Month: September 2012

Bagel Heads

I love bagels.  Love em with cream cheese, love em with peanut butter, love to make sandwiches with them, little pizzas, toasted, untoasted, every way imaginable I love bagels.  But I don’t think that I would like one in my head.

You’re probably saying to yourself, “That’s stupid, of course no one would like a bagel in their head!”  But you would be wrong, some people apparently do like bagels in their heads.  And appropriately enough, they are called, “Bagel Heads.”

It’s true, look it up.  There is a fashion craze going on in Japan.  A new beauty trend called “Bagel heading.”

The way I understand it, is that there is a procedure where a persons forehead is injected with about 400 cc of a saline solution that produces a soft bubble on the forehead.  Then the person who is doing the procedure, presses their thumb into the middle of this bump until an indentation is formed.  The result is an image which makes it appear as if a bagel has been inserted under the skin.  Ok, so technically a real live bagel isn’t actually inserted into someone’s skull, but that’s the way it appears.  After about 16 hours the saline solution is absorbed into the body and the “bagel” disappears.

That’s too bad.  I think I would like to see someones head stay like that just as a lesson to everyone else.  It’s kind of like how you felt when your brother or sister would be making those funny faces at you during the car ride on your family vacation.  Mom would say to them, “Quit making those faces or your face will stay that way!”  And you would be thinking, “Yes! Please, please, please.”

Besides the stupidity in all of this, I’m confounded by the lack of imagination.  From the articles I’ve read, it takes about two hours to inject the saline solution.  So, after two hours of having salt water pumped into your dome the best you can do is make a hole in the center with your thumb and then say, “Hey look everybody, I’m a Bagel, bwa, ha, ha!” ?

Why not make an impression of a light bulb and say “Look I have an idea.” or put a question mark in there and say, “Look I’m thinking.”  or better yet, just leave the the solution alone and walk around with a big bump on your head and say, “Hey, look everyone, I’m an idiot!”

I think the closest I ever came to putting a bagel in my head was when I was about 8 years old and stuck an M&M in my ear.  A green one.  My mom of course was upset and screamed, “Dale, how could you!!!?”  Being only 8, I wasn’t really sure.  All I could say was, “Because I wanted to see if it would fit.”  It did.

She said, “Wait til your father gets home.”  I said, “What?”  So she shouted in my other ear, “I said, wait until you father gets home!”  That’s when the M&M popped out and the dog ate it.

Anyway, to prove to you that I couldn’t possibly make this stuff up, please check out this article from Fox News.com

I think I’ll just have toast for breakfast this morning.

Packers Robbed? Maybe They Helped

I can’t hold back any longer.

By now, even if you are not a football fan, or have been out of the country, you have probably heard about how the Green Bay Packers had a game taken from them and given to the Seattle Seahawks on Monday evening.

Now before I go any further and am accused of being a mean old Bears fan, let me say to all of my Packer fan friends, yes Golden Tate the wide receiver for Seattle should have been called for an offensive pass interference penalty which would have given Green Bay the victory.  Yes, M.D. Jennings the Packers defensive back should have been credited with an interception.  Yes, the refs blew the call.

It should now be obvious that I believe, THIS WAS NOT A TOUCHDOWN!  If I were a Packer fan I would be outraged right along with you.  Is that clear enough for everyone?  Good.

Having now admitted that the Packers record should be 2 and 1 instead of 1 and 2, allow me to continue.

I just read where Packers offensive lineman T.J. Lang (keep in mind, the offensive linemen are the guys who are supposed to block for the quarterback and the running backs) just broke the retweet record, I didn’t even know there was a record kept of these things, with his profanity laced tweet which read, “F*** it NFL.. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs.”   He also tweeted, “Got f***ed by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl”  T.J. wasn’t kind enough to edit the profanities.  He did however pass Justin Bieber who had 87,882 followers retweet him in November 2011 when he posted, “I’M SEXY AND I KNOW IT.”

The gagging sound you just heard was me.  I can’t believe I just made a Justin Bieber reference on my blog page.

