Are you ever going to read the new Harry Potter...?

I must be manic depressive. Sometimes, I get a real hair up my ass to just churn out a lot of stories and post them here. Other times, I need a break and I let the site suffer. I know that I should be posting here every other day to maintain some sort of fan community (all 5 of them so far), but I get distracted. Maybe I have Adult ADD?

Anyway, I've been a little distracted by a new book idea that I've been working on (my third book idea in a years time) and the new Harry Potter book, 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'.

I never got the whole Harry Potter phenomenon when the first four books came out. I remember reading about them when the third one came out and Harry Potter mania was starting to hit in the United States, but it still didn't compel me to do something about it. It was only after the fourth book was out and I was picking winter movies for our Box Office movie pool that we do every summer and winter when my brother, Bill, chastised me for putting the first Harry Potter movie low in my top 5. Bill insisted that it was going to be huge because the books were really good. Intrigued, I mentioned to my friend, Jim, that I was interested in checking out the Harry Potter books. He lent me the first one, which was great because it was in time for a 3-hour road trip for a work-related software installation road trip. I started to read and I read and kept reading and by the time we were almost to Lincoln on the return leg that I had the whole thing finished.

I came to work the next day and asked Jim for another. He gave me the next two book, which I quickly finished. Bill let me the fourth one. By this time, I was hooked. It's hard to explain. They're long, but the read is very friendly and fast. The characters are compelling and the plots are suspenseful. The fifth book came and I got it the first day and had it finished in a week.

This July, the book came out and I rushed to Target the morning it came out and I snagged it up. Bill also bought a copy at Sam's Club. He said that while he was picking up his copy, so guys snagged up their copies and one of them quipped, "First edition!" Bill was thinking, "Sure, if most of the 10.5 million first run copies get destroyed, this might end up being worth some money!" I guess people can dream.

So I poured through my copy in a few days, which was easy to do because I take a commuter bus to work while I'm selling my house. The drive helped me finish it off quickly. Without revealing too many details, someone dies and there are a few plot twists. I kept calling Bill up every other day when I was reading it and after I finished it. I always had the same question.

"Have you read it yet?"

Bill would reply, "Not yet."

I kept asking, "Have you read it YET?"

Bill: "Not YET!"

Finally, after a week of this, I call Bill up yet again and ask, "Are you ever going to read the new Harry Potter?"

Bill chuckles and says, "I am!"

"When? Next month?"

He laughs. I continue talking, "Yeah, I know what you mean, I'm going to RUSH out to buy the new book, but (with sarcasm) I'm not going to read it just yet. I'm not really ready. I ONLY had to buy it on the first day!"

Bill said he was going to start it this week, but that's one of the distractions I've had to deal with this past couple of weeks. I actually have a few stories almost finished, but the distractions and the fact that I keep coming up with new ideas without finishing them doesn't help either. Damn work and family priorities.

Don't be so glib when you talk about Dad leaving...

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but my Dad recently had a pacemaker installed into his chest. Inserted. Stitched. Placed. Installed seems like a good term for it considering he was sent home with a suitcase that you place a phone in, which checks the settings and reprograms it every now and then.

He had it installed because his heart rate was fluctuating too much due to his lung problems, but that's another story and I don't feel like divulging too much about my Dad's health. Bottom line is, though, he's much better now.

My brother, Bill, was on the phone with my Mom recently.

The topic turned to Mom coming up to visit them sometime. She wanted to come and mainly visit Tess, Bill's daughter.

She said, "Well, when your Dad is gone, I'll have a lot more time to come up and babysit Tess."

Bill was taken aback. He was a little stunned at how cold and callous my Mom sounded then on the phone. How could she be so glib about the impending death of our Dad, her husband?

Bill reacted, "What do you mean when Dad's gone? The only person that I know who's going to be gone soon is (someone's) Dad?"

(Someone being Audrey's Dad, who recently passed away. Best wishes to the family by the way)

My Mom said, "No. You're father is going to be gone for 6 weeks in Idaho! I'm driving him up there at the end of July and he's going to look after Taylor while Paul's away at NCO School."

