No Contact, but I wish I had made Contact...

Now it can be told...

I'm usually a pretty easy-going guy. I really really hate confrontation, especially with strangers, but there was one time at the movies when I so lost my cool that I not only yelled out loud, but I also almost chased down a total stranger to let him know exactly what I thought.

Contact, the movie based on Carl Sagan's book starring Jodie Foster, was coming out and it looked really good. In retrospect, I can now safely say that it's one of the most self-indulgent pieces of tripe that I've ever seen. In addition, it's filled with acting that fills almost every niche: overacting, wooden, laughable, stiff. You name it, it's in there.

For some bad reason that I can't remember, I thought it'd be fun to see it on the opening weekend. Being that I hate crowds and so does my wife, it was a stupid idea. The odds that we'd not only get a good seat and not be bothered by people were pretty slim. As it turns out, I was bothered by someone more than I've ever been bothered by someone at the movies. It was worse than the time I saw The Mummy Returns with my brother and some yahoos behind us started screaming "Yeah! Rock! Yeah!" We looked at each other, nodded and moved to the other side of the theater. We had no such luxury this night because it was sold out.

The movie Contact is like that old capsule cold remedy of the same name. The Contact cold medicine commercials had the visual of slow-motion-pulling the cold capsule apart and all the multi-colored medicine beads fell out and bounced around. That is how this movie feels. It's like a mishmash of people throwing in every idea under the sun because it might be neat.

In the theater, the movie starts. Contact starts with a view of Earth with music and other atmosphere noise. The view then pulls back as it races through solar systems, stars, planets, etc. It's semi-neat, but way too long at 3 and a half minutes of mostly silence. I had a feeling right then we were in trouble. In the row I was in, there was an empty seat to my right. Then there was a lady, who was next to the empty seat, with her husband, who was three seats away from me. I could hear him murmuring to her during the sequence such obviousness as "They must be going through other universes."

They were an interesting pair, those two. She was silent save for the popcorn bag that she felt compelled to roll up when she was done eating a handful or two and then she would unroll it when she wanted to eat more. During this movie that was every 5 minutes of 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE', MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH, 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE'. That alone was almost enough to set me off. If you're going to be eating it during the whole movie then why in the hell are you making a shit-ton of noise opening and closing it!?

The husband was even worse. He felt compelled to make a comment, explain things to his wife or guess at every upcoming thing in the movie.

Right off the bat, after the second scene starts, we see a young Eleanor Arroway, or Ellie, on her ham radio. She's calling for someone to pick up. A guy finally comes on the other end. She asks him where he is from. The guy says "Pensacola." She asks her father, "Pensacola. Where's that?" Before her father can answer, Mr. Helpful responds in a hurried whisper, "Florida!"

Back to the movie, we see Jodie Foster playing a grown-up version of Ellie starting her job with SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) in South America. She's now a scientist. From the start, her character makes no sense. She listens to stars for noise. Her first one is one that was a parser cataloged in 1982. This is all well and good, but shouldn’t' she be tracking stars that haven't been analyzed before? Soon, she runs into a long-haired man named Father Palmer, a man that almost became a priest, but now writes about human relations in technology. They hook up and she never calls him again.

Along the way, we're introduced to characters like the sympathetic blind scientist, the smarmy politician, the crazy cult leader, the lovable scientists, etc.

Later, we're shown a flashback clip of Ellie as a girl. She's looking at stars outside her home and calls her Dad to come see them. He doesn't answer so she goes to investigate. The guy in the theater now turns into Mr. Guesser and offers this nugget, "He's dead!", which is sort of correct. Her father has had a heart attack. She slow-motion rushes to get her father's pills which are down the hall to which Mr. Guesser responds with "It's the wrong pills!" Um, no jerk, she was just too late! I start seething. It's only 15 minutes into the movie and already I feel like strangling this guy.

