matthearn.com

Whoof. Busy times for Da Hearn (say it like in the old SNL Bears Fans sketch: DAAAAAA Hearn da hearn da hearn da hearn da hearn… it works best if you’re comically obese) (like me), to say the least. I’m thinking that I may want to cut back on the daily updates, go to more of a 2 or 3 days-a-week posting. The reasons for this are manifold:

1. I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger with a nasty infection in his crotch.
2. It seems to me that 2 or 3 semi-well-written (I do understand my limits, after all) and moderately funny posts are an upgrade over 5 hastily slapped together 2-paragraph blurts of idiocy.

Which days of the week I plan to have containing updates is going to be largely random, but for now let’s assume that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be the standard update days. Which makes sense, since this week’s first update is on a Tuesday. Go figure!

The weekend summary:

Friday night: jam session with the work crew, featuring Much Blues, and Some Rock, and Several Beers. It’s worth noting that we actually sound pretty good, unless I sing, because in that case I’m having to play bass and sing at the same time, and the usual result is just devastatingly sad. Luckily, we have a guitarist who can sing as well, and he seems to have no problems playing at the same time, so we give him as much as we can.

Saturday morning: intended to get up and test out my new MIDI-to-USB doodackey (to connect my “synthesizer” to my compy; more on this later in the week), maybe do a little composing and recording, then pack for our trip to New York. What exactly happened: I slept until 11am.

Saturday afternoon: late start on the road, but still made it to the city by 4ish. My parents’ opera ended around 5, so we wandered down to meet them at the TKTS booth and see if we could snag tickets to something feisty. I picked up a small bottle of rum on the way, in case it got cold. (It did not. Perhaps because I drank all the rum.) The line was long, but mercifully fast (it stretched an entire city block, but only took about 35 minutes to get through). We got tickets to see “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which were unfortunately “Obstructed View,” which I took to mean there’d be some kind of pillar in my way. The four seats were all together, though, so I wasn’t too bitter, and they were half-price, so I was exceedingly glad.

Then we went to have dinner, and found a little hole-in-the-wall sandwich-type pub, the name of which escapes me, but that’s of little import because it’s closed. Seriously. We kept trying to order things, and the waiter would tell us, “I’m sorry, we’re out of that,” and finally he revealed that Saturday night would be their last. ‘Twas a pity, says I, because the food was good. And cheap, particularly if like me you just ordered a diet coke and kept sneaking rum into it.

Finally, we stumbled next door to the theatre, where we discovered that our seats were, indeed, obstructed view, in that they were in the freaking 2nd and 3rd row of the theatre, all the way on the left. The obstruction was the left-side proscenium, so we couldn’t see anything going on in the back on the left, but I don’t recall anything happening over there. On the other hand, we were so close that I could count the stitch marks in the dancers’ knee surgery scars. (You’d think they’d wear some kind of stockings to cover that stuff up. I experienced full body shivers several times.) The show itself was riotously funny, and I highly recommend it to anyone. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jonathan Pryce getting dry-humped. By a dude. Good times.

After that we went back to the hotel and chillaxed for a while, did some Su Doku, and slept on a fold-out bed. I dreamt about puppies and threshing machines. (Two separate dreams, thank God.)

Sunday morning, we got up and went to St. Thomas Church for Morning Prayer and Eucharist. Very high church, totally good times. The sermon didn’t do much for me, but then, sermons rarely do.

After that we met up with my high school buddy Josh for some grub at Rue 57, featuring steak and eggs, and also sushi. Raw fish? For brunch? Yes, I am just that freakin’ crazy. Take it in, baby.

My parents departed after that, as they needed to hit up Zabar’s for coffee and chocolate croissants, so we aimlessly wandered the city with Josh, hitting up the International Center of Photography. They had a massive exhibit on Che Guevara, which made my butt clench a wee bit (I tend to be put off by hippie sentimentality), but which actually turned out to be an exhibit on the way the infamous picture of him has been used for all kinds of capitalistic things. Kooky.

