Feeling Old

Due to a combination of a.) wanting to broaden my horizons and b.) having Michelle staying with me, I found myself watching a fair amount of MTV this weekend. I've come to terms with the fact that they don't play music videos anymore (those have been banished to the poor-stepchild MTV2 network.) But everything I saw this weekend indicated that not only am I NOT in MTV's target demographic, I may not even exist in their blond-streaked, body-glittered, text-messaging, Hollister-shopping universe.

Saturday kicked off with a marathon of "My Super Sweet Sixteen," which follows the travails of blond (surprise!) girls - most of them suspiciously from Southern California - planning their ultimate sweet sixteen parties. Not your usual cake-and-candles affair down in Mom and Dad's basement, either. The tearing point for me came when one girl (probably named Madysyn or Ashlee or Mikayla or something equally trendy-cum-mutilated) burst into tears because her father wanted to wear an Elvis suit to the $450,000 party that HE was throwing for her.

From there we moved on to "Laguna Beach," which I'm not even going to bother writing about. It's basically "The OC" but without those pesky concepts of "plot" and "character development", and sans the benefit of semi-professional actors.

I'll give my highest marks to "Date My Mom," in which blond body-glittered girls - noticing a trend? - compete for the affections of a male contestant (inevitably an Ashton Kutcher lookalike in clothes that don't fit) by having their mothers go on dates with him. Think you've seen forced, wooden dialogue punctuated by popular buzzwords? Think again:

Boy: So, I gotta know - does your daughter wear granny panties, thongs or does she just freebird?
Mom: Hee hee, what does Freebird mean?
Boy: Ha ha, I'll take that shit with a side of diced tomatoes! (I am not making this up)
Mom: Hee hee.

If some kid ever referred to my daughter as "that shit" and expressed a desire to eat her with diced tomatoes, I hope I'd counter with something a little more thought-provoking than "hee hee." Like a knuckle sandwich, perhaps.

In short, the MTV you knew as a kid - with the bouncing astronaut, Poison videos and Kurt Loder - is dead. I even found myself sadly nostalgic for "Beavis and Butt-head." Maybe a decade ago, when we were all wearing flannel, smelling like Teen Spirit, and MTV was fawning over us, the "original" 1980s MTV generation was shaking its head at how ridiculous we looked. But at least we knew what the "M" stood for.

And back then they had those bad-ass Stridex commercials. Do they even make Stridex anymore?

No Further Comment

On ESPN right now: A blond asian male participating in the Alka Seltzer US Open of Competitive Eating. He just ate 13 pounds and 8 ounces of spaghetti in 13 minutes.
The commentary from the announcer: "his swallowing is beautiful."

Waiting for the page...

So, tonight is my first night on-call for work. We cover from 5 pm to 9 am (or 9am to 9am Saturday and Sunday). I had my first page at 5:00, for a 13 year old girl who is using a stronger version of pot to get high (apparently it's much stronger), and is having sex with random older men. SHE'S 13. It's possible that my job will scare me off of ever having kids! That in combination with creepy bunny killer boy (also 13), it's very disturbing to have my job sometimes. (p.s. beanie, if you didn't tell liz my bunny kid story, you should). Ok, that's my vent. Mind if I do that every once in a while?

Also, so she's not left out...

Reasons I love Liz:
1. She inspires me to work out more.
2. She taught me about granola and yogurt (not that long ago either!).
3. She has read all the books I want to read and can tell me if they're any good.

Get back to work, slacker

My company is looking to hire someone for our IT Helpdesk. If you know anyone who might be interested, have them get in touch with me and I can give them the details and/or forward their resume to the appropriate folks.

Run Spot Run.

So I'm doing this little jog on Sunday morning... And they have this cool feature where friends (or enemies, there's no vetting) can get wireless updates during the race. So if you want to feel all plugged in, and want to laugh at how slowly I can make it across SF, you should sign up. I'll update with my bib number once I know what it is.

Full Disclosure: I'm only doing the second half.

Me Too

I don't know about this blog thing. I might just hide in the shadows. But at least y'all know I'm here now. :) Hi.

Love-fest

Reasons I love Beanie:
He remembers odd things, like stories we tell about our other friends.
He's got awesome red hair.
He follows through.

Reasons I love Jamie:
He tells funny politically incorrect jokes.
He lives in an apartment with a pool.
I can debate with him and he doesn't get offended.

Reasons I love Andrik:
Edited in case kids read this blog...

Good job with the blog so far guys. Who else was invited to the party? Maybe I love them too :)

Community Service

For my first official post, I would like to request a change to the color scheme. I know, I know... it's easy to criticize. And fun! But serious, orange? It clashes with my leopard print background.

Also, does blogspot have spell chick?

Wow, what a great audience

Props to Beanie for:

- setting up this blog
- managing to work an umlaut into the title. How do you even type an umlaut?

I visited an outboard engine plant yesterday. I'm sure Beanie and Andrik would have been enthralled. I found it interesting, but I didn't understand 95% of what our guide was saying. It was a lot of talk about "driveshafts" and "torquing" and "piston heads." And "engines." Don't we call them Native Americans these days?

Ahem

tap tap... Is this thing on?