2007

I don’t remember anything about my experiences during the years after I turned twenty. It’s not that I spent the nineties is a drug addled fog; it’s just that nothing stuck in my head. I know when I got married because it’s on a plate in my dining room. I know when I graduated from college if I look at my degree. If you ask me what I remember about 1996 I start with the Presidential election, not anything I was actually involved with. I know I did some stuff during ’96. I may have gone to New York for Thanksgiving, but it may have been ’95 or ’97. I honestly don’t know without looking at pictures. So I figured I would do a review of 2007. The year kicked off with me turning thirty-six. I started doing races. My first race was the Ortega River Run, which shouldn’t be confused with the Gate River Run. I started this blog. LMJ was born. I’m pretty sure I won’t forget that, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. It was a crazy year in mixed martial arts. It was the year of the upset. The UFC bought Pride FC and then shut it down for some reason. This might be the biggest waste of money ever. The New England Patriots went undefeated in the regular season. Tom Brady kicked Bridget Moynihan to the curb when he found out she was pregnant. Britney Spears had a yearlong melt down. Her underage sister was impregnated by a much older staffer from her Nickelodeon show. You can take the family out of Louisiana but… Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was caught soliciting sex in a public men’s room stall at the Minneapolis airport. You can take the Senator out of Washington but… yeah. Maybe I just don’t pay attention because this is about all I can remember for ’07. This is going to be an open entry for the next couple of weeks so I can, hopefully, flesh it out a little bit.

Thursday Next

I’m not a big fiction reader. A novel has about ten pages to catch my interest. If it doesn’t; there’s the recycling bin. I need fast pace and extraordinary characters, extraordinary events, or both. Jasper Fforde is an author who is on the bubble. I think his Thursday Next series is smart, funny and well written. I recommend it to people all the time. It’s English major sci-fi with characters named Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Next, Brick Schitt-Hawse and Braxton Hicks. Thursday has the ability to jump into books and interact with the characters. You’ll never see Ms. Havisham from Wuthering Heights the same again. What’s not to like? I think the only reason there hasn’t been a Thursday Next movie is because there are way too many allusions and puns that most of the American movie watchers won’t get, and while I get most of the allusions and puns I don’t have time for character development, Fforde needs to pick up the pace. If you don’t have a problem struggling through what I think is a plodding first hundred pages, I recommend The Eyre Affair.

IKEA

WARNING: This is the first of three (3) thrown together at the last minute posts scheduled for today as I need to hit my twenty posts for December.

We went to Ikea in Orlando yesterday and it wasn’t too bad. We got some stylish, borderline well made furniture for a reasonable price – until you factor in that I have to put it together. It’s a pretty cool store with a great setup. It might be MJ’s favorite place on Earth, with the possible exception of Disney. If Orlando wasn’t such a corn-flecked turd floating in a punch bowl we’d probably move there. If you haven’t been to an Ikea it’s like a Levitz (RIP) on steroids with a European feel. All their stuff has Swedish names with lots of umlauts so it must be the best. It also has two places to eat – aka how they got LJ to come along. It has a cafeteria that serves authentic Swedish fare and a glorified hot dog stand with 50 cent hot dogs and dollar cinnamon buns the size of car tires. We were in a hurry so I didn’t get to spend all $10 I had planned to spend at the hot dog stand. I only got two dogs, so the trip was a failure from my perspective. I brought some Zantac, some Pepto-Bismol, a pipe cleaner, and a bucket in case I needed some help finishing my allotted twenty franks. They’re not crap hot dogs either; they’re stadium quality. You’d pay $13 at a ballpark for something similar, and I was getting them for 50 cents a piece. It’s obvious why I was excited. MJ went for the furniture. I don’t need furniture. I’ve got furniture. I was going for the nitrates and a stomach ache. I got very little of one and not a hint of the other.

Random Thoughts and Questions

I’m starting to write down thoughts that pop into my mind that I think are funny, and I’m going to share some of them.

When either of these two questions is asked, diplomacy never had a chance: You lookin’ at me? and You think you’re better than me? They don’t suggest open-mindedness. They’re almost always rhetorical, and they’re usually followed by an overhand right.

