matthearn.com

I’m glad I got my hair cut this week. Otherwise my wife would stab me in the ear with her keys! Ha ha!

But seriously, she’s violent.

Anyway, through the magic of my new phone, I’ve taken some snaps, son. Here is the pre-cut hair (taken right after I got home from an opera performance, hence the sexy curls):

And here’s the sexy new do, having been cut and colored to the tune of a hundred smackeroos:

Whaddaya think? I’m totally gonna get ALL the chicks. By which I mean my wife. And really, I won’t get her either. But at least I’ll have intact eardrums.

Two topics today: Politics (duh-UH), and Phillies baseball (Wha-UH?).

Topic one: looks like the Democrats are taking over the House, and possibly the Senate as well. I, for one, welcome our new Democrat blah blah blah. To be honest, I voted largely Democrat, and largely because I hate the Democratic Party slightly less than I hate the Republican Party. At the moment, anyway. This may be a cynical view, but I couldn’t be more thrilled (well, perhaps if the government shrank to about 1/10 of its current size, that would be more thrilling, but I do recognize reality on some level) to have a government set up to get absolutely nothing done for 2 years.

I find that the government that spends all its time fighting over stupid crap instead of legislating is the government that I like best.

On the other hand, having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House is singularly terrifying. It’s like having the worst stage mother of all time directing a school play. Hopefully we won’t all go deaf. (She’s a screamer, I’m told.) Also on the other hand: apparently voters in a variety of states saw fit to enact bans on gay marriage. Good job, voters! Nothing like legalized discrimination. Really gets my hopes up that they might reenact Jim Crow.

Topic two: The Phightin’ Phils are apparently looking to land Alfonso Soriano, which is flat-out making me insane. Let’s look at the Phillies basic line-up:

• First base: A guy may well hit 800 home runs before he retires.
• Second base: The only guy who can be counted on to bat over .300 in any given year.
• Third base: A rotating gaggle of defensive “specialists” who seem to bobble the ball when it counts.
• Shortstop: A speedy defensive star who might hit .350 in a given month, and might hit .200. Who knows.
• Outfield: An extremely washed up guy in left who’s probably leaving and a bunch of medium-hitting young guys.

Soriano’s natural position is 2nd base, but he’s been playing outfield for the Nationals all year, so the Phils are hoping to put him in left to replace Burrell, which is a pretty damn good move, except that good ol’ Alfonso nearly got himself suspended because he refused to play left field. Ah! A character guy! Great times. Meanwhile, here’s what the pitching staff looks like:

• Three starters (Wolf, Myers, Lieber) who might combine for 50 wins next season; they might combine for 20. Who knows? It’s worth pointing out that Lieber is 347 years old. There are also 2 other starters, but they suck.
• A bunch of middle relievers, none of whose names I can recall, none of whom seem to be able to hold a close lead. One of them is really tall, though.
• A closer who is, like Lieber, 347 years old, and also like Lieber, a Yankees castoff. Great! The Phils have turned into the Yankees AAAA team, a position that had long been held by the Toronto Blue Jays.

While I admit that, from a fantasy perspective, Soriano is a HUGE player to sign, two things are important to note:

1. The Phillies don’t need that much hitting. They need more CONSISTENT hitting, which I think they’ll start getting as their young players mature. They need pitching, and a lot of it. One quality closer could be enough, if the starters can stay healthy.
2. Alfonso Soriano is a bit of a dick, and I don’t want him in the clubhouse doing dick things.

All I’m saying, is that I didn’t vote for the man, and you shouldn’t either. Wait, I got confused again. Oh well.

Carmen is done! Finally! Not that I didn’t enjoy it, as I did, greatly, but holy Christmas Q. Patterson am I tired. I don’t know how professional touring folks do it. Of course, they don’t work 8 hour days dealing with customers and the like.

So I’m back to the regular grind, which means of course we’re freaking out because we’re baptizing Charles (well, the priest is, we’re mainly just there for the free holy water) on Sunday, having people over after that, plus a birthday party for half of Christendom as well, on Friday evening. So the house has to be respectable, which means I have to clean up some areas, like the kitchen and the downstairs living room.

