oscars

Here is the church and here is the steeple – why is the mailman stealing my People?

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inside mailbox

Is this why our mail isn’t delivered until 5 PM…

Heavy things weighing on my mind have me troubled folks. I’m not referring to the week-long power outage from last week’s storm and I fully realize this might make me sound like a lunatic, but I’m pretty that sure that our mailman is taking my magazines.

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I know what you’re thinking – I sound like I’m being paranoid. Yes, but I’m also fed up and I can’t take it anymore. Every Friday for more than a decade, my magazines have been delivered without fail. I always understood if there was a storm or Holiday that it might be off by a day, but never like the delays that I see now. Severe weather has been cause for concern in the past, but that’s understandable. As you know, I’m a very understanding person and have never thrown the postal credo in their face: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. UNTIL NOW. Seriously, they’re supposed to be delivered on Friday and some weeks, I don’t get them until well into the next week and in some cases, it’s been delivered over a full week later. A full week later! Today, I got last week’s issue and guess what? It’s ripped up and looks like someone has been chewing on it. How did it get ripped? Why the hell are there folded pages – who’s saving their spot? How does that even happen in routine mail deliveries?

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I know that this might seem insignificant to some of you, but this is a big deal people – I’m OCD and a compulsive creature of habit! Do you have any idea what it does to a person like me to mess with my rituals? It’s like when my housekeeper cleans our bedroom and puts away my eye mask that I literally cannot sleep without. If it’s in the nightstand – here’s a thought: maybe let’s just leave them there and we’ll be OK. You don’t need to mess with them, why would you move them? You don’t ever need to do that? Why aren’t they where I left them? I’ll never know because my wife thinks it’s rude to ask her about that. Similar to when she wouldn’t let me ask her why she cut my shower curtain in half!!! It’s like the world is out to get me and everyone’s in on it!

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Anyway, back to the magazines. It’d odd, because for the longest time it always arrived like clockwork and then it went off the rails. I checked to see if we had a new mailman and maybe that would explain the delay, but then I realized that it was People’s Most Beautiful Issue – of course it’s missing. It was always on time until it’s a special double issue and then it comes a week late AND you can tell that the magazine has been handled and read. Same thing when it’s a special issue of Entertainment Weekly – all of a sudden, I can’t dig into the Oscar deep-dive or the Shondaland crossover episode because it’s not gonna be here for another week. This is literally the reason why print media is dying and it’s all the postal service’s fault! And there are some issues that have just never been delivered at all. How does that happen – did it accidentally get sent to the hatch with the Others on Lost? One week it was a special Lord of the Rings Issue that I never received, so I had to go buy it at the supermarket. Where the hell did it go? Its not crazy to infer that the mailman put it into his Bilbo MailBag-gins and took it home! As if I needed more ammunition to hate him – he’s a Lord of the Rings fan too!

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In the grand scheme of things, if this is the worst thing happening in my life I’m pretty lucky, but let’s not minimize the importance of this. Looking at the bigger picture, I’m trying to keep print media alive and I know that makes me sound like a relic. I don’t want you to tell me to go online to read the stories and get additional content – I’m not doing it! I want my printed copy delivered to me – so stop with the digital things that you can get up-to-the-minute updates on your phone with. I don’t want up-to-the-minute. I don’t need up-to-the-minute, I’m not an up-to-the-minute person and I’m don’t want change so don’t mess with my weekly routines.

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My wife thinks I’m overreacting and getting worked up for nothing, but in actuality it’s kinda stealing in a way. If not actually stealing, it’s definitely larcenous in some way to hold my property hostage or just take it altogether. Here I am pacing every Friday anxious for the Princess in Training issue about Meghan Markle and and he’s pulling the mail truck over to take a break while he reads all about Tim McGraw’s health scare in Ireland! It’s mean and it’s actually borderline harassment.

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I don’t want this to seem like a condemnation of the Postal Service, because I have the utmost respect and admiration for them. Truly, I do. It’s a hard job that I am way too lazy to ever do myself and I can appreciate their dedication to service. I just can’t appreciate them tormenting me with their crazy antics. I know that not every mailman is crazy and not every mailman is screwed up like the one that I have now or especially – the one we grew up with. When I tell you that our mailman Tony was a character, I mean it. He was rocking an iconic 80’s perm similar to Bradley Cooper’s in American Hustle, and he was the absolute worst driver on record. I’ve seen some crazy things in my time, but never before or since, have I seen a mail truck shoot down a block as fast and free as with Tony behind the wheel. It’s legit, the only time I’ve ever seen a mail truck taking a turn at what seemed like 65 miles per hour on two wheels.

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This is what it sounded like Mailman Tony was driving when you’d hear him taking the corners.

Mailman Tony used to hang out with my brother Shawn (which for some reason at the time, didn’t seem as odd as it should have) but not until after Shawn was old enough to recklessly drive his own car. He liked my brother Shawn, but Tony LOVED my other brother Joey! He’d show up at the front door with a box in hand and ask for my brother – proudly stating “I have a package for Joey.” We all wondered what he was really trying to deliver because when Joey looked at the box that Tony had proudly thrust forward, the strange part is that it would always be addressed to my mother.

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We could never pinpoint if it was my brother having a matching perm to his or if it was his personality that our mailman liked, but we always just assume it was Joey’s skin-tight white jeans and the purple pick hanging out of his back pocket. Either way, no one was getting in the way of Tony trying to give my brother his package so my brother would run and hide once he heard those mail truck tires squealing while Tony was rounding the corner!

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Giving the Best Man speech at Joey’s wedding showing people what his hair used to look like…

On the flip side and to the Postal Service’s credit, we had the best mailman I’ve ever had when I was in college. He’d walk up our porch, lean in the open window where we were stationed on the living room couch and process the handover; he’d always have our mail to deliver and we’d always have a beer or a joint to deliver back – it was the perfect partnership. He’d puff, puff, give and then the mail was passed left and he was off up the hill. It was the height of postal efficiency not seen since Newman’s tenure on Seinfeld and the best part: I never a missed any of my magazines! Not once did I ever wait for a God damn issue! If I had to pick the one thing that I miss most about college – it wouldn’t be my full head of hair or my friends and crazy adventures; I miss the regularity of my magazine deliveries.

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Is consistency too much to ask? My wife thinks I should let it go or just buy a subscription for the mailman too, but I think I might just start opening the window and passing a beer or some fine kush out during his deliveries! Unless the Russians are now hacking the snail mail systems too, there is no reason for this to be happening.

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I’ve considered getting a fingerprint kit and mailing myself a magazine, but my wife won’t let me pursue it…Don’t you worry though, I’m gonna get to the bottom of this even if I have to get Ask Asa or get Dateline involved…

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CelebriTuesdays: I felt The Big Sick after Kumail’s egregious Oscar snub!

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big sick poster

I know what you’re thinking: the Oscars always omit deserving nominees and even though the field was expanded to include more films, this year is no different. How can the Academy legitimately present the best films and egregiously omit Kumail Nanjiani’s best work on the movie screen: Poop Talk? That’s obviously much more fun to talk about than me following after him down half a block to get a photo with him…

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If you thought I was referring to The Big Sick, you might be sorry you clicked here. That’s also a really amazing film, but if I’m honest – it kind of pales in comparison to the depths of emotion and honesty that Nanjiani shows in Poop Talk. Forget about Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, this is the real deal – the meat and potatoes if you will. No, I am not making this shit up and you won’t see anything more real on your screen this year. There are no avian females or billboards here, but there are plenty of comedians and experts dropping their truth while celebrating the very last taboo: poop talk.

I will admit that when I first heard about Poop Talk, I was a tad bit offended that I was excluded from participating in the making of this masterpiece. Could there really be a better “expert” on the complex intricacies of number two than moi? I don’t think so and it’s shocking anyone else could either. That being said, since I am a part-time mature adult, I took a cue from Elsa and Let it Go. Also, I thought I’d channel these feelings of exclusion and abandonment into focusing on getting myself a role in the inevitable sequel which they should make just for the title alone: Poop Talk: Number 2 – Dance til I Puma Pants! It’s toilet porn with a lot more corn and you bet your sweet bippy I want in on that!

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Poop Talk is in movie theatres and Video on Demand on ITunes on February 18th so get that Valentine’s Day Shopping done right now – who needs flowers or jewelry, when this is the gift that will show the depts. Of your affection. It’s guaranteed to bring out the smiles and laughter and I heard that Meryl Streep actually said it moved her like nothing has in the past few years. She also could have been talking about Nanjiani’s chili moving through her which would make more sense, but who am I to argue with her Streep-ness? Full disclosure, no one has ever heard her say anything like that, but it does sound like something she might say or it’s more likely that if the Dingo that ate her baby could talk, this is exactly what it would say…

In all seriousness, we should feel extremely fortunate because it’s not very often that you see an Oscar nominee chatting it up about dookies. In a perfect world, The Big Sick would win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar next month if only so that he could rush the stage extolling the virtues of poop and Imodium…I’m rooting for you Kumail – now let’s hang out and swap shitting stories Buddy! Friends talk about the jobs and family, but Best Friends talk about poop and boy have I got a shitload of stories for you!

