Welcome to round two of Aren't You Somebody? Today we look at the second crop of people who I am told I look like. And oh what a crop it is! Let's get right to the harvest shall we?
1) Conan O'Brien
This one hasn't happened for quote some time. I used to get it a lot in college when I actually had his haircut...or did he have MY haircut? The world may never know. However, with my current hairstyle, I think that the only similarity between us is the we are carbon-based bipeds.
On a scale of 100, it now only warrants a 35.
2) Steve Page of the Barenaked Ladies
I think this has more to do with the glasses than anything else, but I take it as quite a compliment. Funny story: (and by funny I mean get an adrenaline needle ready) I think that the BNL record Rock Spectacle was recorded at the Briar Street Theater where I currently work. So what that story lacked in interest it made up for with speculation.
On a scale of 100, I give it a 95.
3) The Prophet Mohammed
This entry is only here for exhibition value, it is not competing. And that is only because I could not find any pictures of Mohammed to back up this claim. I guys I will just have to take the cab driver's word for it.
A lot of people tell me that I remind them of someone. If I'm lucky it's a nice uncle or a cousin they haven't seen in a long time. But most of the time it is a celebrity of some stripe...which is unfortunate for both myself and the celebrity. For myself: because that person now has a whole catalog of feelings toward me that has nothing whatsoever to do with me. For The celebrity: because those poor bastards have to look like me. Here's round one of the quiz sensation: Aren't You Somebody?
#1) Drew Carey
This is a recent one. It only started after I got my new glasses. Frankly, anyone with these glasses looks a little bit like Drew Carey. My real problem here is not that people make that connection, it's that they are being intellectually lazy. Plenty of other people wear these glasses, including other celebrities. But no one ever says, "You know what? You look a lot like Elvis Costello." And more's the pity.
On a scale of 100 though, I give this pairing a 90. But only THE OLD Drew Carey. He got Lasik surgery and doesn't wear the glasses anymore. On his own, without the glasses I give it a 45.
#2) Quentin Tarantino
This is another one whose time has come and gone but still makes the occasional appearance. I grew my hair out for a play I did a few years ago and then the likeness was more apparent. But I was told only a few months ago that I look like Quentin so apparently there is something more here that I don't see. Looking more at the pictures I think I look more like Quentin's fat cousin...more like uhhh...maybe Ethan Tarantino.
On a scale of 100, I give this a 60. If they mean Tarantino the director I give it an 80, if they mean Tarantino the actor I give it a 12.
#3) That one guy...the one that was in that movie...you know the guy!
I was on the train about a month ago. It was late, I was coming home from a late show at work. There was a VERY drunk man on the train who was talking to everyone. No one was talking to him, but that did not stop him. He kept telling us all that he was DRUNK! Like we couldn't tell. I had my iPod on so I was actively ignoring the guy. That did not deter him. He came right up to my, inches from my face, and started to make his case for my celebrityhood. "You look like that guy...doesn't he look like that guy? You know the guy! The one from that movie. The one where they...oh...that guy! Who do you look like?" My standby answer in these situations is, "my mother," but I was not going to help this guy out. I wasn't alone in that sentiment. No one else was helping him out either, which made him guess all the more feverishly. "Oh! That guy! He was in that movie with the thing! You know the one. Why don't you tell me? Who is that guy? I don't know. But you look like him." I can only assume this is what he was talking about... 
On a scale of 100, I'd give it...uhhhh...98.
Today I woke up with Got To Get You Into My Life in my head...which is odd because I don't know that song. I just know that much of it, "Got To Get You Into My Life" and then the little horn phrase that follows it. "Got to get you intio my life...bop-ba-dup-buh-ba! Got to get you into my life...bop-ba-dup-buh-ba!" So that was the loop playing in my head.
I guess the upside is that this is a McCartney solo work so maybe this Beatles thing is coming to an end. The downside is that I think McCartney did a lot of vacuous work and silly love songs. Just my luck to be stuck with the "cute one."
The best I can hope for now is that I will spend a lot of time on his collaborations with Elvis Costello. At least I know the words to Veronica!
Today I woke up with Mean Mr. Mustard stuck in my head. Why do the Beatles keep doing this to me? Yesterday Maxwell's Silver Hammer, today Mean Mr. Mustard?! Why? This isn't the first time the British have invaded my head.
I recently got done listening to a series of podcasts by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and their friend Karl Pilkington. They are hilarious. I downloaded both seasons and listened to all of the episodes in a period of about a week. The downside to that is that they pushed the rest of the Brits out of my head. I noticed this one day when someone around me mentioned Monty Python and The Holy Grail and I heard the lines in Ricky's voice talking to Stephen with the occasional interruption by Karl. Same thing with Fawlty Towers. (I believe Karl was Manuel.) I'm sure if I knew any speeches by Churchill they would have been done in Ricky's voice too.