Back in the movie, Ellie goes into a meeting for private funding to use a bank of satellites in the New Mexico desert for SETI use. When the trustees have the gall to question the practicality of listening for life in space, Ellie responds in here usual mature fashion by ripping them a new one. She makes an impassioned speech about crazy ideas like someone flying or breaking the sound barrier and only asks them for some ingenuity. Coming from someone that sounds like a raving lunatic, how dare they question the importance of finding other life? In a normal world, she'd be thrown out and made a laughing stock, but this is Hollywood where impassioned speeches get people to change their minds everyday so she gets her funding.

At the new place, she quickly gets word that her funding isn't getting cut, but rather the use of the government-owned antennae dishes. Again, it's that same Washington guy played by James Woods that shuts her down. She reacts in the same way by throwing a hissy fit. In true Hollywood fashion, shortly after she's told that she has three months left on the project, she hears a signal coming from space soon after and the movie is off and running as they excitedly start cataloging the signal.

Because it's such a huge discovery, the government gets involved. James Woods shows up as a government official. He's the one great thing in the movie as he flings semi-condescending zingers to the scientists. Angela Basset also shows up as (I'm assuming), the secretary of state and in my opinion is extremely wasted in this role. Oh sure, she does make a complaint about Hitler being the first thing the aliens see (they transmitted back the 1936 Berlin Olympics broadcast), but most of the time she is delegated to such hard hitting dialogue as "Doctor, what does it mean?" or "What do we know?"

Meanwhile, Mr. Guesser in my row is offering all sorts of guesses. He guessed wrong about what the first transmission was. Later in the movie, Ellie gets an email and he shouts out, "It's the priest!" Wrong again, but I started guessing that I was going to have to kill him if he didn't shut up soon.

Back to the movie... Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about this movie is the use of the whole CNN staff. I can understand using Larry King as a host because he does play himself very well and has done so in several movies, but to use the whole network roster? It gets a little sad and it now looks very dated to see stiff newscasters reading fake copy about a supposed real event. It comes off more like they were reporting the weather, as opposed to the historic event that it's supposed to be.

Even more cringe inducing is the use of a real President Clinton speech in the place where the president comments on the transmission from space.

Look, I know that Hollywood really loved Clinton, but the speech comes off as extremely vague for such an event. I would have to believe that a monumental event such as this would have to call for a president to be extremely involved, especially with what comes later. Where was Morgan Freeman when we needed him? He's played a credible president before. For that matter, if you're going to use the real president at the time, why wouldn't you at least try to cast the rest of his staff as their real-life counterparts? Without familiar names it just appears as it is, a bad use of stock footage. I think it's the only movie that's ever used real-life footage of a sitting president in a fictional film.

Later, a blueprint is found in another layer of the transmission. It calls for a pod to be built on top of a tower around what looks like those rotating hula hoop things from Superman: The Movie. The pod calls for just one person to ride in it with no food or bathroom. Apparently the aliens didn't plan for a long trip. This brings me back to the president. I would have to think that a real president would again be really involved in this process.

The day of the pod launch comes and it gets destroyed. Apparently, they'll spend billions of dollars on a high-tech space pod, but cut the security budget so that Gary Busey's kid gets up to the tower to sabotage it? We have the Army and we even have the technology of a photo ID coupled with an appropriate security roster. And isn't that a warning sign to run when you see someone that looks like Gary Busey's kid? I don't know about you, but if I see Jake Busey anywhere near, I'm running.

By the way, Mr. Guesser became Mr. Obvious and commented 'Uh Oh' when Jake Busey showed up. While he didn't put two and two together about Jake being the leader of a doomsday cult until they pointed it out in the movie (his response: "Oh that was the guy!"), he did appropriately point out that some shit was going down.

So with the sacrificial lamb out of the way, Ellie gets picked to go into space. It's an overly long sequence that requires her to emotionally stroll down a long walk way to get sealed in the pod. I know she's crazy, but don't you think that she'd be excited as hell to go visit ET? She walks down the hall like she's going to a firing squad.

