Thursday, November 06, 2003


  • THE THING: The visit from my landlord.
  • THE FULL REVIEW:
    [There's just no haiku I could put for this. So I shall skip that part.]

    My landlord is a very nice guy. He lives upstairs, and I live downstairs. I basically live in a bar. Most of my apartment is a bar. It's a big bar.

    Anyway, my landlord and I get along quite well; he comes and hangs out sometimes. We chat -- it's cool.

    Also, I am keeping watch over his 1966 jukebox. It's a wonderful machine. I love having it there. I almost didn't want to keep it in there, because the apartment is a little small. But it's too sweet, and too bar-related to move it. It rocks.

    A little over a week ago, the jukebox decided to stop actually making any music. The records would spin -- no sound would emit from the speaker. My landlord wanted to come and look at it. We both work and are away at odd hours, so we rarely are home at the same time.

    A couple nights ago, we were. He yelled down through the door between the upstairs and downstairs, "HEY! Wanna look at the jukebox?!" I said, "Sure."

    So he came down. Wearing a t-shirt and just his tighty whiteys.

    Ohmigod.

    He and I get along well. BUT NOT THAT WELL! Just to complete the picture for you: He weighs in around 275. The t-shirt was green. And I was wrong in naming the drawers tighty whiteys. His BVDs were more of a powder blue color. So -- here we are -- me and a big fella basically wearing just baby blue briefs.

    I spent the whole time looking up. There was just a lot I did not want to see. My brain was screaming, "Throw on some shorts, man!" But I just couldn't actually say it for some reason.

    We were working on the jukebox for a while, and he realized that we needed to remove the amp. He told me so: "Well, someone's got to get down there and get that amp out of there."

    "I GOT IT!" I blurted out, trying to avoid seeing him bending, crouching, ratcheting, and tugging in his skivvies.

    We got all done, and I went to go back and play a video game or two. I sat on the couch, which is right across from the bar. He decided he wanted to stay and chat, which is normally fine, but I had had my fill of big-man-in-underpants for one night. He sat down at the bar and kept chatting. I picked up my game controller and stared directly at the TV. Since I was sitting on the couch, and he was at the bar, his underthings and the package they held were basically at eye level. I was frightened.

    I didn't hear anything he was saying. I just had a voice in my head chanting: "Just play the game... just play the game... don't turn your head..." I didn't want to be rude, but I just had to draw the line at eye contact -- the possiblilty of eye contact with man-underthings was too great.

    As he headed upstairs, I realized that not only had I not looked at him for the last 25 minutes, but I don't think I had even breathed.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003


  • THE THING: The 80's music website quiz thingy.
  • THE HAIKU REVIEW:
          Resisting a lot
              of these nostalgia programs.
                  I caved in right here.
  • THE FULL REVIEW:
    I'm kind of sick of all the remember-the-80's sorts of shows out there. I do remember the 80's, and there was some cool, funny, cheesy, wonderful, sappy, silly, glittery, fishnetty, stonewashed-jeany, break-dancey, hippity-hoppity things that happened. For some reason I can only take about 20 minutes of any of the shows... but most people I know that are in my age-bracket love them. I don't know why I keep resisting.

    While visiting Blog, Shmog, there was a link. It looked a little like this:

    [WARNING: THIS IS A HUGE TIME HOOVER!! YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO CLICK ON IT IF YOU REMEMBER ANY SONGS FROM THE 80's AND HAVE ANYTHING TO DO TODAY.]


    I had to find out the dealie-o. So I went there.

    Wow. I had no idea of how much of my brain contained musical crud from the 80's. I will be singing most of these songs all day. There were over 100 lyrical questions there. My brain actually hurts.

    I scored a 69, which I thought was somewhat respectable; at least better than I thought I would. It should have been just a smidge higher. It stinks that you have to put each word in a different blank. Be careful about that... (I hope this isn't any kind of a spoiler for one of the answers: I put white and wedding in the same box, so it came out as white wedding blank. NO POINTS! Urg. And, yes, I reversed lonely and broken, which was just silly.)

    There were many that I could sing the entire line of the song in my head, sometimes the entire song, except for the word that was missing!

    If you have a 1/2 hour, at least, to kill, go check it out.