Random Esquire

You may recall that I like to try on other people’s faces.  When I see someone with an odd expression, I like to try to make the same expression.  I don’t think it’s that unusual, is it?  I want to see how it feels on my face.

Well, I had a new reaction the other day.  I saw this picture of Bill Cosby playing the drums.  (On MSNBC’s entertainment picture slideshow.)  And my first reaction was that I sort of wanted to slug him.

And then I realized that I want to slug John Mayer, as well.

I am forced to conclude that while I have a natural tendency to want to mimic an odd facial expression, if pushed too far, my next reaction is to want to slug it off their mug.

I’m not alone here, am I?  Whose mug do you want to slug?

You may know that I take issue with a Smucker’s commercial for their use of a kid named Dick Smucker.  I take issue with two Jif commercials, too.

But first - it sort of bugs me that all these commercials feature open face peanut butter sandwiches to show off the product but, in reality, no parent is going to give their kid a sandwich with an entire exposed side of peanut butter.  Well, at least, they won’t do it twice.  Here are the ads that bug me:

1.  One slice of bread left, two kids.  They both want peanut butter on bread.  Mom spreads peanut butter on said lone slice of bread, which the kids will share.  The mom tells kid #1, “You cut.”  Kid #1 cuts.  She says that kid #2 gets to choose which ‘half’ he wants.

Dude, oldest trick in the book, right?  Only, the reason it works is because the kid doing the cutting knows that the other kid gets to choose which piece he wants.  The problem in the commercial is that the kid cuts the bread first and then the mom says that the other kid gets to choose.  This bugs me.

2.  Grandma is making an open face peanut butter sandwich for his granddaughter.   He calls it a work of art.  He carves a J into the peanut butter and says, “J for JoAnna!”  Then he cuts it in half and says, “Incredible!  Not just one masterpiece…but two!”  The kid smirks - Grandpa jokes suck on television, too.  Then he says, “Now…who can I share this with?”

Dude, you just freakin’ carved her initials into the sandwich.  It’s her sandwich now, old man.  Back off.

Hmm.  I might have a little cranky grandpa thing going on here myself.  Bah!

I am not a clumsy person. (Boss is incredibly clumsy…in fact, I am honestly surprised when she makes it from one room to the next without tripping.) I don’t spill. I don’t knock things over. I don’t bump into things. And…up until today, I could have said that I honestly do not remember the last time I fell.

But since it was just about an hour ago, it’s pretty fresh in my memory. Here’s what happened. I was heading downstairs through the back way of my condo building. The back way, which is for pets, has…cement stairs. I glanced at my phone and saw an e-mail from SingleMomSeeking about blogging. I opened up the e-mail and started to read just as my heel missed the first step down on a flight and…down I went. I had that brief thought of, “You must be fucking kidding me. I don’t fall.” The cement stairs, they beg to differ. I reached out and grabbed the metal rail and jerked to a stop.

I lay there for a moment and then thought, “Eh, not so bad.” One leg hurt more than the other. I stood up and walked it off. Then I went back upstairs. Boss was over and I said to her, “I just pulled a you.” She said, “What?!” I pulled up my jeans and took off my shoe. Long story short, my knuckles are banged up, my knee has a hole in it and my foot looks like someone dropped a 20 pound weight on it …and everything was bleeding. Nice. Throughout it all, I kept a death-grip on my phone. That can’t be healthy.

There were flashbacks to the time I got my arm mangled in the parking gate and ended up with a hole in my arm. You know, really, it hurt, but it was somewhat exhilarating. Which must be exactly why people like Steve O get addicted to their own stupidity.

I just looked out the loft window to the balcony and thought, “I bet I could jump to that tree easily and make it down.”

1. I made a promise I do not want to break and I no longer wish to keep.

2. I am concerned about someone and am straddling the line between listening…and doing something.

3 . A friend told me recently that I have been distant. I believe the exact phrase was “off-standish.” I feel like I need to clear my head of a fog.

4. Little Filthy senses that things are amiss. Twice today I found him under the bed.

5.  Today, I started to feel…thin. As if I became less of who I am. This bothers me.

1.  Today, I had to resist the urge to send a co-worker an e-mail that read, “We get it.  Shut the hell up already.”

2.  I sometimes see the same young woman at my train stop begging for money.  She’s pregnant and looks…like a used car, if that makes sense.  She walks from person to person and simply looks at them and one by one, they give her a dollar.  Something about the situation struck me as odd and then it dawned on me.  She came up to me and I said, “If I remember correctly, you’ve been pregnant for a year now.”  She gave just the slightest shrug and walked off.

3.   I’m going over to my neighbor’s place to watch a movie in a little bit - the one I just met.  I have no idea what movie it will be but I hope it isn’t a romantic comedy.  I just can’t stomach those.  Please be a brainless action flick, please be a brainless action flick, …or a horror movie, even.  But please, not something like Sleepless In Seattle or *gah* When Harry Met Sally.