You got to be careful what you say in this family now a days, especially Bill!. He might misinterpret a word to have another meaning. I could say that, "Laura is going to come out." Now Bill might interpret that as Laura is going to come out of the closet and announce her love for women, thereby ending my marriage. However, I think he might have missed the real meaning, which would mean that she's coming out somewhere to visit, for example.

I could say, "I love Bauls!", which is the highly-stimulated energy drink. Bill might interpret that to mean that I love... other balls.

Maybe I could say, "That's too bad. I'll be sure to tape it for you." when I hear from Bill that he can't make my grandma's funeral because he was already going to visit a sick relative in California. Bill would then react with "WHAT THE F^&* DID YOU SAY?" because instead of hearing me say "I'll be sure to tape it for you", he'll hear "Oh, can't even make it to grandma's funeral."

Not that I'm off the hook. One Christmas, my Mom called me to ask how my Christmas with Laura's parents was going. I made the mistake of saying that it was going great and that I had received so many great gifts. I then proceeded to list every great gift. My mother then interpreted it as, "Well, your gifts were crappy, but these gifts are great!" My Mom hung up the phone and cried because she felt horrible that I was having a better Christmas at the in-laws.

The next year, I learned my lesson. She asked me how my Christmas with the in-laws was going and I replied, "Good." and left it at that.

I misinterpret things, too. Two weeks ago, my wife was doing Bills and she asked, "Can you transfer $100 out of savings to checking?"

A week later, we're talking about balancing the checkbook and she asks, "Did you transfer that $100 that I asked you to transfer?"

I said, "No."

She said, "What do you mean? I asked you to transfer it?"

"No, you didn't!" I insisted."But I can right now!" I logged into Internet banking and transferred the money.

She grumbled, "I told you to transfer the money!"

I thought about it for a while and realized what the problem was.

"Laura, when you asked me if I could transfer the money, I thought you were just asking it in general, like if it was possible. So when you asked, 'Can you transfer...', I thought you were just asking if we had $100 to transfer."

She looked at me incredulously.

"At the time, I was thinking, 'Yes, I can transfer that money.' You should have asked, 'Will you transfer $100?'"

She didn't think that was a good explanation.

So be careful, how you say something to me and my family

I find it ironic that a foot doctor is on the second floor for some reason...

I went to the foot doctor today. I finally caved in to my foot pain, which has gotten substantially worse in the last several weeks, and went to the foot doctor. I've been battling what is a dull throbbing pain in my right heel for a few years now. It comes and goes, but it's never too painful to worry about. Lately though, I feel it all over the balls of my feet. Seeing as I found out that both my parents suffer from fallen arches and Billtheeviltwin suffers from it as well, I decided to go see the foot doctor to take care of it.

I get to the plaza where the office is and am struck by something. The foot doctor's office is on the second floor. I immediately chuckle to myself because I picture the scene if the elevators ever stop working.

Patients would be growing up the stairs to get to their appointment. Granted, it's only one floor, but I'm sure they'd be pain.

Maybe there would be a sign that read: "Elevator out of order. Sorry for the temporary pain and inconvenience."

That was pretty funny to me until I got off the elevator. That's when I noticed that the back of the building has doors with a small driveway that gradually slopes down to the parking lot. Plus, it's a way shorter walk to the office door from there. I see someone was planning ahead at the thought of the situation that I imagined.

I guess selling a dirty movie wasn't a good idea...

We were seniors in high school when my twin brother, Bill, received a rather unexpected visitor at our front door, who was carrying an item that he thought we'd never see before and the reunion was not joyful at all. In fact, it was downright uncomfortable.

"Are you Bill or Bob?" the angry looking woman at the door asked. She looked as if she had gotten off work and was not pleased.

"Uhh.. I'm Bill," Bill said apprehensively.

The woman pulled out a tape and thrust it at my brother. He recognized it by the label that was on it: WPINK. Bill's heart sank while his stomach did a flip flop.

"I am Monty's mother!" she snapped. "I found this tape. Monty has told me that you boys gave him this tape."

Bill didn't say anything.

"Do you think this is appropriate for a 15-year-old to watch?" she demanded.

Bill, of course, came up with the most logical answer that he could think of. "Well, he wanted it," he said matter-of-factly.