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This has nothing to do with this post, but I would never be able to use this bathroom!

Poop Talk trailer here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrzZ0ceFyRY

CelebriTuesdays: Oh Mo She Didn’t! Beat me with a hairbrush and call me Precious – I met Mo’Nique!!!

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Dreams come true people, dreams come true. Last week, I sent a message out to the universe to meet Mo’Nique the Oscar winner from Precious, and just like in The Secret, they sent her to me. OK, full disclosure, I did ask the universe to also have her hit me and call me Precious while she was pummeling me, but sometimes you can’t be greedy and just getting a picture is enough. More importantly, I want you to take every single thing you have heard about Mo’Nique and toss it aside because I’m here to tell you that this woman is really awesome!

 

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I’m a nightmare because technology is no friend of mine and by technology I really mean the complicated things to manage such as the camera on your phone. When I say this, I’m not exaggerating and as my friend Forrest said “I’m not a smart man.” I literally have no right to ever make fun of my mother-in-law for not being able to cut and paste when I can’t even work the damn camera on my phone. I have taken thousands of photos and still, I get myself into a state of confusion and even the simplest of pictures goes off the rails and looks like shit or doesn’t take. You may be reading this and wondering how it relates to Mo’Nique, but it does.

 

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When you meet a famous person and they agree to take a photo with you, it’s not like you have an endless amount of time – they’re not going to stand around and wait all day. Your friends wouldn’t stand around and wait, so you can’t expect that a stranger will either. You have to be ready for the picture and most importantly, you need to be respectful of their time as this is an awesome thing they’re doing which they really don’t have to! That being said, I had a technological breakdown of sorts and of course it happened when it was my turn with Mo’nique. OK, that last bit just sounded a little dirtier than I meant it to, but you know what I’m getting at and thankfully there’s No’Nique to worry about mechanical issues with that equipment if you know what I’m saying 😉

 

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If only I was this cool…

 

 

Anyway, as I walked over with the crowd of people asking for pictures, Mo’Nique could not have been nicer. She was hanging out, chatting everyone up, hugging everyone, just not in a rush and making sure that everyone got a picture with her. She was smiling and kind and seriously, just a sweetie. I have been doing this long enough to know when someone doesn’t want to be bothered and she was awesome. So there she is, taking nice pictures with everyone and there was a bunch of people around; TMZ was waiting to interview her and her bodyguard was trying to get her to their car – when it was finally my turn…

 

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I’m almost embarrassed to share this video as I usually like you to think I’m a pretty cool dude, but it’s worth a good chuckle to see how flustered I got and what a fool I actually look and sound like. Pay attention to the facial expressions on the girl in the background waiting her turn and just looking at me like I’m such a moron. When it was finally my turn, I suddenly got flustered and all worked up because the camera on my phone was on video – not photo – and I couldn’t get it to switch back or take the picture. I thought for sure I’d miss my chance and that my Precious moment was over before it had even started. I could see the annoyed looks on the faces of the people waiting around me and actually having been in their shoes before, I know how it is to not get a photo because someone was taking too long with camera issues. Mo’Nique could have just blown me off and walked away and she probably should have, but she didn’t. She was really nice and truthfully, she probably thought I was slow or something was definitely wrong with me since little children can use camera phones without issue and here was an adult that couldn’t even snap a simple God Damn photo. It was as if it was the first time I’d ever seen a camera phone…

 

 

I’m not saying it was like when I was mistaken for a retarded person twice, but the looks on crowd’s faces were similar.  She was like “OK Baby” and then she was like “Are you sure? Come on” and then she came back over to me after taking someone else’s picture and took one with me. Success! Seriously thought, it was very cool of her to do that and people don’t normally care if you got a picture or not. They’re usually rushing to get to their next appearance and basically, it’s really awkward to stand around with strangers gawking and snapping pictures.

 

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This was a semi-disaster, but luckily it worked out. It was my own hubris biting me in the ass as I was starting to feel confident that my photography skills had been improving, and then another stumble. You may look at some of my photos and think they’re not half bad, but here’s a few you haven’t seen:

 

 

I’m lucky I can work the remote for our television, so I’m not expecting anything artistic or even trying filters, but a person should be able to at least get a decent shot of two people standing next to each other. I mean come on – it’s actually getting worse now. Look at these – just how does someone try for a selfie with Seal and end up with a picture of their shoe? Or sidle up to Taron Egerton for a shot and end up with a picture of Grey Man the good ghost? It’s like I don’t have control of my faculties or my fingers…just pathetic photo skills.

 

 

I appreciate her being nice and spending a little time with me, especially since Mo’Nique has been getting a bad rap lately with Netflix trying to pay her less than other comedians for a Stand-up special. I say, who cares what you were thinking Netflix – this is a PR nightmare and, more importantly, she’s an Oscar Winner! Mo’Nique needs to have her Golden Globe made into a giant ring like something Elizabeth Taylor would have worn and turn that Oscar into a headpiece like they wear to Ascot so she can rock them and remind Netflix that if a woman of color can beat the odds and make it all the way to the podium at the Academy Awards, skimping out on paying her fairly is not gonna fly!

 

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I’ve only had this one interaction with her, but she left a great impression with me and the crowd – she was sweet and so patient with everyone (ahem, me). Some of the other people getting pictures have met her before and said that she’s been a sweetheart every single time they’ve seen her. Of course, there are always two sides to every story, but cut her some slack and give her the benefit of the doubt. Also, Netflix pay the woman what she’s worth! If for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do, please do it because she will whup your ass like Precious if you don’t!

 

Get Out: I, Tonya is more like I, Oscar as the nominations announcement takes Shape!

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Forget about the Government shutdown or any of those nimrods running this country like a second-rate car wash and prioritize what’s important: Tuesday morning’s Oscar nominations announcement! This year’s race has been all over the place and exciting because there’s not one movie running away with everything – the critic’s prizes have been all over the place so Best Picture isn’t necessarily sewn up just yet.

 

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Forget Christmas or New Year’s – Oscar Season is the most wonderful time of the year! If you don’t agree then you can just Get Out? If you had told me a year ago that this little horror movie would be an Oscar nominee – I’d have told you to get out, but in just a few hours it most certainly will be! I don’t know if I’ll get a Best Picture nomination, but it’s a really great film that’s sure to be recognized tomorrow.

 

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I’m not one to launch into a checklist of all the categories with who I think will be nominated because that’s boring and that’s typical and I am neither of those things. We’ll jump around, but let’s talk Best Director. Do I think Lady Bird will get a Best Picture nomination – definitely. Do I think Greta Gerwig will get a Best Director nomination for it? I’m really hoping that I’m wrong, but unfortunately, I’m leaning towards no. Not because she doesn’t deserve it or she shouldn’t be nominated; I want to be wrong on this but I’m leaning towards no based on Oscar history. At this point, I don’t know that there’s anything to stop Guillermo del Toro from winning for The Shape of Water, but the Director’s Branch doesn’t go with the popular vote for their nominations and that’s especially true recently.

 

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It may seem odd to overlook the front runner to one of the most talked about films this year, but there are only five spots and this is an old boys club that might just stick with the veterans like Spielberg and Ridley Scott over newer directors like Greta Gerwig or Jordan Peele. Also, there have only been four women nominated for Best Director and only one female winner. In 90 Years – how is that even possible? That fact in itself is hard to ignore and pushes me towards a Gerwig snub Tuesday morning…

 

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If snubbing Greta Gerwig seems absolutely crazy, remember that this is the same Director’s branch that didn’t give Martin Scorcese a Best Director Oscar until The Departed in 2006! Take that in folks – Eminem was an Oscar winner for 8 Mile years before Martin-effin-Scorcese! Shameful as that is, Christopher Nolan has never even been nominated for Best Director – this nomination for Dunkirk will be his first! This is one branch of the Academy that doesn’t seem to go with emotions or what the public does like the acting branch. In fact, in recent years the Best Director hasn’t even lined up with the Best Picture winner which, historically, was never the case.

 

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Remember how great it was when Kathryn Bigelow stormed the stage for The Hurt Locker to win Best Director? That was an anomaly. She was snubbed for Zero Dark Thirty shortly after in the same year that be Affleck was snubbed for Argo – which actually won Best Picture! How the hell does the film winning Best Picture not get a nomination for Best Director? Affleck’s snub was the best thing that happened to Argo; it made them the underdog and they ran on a “shame on you for not nominating Ben Affleck” campaign which gained momentum and won the trophy. That could certainly happen with Lady Bird if Gerwig isn’t nominated tomorrow – it would up the chances in a race that’s not over by a long shot and march Lady Bird right up to the podium!