These next thoughts were inspired by Harry Belafonte singing s A Long Time Ago in Bethlehem.

There’s a Florida Gator joke that goes, “Why does the St. John’s river flow north? Because Georgia sucks.” Is there a Muslim parallel about the Nile and Israel or is there too big of a cultural gap?

Why isn’t there a heavy metal band named Deathlehem or at least a song, and if there is then why haven’t they made it big? How can you suck with a name like Deathlehem? I’ve got an idea for a movie called Deathlehem. It’s basically a buddy cop movie, but instead of detectives they’ll be prophets. The team will be Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Moses will be the wily, crafty veteran and senior prophet. Jesus will be the on the edge burnout who’s seen too much, but constantly feels the need to prove that he didn’t get the job just because of who his dad is. He won’t be able to do any of paperwork because of the Stigmata. Mohammed will be the by the book rookie who won’t bend the rules – procedure over efficiency – and will only speak in Arabic. Abel has been resurrected and sent to Bethlehem to show that God has forgiven man and we can re-enter the Garden of Eden, but Satan and Cain have different ideas. The Prophets will be dispatched to keep Abel alive. The first line of the movie will be Cain asking Abel, “You think you’re better than me?” Action will ensue.

Hava Nagila

EJG asked why don’t Christians celebrate Jewish holidays. I wondered this on a few occasions growing up. The first time I was eight or nine and celebrated my first Hanukah with my friend Neal. It was simple math: eight nights of gifts as opposed to one morning. It’s always about the money. The next time was when after moving from Washington to Jacksonville I no longer got Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah off from school. Now I think about it whenever I get asked by a complete stranger if I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I try not to get angry that some jackass who has difficulty with the subtleties of Monday Night Raw is quoting the King James Bible and thinks he can boil the entirety of existence down to John 3:16. I try to appreciate the irony. I wonder if Messianic Judaism is the correct Christianity. Why shouldn’t I have a Passover Seder, if for no other reason than to upset my neighbors?

Is everything okay, LJ? Your door is wide open.
I don’t know, he said they’re waiting for Elijah.
Elijah, Elijah who?
Elijah Profits I think. Do you know him?
No, I think he was a linebacker for the Jags.
No, that’s Elijah Pitts.
This is just weird. I think we should call the cops.

There will need to be some ground rules though. First, bacon is staying on the menu and gefilte fish isn’t getting on. Second, I can’t grow facial hair. It’s genetic, there’s nothing I can do. Third, if I have a son I’m naming him after me. Other than that, I’m already circumcised, and we’ve always agreed that women are property and homosexuals should be tormented. What else is there? Mazel tov and LeChaim.

Alberto Gonzales, Bill & Hillary Clinton, and Satan esq.

This is from the FAQ section of Tucker Max’s website. I’m not linking to his site because he’s not a good human being. But he’s a good writer and he’s funny, and that goes a long, long way in helping tolerate someone’s jerky tendencies. He graduated from Duke Law and decided writing about his adventures as an arrogant ass for a living was better than practicing law.



Should I get my JD? What is your advice for someone thinking about going into law school? Do you want to waste three years of your life debating stupid and utterly irrelevant minutia? Then yes, get your JD. Do you want to get a degree that allows you work the rest of your life in a tedious, shitty, unrewarding job? Then yes, get your JD. Are you a boring, facile, socially retarded whore, desperate for the illusion of money and success, regardless of the cost to your life and the lives of those you love? Then yes, get your JD. Do you want to squander your existence sitting in a lifeless office, churning out ultimately meaningless paperwork? Then yes, get your JD. Listen to me people: There is a reason that lawyers have the LOWEST job satisfaction of any profession in America. THE JOB SUCKS. It is horrible. If you know any lawyers, ask yourself: Are they happy with their job or their life? 90% of the time, the answer will be no. If the answer to that question is yes, then ask yourself, "Do I like that person." The answer will be almost always be no. The only lawyers who like their jobs are the sketchy ones that are the reason lawyers jokes are so prevalent and popular. Do you want to be that person? If so, then yes, get your JD.

