I’m feeling a bit random today, and luckily the random absurdity has been piling up. I saw the sign pictured above during a recent visit to UNC Hospitals. I thought it was a bit zen for a traditional western medicine establishment. (Actually, I first noticed “Remember 3C” and thought, “There must be a ‘Remember 2B,’” and drove around until I found it. My apologies to anyone who had recently had a major organ removed who might have been waiting on the sidewalk in a wheelchair.)
At the hospital, I also saw this, on a Mustang. I will make no further comment other than to direct your attention to the handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror.
There’s a banner ad that keeps popping up on Yahoo aimed at people who suffer from acid reflux (or GERD, which will always sound like an East German weightlifter to me). It reads, “Bowl of pasta, or bowl of pain?” Bowl of Pain needs to be the name of a band right now. Get on it, people.
The Hardback Café used to put a chalkboard out front with the specials on it. One day it read, “Gazpacho – the cold soup of Spain,” a quote from the Pepper’s Pizza menu. Later in the day someone changed it to “the cold soup of pain,” and still later it read, “the cold soup of space.” I can never hear gazpacho mentioned without thinking of that and telling the story, often to people who have heard it four or five times.
Finally, randomly, I got an email from a friend the other day who is a highly-accomplished professional in his field. He was mortified to notice that he had let the Microsoft Word autocorrect feature get a bit away from him. In a proposal to a client, he meant to say he would “provide coaching and feedback to others.” What he actually proposed was that he would “provide coaching and feedback to otters.”
If that’s a real job, I want it.
After five years I have come to the conclusion that, as sweet as he is, Hastings is not the sharpest flea comb in the drawer. Let’s just say it’s a good thing he’s domesticated. As with most cats, he is primarily concerned with eating, napping, parasitically sucking up body heat, and chasing imaginary rodents. He used to be really good about eating. I would put a small bowl of dry food down in the morning and he would stand there until he finished it, and that was that. Then, during last year’s ice storm, I really screwed up. I felt bad for making him stay in a cold house all day while I decamped to places restored of power, so I started giving him a snack at night. The first time I did it, he looked at me with an incredulous expression that seemed to say, “What?! You mean you can feed my anytime you want?!” And from then on I was doomed.
For the past year he has followed me around relentlessly, and meows plaintively whenever I walk into the kitchen. Any time I stand up, he is on me like a cheap furry suit. And of course, he greets the dawn by jumping on my bed and putting his nose in my mouth. (“Oh, you’re awake? Well then you might as well feed me.”) I finally got tired of it and inaugurated the Full Bowl Policy two weeks ago. Many of my cat-owning friends keep a bowl of dry food constantly replenished and their cats eat whenever they feel like it. Sure, some of them are a bit, er… zaftig, but they also aren’t leaping around like Chinese acrobats on the Ed Sullivan show every time you get up to go to the bathroom.
On Day One of the FBP when I filled his bowl to the brim, Hastings thought it was Kitty Christmas. Since then he’s gotten used to it, but whenever I top up the bowl he looks at me as if to say, “I’ve never loved you more.” I think he’s gained maybe a pound, and for him that probably isn’t a bad thing.
But has it changed his behavior? Has it my eye. He still meows at me when I walk past the cabinet where his cat food is kept. When I point to his full bowl, he kind of shrugs and goes, “Oh, right.” And he still wakes me up in the morning and tries to herd me downstairs when I head for the bathroom. I realize he’s an animal, but like some kind of pathetic parent with a child vying for a spot in a magnet school, I want him to be exceptional. (Then again, as far as intelligence goes, I’m the one trying to reason with a cat here.)
Maybe he needs a tutor, or some flashcards.
A few weeks ago, Jean came over for dinner and gave the hairy eyeball to my stove, which I’m assuming has been here since 1978 when the house was built. At first I was confused because I thought it was pretty clean, and not just by my pathetically lenient standards.
“You know you can get new trim rings and drip pans,” she said. What? Of course I don’t know that. Who the hell knows that? I didn’t even know those objects had names, although “trim ring” and “drip pan” seem pretty straightforward. If something has to be purchased at Lowes or Home Depot, I usually assume it’s going to have some kind of specialized and esoteric name that I will neither know nor be able to deduce. It wouldn’t surprise me if these things on my stove were called plattrens and cronnets.
Anyway, my 26-year old stove now has brand new decorative hardware (one of the odder gifts I’ve received, I must say), and it does liven it up considerably. But now I have to worry about getting fingerprints on my shiny new cronnets. Err, trim rings.
