A Sad Day Indeed

Two Days ago, the unthinkable happened. My Xbox 360 decided it wanted to take a holiday for the holidays. Heidi and I have guests arriving for the weekend, and we were going to be throwing down on some video games. In anticipation, I went to Blockbuster and rented Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I’d seen some adds and had been hearing the hype, so I wanted to check it out. After popping it in for all of about 3 minutes, I was going through the training section and my system froze. It was odd, but I just turned off the machine and powered back up. It went to just about the same spot and froze again. This time, when I powered back up, I had three red lights shining back at me.

This didn’t feel so much like a disappointment, but more like I had a loved one taken away from me. Perhaps really not that drastic, but my gut dropped. I take good care of my stuff, and kept it in a well ventilated area, but my launch time 360 finally bit the bullet. Dealing with the problem wasn’t too bad, I called Microsoft, and they are sending a package aka “The Coffin” to send it in for repairs and they will cover the costs of repair and shipping. I am however going to be without my primary means of entertaining myself for probably about a month or so. I have other game systems however, but really it’s not quite the same. It’s kind of like, you’ve been dating the head of the Cheerleading squad for a couple of years, and then she breaks up with you for some guy in his Sophomore year in college studying the metaphysics of plutonium’s affect on tumors in lab rats. Then after she breaks up with you, you have to go back to the girl with the last eye from the glee club that you had said a few nasty things about when you started getting busy with the popular girl.

So instead of fragging noobs in Halo3, and pulling a laserflip to frontside crooks over the gap and dropping in on the hubba in “Skate”, I’ll be rolling balls made of paperclips and kitty cats in Katamari Demacy, and getting some kills in on Black, but still there’s that empty feeling of not playing online with the headset. Not only that, I just ordered 2 games that are coming from Amazon.com and they’ll just have to sit and wait for me. The last 2 mornings have been strange.

I’m a creature of habit. If things aren’t going in order, I tend to forget things and have a strange feeling of emptiness about me when my routine is bothered. Sometimes I may forget to take medicine, sometimes I may skip taking out the recycling. Little things, but enough to know that something’s not right. It’s going to be a long hard road until my system comes back from repair, but I hope it flies by and I’ll be back to my old habits when it comes back and I won’t have to dread the ring of red.

It seems strange to have something so trivial taken away from me. What’s next? No flashy sneakers? No juvenile hip hop? No pizza? Dark days are ahead, and I hope that’s the end of my troubles for awhile.

Until next time, happy gaming?

Artistic Cock, or Terrible Gift?

There’s one of those moments that will hit you. An Epiphany. Sometimes it’s in the form of just the right punch line to a joke, sometimes, it’s realizing you can make a difference in someone’s life, and sometimes it is when you find just the right gift for the right situation. Enter the glass rooster.

Here’s the situation. I got invited to a home warming party. It’s for a couple of old friends that I used to work at Souper Salad with. It was one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever had and made so many great friends. It was a job that never really paid the bills fully, but you had so much fun there it was hard to leave. Even when I worked full time as a Tandem Mainframe operator, I still worked on the side there to make some extra scratch and hang out with my friend Mark Caulkins. Throughout the years I’d worked there, I’d been kind of known as a goofy funny kid. Not much as changed, but Souper Salad doesn’t exist anymore and this is a good opportunity to see old friends.

The invitation said “no gifts”, but seriously who ever listens to that. Not that I’m going to go out and buy a crystal vase or anything ridiculous, but I needed to bring something. My plan was to go to Marshalls and pick out something crazy, leaning towards the side of ugly. Not so much to be a jerk, although that’s a bonus, but for that golden moment when someone opens a bad gift and they’re forced to pretend they like it. I was thinking of a beaded monkey or perhaps a gilded pig, but then like a shining beacon from heaven, my eyes landed upon the rooster. The sound dropped from my ears and a moment of vertigo took over. There was nothing existing in this world at that moment aside from this hand blown glass cock from China. How could I resist. I walked around Marshalls with it clutched to my body like a Heisman trophy. Tucked into the crook of my arm so as not to drop it, it was more precious than a Ming Vase.

Look at it. It’s hard to look away, and it’s stunning in its ridiculousness. It came in at a whopping $7.99 because it was from Marshalls, but I think it would be safe to say that if it were at a gallery in Portland it would fetch hundreds. From the side, it catches the light just right and if you listen close enough you can hear the faint whisper of angels singing. But from the front, it looks like a full on infected pecker. And I don’t mean that in the sense that he’s a foul and eat with his pecker, I’m referring to if this were a flower, it would be the stamen.

Giddily I went home and snapped a couple of pix of it to capture the beauty, and wrapped it up until it unveiling on Saturday. I don’t really know for sure what my friends will think of their rooster, but I sure hope the moment is awkward. Because if you can’t take joy in the awkward moment of a young couple unwrapping a glass cock, what can you really take joy in?

What’s Going On????

A lot of things have happened since my last post. I know I haven’t been very diligent about updating my blog, and for some reason, lately I’ve been getting hits, so I thought I’d make a quick post.