I despise lawyers. It’s lawyers that ruin every good idea ever put into action. Who made the tax code the way it is? They play this ridiculous little game where they make up the rules as they go along and change them as it suits their needs, while excluding everyone not in the “club”. They’re parasites that prey on people at their weakest moments. They have win at any cost attitudes, and don’t understand when people caught in the collateral devastation get upset. They use game theory but don’t understand the math. How many lawyers have gotten rich off of terrorist bombings, hurricanes, and little old ladies? How many innocent people have state and district attorneys gotten executed because they were more interested in the book deal or the state legislature seat than the truth?

Maybe if the new lawyers I’ve had to deal with this week were funny then these last two post would have been as well.

Public Service Announcement

If you're over fifty years old you need long term care insurance. There's roughly a 50-50 chance you'll spend more than 3 months in a nursing home, an assisted living facility, or need in home health care for at least that amount of time before you die. Medicare doesn't pay for it. Supplemental health insurance doesn't pay for it. Medicaid will gladly pay for it if you have less than $2,000 of stuff, not counting your home or one car, and depending where you are in the country they may put a limit on the value of those. Every penny you bring in over $1,200 a month will go to the facility. If you bring in more than $1,800 a month, better luck next time, there's the door. While Medicaid ignores the spouses income, they do consider everything jointly owned. In Florida the average cost of a facility is $5,000 a month, and it goes up every year. I run into people a lot more often than I would like to that get themselves stuck. They work for fifty years building a nest egg then Johnny has a mild stroke and breaks his hip, which becomes arthritic, and they have to give it all back. Or they can go to an attorney who specializes in Elder law who will suggest they need to get divorced so they don't wind up sharing cans of generic cat food for the rest of their lives. Merry Christmas.

Stuff I Didn't Know

I found out this week that professional baseball players are on steroids and the internet has lead to increased viewing of pornography. Did you guys know any of this? I didn’t have a clue. The next thing you know we’ll find out that professional wrestling is staged, and potheads like hacky-sacks. How do these ridiculous studies get funded? When a thirty-seven year old man’s head grows a full hat size, he’s on something. How do people not know this stuff? The porn study also found out that men download filth more often than women. Really, men like porn more than women? Do we also like sports with balls more than women? Maybe I can get a grant to study whether men or women are more likely to pick up street hookers. I remember thinking the kids from either Harvard or Yale that had the cojones (pronounced like an assistant Jones) to ask for a grant to find out which American university was the biggest party school. I get worked up about this stuff because there are hungry children, uncured diseases, and war. When those three things get taken care of -- all of them – then I will be more receptive to studying whether or not African-Americans have a heightened affinity for poultry, and if we do is frying our favorite preparation. When Ronald McDonald house closes because they don’t have any work we can find out whether it’s possible to go back once you’ve gone Black. When there is world peace I’ll be more than happy to study whether or not the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday or just most days. I think it would be best if I was on an island near the equator with someone to bring me drinks with rum in them – a relaxed scientist is a good scientist. I would take some sun screen, but if I’m doing this study then cancer is a thing of the past. Don’t we all hope that I get to do this study?

This Just In...

North Florida has second-highest number of crack dealers in the nation eligible for reduced prison sentences. Scoreboard New York and Los Angeles. There are about 30 million people in metro New York and almost as many in SoCal, but tha 'Ville is ahead of at least one of you metropolises (metropoli?) when it comes to releasing drug dealers onto the streets due to racist sentencing guidelines. Yeah Big Apple, you kill more unarmed minorities than we do, but that's because no one down here is unarmed. There was a CSI: Miami on Monday about a gun called "The Vaporizer" that shoots 100,000 rounds per minute. I have two of 'em in my truck - just in case.

Taser Used On Parent at Ed White. The Taser has to be cops' favorite gadget since the advent of the siren. They don't have to take any crap anymore. There used to be a huge gulf where diplomacy lay between a cop having to risk going hand-to-hand and shooting someone. Now cops can zap people willy-nilly and only two out of every hundred will go into cardiac arrest. I'm a little disappointed that this didn't happen at another Jacksonville high school, Nathan B. Forrest Senior High School. Forrest Gump was named after him.

