May 2012
3 posts
A Description Of My Hotel
When traveling, in lieu of racking up points, I always try to stay in hotels that cost the same or less than a Marriott, Hilton, and the like but are more unique and independent. I think people call them “boutiques,” but I refuse to use that term unless I’m referring to an arrangement of cut flowers.
Instead of sharing a photograph, I have decided to describe this hotel in...
Kevin
Kevin was the coolest kid in the class, by far, and everyone knew it. He’d earned this title simply because of his prolific athletic ability, and, I think, sick buzz cut. He wore diamond-insignia’d Umbros and his soccer team’s shirt to school every day, which in North Carolina was the signature style of third grade hipness. I looked up to Kevin, partly because he was about two...
April 2012
3 posts
Oates
We are working on a campaign for a client that has business interests with sunglasses. This client recently sponsored a concert for John Oates, of Hall & Oates fame. We were looking through pictures from the event and noticed all of the band members except Oates were wearing sunglasses.
Coworker: “I wish John Oates was wearing sunglasses during the show.”
Me: “Maybe he...
Sales
In a sense, everyone’s a salesperson. You sell yourself to a company in hopes of being hired, or sell yourself to an attractive person who has a beauty mark in hopes of them liking you back. I can be a good salesman in these cases. But when it comes to actually selling something - products or services to another person or entity - I am genuinely no good. Take the time I Craigslisted a sofa.
...
March 2012
4 posts
My Second McSweeney's Rejection
Getting rejected by McSweeney’s - and believing that you have what it takes to get published there - is, in and of itself, one of the whitest things a white person could ever do. The rejections from editor Chris Monks, however, are some of the kindest rejection letters you’ll ever receive. Chris actually makes you feel good about losing.
I’ve set a goal to get published on...
The Time I Drove Dave Attell From His Hotel To A...
Years ago I knew the owner of a comedy club, and one evening the namesake host of Comedy Central’s Insomniac with Dave Attell, Dave Attell, was performing there. I was given the keys to a Dodge Durango and asked by the owner to pick up Dave Attell from his hotel and bring him to the comedy club. Along the way I imagined myself hamming it up with Dave Attell and really getting to know him as...
Pants Panic
The jeans I was wearing smelled like the Chinese place’s kitchen from the night before. I’m certain it was the cumin that had penetrated the denim in a way that made the pants unwearable for a second day, despite having already worn them for half of that second day. Who puts cumin in Chinese food anyways (besides the Chinese, as they have for centuries)? The cumin made the Chinese...
February 2012
3 posts
Salad(s)
For lunch I ate salad. Now you might be asking, “Did you eat a salad-salad, a fruit salad or some sort of meat-based salad?” More than likely, though, you aren’t asking yourself that question, because it’s a really uninteresting thing to inquire and you probably assumed, from the beginning, that I ate a salad-salad. You immediately imagined me eating a green salad with...
An outtake from Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler...
Return Flight
I’m on a return flight home from San Francisco to Richmond. San Franciscans might wonder why I would require a flight to Richmond when Richmond is a district in San Francisco. It’s also a city in Virginia. It’s actually also a city in the San Francisco area, along with the Richmond district, which includes both Inner and Outer Richmond. My point is that I am not going to any of...
January 2012
5 posts
2 tags
Health Questions
Over the weekend I managed to cozy up to a patch of poison ivy. Not on purpose; that would be dumb. Though I’ve always wanted to try what they do in deep African countries where the natives attempt to build up a resistance to poisonous plants by rubbing their bodies with them, but I’ve never really gotten up the nerve. Anyway, I could see the rash forming on my right arm and hand...
5 tags
Concordia movie (a synopsis)
Here’s what I’ve got thus far on my script for Concordia, the movie about the doomed cruise liner in Italy, due out Summer 2013.
So this dude, Giampiero Consigliere, is just nailing this hot chick. This goes on for about seven minutes before the opening credits start. There is graphic nudity. “Walt Disney Pictures Presents.” We see flashbacks to the attractive couple...
Gwyneth and Heads
We recently rented the movie Contagion and while I’ll say that it was rather slow and uninteresting (a pity rental), I was curious on why Gwyneth Paltrow chose to do this film. I’m not giving anything away by saying she dies because her death comes at the beginning, but there is a scene where, lying dead on a table, the autopsy-doer pulls her scalp down over her face to reveal her...
Tim's Shirts
A buddy and I recently developed a business concept that we think is going places. It’s kind of hard to explain but I’ll dumb it down: you visit our website and buy a shirt, and then we’ll give a second shirt to a person in need in Africa or Mexico or someplace. Right now we are calling the business Tim’s Shirts. Neither of us is named Tim, or knows a Tim. It’s just...