 

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Along with the snubs are the surprise nominations that come along every now and then; there are always a few head scratchers that seem to just come out of nowhere and I love them. Last year, Amy Adams was snubbed for Arrival which I didn’t love and then her costar Michael Shannon came out of nowhere and got nominated for Nocturnal Animals which he could do again with The Shape of Water. It’s a film that everyone has seen so he could possibly hear his name called if the film builds momentum. It’s extremely doubtful for so many reasons but just know that if he hears his name, Woody Harrelson or Armie Hammer definitely won’t.

 

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Both The Shape of Water and Three Billboards will have three acting nominations but Sam Rockwell – it’s about damn time! Three Billboards will be the first film since Bugsy in 1992 with two supporting actors nominated for the same film. Those nominations are givens, but although quite unlikely, it’s entirely possible for Jessica Chastain in Molly’s Game to sneak into Meryl Streep’s The Post spot and Daniel Day Lewis might not get the love people are expecting for Phantom Thread leaving an open spot for Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out.

 

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My big wish for the nominations is to see some love for Mudbound and The Big Sick and not just because I met Kumail Nanjiani and he’s awesome. I don’t think Mary J Blige is gonna make the cut for a Supporting Actress for Mudbound, so I’m rooting for her in the Best Original Song category! Mudbound is a great film, with a great story and a great cast that just happens to be written and directed by Dee Rees and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves. It should land a screenplay nod tomorrow, but getting a Best Picture nomination would be amazing, but it’s a very long shot.

 

 

 

If you think the race is over, consider that final Oscar voting closes on February 27th and the ceremony isn’t until March 4th – that is a lifetime away from now in Oscar campaigning and although Three Billboards has momentum right now, it’ll be hard to maintain that for the next month; I, Tonya could club the competition and surge up to a prime spot between now and then.

 

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The only AA I care about: Academy Awards! Hollywood hasn’t been this fixated on the Reds since Joseph McCarthy!

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“This year has been all about the Reds and it has nothing to do with Warren Beatty!”

 

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The Oscars are finally here and I couldn’t be more excited. Just like all of you, I’ve been cramming in all the last minute nominated films and I could not be more pumped up about this year’s crop. There is truly something for everyone – Action, drama, sci-fi, musicals, sports, musicals, war, and seriously – one cannot talk about the year in films without mentioning Hollywood overcoming a HUGE hurdle that most people won’t talk about: after years of neglecting nominees of color, this has been an extraordinary year for Gingers! In the span of two years it went from #OSCARSOWHITE to #OSCARSORED! Forget about Rogue One – It’s more like Rouge One this year at the movies!

 

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Nicole Kidman in Lion – Boom! Emma Stone in La La Land – BOOM! Amy Adams in Arrival AND Nocturnal Animals – Snubbed but I’d like to give her that Boom! Isabelle Huppert in Elle – BOOM! Lucas Hedges in Manchester by the Sea (reddish brown, but you can’t hide from me) – BOOM! Deadpool – BOOM! The Red Turtle – BOOM! The Lobster – BOOM! Poppy in Trolls – (technically pink, but we’ll give it to you) – BOOM!

 

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I’m not gonna go on a rant because I’m not a La La Lunatic, but if you haven’t been swept up this year by the sheer scope and style of the offerings – you just might be dead inside. I actually checked to see if rigor mortis had set in on him because my brother Joey hated Manchester by the Sea. Can you imagine? The scacriledge! Casey Affleck caused me to need anti-depressants and Michelle Williams performance still haunts me months later.

 

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This is not just to say how amazing La La Land is I La-La-Loved it and Emma Stone will rightfully dance away with her Best Actress Oscar tonight! If it was a just world, Ryan Gosling would win as well, but in a year when Casey Affleck’s pain tore me up and Denzel Washington reminded us why he’s the best working actor alive – Gosling’s nomination is a win in itself!

 

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I would have rather Andrew Garfield had been nominated for Silence rather than Hacksaw Ridge. I might be in the minority, but I didn’t love the movie – I actually wanted to take a hacksaw to cut myself in half just to make it stop. Personal issues aside, Mel Gibson is an extremely talented director and it was well made; I just felt that it was slow and drawn out – especially when Garfield’s character was saving soldiers during the last battle on the ridge. We get it, he saved seventy five people; do we need to show twenty rescues? I felt exhausted just watching him struggle to carry those soldiers to safety.

 

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Although I’m a big fan of his work, Andrew Garfield’s performance felt hokey and cartoonish at times. I couldn’t tell if his character was supposed to be “slow” in the beginning, but it was like there was a little something “off” about the guy. No hot nurse would have fallen in love with someone like that – they would have fallen for the cop that helped them get the restraining order. I felt the same way about Joel Edgerton in Loving; I know it’s based on a real person’s story, but was something wrong with the guy? I’m not making fun because I’ve actually been mistaken for a retarded person myself, but I couldn’t help but think – is he supposed to be handicapped? It was distracting and I almost felt like Ruth Negga’s Best Actress nomination had more to do with her keeping a straight face while her partner showed us what the love child of Forrest Gump and Sling Blade would look like!

 

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Speaking of miscast roles, Vince Vaughn was horribly miscast as a drill sergeant in Hacksaw Ridge – I felt like at any minute he was hazing him that he might lean in Garfield’s face and whisper “Just the tip, just for a second…” After this and True Detective Season two, he really needs to just stick with comedies…

 

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Hell or High Water; Sort of like the way I felt about Luke Wheeler on Nashville – if you don’t have something nice to say, move on! I got nothing for ya and I’m rolling on to one of the most amazing films I’ve seen all year: Jim: The James Foley Story. I haven’t seen such a powerful, grab you by the heels documentary that I absolutely loved since Searching for Sugarman and this one was a doozie. If I could tell you to seek out one film nominated this year – let this be it! No offense to OJ: Made in America or Life, Animated, but this is the Best Documentary of the year! I’m just grateful that it was nominated for Sting’s powerful song “The Empty Chair” or I might have missed it altogether.

 

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Florence Foster Jenkins? I love her Streepness too, but I’d rather watch Jodie Foster’s last colonoscopy than ever hear about this movie again. Meryl Streep is great in everything but in a year when Annette Benning made 20th Century Women, Amy Adams had not just Arrival, but Nocturnal Animals as well, Jessica Chastain in Mrs. Sloane; it’s almost a crime to line Meryl up for this. For the first time in probably ever – the Best Actress pool was overflowing with amazing, amazing, amazing performances that there was really no way to pick five and not leave out multiple deserving, go for broke, career-best performances, but I am still shocked that Amy Adams isn’t in there. Besides Streep, I can’t think who you’d replace. Natalie Portman was Jackie Kennedy! Isabelle Huppert was crazy amazing in Elle, Ruth Negga was great and Emma, Emma, Emma – I just loved you!

 

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You wanna talk about the year’s biggest snub? The supporting role that was inexcusably overlooked was the green dress that Amy Adams wore at the end of Nocturnal Animals! She has never looked more amazing than she has here and that green dress brought more feelings out of this writer than I should be admitting. I read that the original title of the film was Nocturnal Emissions and after seeing that dress, I can tell why.

 

 

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Best Supporting Role – this dress!

 

 

So many other non-redhead performances were amazing this year too, but there’s just so little time to gush: Joe’s Violin, Moonlight, Jackie, Fences, A Man Called Ove, the short film Sing, Toni Erdmann (even if only for that “Greatest Love of All” scene), La Femme et le TGV, Captain Fantastic…just so much to love. Go and enjoy the Oscars. In a year when there are so many touching and powerful performances you can look at it two ways: A) be thankful that the amazing Lion, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight grabbed us and transported us through emotional journeys or B) scratch your head at how far we’ve fallen as a society when awful things like Passengers, Suicide Squad or Dr. Strange are Oscar nominated…I for one could have lived without finding out where Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them were!

 

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A Patriotic Tribute

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They took one look at me in fatigues and changed their mind...

They took one look at me in fatigues and changed their mind…

On this fine day when we stand in tribute to the great men and women of our armed forces who fight each and every day for our freedom to abuse Imodium AD and write a crazy blog like this, I went to the local recruiting station. Writing this blog is providing an essential service to the country, but I started to question whether I was doing enough and considered enlisting in the Marines. After a quick glance at me in the fatigues, the recruiter thanked me for my interest but assured me that my enlistment wouldn’t be fair to my wife and kids, wouldn’t be to my fair to my friends and colleagues, and above all – it wouldn’t be fair to the Marines! He saluted me and asked that I promise to continue my vital work on this site so here is a tribute to the Marines and all the other armed service men and women risking life and limb the only way I know how:

https://immodiumabuser.com/2012/08/31/me-at-parris-island-with-the-marines-no-good-can-come-of-this/

I just fell for a girl named Glozell and my wife thinks its swell!

