A Beautiful Chunkset

This week's Good Frickin' Picture Wednesday comes courtesy of Jered Earl "Chunks" Widmer. You may remember him from such wedding toast animations as the one directly below this post.



Chunks just started up a new blog. Check it out when you get a moment. Who knows, after a while, he might be your favorite one-eyed homosexual narcoleptic, too.

Toasted

I’m having a hard time concentrating right now. My buddy’s wedding is coming up on Saturday, and I’m the best man. Now I might be the best basket weaver or bull rider attending the wedding, but the best man? That seems to me to be a highly dubious claim, and I should know.

Regardless, his wedding will be a wonderful thing – with the dancing and the making merry and the celebrating of the most important day of my friend’s life -- but then there’s the toast.

I’ve been stressing out about this for months. Seinfeld does that joke about how, at a funeral, the average person would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy. I wouldn’t go that far, but if someone gave me the choice between public speaking and getting shot by a taser gun while slamming my fingers in a car door, I honestly don’t know which one I would choose. I mean, how many volts are we talking about, and is it one of those little red and yellow Fisher-Price cars?

For this public speaking engagement, though, I have a score to settle. My friend Josh P.* (name not at all changed to protect his identity) was my best man at my wedding to Kara last year. For his toast, he hopped on the internet, went to my online journal that only a few friends knew about, clipped out stuff that I’d written about my bride-to-be Kara, and read it aloud to everyone. So basically, when called upon to say a few nice things about me, Josh read my diary to everyone that I know, including my new in-laws. It was actually very funny, but I must feign indignation for the time being so that I can justify the payback I’m going to give him in a few days.

Since I pretty much wrote Josh’s toast, I thought it might be fun if he helped me write mine. It’s only fair, really. Once I had my computer’s modem all set up to record our conversations (which was, by the way, frighteningly easy to do), the only hard part was deciding which snippets of our conversations to play back at his wedding. Linda Tripp would have been so proud.

I sent my favorite sound clips to a mutual friend, who has taken old pictures of me and Josh, run them through his computer, and animated our conversations in a crude, South Park kind of way. I can’t wait to see the look on Josh’s face when a picture of him, projected onto the wall at the reception, starts reciting a conversation we had two months ago.

Here’s one of my favorite bits:
Me: What should I talk about in my toast?
Josh: Well, you’ve got two ways you could go. Funny or, you know, meaningful.
Me: What about the kind that humiliates you?
Josh: It’s impossible to humiliate me, man. The only way you could humiliate me is if you brought up… [At this point, the Road Runner runs across the screen, says, “Meep! Meep!” and then runs off, obscuring what Josh is saying. I’m not totally heartless.]

Thank you, Josh, for that pearl. I was expecting it to be a little more difficult to get some good stuff out of you, but now you’ve almost made it too easy for me. It’s like hunting for windmills at a putt-putt course.

If anyone sees my friend Josh around, I hope that, after they congratulate him on finding a partner who possesses both exceptional beauty and relatively low standards, they’ll ask him what exactly he said when the Road Runner so rudely interrupted. I’ll never tell -- unless you ask me.

*********************************

IN-TAR-NET SPECIAL!

Through the magic of the in-tar-net, you can see the toast here (if your boss hasn't given you anything better to do): http://holythunderforce.bisti.org/albums/Toasted/Toasted.swf

Much thanks to Jered Earl "Chunks" Widmer for the countless hours he spent animating this thing.

Warning: This link automatically opens a Flash movie file, which takes a while to download (5.4 megs.) If you're on dial-up, I hope you didn't want to do anything else on the internet today.

Good Frickin' Picture Wednesday rides again

Homey say Guat? Here's another Jeff Hofer special from Guatemala:

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but I'm fairly certain that, if this guy is ever in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, he should fight Donatello.

Feeling flushed

The plumbers came by recently to relieve me and my wife Kara of a problem we were having with our discretionary income. Luckily, they were able to come dry it all up before we did something stupid, like buy a rotisserie chicken machine from Ron Popeil or pay the mortgage.