December 2011
3 posts
Barefoot
Shoes, socks, bare feet. When I walk into someone’s home and don’t know their domestic habits, my eyes turn to their feet. If they’re wearing shoes, I’ve just stepped into a nightmare.
A shoed homeowner means I need to keep my shoes on while indoors, too. To seem polite. “Make yourself at home,” they’ll say, Reeboks hogtied snug around their feet as they...
3 tags
Next Time I'll Warn People Before Bringing A...
Live and learn, that’s what my grandfather always used to say. I tend to be one of those people who has to learn through experience, and sometimes, that means learning the hard way. When I was a kid, I put my hand on a stove burner and quickly grasped the concept of “hot.” It took a speeding ticket - 62 in a 25 - before I quit driving like a bat out of hell. And then last...
On Set
Out of nowhere this week, I managed to snag a role as a Union soldier the set of Steven Spielberg’s new Abraham Lincoln movie. This was, apparently, payoff for the gobs of cash that Cristin and I have mercilessly blown into the stratosphere while eating and drinking at higher-end bars and restaurants around town, all in what has been a fruitless attempt to land a celebrity sighting in the...
November 2011
6 posts
StockWatch: Wayne Enterprises (WEP)
$15.47 (-$0.08)(-0.51%) Photos of a bruised Bruce Wayne have led many investors to fear the conglomerate’s CEO is suffering from lymphoma.
-The Onion’s “StockWatch” featurette
Catalog
I’d traveled to the suburban office building to hand-deliver a package. The guy who was to receive it was out at the time, so I left it at the front desk.
Not one to leave a package behind without a note, I asked the the receptionist for a Post-It. Obliging, she tore off a yellow square and slapped it onto the counter. I began to write my note, but the pen seemed to be out of ink. As one...
Furnace Home
About a week ago, the unmistakable smell of death entered our home, nestling itself around the kitchen. Considering both of us and the dog are very much alive - and, speaking for myself, smelling pretty fine these days - we came to the immediate conclusion that the stench was that of a house mouse in the early stages of decomposition.
After opening the windows, I investigated the probable...
1 tag
October 2011
6 posts
Hepatitis Cteakhouse
This week I traveled Texas for 22 hours, and the group I was with ate dinner together at steakhouse.
Nearby, a small group was assembling in a private dining room. I could see the whole party through the glass door that separated them from the rest of us. The table fit about 12 people or so, and at the head of it was a projector screen reserved mostly for stuff like wedding slideshows or a...
5 tags
DD-L
Daniel Day-Lewis has arrived in my city and has begun filming the upcoming Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, which I’ve written about before. Day-Lewis (or is it just Lewis?) plays the part of Abe Lincoln, who was a president or something. That part isn’t important.
What’s important is that Dan is in town, and my chances of running into him have increased from like 0.01 percent up...
September 2011
3 posts
WatchThe President is in town and all highways were shut down. I needed to get to the airport. Only way there is the highway. I found an onramp with no police. I got on the highway. I was the only car on the highway along with another, which I think was a cop. What I did might gave been illegal. Then I saw the motorcade and Obama. And it was neat. Here is the wacky video. I stupidly panned the camera...
1 tag
August 2011
17 posts
WatchTraining to D.C. for the evening and passing through my college campus. Here’s video of where I went to school and nailed like zero chicks on the reg.
“Recessional: Born to Run”
– Our wedding program. Somehow, by means in which I still do not quite fully understand, I have managed to work this Springsteen classic into the ceremony on Sept. 10. Performed by a string quartet, nonetheless. I’d have loved to have seen the musicians’ faces when that request came...
"UR MOM"
After years of figuring that such a thing was out in the city somewhere, I finally saw it today, two blocks from our house: the completely unironic license plate “UR MOM,” held - apparently - by the mother of a University of Richmond student. Also serving as an insult to every single person who drives or rides behind her, including me. I couldn’t move fast enough to get the...
Sidebars
Decided I want to work more sidebars into my daily life. I rarely use this tool, which hails from the courtroom and is defined as a request for a private conversation while in the company of others, and outside of everyone else’s earshot. Sidebars are a great asset to have in your communications arsenal. How can you effectively use a sidebar?
Say you’re having a work meeting with...
7 tags
Life Lessons And More From Kanye West And Jay-Z's...
Like the majority of white guys on the incoming edge of their 30s, my musical tastes are largely confined to alternative-slash-indie rock, whatever I listened to in high school, and Belinda Carlisle.
Yet if there is an outstanding anomaly among my playlists, it is that of Kanye West. “Ye” is a very hated man, a very loved man, a man with a reverse self-esteem problem, and a man whose...
Special Delivery!
I love the concept - or rather, the terminology - of a company such as Boeing “delivering” a new airplane as if it was a UPS package. How does one go about delivering a 787 Dreamliner, anyway? Must be a pretty custom box size. And I bet the shipping fees are outrageous.