The woman announced that she was going to be contacting our parents about this and stormed off.

What was the fuss all about? Well, it was about a movie called, "WPINK is Red Hot!"

In junior high sometime, a friend of ours named Matt sold us this tape that had the movie "WPINK is Red Hot!" on it. Matt was a really nice kid that had a very mellow wild streak in him. He wasn't rude or flippant, but he did some inappropriate things from time to time. I'm wondering if it had to do with his Dad being the biggest asshole on the planet. It was an ackward dilemma for sure whenever we went over to Matt's house to see if he was home. We liked hanging out at his place, but then his Dad would come home and start bitching and cussing at Matt for not doing his chores yet or at us for just being there. Once, Matt was showing my brother his trombone so Bill asked if he could try it out. Matt said it was okay. Bill started to blow on it when Matt's father saw it and snatched out of his hands yelling, "Put that fucking thing down!"

Now I don't know what your view of parenting is, but I do agree that some people try too hard to be their kid's friend and not their parent. So a lot of "experts" insist that you can't be your kids friend, which would explain all of those commercials that make it seem like every teenager under the sun is trying to get out to drink and do drugs. My view is that you need a middle ground. Yes, be a hard ass sometimes, but don't make it so unbearable that your kids don't ever want to hang out there! You're really asking for trouble. I think you'd want to be loose enought that your friends kids would want to hang out at your house because you could be a hardass, but you could also be cool...

But I digress...

Now where was I? Oh yes. We got the tape from Matt. How did it come up? Not sure. Did we even know that Matt had this for sale? Again, I couldn't tell you. Basically, I think we were over at Matt's house and he just casually mentioned that he had an adult film for sale. We didn't know what the movie was called or who was in it, but we snatched it up. 5 dollars later and we had our film.

What is WPINK about? Well, it's a tale of a whole crew of news people led by Ron Jeremy, the famous everyman film star, whose nickname is the Hedgehog, who decide to break into their news station and transmit a feed of naughty shows. Before that happens, they make sure to stop the feed from the mayor's house and every cop in town, which is totally possible, even in 1985 technology! They get on the air and produce everything from game shows to exercise with everything having an x-rated twist, of course. In the meantime, the feed has been viewed by the CIA, who send in their own agent, Scorpio, played by Harry Reems, to infiltrate and stop the show. He doesn't get the job done and a great time is had by all.

It's actually a semi-funny movie, if a little stupid.

The film was viewed mainly by Bill, me, Brian and our Vietmanese friend named, Ngoc. Ngoc especially liked the movie. The movie would eventually be watched by many friends that passed by Brian's house, which is where it was stored.

So we had this tape and we knew this kid named Monty, who was two years younger than us and kind of annoying. He'd come over to our friend Brian's house and hang out, but he was always uninvited. Brian generally poked fun at Monty, but that didn't stop Monty from coming over. Maybe he thought it was cool that he was hanging out with older kids.

As luck would have it, we were watching the video one day when the door opened to Brian's basement and Monty came storming down. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight on the television.

He asked what we were watching. We told him and he stuck around, uninvited again, to watch the movie with us. What was nice about it was that instead of talking incessantly about everything, Monty didn't say much at all. He was nice and quiet, which was a nice change.

A few days later, Monty came over with a request. He wanted a copy of the tape!

We said sure, but seeing an opportunity, we pounced on it. We traded baseball cards at the time and wanted a Brett Saberhagen (a Royals pitcher at the time) rookie card that he had. Up to this point, Monty had steadfastedly refused to trade us the card unless we were to trade several cards that were worth way more. We always refused. Now we had the upper hand and we were going to make Monty pay for it dearly. We requested the Brett Saberhagen rookie card AND ten dollars. He balked a little, but he came through. Money and baseball card was paid and we handed over the copy we had made. We though that was the end of it.

Fast forward a few years and we're back to the situation. I think I was at work at the time when all of this happened with the angry mother. I came home later that night with my brother sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and dad sitting there with smirks on their faces.

"What's up?" I asked a little apprehensively.

"So what's this I hear you guys sold an adult video to a teenager?" my Dad asked while smirking, which was a reaction I didn't think he would have on his face in this situation, but he can surprise you from time to time.

