LA, You've Gone Too Far

Just got back from a morning constitutional up on Runyon Canyon, the popular hiking trail near my place, where I witnessed a new standard in pet wardrobe weirdness: two small dogs wearing dog-sized Snuggies. That's right. You can now buy Snuggies for dogs. I know they were Snuggies because I lowered my sunglasses so as to allow my eyeballs to pop out of my face and read the label on the miniature blanket with sleeves. It said "Snuggie."

Don't get me wrong, I actually like the Snuggie. I don't have one myself, but I've been tempted to purchase one over the phone, when the ad comes on TV late at night and my judgement is a bit clouded by a coocktail or two. They actually look pretty comfortable, and their commercials are hilarious. But only because of how ridiculous they are. Nobody actually wears Snuggies to the movies or baseball games. If they did, they might very well be institutionalized by their loved ones.

Which is why the dog Snuggie is just too much. In LA people do all sorts of weird things to their dogs: dye their fur, dress them in sweaters and shoes, etc. One time when I worked briefly as a dog walker years ago I had to walk a huge white dog that was wearing a white tank top that said "#1 Bitch" in pink letters (that was a fun day). But a blanket with sleeves? That's just going out of your way to show how bizarre you can be.

Apples & Orangutans

Friends of mine have heard this pet peeve of mine before, but I've shockingly had nothing to kvetch about the past week or so, and I recently heard this expression again somewhere out there in the ether. So here we go.

I hate the expression "apples and oranges." As in, "You can't compare the two. It's like apples and oranges."

Why does this bother me so? Well, simply put, the expression makes no sense. If ever there were two things you could absolutely make a comparison between, it's an apple and an orange. They're both fruits. They're both round. They're roughly the same size. In fact, they are extremely similar to each other. If I were to ask you to list your top five favorite fruits and then discuss the differences between them, there's a very good chance you'd be giving me an answer in which you'd be comparing an apple to an orange. You might also be comparing a watermelon to a banana. Or a kiwi to a plumquat. All totally appropriate things to compare to each other.

My point is, apples and oranges are in fact so similar, so very comparable, that to use the expression "it's like apples and oranges" when indicating that two entities are so dissimilar that they can't even be put in the same discussion, is ludicrous and makes whoever uses this trite cliche sound like an idiot.

Thus, I propose a new expression, something that pits two things against each other between which no logical comparison could ever be made. There are loads of possibilities; just pick out almost any two items you see. Clouds and stethoscopes. Milk and harmonicas. Cell phones and nipples. All those are examples of pairs of things that would be difficult, if not downright ridiculous, to compare to each other. At the very least, they make a thousand times more sense than using apples and oranges to illustrate your point.

But maybe my new saying would catch on faster if it incorporated part of the old one. So we'll keep apples in there. But instead of oranges, how about "orangutans"? Orangutans also starts with "O" - in fact, it actually uses most of the word "orange" (except the E on the end) - so you still have the same kind of alliteration as you did with oranges. Plus, everybody loves monkeys. And, most importantly, there are very few similarities between apples and orangutans.

So remember this new and improved colloquialism next time you say something like "You can't compare Saved By the Bell to Mad Men...it's like apples and orangutans!"

I'm really hoping this catches on.

Stupid Technology

Bored in my home with nothing to do at 10PM on a Tuesday, an idea for entertainment struck me. You see, I have a very cool DVD player. It's a Blu-ray player. The guy at Best Buy told me how cool it is. It is so cool, it connects to the internet - wirelessly, mind you - and links up with my Netflix account. Thus, I can stream Netflix movies from the online universe directly to my television. I can be sitting on my couch, think of a movie I want to watch, access Netflix on my Blackberry, and minutes later have that movie magically appear on my TV via my cool DVD player. I paid good money for this DVD player. Keep that in mind.

So I decided to watch the movie Step Brothers, which was already in my online movie queue. The first thing I did was turn on the TV and DVD player. So far so good. But then, when I tried to access Netflix, a message popped up telling me that "new Firmware was available," and did I want to download an update? I don't know what Firmware is, but I figured if it was new and would improve my system, I should get it. I clicked "OK."

The Firmware started downloading. After three minutes, it had downloaded 0%. Growing impatient and wondering why the DVD player couldn't just do this updating on its own, when I didn't want to use it to watch a movie, I clicked "Cancel." It canceled the download.

When I tried to go back to Netflix, the remote stopped working. I jabbed it at the screen several times, pushing all sorts of buttons to try and elicit a reaction, but got no response. I was stuck.

I did the resquisite tapping of the remote against my palm, the obligatory taking of the batteries out and putting of them back in, but still no reaction. At this point I was muttering under my breath. Cartoonish, Elmer Fuddisms like "razzmatazz" and "sassafrassin'."

