At lunch one day last week, the topic of renting and buying real estate came up: location, square footage, cost, et cetera. I took the occasion to consider what I’d put into my dream house were money no object, and am taking the opportunity to publish a few quick thoughts (should anyone ever want to surprise me with a mansion for my birthday):

First, it would have a 50-ton industrial air conditioner with its own 24-hour maintenance and engineering staff.

Second, it would have tankless water heating (and full-time support staff) and a team of snipers to take out anyone insolent enough to correct me when I mistakenly and redundantly refer to the “hot water heater.”

Third, each bathroom would have a fan so powerful that there wouldn’t even be a hint of steam outside the shower—and even inside the shower, the steam would be gone just as soon as the last drop of water hit the gold-plated floor. If it were that powerful, I might have to have wall dispensers for the soap and shampoo, because bottles might get sucked up into the fan. Towels might get ruined, too, so in lieu of towels I’d install a massive air-dryer, just as powerful as the fan. Again, a team of maintenance workers and engineers would keep the whole shebang running at optimum efficiency.

So those are the big three criteria for my ideal home. I like brick, too.

One Response to “Dream house.”

1. Doctor Hmnahmna Says:
   August 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 PMSo, how much are you paying your staff engineer? And where do I send an application?

Tonight I got back from my final trip of the summer, to Virginia (to see friends), Maryland (to see more friends) and Pennsylvania (to see family).

The main event was a pig roast, held last night at the Mole’s secret mountain hideaway. The pig was excellent and Mole’s girlfriend made the best pasta salad I’ve ever had. Hopefully, both kept well in the cooler on the way home. Question: if a dog eats the eyeball of a roasted pig, does it absorb the pig’s soul? Is it doomed to possession by the pig?

Anyhow, the night before the pig roast, I visited my brother and his girlfriend up in a quaint little town called Wernersville, Pennsylvania. It’s near Reading, of “Monopoly” railroad fame. The typical thirty-minute discussion about where to eat dinner was averted when the girlfriend suggested a local teppan-yaki called The Panda House. It was an odd name for the place, considering that pandas are usually associated with China, not Japan. Turns out the place was “pan-Asian.”

The dinner was good. The ovens were ridiculously hot—that sounds obvious, but normally I don’t break a sweat simply from sitting near the stove, even at full blaze. The chefs weren’t very good at the tricks: our chef tried throwing pieces of chopped vegetables into our mouths, but only connected once out of maybe twenty attempts. The next chef over tried the spinning-egg-on-spatula trick, but dropped five in a row before giving up. The last one bounced off the table near a toddler in a booster seat, barely missing getting egg white and yolk on her, but splashing a man at the next table over.

Aside from the poorly executed tricks and the loud, wasted couple at the opposite end of the table (he looked like a boy-band wannabe and earned the nickname “K-Fed”; she belonged in an eating disorder PSA), dinner was uneventful. My filet mignon and scallops were cooked just right, and we were served noodles in addition to the fried rice. There was a teensy bit too much sauce on the meats, but it didn’t really detract from the meal.

After dinner, a waiter gave each of us two orange slices and two fortune cookies. Comparing fortunes has always been one of the most entertaining portions of the Chinese dining experience, so it stands to reason that it would be just as enjoyable after eating Japanese teppan-yaki.

My favorite fortune of all time was bestowed upon my alien-energy-form-posing-as-human friend Robert: “It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.” Add the words “in bed” to the end (any clue which comedian came up with that idea?) and it belongs in the Hall of Great Fortunes. I hope to one day crack open a cookie and find a fortune even half that good.

Alas, this was not that day. I opened the first cookie and was greatly disturbed by what I read:

“Moo Shu Cereal” for breakfast with duck sauce.

I thought there was a mistake. Surely, this could not be what the Fates had in store for me; it had to have been a misprint. This was not useful, or optimistic, or forboding, or anything—there wasn’t even a verb. What did it mean?

I moved on to the next cookie, hoping that the first one was a mistake. I cracked the second cookie:

Did you remember to order your take out also?

My God–I didn’t. In fact, there was no food left on my plate for a to-go box. What evil doth this omen portend?

If I am indeed doomed, know that I truly did tolerate most of you. I hereby leave the remnants of roast pig and pasta salad to my family’s dogs.

One Response to “Misfortune.”

1. twink Says:
   August 7th, 2007 at 8:03 PMI call the pasta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know oh come on. The show’s been on forever, which means that you’ve essentially already seen this movie.

Once upon a time, there was a very funny TV show called The Simpsons. It was well-written, clever yet unpretentious, and was always good for at least one bout of hysterical, side-splitting laughter per episode.

A show by the same name is still on the air, but for the last several years, it hasn’t been funny. They started making episodes that I could smirk at, or maybe chuckle at if I stretched it, but none that would elicit a good belly laugh. There were rarely any jokes worth remembering, much less telling anyone about at work the next day. There were so many guest stars occupying so much screentime that the show came to resemble Scooby Doo—which was never known for its wit. I could go on and on about how badly The Simpsons has sucked during this millennium, but I’d like to address the movie.

The movie was good; far better than the show’s been in years. It had a few touching moments. There were several moments that made me laugh out loud. There were hardly any guest stars, and they were almost negligible. It was absolutely worth seeing in the theater; in fact, some of the gags are funniest seen in a theater.

That said, there were a few moments that, to me, would seem more at home in a South Park show or movie rather than a Simpsons production (specifically: Bart’s privates, Homer’s fingers, Otto’s drug use, Marge’s “G-d damn”). Why? The Simpsons (at least, back when I watched regularly) was rarely, if ever, vulgar or harsh–rather, it was suggestive and sly. Perfect example from an old episode: Homer is suddenly infuriated and asks the kids to step outside. They scurry away in fear. Homer takes a deep breath, brings his lower lip back to his top teeth, begins to say, “Fffff–” and is cut off by the blast of the church’s organ pipes as birds fly away from the house. The town comes to a halt. It was hilarious.

On the other hand, South Park is deliberately harsh and vulgar in its satire–in fact, vulgarity is often a major plot point (see the movie or the “Words of Curse” episode). When they want to get something past the TV censors, they’ll merely use black bars, blurring, and bleeps. The creators of South Park simply would’ve had Homer say the “F-Word” and bleeped it out. No organ pipes. No birds. No shocked onlookers. No cleverly placed fig leafs, so to speak.

But I nitpick. The Simpsons Movie was fun. It was good to once again watch these characters in action and actually laugh, rather than pray for the show’s swift and merciful cancellation.

…

My God, the Celtics might actually be good again before I die. Please let this trade go through.

2 Responses to “On The Simpsons Movie.”

1. Andrew Jackson Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 9:23 AMAye, indeed.

   I must proclaime, however, that the funniest gag was the “Titanic”-inspired sinking of the Green Day concert barge.

2. VDV Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 3:49 PMThat was amusing.

   I noticed that in one scene where the townsfolk were looking up at something, one of the mayor’s girlfriends/secretaries/whatevers was dressed and posed as Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C., a.k.a. the chick from Andy’s last poster in The Shawshank Redemption.

Part of the marketing campaign for the Simpsons movie is a website called SimpsonizeMe.com. You go there, upload a photo of yourself, press a button here, turn a dial there, and after a minute or two, you’ve got a yellow, four-fingered, bug-eyed picture of yourself. Then, if you think the computer didn’t quite capture your essence, you can tinker with the image.

Here’s me:

I couldn’t find a scowl among the smiles, so there you go. Also, the pocket’s on the wrong side and the face is symmetrical.