Anyway, here is my issue.  T.J. Lang is part of a Packers line that allowed it’s quarterback and “Most Valuable Player” Aaron Rodgers to be sacked 8 times in the first half.  He is part of an offense that didn’t score a single point until the third quarter.  He is part of an offense that scored just two field goals and one touchdown, for a total of 12 points the entire game.  He is part of an offense, who, if they would have gotten just one first down the last time they had the ball, would not have had to worry about a bad call deciding the game.  (Remember, they were playing the Seattle Seahawks not the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers.)  I would have been much more sympathetic to the outrage that Lang directed toward the refs if he would have taken some personal responsibility and also tweeted, “Sorry for almost getting you killed on Monday Aaron, I hope to play better next game.  My bad.”

Unfortunately, it is so much easier to lay the blame than to take any.  Does Lang feel that he and his teammates bare no responsibility for that loss?  That only the refs should be embarrassed by their performance?  It sounds as if he thinks exactly that.

The truth is that the Green Bay offense played so poorly, that had Justin Bieber been playing defensive end for Seattle during the first half of Monday’s game, Lang and his fellow linemen wouldn’t have even been able to block him much less break his tweet record.  The refs weren’t  the only ones who were less than great at their jobs Monday night.  The sad thing is that all too often we expect others to be perfect even though we ourselves are not.

Finally, anyone who has ever played or coached sports knows that when you don’t play well, you put yourself in a position to lose a game because of a referees call.  It happens many times each year in all sports.  That is what happened on Monday night.

Falling Into a Job

I finally have a job interview today.  Before you even start to wonder, the answer is NO!    I did not hear back from Patty at the staffing agency.  She did not get me this interview.

This is the first interview I have had in the four months since I became unemployed.  Actually come to think of it, this is the first interview I have had in about 37 years.  That one was for a sporting goods store located at Woodfield Mall.  I don’t remember much about that interview, but one thing does stick in my mind.  As I  was about to leave, the hiring manager stopped me to ask one more question.  For some reason, maybe because I was a stupid 20 year old kid, I turned back toward him and leaned my hand on the half door that led to the cashiers cage at the very front of the store.  You know the kind of lean I’m talking about.  The one where you place your hand on something and lean against it, crossing your ankle over your other leg in an attempt to look cool and nonchalant.  And I did look cool, right up until the time when the latch on the half door came loose and sent me tumbling into the cashiers cage and almost knocking over the girl who was at the register helping a customer check out.

I left that interview dejected and embarrassed, knowing full well that I was not going to get the job.  Surprisingly, the next day the manager called and told me to come in.  I was hired.  A few months later I asked him why he had hired me.  He said that when I fell through the door he hadn’t laughed that hard in years and he thought I might be fun to have around.  I made a mental note of this for future employment opportunities, not realizing at the time, that nearly four decades later, the same type of mishap most likely would not be my ticket to another successful interview.  Falling through a door and laying on the floor like a slug just doesn’t have the same comic effect at the age of 57 as it does at 20.  While it might get you laughed at, I don’t think in this day and age, that it would get you hired.

I feel completely out of my element.  I have no clue what I will be asked today or how I should answer.  I’m hoping my interviewer isn’t a big Barbara Walters fan who decides to hit me with, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”  I’m afraid I might blurt out the first thing that comes to mind like, “A weeping willow!” and blow the whole interview.

I’ve heard that companies now like to ask you what your biggest weakness is.  Apparently this is to put you on the defensive in order to see how you react under pressure.  If I’m asked this I’d probably end up saying something like, “I don’t know what my biggest weakness is, I’m still pissed at myself for answering weeping willow to your stupid tree question!!!”

So here I sit, just a couple of hours until my interview.  Knowing that I can no longer rely on my fall through a door as a backup plan.  Having to now use only my wit, intelligence, and personality in order to impress the interviewer.  This is just another way of saying that I could be screwed here.