Then I remembered I had shrewdly planned ahead for just such an occurance and bought a pack of batteries at the store the other day. I congratulated myself on my foresight and started taking the old batteries out of the remote again to be replaced.

I got the first one out, but the second one was stuck. Just wouldn't come out, the stubborn little bugger. I sat there, brainlessly picking at it with my fingernail for a good 90 seconds before abruptly shouting out "GodDAMMIT!!!" to the empty room, got up, stormed into the kitchen, got some scissors and pried the battery the hell out of there.

I went into the other room and got the new batteries, only to realize I had purchased 24 AA's, when in fact what I needed were two AAA's.

Uttering my loudest sigh of the day, hoping God might finally hear my annoyance, I found a different remote with the same sized batteries and pilfered them, trading them into the DVD remote. Full success! I was able to use the DVD player again like it was 1998. I clciked on Step Brothers, and it started downloading.

Very.........slowly.

I waited just under another 1o minutes, when after 95% of the downlaod was complete, a popup message broke the unfortunate news that there had been a Network Error. "Download Failed."

So ended my night, after roughly a half hour of wasted life.

Why can't things just work? Why does technology actually end up deproving my life instead of improving it more often than not? I never had this problem with my Betamax player.

Americans in Financial Hole

Has anyone else seen this one second television commercial? It usually comes on during football games. It is literally just a one second shot of someone reading a newspaper that has the massive headline "Americans in Financial Hole."

At first I thought it was a programming glitch, like when you start to see the beginning of a commercial but then it cuts back to the game you were watching because someone realized there wasn't enough time to show the whole thing without missing some of the action. But I've seen this spot about a half dozen times now, and that's all it is - a quick shot of a guy reading a newspaper with this weird headline, sandwiched in between two other commercials.

There's no product being advertised. Seems like it's just a subliminal message designed to make us feel even worse about the economy than we already do - and while we're trying to relax and watch our escapist entertainment, no less. So what I want to know is, who's the jerk responsible for this Debbie Downerism?

My money's on the Republicans. Maybe it's Rush Limbaugh. He's taking the money he was going to use to buy the Rams and spending it on bumming out the NFL fans he won't have the opportunity to rule over.

Throwblechs

Was watching football last Sunday, as per usual. Is anyone else getting incredibly sick of these ridiculous throwback jerseys every single week? I mean, there isn't a week that goes by where some team is completely unrecognizable because they're wearing some uniform that a previous incarnation of their team wore in like 1892.

It started out innocently enough. A few years ago the Chargers wore their throwback powder blue uniforms for a game, and everyone thought they looked pretty snazzy. So the rest of the league started catching on, presumably because teams discovered they could probably sell more merchandise that way.

But it's just gotten out of hand. If the league wants to have a throwback week, that's cool with me. Pick one week out of the season where every team wears it's throwback jersey. Done. That's enough to sell the merchandise. But the way it is now, every week some teams are wearing their regular uniforms, while others look like they're fictitious teams from Any Given Sunday. We just finished Week 5, and the Patriots have already worn their throwbacks twice. Come on!

The Pats' opponent last weekend, the Broncos, were wearing throwbacks that looked like the Steelers' throwbacks. This is how absurd this has become: I'm already confusing different teams' throwback uniforms with each other.

But this one really took the cake: the Kansas City Chiefs were playing the Dallas Cowboys, and wearing throwback jerseys of the team they used to be: the Dallas Texans. So the Chiefs' helmets had logos of the state of Texas on them, and their coaches were wearing gear that said "Dallas Texans." Even though they're from KC and were playing against Dallas. And oh by the way, there's a whole other team in the NFL actually named the Texans now. Way to represent Kansas City, Chiefs. The whole team must have an identity crisis, for Christ's sake. No wonder they're 0-5.

And as if the throwbacks aren't enough, teams also find it necessary to wear jerseys that are simply completely different colors than their regular uniforms. Anybody see Miami Monday night in those orange jerseys? How about Seattle a couple weeks ago in those lime green ones? Those were classy. The Seahawks looked liked they'd been slimed on You Can't Do That On Telelvision. (Anyone? Anyone?)

In closing: thank you very much, San Diego. You started all this. PS - at this point you wear your powder blues at least as much as the navies, so I don't even know which is the modern uniform and which is the throwback.

Nobel Peace Cries

I'm not terribly political, nor do I particularly enjoy when whiners like me start spouting off about politics, the government, foreign affairs, etc, like they know how to run the country better than the people who are actually doing it. But the conservative backlash over President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is pretty disturbing.

Look, I don't think he particularly deserved it either. You shouldn't win awards for stuff you say you're going to do, but haven't actually done yet. That being said...he is our president. He was elected by a majority of the country to lead us, and whoever determines who to give this award to decided to give it to our guy. Shouldn't we as Americans be proud of that, as opposed to using it as just another opportunity to criticize him?

