August 2009

You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day...

I've been putting this off and putting this off and putting this off. I'm getting angry emails about "where's Ten Happy Things?" so I guess I can't put it off any longer. It really has nothing to do with not being happy or anything like that. I think I'm just tapped out writing-wise. I've had a series of fire drills at work that has just drained my will to write. I look at my keyboard and I'm just like UGH. But the readers have spoken! So, here we go.

10. I went to a Bachelorette Party a couple of weeks ago that was really a comedy fest. I only attended the first half of the party (I had to skip the downtown portion because I had another party to go to) but the part I did attend was a riot. It was filled with so many delicious one-liners like "mine is the one with the green penis" and "those Popiela girls really know how to work those penii" and "I know what a blowjob is! I wasn't born yesterday!" I was actually writing the quotes down for a while because they were all so random and hilarious. Nothing, however, topped the 'dancer'. Oh good grief. First of all, the Bride is one of those girls that has the most expressive face EVER. She makes so many great facial expressions, especially when she's all charged up about something. I've been known to call her "Carol" as in Carol Burnett from time to time because she makes all these Carol Burnett faces and it's just friggin adorable. I digress. So, the dancer shows up and he's a really nice looking bloke and he puts the Bride on a chair in the middle of the room and proceeds to just torture her. It was ridiculous. He's doing all this stuff to her and she's making all these faces and I was just dying laughing. Then he gets a hold of her mother and starts torturing her. He had the poor woman handcuffed to the chair while he unbuttoned her entire blouse and juggled her boobs around like a couple of ripe cantaloupe. I didn't know a person could turn maroon. I've seen people turn red but never maroon. The poor lady was like a neon shade of maroon. Then he starts making his rounds around the room. I was safely perched behind the couch so I could see everything but I was spared being touched. Call me a prude but getting touched intimately by some strange, oiled up naked man is not high on my list of to dos, you know? I don't know where the hell that's been, I see where it is now, and I'm just not interested in that brand of cooties. I digress again. By the time he was going around the room to the other girls, my face hurt from laughing.....and then he came to Ann. I don't know how my poor cheeks handled how funny she was. Our friendly dancing naked man is coming toward her and she's in the defensive posture yelling "no, no, no, no!" He grabbed a hold of her hand and started running it down his chest and abs and Ann goes "no, no, no, no, no, oh, that's pretty nice actually." That was it. I was DONE. I was, like, hyperventilating from laughing so hard. I wish I would have filmed it. It was too funny for words.

As a side note, the naked dude was Jewish. It really doesn't matter to me either way...it just caught me off guard. He took his shirt off and he had a Star of David on one pec and a Hebrew character on the other. I was like "wait...what?" It was just so....unexpected. Not saying that Jewish men can't make good strippers because this dude was pretty alright but it's just not two islands my mind ever bridged together, you know? I took to calling him our happy naked Jewish friend.....because that's what he was. Our happy naked Jewish friend.

9. I mentioned before that there's been a few crazy fire drills at work. Well, one of them was this absolutely Herculean RFQ (Request for Qualifications) that both literally and figuratively kicked my ass. I'll give you a short lesson in RFQs so you can see where I'm coming from. When an organization needs the services of a company like the one I work for, the organization will put out a Request for Qualifications or a Request for Proposal which is usually a big questionnaire that companies fill out in an attempt to solicit the business. It's kind of like what construction companies do with bids. There's a job that needs to be done and a bunch of different companies submit bids and then the best one is picked. Same principal with this particular RFQ. The difference, however, is that this RFQ was the most intrusive RFQ of all time. The questions were so numerous and so involved, I felt naked and raw by the time I answered them all. I've answered tons of these things and never once have I encountered one so all encompassing as this one. To make matters even more fun, the issuing organization wanted ten hard copies and 45 CD copies of the response. The day that we put the whole thing together and sent it out, it literally took the coordinated effort of everyone in the office to get it done. By the time the damn thing went out, I seriously looked like I'd been through the war. However, when we all brought the box downstairs to the UPS drop-off and we set it down, a feeling of exquisite joy came over me. I literally laid down on the floor and took a deep, satisfied breath. I have never been so overjoyed to finish a work project. It was a pure bliss moment.