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Shouting

When you find something good you want to share it. When you stumble upon something crazy – you want to shout it. Consider this me shouting. Immodium Abusers, meet Glozell!!!

Glozell 1

I am not one to tell anyone to stop reading this site to head to another site, but today I’ll make an exception: Glozell is an icon with over 1000 videos on Youtube. One glance will have you spending the rest of your afternoon trolling through her site. Her cinnamon challenge is my absolute favorite and has gotten over 25 million views. Granted, at least a third of those are from me and my coworkers, but still…Her ghetto hunger games video will make you forget all about Jennifer Lawrence and beg for her to be recast in the next film, her interpretation of Maya Angelou’s work will leave you speechless and don’t even try to tell me her Beyonce lip syncing isn’t hysterical…

glozell teeth jpeg

Check out the Cinammon Challenge video for a starter and then check out her Youtube page and if you’re not convinced after all that, you might be dead. Anyone that can pull off Green lipstick like this (even if it might be nail polish and not lipstick) is hysterical and makes me look like a sane person. Her sense of humor reminds me of a young Nicole Kidman in The Hours…OK, she is nothing like Nicole, but anything that reminds me of this picture again can’t be that bad now can it?

For some strange reason, my wife doesn't believe that I got this magazine to read about Celine's Floridian getaway...

For some strange reason, my wife doesn’t believe that I got this magazine to read about Celine’s Floridian getaway…

Check out Glozell and let me know what you think of her. If you’re already a fan – tell me which video is your favorite. If you don’t like her – there’s something wrong with you. If all else fails, your welcome for the Nicole Kidman picture…Here is her Cinammon challenge video (LINK HERE) and here is her Youtube page – Enjoy!

You down with OCD, yeah you know me…my Toiletries regiminent revisited

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Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am under absolute duress to be ready for anything in any reasonable amount of time. Even more than that, I can’t even get ready in an unreasonable amount of time. Celebrities don’t take this long to prep for the Oscars – but for me to run to the supermarket is a production. I have tried things to quicken the pace, but sort of like a gentle soufflé, you cannot rush certain things.

My wife always argues with me about how long it takes me to get ready, but while she looks absolutely perfect and requires very little touch-ups from the moment she rises out of bed, when I wake up I look like one of the zombies marching in back of the float in the Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance video.

My toiletry regimen alone is a great big process in and of itself: I set my Ipod for one song and then get in the shower. It should not take longer to shower than one random song. That’s not the time-consuming part. The exception to this one-song rule is if you have fallen into the cesspool (Lance) or had a plumbing pipe full of shit (literally, full of shit) explode into your mouth and onto your chest (Hal) – At that point, take as long as you feel necessary in there and no one will say a word.

Back to the routine; I like to start at the top and then work my way down. The opening act, or my first facial scrub, is just a tingly little wake-up call and then we head straight for the follow-up nourishing face wash and immediately into the Bliss face wash after that. I then grab my two thickening shampoos (it’s sort of the same philosophy that I have with Pumpkin muffins, where if one is good – two will be much better) and wash my hair. Obviously, the shampoo is dripping down my body and I would need to scrub again after it – so it just makes sense to use the body bar after the hair is done. Moving on to my Oil of Olay Age Defying soap for certain parts of the body – though never on this gentle face with a bar soap! I actually don’t understand why anyone would choose to use a bar of soap to wash their body and then use that SAME bar to wash their face. Any bar of soap that touches my feet or cleans my balls surely isn’t going anywhere near my face!

Blue Body wash is next for the rest of my body that the soap doesn’t cover. I don’t mind scents, but I feel like it needs to be blue or it won’t fully clean me. I don’t know why blue body wash strikes me as more thorough – but I just can’t use another color. Then I dry off and get my robe and waist towel (what my wife lovingly refers to as a skirt) and put on my Birkenstocks so my clean feet won’t touch the ground. Did I forget to mention that I HATE to be barefoot and just cannot do it? Nothing gets me worked up more than that. OK, the beach does – I mean you’re sitting in dirt – It doesn’t make any sense!!!

(I actually had a mini panic attack at the airport last summer when I rushed out of the house in flip-flops not thinking and then had to go through security when I got to the airport. I almost scrapped the whole trade show that I was going to for work when they told me I had to take the flip-flops off. I asked for some napkins or paper towels so I wouldn’t have to walk on the floor – but they looked at me like I was the crazy one. Needless to say the sight of me scrubbing my feet in the men’s bathroom sink immediately after going through security didn’t go over well. Two people looked at me like I just escaped from the mental hospital and another told me that I was crazy. Screw them – people can shave in the sink and hair is everywhere, but one foot on the counter sets them off? I was balancing like Nadia Comaneci because if one of my barefoot little toes had touched that disgusting airport bathroom floor – they would have taken me out on a stretcher right into the ambulance.)

For my next act, I move straight into oral hygiene and start with my Listerine pre-rinse and floss and Q-Tips to check for wax or and then grab my Radius toothbrush to start on the choppers with my Tom’s of Maine fennel toothpaste. Don’t let them fool you, if it’s not fennel – it’s not fine. I will not use a toothbrush that isn’t Radius – it just gets the job done! If you haven’t tried it – get one right now. Your brushing will shoot right up to the next level and you’ll be thanking me for it for years to come. The zesty tingle after a good brushing just starts me on the right path and keeps me going all day.

If you were just thinking that I was finished and ready to leave the bathroom, you would be mistaken. The next stop on the OCD Express is my eye serum for the bags under my eyes (regular face creams are just not gentle enough for this area) then we move on to the T-Zone cream (for the nose and forehead) which tends to be an oilier area so you have to use a product of a different consistency and then I finish up with my gentle SPF Facial cream for the chin, cheeks, and neck area.

I hit the Styling Paste to spruce up this thin crow’s nest I’m calling my hair these days, and then an extra healthy spot of Rogaine Foam. Rogaine is the only one of my toiletries I have a heavy hand with – you never know. I now head for the brush to get my hair under control and give it a “look.” With my hair, I try to go for the “messy, cover-up” look to make it look thicker, but it usually just comes across as the “desperate, comb-over” look.

We haven’t even gotten to the deodorant (Spray? No way!) and cologne yet. Lately, I have been going back and forth between Tiffany for Men and Diesel. I’m actually a little scared of using the Diesel at full force with more than one squirt – so I go very sparingly. It says right there on the bottle in big letters to “Use with Caution” and I take that warning very seriously. Seriously, the last thing I need is to go waltzing into work after one too many squirts of Diesel and set that little minx in Accounting off into a Diesel infused stupor. Instead of her flirting with the Subway guy at lunch like she usually does, she’ll be trying to steal the pickle off my McRib sandwich! That’s the power of Diesel!

I grab the tweezers for a quick little maintenance check and to make sure there is no hair trying to escape out of my nostrils or ears. There is absolutely nothing more offensive or careless than nose hair. There’s just no excuse for it. Why don’t we use this as the general rule of thumb for nose hair from now on: If you can grab it and twirl it or if small children can jump rope with it – there’s a problem. If your nose hair is long enough to floss your teeth with – stay the hell home and trim it!

If this is you – by all means trim that!

One last check in the mirror for the once over and then I am ready to leave the bathroom and pick out clothes to wear. I did leave out one minor detail which doesn’t help my time spent in the bathroom: I have to do all of these things a certain number of times and simply cannot veer off of that. If I don’t brush my teeth forty-five times – I need to start over. If I don’t rub the Rogaine on my head into a circle seventy-five times – I need to start over. Also, if I go out of order in my routine in any way, I need to start over. That’s not a joke either – I don’t think of it as compulsive, I think of it as thorough. I will literally get back in the shower and start over.

If this sounds excessive or crazy, just imagine that I shower multiple (3 – 5) times a day. When I wake up (obviously), every time I take a shit, if it’s summer and I’m sweaty – add at least two more showers that day, before I got to the gym, when I get back from the gym…It’s actually a good thing that I’m overweight and have decided to cut out my time at the gym so I don’t risk a heart attack or I would have to get up even earlier than I already do to take another shower.

This doesn’t even take into consideration me wearing gloves to sleep in after I apply the hand cream. Since I wash my hands so much, I constantly have really dry hands. They’re so dry that when I shake hands with someone, they wince in pain because my paws feel like sandpaper. Add my blinders that I can’t sleep without and you can imagine how much my wife enjoys co-habitating with me.

If you didn’t feel bad for my wife before this – I’m sure you have now joined the growing crowd that does. I actually used to feel really bad for her too because she is so patient, but then one day I stopped. The day that I stopped feeling bad was the day that her and her crazy sister actually jumped me in their mother’s basement to try to “Cure me” of my OCD. They had seen a documentary where this lady got a vacuum cleaner dumped on her head while she was duct taped to a chair and they got inspired. She sat there crying her eyes out and the light bulb went off above their heads.