But no. The right has totally thrown away any intention of getting behind Obama. On anything. It's absurd, disappointing and a little frightening. Rush Limbaugh called his winning the award a "greater embarrassment" for America than not getting the 2016 Olympics. Which, by the way, right wingers were also rooting against getting, simply so they could rejoice in another failure of their president. These are also the same people who were outraged over Obama delivering the highly socialist message to America's children to stay in school and work hard.

Look, conservatives: I know you didn't vote for the guy. But he won, fair and square, and he's in charge of running the country for the next 3+ years. Rooting for him to fail at everything just so you can replace him with Mitt Romney in 2012 and have your taxes lowered slightly is idiotic and unpatriotic. You guys are like Colts fans screaming in anger that Peyton Manning got voted to the Pro Bowl after having an off year. Just shut up and support your fucking team once in awhile.

Stripper Follow-Up

As I am wont to do after being slighted, I sent Michael, the proprietor of RisqueKitty.com and World's Worst Pimp, an aggrieved email detailing my experience with him and his company. Here is our correspondence, with his misspellings left intact to further demonstrate his level of retardation:

Subject: Thanks for Nothing
From: Ethan Furman <ethanfurman@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, October 02, 2009 4:55 pm
To: info@risquekitty.com

Attn: Michael

You'll be happy to know you completely ruined my gift to my friend for his 30th birthday. Instead of waking up to a topless girl giving him a lapdance, he woke up to me handing him a shot of vodka. Why? Because you assured me it was "no problem at all" to have one of your girls come to his house this morning at 9AM.

What happened when she didn't show? You implied it was my fault for even making such a request, saying "you had a 50-50 shot of this happening anyway since it's so early." Oh really? That would have been helpful information to give me when I confirmed with you that the girl would be there. I would have gotten someone else to do it.

Instead, you ruined everything with your incompetence. Being completely unapologetic on top of it was a nice touch. You're a shitty company, and I'll do my best to make sure people don't use you.

E

Michael's Response:

From: "Risque Kitty" <info@risquekitty.com>

Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:03:39 -0700

To: Ethan Furman<ethanfurman@gmail.com>

Subject: RE: Thanks for Nothing

Thanks for those nice woods of encouragement. I too wish you the best of luck with your business as well. Fortunately for me Ive been in business for 11 years and plan on at least another 20 years to go. So good luck at bad mouthing me and my company.

Did you give your friend a lap dance since he didnt get one from the girls??? just curious.......I hope he liked his shot!!

Best Regards,

Michael
(818) 723-3870
risquekitty.com

My Response to His Response:

Subject: Thanks for Nothing
From: Ethan Furman <ethanfurman@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, October 05, 2009 12:13 pm
To: info@risquekitty.com

Your arrogance is disappointing. I'm somewhat shocked at your complete lack of apology over a situation in which you completely failed to deliver your service to a paying customer. It must be these stellar skills that have kept you in the whore business an impressive 11 years. You're a regular Donald Trump.

I get it. Your coke-addicted employees are strippers who can't be relied on to get up in the morning and be somewhere on time. Just don't be such a prick when you're clearly in the wrong.

Michael's mind-numbingly idiotic response:

Subject: Thanks for Nothing
From: info@risquekitty.com
Date: Wed, October 07, 2009 4:35 pm
To: ethanfurman@gmail.com

Apology? for what? did you pay any money? NO! did they arrive? NO! Are they coke addicts? NO! Are you a moron? YES We have a winner you are definately a moron! What have you won? A jerk off session with your friend!. Hope it was a good one. your the frickin prick who showed up with a bottle of vodka to your friends house and had a circle jerk session not me.

Best Regards,

Michael
(818) 723-3870
risquekitty.com

My (hopefully) concluding response:

Subject: Thanks for Nothing
From: ethanfurman@gmail.com
Date: Wed, October 07, 2009 5:45 pm
To: info@risquekitty.com

This email is too stupid to even respond to. I hope something truly terrible happens to you.

Strippers are Unreliable

Today was my friend Adam's 30th birthday. Rather than buy him a present, I thought a better gift would be to give him a memory, something that would forever mark the mature transition into the adulthood of his thirties.

I decided to hire a stripper to wake him up by singing Happy Birthday while giving him a lap dance.

Pretty good idea, right? Who wouldn't want to wake up to a topless girl gyrating on top of you on your birthday? That's a memory that will last a lifetime.

So I went online a couple weeks ago, trying to find companies that could provide such a service. The one I landed on was called RisqueKitty.com. They had a good looking website, lots of girls to choose from in multiple cities, etc. In short, it looked like a legit operation. I called up and spoke to someone named Michael, who assured me he could provide what I was looking for.