I set out Sunday morning in the snow with the promise of freedom toast and a kind word. I turned around and came home ten minutes later after discovering three things:
1. Plooblewagon’s boy-racer low-profile tires love dry pavement, but they get all confused and belligerent when they encounter anything slippy.
2. The vast majority of other vehicles I encountered were SUVs (many of them two-wheel drive, which is the stupidest thing ever) piloted by sorority girls driving far too quickly and running stop signs while talking on cell phones.
3. I don’t like doing things I’m no good at.
(It didn’t make me feel any better when I watched the Monte Carlo rally Sunday night and saw people driving 80 miles an hour on roads I would be reluctant to walk on.)
If you’re from some place that has real winters and you’re aching to scoff at my wimpishness, remember that I live in North Carolina, so we don’t have snow plows, we don’t have snow tires, and we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. And since it doesn’t happen very often, we can afford to avoid the snowy and icy roads and hunker down in slippers-and-pay-per-view mode. Even so I will admit it is a bit ridiculous that one inch of snow will shut down the entire state and cause a run on the grocery stores that resembles the evacuation of Saigon and leaves shelves denuded of milk, bread and eggs. (I’m stealing from some stand-up comedian here, but what is it about snowstorms that makes people crave French toast?)
I was born in New Jersey but I grew up here, so winter weather meant no school. It takes a long time to overcome that nostalgic memory. When I first started working for myself in 1995, I woke up one morning to an ice storm and thought, “Cool! I don’t have to go to work.” Then I remembered that I worked at home, so essentially I was trapped in the office.
White tigers have been in the news a lot lately, and not just because one of them tried to make a sequined canapé out of either Siegfried or Roy. (Like I care which one.) An Argentinean tiger recently gave birth to sextuplets in the Buenos Aires zoo, for instance. There’s so much tiger talk that Yahoo news has a white tiger slide show, where I found two pictures. The first one reminds me of one of W. Eugene Smith’s famous photos, which depending on which Google search you believe is either called The Walk to Paradise Garden, A Walk to Paradise Garden, A Walk in Paradise Garden, Walk Into Paradise Garden or Those Damn Kids Are in the Garden Again.
Now here’s another white tiger cub photo. Could it be any more different? It almost seems as though this tiger has a publicist telling him, “Don’t work the cute angle. The cute angle is overplayed. Go with funny. Gimme some yucks. When I get done with you, kiddo, they’ll be saying Kangaroo Jack who?”
original photo Luke Frazza/AFP
When Time Warner Cable announced they would be adding BBC America, I could hardly contain my excitement. I’ve been a huge Anglophile since I was ten years old, and my favorite shows have almost always been British – especially British mysteries. My cat, for instance, is named for Hercule Poirot’s sidekick. He will answer to Hastings but prefers Captain Hastings. (That sounds a whole lot dorkier written down than when I say it.)
Watching BBC America makes it obvious that there are dozens of people in Hollywood and New York who are making a tidy living by copying British shows for American TV. It’s not a new phenomenon, as you may know: Sanford and Son was a remake of Steptoe and Son, Three’s Company came from a show called Man About the House, and the US Congress show on C-Span is a shameless ripoff of Fawlty Towers. Even the apex (or nadir) of American television, the reality show, originated in the UK with a show called Castaway, which dumped a bunch of whiny jerks on a Scottish island and forced them to learn how to make bread and husband sheep. I noticed tonight that Airport, which follows people around Heathrow airport, has been copied for A&E. I turned it off after three minutes when the first situation involved a Southwest employee dealing with a man who had soiled his trousers. That kind of reality I don’t need to see.
My favorite British reality show is called Faking It, in which they give someone one month to learn enough about a particular topic to try to fool a panel of judges into thinking they are experts. One show took a classical cellist and turned her into a club DJ. Another featured a country vicar trying to convince people that he was an Essex used car salesman. In most of the shows, the fakers form a strong bond with their mentors, and often succeed in fooling the judges. This week’s show, however, took a professional video game tester and tried to turn him into a race car driver. He failed horribly, not only in his task, but also in endearing himself to his mentors. At the end of the show, one called him “an arrogant twat,” and the other said he hoped never to see him again.
I’m wondering how long the show can last before they run out of plausible subjects for fakery and start reaching too far. “This week on Faking It, we’ll watch as Trevor, a butcher’s apprentice from North London, tries to fool a panel of doctors into believing he’s a brain surgeon.”
