Car Commercials

Never watched it...

Seriously, am I the only person who doesn't want a car that fishtails anytime shit gets serious?  It seems like that's every car commercial these days:  a car Tokyo Drifting (or power sliding, whatever the hell that means) through random-ass scenes.  Give me a stable car that's not going to slide or flip, and we've got a deal.

Why can't car ads be geared more toward the ones that convinced me to get my car:  the 2007 Dodge Caliber.  Go America!

Just like my car, I'm anything but cute,
~RoB

Carpool Lane

While driving across the country, I kept a notepad with ideas for future blog posts.  In my head, I've entitled it "Thoughts from Route 66".  I considered a segment just like DIETY. 

I did this for a while at the beginning of my blog, before I got in the habit of just ranting every day.  Now that my blog posts have been sporadic, I figured it would help me get my opinions back on track.

But now I can't find it.  And I can only think of one big question.

Do you think a cop has ever pulled over a car full of midgets in the carpool lane?  (Ya know, assuming that the tallest little person, or whatever is the appropriate term, was driving and the rest couldn't be seen from his car.)

Just when you thought the internet had everything, you struggle to find a visual image for 'midgets carpooling'.

I made myself laugh at this idea when I Googled "Car Full of Midgets".  Apparently, it's a ska band in Wisconsin.  I'm immediately interested.

Maybe put them in booster seats so the silhouettes of their heads can be seen... to avoid confusion,
~RoB

Acura for Trekkies

Do all Star Trek fans drive Acuras?
I'm neither (except the most recent film with Chris Pine was kinda awesome), but I was surprised that I had never noticed the similarities in their symbols until I was driving (very closely) behind an Acura last week.

I mean, it's obvious that they are both As.  Maybe that's their only similarity.  Maybe I'm crazy.  They don't look that similar now that they're next to each other.  However, I think Acura is feeding off of the Trekkie subconscious.

It's not just me, right?
~RoB

Bridesmaids & Batteries

I told Annie that I was interested in seeing Bridesmaids when we first saw the poster a month ago.  I knew that it had something to do with a bakery (my cupcake blogs were abuzz), and I love the girls from SNL.  Well, the movie was a hit, but we didn't get to see it until last night.  It was truly hilarious and a highly recommended movie.  Hell, you've heard that all week.  However, I woke up this morning frustrated by unanswered questions that apparently haunted my sleep.  (IMDB this shit if you don't remember character names from 3 days ago anymore!)

1) Why can't they make anybody from the Midwest in movies sound like they're from the Midwest?  They had crazy accents flying around the whole movie, and not one sounded Milwaukeen.  I know people study accents.  Come on!
2) What was the pill/drink combo that Helen gave Annie, and why wasn't she ever caught purposefully giving her a concoction that would fuck her up?
3) Does Annie ever get back into baking professionally?
4) What was it that Helen said that convinced Rhodes to come reunite with Annie after the funeral?  And where, exactly, did he change from his uniform to the hipster suit?
5) How long can a butterfly survive enclosed in an envelope?

I guess I can't expect things to come full circle if the script is written entirely by women.  (Considering how popular yesterday's post was, I guess I have to keep things controversial.)  [I'm clearly joking.  Women are smarter than men.]  {I'm out of parenthetical enveloping symbols after this.}  <Except these, I guess.>

I figure that some of these questions were left unanswered to leave room for Bridesmaids 2 (where Annie and Rhodes get married) and Bridesmaids 3 (where Megan marries Air Marshall Jon) and, assuming Hollywood continues as it has, Bridesmaids 4 (where talking puppies get married) and Bridesmaids 5 (where one of Rita's 'sticky' boys grows up to marry Helen's step-daughter) and Bridesmaids 6 that I can't even pull out of my ass right now.

Moving on...

I stayed home yesterday to fix my car.  It was just the battery, though it was hard to diagnose.  The most physically intense part came where I had to try and jump start the car so I could drive to a store and replace the battery.  My car was parked in the car port under our apartment building, so the hood was inaccessible.  I turned the key (it didn't start if you've been keeping up), but I was able to put it in neutral and let it roll down the driveway.  However, I'd have to turn the car uphill in order for me to park it downhill (everything in the bay area is at some sort of angle).  There was some pretty crazy leg pressing going on as I pushed my car slightly uphill, jumped in, pulled the steering wheel with everything, and managed to depress the manual brakes before ramming Annie's gas-guzzling SUV.

I have no real tools at my apartment, but I managed to do it all by myself.  It required using a random-ass assortment of tools available at the local auto parts store.  While struggling to get the battery out in the parking lot, there were some great moments.  One African American guy walked by (and into the store) shirtless, openly smoking a joint.  He didn't seem to give a f*ck.  Also, two Hispanic guys climbed out the back of a semi trailer and asked me what the price of some tires sitting outside were, as if I gave a f*ck.  I'm out $100, but that's way better than I thought it would be in the middle of my freakout.  I then went home and made chili in a crock pot, and I took the rest of the day off work for some macho time watching Bill Burr's first HBO Special.  Once again, I had one of those days where my pimpmones were flowin'!

