Comic for Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

Posted: 7:35 am, Tuesday, January 2nd

And happy New Year part deux. We had a strip yesterday in case you were too hungover to get to the internet at any point. I hope everyone had a rockin' holiday season and got all the goodies you wanted in your stocking or under your dreidel or wherever Hannukah gifts get delivered to. We made out like bandits, particularly in the pre-prepared food department. Our fridge and pantry (such as it is - a cabinet with three shelves, one of which is taken up with plates and bowls) have never been more full, and we even have a jar of pickles that has yet to find a home yet. Good times!

I didn't actually go to the trouble of scoring the Scrabble game, by the way.

2.0 received a rocking chair from my parents for Christmas, which pleases her for two equally important reasons. One is that in order to house the rocking chair, we have to get rid of my old blue recliner that she hates. Another is that the rocking chair is handmade by an Amish dude upstate and is phenomenally comfortable. I am pleased primarily because of the comfortable bit, and also because it affords me an opportunity to tell my story about these awesome rocking chairs. Senior year of collitch, God, something like ten of us went to Killington on spring break (every time we tried to go somewhere sunny, it was a disaster, so we actually resigned ourselves to fleeing South Bend's hellish winter for somewhere that was also snowy). To break up the long drive, we spent the night at my parents' house (also, to eat pancakes and some really good ham sandwiches). We arrived at about eleven or so, and my mom had pizza and a fire in the woodstove all ready. I sat in a rocking chair next to the fire and got yelled at by Mom that I should let one of our guests sit in the good rocking chairs.

Me: Fine. Hey, Sweaty, sit in this chair.
Sweaty: This is a really comfortable chair. Where'd you guys get it?
Mom: An nice Amish man made it over by Little Falls.
Me: Yeah, Sweats. The Amish guy and his two midget Amish sons.
Mom: Jeremiah, that story's not as funny as you think it is.
Sweaty: I don't know, Mrs. Conway, that's pretty funny.

So, yeah, evidently there's a lot of midget Amish up our way because of inbreeding. Anyway, 2.0's chair was made by a different Amish guy, who has no midget sons. But I believe a midget told my parents how to get to the guy's workshop or something. There was a midget in the story at one point.

What else. Got my first-ever speeding ticket on the drive back from Rochester last week. Guy got me going 80, which I think was fortunate because I was probably going about 83 or so. The cop came back and told me he was writing me a ticket for going 79. He asked me if I had any other tickets, and I told him this was the first time I'd ever been pulled over. (A lie, I got pulled over by a cop in Delanson once at nine on a Sunday morning, on my way to Mass. He told me that I had a tail light out, which was not true. I don't know what the hell that was all about, and decided that I'd just go ahead and not mention it to the cop that pulled me over.) The cop said, "We can take care of that - I can just pull you over again a few miles down the road." This absolutely cracked this guy up. He seriously put a hand on his knee to steady himself after that one. State troopers are fucking weird.

Anyway, the whole point of this story was leading to the New York DMV website called "Humor," which was a collection of the least-funny jokes I've ever seen. Unfortunately, in between Friday when I discovered this page, and today when I'm trying to link to it, Eliot Spitzer took over as governor, and evidently had "revamp the DMV site" at the exact top of his to-do list, because the entire thing has been massively overhauled. This is evidently the collective roar that he kept talking about in his campaign ads.

2.0 and I saw Casino Royale the other day. Pretty bad-ass, I must say. 2.0 had never seen a Bond flick before and was really into it. This lead to us going to our local video store yesterday to try and rent Goldeneye, which was my favorite Bond before Royale (I'm not much of a Bondphile, either). Unfortunately, they only had Goldeneye on tape, and as loyal readers may recall, I recently had to disassemble the VCR to get a tape out, and rendered it useless. So we scoured the action section of the store, trying to find something else that looked good. We left with the Constant Gardener, which was filed under 'Thriller.' Not only is that movie not thrilling, but the dude doesn't even garden for the second half. Is there a rule that Ralph Fiennes isn't allowed to star in a quickly paced flick? Holy God. Anyway, good flick, but not what we were looking for. So then we popped in Run Lola Run that we had from Netflix. And then we decided we should not try to watch a third movie.

Have you ever read the first page of a book and just *known* that you were going to love the entire thing? I got Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell for Christmas. Granted, this book was right in my wheelhouse - it's a collection of short stories about New York characters, more or less in the line of Work and Other Sins, a book I've mentioned countless times, except that the bulk of this book was written back in the 40s and 50s (I think - I'm only about forty pages in). The first chapter is a New Yorker piece on McSorley's tavern, and I think I actually laughed out loud ten times reading it. It's so good that I actually read most of it out loud to 2.0. I'm jazzed that this book is about 650 pages long, because if it somehow keeps up the pace of the first chapter, I'm in for a really enjoyable read. I also finally read the Watchmen over Christmas, commonly referred to as the best superhero comic book of all time, and enjoyed it immensely. It's a lot like the Dark Knight Returns, except about three times as long, so its characters are a bit more fleshed out. Gets a bit ridiculous toward the end, but it's quite excellent. And I read Notre Dame Vs. the Klan. Back in 1924, the Klan held a rally in South Bend, a kind of a big fuck you to the University. The students went and beat the crap out of the Klan, and then got kind of ambushed a few days later once the Klan and the local constabulary struck a deal for revenge. Evidently, there were over 400,000 registered Klan members in Indiana in the 20s, including the governer. This fact is not discussed much in Indiana these days, apparently. Anyway, another good book. I guess I did a deal of reading over break.