I’m fascinated by the idea that someone with a month of intensive training can pass as an authority in almost any given field. It’s fun to watch on TV. It’s less enjoyable when your boss seems to have followed the same route.
If you could spend a month learning how to fake something, what would you choose?
My name is Dave Thomas. It doesn’t matter if I introduce myself as David Thomas or David B. Thomas, I still get, “Huh, like the founder of Wendy’s?” As if it might have escaped my attention. (It used to be one in ten people said, “Like the guy from SCTV?” and I usually liked those people, and one in 50 would say, “Like the guy from Pere Ubu?” and I always liked those people.) One year for Christmas my mother gave me and my father coffee mugs that say, “Yes, my name is Dave Thomas. No, I don’t have a daughter named Wendy. No, I don’t make hamburgers.” On the bottom it says the cup was made by Thomas Tiles, so I assume there is a fellow sufferer out there who decided to cash in. I wish I had thought of it.
Having shared the name of a famous hamburger pitchman for decades, I have learned firsthand that if a name can be lampooned in any way, the namesake has probably heard it a hundred times. I could meet someone named Delicious Chocolate Pudding and I would say, “How do you do, Mr. Pudding.”
All this is preliminary to what I am about to post. I know I have the same name as the late burger baron. Don’t bother pointing it out. You have been warned.
My friend Greta, who I’m sure has heard her fair share of Garbo jokes, hipped me to a site called Googlism, which does some kind of fancy internet magic and pulls together quotes about any term or name you enter. Here’s a sample of what you get for me:
dave thomas is truly the biggie man
dave thomas is covering his eyes with his hands in mock fear
dave thomas is a bigot
dave thomas is a life
dave thomas is a woodturner based just outside the picturesque village of shere
dave thomas is spared immortalization by way of clumsy cartooning
dave thomas is currently not yet a bronze member
dave thomas is an original american folk hero
dave thomas is wanting to go out in the parking lot and fight defending his own lie
dave thomas is available for viewing with windows media player
dave thomas is the perfect fit
dave thomas is revealing his inner workings
dave thomas is an award winning canberra cannon
dave thomas is leading the charge for legislative action to add a state fossil to michigan’s popular list of identifiable symbols
dave thomas is resigning his position after only three weeks
dave thomas is
dave thomas is your superior technical advisor
dave thomas is prominent in the worldwide ruby community
dave thomas is an unashamed packrat
dave thomas is not blues
dave thomas is 20th
dave thomas is one of the most underrated geniuses in the country
dave thomas is hot as
dave thomas is mentioned
dave thomas is sitting in the booth behind us
dave thomas is sexy
dave thomas is cool
dave thomas is getting a chance to do something like this
dave thomas is particularly proud of his customer service
dave thomas is a wonderful man
dave thomas is to blame
Want to see some other Dave Thomases I found on the web? <a href=”Of course you do.
If I were given the choice between opening a door marked “All-Day Meeting,” or another one marked “Five Minutes of Root Canal,” I would stop and think hard for a moment and then say, “This is a stupid metaphor.”
If it’s even a metaphor. I know it’s not a simile. Or an analogy. Maybe it’s an allegory.
I’ll start again.
Today I drove to Raleigh for a meeting on the grounds of what used to be called Dorothea Dix Mental Hospital and is now probably called something else. (I wondered if, like the Simpsons when they visited Ned after he went loopy, I would be given a sticker that said “SANE.”) This was a meeting of very smart and committed people volunteering their time for an extremely worthwhile cause, and I was happy to be involved. But dang, y’all.
First of all, and I won’t belabor this point, it’s time we abandoned the business suit, for men and women. ‘Nuff said.
Then there are the roundtable introductions, which no one ever hears, since we’re all practicing our own in our heads. I think the woman to my right said, “Hello. I am a leopard. Grrrrrr.”
And then there’s PowerPoint. “Can you see this in the back? No? Okay, I’ll just read all the slides out loud. First, a little background. Millions of years ago, after the Earth cooled and developed an atmosphere…”
I will admit that my mind tends to wander a bit during an all-day meeting, and then it starts to get me in trouble. I find myself imagining the most inappropriate thing I could do at that particular moment. “What could I do right now,” I wonder, “that would be incredibly embarrassing, but not so embarrassing that I would have to leave town?” But that doesn’t satisfy me. “What could I do right now that would be so embarrassing that I would have to leave town tomorrow and never return?” Before I know it, in my mind I am naked and dancing on the conference table singing “Inna Gadda da Vida” in Elmer Fudd’s voice and throwing poppyseed muffins at people. Then I have to go to the men’s room and think about lost puppies until I can keep a straight face again.