However, if things start going bad quickly, I am not opposed to nonchalantly crossing my right ankle over my left knee, leaning way back in my chair so that the front legs are off of the floor, further and further back until…….

Yeah, that could work!

Wish me luck.

The Job Fair

Being out of work as I am, I attended a job fair the other day.  It was a complete waste of time, but that’s a different story for a later post.

An interesting thing did happen while I was there though.  I met a mysophobe.  That is someone with an abnormal fear of dirt and contamination.  Also known as a germaphobe.  Since her name was Patty, let’s call her that.  I would love to give you her last name but I forgot it.  She was a representative for a staffing agency and one of her colleagues, whom I had given my resume to earlier, suggested that since I was looking into a management position, I should speak with Patty because she was the agencies “Professional” placement counselor.  I approached Patty, introduced myself and offered my hand.  She looked horrified, took a quick step back and clutched the folder she was holding tightly against her chest.  I spun around and looked behind me half expecting to see a crazed unemployed postal worker ready to attack, but the only one there was a harmless looking woman who appeared to be in her 60’s.  The speed with which I spun must have startled her because she now jumped back also, clutching her purse to her chest as if she thought I was going to snatch it out of her hands and make a run for the exit.  I might have considered doing just that except, being that this was a job fair and we were all unemployed, I figured she probably didn’t have much more in her purse than I had in my pockets anyway.  $1.28 and a half eaten bag of candy didn’t seem worth the risk.  Puzzled, I turned back toward Patty and asked, “Is everything ok?”  She  bent toward me and whispered, as if we were co-conspirators in some kind of devious plot to overthrow the government, “I’m not shaking hands with anyone here.  This place is full of germs.”  That was it?  That was why she had reacted like someone had tazed her?  Because she didn’t want to shake hands?  This was the “Professional” placement counselor who I was going to entrust my future employment opportunities to?  I had a sudden urge to either lunge forward, give her a big hug and watch her really freak out, or, “accidentally” drop to the floor one of the pieces of candy I had in my pocket, pick it up and offer it to her;  “Care for a Skittles Patty?”  🙂  Instead I just whispered back, “Can we knuckle bump?”  Her lack of a smile at my attempted humor told me two things.  (1) One of us had no sense of humor and (2) Even though she said she would look at my resume and give me a call, we both immediately knew that she probably wouldn’t.

It made me start to wonder how far Patty took this fear of germs thing.  I was tempted  to remind her that the hand she was afraid to shake had actually touched the resume she promised to look at.  Not only that, but my wife had touched it, one of Patty’s co-workers had touched it and God knows how many others.  I got an image in my mind of Patty going back to her little cubicle at the staffing agency and putting on a Haz Mat suit in preparation of reading my resume.

I thanked her for her time, which amounted to about 45 seconds of her “professional” life, and just for fun stuck my hand out again.  Patty frowned and quickly shook her head back and forth.  I turned to leave and saw that the woman behind me was still holding tightly on to her purse. She stepped way to the side in order to let me pass.

Yeah, that’s right lady.  I’m the crazy one.

Home Improvement

I’ve decided to change the look on the front of our house.  For years we have had a green mailbox, green garage door, green front door, and at one time we had green shutters.  The shutters came lose a few years ago due to a windstorm coupled with faulty installation.  I refuse to name or criticize the installer, let’s just say, you know him.

So, as I was saying I’ve decided to go with a different look for the house and one of the first things I wanted to do was put up new shutters.  The old ones, because they were loose had already been taken down so I figured it would be a quick installation since there were already mounting holes drilled into the brick.  That’s when I discovered that some of the wall anchors and screws that held the shutters to the house had broken off inside the holes and had to be removed before I could install the new ones.

The internet told be that if you were unable to remove the old hardware from the hole (which of course was my situation) you could put a screwdriver in the hole, hit it with a hammer and knock the anchor into the wall.  This would be easier if you had brick facing not solid brick.  I was in luck!!!