Thankfully, this whole sequence was really loud so I could only hear the murmur of Mr. Obvious/Guesser/Helper. Ellie is thrust up and down worm hole after worm hole until she gets to the end. There she meets the alien representative, who shows up as her father! Apparently, it would be too distressing to see a real alien? As if the horrific space voyage wasn't horrible enough?

She's sent back home and the pod falls into the safety net. At this point, the bad news is given. She had never left! Now I know I'm not a scientist and that I don't know squat about how technology works, but I do think that if I was going to send someone into space using a new-fangled pod delivery system that I'd test it out first to see if it worked.

At this point, Mr. Guesser burst out loud, "I knew it!!!!" I'm thinking, "Sure you did!"

So of course there's a congressional inquiry about the debacle and Ellie is put in the spotlight as someone who collaborated on a multi-billion dollar scam. Of course, she responds in her usual respectable demeanor, by crying and yelling that it was true. Way to not appear as a raving lunatic!

After the hearings, Angela Basset, in one of her small lines, says to James Woods that the static that was recorded by Foster lasted a whole 18 hours, which would mean that even though it was instantaneous, she was gone for 18 hours. James Woods' response: "Really?!" Mr. Obvious' response: "Really?!" My response was to glare in his direction.

At the end of the movie, right before the credits, the following appears on the screen: "For Carl". Mr. Obvious responds with, "Carl Sagan!"

I yell out, "No f^&*king shit!"

The credits roll and everyone picks up their stuff to leave.

I turn to my wife and calmly say, "I'm going to tell this motherf^&*er how much he ruined this movie for me!"

I turn around and start walking toward the guy, who seems very oblivious to how annoying he was. Laura is desperately clinging to my arm. She keeps saying, "Don't!" "Stop!" and "It's not worth it!" several times. I finally calm down, but inside I'm still fuming at this guy. I just can't believe that he can't understand that no one wants to hear his commentary. I also couldn't believe that his wife would put up with his helpful suggestions through every show or movie that they'd watch.

I can just picture him watching Seinfeld with her and when Kramer walks through the door, he'd chime in with "That's Kramer!"

I think I might have enjoyed Contact had I watched it at another screening. It taught me a valuable lesson. Don't go see Jodie Foster movies if you don't enjoy overacting... that and don't go see a movie on opening night if you afraid of someone ruining because odds are pretty good that they will.

A funny Julia story and Bill critiques my finger story...

One of the ladies that works with Julia over at her pre-school is expecting a baby.

This lady told me that during her class today that she sat the class down to give the big announcement. When she told the class that she was going to have a baby, Julia put her hands to her head and exclaimed, "Oh NO!"

Then she asked, "You're not going to have a chimpanzee are you?"

Her and her co-teacher were laughing pretty hard at this while the rest of the kids looked confused.

I need to explain the chimpanzee comment. We got Julia a For Real Friend toy for Christmas that is a baby monkey that she calls "Chimp" or "Chip". We thought it was Chip at first, but it's sounding more like Chimp.

Chimp can hug you, eat a banana, be tickled and generally just 'ooks' and 'eeks' for about 5 minutes until he falls asleep. He'll interact with you if he keeps getting attention. Julia carries him around like he's her baby.

...

Bill gave me some feedback on my story about his cutting off his finger. I really should have consulted with him prior to publishing the story because I forgot one key detail that made part of it a lot funnier.

Right after I told Bill the 'as a rule of thumb' comment and his response about it being funny (Bill disputes that, but I swear I remember that comment), Bill asked, "How long have you waiting to ask that joke?"

I responded, "Pretty much all day."

This is where I can cut him some slack. As much as it seems like he's a major pain in the ass sometimes, and he can be (kidding), he generally never gets mad as me for writing about him. I think he secretly enjoys it.

My brother, Bill, almost cuts off his finger...