As for my suit, it is charcoal gray and unremarkable except for the label, which declares “Pronto Uomo – Firenze.” Because this is the year 2497 and I am Buck Rogers, I was able to take out my subspace communicator and send a text message during the meeting to Memsy, who told me that “Pronto Uomo” is Italian for “Ready Man.” Surely he is one of the lesser superheroes. “We’re leaving in five minutes.” “I’m ready!”
Mark holding court in Hell – photo by Primo
I’m sure you’re all readers of Maxim magazine, if not subscribers, so you already know that my favorite bar, Hell, was awarded “Bar o’ the Month” in the January issue. Since I love the bar and all who sail within in her, I will pretend that recognition from Maxim is a good thing.
(My favorite piece in the current issue is called “How to Spot a Bunny Boiler.” It advises me that if a woman cleans her bathroom weekly and always has plenty of toilet paper on hand, she has obsessive compulsive disorder and I should “keep a shrink on speed dial.” I would be worried if I thought anyone actually read this magazine as opposed to just looking at the cheesecake pictures of C-list, D-cup pseudo-celebrities.)
The first time I went to Hell I hated it and swore I would never go back. It was hot and dirty and the pool tables sucked. Then, like many people, I was drawn in by the charms of owner Mark Dorosin, everybody’s favorite attorney/professor/elected official/playwright/bartender. Mark used to drive by my friends’ house during Saturday afternoon yard parties and yell, “Hey you kids, go to Hell!” This was before he knew them. I’ve already chronicled Mark’s vision for the bar and the result in a piece I wrote for the Independent Weekly celebrating Hell’s fourth anniversary, so here I’ll just say that I’ve never been to a bar that inspired so much loyalty other than the now-legendary Hardback Café.
I don’t go there as often as I used to (and it would be physically impossible to go there more often than I used to – Ryan and I once figured out roughly how much money we had spent in Hell and it was more than I put down on my house). But I was there last week for Trivia Night when two young women came down the stairs and stood looking about tentatively. If they had come on Maxim’s recommendation, they were probably a bit disappointed to find a room full of people trying to remember who fought the Crimean War and the name of the transsexual tennis-playing eye doctor from the 1970s.
One of the problems with exposing myself to reality TV is that I also expose myself to TV commericials, and I will buy anything anyone tells me to. As a result, I found myself on Wednesday driving about 20 minutes round trip to pick up a Hardee’s Low Carb Thickburger. “How did they make a fast-food hamburger with so few carbohydrates?” I asked myself. I got it home and found the secret: no bun – it’s wrapped in lettuce. It’s not bad, really. It’s kind of like a giant ground beef spring roll. But I don’t think I’ll be making any more 20 minute round trips to get one. (Mike and Chris have promised that at their next brunch, in consideration of any low-carb dieters, they’re going to make meat waffles. I can hardly wait.)
While finishing off the No Bun Weirdburger, I remembered another time I went considerably out of my way to eat something ultimately disappointing. When I lived in Tokyo, my aunt and uncle came to visit and we went to Kyoto. My aunt went out for a walk one morning and returned to the hotel unable to talk about anything but the cinnamon rolls she had smelled from a small bakery. She went on about it all day long, and made me promise that I would go with her the next day to negotiate the purchase of these items, since I had been in Japan for several months by that point, honing my smiling and pointing skills.
We set out the next morning at roughly the crack of dawn (she really was like a kid on Christmas day) and found the “bakery” in question, which looked more like a machine shop. But there was no denying the intense aroma of cinnamon baked goods. I found someone who worked there, who reacted the way many Japanese do when they encounter a foreigner, which is roughly the way they do when they encounter Godzilla. I finally managed to convince him that we weren’t there to step on cars, but wanted to buy what they were baking. The delight on my aunt’s face when I emerged holding a bag of goodies was almost spiritual. We each removed one item from the bag, and took a big bite of … something with the consistency of a building material. Perhaps a wood laminate, or polycarbonate. It was undeniably cinnamon, but to this day I’m not entirely certain it was food. Somewhere I have a picture of my aunt trying in vain to bite through hers, with a there-is-no-Santa look on her face.