I always used to think of water as my friend. I’d eat some pretzels or mow the lawn, and there water would be, waiting for me, cool and crisp, ready to wash my hands before I’d pop open a can of soda. But water is only your friend until you buy a house, at which point it becomes the worst enemy you’ve ever had, not including the bully who put your head in the toilet in the seventh grade. But come to think of it, water was part of the problem then, too.

Being a homeowner has afforded me all sorts of thrills to which I’d previously been uninitiated. Now that I’ve been through it, though, I can authoritatively say that you haven’t lived until you’ve been sitting in your living room on a quiet, cloudless evening, when in the back of your consciousness, you hear the distinct pitter-patter of rainfall coming from your basement.

“Ahhh, what a peaceful sound,” you think. Then you go back to wondering if anyone has ever tried to ride a moose like a horse, and if so, were the results hilarious, tragic, or both? But then it clicks in your head. Wait a minute. It isn’t raining outside. The shower isn’t running. I’m continent. That can only mean…

Some people pay good money for the kind of adrenaline rush you get when that realization hits. We eventually did, too.

Now I enjoy a nice cool rain shower as much as the next guy, but it is difficult to muster up that “Singin’ in the Rain,” heel-clickin’ spirit when the nimbus cloud overhead is your toilet. As I stood there helplessly watching the water fall from the ceiling and splatter onto the basement floor, I couldn’t help but wish I was back in seventh grade with my head in the john.

Three plumbers and three thousand dollars later, we were back in the Age of Indoor Plumbing, which is much more pleasant than the Age of the Backyard at Night. I won’t complain about the cost more than I already have, because if you can’t spend your money on the luxury of a functional toilet, then what can you spend it on, besides yourself, and the people you love, and maybe a couch that doesn’t have ferret holes in it?

Looking on the bright side of the whole fiasco, our toilet is finally firmly anchored to the floor for the first time since we’ve lived here. It used to rock around so much that our guests would mistake it for a mechanical bull. To make it seem normal, we used to have a honky-tonk band playing in the shower behind chicken wire, and we’d serve peanuts in buckets and let people just throw the shells on the floor. I’m glad those days are over; the bathroom brawls were getting out of hand.

The absurdity of the situation strikes me every time I flush. I’m too cheap to buy myself a thirty dollar ticket to go to a waterslide park, but my toilet water gets its own three thousand dollar flume ride. Sometimes life just doesn’t give you any choice but to flush your money down the toilet.

The more mature half's Good Frickin' Picture Wednesday

My woman, Kara, took this week's picture. Yeah, that's right, MY woman. I dragged her by the hair back to our cave so that she'd have someone to mow the lawn and pick up ferret poo.



She took this one in New Zealand, while I was off playing with sheep. No, not really. They hardly know any games, besides Stratego.

My fashion statement: No

Walking through the mall recently, it struck me that it was only a few years ago that I used to get all my clothes at stores that now seem to cater to kids who are too young to baby-sit. The clothing in my old favorite stores now generally looks like it should be sold with bibs and pacifiers, and maybe something that lights up and plays “It’s a Small World After All” when you shake it.

If I did buy something in one of my old stores, the sales people would probably politely wait until I left the store and turned the corner. Then they’d gather up whatever they had left of the item I just bought, take it out back, and toss it in an incinerator marked “OLD PEOPLE LIKE IT.”

I’ve graduated from my old demographic. Not that long ago, I was in the demographic of wearing jeans halfway down my backside and blaring Rage Against the Machine through the neighborhood. Now I’m in the demographic of elastic waistbands and feeling my pulse quicken when NPR’s Marketplace comes on. If I turn the bass way up, I can actually see my rearview mirror vibrate when David Brancaccio says the word “NASDAQ.”

I understand all too well that I’m not exactly the target audience for my old clothing stores anymore. Perhaps that’s why I find some current trends so difficult to understand. For example, why do clothing stores in the mall invent sports teams to put on their t-shirts? I’ve never been to an American Eagle lacrosse game, but apparently they have a team. Do they play pick-up games against Friendly’s and Hallmark?