Out I go with my screwdriver and hammer, and things seem to be going surprisingly well.  Until I reach a stubborn anchor that just won’t cooperate.  I give the screwdriver a terrible pounding with my hammer and when I attempt to remove it from the hole, it’s stuck!  I now have a screwdriver sticking out of my house that I am unable to remove.  I go to the garage, get a vice grips, attach it to the handle of the screwdriver and begin to pull with all of my strength, it doesn’t seem to be budging at all.  Finally I give one mighty tug and the screwdriver pops loose sending me hurtling backwards, arms flailing in an attempt to stay upright, I look like some kind of deranged Olympic swimmer doing the backstroke in a pool without water.  Time for a break.

Break is over and I return to my project.  I still have the higher anchors to take care of and to do this I will need a ladder.  I only have to go up about 5 feet, but still high enough to do bodily harm in the unlikely event that I should fall.  Up the ladder I go with my hammer and screwdriver.  I don’t take the vice grips because I don’t plan on being stupid enough to get the screwdriver stuck again.  Raise your hand if you think I should have taken them, just in case.  Those of you who raised your hand are of course correct.  Hammer, hammer, hammer. The screwdriver is once again stuck.  Down the ladder I go to get the vice grips.

Now I’m angry with myself and the screwdriver.  (Suggestion to do it yourselfers; don’t go up a ladder angry.)  Angrily I climb the ladder and attach the vice grips to the handle of the screw driver.  As I begin to pull, it suddenly occurs to me that this could end badly.  Three things come to mind; 1) My previous silly looking backstroke routine.  2) I have not enlisted any adult supervision to help with this project.  IE; No one available to dial 911 in the event of an accident.  3) The “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” commercial suddenly pops into my head.

I ease up on my pull just as the screwdriver comes loose from the wall.  I begin to stumble backwards down the ladder.  I avoid falling to the ground but step on, and break in half, one of the solar lights that I have strategically placed in that exact spot, seemingly for the sole purpose of me breaking it.

When I look down at the broken light, I realize that I will have to decide whether to tell my wife how it happened, or blame it on the dogs again.  That makes me kind of sad for the dogs.  But then I look up at the house and realize my holes are complete!  It’s like a cloud has lifted and I’m happy again!  All in all a pretty good days work with minimal damage done.

And I still have time to start replacement of the outside garage lights.

Note to self; Turn off electricity.

Don’t Try This at Home!

How many of you have used the phrase;  “I am going to hop in the shower.” or, “I am going to jump in the shower.”

We use this phrase a lot at our house.

Wife: “Hey, are you almost ready to leave?”

Me: “Yeah, I just have to hop in the shower, then we can go.”

Of course at times we will just say that we are going to take a shower, but it seems like more often than not we use the words “hop” or “jump.”  It made me start to wonder where this term came from and how it ever started being used in the first place. Do other people use it or is it just my family?  I am going to make the assumption that the Massaros are not the only ones saying this.

So let me ask you something personal.  If you use the words hop or jump when talking about taking a shower or bath, do you just say it, or do you actually do it? And if you do it, does hop or jump refer to the act of entering the shower or what you do once you are in the shower?  In other words, do you enter the bathroom and take one big jump to get into the shower, or once you are in, is that when the act of hopping and or jumping takes place?

Personally, I say I’m going to hop in the shower, but I have never actually had the courage to do it.  Even with the non slip duck stickers on the shower floor it would just seem to be a dangerous thing to do.  I’ve heard too many horror stories about people falling in the bath tub.  It makes me wonder how many of them told a loved one that they were going to “hop in the tub” then really did it, and down they went!  And what would be the purpose?  I guess it could be looked at as an aerobic activity but it certainly is not what I would consider to be aquatics.

I usually just step into the shower, and then once I have accomplished that safely, I stand there.  I was showering a few minutes ago and actually considered, in the interest of writing a thorough and informative post, giving hopping a try.  I’m sorry to report that I couldn’t do it.  The risk was just too great.

So I’m looking for some feed back here.

1) Do you use the term hop or jump in relation to getting into the shower or bath tub?