Can I even talk about bridesmaids and pimpmones in the same post?
~RoB

Fu¢k Me.

I had a great time yesterday.  I came home to a fixed sink.  The plumber left the keys and we were able to find them.  We went to a Michigan Alumni Association Happy Hour in San Francisco at a swanky wine bar.  We met some really cool people, including a fairly recent grad who owns a sushi restaurant in the city, and he invited us to come check it out.  We are really excited to do just that!  (Everybody loves Annie and I.)  Fittingly, the person who was in charge of cheese at the wine bar was also a UM grad, and a good friend of one of the people at the Happy Hour, but he didn't know the event was happening, and they didn't know that they lived in the same city.  Long story short, we got a free, really cool cheese plate and he answered questions about everything.

We got home without getting rained on too hard.  We picked up Angel from Doggy Day Care late, but they didn't charge us extra.  We snagged a few slices from a delicious, local pizza place, watched gLee, and hit the sack.  Then, the alarm rang this morning.

I knew when Annie's alarm went off that today was going to be rough.  Something told me not to get out of bed (and it wasn't Annie, cuz she was damn near pushing me out).  It was my day to take Angel out and feed him breakfast.  This happens at 5:45am every morning, so we switch off like good parents.  We then, usually, go back to bed for 30 minutes or so (cuz it's the best puppy snuggling time of the day).

Well, I locked myself out.  Our roommate just returned from a trip to NYC to see her sister graduate from Columbia, and her mom was staying the night, and they got in really late, and she had to leave fairly early, so I felt bad ringing the doorbell to get Annie to come let me in.  So, I walked out in the road, picked up some stones, and started chucking them at our bedroom window.  It is impossible to throw stones at a girl's window without either of these going through your head: 1) "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." or 2) any random scene from the John Hughes/Brat Pack movies of the mid-80s.

She came down to let me in.  Things were running smoothly (except the bathroom got all clogged up by the number of people in the apartment, as everyone was waking up).  I ended up having to skip a much-needed shower.  The real 'Fu¢k Me!' moment came when I went down to my car to drive Annie to work.  It didn't start.  My 2007 Dodge Caliber didn't fu¢king start.  Grrrr.

Two weeks ago or so, it started making funny noises, right around the time that I got a huge crack in my windshield.  I figured I'd just get all the fluids topped when I went to get my oil changed sometime soon.  I also figured I'd let the windshield go until it started to look dangerous.  I've been doing dramatically better with my money, but I just invested a fair bit into a super-secret self-improvement project.  I'm trying to hold off on investing money into my car, which is still fairly new and a trooper.

I guess that changes now.  I absolutely need my car by Saturday, for a fairly long trip.  This means I'll have to find money to have it towed, and have it fixed, and they'll probably want to replace my windshield, and we might as well do the tires/oil/everything else now.  Awesome.

I can't wait until we run out of oil, and I can bike to work every day,
~RoB

Nothing is Simple

I've said for a long time that my life is interesting.  I guess most of that is due to its complicatedness (word?).  Yesterday is a good example:

My car tire had been slowly losing air over the past month.  Since I didn't have the dough to fix it, I just let it go flat.  Yesterday, I got some dough.  So, I went out to my car to put on the donut, in hopes of simply dropping it off at a nearby tire place to get fixed.  While kicking my tire iron to get the last lug nut off, I actually busted the stud in half.

Shit.  $15 tire change turns into a major ordeal.  First of all, I could only find 3 places that would fix it.  The first place had a reasonable price, but couldn't get me in for 2 more days.  The second place gave me an AMAZING quote, so I ran out the door to get there before they forgot about how AMAZING the quote was they just gave me.  By the time I got there, they put it together that the AMAZING quote was just for fixing the flat.  No stud included.  Damn you.

I returned to my car to call the 3rd place.  Kim Jong-il answered the phone (or at least the South Park equivalent).  His quote was even better than the first guy's, so I drove straight over there.  I didn't want to deal with it anymore, so I just gave him my keys and left.  I ran downtown to meet Annie for lunch.  When I got back 90 minutes later, everything was fixed.  Plus, he charged me half what the second place quoted as a 'base price' (which we all know that's 1/2 what a mechanic will actually charge you).

So, a simple leaky tire turned into a day-long tribulation.  At least that keeps things interesting.

I saw a few interesting things in Oakland throughout this whole thing.  First of all, look up Michael Mischer Chocolates in Oakland.  Zoom into it on Maps until you can see what's directly next door.  Unfair, right?  The street view helps, but it's hard to read the chocolate sign.

Similarly, you should check out street view at 1940 Broadway, in Oakland.

Undershirts have helped my nipples, but then I get too hot,
~RoB