If I were on the American Eagle Lacrosse team, I’d be sure to show up for the game against Spencer’s Gifts. I’d psyche out my opponents by waving my big lacrosse stick around and yelling things like, “You know those fake fire pots with the wavy orange paper blowing around in them? Yeah, well they don’t even look like real fire!” and, “The only thing shocking about those hand buzzers you sell is how bad you are at lacrosse!”

Okay, I wouldn’t be that good with the insults, but that wouldn’t matter, because while they’d be paying attention to scoring goals, I’d be putting “Beer Belly Helper Wacky Pills” into their water jugs. I wouldn’t be exactly sure what to expect from those pills, but if the packaging is any indication, hilarity would certainly ensue.

Oh, and the Abercrombie Ski Patrol -- what exactly is that? It must be an elite team that’s always on call in case anyone gets hypothermia in the baby-doll tee section, or breaks a leg while reeling backwards from a pair of $148 jeans. And I don’t mean in any way to impugn the integrity of the Abercrombie Ski Patrol. Someday I might launch off a mogul, attempt a daffy to spread eagle combination, then wipe out on the stretch boxer-briefs display, showering tight-fitting yet breathable men’s underwear all across the store. If that ever happened, I’d sure be glad that Abercrombie has a stringent certification process in place for all of its ski patrollers.

Certification process: “Hey kid, would you pay thirty bucks to wear an advertisement for my store? Great! You’re on the team.”

Perhaps I’m just bitter because the depressing reality is setting in; it is only a matter of time before I’m going to have to buy all my clothing at stores that also sell chainsaws.

Five o'clock shadow

Another Good Frickin’ Picture Wednesday shot, courtesy of Rob of the Broken Arse.



That's his girlfriend, Natalie. You might recognize her from her appearances on Scrubs and That Seventies Show. Yup, that explains why she looks so familiar. Now that I'm looking, is she that girl from the iPod commercial, too?

Oh yeah! See more of Rob's stuff here!

You know, Blogger just isn't doing this shot justice -- looks a little dark. But it's a frickin' good picture. If you check it out on Rob's site, you can see it better.

I’m just not working out

My sister Amy often accuses me of stealing her height; she is exactly five inches shorter than both of our parents, and I am exactly five inches taller. I don’t really see what all the whining is about, especially since she totally stole any ovaries I might have had coming my way.

When my wife Kara and I were visiting her in San Francisco last week, Amy actually brought up the height thing again. She only complains because she doesn’t know what it’s like to spend the better part of one’s life banging one’s head into light fixtures. I have to wear a bike helmet to go to casual dining restaurants. Besides, being shorter gives her a natural advantage at many things, such as The Limbo, and spotting loose change on the ground.

Height is a pretty insignificant thing to get upset about, anyway – she’s the one who stole all the motivation. I’d rather have that. Amy has run two marathons in the past few years, and is training for a third. The only thing I run is stoplights.

I hate running. If I die and come back as a gerbil, and you buy me, save yourself a couple bucks and don’t even bother with the little running wheel. It would do about as much good as that internet petition you just sent to those fifty people who like you a little bit less now.

I prefer to think that exercising is for the unimaginative. Here’s how I work out: I set the cookies in the dining room, and then watch TV on the couch in the living room. I pretend the cookies weigh two hundred pounds each, and that I can only carry one to the couch with me at a time. After a couple reps, I sit there on the couch and stare mournfully at the cookies in the other room, too lazy to stand all the way up for one more.

This little game pits my gluttony and my sloth squarely against each other; I’m always curious to see which one will win. I inevitably can’t help but feel bad for the loser, though, so I just bring the whole plate into the living room and we have ourselves some cookies.

Sometimes at work, I catch myself thinking, “Hey, if I get up and take a little stroll, that’ll help keep me in shape.” Then I realize that if the only exercise I get is walking around the hallways at work, after a while, I’ll probably look like a guy who’s only exercise is walking around the hallways at work.

If I really cared to learn about healthy living, I’d have picked up some reading material from Amy’s bookshelves; they were packed with titles like “Eight Easy Exercises that Nobody has Ever Actually Done, Except Maybe Amy.” Kara flipped through one of those books and found this interesting tidbit: healthy people should eat six meals per day. There was no mention of whether or not these meals should be super-sized, but for only forty cents extra, I’ve been playing it safe.