When I say that they jumped me, I actually mean that they jumped on top of me and threw me to the ground while the two of them tried to remove their shoes and put their bare feet on my face. Their fucking bare feet on my face! Who they thought that would help, I certainly don’t know, but I went all Wu Tang on them like I was back on the streets. OK, I was never actually on the streets and there are grade School kids tougher than me, but at that moment – I imagined myself a gang member or as the epitome of strength and courage: Chuck Norris.

At this point in the game when two crazy bitches get all up in your grill like that – the “don’t hit a girl” rules fail to apply. I was all Chris Brown throwing punches left and right at those girls. Luckily for them I have as much coordination as a newborn kitten and I punch like a five-year old girl, so I was mostly hitting myself. I was screaming for help to old lady Ann that lived next door but to no avail. I was bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali and was finally able to get away and run up the stairs to freedom (and another shower.) Yep – they knocked me to that basement floor and there was no way that I wasn’t going to need a shower.

I grew up in a house with a crazy kamikaze sister who would turn into the flying Whoozini and attack out of nowhere and now here I was married to another ninja attacker and her crazy wombat sidekick. Needless to say, it’s been years since that happened, but I still never turn my back on either sister at family functions for fear of a repeat performance. Sometimes life just isn’t fair!

Me at Parris Island with the Marines? No good can come of this!

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When my cousin’s Leaky’s boyfriend graduated from the Marines Boot Camp, he invited our whole family to come down to Parris Island for the ceremony. It’s not the Oscars for Christ’s sake – just because you’re invited, doesn’t mean you have to go. The very idea of an outdoor ceremony (forget that it was in South Carolina with that sweltering heat) was a reason enough for me to RSVP with a big fat No Way Jose, but then they ganged up on me.

I get it that he was doing a service to our country and he’s patriotic and we should support the troops and blah blah blah…I get all that but let me tell you a secret  – I don’t respond well to many things, and the sweltering heat is at the top on my list behind public toilets and apple cider. It just came across like a selfish request. Sure the girlfriend had to go, but why was I being punished? Don’t roll your eyes at me – I’m selfish, I recognize selfish requests when I see them! Also, if Hallmark doesn’t sell a card for the occasion there is absolutely no obligation to attend. I have never seen a “You’re really a Champ because you got through Boot Camp” card, have you? I loved the guy and all, but there was no way I was going. That was until my aunt told me that she wouldn’t hound me about how much I drank, she’d let me sleep late, but most importantly, she would give me money. She knew it would mean a lot to him to have us all there and when I was in college, I was sort of like a Times Square Hooker – I wasn’t afraid to take money for the promise of a “Hot Time” (get it “the heat in South Carolina”– a hot time?) and we made our plans. What could happen, right?

So we make our way down there and get to the hotel to drop our bags off. My aunt and my cousin went to get their nails done and that kind of crap for the ceremony the next day, so I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation: found the closest bar. My aunt’s boyfriend and I hit about six bars close to the hotel over the next few hours and I was tanked. We went back to the hotel and I went to bed without incident. That’s what I thought happened, but apparently I was so drunk and hungry from not eating before we drank, that I was scouring the halls until I found a row of vending machines. In my drunken wisdom, I proceeded to break into one of the vending machines by picking the edge of the door open and forcing my hand and shoulder into the machine so that I could loot it. I’m not sure where the super human strength came from, but I was like Superman ripping the door off of a car and reaching in to get the goodies. This might have been fine had I got the snacks and not dropped my glasses into the vending machine as I connected with a bag of Cheetos. When I peeked in to peruse the selection – my four hundred dollar frames slipped off my nose and in a flash they were gone…That’s what I get for vandalizing shit. It wasn’t like I could go to the Front Desk and say that I lost my glasses while pillaging their vending machine, now could I?

The next morning, I was awoken by my crazy aunt kicking the end of my bed and yelling to get up. I lifted my blinders to give that hooker a piece of my mind for waking me up like that, but I could see that she was already in a state. I was like “What’s wrong with you?” which  cerrtainly didn’t help her miserable mood. “What’s wrong with me? Go look in my room and see if you can tell!” Curious, I went through the connecting door to find the room covered in cheese doodles, sun chips, popcorn, munchos, and all manners of snacks strewn about everywhere. I then proceeded to tell her how disgusting her boyfriend obviously was to make such a mess because I assumed he had done it. It was a mistake to assume that. Apparently, when I came back to the room with the snacks, I told them how I looted the machine and compared myself to Robin Hood. I was in a overly sharing mood with the snacks and jumped bed to bed dancing and singing causing them to explode out of their packages all over the room…At that moment, I knew just how Mumble felt in Happy Feet when they just wouldn’t let him dance…

I didn’t really care about the mess, so I went back to lie down. That’s when then they really started screaming about how we had to go or we’ll be late for the graduation blah, blah, blah…It’s that moment when I was told that just because I went out and got drunk, I was still going and wouldn’t make them late – there was no getting out of it. I slowly got ready, but I was dragging big time and wasn’t feeling all that well. We left a half hour later and I still looked like who did what and ran to me…

There I was, emerging out of the suburban when we got to Parris Island and I knew that I was gonna stand out here. Picture me emerging from my cocoon of self-delusion, rising out and rocking my white linen suit like Puffy at one of his White Parties in the Hamptons. I’m not sure who the hell I thought I was, but with my pasty, albino-like white skin I was like a nightlight in a sea of camouflage everywhere.

Also,  what about those nasty sand fleas that inhabit Parris Island? Don’t the Marines go through enough without having to deal with these disgusting little parasites that you can’t really see that attack you in droves…They must have smelled fresh meat when I walked in and called for reinforcements to attack. I was scratching like a stray dog with fleas and immediately got back in the car. “I’m done here” I exclaimed and went back into the air conditioning. I looked over and my aunt had gotten back into the car too like nothing was wrong. “How are these sand fleas not biting the shit out of you?” I asked. She looked side to side to make sure no one was too close to the car, then threw her seat back almost flat and then ripped her hands up and under her wig to scratch for all she was worth before ripping the wig right off of her head. She went to town scratching those fleas while she shook that wig out for all it was worth. Apparently, the Rachel Welch collection of wigs aren’t insect repellent – who would’ve thunk it? (As a side note, she wears wigs because she has bad hair – don’t feel bad for her it’s not a health issue. It’s about her having bad hair people, not a medical thing)

After we took the tour and then we were supposed to head over to the stands near the field to get seats for the Graduation ceremony. I’m not sure that I was hung over as much as I was actually still drunk and the heat wasn’t playing very nicely with me. Me and my white linen suit were schvitzing up a storm and I knew this couldn’t possibly end well for me. We get to the stands and apparently, these people must have slept there the night before, because the only seats available were like thirty rows up at the top of the bleachers. When I tell you that there was not a stich of shade anywhere on that field, I am not exaggerating. I was like a sprinkler the way the sweat was pouring off of me as we made our way up.  We finally made it up and found seats in the very last tippy-top row and I was already soaked through my T-shirt from sweating. As the ceremony was starting, I started to get nauseous. I wasn’t going to make it through this ceremony and it had only just begun.

I lean across my cousin and whisper to my aunt “I need the keys to the car – I have to go back to the hotel.” She tried to ignore me as if I wasn’t there. “Hey, I said I need the keys right now – I’m not gonna make it if you know what I mean. I’m gonna be sick.” Nothing back from her and she actually turned her head away from me.” I leaned fully across my cousin and grabbed her mother’s arm and said – not a whisper this time – “GIVE ME THE FUCKING KEYS RIGHT NOW  or I am going to be sick and shit right here in these bleachers!” She couldn’t look away this time because there were about ten people tittering around us and staring at me. She gave me a nasty look and said “why don’t you just take another Imodium” as if I hadn’t already swallowed eight tablets…“If you don’t give me those God damn keys right now I will rip that wig right off your head and throw it – GIVE ME THE KEYS RIGHT NOW – I DON’T HAVE THEW TIME TO ARGUE – I’M IN A WHITE SUIT!” She handed me the keys and gave me another look of disgust…

I tried to be nonchalant and not cause  a distraction as I made my way down the bleachers, but it wasn’t meant to be. I don’t know if you’ve ever been severely drunk/hung over and tried to make your way through a crowd while moving down an incline all the while clenching for all you’re worth. I was falling into people, stepping on them and knocking in to almost everyone I went past because even when I’m not mid-clench, coordination isn’t my strong suit. I thought it was over for me because I wasn’t even at the halfway point of the bleachers and my stomach was rumbling like mad…Time was of the essence and one wrong step meant the end of that white suit… I must have had fifteen comments/dirty looks/people pushing me back as I made my way down, but I finally got to the field. Then I walked partially on the field while trying to find which way to get to the parking lot when I realized that there was no way I would make the fifteen minute drive back to the hotel and, more importantly, I had no idea where the car was parked.  I was panicking and had seconds to spare when I saw the cross on the building across from where I was: God was like a lighthouse leading me through the storm…

This is the actual chapel at Parris Island.