Instigator and I were discussing Michael Vick and dogfighting today. We agree that he should get the book thrown at him. I mentioned that I thought bullfighting was unusually cruel, as well. Sticking a bunch of barbs in an animal? Seems pretty rough to me.

And that brought up cockfighting. For some reason, neither of us had that gut reaction of disgust at cockfighting. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s bad. But for some reason, if it has feathers instead of fur, I just don’t get as worked up.

Well, maybe if they were baby ducks. Baby ducks are cute. That would be disturbing. I don’t think I could stomach a bloody baby duck. Okay, so feathers aren’t the key. Maybe it’s size? The bigger the animal, the more tragic it seems.

And then it hit me: Siamese Fighting Fish.

It’s perfect. They’re small and they have neither fur nor feathers. Put two of them together and they duke it out to the death. Easy to maintain - it’s brilliant! I’m going to start collecting some beauties and taking bets. I’ll put a large tank in the middle of my living room and have some seats built around it. I’ll hang a sign on the side of the bowl that says, “Two Fish Enter, One Fish Leaves.” And clean-up is a snap. Er, a flush.

Get in on the action.

 This guy sent roses to his girlfriend via 1-800Flowers.com.  The company then sent a thank-you card to his home…where his wife found it. She called the company and asked for the receipt. Busted.

I saw him on the Today show where he and his dimwit attorney attempted to defend their lawsuit. Leroy stated that it wasn’t really cheating because he and his wife were already in the midst of a divorce proceeding.  Nevermind that the card read “Just wanted to say that I love you and you mean the world to me! Leroy.” This somewhat implies a less than “freshly developed” relationship.

This man is a Blamer. Some people must always find someone upon whom they can heap their collective misery to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own wrongdoing. We probably all know someone who is like this, if only to a far lesser degree. That person who, upon hearing that anything has gone wrong, immediately utters something like, “Well, I did what I was supposed to do…” thereby not directly implicating someone else but attempting to clear his or her own name immediately. Message to Blamers: You are not subtle.

Clearly, I do not know the full story of one Mr. Leroy Greer but I will gladly take the opportunity to relish in his misfortune. Schadenfreude at its best.

Watching Boss sit down to play Wii is vaguely similar to watching the metamorphosis of cocoon to butterfly. Actually, more like Bruce Banner into the Hulk. And not so much vaguely similar as frighteningly similar.

Boss has a pretty even temperament. She neither gets overly excited nor overly upset about anything for long. And so, I’ve never really seen her downright drop her blob. That is, until we bought a Wii.

When I hand the remote controller to her, I can see her eyes glaze and fingers twitch. Fortunately, enough of her good sense remains before she begins that she tightens the wrist strap. She does not just flick to swing a tennis racket. She stands, bouncing from one foot to the next, eyebrows furrowed and muscles tensed, waiting…waiting to slam that remote into your head if you get too close. She turns into…John McEnroe. In the heat of battle, she’s near cold-cocked me and banged her hand more than a couple of times on a table sprinkling it all with obscenities and objections to calls of in or out.

She’s that person who will deliberately wait until you scratch your nose to bean a pitch at your head. And if you play a game that requires that you take turns, she will twitch with impatience and bark commands on how to do it right until it is her turn or I bark back that she’s turning Béla Károlyi on me.

Today, she sat down to play Ratatouille. It was like Joe Pesci was in my living room. Yelling, stomping, etc. And two hours later, she was curled up on the couch, spooning Little Filthy and you’d have had no idea that shortly before, she might have killed you if you stepped in front of the screen while she was attempting to swing over to a piece of cheese. Tomorrow, I’ll come home from work and find her calling the remote her Precious.

This post features the Andy Rooney stamp of cynicism, gracing all things wonderfully crabby.

There are two things I do not understand at all:

and .

Criss Angel and Robin Thicke. I just do not get it. I know they have talent so I won’t dispute that.

Criss Angel reminds of the kid who rode his skateboard to school. The major difference being that he seems to be surrounded by attractive women. Not only is he perpetually dirty, he’s a magician (formerly a kiss of death to any young man’s sex life) and he has a speech impediment. At what point do these gorgeous women look over and realize that they are with a makeup-free Marilyn Manson-esque David Copperfield who looks about 3 days shy of sleep?

Robin Thicke, I admit, is more of a puzzle to me. Did you know that he thinks he’s

? That’s right. He thinks he’s a black man. Except he sings in falsetto. Which makes him more like .

I heard him sing and he broke out the Michael and I think my jaw dropped because women were popping their trunk for him. So, if you’re a woman and you like either of these two, please, explain the appeal because I’m stumped.

Let me be the first person to say that Ann Coulter is a complete nutcase.

Having said that, I will admit that I did laugh when I read her statement about John Edwards just because I was so taken aback with her brazen words:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards,” Ann Coulter told GOP activists attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

That’s totally nuts! If Kathy Griffin had said it, it would have been hilarious because Kathy Griffin loves her gays and would have meant it to be funny. Ann Coulter? You know that evil woman is just…well, evil.

Stuff it, Ann Coulter.