Behold the power of the dragon. The time I normally would have been doing stand-up has now been filled with the sounds of myself getting punched in the face. Heidi and I have been taking karate since January and have been moving up the ranks. Starting at white belt, then yellow, then orange, and currently we’ve graduated to purple belt. It’s something we both always wanted to do when we were younger, and figured what the dilly-oh, let’s do it. We’re part of the Villari’s school out of Scarborough, and I’m pretty surprised how much we’ve learned up to this point. That, and Heidi looks cute as a button in her karate PJ’s.

I’ve still been thinking about comedy and keeping the wheels moving. I’ll be back to represent in 2008’s Portland’s Funniest Professional. I’ve got a few more jokes lines up playing off my Fajita joke, and those folks that have heard it seem to like that direction of my humor. I still miss standing in front of a crowd making them laugh, but the constant nagging fear of “this could be the single worst moment of your life” thought of bombing onstage no longer haunts me.

Recently, people have been asking me a lot about stand-up, even though I’m not active. A really cool thing happened during the World Series in October. I wanted to go to Olympia Sports in the mall and pick up a Red Sox players hat for the Series. A kid behind the counter that I didn’t even know asked me if I was still doing stand up. I was kind of shocked, I didn’t expect it. He said he’d caught my act before and really liked it, especially my Red Sox joke, which is actually my Swahili Lover joke which is also one of my favorites. It almost always works. That was a really great feeling. As I’ve said before, if I can say something funny and put a positive spin on something someone experiences later on in life, I feel good about what I’ve done. That was quite the circular sentence, but you get the gist.

The Red Sox won the World Series. It was just as sweet to see it the second time. I got to go to a couple of great games this year too, with great seats. I saw Dice-K’s first game at Fenway, from about 10 rows behind the Sox dugout. I was in heaven. Elliott hooked me up with a free ticket for that game. I also got to see Clay Buckholts’ first game for the Sox too. My dad brought me along as his guest and we were on TV most of the game we were so close. Also another highlight, that and my dad’s cancer (he states) is close to in remission. He’s hard of hearing though, but he really is doing so much better than a couple years back when we almost lost him.

I’m on two wheels. Maybe not now because it’s gotten cold, but Heidi and I got our motorcycle permits. I bought a 150 cc moped online and put most of it together. It was a great way to learn about my scooter, but I didn’t expect to have to assemble so much of it. Because of the size of the motor, I had to register it as a motorcycle, but it’s been a ton of fun. I’ve gotten it up to about 70mph and put well over 500 miles throughout the season. Because it gets around 90 miles to the gallon, I’ve saves a ton on gas over the summer on my commute to work and back. It’s been a blast, and Heidi and I go on rides all the time when it’s warmer. I may have to move up to something in a big boy bike next year or so, but for now, the moped does the trick.

I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. One of my favorite finds recently has been MC Chris. If you’re familiar with Aqua Teen Hunger Force, he plays the part of MC Pee Pants. His voice is very high pitched, and at first I had a hard time getting used to it, but after a few listens, its fine. His creativity is really well executed. He can really puts images and phrases together so well, and raps about video games and Stare Wars among other things. I’m real impressed, and his music has been kind of inspirational in my thought process for some of my newer jokes. Not lifting or using his material, but following his thought process. Redman is also a great inspiration to me in the same way in my comedy.

I’ve been playing quite a bit of video games on my 360 lately too. I just beat “skate” which was rad beyond rad. It made me wish I still had that coordination to skate still, but sadly I do not. Bioshock was pretty slick too, but now I’m engulfed in the world of Halo3. Heidi’s brother plays it quite a bit, and he’s really good. We play on XBOX Live when we can. If you play Halo3 and want an easy frag, check me out my gamer profile is: peabean. It’s a combination of my nickname for Heidi “Peanut”, and my musical nom de plume Beanz, from when Pork and Beanz was all the rage.

Speaking of comedy and CD’s, you have to check out Mike Birbiglia’s new one. My Secret Public Journal Live. If you’ve heard his older stuff, some of it will be redundant, but he put it together really well. Also I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Patton Oswalt’s Werewolves and Lollipops. Normally I find his comedy to be too formulaic, but this time it worked more fluidly. Then my friend Mike said he thought this new album seemed a lot like how I tell jokes. That was a nice compliment.

The Celtics are contenders once again. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a rapid Orlando Magic fan, but Mike and I have been going to the Celtics for a couple of years now. I’ve enjoyed them as a secondary team, but I cheered for them in the New England way. I’d sit there and go “Yup, that’s why they suck” pointing out their faults and giving my opinion on how they could be a legitimate franchise once again. Usually bitching about the selfishness of Paul Pierce or the inability of Coach Doc Rivers ability to coach anything. He was fired from Orlando a couple years back at his supreme ability to suck in an unparalleled fashion. Now with the acquisition of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, even with Doc’s horrible coaching they’re doing great things. 5 and 0 as of this post. Let’s hope they keep it up.

My favorite football team, Packers, are still kicking bootay! Behind the helm is the man Brett Favre. I have a man crush on him. Nothing involving penetration, I just think he’s cooler than titties. I expect the bottom to fall out at some point in and around the playoffs, but I’m riding high for right now.

I guess this isn’t such a quick post after all. I guess I’ll tie it up for now, and will try and make a valid attempt to update this more frequently. There’s tons of other stuff that’s gone on since my last post, but I’ll catch up on that as we go.