Sunday, January 01, 2006

The wave of the future

If all has gone according to plan, your gut is hanging pendulously over your belt right now, just like mine is doing. If not, go see what’s left in the fridge. Those extra notches on your belt are there for a reason.

I always forget how much I love this time of year. Through all the stress of running around, buying presents and wrapping them poorly, I never think about the post-holiday slowdown. It’s just pleasant to have some time to be with family and to eat twice my body weight of stuff that other people cooked.

And even though we don’t have new hobbit movies to keep us company at this time of year anymore, I love having enough time to catch up on all those movies that I never have time to see when life is moving at its normal pace.

Just before leaving to be with my wife Kara’s family, we had a night where we finally got to watch The Aviator, which gave me some great new movie quotes to annoy Kara with.

There’s a scene in the movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio (playing the great aviator Howard the Duck) can’t stop saying, “It’s the wave of the future.” He was referring to jet engines, but I’ve found that you can apply the phrase to so many other things, especially if you’re looking to annoy the person you just saw the movie with. That night, Kara and I went out to dinner. Here’s how our conversation went:

“I wish our waitress would stop hiding in the kitchen. I’m about to die of thirst,” Kara said, pushing her empty Coke glass to the edge of the table.

“Free refills are the wave of the future,” I replied. On the way to the restaurant, pedestrian crosswalks and blinking street lights were also correctly identified as waves of the future.

“Stop saying that,” she said.

“Okay, okay. Sorry. It’s just that saying it is the wave of the future.”

“Seriously, I’m going to kill you. Stop it.”

“But stopping saying this is clearly not the wave of the future.”

“You not having a future is about to be the wave of the future.”

It has been my experience that men are very fascinated with quoting movies, much to the annoyance of the females in their lives. I regularly have hours-long conversations with guy friends in which not one original thought is exchanged. (“PC Loadletter? What does that mean?” “Just gimme some uh them french fried potaters. Put a little mustard on ‘em. Mmmm-hmmmm. I reckon.” “Dang! You got shocks, pegs... Lucky! You ever take it off any sweet jumps?”)

Kara prefers to watch movies in which, from start to finish, people are telling her to exercise. I came into the living room the other day to find her watching a lady in tights doing stomach crunches. Not a bad way to pass the time, I suppose.

One of the exercises involved lying on your back with your legs bent, placing a three-pound weight between your knees, then doing stomach crunches while bringing your knees up over your stomach.

“You’d like yoga,” Kara told me. “Come try it.”

I had a hearty laugh, then proceeded to perform about ten crunches, because that’s how many times you have to chew Cheetos before you can swallow them. Then I went back to playing video games.

There’s no way I’m doing any exercise that involves a three-pound weight hovering precariously two feet above my crotch. A smart person just doesn’t give an object that sort of potential energy. Potential energy has a way of turning into kinetic energy, and objects with kinetic energy being propelled into crotches is what kept America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air for fifteen years.

When you get done taping your five-year-old driving a golf ball into your groin, you can reach Mike Todd online at cox1013@hotmail.com.

5 comments:

  1. lol - very funny! I agree about the Funniest Home Videos. What is it about that show that causes me to squeal in delight as some poor, unsuspecting slob has his nuts/crotch/gonads punched by a 3 yr old or hit with a bat or driven into the bar of a bicycle? I must be wierd.

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  2. Sheri -- I concur wholeheartedly. Nothing like a good kick to the nuts. On other people.

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  3. Mike,
    After reading your blog, I ran right out and bought

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A8AX0Y/qid=1136516971/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl74/104-1843404-3103959?n=507846&s=dvd&v=glance

    How incredibly topical

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  4. Funny freakin' blogs... they're the wave of the future!

    Cheers!

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  5. Dude- I think we went to college together... decent blog entry - some grammatical errors, but otherwise very entertaining. You should have a proficient English major review your draft blog entries.

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