But now, apparently, Ricky and company have been pushed out by the Fab Four. I recently purchased the Beatles Singles 1967-1970, loaded it on my iPod and listened to all my Beatles music one morning. In the span of about an hour and a half The Beatles beat up Ricky, Stephen and Karl...which is no small feat considering two of the Beatles are dead so technically they were outnumbered.
I hope to get this problem sorted out before Oasis comes along and vies for the top spot. I'm not sure I could stand the Gallagher brothers having an extended beer-fueled art-brawl in my head. Pretentious twits!
I can't decide which is worse: the stabbing pain behind my eyes that is keeping me up (it's 5:45 a.m.) or the fact that I can't get "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" by the Beatles out of my head. It's a toss up. They are both causing me great pain.
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A quote from one of the defendants in the Enron Trial concerning their conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges: "Certainly we are surprised, more appropriate to say we are shocked, certainly this is not the outcome that we expected," Ken Lay. Then he got on his pink unicorn and flew back to his gingerbread house in the sky.
I've been struggling with whether or not I was going to post this...and well...I'm still not sure this is the right thing to do, but it's too good of a story to pass up.
A few weeks ago Jen and I saw a midnight movie at the Musicbox Theater. This, in and of itself, is not a noteworthy occasion. We see movies there a lot. It was the movie we saw that makes this evening worth mentioning. It was a movie from 1977 billed as "The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin." It was alternately know by the titles: Blonde Emmanuelle, Disco Dolls and Hot Skin in 3-D. It's a 3-D "adult comedy" (read: porn) that was constantly being re-edited and re-distributed to different markets.
Now, before you go getting all in a huff, I know all of this because there was a film historian who spoke before the screening. And not just ANY film historian mind you. This was a PORN film historian (read: pervert), so he knows what he's talking about. Incidentally, we ended up riding the train back home with the porn film historian (no, that is not a euphemism!) and he is exactly as attractive and worldly as you think he is. (read: hairy palms)
I thought it would be interesting to see a 3-D porn movie. I figured there would be lots of men making dramatic, last minute turns to the camera just as the first three rows cowered in fear and reached for their umbrellas. Good fun, I thought. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The film was put together from 3 or 4 different prints (according to the debauched bachelor who has devoted his life to obtaining this first-hand "knowledge") so there were a lot of splices in the film and lots of opportunities for the film to break. And you know what? The film took every single one of those chances. The first 10 minutes of the film took about a half an hour to watch. After the fourth or fifth time the film broke, someone in the back of the theater yelled out, "It's ok. This happens to every film! We can just cuddle."
I LOVE Chicago!
Remember back to those heady times of...oh...a week ago, when I was updating you all on my hometown? Well, I had planned to talk about one other facet of the town but ran out of town. (I may discuss WHY I ran out of time in a subsequent blog, but I'm waiting to find out if anything comes of it first.)
This year I began a small, insignificant project. I started keeping track of the number of movies I watch. I know I see a lot of movies, but I wanted to keep a running tally so I would have an actual number to attach to it. Admitting you have a problem is the first step. Being able to quantify it apparently is the second. Now that I've started counting I find the it has turned into a grail quest of sorts. (Forgive me, I just saw the Da Vinci Code last night. Here's my five letter review: sucks!) As of yesterday I've seen 80 movies this year. Well, when I was home I realized that this obsession with the moving picture shows all started at home at the Center Theater. (Incidentally the theater is about a block from EVERY craft store in town.)
Their website has a better history of the theater than I could ever provide, but I can tell you that when I was in elementary and middle school they had a big community-wide fund raising drive to remodel the theater and I became hooked on movies. They played first run movies, but they played them a few weeks after their prime. (does that technically make it a second run theater? I'm not sure.) And here's the deal: all movies are $.99. Not one dollar, no! $.99! They give you the penny back!
I saw a lot of movies there. I saw one of the Star Trek movies (the one where they go back in time to save the whale) like 7 times. I'm not proud of that fact, but it's true. And it was economical. Seeing that dreck seven times was still less expensive that seeing the Da Vinci Code ONCE! Ahhhhhhhh...so dark is the Khan of man.
I did some shopping when I was home this past week and found myself in a department store. As I made my way out I inevitably passed the perfume counter. (They have to make those things unavoidable or else we would all smell like wolves! Incidentally, that's why all the women who work there are so aggressive. They're used to dealing with animals.) There was something different about this counter. It had a toy car on top of it. At least I thought it did.