I got a call from Bill the other day that was a little surprising and not surprising like "I'm moving to New York City and never talking to you again" surprising, but more like "I cannot believe you did that surprising". I've been there. I ought to know the difference. I've been on the latter end of that conversation before.

Bill asked, "Hey, remember when you had your accident with the hedge trimmer?"

Do I remember? How could I forget that? For those that don't know. I almost cut off my finger with an electric hedge trimmer in the most humanly stupid way possible. Well, I suppose that the stupidest way that I could have done it would have been to turn on the hedge trimmer, stare at it and put my finger in it. What I did was not really as stupid as THAT, but it ranks up there.

One hot summer day, I am cutting my stupid hedges, which I call that because I really, really hated those hedges. They were a blight on my nice house and after almost cutting off my finger; the luster wore off even more. The hedges were on the left side of my yard and were obviously put there to shield my nice yard from the blight that was my next door neighbor's yard. His yard was more of a collection of small shrubs, crab grass, field grass, bare patches of dirt, an above ground pool, a shed, a hot tub, a dog kennel in a cage complete with a dog house, a dog that barked a lot... Did I mention weeds and patches of dirt? While the hedges did indeed shield my precious eyes from the blight next door, I really hated cutting those hedges... a lot. I hated cutting them so much that I put it off until the branches were practically falling over from the top. When I trimmed the top, I pulled 4 foot long branches off every time.

What really sucked about the hedges is that they were grown very close to the neighbor's fence. When trimmed, there was just enough space to squeeze my 22-inch cutting path lawn mower between the fence and the hedge to mow the grass that had grown high. Before this could happen, I had to cut a path between the hedge and the fence. Seeing as how the fence was so close to the hedge, I had to cut a path like one would cut a path in the jungle with a machete. Unfortunately, I didn't have a machete. Well, maybe that was fortunate.

So with a rusty hedge trimmer, no gloves, and shorts on, I started to cut a path down the side of the hedge by the fence. Using a nifty arching motion with my right arm, I swung the trimmer up in the arm, over the branches above me and down by my side again. With my left hand, I pulled the cut branches down. It was a nice system of swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pull when BUZT, I stopped after cutting because I hit the cord that was powering the trimmer, nicking it, but not quite cutting through to the wires.

I thought, "Wow. That could have been dangerous. I could have cut through that power cord."

I should have been thinking something else that could have happened, something that happened not ten seconds later.

I started again with my swing, cut, pull (I’m getting tired of this, so I move faster), swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pu... BZZT! There was that sound again. I look down to see what happened. I'm staring down at my left hand. My index finger has been cut... deep. My skin that was around the top of my finger now look like I've cut the top of my finger and started peeling it like a banana.

I yelp, "Ow." I stare at my wound for another second. Now blood is starting to rapidly emerge from my wound.

"Oh no. Oh no. Oh God. Oh crap!"

I am cursing myself for doing this. In vain, I shake my hand, which causes a pain tremor to shoot down my arm. I head for the sliding glass door that will take me back inside. In my haste to get back inside, I realize that the hedge trimmer is still running. I can hear it on the other side of the hedge. I start to run toward the hedge trimmer, but decide to just pull the plug.

I run inside and yell, "Take me to hospital!" I'm holding my hand.

Laura looks at me like "Yeah right."

"I'm not kidding!!!" I yell.

She took me to hospital and I endured a nice set of stitches and pain for a few weeks followed by humiliation and finger numbness...

But this story is not about me...

So Bill calls me and asks me if I remember my accident with the hedge trimmer.

I answer that yes I did.

He says, “Well, I may have just topped you today. I just got back from the hospital”

So what happened was that Bill was splitting boards with a table saw. He was pushing boards through a table saw for some unknown project that he’s been planning around the house.

Bill was originally supposed to come over to visit me by the way. We had it all planned out that Bill would come over to visit with his kids so that Julia could play with her cousin, Bill’s daughter, Tess.