There was also an exhibit entitled “The Body at Risk, which had all kinds of pictures of people with amputations and diseases and deformities. It was like rotten.com (Warning: horribly NSFW), except that it was art! I was in hog heaven.

J-Lew and Sarah were a little disappointed in the lack of pictures of puppies and flowers, so I figured I’d throw them a wee bone:

After some light shopping, we retrieved our car and headed out of town. Unfortunately, the Lincoln Tunnel was getting worked on, so traffic heading out was backed up for blocks. I said, quote, “this is teh sux0r” and headed down the West Side Highway to get out via the Holland Tunnel. This, as Jet Li might put it, was a mistake. I didn’t realize that the Holland Tunnel only has 2 lanes of outbound traffic, into which 6 lanes from 3 different directions merge. It took us 45 minutes to get out of New York, 40 of which were spent going the last 3 blocks before the Tunnel.

After that, though, the drive was a breeze, although I’m continually amazed at people’s ability to sit in the left hand lane and not notice that I’m flipping them off. Breathtaking.

It being Thursday, I give you: the random crappy URLS of stuff that you can probably find on Fark if Fark wasn’t TOTALLY out of the loop! (Ha HA! Just kidding. One Fark link to me and I’d get more bandwidth in an hour than I have in 4 years. And that’s a fact, jiffypop.)

• The Top 30 Facts about Jack Bauer, very similar to the highly rated Facts about Chuck Norris site. My favorite: “Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.” So true.
• There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING more awesome than hilarious pranks on homosexual PETA members. This poor guy screamed like a 3 year old with a drinking problem.

  I don’t know what that means.

• I can’t decide what’s more depressing. The fact that this guy posted this on ebay, or the fact that the winner only had to pay $22.22.
• No, this isn’t me. But I could see how you’d think that, what with my personal largeness and my unrivaled DDR skeelz.

  That guy carries all his weight in his massive gut. I carry most of mine in my shoulders, thighs, and ass. It’s actually kind of depressing that I never played organized football, because my body is a linebacker’s dream. Also I like to hit people. That guy likes to hit his DDR machine when he falls off.

That’s about it for now, but I may post some more stuff later on today. Thanks to Craig for the last link, it made me pee a little.

I don’t have a lot today due to extreme business, but I wanted to share one quick thing: I have come up with yet another reason why Napoleon Dynamite may be the best movie ever made. (As if we needed one.)

The success of the movie, and the consequent frequent quoting thereof by yours truly (and many of my friends), has cut down significantly on the amount of swearing I do. For example, when Sarah says to me, “Hey, are you hungry?” I no longer say “F-bomb yes, I’m hungry. Let’s make some goddamned nachos. S-bomb.” I much more likely to say, “Heck yes. Let’s make some ham.”

When people cut me off in traffic, I had in the past usually screamed something like “F you, you F-ing F!” which is a quote I learned from a T-shirt in New York City. Now, I usually just mutter “Freaking IDIOT” or “You have the worst reflexes of all time.”

All of this is definitely a good thing, what with a baby coming, and all.

What the heck, man? What sort of crackhead tardo winter is this? It was like 55 degrees out this past weekend! Listen, I’m willing to accept that around here, we rarely get snow on Christmas (although for the past few years in a row, we’ve gotten snow BEFORE Christmas, which has been weirding me out). But if it can’t snow on Christmas, it oughta snow on my birthday. Or at least be what I colloquially refer to as “balls cold,” meaning very very cold. And last weekend was like late April up in this piece. It made me sad in my bowels.

This morning when I awoke, at least there was some frost on the ground. I think this is maybe the 2nd frost of the new year. That is flat out redickerous, and simply lame beyond all previous lame-ity.