2) Do you know where this term originated?

3) Have you ever actually been silly enough to try it?

If you have been reading my blog but have not yet registered, please do so.  That way you can leave comments and help me with these deep questions that have been preying on my mind.

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I Hated That

On the eve of becoming a Grandpa, I guess it was inevitable that I would start thinking back to when my kids were small, and to all of the things we used to enjoy doing together.  Then I realized there were some things that weren’t all that great.  Here are the top 10 things that drove me crazy when my kids were young.

1) Playing Hi Ho Cherry O; Someone was actually paid money for inventing this game? Object of the game was to get all 10 cherries off of your tree and into your bucket.  Not only boring but rule # 3 states that the youngest player gets to go first.  I was immediately placed at an unfair disadvantage.

2) Barney; I should never have let on that I knew the words to the theme song.  Like potatoes are a staple at dinner, the Barney song was a staple at playtime.  And once you got that song stuck in your head you couldn’t pry it out with a crow bar.

3) Doing homework; Do I even have to explain this one?  I still have some teachers waiting for me to turn in my homework.  Homework night with my kids normally ended with someone in tears.  Occasionally me.

4) Parent Teacher Conference #1;  “Mrs. Massaro, your son is doing terrific in math!!!  I see you’ve been helping him with his homework.”

5) Parent Teacher Conferences #2;  “Mr. Massaro, you’re daughter is failing math.  I see you’ve been helping her with her homework.”  (Blah, blah, blah)

6) Teaching bike riding;  It’s tiring.  Run to the end of the block holding onto the back of the seat.  Run back the same way you came.  Do this 5 times then collapse. And God forbid you let go of the seat and allow the kid to crash into a tree!  They look at you like…. well, like you just let them crash into a tree or something.

7) School plays;  You need to be more of an actor than your child.  I mean how many times can you sound convincing saying, “Oh Honey, you were the best tree in the play.”  And that water with food coloring they serve afterward and try to pass off as punch.  Just awful!

8) Answering the question “Why?” ;  Early on as a parent, some maniac advised, that when my kids asked the question “Why?”  I should not answer, “Because I said so.”  Bad advise.  Just like Truman used the bomb to shorten the war, had I learned to use the “Because I said so.” answer early on, I estimate that I could have cut down on approximately 3,468 follow up “Why?” questions from my kids.

9) Bed Time;  Don’t even want to talk about this one.

10) Shopping for presents;  OK, so maybe hate is too strong.  But at the very least it was aggravating when my wife wouldn’t let me buy the kids toys I always wanted as a kid but never had.  With all of the times I played that stupid “supermarket” game with my daughter, would it have killed her just once to play the Strat-O-Matic football game that I wanted to buy for her eighth birthday?

But I wouldn’t trade any of these things for the world.

The Cloak of Invisibility

An English speaking woman dressed in dark colored clothing, and described as “Asian” turned up missing (I always liked that phrase, it’s kind of like jumbo shrimp) Saturday while on a bus trip in Southern Iceland. Reports stated that she got off of the bus and never returned.  A search was begun that lasted throughout the remainder of the weekend.

As Paul Harvey used to say, Here’s the rest of the story;

As it turns out the woman had gotten off of the bus and for some reason had changed clothes.  She actually did return to the bus but no one recognized her and the search was on.  Apparently when a description of the “missing” woman was circulated, she didn’t realize she was the one everybody was looking for, so she joined in on the search! Eventually a light bulb must have gone on in her head because she ended up reporting herself to the police as found.  I imagine her saying something like, “Oh my gosh, here I am!”

That puts a whole new twist on the meaning of “finding ones self” doesn’t it?

Here is the story as it was reported in the Reykjavik Grapevine

Now let’s all think about this for a minute.  She changed her clothes and no one on the bus recognized her!  NO ONE!!! I have a few questions, I’ll bet you do too.