The reason I saw this...
...was because of this.
Humvee now makes a fragrance. I'm only too sad to report that I didn't actually get to smell "the essence of adventure." I can only assume that it smells like old rich guys and soccer moms. In other words: like hostility and condescension.
Who is this for? My guess is people who cannot afford a Humvee but want to smell like they can. How disappointed is your date gonna be when she smells Humvee but you go to take her out in a Hyundai?
"I'm sorry, I thought it'd be bigger. And your car's small too!"
Antique/Craft Stores in my Hometown:*
1) Rustic Creations
2) Gems Antiques and Other Fine Things
3) Prairie Creek Cottage
4) The Primitive Star
5) The Shabby Shack
Grocery Stores in my Hometown
1) Family Foods
*All the antique/craft stores are located within 3 blocks of each other.
Statistics for my home town of Grundy Center, Iowa.
The Facts:
Population (year 2000): 2,596
Est. population in July 2004: 2,595 (-0.0% change)
Males: 1,199 (46.2%), Females: 1,397 (53.8%)
Land area: 2.5 square miles
Median resident age: 43.8 years
For population 15 years and over in Grundy Center city
Never married: 18.0%
Now married: 64.0%
Separated: 1.5%
Widowed: 10.3%
Divorced: 6.2%
0.7% Foreign born
Population change in the 1990s: +11 (+0.4%)
Analysis:
No one moves in and no one moves out and yet, according to my own observation, there are still new houses and developments going up around town. I believe this to be linked to the divorce rate 6.2%. There are no more people in town but they need twice as many houses to live in.
Sorry I've been so absent from blogging lately. I'm sure you've had a difficult time filling the empty hours of pointless reading without my ramblings to fill the void. I apologize. I've been working a lot lately. But now I'm on vacation...essentially. I am writing this from my mom's computer in the spare bedroom. That's right folks I'm in Iowa. I had a few days off and I decided to come home for mother's day and hang out here for awhile. So I'm sure I will have plenty of time to catch you up on all of the minutiae of my existence...since I ran out of things to do after I'd been here about an hour. So with out any further adieu, here is today's installment.
CHRIS AND JEN'S GRAND DAY OUT!
We won some tickets to see the Cubs play against the Padres on Saturday. The Padres played a hard 9 innings and the Cubs played 8.
First of all, if you get a chance to go to a game at Wrigley, I fully recommend getting there at least a half an hour before game play because this awaits you... 
That's right, Dixieland Jazz: Chicago Cubs style! Which I can only assume means that these guys get 18 bars into a song and then just give up. That being said, those 18 bars are amazing. They are totally worth the price of admission...but since they stand outside the field before the games you don't even need to pay the price of admission! Best deal in all of baseball. It's not quite as good as getting to throw out the first pitch, but apparently they let just anyone do that now. Here is the first pitch....
Then they had someone come out and throw out another "first pitch."
Not to be out done, this yahoo got to throw out the "first pitch" as well.
I think they should just name the pitches more appropriately. Submitted for your approval: The First Pitch, The Anniversary of the First Pitch, and the Commemoration of the Anniversary of the First Pitch. Problem solved. You're welcome Major League Baseball.
The Cubs were ahead for the whole game until the top of the last inning when the Padres took over and won. The Cubs changed pitchers a few times in later innings and finally they let the lead slip. Maybe that's what the "first pitch" business is all about. They're actually scouting for new pitching talent.
"We're out of pitchers in the bullpen. Get Mary Reilly from section 116, row 11."
"But Dusty, she's been completely drunk since the third inning!"
"That still puts her ahead of half our pitching staff! She's our only hope!"
And they keep the band around to mourn their play with jazz funeral music. Ah, the world makes sense again.
I borrowed two CDs from a friend of mine the other day: Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. I don't have a lot of Johnny Cash so I figured this was a good way to get to know him. I was surprised at how much of the music I recognized from other artists who have covered the songs. I remember seeing Bruce Springsteen cover Give My Love to Rose. I think Kris Kristofferson still does Sunday Morning Coming Down wherever he performs and everybody's done Ring of Fire. These songs have just seeped into the collective consciousness of the culture. Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, I Still Miss Someone. A lot of them have accidentally slipped into my head.
However, I was surprised to find one song in particular lurking in a dark corner of my head: Daddy Sang Bass.... The story of the song is very sparse. The narrator is yearning for simpler times when the family used to gather together and sing hymns. The song even interpolates the spiritual "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." At the chorus Johnny Cash intones, "Daddy sang bass..." and June Carter-Cash sings "Momma sang tenor..." and the back up singers chime in with, "Me and little brother join right in there."