I knew that I had mere moments and bolted off the field, across the parking lot, through some grass and into the Chapel. Sensing my distress and seeing the state I was in, a lady in the Chapel said “the restroom is back there” and pointed down a long hallway. I stormed through the men’s room door and into the first stall and let out a huge sigh of relief that my fragile white suit was still intact and would live to see another day. At least this is over, I remember thinking…but that was before I got nauseous and started to throw up. I was hovering and pivoting back and forth on the toilet as the vomit dictated; when out of nowhere I heard gunshots…I started screaming at the top of my lungs like Meryl Streep when that dingo ate her baby. It was at that moment when three patrol soldiers that had saw me running off the field and followed me to see where I was running. When they heard me screaming like a little girl, they burst into the room and kicked my stall door in as I was thrown back. If I was screaming from the gunshots before – you should have heard me now. They LITERALLY scared the shit out of me and I thought for sure I’d have a heart attack as they just peered into the stall at me guns out and drawn.

Until they kicked the door in, I had been hovering about a foot over the toilet minding my own business. In the commotion and with the force of the stall door being kicked in at me, I was thrust back and came bare cheek to porcelain on that filthy throne. Bare cheek to porcelain!!! I could not stop screaming and the three of them just burst into hysterics as I was writhing in pain half muttering/half screaming “What the fuck, what the fuck?” Who does that? It’s not right? – my skin hit the bowl…my skin hit the bowl…” They backed out of the bathroom to let me collect myself and laughed at how I got scared of the 21 gun salute…Not my shining moment, not by a longshot.

I had been gone for almost two hours as I was being assaulted by the military police, and the ceremony had ended and they were all taking pictures – thinking I had went back to the hotel so they didn’t look for me. I emerged from my worst nightmare and hobbled out the door into the sunlight to find them randomly taking pictures across from the chapel. I was still in a fog as I wandered out to hear people screaming my name and they were laughing at me and asking if I went to pray to God to help me with the hangover – I couldn’t even talk nor did I want to tell them what happened, but the lady that pointed me to the restroom inside was coming out the front door and still laughing at me and she blew my spot…No one can appreciate explosive diarrhea and its many casualties like family does.

I did learn a valuable lesson that day at Parris Island, but it’s not about how my inappropriate drinking or actions cause bad karma…I learned that I should trust my instincts more. My first instinct was not to go on the trip at all and I went against it and look how that turned out for me…

The Legend of Weeva the Diva

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Get Well Soon Weeva!

My friend Weeva is recuperating from surgery, so I thought that I’d tell you a little about her so you can send lots of Imodium love her way. As a note to my other friends: Don’t go and get hospitalized so I’ll write about you too! This is a one-time only,  isolated occurrence!

Weeva and I used to work together and we always had a blast. She’s twice as old as me but three times as crazy as and ten times more fun than almost anyone else I have ever worked with. The rearview mirror in her car is about three inches shorter than the Hubble Telescope but can see just as far. She has been known to rock a neck brace for no apparent reason, created her own hands free cell phone with duct tape on her steering wheel, and she’s a Dunkin Junkie that goes there multiple times a day for her fix.

At least she isn't texting while she drives...

When I say multiple times a day, I mean it. She lives in the building across the street and is in there more than some of the employees. She reads her morning paper there and one time a homeless guy took pity on her because he thought she was homeless too when he saw her there in a paint-splattered baseball hat and sweatpants.

If you think remembering the correct lyrics to REM’s “It’s The End of the World As We Know It” is tough – try remembering Weeva’s coffee order. She gets this humungous jug filled with half coffee, a quarter espresso, one part wolf tears, two parts parsnip, a half ounce of Columbian sugar cane, two hits of patchouli extract and a drop of kerosene. That isn’t the exact combo she orders, but it’s fairly close.

I am not a coffee drinker (need I remind you of my stomach and the reason this site is called Immodiumabuser? Me drinking coffee is like someone pulling the pin off a grenade!) so I’d get tea or Diet Pepsi. One time I went and forgot my note with her secret formula scratched on it and was about to turn around and go back when I randomly thought to ask the cashier. “On the off chance, do you know how to make the weird mixture for the crazy lady I work with…?” “You mean Weeva? Of course I know what she gets” and then she made it correctly. That was when I realized exactly how much time she spends in there.

Should be required reading for any movie lover!

Our local movie theatre was showing The Graduate and having a talk and signing with the writer Mark Harris, who was there to present his brilliant book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of a New Hollywood after the screening. It was a great book (If you’re a movie lover – this is a must read!) about the back stories of the five Best Picture nominees from the 1968 Academy Awards (of which The Graduate was one) and we both love The Graduate, so it was a no brainer. Mid-way through the question and answer section, a look of realization comes over her and Weeva nudge me and says (A little bit too loudly) “Oh my God, these people here probably think I’m your Ms. Robinson!” Picture me crying with laughter.

I'm all for trying a new look Weeva, but this is ridiculous!

 

One day she came in with a new short do and everyone was complimenting, but I knew. The next day, her hair was three times as long and more compliments. It made me realize that I work with the most polite people in the world or the most oblivious. After Weeva walked by, I looked over and said to Christine “You know that she’s wearing a weave, right? “What makes you think that?” she replied. “Are you kidding, her hair was shorter than mine yesterday and today it’s hanging past her ass…that’s not a sign?” “Really? Are you sure?”

My favorite Weeva story happened one day while they were renovating our building. They got us pink and blue hardhats embossed with the company logo for our client appointments during the construction and no one loved their pink hardhat more than Weeva. All of the Spanish guys on the crew used to always point and giggle as she pranced around because she rocked that plastic lid like a mini Donald Trump surveying the land.

As I was sitting at my desk in my god-awful cubicle, Weeva walked up and was standing next to me as I turned around. She had on slacks and a blazer and we were chatting as Renee walked up and said “Weeva, what’s that hanging out of the back of your pants?” Weeva turned to look and there it was – half a roll of toilet paper overflowing out the back of her pants and hanging well past her knees. She ran to the restroom grabbing at the mounds of paper and it actually took a few tries before she got it all out – while we were rolling on the floor hysterical laughing.

She came out of the bathroom laughing harder than any of us were and she was mortified, but not from us seeing it. “Oh my god, I haven’t been in the bathroom for over two hours – how long has that been like that? I had a client appointment and I went to Dunkin Donuts like that! No wonder all the guys on the construction team were laughing and pointing – this time it wasn’t the hardhat!” I can still see all that paper flying by me like a tail as she ran off…

This is similar to how much paper was hanging out the back.

Weeva – you rock it like no one else can and your weave always look good! Keep it up! If Scheherazade had 1,000 tales, you are my Supreme Princess of a thousand hairpieces, get better soon and remember CYA! Always cover your ass – you never know what’s hanging out of it!

The only A A that I care about stands for Academy Awards!!!

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I’m going to be like all the other hacks and take this time to talk with you about the Oscars coming up this weekend. I’m not presumptuous enough to believe that any of you are actually out there waiting around for me to tell you who to pick for your office Oscar pool, but here goes. OK, maybe Weezie is actually waiting for me to tell her, but with my picks she has been undefeated and actually shut down her company Oscar Pool. They got pissed off that she kept winning yet hadn’t seen any of the nominated films so they stopped doing it. Way to go Weezie – work that system!

A little history about me, if you will. I will say it loud and clear: I am a movie lover. New ones, old ones, musicals, foreign, Black and White, documentaries, I love all types. Well OK, I actually detest 3D movies, but come on – Why would I want things flying at my face while I’m watching a movie?

Now that's how you make an entrance!

 Before we go any further, a little respect needs to be paid. February 27th is not only the 83rd Academy Awards Ceremony, but the birthday of my very first love, Elizabeth Taylor. Cleopatra was the first movie that I ever saw and let me tell you – this little boy was just blown away. I sat there transfixed as I watched her arrival into Rome on that enormous barge (no I am not referring to Richard Burton) and I could tell even then that this feeling was something special. It instilled an insatiable desire that still burns in me to this day. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had experienced the unmistakable power that movies can have over you. To be drawn in and be so completely enraptured is the ultimate experience. Such emotion gets so intertwined into a great movie that you remember that feeling every time you see it again. That’s power.     