OK, I've gone on long enough. I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff I meant to say, and I didn't write a lot of what I did say as well as I wanted to, but that's more or less par for the course for me after a layoff. By the way, nice to see some of you entertaining yourselves in the comments while I was gone. I missed doing the site this past week, so I guess you can rest easy knowing I'm not going anywhere for a while. Happy '07.

bullfrog

So...the question becomes...can ND (basketball) continue to win despite having their point guard suspended because he's an idiot? http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/cs-061230mcalarney,1,4326732.story?coll=cs-home-headlines

I think so. I think 9-7 in the Big East will get us in, and, ooh, lookee there, we don't even play UConn.

I want to be a federal employee... I swear I *need* to mourn G. Ford today.

I'm mourning being back at the office. 909 spam awaited my inbox this morning. Good times!

By the way, since I didn't mention it in the long, rambling, badly composed post - burn in hell, Michigan.

There are a box of saltines out in the mailroom for people to eat. Two things: Why? Who the hell eats Saltines if they're not hung over? And I mean royally hung over - vomiting out of your ear hung over. The last time I bought Saltines was senior year of collitch, after my bout of food poisoning brought on by a reuben at South Dining Hall. The other thing: Rachel Ray is on the box. She's endorsing Saltines now? How does one get excited about Saltines?

This is a confusing day already.

Wow, I had totally forgotten about that rocking chair story. Man, that was back when I was still slightly funny.

So do to the fact that I was offered a free ticket for the Patriots-Jetliners game this weekend I'm not going to be able to make it down to NY. I know, I'm a bad friend.

Happy Belated Birthday Miss 2.0!

Oh, yeah - it was 2.0's birthday while we were away. Did I mention that?

And Sweaty, know thy enemy - it's "Jetropolitans." Duh.

Beware the Manginius. Although it will appear is if a football game is being played, the outcome will actually be decided by a psychic battle between Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini. The action on the field will simply be a physical manifestation of this battle.

Speaking of coaching geniuses (genii?), I read "No Excuses" by Charlie Weis recently. Not a bad read if you are interested in learning more about how exactly he progressed through the coaching ranks. There's nothing too profound to be learned from it, but it's short and can be read in a few hours.

I keep saltines in my desk drawer - still trying to eat six in a minute w/o taking a drink.

Yes, thank you, E, I also was eight once and am familiar with that game.

Reggie Ho read that one and liked it, too, RAW. Shameful secret: I believe I maintain possession of Return to Glory, about Ty's first season under the Dome. (It is an exceptionally poorly written book, actually.)

For another fun food game (or an easy way to win drinks at a bar) bet someone they can't eat a slice of white bread in 30 seconds with no additional liquid. Sounds easy, no?

Indeed it was lovely watching the Corn and Blue get crushed, but rooting for USC is kinda like having a cut and getting salt water pouring over it instead of lemon juice. Yay?

Thanks for the heads up on the Brisco County Jr. DVDs. Mrs. Z was diligent and they appeared under the tree.

Zero

In the pre-9/11 days, I would routinely root for the stadium to explode in games such as yesterday's Rose Bowl. But changing times and - dare I say it - a touch of maturity have changed my stance. Yesterday was a tough one, though. Pete Carroll, whose last name is a girl's name, is a giant prick and I despise him. I hate him way worse than I hate Lloyd Carr (who, actually, I don't even hate - he just seems to be a grump in the mold of Bo, and would never dress up in a Wonderbread racing suit like the Poodle). So that's a point to Michigan. USC's had a lot more recent success, so another loss to deflate their egos a bit would be nice. Another point to Michigan.

And then I read a post over at Blue-Gray Sky about nemeses and archenemies, cribbing from a Klostermann essay from a few years back. And also, a post at MGoBlog about how Brady sucks. And I realize that there is a moral imperative that any good and decent human being should simply wish for Michigan to never win another fucking football game as long as the institution exists.

(Here's the Klostermann essay, which is pretty funny:

http://www.grendel.org/tsc/klosterman-enemies.htm

I will not link to the MGoBlog one, because in my fury, I passed it along to RAW after reading it, and immediately ruined his day. I don't want to do that again to anyone.)

Saltines must be made by Nabisco if Rachel Ray is on the box. Her face is also on Triscuits and Wheat Thins, much to my unhappiness. She is WAY too perky.

yum. daniel craig. LOVED casino royale.

Indeed SKT.

Holy hell, am I bored at the office.

Not "un-busy," mind you. Just bored and not in the mood to be back. And the morning went so *quickly,* too.

Up in the Old Hotel is amazing. Mitchell is the best non-fiction writer of, at least, the past century. Wait 'til you read about the homeless harvard man. Those are my favorite stories.