In hopes that Ol’ Man Winter (distantly related by marriage to Ol’ Man River) might make an appearance, I’m going to list some of my favorite winters of the past:

• January, 1978: I am born during a large blizzard. I don’t know a lot of details, but it must have been AWESOME.
• 1994: Freezing rain shuts down New Castle County’s schools for an entire week (as I recall). I spend the entire week at Josh Lewis’s house, because his neighborhood actually has hills, and we made use of various Radios Flyer and toboggans and the like. Usually we would get so soaked with wet snow that I would end up wearing a pair of Josh’s pants and some of his socks. You definitely wanted to know that.
• 1996: In a similar situation, sleet and snow shuts down most of Delaware’s schools for a week straight. I spend the week with the future HW in Stefanie Bennett’s basement, uh, watching movies. Yeah. That’s the ticket. We were WATCHING MOVIES.
• February, 2003: Massive blizzard dumps about 2 feet of snow on northern Delaware and the surrounding environments. The Governor proclaims (is that the right word? Probably not) a state of emergency, and shuts the schools for a week. My wife and inlaws and I are stuck in Dallas for two days, trying to find a flight home. We spend the bulk of those two days in a hotel bar. Finally we manage to make our way back, and my truck gets stuck in the snow in my driveway. I skip work for a couple days so I can shovel roughly 3 tons of snow off my driveway, and then a couple more days so I can learn to walk again.

Clearly, I dig me some snow. So when, in the middle of January, it freakin’ RAINS, I get bitter and angry.

I wonder what the weather’s supposed to be like this weekend…oh, dang.

A wild and wooly weekend, it was. With wetness and warmth and, uh, white people, and, uh, whimsy. Ha HA! W.

The completion of my 28th year was rife with enjoyment, starting with a hockey game on Friday. Brian managed to hook me up with a couple tickets to see the Philadelphia Phantoms play the Hershey Bears, so I picked up my father (aka Grumps) and we drove up to the Spectrum, where we took advantage of reserve parking and headed inside to drink beer.

The game was superb; the Phantoms started out down 3-1, but recovered to tie the game at 4 in the third period and send it to overtime. The overtime period was uneventful, but then the Phantoms won in the shootout. It was freakin’ sweet. As an added bonus, because of the overtime, the Sixers game going on across the parking lot in the Wachovia Center ended before the hockey game did, so when we finally got out of there the traffic wasn’t bad at all. We got out in about 3 minutes.

The only downside was that the game was very well attended, so it was hard to upgrade one’s seats. My dad and I started out in pretty good seats, but we had a railing in our view and a couple of jerk Bears fans sitting behind us, so we moved over. We were there about 90 seconds before people arrived and took their seats back. So we moved, and then the same thing happened again. Finally we said screw it and went to get some more beer.

Saturday I slept in, and helped HW clean the house for the party that evening. HW overworked herself and threw out her back, but the party ended up being a hit anyway. I got Dance Dance Revolution for my birthday, so we played that while drinking. It was very, very hard. At about midnight, I decided it would be a good idea to watch “Ocean’s 12,” and managed to stay awake for the whole thing, but was far too inebriated to understand it.

Sunday morning we skipped church, and God punished us by having our upstairs toilet start leaking water all over the bathroom. Totally rad. I took it apart and discovered some of the seals were pretty worn, but we had been planning to go to Home Depot anyway to get some paint and other stuff. I grabbed the necessary bolts and seals. Then we went to my parents for Turkey Lurkey Murkey and cheesecake and presents, and then home. I repaired the toilet, watched 24, and passed out.

Today I’m going back to work. I’m so thrilled.

Things that make me happy:

• Trying to find a video game version of Cricket that’s playable on an American PS2, failing, discussing the expensive possibility of convering my PS2 so I can play foreign games, and then realizing, hell, I’ll just get the PC version and save a lot of trouble.
• Discovering a Torrent that has a downloadable CD image of the game, thereby saving $59.99. (Not that I would ever do this, of course, as it’s immoral and unjustifiable and wrong. Still.)
• Thinking to myself, “Damn, I’m hungry. I wish I’d brought lunch today,” and then realizing a few minutes later, “Hey! Wait! I brought fried chicken! It’s in the refrigerator!” This, in fact, made me so happy I did a little dance, and might have peed a little bit.
• My birthday.
• Aged scotch.
• Diet Sunkist soda.
• The English.
• New Strong Bad Emails.

That’s about it. And, uh, that’s about it.