I panicked a little, but managed to keep a straight face.

"What tape?" I asked innocently.

"What tape?!" my Mom asks with a laugh. "How about the tape that you guys sold to this Monty kid. What's it called, 'W - P - I - N - K'?"

My heart sank. I thought I was dead. I had experienced a lot of these types of conversations when my older brothers had gotten in trouble for wearing questionable t-shirts, telling inappropriate jokes or having objectional material in the house.

"How did you guys find out about that?" I asked finally.

"Monty's mother gave us a call," my Mom said with a smile. I look over at my Dad. He's chuckling.

"Apparently, he was using his copy to charge his friends for showings of the tape!" my Mom burst out with as my Mom and Dad started laughing again.

"What?"

"Yep. He was in the middle of another showing when his mother came home early. She walked in on them watching the movie."

That's right. Monty, the ever resourceful kid had resorted to extorting his friends to take advantage of their teenage feelings of rampant horniness coupled with the not-so-unusual circumstances of being able to do nothing about it with the fairer sex.

I pictured a roomful of pimply-faced teenagers that could barely drive all crammed into a dark living room in dead silence watching the movie as if they were studying the periodic table. I also pictured a shocked and angry mother who was probably screaming, scooting the kids out, slapping her son and clutching her chest like Fred Sanford for the shock and awe campaign that had been going on under her nose.

After a little discussion about it, I began to wonder if we were in trouble. My parents smiled and said that our punishment was to watch the tape with them.

I stiffened. Oh, they were good! They knew that humiation would be an excellent punishment. Being grounded for a few weeks would have been heaven compared to the shame and humiliation of having to watch an adult film with our parents.

I'm sure it would have gone along the lines of them watching it with us and them making comments or asking questions like:

"Oh, isn't she pretty."

"Do you boys have any questions about what they are doing?"

"Do you know what that's called?"

"Oh my goodness!"

and so on... It would have been excruciating. I can honestly say that I had never seen or heard my parents in the midst of love or even talk about sex and I intended to keep it that way if at all possible. Watching an adult film with them would have been as close to that as I wanted to get. Once, my Mom saw a commercial about talking to your kids about sex and she asked me if I had any questions. Being that I was a kid that had HBO and the benefits of our seventh grade Health class that went weeks into the subject I said, "Sure. What do you want to know?"

They asked us if we had the tape and we told them that "No" we didn't have the tape anymore, so they were out of luck. Actually, we DID have the tape, but there was NO way we were going to admit it. I may be gullible, but I'm not THAT gullible. Sometimes, I actually think before acting.

Later, my brother Paul grabs Bill and I and instructs us to go with him.

"We're going to rent that video," he said with a big grin.

Uh oh! We hadn't thought of that! What if the video store actually had it?

We get to the video store and Paul goes to the book of adult video titles and starts looking through them. Not finding what he's looking for, he asks the clerk behind the counter if they have WPINK. My brother and I look at each other with that twin look that says, "Oh God. I hope they don't have that tape."

Thankfully, they didn't have the tape. Even better, Paul didn't rent a substitute and force us to watch another title with our parents. We managed to escape this one unscathed, which is still incredible to me. One doesn't often have material that parents would object to, let alone sell a copy to a friend, who then charges admission to his friends to see it and still come out clean, but we did.

Which reminds me Mom and Dad, while I am bragging about this incident since we did kind of got away with murder than doesn't mean it's time to punish us. It's a little late for that.

I may not be a smart man, but I know what cleaning is...

We're in the middle of trying to sell our house, which I think I've mentioned before, and it's a little stressful for us, especially my wife.

We had an open house on Sunday and my wife left it up to me to clean up the house.

Over the course of the morning, she instructed me to vacuum, put away dishes, wipe off the counters, take out the trash, pick up Julia's toys in the living room, pick up my sphere of influence in the living room, open all of the blinds, turn on all the lights, put the cats in the pet carrier in the garage, give the cats food in the garage, put away any errant shoes, pick up anything on the floor, roll up the hoses outside, put away the Sunday newspapers, put away the clean dishes from the dishwasher, load the dishwasher with whatever dirty dishes had accumulated, clean the downstairs shower, vacuum the office, change the litter box, clean the toilets, wipe off any mirrors, dust shelves, swiffer the hard wood floors upstairs, pick up Julia's toys in her room, basically, a whole myriad of chores for your truly to do.