Anyway, from Amy’s apartment in the city, you can see a long way out. At the beginning of our visit, she pointed to a hill far off in the distance and said, “I jog to the top of that every day. Do you guys want to join me?”

We both respectfully declined. Had Amy needed something out of the top cupboard, I would have been glad to help her out. When you drive, the world rides with you. When you jog, you jog alone.

Good Frickin' Picture Wednesday -- The Money Shot

This week's good frickin' picture is one I took in New Zealand last year when Kara and I were on our honeymoon. I was trying to take a picture of an orc, but then this sheep jumped in the way.



I still haven't slept right since I saw a sheep with a tail on that same day. Did you know sheep have tails? I mean long frickin' tails that flap around when they run. Farmers snip 'em or something when they're born, but we saw a few sheep with big long honkin' tails. It was like seeing a golden retriever with horns.

Anyway, the first person to make a joke about me, sheep, and our honeymoon wins the big prize, since I know it's coming anyway. But in order for the joke to count, you must also mention Kentucky Fried Chicken, American Samoa, and the Pope. Let's see what you've got, baaaah-dass.

Hyundai! Hyundai! Hyundai!

I gave my column this title because I learned from morning radio that people really like it when you shout “Hyundai!” repeatedly. If a radio ad isn’t loud enough to replicate the experience of putting your head inside a blast furnace, it just doesn’t sound sincere.

When you saw this title, you probably thought, “Oh, I hope this column’s about America’s best warranty.” But I’m afraid that despite indications I may have previously given to the contrary, I don’t really have anything to say about Hyundai today. I did just realize, though, that the radio plays so many car commercials in the morning because that’s when people are driving to work, sitting in their Pintos, thinking, “Why hasn’t this dang thing exploded yet?”

Plus, everyone’s all grumpy in the morning because everyone is the only good driver in the world, and everyone else is doing those things that everyone would never do -- drinking coffee, talking on their cell phones, running into phone poles, and making everyone late to work. Everyone else is always getting in everyone’s way.

So that’s when car commercials hit you, when you’re all groggy and grumpy and feeling as if your life would be better if only you had something that could get you away from everyone else – hence the popularity of off-road vehicles, because even though most forests now have Walmarts or oil derricks on them, we’d like to think that we could just tear off into the woods, even though we would never actually do that, because that might scratch the paint.

What better time to try to sell you a new car than when you’re half-conscious and unhappy in the car you’ve got? That’s when car companies dangle shiny objects in front of you, because they know that we’re all really just salmon, swimming around, looking for new ways to reach our credit limits. Or perhaps raccoons would be a more apt analogy for us, because raccoons also like shiny objects, and we all have mammary glands. Well, some of us have mammary glands. I mean, I don’t. You might, though. No, I was not looking.

Okay, I just looked it up online. It seems men do have mammary glands, but they’re vestigial and therefore totally useless, like the wings of an ostrich, or the outdoors to a child with a PlayStation 2.

And while we’re on the topic of mammals, have you seen any of the ads for CareerBuilder.com? They show a normal guy in an ordinary office, and all of his co-workers are chimpanzees. The guy wants to get work done, but the chimps are hopping around, playing with whoopee cushions, and laughing crazy laughs, like Eddie Murphy’s laugh from when he used to be funny, but much higher-pitched.

Sure, those ads are humorous, but I don’t really care for the attitude. Everyone else is not that bad of a driver, and the folks you work with are not chimpanzees, unless of course you are a zookeeper, and even then there’s a good chance that you work with polar bears or aardvarks instead.

Perhaps it’s because I spend much of an average day at work sucking my toes, but I don’t really feel like those CareerBuilder ads are saying nice things about most of us. There are about a dozen chimps in those ads, and only one human. If your workplace was portrayed, are your odds better of being the person or the ape? I’ll give you some time to think about that one, Koko.

¡Feliz Bueno Frickin' Picture Miercoles!

Here's another good frickin' picture from Jeff Hofer, who's back in Guatemala:



Seriously, I have no idea why National Geographic isn't beating down his puerta.

And yes, I am proud of myself for getting that upside-down exclamation point in there.