The reason I "know" this song is because whenever anything musical was going on my dad would throw out, "Daddy sang bass..." and then wait for someone to answer his call with the appropriate parts. Usually no one, especially me, knew what he was doing so he took to just finishing the line himself rather than waiting on help that wasn't forthcoming.
When I was loading the songs into my iPod I finally listened to "Daddy Sang Bass..." all the way through...and I got it. I got it for a lot of reasons.
When I was little my dad had a lot of records. Most of them were of The Statler Brothers. Short Stories, 10 Years, The Country America Loves, Atlanta Blue, The Statler Brother Christmas Card, all of them. And the whole family used to spend a time huddled together around the record player singing those 4-part harmonies. And, true to form, dad sang bass. Mom sang whatever the person next to her was singing even if it was dad who was next to her. She was never very good at holding her own part although, left to her own devices, she is naturally an alto. Me and my brother (who is actually older than me and a good two or three inches taller, so not "little brother" by any stretch of the imagination) would join in where and when we could. Eventually we knew the whole Statler Brothers catalog. That is how we learned to pick out and sing harmonies: by listening to Statler Brothers records.
And the back up singers on Johnny Cash at San Quentin were those very same Statler Brothers.
"Will the circle be unbroken, by and by lord, by and by."
I recently embedded code into my blog site that gives me all kinds of useful statistics on who is looking at my writing. It's called StatCounter. One of the useful stats that provide is a list of how people wound up here. Exactly ONE person pulled up my blog (this entry in particular) because they entered this search term into Google: "Why won't my partner take my advice?"
My arm-chair analysis of this situation is that your partner won't take your advice because...ummm...I don't know...BECAUSE YOU'RE TRYING TO FORCE IT ON THEM?! Honestly, who goes to the internet to find out why your partner is not taking your brilliant advice? No one ever says, "Well, I can't be crazy. The internet agrees with me." And when has the internet ever lied to anyone?
And what makes you think that your advice is so great anyway? Maybe no one takes your advice because it's horrible!
"No, Glen told me I didn't have to wait to swim after I ate!"
"No, Glen told me that I could renovate my rental apartment."
"No, Glen told me that restraining orders are just a suggestion."
More importantly, if you are of the mindset that a blog will contain the answers to all the problems of your life, you are sorely mistaken on the subject of blogging. People don't blog because they have all the answers. They do it because they think they have all the problems. And that, my friends, is entertainment. My pain; tragedy. Your pain; comedy.
Unintentionally profound thought I had the other day while riding my bike: "A person can go a lot farther with properly inflated tires and a cushy seat."
I saw a sign at the drug store today that confused me. It said "New Hispanic Product In Aisle 10." It was the "new Hispanic product" part of it that got me. A product for people who are newly Hispanic? That doesn't make sense. A new product aimed at Hispanics? Maybe. A new product that is made BY Hispanics? Also possible, but no matter how you parsed that sentence it just raised more questions. Too many questions. So I decided to make my way over to aisle 10 and put my questions to rest.
Well finding aisle 10 turned out to be harder than I thought. The signs above the aisles only go to 9 and beyond aisle 9 is the liquor section. I began to panic that some half-witted manager got scared by the 400,000 people at immigration rights rally downtown yesterday and decided to start awkwardly marketing tequila to the Hispanic population as though he just discovered it.
I finally stumbled on aisle 10 (which was hiding behind aisle 1. It's always the last place you look!) and it was the hair care aisle. I never did find this miracle product, but if this is how hard they have to work to get a good shampoo plus conditioner then immigrants may want to reconsider coming to this country in the first place. I mean, how many people will have to clog the Loop before they can get a good moisturizer? The mind reels. No wonder they need the tequila.
(Actual conversation overheard at the do-it-yourself buttering station AMC River East Theater on 5/1/06)
Woman: You're doing it wrong. Move the bag around. Move it in circles.
Man does nothing.
Woman: Stop it. Give me the bag and you push the button. Ok, now push the button.
Man pushes the button. Woman moves the bag in cirles under the artificial butter-flavored topping-like substance.
Woman: Ok, that's enough...you can stop...stop now...stop pushing the button. STOP!
Woman pulls bag out from underneath the torrent of artificial butter-flavored topping-like substance. Butter runs down the bag and onto her hand. Woman leaves in a huff. Man grunbles to himself.
Man: You did that on purpose...now it's all squishy.
Here's my question in all of this: Why was that a two person job to begin with? Was it a union regulation?