Would-be Robbers Strike Out Twice at Jacksonville Restaurant. How is it that these two jackasses didn't get tasered by the police. I love Law & Order: Criminal Intent's major case squad, but I want to see Law & Order: Re-Tard. In Jacksonville's war on crime, the dumbest criminal offenders are filmed and ridiculed mercilessly by the detectives of the You've-got-to-be-kidding-me squad. These are their stories. CHUNG-CHUNG. It would star Samuel L. Jackson and Billy Bob Thornton. The Captain would be Chelsea Handler. The Assistant State Attorney would be Don Cheadle doing the cockney he does in the Ocean's # movies. Eddie Izzard would be the transvestite vice cop. The show would be pricey but it would be worth it.

On the other hand it was 85 degrees here today, December 12.

Movies That Are Funny Because of The Foul Language

Just because there’s a lot of cursing doesn’t mean it’s a great movie, although it never hurts. The best cases for this are every Steven Seagal movie not named Under Seige. However, potty language can make a good movie great, just look at South Park the Movie: Bigger, Longer, Uncut. A social commentary on little kids talking like little kids talk. It’s the greatest musical ever. Full Metal Jacket falls into the unintentionally funny due to over the top swearing. I don’t know if Stanley Kubrick was trying to make a political statement, but Sgt. Hartman is one of the funniest characters in the history of art whether he was supposed to be or not. He tends to overreact – as drill instructors will. What made him even funnier for me is that the first time I watched it I was with a buddy who was shipping out for basic training the very next day. He didn’t find anything about the movie funny at all. Badder Santa isn’t interested in good taste at any moment in the film. Lauren Graham could win ten Best Actress Oscars in a row; she’s going to be remembered for one line and one line only. The new curse master is Judd Apatow. He’s written great bad language for at least three movies: The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad. Eddie Murphy once said you can’t give a curse show. I think he may have been wrong.

This Should Have Been Friday’s Post

Friday was supposed to be a day living in infamy, but I didn’t hear anything about it. I forgot about it. I didn’t have much contact with the outside world Friday but still. I like to consider myself an amateur history buff, and I forgot the anniversary of one of the biggest military blunders ever. I don’t view the attack on Peal Harbor as most Americans do – well most Americans, today, don’t view it at all. I don’t think about the tragedy of the destroyed naval base. I think about awesome miscalculation of the Japanese. Everything in the world today is the way it is because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If they had let well enough alone the United States would have remained isolated; Germany would have conquered Europe; and Japan would have done the same in the Far East. There would be no Israel because there would be no Jews. Germany would have finished “evacuating” them and the world would never know what happened. Communism would have had a much shorter run than it did. It never would have made it to Latin America or Southeast Asia. There would have been no Cuban missile crisis, no Viet Nam, no Korea. The Chinese would probably have met the same fate as the Jews in Europe. The United States might still be an almost completely agrarian economy. The only thing that would have kept us from speaking German and/or Japanese is that we’re so far away from the rest of the world and we’re so big. There are military experts that think if the attack on Pearl Harbor had come even six weeks later Germany would have had time to finish off Great Britain and der Rest würde Geschichte sein. It makes me sad that we’re starting to forget the day that will live in infamy – despite Ben Affleck’s best efforts. There are fewer and fewer people who were there. A sixteen year old who joined the Army in 1945 is seventy-eight, most likely about to turn seventy-nine. That’s a little bit older than Clint Eastwood. I hope I have the time and energy to teach LMJ about this stuff.

One of my favorite movies is Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci. It’s about the Wannsee Conference where the Nazis make the executive decision to streamline the Holocaust. It’s disturbing. Netflix or Blockbuster it today for some cheery holiday viewing if you haven't seen it.