The day before, Bill calls and cancels. He said that Sawyer, his son, had come down with a cold. I could understand that.

So Bill gets to work splitting boards. I need to mention that Bill is downstairs in his non-finished, dank basement doing this. He’s wearing work gloves, goggles and a dust mask.

Bill was guiding the board through the saw blade when (I’m assuming) ZING! He lops off the side of his left hand by the nail. It cuts clean through his thumb, shearing off the far right side of his right thumb. Did I mention that he cut through the bone? Oh yeah, Bill cut through the bone on his right hand. He really upped the ante on that feat. Not only did I not cut through my finger bone (I just cracked it), I also managed to retain my skin. Beaten on both accounts.

In shop class, we were taught that if you ever use a table saw that you should always use something to push the boards through past the blade. The one thing you should never do is to guide the boards through with your bare hands, well that’s exactly what Bill did. When I mentioned this to Bill later by asking, ‘You know you’re supposed to use a guide when using a table saw right?’, Bill got defensive and claimed that when he usually does something like that, he notices that he needs a guide and uses one. This time, he noticed at the same time as the accident.

Now Bill reacted much in the same way that I would have reacted. He noticed that he had cut off part of his thumb and he raced upstairs and screamed, “HELP ME!” to his wife, who I’m told not only did believe his cry for help and not think that he was kidding, but she helped stripped Bill of his mask, goggles and gloves before racing to find a baby sitter from a neighbor nearby.

So long story short, Bill goes the hospital, they spray it off, clean it up, x-ray it, and send him home with some kick ass medication.

The next day, I had to think of a joke. Whenever someone in our family gets injured, we of course tend to the injured, but when it’s apparent that they are okay, it’s open season. When I injured my foot one summer, my older brothers called me “Crip” because I had to hop around the house until my foot healed. After I injured my index finger and had it in a splint for several weeks, I heard a lot of “Don’t flip me off” jokes from co-workers and family alike.

I sought out the perfect joke for this incident, one that would be kind of subtle, yet obvious enough to be slightly mean, but still funny. I did a search for “Slang: Thumb”.

I had my joke, so I just had to call Bill. On my way home from work, I asked Bill how his day was going. He had taken the day off from work because of the pain and was seeing doctors on what to do about the thumb. He might need a skin graft or they might just let it heal over.

“Any diagnosis on how much time it’ll take to heal?” I asked.

“They didn’t really say,” Bill said.

“Well, as a rule of thumb, it takes a few weeks for this type of injury to heal.”

I wait. Bill kind of grumbles.

“Hmm… Is that supposed to be FUNNY?” Bill intones in a slightly annoyed voice.

I laugh.

“I couldn’t help it. I just had to come up with a joke.”

“Well it’s not really funny yet. I’m in pain!” Bill exclaimed.

I get off the phone with Bill and I just have to call people and try the joke out on them. Perhaps I just need to try it out on people that have all of the fingers, have no pain or both. So I scan down in my phone book on my cell phone and dial the first name I scroll across, my brother Joe. He’s not at his office, so I call home. He’s not home, so I talk to my sister-in-law, Jackie.

I ask her if she had heard about Bill’s accident. She hadn’t, so I gladly and helpfully fill her in on the details. I then proceed to tell the joke how I told Bill.

Her response?

“Oh, you’re terrible!” she exclaimed while laughing.

She mentions that Joe is out of town at a conference. So I call Joe on his cell phone. He happens to be in his hotel room at the time. I tell him about Bill’s accident and my subsequent joke.

His response? Laughter and chuckling.

On a roll, I call my Mom and my brother, Paul. Both found the joke funny. So it wasn’t the joke, it was the context of it that Bill couldn’t appreciate. I guess he had to have a little distance from the joke, like not be the one involved…

Now that isn’t exactly the end of the story. While I was off calling other people and telling them the joke, Joe happened to receive a call from Bill a short while after I had called him with the joke.