I'm sure that she's rattling off the list to keep her sanity, but it should be pretty obvious to me what needs to be cleaned for an open house. I have lived with her long enough to figure that out.

Obviously, she still remembers the days when I used to live life like a shopping cart guy that wore the same pair of pants for weeks at a time, lived with a brother that slept with so much cat hair on his bed blanket that he could have stitched together a fur coat, collected pop cans so infrequently from the living room that it seems like they were having a convention together, vaccuumed infrequently our extremely dirty carpets from our shoes since we (Bill and I) never took them off, allowed the kitchen to be overrun by mail all over the counter and dirt and grim from our cooking and basically cleaned thouroughly only when we were moving to a new apartment and Mom came to help us. Each time, Mom would swear that this was the last time she was going to help us and swore that she was going to turn us into Health and Human Services.

My friend, Jeff, who lived with us for a short time, used to refer to our cleaning not as cleaning but sporadic fits of straightening up. Not that my wife was any better, her apartment was neat, but her bathroom was way more disgusting than mine. At least I cleaned the toilet every now and then. And don't even get me started on the shower!

So Laura is explaining what to clean throughout the morning and each time I'm saying things like, "Yes", "OK, "Got it", "Gotcha", "Obviously" and "I understand what you telling me completely."

I then remarked that she must think that I am a moron if I can't figure out to put all of the dirty dishes in the sink prior to the open house.

This was followed by the usual reply, "Well, I never know with you..."

Driving with Julia to the YMCA pool, I call Laura (it's about 5 minutes to the open house).

She asks, "Did you get what I asked done?"

I respond, "Which is?"

"The cleaning and putting things away!"

"Cleaning? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh HA... HA... HA... You are so funny!" Laura laughs sarcastically.

"Aren't I?"

"So funny! You are hiLARious!" again with sarcasm.

"I know! I should do stand up!"

"Oh you should!"

"I should start my own blog!"

Laura groans on the other end.

The open house went well. Laura made sure to call me to tell me that the realtor was impressed by how clean the house was. I can still surprise, I guess.

War of the Worlds is Wo(t)w!!!

This weekend, I saw what is most likely the feel-good-movie of the summer, War of the Worlds. It's a cheery tale of a divorced father who becomes closer to his estranged kids when aliens invade and start terminating the human race.

The story takes place over a few days as Cruise just gets off work at his job on the seaside shipping yards lifting and placing shipping containers on and off of barges all day long. He goes home to have his ex-wife bitching at him a little about being late for his weekend with the kids and then his kids start giving him flack for being a shitty Dad and for having no food in the house.

Like any good father when this happens, he tells his ex-wife not to worry, tells the kids to order in and goes to sleep.

Shit starts hitting the fan when an electric storm starts shooting lightning down to the same spot in downtown Boston, which completely fries anything in a mile or so radius. Cars won't start, TVs are on the fritz. Telephones don't work. Of course, this opens a plot hole for the aliens to arrive and a future plot contradiction, but more on that later.



Here Cruise thinks he's going to get his kids to clean this mess up...

He goes downtown to see what is going on. In the middle of an intersection, through a series of earthquake-like activity, a hole opens up. Out comes a large tripod-like creature that indiscriminately starts shooting (and disintegrating every person in sight.) Cruise and everyone starts running for their lives. Such is the tone of the movie. It's one long chase run and hide sequence with a few breaks in the action to set up the new action.

Spoilers ahead...

Because he's stolen the only car that happens to work, which is a van that just had a fried solenoid replaced, Cruise and his kids make it to his ex-wife's house (she's out of town). Outside of the house, after several jet airliners crash in the neighborhood, he runs into a news crew that is running from the aliens yet still have the moxie to get all of it on tape, which leads to the big plot hole. Cruise is shown a tape of the aliens coming down in the lightning strikes, which is pretty cool except for the fact that the news crew had to be there at the time to record it, avoid their equipment from being fried and escape in a van that was probably fried, too. Oh well, no plot can be perfect.

End spoilers...