8. Okay, you all know that I'm a golf retard. You've heard me talk about golf - both playing golf and watching golf - enough that I'm sure a good many of you would like to bludgeon me to death with a golf club. What you haven't heard me talk about, however, is women's golf. Truth be told, I don't watch a ton of women's golf. I follow it. I know who a good chunk of the players are...but if there's a choice between watching a PGA event or watching an LPGA event, nine times out of ten I'm watching the boys play. However, the Solheim Cup, which is the Ladies' version of the US versus Europe Ryder Cup, was a couple weeks ago and, let me tell you, I was GLUED. It was AWESOME. With the exception of Jim Furyk and Mike Wier, almost all the PGA golfers I love are European so when there's a US versus Europe thing going on, I end up rooting for Europe because I'm rooting for my boys. With the LPGA, it's the total opposite. I love the American girls. They're flippin' fantastic....and watching them kick the collective European ass at the Solheim Cup rocked my socks. All the American girls played really well, Michelle Wie completely came out of her shell and just dominated, and to add some sugar to the heap, like 90% of the girls on the American team were super hot. Even my younger brother who can't stand golf was like "woah! What the hell is this? These chicks are hot!" There are some great things in life but few of them are better than watching a bunch of hot American chicks kick ass at something. Girls rule!

7. Fall is coming, fall is coming, fall is coming! I think we might have a couple of warm streaks left this season but fall is definitely coming.

6. Last Tuesday, I spent my evening with the three drunkest fools in Chicago. Our Accounting VP has season tickets to the Cubs...and she took three of us to a game last Tuesday. Let me stress...this was a TUESDAY night. Not Friday, not Saturday, not a weekday followed by a no-work holiday. A regular old Tuesday. We went to some bar in Wrigleyville before the game and had a beer or two and some wings. Honestly, that was enough for me. It was humid as hell at the stadium and beer was doing nothing for me but making me feel warm so when we got to the game, I switched to water. After all, it was a Tuesday. Yeah, well, my three compatriots didn't feel similarly. Not even remotely. They drank like alcoholics on death row and absolutely could not understand why I was drinking water. By the time the game was over, it was beertard number one, beertard number two, beertard number three, and me. They were so funny. They were saying the most ridiculous nonsense, making the silliest faces, and being such complete goofballs. We get out of the stadium and somehow came to the decision that we were going to go to a gay bar. Why you ask? I have absolutely no idea. Let's see....it's Tuesday night after a ball game, we're in a group of two married women and two completely ungay dudes, three of us are already hammered, what should we do? Go to a gay bar! Duh. So, we went to a gay bar. Not a slightly gay bar. Not an ambiguously gay bar. Not a "I experimented in college" gay bar. A towering inferno of gayness gay bar. Personally, I love gay men. I think most women do. They're completely fun and they have a freedom about themselves that I think a lot of women admire. I know I do. Anyway, there we were....the three drunkest fools in Chicago, me, and the gayest men in the Midwest. They were all lovely. They were all well dressed, groomed, and coiffed. They were all flamboyantly gay. Two of them had purses. One guy walked in wearing cowboy boots, jean cutoff short shorts, a button down shirt, and a brown Coach purse. It was a complete riot. Here's these two guys who are the complete and total opposite of gay trying to order beer at a gay martini bar in Boystown. We couldn't have stuck out more if we tried. After we left the place, the three drunkest fools in Chicago wanted Mexican food so at 1 in the morning on a Tuesday, there were the four of us eating Mexican food at some joint on the Northside. The best part was me trying to drive drunk ass Topher the Beagle Giver home. He lives on the Northside. I have no idea how to get around on the Northside. I live in friggin' Frankfort, okay? I don't know my way around on the Northside because I don't go there often. I don't want to go there often. But there I was trying to drive Topher home and he kept passing out in the car. I'd wake him up and ask him where I needed to turn, he'd look around and tell me to keep going straight, and then pass out again. It took me, like, three years to get him home. I finally got home and went to bed at 2:38 in the morning.....and then got up for work the next day. I was so slap happy that everything in the office was the most hilarious thing ever. Good times. :o)

5. I don't know how many of you watch Rescue Me on FX but I'm a devoted fan. I've been watching since the first episode. I really lagged on this season though. I had the entire season recorded on my TiVo before I finally got around to watching the season premier. I'm getting through them now, though, and I'm about half-way though. Whether you watch the show or not, there's no way you can't find this bit funny. They did this kind of musical episode and the scene in question involves one of the show's funniest characters getting prepped for surgery to remove a cancerous kidney. They give him the anesthesia and he has this dream sequence that nearly killed me. The beginning's not terribly hilarious....the good stuff doesn't pick up until about 1:20 but feel free to watch either all or part of it:









Okay, I'm sorry, but that nearly murdered me. When Garrity is singing and his idiot brother comes into the scene and Garrity carries on singing while making annoyed faces about his brother, I couldn't stop laughing. He's so funny on that show, it hurts....but this was easily his funniest moment in the show's history. And holy cow can he sing! I was floored. Every time I watch that clip, I just go bananas laughing.