I picked out a busty blonde named Heidi. Michael assured me she would be at Adam's house today, Friday morning, at 9AM, ready to sing happy birthday while grinding on his bedcovers. The price was $140, plus tip. I believe his exact words were, "No problem at all, you're all set."

Cut to this morning. I arose early and left at 7:30AM to make the drive from Hollywood down to Hermosa Beach, giving myself plenty of time to stop by the ATM for a roll of 20's. I had previously arranged for Adam's roommate Jason to let me in. Jason was also in charge of getting Adam nice and liquored up the night before, to ensure there were no early risings on this day. When I arrived, Jason came outside to assure me that Adam was still snoring snugly in his bed. Everything was all set.

Except the stripper didn't come. I had expected her to be a little late. But at 9:15 I called old Michael to see where she was. "She's probably stuck in traffic," he offered.

"Well...can you call her and see when she'll be here?"

He said he would. Another fifteen minutes. No stripper. No Michael. I called him back. No answer.

Jason kept running inside to make sure Adam was still asleep. He was, but Jason wasn't sure how much longer that would last. I called Michael a couple more times, but it kept going to voicemail. I was getting the unsettling feeling that he was now avoiding my calls.

Finally, at 9:50, I got ahold of him. "Yeah, she's not answering her phone, so I don't know what to tell you," he said unapologetically. "She probably overslept."

"Are you kidding?" I asked, in disbelief at his poor customer service skills.

"To be honest, you had a 50-50 chance of this happening anyway, just cause it's so early." I couldn't believe this guy. Was he actually blaming me for this complete destruction of a great idea?

"Oh really?" I asked. "I appreciate you telling me that NOW!"

"You're welcome. Have a nice day," he quipped.

"Fuck off."

I'd like to think I got that last part out before Michael hung up, but I'm 80% sure he never heard it. This angered me infinitely more.

So this guy totally ruined my birthday surprise. I had to quickly formulate a Plan B, which turned out to be chilling shots of vodka, waking Adam up myself and forcing him to drink. Which isn't terrible, I guess, other than the confusion he had of why I was in his house.

Who knew strippers could be so unreliable?

*Bonus Kvetch: Jason had alerted me the night before that Adam told him he had agreed to pick up another friend of ours, Kevin, from the hospital at 10AM after having a medical procedure done. Obviously, this would have screwed up everything, as it would have caused Adam to be awake and leaving the house right when the girl was supposed to come over. So I quickly called Kevin and told him that, while I didn't want to be insensitive to his deteriorating health, I would need him to contact Adam ASAP and tell him to come pick him up an hour later, and hang out in the hospital a little longer all drugged up on painkillers. Thankfully he was a sport and agreed, but the stripper's no-show makes me feel bad about that on top of all this.

Many people's lives were damaged today. Happy birthday, Adam.

Warning to Prospective Homeowners

Back in May I became a homeowner for the first time, moving into a condo building in Hollywood. A few weeks later, it was announced that two positions on the five member Homeowners Association Board were becoming temporarily available, and that if anybody was interested in joining, to express interest. Eager to get involved in the goings-on of my new building and meet my neighbors, I did just that.

Big mistake.

As it turned out, only me and one other guy chose to be on the HOA board. I now understand why. I am bombarded by emails daily about every possible boring issue pertaining to the building - sometimes they come so rapidly, one after another, that my Blackberry vibrates nonstop for minutes on end. I get anxious looking at them all sitting there, piled on top of each other, waiting for me to read them and chime in my required approval for some resident I've never met to install a ceiling fan in his unit.

I also have to attend meetings. Usually they are just once a month, and the first two I participated in weren't so bad. But we had one last week that lasted three hours. It was like seeing The Watchmen again, only ten times as tedious. I won't bore you recapping why it took as long as it did (I actually started to, but then decided better of it when I began nodding off at the memory), but at least know this: there was only one building resident in attendance, and he had no complaints to make during the portion allotted for homeowners to talk about their issues. If there had been a sizeable turnout of residents there with things to talk about, the meeting could have easily been over four hours long, in which case I would have shot myself in front of everyone like the kid does in the "Jeremy" video. Come to think of it, I don't even know why that one homeowner voluntarily sat through that whole meeting. He really must have no life.

Anyway, part of the reason I joined the board was because the position was temporary - my seat and two others were to be up for re-election after two months. Because I don't say much at the meetings, I was peer pressured by the rest of the board to run for re-election, a process that basically involved writing down my name on a list. So I did (this was before the three hour fiasco). Last night the election results were announced down in the pool area. I sat there, praying I had been voted out and replaced by one of the three nutjobs who were actually running against the incumbents. Alas, it was not meant to be. I am simply too popular for my own good. I was re-elected. I now face a two year sentence of being Member-at-Large on the Hollywood Regis HOA board.

Sigh. At least I'm not President. That guy really suffers.

So, for anyone who is considering joining the HOA board in their building: I do not recommend it.