With Cleopatra, I dove head-first into the movie pile devouring everything that I could get my hands on, and I haven’t been out since. I learned what being cool was from James Dean, what it meant to be a man from Paul Newman, and what funny really was from Cary Grant. I saw in these amazing films other worlds that just sucked me in and, somehow, resonated with me. Who didn’t want their very own Auntie Mame? Whose family doesn’t resemble Claudia Larson’s in Home for the Holidays and who didn’t want a friend like E.T.? I laughed with Arsenic and Old Lace, I was terrified of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, I was enchanted by A Place in the Sun, and I cried like a baby with Life is Beautiful.  On the downside, that painted an almost unrealistic picture of what the perfect woman should be for me. I never could have guessed back then that I would somehow manage to find the ideal mix of Vivien Leigh’s feistiness, Audrey Hepburn’s elegance, Rosalind Russell’s sense of humor, and Jayne Mansfield’s rack – but somehow I did. And she loves movies as much as me if that’s even possible!!!

One of my favorite movies - EVER!

 I tell you this to reinforce how personally I take these movies. Just like with a great book, I love that feeling of getting swept up in a story and just transported – there‘s absolutely nothing like that. I am also OCD compulsive and cannot control my need to see every single film nominated for the Oscars. Every single film. My wife was pregnant and tired, but I still dragged her almost two hours each way to see August Rush because it was nominated for Best Song. Suck it up Honey, its Oscar Season!

The actual Academy Awards Ceremony is the icing on the cake. Granted, it’s really good icing, but the reward for me is to see all of these movies that I possible might not have. I had heard of Animal Kingdom, but after seeing Jackie Weaver’s scary-good performance in it – Wow. Javier Bardem in Biutiful – Oh my God, just amazing! Restrepo – I dare you to watch that documentary and not feel something. Exit through the Gift Shop –one of the most fun films about a truly charmed and crazy individual; it’s like reality TV gone wild. Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy – OK, now that one I should have skipped because it was really awful. It reminded me of this one time in college after we ate mushrooms and I couldn’t get off the sidewalk. It was torture, but I physically couldn’t lift myself off the ground so I just stayed there – lying on the ground next to the Post Office for hours. That was Tron: Legacy for me. If you haven’t seen it – it’s basically an ultimate Frisbee game if the Frisbee were glow in the dark. And where was the warning label before that movie. Forget what rating it was, I was afraid I might stroke out right there from all those god damn flashing lights.  

While I’m up on my soapbox, let me also say that I don’t agree with ten films being nominated for Best Picture instead of five. It takes some of the cache away from being an “Oscar nominee” when there are now twice as many films. When Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture it was such an accomplishment for an animated film to make the cut and now for the past two years there have been animated films nominated (Up and Toy Story 3). I’m not saying they weren’t worthy or aren’t very good, but it’s less of an accomplishment in a way. And let’s be honest, neither really had/has a shot at actually winning Best Picture anyway. Best Animated Picture definitely (although I did personally love How to Train Your Dragon – which I was surprised to learn as the movie started – was not a porn film) To me, it just comes across as a way of the Academy trying to skewer younger to be inclusive of movies that they feel younger people want to see and will root for. My message to the Academy: The formula works, stop messing with it!     

What I love as much as a great film is when I see a movie that is nominated or gets rave reviews and I hate it. It reminds me that my perceptions and tastes aren’t universal but sometimes it shocks me too. Lord of the Rings – I absolutely despised it and want the movie gods to give me my time back. It’s not that I don’t like the fantasy movie genre, but it just did nothing for me and I just don’t get all the raves for it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there is absolutely no ring, or any piece of jewelry for that matter, that’s worth over ten hours of my time!

Another example of critical love/my hatred is True Grit, which I think is just awful and clowny. I know that people love the Coen’s and cozy up to shower praise on the Coen Alter, but once again I just don’t get it. I sat there watching it thinking A) I cannot understand half of what Jeff Bridges is saying and B) who thought that Matt Damon’s moustache and sideburns were a good idea? Don’t read into this and think that I am anti-Jeff Bridges either. He was outstanding in Crazy Heart and deserved to win Best Actor last year and I actually think that The Door in the Floor is the best movie he’s ever been in, but I am really surprised by this nomination. Speaking of last year, I am still offended that A Serious Man was nominated for Best Picture.  As I sat there watching it, I really thought that Netflix sent me the wrong disc because it was that bad. It doesn’t come across as quirky, just annoying. How ironic that A Serious Man was such a joke.

I want to talk about chemistry in the movies. People are annoyed at some of the nomination oversights and snubs this year, but which category has a snub where someone non-deserving took their place? Supporting Actor? I think The Social Network worked because of the dynamics between Andrew Garfield and Jesse Esienberg together, but I wasn’t surprised that Garfield didn’t get a nomination. The played off each other so well and that’s what made the betrayal in the story sting even harder. Garfield gave a great performance and was deserving of a nomination, but he was a victim of a foolish studio trying too hard to get three Supporting Actor nominations. Why would they campaign so hard for Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Armie Hammer? Timberlake had the least showy of the three and was the furthest chance for a nomination by any means and this is a movie that is seen as a writing triumph, not an acting triumph. They should have focused on Garfield and he might have edged out Mark Ruffalo. Don’t get me wrong, Mark Ruffalo is a great actor, but not in this role. He’s really good, but should have been nominated for You Can Count on Me.

The Kids Are All Right is another example of this. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore were so realistic and their relationship made you care about the story and pushed it further. They should have been campaigning for Moore in the supporting category all along, not as a lead. I know she was as much if not more of a lead as Bening was, but her performance got lost due to so many great performances this year. She will win one of these days (as will Bening, but not this year) and we will look back at this as a side note in her illustrious career. I see her in so many performances and have this terrible thought in the back of my mind that she might turn out to be like Lauren Bacall and always be the bridesmaid…I hope I’m wrong about that though.  

Blue Valentine is such a powerfully realistic portrayal of a decaying marriage, but truthfully, it’s a bit of a downer. It pulls you in, makes you care about them so much, and then spits you out because your heart just breaks for Ryan Gosling and you want so badly for it to work out between them. Michelle Williams makes you forget all about Dawson’s Creek and the two of them are like magnets drawing each other in and then repelling each other. This is a movie that stays with you long after the credits and Gosling’s snub is a shocking omission because the two performances are brought to another level because of each other. They work as a whole and it is impossible to separate where one begins and the other ends in the equation. I knew in my heart he was going to be left off the nominations list, but he was the one I was hoping might sneak in.

I will make the exact same case for Aaron Eckhart in Rabbit Hole. As I said about Blue Valentine, people have a tendency of shying away from sad stories/downers no matter how good they are and this is one that just breaks your heart. Unimaginable loss drives him and Nicole Kidman and they both just give it their all. I saw this movie by myself and I am not embarrassed to say that I was sitting in the back, clutching my Twizzlers welling up and just thinking “Oh my God” because it was just so powerful. Maybe if I saw this a few years ago when I didn’t have a son it might have hit me a little differently, but wow. When the cell phone video of his son got accidentally deleted, I just lost it. That stayed with me for weeks and hit me like a ton of bricks because of the two of them intertwined into each other. It is not an overall great movie, but the two of them elevate it to a higher level.

Natalie Portman totally transformed herself and is utterly unrecognizable as The Black Swan

I bring up these deeply intertwined relationships to lead you to Natalie Portman. Black Swan (despite what I wrote about it earlier) is at times a psychological thriller and at times a little girl’s fairy tale crossed with a horror film. If Natalie Portman isn’t announced as the winner Sunday night, than the Academy Awards really have stopped being about the performances. Annette Bening is Hollywood royalty and should have won already for Being Julia (my favorite movie she’s been in) but she shouldn’t win for Kids. Sure, she is great and our heart aches along with her, but this is not her strongest performance. Nor is her performance stronger than Kidman’s or William’s and I will just omit Winter’s Bone entirely, because I was taught if you have nothing nice to say – blah blah blah…Bening winning this year would be a triumph for a deserving career, a political statement without saying a word about gay marriage and the recognition for a film that dared us to look at “unconventional” lives and show us what the new “normal” might be, but it would not be about rewarding the best performance. Portman gave her heart, body (literally) and soul and every ounce of it shows on the screen. This was a go-for-broke, give-it-your-all performance that carried the movie to another level. If you removed any of the other performances in the film (Kunis was great and looking good as always) Portman would have still been as effective. She gave an amazing stand-alone performance that was great because of what she brought to it, not what she played off of. I’m all for a good upset, but I will be shocked if another name is called in this category.  

The Fighter was absolutely amazing and one of my favorite films. Christian Bale is unrecognizable and surely a lock – unless Geoffrey Rush gets caught up in a sweep for The King’s Speech (which will win Best Picture). The Fighter has the best ensemble performances on screen this year. Mark Wahlberg was overlooked for a nomination, but should take solace in the fact that he is personally responsible for elevating Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams to nominations. His was a more subtle role, all the while driving the other three to go all out, but never over the top. Melissa Leo could have easily become a cartoon character with the big hair and multiple-daughter posse she rode with, but she brought it home like a champ. I think that she might have peaked early and given a little room for Adams to sneak through with the award because this is a movie you see more than once. The first time, Bale and Leo dominate your thoughts and conversation, but you go back for Wahlberg and Adams. Supporting Actress is the only category I allow myself to go against conventional wisdom every year, so I am backing Adams for the win. I will not even mention Melissa Leo running her own “consider me” ads either. Where are her people? She was a lock until she started getting all crazy. Not that one should ever use Monique as an example to follow, but she should have just let the performance speak for itself.     