My birthday is on Saturday! I’m old, I think. I’m definitely starting to FEEL old, what with my 5 years of marriage, my home-ownership, the impending birth of my progeny, my expanding waist-line, my ever-increasing need to moisturize my neck, and the fact that I dyed my hair blond in order to appear more youthful. (Sometimes I apply sunless tanner to complete the “horrifically obese surfer” look I’m going for. Laird Hamilton better watch out, ’cause he’s Old and Busted®, and I’m the New Hotness^TM!)

Anyway, I’m sure you’re all absolutely wildly looking for presents for me, but to be honest, I don’t need much. My friends, my family, an endless supply of quality single malt scotch, neck moisturizer: these are the things that I need. Maybe an iPod, or a widescreen TV. A 1970 Chevelle would be nice, too. Or somebody to clean my house. But I’m getting far afield of my topic, which is:

Honestly, I don’t really remember. Let’s see: birthday presents; Laird Hamilton; hair bleach; my wrinkly, leathery neck; oh! My birthday, and why it is awesome and should be a national holiday on which everybody but my company will be celebrating with a day off and a bottle of Glenfiddich.

This is why my birthday is important: it is because I am special. Or so all of the self-esteem-building stuff I watched on TV in the early 80s said. I am special! Which would seem to indicate that no one else is as awesome as I am. Of course, considering these programs were wildly watched by thousands, nay, millions of young children, it would seem that everybody’s special, and equally so, at that. Which would seem to indicate that no one is special at all.

Except me.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: I don’t really have anything valid to say. Which makes this pretty much the same as any of my posts. Except that today, I’m wearing new Christmas present pants, which I didn’t wash before putting them on, and so they are making my legs itch very, very badly. This is an example of something that quite literally does NOT make me happy in my pants. Everything in my pants is quite angry right now.

Note to all: anger in one’s pants is something to be avoided. And now I must return to scratching. See you tomorrow, when I’ll have even LESS to say! HA HA!

I’m not sure what to think. Should I be pissed off that DelDOT (The Delaware Department of Transportation (and possibly Lugubriosity)) saw fit to tear up the streets of my neighborhood for the second time in six months? Should I be overjoyed at the fact that they managed to completely tear off several hundred yards of roadway and replace it in a SINGLE DAY? Should I be outraged that they can do that, and yet the same part of I-95 has been a construction zone for roughly 18 months?

I don’t know what to think.

You might think that yesterday lacked a post because I was off and relaxing, but no! It actually lacked a post because I worked so hard during the day that I had no time for an update! Ha ha ha! Good times! I’m trying to figure out how to word my letter to Jesse Jackson to ask what he thinks of my company not giving us a day off on MLK Jr. Day.

We had a nice weekend, though. Friday night I went over to my buddy Bill’s for an evening of music playing, which we try and do every couple weeks. The next day we spent putting away all the Christmas stuff (the tree had been up for a record 7 weeks! Woohoo!), and doing some general cleaning, such that our house doesn’t look quite so much like Santa took a dump on it.

That evening I worked, and then we went out with Sarah’s mom to pick out some sexy new cabinets for our kitchen so I can store more than 2 cookie sheets and a bundt pan. We then got dinner at “Steak and Ale.” I had prime rib, although to be honest, I question whether or not the meat was actually prime-quality. It had all the toughness and lack of internal marbling that seemed to indicate “Select”-level meat. It wasn’t bad, though. Good vegetables.

Sunday we had church (1 hour and 45 minutes! WHOOOO!), followed by fixing the gutter on my roof which had almost completely separated from the house in high winds. I forgot to take a picture. MY BAD. Then we went to my parents where we met with old friends and ate fried chicken.

It made me happy. (In my pants.)

I am overwhelmed by guilt.

I’m sure many of you have heard me reference my irritation with people in the drive-thru at fast food establishments several times, including twice in the past week or so. What can I say? I have strong feelings that can’t be expressed any other way, like latent homosexuality, or fear of bears. One of my basic rules is: if you want to make a special order, you need to go inside. The drive-thru lane is where you go when you want to get a standard order and get it quick.