Bill called to ask Joe what we wanted to give Mom and Dad for Christmas. During the start of this conversation, Bill did not mention his accident to Joe, which was surprising to him. Bill suggested some things that Mom or Dad might be interested in. Joe wasn’t sure on what we should give them.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m all thumbs when it comes to giving gifts.”

Bill yells, “Did you talk to Bob??!”

Joe laughs explains that he had just talked to me a while before that.

I talk to Bill later and he’s a little peeved at being thumbed at for the sake of a few jokes.

“So you and Joe were just laughing it up at my expense, huh?” Bill asks.

“Sorry. I thought the joke was funny and needed to be repeated.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh come on!” I said. “It’s not like I’ve never gotten shit for doing similar things. I got lots of crap when I almost cut off my finger with the hedge trimmer. And don’t you remember when Joe almost broke my foot and I had to hop around for a few weeks? I kept getting this from Joe and Paul, ‘Move it, crip’”

“Yeah…”

“So just have a little sense of humor about it.”

“Well at least you still have you whole finger left. It’s not funny because I lost part of mine.” Bill retorted.

I thought about that and dismissed it. If anything, in our family, that makes it a lot funnier. Now if he had cut off his whole hand, now that wouldn’t be funny… for while. We’d probably have a moratorium on that one until he was free from pain, fitted with a prosthetic and could use it functionally. After that, the Captain Hook references would undoubtedly commence at some point.

Bill jokes about giving away Survivor, but gives a bigger hint...

Bill called Thursday night after Survivor usually airs.

I hadn't watched it yet because while I like the show, I'm not addicted to the show. I usually wait a few days to watch it on my DVR list.

Bill says, "I don't want to spoil Survivor for you, but someone wins immunity."

I chuckle and ask, "Oh really?"

Bill continues, "Yeah. And when he wins, they put the immunity necklace around his neck."

"Oh? So the person that wins immunity is a 'he', huh? You do realize that you gave away who might have won by narrowing it down to the men?"

"No..." Bill stammers a bit. "I... uhh.. was using the 'he' term in the relative non-gender use. I didn't give anything away."

"Well, we'll see," I laugh.

Sure enough, when the Immunity Challenge segment arrives, the person that wins it is a man and not only that, but the guy was in such a huge lead that it was pretty obvious that "he" was going to win it.

I really don't care, but it was just funny to me that Bill attempted to joke and not give anything away, but ended up giving a bigger hint than he intended. Leave that to a professional...

Bill freaks out over me telling him about Survivor...

I've been really, really busy lately. I have a stockpile of stuff I need to write about, like when Bill gets into an accident with a table saw. That doesn't sound so funny, but trust me, it is. For now, here's a story about me and Bill yelling at each other...

We're watching Survivor the other night upstairs while I'm cooking dinner and one of those cute kid story moments happen. Julia really hadn't seen it before. The part of the show we were watching was the immunity challenge where the show's "tribe members" have to navigate through a series of puzzles or challenges. This one centered around a person answering a series of questions to get a number. If they untied the box with that number on it and and unwrapped the item in the box, there might be a key. If they get the key, they go to another set of things to untie to get to an obstacle course, through the course, over a series of floating things and then pulling a flag to win.

Jeff Probst, the show's host, mentions that "Alex has a lead!"

Julia yells out, "Alex is going to win!"

Alex does indeed win and Julia yells out, "Alex won! I told you he'd win!"

My wife and I both laugh because we know she's never watched the show before and at that point, it was obvious that Alex was going to win, but we let her enjoy her moment.

"Yes, very smart, Julia." I said.

It was very soon after this that my twin brother, Bill, called. I thought the story was kind of cute so I wanted to tell him. Granted, it's not one of those "Ha Ha" stories, but it's a story parents like because we think our kids are so darn clever and cute.