I Need My Bree

I don't mean the cheese. I love Desperate Housewives. It's the best nighttime soap opera since Dynasty. On Sunday night I need me some Bree, Susan, Lynette, Gabrielle, and Edie. It's how I mark the end of the weekend. It's not on tonight. ABC is showing some movie with Michael Imperioli where he's a suicidal ex-ballplayer who is spending a day with his dying mother. What kind of crap is that?!? I don't understand the fascination with contrived, hokey tearjerkers. They don't tug at my heartstrings; they make me roll my eyes. There are a lot of genres I don't like but I understand why other people do. Country music is about the stories. Well, good country music is about the stories. Chick flicks are about real chicks identifying with the trials and tribulations of the fake chicks in the movie -- and the gratuitous nudity thrown in for the guys. That's why guys don't like Julia Roberts. She's ridiculously stingy. I also understand why people who don't like the stuff I do. Most of it's offensive and the rest of it is stupid. But who likes stories with premises so over the top that they can't possibly hope to live up to the hype? Who gets worked up about the dyslexic orphan girl trapped in a boy's body finding out she has leukemia as she's being sent to Auschwitz? Can anyone really muster any sympathy for her? A suicidal ex-ballplayer who is spending a day with his dying mother sounds like a Tina Fey joke on 30 Rock. Just pay the fracking writers their money. It's all fun and games until I'm bored.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace

This is the 100th post on Runners High

I’m a fan of extremes. I enjoy polar opposites. How bad can bad get is one of my favorite questions – when it’s funny. I’m listening to someone sing the Ave Maria over Schubert’s melody very well. I think it’s Loreena McKennitt. It’s a transcendent piece of music, of which there are about four in the world. Strangely, they’re all religious pieces except for Gin and Juice. Normally I don’t “listen” to music. Normally it’s just there as a mild opiate, but occasionally, as in the case of the Ave Maria, I can’t push it to the background. No matter how many times I hear it I fall into the intricacies of the talent and skill necessary to do it right. And by doing it right I mean a top notch soprano. It probably should be sung by a castrato but that’s creepy. There’s a recording of one of the last castratos from the early twentieth century with his picture next to it. Dude looks like Tony Soprano (wow, I didn’t even see that pun coming until it was on the page) but sounds like an eleven year old boy. It makes my skin crawl. Anyway, if it’s not going to be sung by someone with a tight control of a high register and without genital mutilation then let’s derail this train. Biz Markie sings the Ave Maria. Pee Wee Herman sings the Ave Maria. Steve & Edie sing the Ave Maria. Ashlee Simpson sings – not lip syncs – the Ave Maria. I’m sure the Vatican, the Catholic League, Opus Dei, the Southern Baptists, the Sons of Abraham, and even Al Qaeda would agree that Ashlee Simpson singing the Ave Maria would be blatantly anti-Catholic and a crime against humanity. If locking Ashlee Simpson in The Hague can bring Catholic and Protestant, and Jew and Muslim together then isn’t that what the holidays are all about? It’s what Martin Luther King, jr. died for.

I'm That Dad

We went to the middle school chorus Christmas performance at MJ’s church. We took LMJ to start the process of getting her acclimated to public events. She is an off the charts well behaved baby when she can stick to her schedule. She’s on a three hour cycle. She eats. She takes a nap lasting between thirty minutes and an hour. Then she plays for the rest of the three hours. The hungry and sleepy dovetail at about three hours fifteen minutes into crankiness. We knew this going into the concert so we sat on the outside edge of our pew to make it as easy as possible to exit the concert if and when she stopped enjoying the singing. The singing began at about seven thirty and LMJ made it to about five till eight. MJ handed her to me and I walked out silently. This is where the realization of self happened; where I learned something about myself that would have caused me a certain level of cognitive dissonance if I let it. A grandmother was carrying her grandson around the foyer trying to minimize the ruckus he was interested in causing. He was the same age as LMJ and was doing the same thing she was – deciding when cranky needed to move into rage. The two infants were acting the same. The two infants did not look the same. Her baby was ugly. I think it had to do with a lack of genetic diversity, but that’s not the point. The point is that I ran a gamut of emotions which started at SCOREBOARD, moved into pity, and ended with a twinge of guilt for shamelessly flaunting my beautiful baby. I was holding Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy. My baby’s face could launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Ilium -- twice. This lady was holding Peyton Manning with no hair and no ability to read defenses. This is when I realized I was that parent, silently comparing every baby I see to my own and doing my best not to openly gloat. “Your baby sucks!” is not an appropriate comment anywhere; especially not at a Christmas concert in a church to someone you just met.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

I must have gotten enough sleep last night because I woke up giddy. I was singing Christmas carols while I made breakfast. I was singing Luck Be a Lady to LMJ as I changed her diaper. Thank God for the Chairman of the Board. He sang in a register I can approach. I have about a one and a half step range. Francis – I call him Francis – would let you know he had vocal chops whenever he was in the mood, but normally the point was to show how pimpin’ he was. That’s why we connect on a musical level. I digress. At some point this morning I started singing There’s No Business Like Show Business. LMJ loved it but it started to get old for MJ after the third go round. I only know

There's no business like show business
Like no business I know
Everything about it is appealing
Everything the traffic will allow
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
When you aren’t stealing that extra bow.