Clearly, I am no expert and I’m not the go-to Oscar prognosticator for Entertainment Weekly like the genius Dave Karger but I hope you take my thoughts into account before you fill out your ballot for Sunday night. At the very least, maybe it will encourage you to see some of these extraordinary films. See you at the concession stand!   

From OCD to TKO in a Heartbeat

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Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am under absolute duress to be ready for anything in any reasonable amount of time. Even more than that, I can’t even get ready in an unreasonable amount of time. Celebrities don’t take this long to prep for the Oscars – but for me to run to the supermarket is a production. I have tried things to quicken the pace, but sort of like a gentle soufflé, you cannot rush certain things.

My wife always argues with me about how long it takes me to get ready, but while she looks absolutely perfect and requires very little touch-ups from the moment she rises out of bed, when I wake up I look like one of the zombies marching in back of the float in the Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance video.

My toiletry regimen alone is a great big process in and of itself: I set my Ipod for one song and then get in the shower. It should not take longer to shower than one random song. That’s not the time-consuming part. The exception to this one-song rule is if you have fallen into the cesspool (Lance) or had a plumbing pipe full of shit (literally, full of shit) explode into your mouth and onto your chest (Hal) – At that point, take as long as you feel necessary in there and no one will say a word.

Back to the routine; I like to start at the top and then work my way down. The opening act, or my first facial scrub, is just a tingly little wake-up call and then we head straight for the follow-up nourishing face wash and immediately into the Bliss face wash after that. I then grab my two thickening shampoos (it’s sort of the same philosophy that I have with Pumpkin muffins, where if one is good – two will be much better) and wash my hair. Obviously, the shampoo is dripping down my body and I would need to scrub again after it – so it just makes sense to use the body bar after the hair is done. Moving on to my Oil of Olay Age Defying soap for certain parts of the body – though never on this gentle face with a bar soap! I actually don’t understand why anyone would choose to use a bar of soap to wash their body and then use that SAME bar to wash their face. Any bar of soap that touches my feet or cleans my balls sure as fuck isn’t going anywhere near my face!

Blue Body wash is next for the rest of my body that the soap doesn’t cover. I don’t mind scents, but I feel like it needs to be blue or it won’t fully clean me. I don’t know why blue body wash strikes me as more thorough – but I just can’t use another color. Then I dry off and get my robe and waist towel (what my wife lovingly refers to as a skirt) and put on my Birkenstocks so my clean feet won’t touch the ground. Did I forget to mention that I HATE to be barefoot and just cannot do it? Nothing gets me worked up more than that. OK, the beach does – I mean you’re sitting in dirt – It doesn’t make any sense!!! (I actually had a mini panic attack at the airport last summer when I rushed out of the house in flip-flops not thinking and then had to go through security when I got to the airport. I almost scrapped the whole trade show that I was going to for work when they told me I had to take the flip-flops off. I asked for some napkins or paper towels so I wouldn’t have to walk on the floor – but they looked at me like I was the crazy one. Needless to say the sight of me scrubbing my feet in the men’s bathroom sink immediately after going through security didn’t go over well. Two people looked at me like I just escaped from the mental hospital and another told me that I was crazy. Fuck them – people can shave in the sink and hair is everywhere, but one foot on the counter sets them off? I was balancing like Nadia Comaneci because if one of my barefoot little toes had touched that disgusting airport bathroom floor – they would have taken me out on a stretcher right into the ambulance.)

For my next act, I move straight into oral hygiene and start with my Listerine pre-rinse and floss and Q-Tips to check for wax or and then grab my Radius toothbrush to start on the choppers with my Tom’s of Maine fennel toothpaste. Don’t let them fool you, if it’s not fennel – it’s not fine. I will not use a toothbrush that isn’t Radius – it just gets the job done! If you haven’t tried it – get one right now. Your brushing will shoot right up to the next level and you’ll be thanking me for it for years to come. The zesty tingle after a good brushing just starts me on the right path and keeps me going all day.  

If you were just thinking that I was finished and ready to leave the bathroom, you would be mistaken. The next stop on the OCD Express is my eye serum for the bags under my eyes (regular face creams are just not gentle enough for this area) then we move on to the T-Zone cream (for the nose and forehead) which tends to be an oilier area so you have to use a product of a different consistency and then I finish up with my gentle SPF Facial cream for the chin, cheeks, and neck area.

I hit the Styling Paste to spruce up this thin crow’s nest I’m calling my hair these days, and then an extra healthy spot of Rogaine Foam. Rogaine is the only one of my toiletries I have a heavy hand with – you never know. I now head for the brush to get my hair under control and give it a “look.” With my hair, I try to go for the “messy, cover-up” look to make it look thicker, but it usually just comes across as the “desperate, comb-over” look.  

We haven’t even gotten to the deodorant (Spray? No way!) and cologne yet. Lately, I have been going back and forth between Tiffany for Men and Diesel. I’m actually a little scared of using the Diesel at full force with more than one squirt – so I go very sparingly. It says right there on the bottle in big letters to “Use with Caution” and I take that warning very seriously. Seriously, the last thing I need is to go waltzing into work after one too many squirts of Diesel and set that little minx in Accounting off into a Diesel infused stupor. Instead of her flirting with the Subway guy at lunch like she usually does, she’ll be trying to steal the pickle off my McRib sandwich! That’s the power of Diesel!

I grab the tweezers for a quick little maintenance check and to make sure there is no hair trying to escape out of my nostrils or ears. There is absolutely nothing more offensive or careless than nose hair. There’s just no excuse for it. Why don’t we use this as the general rule of thumb for nose hair from now on: If you can grab it and twirl it or if small children can jump rope with it – there’s a problem. If your nose hair is long enough to floss your teeth with – stay the fuck home and trim it! 

One last check in the mirror for the once over and then I am ready to leave the bathroom and pick out clothes to wear. I did leave out one minor detail which doesn’t help my time spent in the bathroom: I have to do all of these things a certain number of times and simply cannot veer off of that. If I don’t brush my teeth forty-five times – I need to start over. If I don’t rub the Rogaine on my head into a circle seventy-five times – I need to start over. Also, if I go out of order in my routine in any way, I need to start over. That’s not a joke either – I don’t think of it as compulsive, I think of it as thorough. I will literally get back in the shower and start over.

If this sounds excessive or crazy, just imagine that I shower multiple (3 – 5) times a day. When I wake up (obviously), every time I take a shit, if it’s summer and I’m sweaty – add at least two more showers that day, before I got to the gym, when I get back from the gym…it’s actually a good thing that I’m overweight and have decided to cut out my time at the gym so I don’t risk a heart attack or I would have to get up even earlier than I already do to take another shower.

If you didn’t feel bad for my wife before this – I’m sure you have now joined the growing crowd that does. I actually used to feel really bad for her too because she is so patient, but then one day I stopped. The day that I stopped feeling bad was the day that her and her crazy sister actually jumped me in their mother’s basement to try to “Cure me” of my OCD. They had seen a documentary where this lady got a vacuum cleaner dumped on her head while she was duct taped to a chair and they got inspired. She sat there crying her eyes out and the light bulb went off above their heads.

When I say that they jumped me, I actually mean that they jumped on top of me and threw me to the ground while the two of them tried to remove their shoes and put their bare feet on my face. Their fucking bare feet on my face! Who they thought that would help, I certainly don’t know, but I went all Wu Tang on them like I was back on the streets. OK, I was never actually on the streets and there are grade School kids tougher than me, but at that moment – I imagined myself a gang member or as the epitome of strength and courage: Chuck Norris.

At this point in the game when two crazy bitches get all up in your grill like that – the “don’t hit a girl” rules fail to apply. I was all Chris Brown throwing punches left and right at those girls. Luckily for them I have as much coordination as a newborn kitten and I punch like a five-year old girl, so I was mostly hitting myself. I was screaming for help to old lady Ann that lived next door but to no avail. I was bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali and was finally able to get away and run up the stairs to freedom (and another shower.) Yep – they knocked me to that basement floor and there was no way that I wasn’t going to need a shower.

I grew up in a house with a crazy kamikaze sister who would turn into the flying Whoozini and attack out of nowhere and now here I was married to another ninja attacker and her crazy wombat sidekick. Needless to say, it’s been years since that happened, but I still never turn my back on either sister at family functions for fear of a repeat performance. Sometimes life just isn’t fair!