I’m not sure if I didn’t notice some seismic activity or if my drunk ass just banged into my bedside table, but now when I turn over at night my little alarm clock seems like it’s pointed directly at my face from about five inches away. It makes it sort of hard to actually sleep when I keep looking at the clock to calculate how much sleep I will get if I start right then.
As it gets closer to morning I still look at the clock, just so I can measure how long I can hold my pee before I have to get up. It’s a regular carnival over at the Coulter house. Just so you know, the rest of the column is probably going to be almost as exciting as the preamble. Proceed at your own risk … of boredom. Let’s get it on.
IS THAT GOD LAUGHING?
I watched this movie, Kicking and Screaming, again the other day. It’s not the Will Ferrell soccer one, which I haven’t seen, but would probably enjoy. Instead, it’s the Noah Baumbach one about rich, whiney, post-college kids who are apparently very afraid of working. It’s pretty funny if you can convince yourself to like any character in the film.
Anyway, there’s a funny line about an “I like bow hunting” bumper sticker that still kills me. My other favorite part is a line delivered by the best character in the movie, Eric Stoltz. He asks, “How do you make God laugh?” The answer, of course, is to have a plan. So with that little joke in mind and promised warmer weather on the way, Let’s all get ready for spring.
THAT STUFF THAT SUCKS
A lot of the preparation isn’t all that sexy, but it still needs to be done. Take a look at yourself after a long winter. Exactly. Some things need to be fixed up a little bit … to say the least in some cases. It’s usually around this time of year that I take the lawn mower for a tune-up and to get the blades sharpened. Usually, if you take it in about now, they will have it for you some time in September. However, since I only mowed about five times during the dust bowl of 2012, I think it’s probably still fine.
I’ll eventually clean the goddamned gutters, too. That’s usually great. “Oh, look, a lemur somehow got stuck in the gutter in November and has been rotting for about five months. It should be really fun to accidentally jab my hand into that.” The actual worst part of the gutters is climbing up and down a ladder over and over again. It makes my butt hurt … not in a creepy rest stop way … but still.
Anyway, this year I will simply call climbing this ladder “training.” So, anyway, I buried the lead quite a bit. What I really need to prepare for this spring is the goddamned Tough Mudder, an obstacle course sort of thing where you get shocked, burned, and generally hurt pretty badly. You also have to run, or in my case, crawl, a lot. I decided to take a look back and see what I wrote about this godforsaken event a little while ago.
The funniest part about the whole deal is that they asked me if I would like to be on the team and do this. Long story short, I laughed so hard I peed my pants and fell on the floor. After that, I took a long drink of beer, followed by a long drink of whiskey. I then rubbed my cigarette out and said, “I’m not doing that. You guys are fucking stupid.”
Um, so that’s what I wrote, and I honestly planned on sticking with it. I’ve sort of been working out, mostly just to see how it went, and it went better than I expected, and then all of a sudden on Sunday afternoon I told the wife I would be on the Tough Mudder team with her. Yeah, I know. I am a fucking delusional idiot.
I don’t know where that statement came from. I wasn’t even drunk yet. I just sort of blurted it out. Of course, once I said I would do this terrible, terrible event, I immediately went out and got liquored up, but by then the damage was done. I figure I can still drink during my training. It’s just that I’ll have to be running up hills as I’m drinking. Here’s the video again since it will make it easier to laugh at my folly.
Of course, my wife is super excited that I’m doing the Tough Mudder with her. I can only assume this is because she’s always thought it might be fun to be a widow. As of now, I sort of alternate between feelings of intense dread and feelings of being stunningly unprepared. So far, driving to the event and registration are the only two things about this shit show of a day that don’t scare the piss out of me. I know many of you are thinking there’s no way I can do that shit. I completely concur.
Anyway, I’m going to suck it up, try to get in shape, and do the fucking thing. If I seem like I’m in a bad mood for the next two months, you’ll at least know the reason why, which will be sort of refreshing.
ROCK AND ROLL REVISITED
That little column on great American rock bands last week brought out a lot of disagreement and also a lot of people naming bands that weren’t American. My friend, let’s call him Todd, insisted that Journey should be on the list. He even went so far as to play several of their songs on the jukebox in an effort to convince me. Honestly, that really didn’t help.
Let’s take this sentence, “I went on a Journey that began in Boston and ended in Kansas and to get from one place to the other I traveled on the river Styx.” Okay, if a band was in that sentence, they can’t make the list. Generally, I find bands named after cities or states to be not completely great. Um, Chicago for example. Either way, letting even one of those bands in could open a Pandora’s Box, and from what I understand, she doesn’t like to have her box opened.
Still, there were a few good other suggestions like Green Day, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, the Doors, Pretenders, ZZ Top, and 3 Dog Night.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
I know dick about Taylor Swift and I got off that Nicolas Cage train many years ago, but you put the two of them together and it makes me laugh. I’m not sure exactly why I’m laughing, but sometimes that’s the best kind of laughter … or is it?
EXTRAS
Remember that one really good Kate Hudson movie? Yeah, me neither.
It’s weird to see a person in street clothes running very fast down a sidewalk.
I’m really juiced Pizza M is getting its own place.
I should work harder on the EXTRAS section. Seriously.
Buona sera, senorina, kiss me goodnight.