Cleaning the kitchen requires me to put everything way, which means I need to finish and mount the shelves I’m building so that I have space for all my crap. Cleaning the living room requires the carpet to be cleansed, so we’ve got a crew coming tomorrow to handle that, and they’ll move the furniture, but they won’t move any little crap, so we’ve got to basically empty the room of stuff. We have a lot of stuff.

I know you’re getting exhausted just reading it. I’m exhausted just TYPING it. Plus tomorrow I have to fit in some time to get my hair cut, a piano lesson, and I need some ME time dammit or else I’m just gonna cry like a little girl.

Charles has started an amusing new trick in which he wants to grab everything within reach and put it in his mouth. This includes toys, flatware, furniture, power tools, animals, basically anything that makes the mistake of getting where he can grab it. Particularly fingers. Did I mention he has developed a tooth? Ow. The little booger is ravenous for my blood, I think. I’ve taken to calling him Audrey II. Totally freaks out my relatives.

I go through cell phones like Rosie O’Donnell goes through butter. I try and pick phones of good quality, but they just don’t last. I’m clumsy, and so they get dropped and banged into things and suddenly they don’t work so grood anymore.

My last phone was some kind of flip-phone with a camera in it. Totally awesome, and completely useless for about the last 6 months because I simply couldn’t be heard on it. The phone before that, I actually paid for the stupid coverage plan, which was nice because when it broke, twice, it was replaced each time.

As soon as I’m eligible for a new phone, I immediately buy one, so I’m on, I think, mobile phone #5. My wife is 2 years into #2, the first one having lasted, I believe, 6 years. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I bought me a Sanyo Katana, which is black and has a camera and eentarweb and omg it is so awesome. I then shelled out an additional $19.99 for Xingtones, which is software that you can use to record, edit, and upload your own ringtones to your phone. Yes: by this weekend I intend to have my phone sing “2 Legit 2 Quit” whenever my wife calls me.

Oh, and if you’ve called me in the last couple months, my phone hasn’t worked, which is why I haven’t answered. It works now! I’m ready to be friends again!

I love our trash guys. They’ll haul away anything. If I were to die this instant, HW could haul my corpse to the curb and I’m pretty sure the trash guys would just throw me in the truck without a second thought.

That, my friends, is service.

Here is a list of the things that our trash guys have taken away:

• Trashbags full of gravel and cat feces, every week
• A large piece of unexplained concrete that I pulled out of my lawn
• Large pieces of concrete that I pulled out of my old patio that have rusty pieces of metal sticking out of them
• Two empty wood pallets
• Approximately 400 pounds of construction sand
• A freaking WASHING MACHINE

That last item I actually called the trash company to ask if I could arrange a special pickup. The lovely lady on the phone said, “Oh, just throw it out there, they’ll take it during the regular run.”

I love my mafia-owned trash company!

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Oh, btw, if you’re having trouble getting to charleshearn.com, you aren’t alone. It’s misbehaving because the registrar can’t seem to get rid of the old nameservers. I don’t know why. I’m hoping it’ll clear up in a day or two.

You know I can’t resist an idiotic meme of any kind. This one is entitled:

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU CHANGED IN 10 YEARS

TEN YEARS AGO………………………………………………………

How old were you?
18, and ignoring my responsibility to vote.

Where did you go to school?
Peabody Conservatory, where I learned to hate musicians with a fire equalled only by my hatred for people who sit in the left lane without passing. (The hatred of musicians has abated, mostly.)

Where did you work?
I manned the soundboard for the recording department at Peabody, taping people’s recitals and The Like, until I got fired for incompetence.

Where did you live?
Baltimore, although I still maintained offices in Wilmington, DE. (My parents’ house.)

Where did you hang out?
Mostly on campus, smoking heavily and ignoring my studies. I was a real winner!

What was your hairstyle?
Unkempt.

Did you wear glasses?
Nay nay. Still don’t. Shoot, did I give something away? Forget I said anything.

Who was your best friend?
Hmmmmmmm. That’s a toughie. I had sort of a crew of pepys from back home that included Sarah (my future wife), Josh, Milo, Stefan, some others.

Who was your regular-person crush?
I think at the time I was still all up onz my wife.

