to accomplish, and subject them to torment by their guests. Life would be great, but they do request ridiculous things, and they get what they want and what they deserve.

So as we were heading downtown to one of our fancy worklunch places, where no work was actually going to get done, we started having a conversation. Here’s just a snipit. Because that’s all you get.

“Well, we’re all in the same boat.”

“Yes, I mean, it’s not like anyone else is better off, it’s like a club, and everyone in the WORLD is in it.”

“Except maybe Matthew McConaughey. But I sure wish he was in our club”

“Yeah, Matthew McConaughey is hot. “

“HELLO! That’s why I want him in our club. So we can be like, hey Matthew, what are you doing here.” In our fictional club.

Then we started talking about how someone should really record us and put it on a blog. But no one would get us and they’d be all, why are they talking about clackers and manties? Which, if you don’t know what manties are, then you really wouldn’t get it and we’d loose you and you’d probably open the door to the car while it was still moving, jump out, do the tuck and roll, and end up fine on the curb, but only because you jumped out before we started talking about the Slasher and borrowing butter from a Mexican restaurant, which just might have made you want to blow your brains out on the exact curb that got you safely away from our ramblings.

But really, we got work done. Not to mention we vetoed the child-like, life size, Victorian doll sitting on the front porch while guests are arriving. Someone might have called the cops.

Commericals are what makes me what to shoot my brains out every Sunday.

Yeah, it might be TGIMNF. (that’s Monday Night Football for those of you without football-crazed husbands). But it’s SMBOSF (Shoot My Brains Out Sunday Football).
I’m not tired of football, yet. I actually feel a little sad for my husband, whose favorite sport’s season is already half over. Where as mine, baseball, lasts for FRICKING ever! I will not be the last to admit that 180 games plus post-season gets long. It’s like the whole year. Pretty soon they’ll be adding more games, just like they keep moving daylight savings clock changes closer together. No one will remember when there wasn’t baseball, spring training won’t take place, and baseball will cease to be a past-time, but become all-the-fucking-time sport. And everyone will cheer when football starts, and cry when they don’t have a new episode of Pushing Daisies because there’s a baseball play-off game. I wonder if we’ll even have playoffs in our new year-round baseball season.
But until that happens, I’m ready to kill myself. Why? Because the ads during Sunday Football make me want to cry like a little girl. Hurray for jingles…I mean, there’s nothing like being a musician that makes repetitive songs that you don’t have to wait for hours listening on the radio to here…just wait until a ‘commercial timeout’ to hear your own creation. Which, don’t even get me started on ‘commercial timeouts.’ Have you ever been to a game with those? It SUCKS. Seriously, they can’t go one set of downs without a timeout. BO-RING. But, I digress, much like this entire post.
I have recently started cringing when I hear a couple different commercials. So much that HubbyBee and I have wondered if throwing the remote at our TV will end the suffering that we have to endure by listening to:
SAVED BY ZERO! SAVED BY ZERO! over and over and over and over and over and over again. Just thinking about it makes me want to…well, Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN had this to say about that commercial:
“Speaking of halfway points, let’s take a commercial break before the second half of the column.

Saaaaaaved byyyyyy zerrrrrr-ohhhhhhhhhh.

“Now, for a limited time only, you can get amazing zero APR financing on your favorite Toyota.”

Saaaaaaved byyyyyy zerrrrrr-ohhhhhhhhhh.

“That’s 0 percent financing on 11 different models! Featuring Toyota’s legendary quality. No other car brand can make this offer. So hurry in now, and see how much zero can save you on a brand new Toyota.”

Saved by zero! Saved by zero!

(By the way, I did that off the top of my head. We are reaching the point that I am two weeks away from stopping by my local Toyota dealership, buying a brand-new Toyota Tundra with zero APR financing, driving the car off the lot, doing a U-turn, then plowing it through the front window of the dealership at 60 mph while screaming, “SAVED BY ZERO,” like the guys from “Red Dawn” screamed, “WOLVERINES!” Cut down on the ads, Toyota. We’re not kidding. You know why you haven’t see John Mellencamp in two years? He’s trapped in the basement of some frustrated baseball fan who dressed him like the Gimp and keeps him in a trunk after hearing “Our Country” for the 700,000th time. Look, we’re all ecstatic that the guys from the Fixx are getting royalties again. Just tone it down. We get it. Zero APR financing. Heard you loud and clear.)”
I feel the same way. To read the rest of his analysis of half-way football team information, read here.

And don’t even get me started on the freecreditreport.com guy. I’m sorry this guy couldn’t get a car, couldn’t get a job, and apparently can’t get a record deal, but really, I’m ok! I checked my credit last night. And yes, it was free. But I’m sorry, my credit is better than yours. I’ll see you next week when you serve me my fish & chips basket. For god sakes, don’t bring your guitar! Or your pose. Or your 1993 Geo for that matter.

Finally, there’s the endless Sonic and Olive Garden ads. This are annoying because, HEEELLLOOOOO. I don’t have either of these restaurants to go to. I can’t enjoy whatever drink possibilities I want. Or endless soup, salad & breadsticks. I can’t. And I’m sad. Could the TV please stop torturing me while I’m eating my lukewarm soup that I had to heat up in the nuker?

I’m theeeeesse close to chucking the whole damn thing out the window. If only I wasn’t so attached to Pushing Daisies and Mike Rowe. I’ll just have to wait for CWFMBA (Can’t Wait For More Baseball April).

Time to write again

I think I’m back to my normal self. Strike that. I’m back to my abnormal self. The one that likes to write a blog. Which is finally coming back to me. I was on hiatis. I don’t know why. It happens to the best & the worst of us, I’m sure. So, after a month long break including some great material about my trip to Florida, I’m ready to bare it all to the world. No…not like that. For that, you need to check out Elmo on Mommypie today.

The election is over and a new hope is brimming around the country. My political cup over floweth instead of being a soggy, dried up teabag which is what I’d had every morning since…let’s see…January 2001?? It’s amazing to feel like something might work this time, just might, and we WANTED it to work.

I came to work Wednesday morning with a major election night-hangover. I think it was the release of my stomach being in knots for the past six months. Will he? Won’t he? NO….HIS OPPONENT DIDN’T just choose HER! Wow, that speech was amazing. It all left me a little dizzy and giddy.

So, without further ado, I give you my great find for Friday, my salute to Mr. President-Elect:

Give that man a cape and let him get to work.

P.S. If you need a great event coordinator for that Inaugural Ball, look me up!

P.S.S Thanks to this blog!