Then I start over. MJ is a patient woman. She didn’t pick up a knife or a blunt object. She just asked what was wrong with me and suggested I learn the rest of the lyrics. I learned this show tune watching Drama Queen, aka EJG’s and JSG’s gravy train, sing it last year as the star of Annie Get Your Gun. She sings it a lot better than I do. For my money sixth grade musical theater is the only musical theater. Then I started thinking about how hopelessly uncool she must think we all are with our silly blogging gang name and political opinions. Sinatra, aren’t they a Brazilian heavy metal band? It doesn’t bother me because I know I’m cooler than Freddy Jackson drinking a milkshake in a snowstorm – long live Outcast – and in twenty-five years she’ll feel the way I do now.

I had a pleasant conversation about how cold it is here at 8 o’clock this morning with a guy in the elevator. I think when I have a moment’s peace around this time of year the cheer really affects me (effects? Cora can you help me?) in a positive way. Happy birthday Jesus.

I Got a Little Bit

My Xmas humor is taking a turn towards the dark. I don't like the over the top tacky "Happy Birthday Jesus" displays people seem to think are clever. I make it a point to read the Bible from "In the beginning" to "Amen" every year, and I don't remember anything about Jesus being gaudy. Maybe I missed something or maybe I have a bad translation but Jesus seemed to be into unconditional love and humility. But since I could be mistaken, I'm thinking about commissioning a Mel Gibson style robotic nativity scene (the Easter one is going to be even better). I don't want to give anything away but Mary is not going to have an easy delivery -- in my front yard. Since CJG works for a robot company I think I can make this happen. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men.

It's Been A Long Couple of Days and I Got Nuthin'

What is The Matrix?

Jiu-jitsu? I'm going to learn jiu-jitsu? - Sir Keanu Reeves.

The interweb was down last night all over Jacksonville. Maybe I'm a conspiracy nut but stuff like this always makes me nervous. 1984 and A Brave New World scare the hell out of me.

The Ubiquitous Yuletide Yummies

Most people think Christmas is about Jesus. It's not. It's about sugar. During the holiday season my trinity is ginger snaps, oatmeal raisin cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. What are your favorite Christmas sweets?

I Apologize. I Read The New York Times

It's around 10:20 and I was struggling for a topic so I cracked open the Gray Lady. Well, I didn't actually open the newspaper. I went to its website. I read the Times -- and the Washington Post -- because the local fishwrap is borderline unreadable. I don't particularly like the Times but at least it's written by professional writers. After tonight's perusal I've come up with an idea for when a president is sworn into office. Since every one of the G.O.P. candidates is such a hardcore badass(sarcasm laid on as thickly as possible), and since each of the Democratic candidates makes me violently angry, I think the new POTUS should be smacked in the face with a 2x4. I don't mean ceremonially, even though it will be a ceremony, I mean blasted in the grill with a big piece of hardwood. If you want to be president you're going to have to ante up some blood. How else are we supposed to know if a candidate is serious if we don't know whether or not they're willing to get some of their own blood in the game. I think everyone but Hillary and McCain would drop out toot sweet, and that's really the point. We need to weed out the suckers. There's a broken nose minimum. A broken nose isn't that big of a sacrifice to be leader of the free world. Right now I don't know who I could trust to do it correctly other than me. Oh sweet Baby Jesus would I hack. I'd be like Reggie Jackson in prime time. I'd try to blast that fool's teeth through the back of his/her head. If the President dies, the VP is next. It's not like I'm uncivilized, if Nancy Pelosi or someone else in the line of succession doesn't want the free rhinoplasty she can tap out and we keep moving. I'm sure I'll get tired somewhere around the Secretary of Agriculture. God bless America.