From there, they try to flee the area and be safe but mob mentality soon takes hold and it's a frantic struggle to stay alive in every scene after newly introduced characters get quickly vaporized or grabbed by the aliens. The alien's attacks start big and then go small as they get down and dirty to find humans hiding.

Along the way, Cruise's kids still manage to give him flack for doing things to keep them safe, but for the most part are pretty realistic portrayals of regular kids. Dakota Fanning gives an especially convincing turn as Cruise's 10-year-old daughter who suffers from claustrophobia.

So Cruise does everything to keep his kids safe, which got me thinking about what my Dad would do in a situation like that (My Dad when he was 40). I'm sure it would go something like this:

(Fleeing the house)
"Get your asses in the car!"
"Where in the hell did you kids put my flashlight?"
"You've got 60 seconds to get your asses in the car or I'm leaving you. Now one of you kids fill up this box with food and another grab a few cases of Budweiser out of the garage."
"Goddammit don't slam the door! I don't care if aliens are coming!"
"Don't stomp down the stairs!"

(In the car)
"Who fiddled with the radio?"
"Will you kids shut the hell up and do as I say?"
"If you kids don't shut up, I'm going to turn this car around and we'll get killed by the aliens. Now do you want that?"

But I digress (Just exaggerating Dad! Except for the beer part. He doesn'’t drink now, but when he was younger, he'’d buy extra cases if bad weather was coming. I can only imagine what he'’d do if aliens attacked)...

If anything, the film does suffer a little from the lack of characters that you feel any empathy for. The action all follows Cruise, so he's in every scene. This does make you care about his character, but it does make the other characters paper-thin. Only Tim Robbins stands out as a mentally-deranged former ambulance driver who helps Cruise and his family hide out.


"You must believe me! I know about the aliens because I've studied! Don't be glib!"

Tom Cruise does a good job of keeping things afloat. Critics complained that it was a little hard to picture Cruise as a working Dad, but I found no problem with it. In fact, I think that a lesser actor would have had a hard time keeping the audience engaged for the whole picture.

On the downside, the ending is a little predictable and it wraps up things a little too neatly. Also, the movie is a bit much to take. It's like watching Schindler's List with all the executions in front of you, but there is no magic list to keep certain people safe. The constant on the run danger feel got tiring after a while.

All in all, it's a roller coaster ride of a movie about what an everyday Joe would have to do to keep his family safe.

I don't know which is sadder...

This past weekend, we were driving to Kearney, Nebraska to visit my in-laws.

While driving, a Rob Thomas song came on the radio. He was the vocalist for Matchbox 20, the band that was sort of considered alternative, but were more mainstream than anything. I never really liked any of their songs, but they're popular, so I guess people must like them.

Hearing the song triggered my memory that Rob Thomas decided to leave Matchbox 20 to concentrate on "darker" material. So if darker means writing a song about not being lonely anymore, then I guess mission accomplished. To me, it doesn't sound anything different than Matchbox 20, but I guess I'm not hearing the subtle nuances that only a Rob Thomas fan would hear.

I mention this fact to Laura in the car while the song is playing.

"That's the fifth time that you've mentioned this to me and it's ALWAYS during this song."

"You're kidding?" I ask. "I've mentioned this five times?"

"Uh huh!" Laura snapped triumphantly. "I ought to know because I've been counting!"

"Wow." I said. "I don't know which is sadder, that I've mentioned this to you five times or that you've actually been keeping track of this for months."

Later, we're watching TV in the in-laws den. Everyone has gone asleep except for Laura and I. A Bewitched movie trailer comes on the television. This is for the remake of the TV series with Nicole Kidman. They show her nose twitch that is similar to the nose twitch that the original Samantha used to do in the Bewitched series. To me, it looks like her nose is just standing still and she's just rapidly moving her upper lip back and forth, yet they make a big deal about it in the movie previews that I've seen.

I mention this fact to Laura.

"That's the SECOND time you've told me this," she replied.

"Again." I said. "I'm not sure which is sadder, that I've mentioned this to you twice or that you've been counting."

Now I have to wonder what else of my non-sequiturs she's been counting...

Mental note: must read, retain and regurgitate more non-sequiturs...