I tell Bill, "Hey, we were just watching Survivor. Julia was watching it during the immunity challenge and...

"Don't tell me anything! I haven't seen it!" Bill yells at me. You have to remember that Bill can be a bit of a hot head and we often yell at each other like this.

"Bill, it's not going to reveal anything." I say

"Yes, it will. You'll try to make it generic, but you'll reveal something."

"Bill, I won't. It's just a cute story."

"Don't say anything."

"But I just wanted to tell you..."

"Don't say anything!"

"about this part..."

"I said not to say anything!"

"... but it's not going to reveal..."

"I don't want to hear it!"

"Look, it's not going to spoil anything!" At this point, I'm moving downstairs to yell at him.

"Yes. It. Will!"

"It was during the immunity challenge. Someone had a big lead..."

"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!"

"... when JEFF PROBST SAYS..."

"...AAGGHHH! I'M NOT LISTENing!!!!" Bill trails off at this point because it sounds like Bill, a grown man, has resorted to throwing the phone down. I can still hear yelling in the distance.

I get really pissed. All I'm trying to do is to tell him some innocent kid's story and he's acting this way.

He gets back on the phone and I yell, "LOOK! YOU BIG F*&*ING BABY! ALL I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU IS THAT WHEN JEFF PROBST YELLED, "SO-AND-SO IS IN A LEAD!" JULIA YELLED "SO-AND-SO'S GOING TO WIN!" WHEN SO-AND-SO DID WIN SHE SAID, "SO-AND-SO WON! I TOLD YOU THEY WERE GOING TO WIN! It's just some cute kid story and you are ruining it!!!"

"See! That's hardly giving anything away," I finish.

"We'll see.." Bill mutters.

"Oh you're such a baby when it comes to that."

"Because you always give something away. No matter how hard you try, you still do."

So the next morning I talked to Bill. I jokingly ask him, "So were you still able to enjoy Survivor after I gave something away?"

"Yes, but you totally gave it away!"

"What?" I ask.

"Yeah," Bill replied. "When Jeff said that Alex was in the lead, I thought, 'Well, I don't need to watch the rest of this now and I fast forwarded through it.'"

"You're kidding right? Seriously? You're upset because of that? It was blatantly obvious who was going to win that challenge."

"You never know," Bill said.

"You never know? By the time he said that, he had such a huge lead, it was obvious he was going to win."

"Sometimes, it's not like that. Someone comes from behind."

I sigh.

"You just can't help yourself."

"And you just can't stand to have anything revealed, no matter how small. You don't even like me telling you the show's description on the cable guide," I retort.

"Whatever. You told me about an episode of Amazing Race last year and I quote,'You'll be very happy at the result.' Yeah, like that didn't give much away."

"That was Joe (our older brother)! That wasn't me!"

"Well, you still ruin things..."

"Of course I do. You know who shot Mr. Burns? Maggie Simpson. And that chick in The Crying Game? Totally a guy!"

Bill kind of laughs

"Bill, I hate to ruin it for you, but in Titanic, the ship sinks at the end. Sorry..."

My bad half-day...

I don't want to complain about everything in my life, but today just seemed to fray the very fiber of my existence. Well, that's probably taking it too far, but it was pretty annoying at times today. I don't know if it's just because I was in a hurry and had things to do and places to go, because that tends to amplify it, or if I'm just impatient. It's probably a combination of both.

First off, I get up late for work. It's not that I'm "late" but rather I got up later than I thought I would. I get out the door at a semi-decent time, 7:30, and head for the local grocery store so I can buy a six-pack of pop and to get some cash back for the week.