Yesterday, in the drive-thru, I placed a special order. I know, I’m sorry. I don’t think anyone behind me was inconvenienced, but it hurt my soul. Oh, how I cried.

A little background is in order: on Tuesday, I went to McDonald’s and got my usual order, 6 double cheeseburgers and a large diet coke. When I pulled up to the pickup window, I met a very friendly woman who asked me, “Wow, are you gonna eat all those?” I responded, “Well, I’m on a low-carb diet, so I eat the meat and just throw the bread away.”

“Well, why didn’t you just order them without the bread? We can do that for you!”

Because every time I try to do something like that, each meat hunk gets wrapped in its own individual plastic container, which not only slows down my eating, but is a horrific waste of plastic. That’s not what I said, of course. I said:

“Well, I just figured it would save time.”

“No, it actually would save time to just have ordered ’em without bread!”

“Oh well, sorry about that!”

She smiled. “That’s okay . . . you’ll know for next time!”

Now, I was fairly certain that there was no way that having to individually wrap up 6 hunks of meat and cheese in big plastic containers, as opposed to just throwing them on buns and wrapping them in wax paper, was not going to save time. Unfortunately, I have a very specific problem: I am a wuss. And I knew yesterday that if I returned and ordered in my usual manner, there was no way to predict what this woman might say or do when I got to the pickup window.

In my defense, she was a terrifying sight. She had plucked her eyebrows completely off her forehead, Whoopi Goldberg-style, and then painted them back on very thinly about 3/8″ from her hairline. Also, her teeth were interesting. She didn’t seem to be missing any, but everything appeared to be artfully rearranged, such that she appeared to have a canine in the center, a molar to the left of that, and then a slight gap between it and an incisor that had been twisted about 90 degrees on the vertical axis. I try not to irritate people like that by basically saying “your idea was retarded, I’m going to continue ordering it my way and damn the consequences.”

I worried that she might leap from the window and apply that weird center canine to my eyeball, or something.

So yesterday I arrived and ordered 6 double cheeseburgers with no buns, and cringed. I paid, got to the pickup window, was handed my soda, and then got the horrific instruction: “Sir, can you please pull up to the parking spot up there?” That’s right, the “waiting for a special order” parking spot. It’s like being put in the corner.

So I pulled up, dried my tears, and waited 5 or so minutes for my order. Then I peeled out of there and drove to my office, where it turned out having all the little plates made eating the food a lot less messy.

STILL.

Anyway, next week I plan to show up, order my cheeseburgers WITH BUNS, DAMMIT, and I expect to face the wrath of the eyebrow lady. At least this time I’ll be able to say, “Yeah, I tried it your way last week, and it took 10 minutes. SO SUCK IT, CRAZY LADY.”

Hopefully she’ll cry a little. Only then will I feel redeemed.

ThURLsday’s back, with some brand new inventions:

• Just turn the sound up, and click here. Feta Cheese it out.
• I could see spending 10 grand on bitterness and angst, myself. That’s why this? Not surprising to me.
• OMG, like somebody‘s all bitter that the the Chronic(WHAT?)cles of Narnia Rap is more popular than they are! Like, double-u tee eff, right? LOL!
• All they have to do is come up with some rules like these (developed for Monopoly) for Cranium, to help clear up some gray areas (for example, like if in “Copycat” questions, you have to actually act like the famous person, or can you just spout non-name/place facts about them?).

  Whoops, spoke too soon, although they don’t much help.

• This counter-telemarketer script seems like it wouldn’t really be all that useful. I can’t think of any way to keep the telemarketer on track, although if the old story that telemarketers are never allowed to hang up on a potential customer is true, maybe after a while you could break them down.

  Me? I’ve always been partial to saying “Mr. Hearn? Just a moment, I’ll get him.” Then I leave the phone off the hook until they finally hang up. Usually they’ll sit on there for a good 5 or 6 minutes, which I figure is 5 or 6 minutes that they aren’t bothering somebody else. I do this is a public service for you, the American citizen, and no, you don’t have to thank me.

  Sometimes my father puts Norwegians on the phone to confuse the callers as well.