How many tattoos did you have?
None.

How many piercings did you have?
None.

What car did you drive?
I was living in the city, so I didn’t drive much. I borrowed my parents’/sister’s Saturn occasionally if I was home.

What was your favorite band/group?
Criminey, who knows. Jackson Browne, maybe? My tastes change daily.

What was your worst fear?
I’m more afraid of bein’ nothin’ than I am of bein’ hurt.

Had you driven yet?
Heck yes, hoss. I’d been driving for two years, and had multiple citations for speeding.

Had you been to a real party yet?
The first party I went to in college was at some guitarist’s house, and I drank vodka punch until I threw up all over his kitchen and someone rolled me up in a blanket and left me there for the rest of the night. Classy evening.

Had your heart broken?
Yeah, sure. Happened all the time, because I was basically retarded. Still am.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter:
Taken.

FIVE YEARS AGO……………………………………………….

How old were you?
23.

Where did you go to school?
I had just graduated from U of Del.

Where did you work?
Computer company in Newark. Same place I work now, in fact.

Where did you live?
We had just moved into a righteous rental house near Price’s Corner. It was out-damn-standing. I miss that house, occasionally, even though the location was for crap and it only had one bathroom and the basement occasionally flooded (the first time, approximately 12 hours before my parents 30th anniversary party).

Where did you hang out?
Mostly at the Charcoal Pit that was roughly 50 yards from our house. No kids at the time, so HW and I would get home, walk down, eat burgers, drink too much, and then stumble home. It was the bomb.

How was your hair style?
Varied. Usually fairly short.

Did you wear glasses?
Hecks no.

Who was your best friend?
In the interest of marital bliss, let’s say my wife.

Who was your regular-person crush?
(As opposed to my irregular-person crush?) In the interest of marital bliss, let’s say my wife.

How many tattoos did you have?
Just the one, I think, I got it that summer.

How many piercings did you have?
Zero, junior.

What car did you drive?
Ah, my pickup. 2002 Ford F150. Black. Stick shift. I miss that truck immensely.

What was your favorite band/group?
I have no earthly clue. It’s all I can do to remember my name, most days.

What was your worst fear?
Never paying off my credit cards.

Had you been to a real party yet?
I’d thrown a few of my own, at which I frequently removed my pants. For charity.

Had your heart broken?
Hey, sure. Why not.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter:
Married.

**OCTOBER 2006**

How old are you?
28

Where do you work?
Crappy computer company. Same one, in fact.

Where do you live?
It’s locked down in New Castle, beotch!

Where do you hang out?
At my house with my little boy, mostly.

How is your hair style?
Long and ridiculous.

Do you wear glasses?
No sir. 40/20 vision. Which means I can see what you are doing right now. PUT THAT AWAY.

Who are your best friends?
Sarah and Charles.

Do you talk to your old friends?
The ones that will still talk to me, sure.

How many piercings do you have
Still none.

How many tattoos?
Still one.

What kind of car do you have?
Driving Sarah’s old Mazda Protege with sorority stickers on the back. Wooooo!

What is your favorite band/group?
John Mayer, at the moment. I have a mancrush on him.

What is your biggest fear?
I try not to put voice to my fears (I find it tends to make it a little TOO real), but since I have a 5-month-old son, you can probably figure it out.

Have you been arrested, if so how many times total?
I have no recollection of that, Senator.

Has your heart been broken?
Not recently.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter
Married. Still bitter, though. Ha ha! Just kidding! Put the knife down, honey!

Oh, Happy Halloween and whatnot.

I got pulled over on Saturday, but received no ticket. Wooooooooo, says I.

It was rather late (I had actually just turned the clock in my car back, as it was 2am EDT and 1am EST) and was heading home from the Carmen cast-party (Carmen opened TEH BOMBZORZ, as expected) and traffic was heavy (I don’t know why; this is the third parenthetical aside this sentence, a new record even for me). Over on the right hand side of I-95, the cops were sitting with their flashers going, which usually indicates they’ve already pulled over somebody, so slowing down is dumb. Everybody, of course, slowed down, including one idiot that swerved in front of me and then hit the brakes.