(1) How many 5 foot 2 inch Asian women were on that bus….. in Iceland?  (Did I fail to mention she was 5′ 2″?  I think that alone would aid in the identification process)

(2) Didn’t anyone wonder who the “new” Asian woman that just got on the bus was?

(3) Did the bus driver not realize he had the same amount of people on the bus as when they started the tour?  Maybe he was mathematically challenged and said something like, “Let’s see, 30 off the bus and 30 back on. Shoot, we’re missing somebody again!”

(4) Or, the only one that makes sense to me, did she change into those clothes from the Harry Potter movies?

Now I’ll admit that I have lost my glasses a couple of times and later on found them still attached to my ears.  I’ve even walked around the house looking for them.  But I have never, changed my clothes and then forgot what I looked like.  Of course I’m not a 5″ 2″ Asian woman, but even so, I can’t recall  having anyone ever ask me;

Fellow Tourist; “Have you seen a bald headed guy with a goatee, mid to late 50’s about 6 feet tall 210 pounds wearing a black shirt and blue jeans?  He was on this bus a minute ago and now we can’t find him.

Clueless Me; “Wow, that sounds a lot like me, but it couldn’t be, as you can see I’m wearing a blue shirt.”

This woman must have been a champion hide and seek player when she was a kid.  “Ha Ha you’ll never find me, I changed my blouse!”

And you wondered why no one ever realized that Clark Kent was actually Superman!

Paranoia Runs Deep

I just got home from grocery shopping.  Excuse me while I take my blood pressure medicine.  Before you jump to any conclusions let me just say that I enjoy grocery shopping, I really do.  I f I were filthy rich I wouldn’t even hire someone to shop for me.  I would just give the manager of the supermarket a butt load of money to shut the store down and let me shop in peace.  I enjoy squeezing the peppers, thumping the melons and moving all of the eggs around in the carton to make sure none are cracked.  There are only two things I don’t like about shopping, the other shoppers and the employees.  Neither group adds any enjoyment to my shopping experience.  My wife says it’s because I don’t like people, but that’s not it at all.  It’s because they are all out to get me.

The shoppers; They intentionally get in my way for the soul purpose of impeding my uninterrupted progress through the store.  This I know is true.  What I’m not sure of, is if it is a plan they hatch on the spur of the moment when they see me coming down the soup aisle minding my own business, or is it a premeditated act?  Do they stalk me from the minute I enter the store?  They seem to be strategically positioning themselves, perfectly aware of the fact that the wobbly front wheel on my cart is causing me to constantly veer to the right.  In order to prevent me from passing without banging into them, they park their carts in the middle of the aisle at just the right angle to ensure that neither side is wide enough for me to pass by.  Ohhhh they’re crafty.

Two women move their carts in what seems to be a perfectly choreographed maneuver and block my path to the refrigerator section.  In an attempt to avoid a collision I pull hard to the left but that blasted wobbly wheel on the front of my cart won’t allow it and I crash into the stand where a woman is handing out samples of Eckrich Kielbasa Sausage.  How had they known that my next stop was going be the Philadelphia Brand cream cheese?  I didn’t even know that’s where I was headed.  But they knew.  Oh yes, they knew.

You think I’m paranoid don’t you?  But wait, there’s more.

The employees;  They have put me on some kind of secret supermarket hit list where as soon as I enter the store, I’m spotted on security cameras and they’re instructed to act like I’m speaking to them in a foreign language.

Me: Excuse me, do you carry panko breadcrumbs?

Employee: Huh? What?

Me: Panko, PANKO!!!!!  (OK, I have to admit, when you say panko panko really fast it does sound a little like a foreign language)

Employee: We have Progresso

Me: No! It’s not a brand it’s a….. can you go find out please?

Employee: Find out what?

Me: About the panko breadcrumbs!

Employee: Yes, we have Progresso.

I walk away defeated and make my way toward the checkout.  Hands numb from trying to steer my cart in a straight path.  Shopping list crumpled and only partially complete.  I promise myself that I will return next week better prepared to face these challenges.

Did I mention that I enjoy grocery shopping?  I really do.