4. The US Open is underway, DirecTV has given me something like seven channels of coverage, Andy Roddick's confidence is high, and Kim Cjlisters, one of my most favorite female players ever, is back from retirement and looking in peak form. Plus, they honored Andre Agassi during the opening ceremonies, which was awesome because I love me some Andre. There'd be no tennis in my world were it not for Andre. The sport misses him. I miss him more. It was so great to see him back at Ashe.....and he did that blowing kisses bowing thing that he always does, which made me all joyous and weepy. See:

Here's to hoping that it's not another damn Federer win. Oh, and just to start things off properly, on opening night we got the obligatory Andy Roddick rolling around on the court with his ass in the air. It never fails. Every tournament has to have at least one instance of Andy diving, then falling, and then rolling with his legs flailing through space. I wish I could find a picture of it but no one seems to have one. Shame...because it was a good one.

3. True Blood. That's really all I need to say. It's not all I'm going to say but it's all I probably need to. It's the BEST show. I'm totally hooked. Those of you who watch it....you know. Those of you who don't....start. It's so good. I wake up on Sunday mornings happy because it's True Blood day.

Oh, and just for the record, I'm totally pro-Eric. Bill can take a flying leap. I kind of can't stand him.....and I really hate his hair.

2. This one is for my fellow True Blood fans....and for any of you who happen to like the movie Zoolander. This past weekend, I was looking for something to put on the television as background noise while I was cleaning. One of the eight million channels I get was playing Zoolander so I put that on. You don't really have to watch Zoolander if you've seen it enough times. Just listening to it is funny enough. Right, so, I've got Zoolander on and I'm going through the house with the Swiffer and I hear that the gasoline fight scene is coming, which is my favorite scene in the movie, so I stop dusting to watch. Okay my fellow True Blooders, watch this and tell me who you see:










You see it, right? Meekus, the tall blond idiot model. The one who's like "Uh, Earth to Brint..." Yeah, that's totally Eric. I was watching it and I kind of stopped and stared.....and then I put two and two together and realized that Meekus was being played by Alexander Skarsgard.....so I rewound the scene and watched it again.....and then I absolutely lost my mind laughing. The scene in and of itself is funny enough. I mean, they're friggin' idiots. But if you watch True Blood and you're familiar with the character Eric, the whole thing becomes ten times funnier. Even more so, if you watched Generation Kill on HBO and you're familiar with Alexander Skarsgard's performance in that, it becomes like ten million times funnier. The faces that he's making in the back seat of the jeep while they're cruising along to Wake Me Up Before You Go Go with their orange mocha frappuccinos is just about the funniest thing ever. I had to sit down, I was laughing so hard. There's Mr. Mysteriously Devilish Sexy Vampire Eric dressed up like I don't even know what acting like a dumb Swedish model. Granted, he's got to be something like 22 or 23 there but still. When he starts cracking up at his own stupid joke, it's all I can do to not pass out from laughing. God bless YouTube.

1. A while back, I mentioned that my Gram is moving here from New York. Well, she totally did. She's totally here. She's all moved in to the in-law apartment at my mom's house. It's so cool. I haven't had my Gram living near me since I left New York. Hell, I haven't had ANY grandparent live near me since I left New York.....and that was like a million years ago. I don't think it's actually sunk in all the way yet. I mean, I'm used to having to get on a plane to see my Gram. Now she's like 20 minutes away. It's kind of surreal in a way. I have little moments here and there where I think about it and then I giggle....because I'm totally a Grandma's girl. I'm like the biggest Grandma's girl EVER. And now she's not far away so I can be a Grandma's girl ALL THE TIME. :o)


See, now that I did it, I don't know why I was putting it off. I'm a big nerd. Anyway, be will kids and I'll see you next time around....same Ten Happy Things time, same Ten Happy Things channel.