So I flashed my highbeams, swerved around him, and accelerated back to a healthy seventy miles per hour. Apparently the policefolks disapproved of this move, so they chased me down.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He appeared to be one bright policeman. What does one say to that? I went with

“Um…nothing, officer.”

“Where you goin’ in such a hurry? I saw you whip in and out of traffic back there.”

“Well, sir, the fellow in front of me swerved into my lane and hit the brakes when he saw you folks, so I had to swerve around him to keep from hitting him.”

The officer grunted at this. “You have anything to drink tonight?”

“Yes sir. I had two beers about 2 hours ago.” This was true; I’d stopped drinking at the party around midnight.

“Just two beers?”

“Yes sir.”

“Got your license, registration and insurance?” I handed them over, and he went back to his car, while I sat and waited. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they intended to charge me with; he couldn’t possibly have clocked my speed from where he was. I assumed they might charge me with an unsafe lane change, which I figured I could probably fight successfully in court, since technically a guy did change lanes in front of me and hit his brakes. I assumed I would probably get a warning for having one headlight out (the Mazda seems to go through them like Rush Limbaugh goes through oatmeal cream pies). After a few minutes, the cop returned.

“Slow down.”

“Yes sir.” I drove off. A surreal experience, all in all.

The migration continues! Some of you may or may not have been able to send me email today; I completely asploded my mail quota by moving all my old mail folders in there, and I’m an idiot so it took me like 4 hours to figure it out. I’m a big dip. If you got a bounceback for me today for mail, kindly resend, s’il vous plait.

If you can read this, the DNS (Domain Name Services) change has propagated to your nameservers, which is great. I may try and set up some kind of forwarding on the old page to get to here for those folks that have slow DNS servers, but honestly every DNS server in the world should be aware of my new location by Monday, and it would take me about that long to remember how to do automatic forwarding in HTML.

In other news: had our dress rehearsal for Carmen (call and get your tickets! Grand Opera House, 302 652 5577! Shows 10/28 8p, 11/2 7:30p, 11/4 8p, 11/5 2p) last night, and it was spectacular. Somebody arranged to have a bunch of kids and their owners bussed in, so we had a good crowd to clap and giggle at jokes and whatnot. I didn’t die during my swordfight, and didn’t forget any words! Yay us!

Come see it. It’s good people.

Just as a heads up: I’m moving matthearn.com (and charleshearn.com) over to a new hosting service over the weekend (probably starting sometime Friday), so things are guaranteed to be hella shaky around here while various DNSes catch up with one another. I don’t expect anything to be DOWN, perse, but it’s entirely likely that if, for example, I post an update tomorrow, those of you with particularly slow name resolution might not see it until Monday.

That last paragraph contained a lot of big words for the non-computer-savvy, so let me break it down for you a bit better:

Stuff will be screwed up here over the weekend.

It’ll be back to normal on Monday.

Although, if you DO notice anything awry next week (I rely on quite a bit of PHP and database jaunpiece around here, and the whole database has to move as well, and the new one doesn’t name anything the same way, so half of everything will be broken if I don’t catch it, which I undoubtedly won’t), please let me know (leave a comment is the easiest way, it emails me when you do that).

That is all. Read down below for the amusing post I did earlier today regarding why I look like Julie Andrews.

Hey great, I look mostly like a chick.

Most of you were already aware of this on some level, but I have proof! I ventured over to MyHeritage.com at my wife’s suggestion, uploaded a picture of myself, and said to it, Sir, please tell me which celebrities I look most like!

It responded with 5 chicks, 3 dudes, and 2 little boys. I’m stoked! In order, I look most like:

• Cameron Bright – 78%
• Julie Andrews – 64%
• Andy Kaufman – 61%
• Neils Bohr – 60%
• Richard Pryor – 57%
• Piper Perabo – 55%
• Christina Ricci – 54%
• Yoon-Jin Kim – 54%
• Minnie Driver – 54%
• Jonathan Taylor Thomas – 53%

That’s, in order, a 12-year-old boy, a nearly 70-year-old woman, a dead man, a VERY dead man, a dead black man, various broads, and a child actor who is not aging well. I’m looking forward to when I can go to ShootMeInTheDamnFace.com!