« Archives in May, 2010

For this, I blame Michael Jackson

May 17, 2010 / posted in Uncategorized / Comments Off

Today I did a big thing: I threw out all my white tube socks. All of them.

I’m not sure when I decided that white was the way to go, sock-wise. But I remember noticing them back in second grade. That would have been the Thriller era, the height of Michael’s power, when we were all wearing red shirts with black mesh and many-zippered jackets and things like that. Heck, my friend Tyson even had a single silver glove.

All our dads had plain black socks. Maybe sometimes brown or olive. But Michael had white ones. They peeked out from over his patent leather, under his high-water, tight pants: this was the look we all wanted.

Of course, being 7 I didn’t understand that his look was stylish because Michael was stylish. He could take any look and make it hot. Well, Diana from V’s jacket was hot first; but, those white socks? They were square. Not as bad as those thin, tall black dress socks our dads wore, but square nonetheless.

So our white socks were great for everyday and for sports, which was a big bonus. Except, if you’re the average, marginal-on-style white guy of middling size, like me, they just never could look good on you.

So now I got all sorts of thick, comfortable, striped and patterned socks. In bright colors. Because, if you’re a white guy of middling size, you might as well be bright and obnoxious about the ankles. Because there is nothing you can do to be like Michael Jackson circa 1982.








Big Day For a Bird

May 9, 2010 / posted in Junior, Uncategorized / Comments Off

There’s something to be said for having a pet who can talk. At the very least, it makes life a little bit exciting. New words are always fun, but so is the whole weirdly not real conversational aspect. But first, of course, Junior practices. Sometimes, I get lucky and I get to overhear the practice.

That was how Friday started. Junior was playing in the driveway, running around on the ground and tearing up some wooden toys he has. He was excited, running back and forth, throwing the toys up in the air, then grabbing them in one claw and tearing at them with his beak. Some prey!

In the midst of a great hopping and flapping of wings came the new word. Something that he hears from us often, when he gets flappy around the house: “relax, Junior.” When he gets too worked up, before he can get picked up or get a kiss or anything like that, he has to relax. Reeeelllaaaax, we say it, real slow, and he stops bouncing on his tree and flapping his wings and gets quiet and earns that kiss. And then on Friday he says it to himself, and stops hopping and flapping and just quietly dismantles a clothespin.

Then, a couple of hours later, he was perched on top of the back gate. Lately he’s been spending his time on that gate ducking away from a mean crow who likes to fly low and buzz him, but Friday was a sunny day and the crow was nowhere to be found. Junior got to fidgeting, and the next thing I knew the back gate was wide open. So I shut it, and, a minute later, there was a loud click and the gate swung open again. I closed it again, just to catch him in the act this time — he’d figured out the latch and was opening it.

Finally, when his mother got home, he was so excited to see her that he came out running — something he’s never done before. I’ve got to admit, there’s little that’s as good as a bird toddling along:








Hey, I Had a Wedding, That Must Mean I’m an Expert on Yours, Right? Part 4

May 2, 2010 / posted in Adult Problems, Otherwise Uncategorized, Uncategorized / Comments Off

The final challenge in having your wedding is… having your wedding. You’ve got guests, a venue, and you’re spending your money where it counts, but will the day go off right? It will if you follow the lesson I got from my wife, DJ L’il Bit, and plan the day of the wedding and the day before out in excruciating detail. If you’re in the entertainment industry, you know the trick: you need to make a call sheet for your wedding.

What’s a call sheet? It’s a very detailed, hour-by-hour list of who does what when. That sounds simple, and the good thing is that this call sheet is a pretty simple tool; it’s only the level of detail you expect that is complicated. Your call sheet should include what every key wedding guest is doing — the bridal party, of course, but also the DJ, emcee, the parents of the future spouses, caterer etc. Make sure you’ve taken care of things like:

  • Flowers
  • Food, especially the food you’ll eat before the ceremony starts (you need to have food, otherwise you’ll get drunk and pass out and miss the whole shebang)
  • Transportation and how people get places
  • The order in which people walk down the aisle
  • When the booze starts flowing

Go moment-by-moment in writing this call sheet. Mine started on Monday — the wedding was Saturday! — had eight tasks on Wednesday, four on Thursday, and 42 for the day of, all arranged hour-by-hour (even more precisely for the day of). You’ll have enough to worry about as you get down to the wire, don’t make yourself worry about where you’re getting lunch or what time you’re going to the barber for the shave… figure it out ahead of time.

And, of course, putting this all together means that you have to have talked to the key vendors and gotten onto the same page with them. Writing the call list forces you to do that, which can be an easy thing to forget. While the vendors may or may not want a call list — our DJs liked ours — the wedding party and parents should all get a copy. That way, nobody will call and ask you questions the day of the wedding. Because it’s all about making it all come off perfect, and you will not be a useful part of that on your big day; you’ll be worried and anxious and thrilled and ecstatic. Enjoy that feeling, not keeping the event running.