I get to the check out and the guy behind there has just finished with a customer. I plop my six-pack down and wait for the guy to acknowledge me. He's looking down and making a motion with his leg. I wait. He makes the motion with his leg a few times more while looking down. I look at my watch, tap my hands on the checkout shelf and watch the guy make the same motion with his leg while looking down. The guy finally stops making that motion with his leg and bends down. He picks up a pen! The motion that he's been making for the last 45 seconds was him trying to manipulate a pen that had fallen down below the checkout surface and he was trying to pull it back towards him by gently, ever so gently and slowly, move the pen with the ball of his foot by pulling backwards on it. Granted, it probably would been a lot easier to bend down and grab the pen, not to mention faster, but this guy had chosen his method of pulling a pen towards him and he was sticking to it by God!

He finally gets up with his pen, sets it down and asks, "Did you find everything all right?"

I had. So he rings me up. He scans my pop and my donut. I give him my card and tell him how much cash back that I want. He types it in fast. I swipe my card and type the confirm commands to get my cash and I'm thinking that this is going to make up for lost time. The drawer opens for my cash when another store employee walks up. The cashier was starting to grab my cash, stops and then starts fiddling under the drawer for some receipts that he needs to give the other guy.

He's doing this with one hand by the way as the other hand is trying to get my cash. Now I'm assuming that giving me my cash first and sending me on my merry way would be smart since I'm the customer, but I guess he was wanting to please us both, which wasn't happening. The cashier mumbles something about receipts he needs to give someone when the other guy asks, "Do you have a quarter?"

I look down and the other guy has two dimes and a nickel in his hand. That's it? This is why I'm delayed yet again? I look at my watch as I have been doing for the last four minutes that I've been standing there hoping that it will send a signal that reads "Time is money" or "I'm a man that has too little time on his hands" or "Hey! Look at the time!"

Finally I get my money and leave. I glance at my watch and it's not bad, but not great. I had hoped to hit the new Dodge street expressway by 7:35, but it's now 7:45. Traffic is bad as I head a mile north as it seems that every car is itching to try out the new expressway.

I finally get going on the expressway, but when it merges into 680 South, that's when it's like a scene out of Final Destination 2. Cars are flying this way and that. Cars behind me are trying to get around me. I'm trying to get around the cars in front of me. Some lanes are going fast. Some are going slow, which causes near wrecks as those trying to get from the fast lanes to the slow lanes have to slow down abruptly to get over.

I finally get to work.

My agenda over the lunch hour was to renew my license at the Department of Motor Vehicles so that I can register to vote. I just moved to Omaha about 9 months ago so I must register to vote again. I find out from our receptionist that all of the DMVs are closed because they all have training classes on their new computer system this week. I was a little stumped. The deadline to register to vote in the state of Nebraska at the DMV is October 18th, which happens to be right in the middle of the closed office week. I smell conspiracy... No matter, I decided to go to the court house downtown to see if I can get a renewal.

I go downstairs to the renewal office and wait in line. It's not long, but it's a little stuffy down there. This is a bad problem because two vintage-clothes alterna-adults are standing in front of me. The woman to my left is wearing what can only be described as a black and white Purina dress (if they made clothes). Her hair has jet black roots with blond streaks to accentuate her short, slicked spiked up hair. She tops it off with some black horn-rimmed glasses. The guy is wearing a more conventional drab-green wool coat with a short stocking cap that is not unlike the caps that bald football players wear, except that it's just made of yarn.

My problem is not the clothes that they are wearing. You can wear whatever you want. I don't care.

However, if you are going to dress that way, how about taking a bath first? Better yet, how about a shower? While you're in the cleaning mood, how about washing those clothes?

They seemed like nice enough kids, but the guy took off his hat and starting fan them, which put regular whiffs of stale body odor with a touch of clove cigarettes or incense. Whatever it was, it was not too pleasant and I just had to stand there (because there was a scary looking guy right behind me) and cover my nose to avoid the B.O. As they were leaving, I felt compelled to remark, "It's called deodorant" but didn't because I'm sure they don't even realize they smell.

I finish with the DMV and head over to the local electronics store to get some earphone pads. Mine keep tearing because I don't wind up the headphones in their case. I just wrap it around my cd player and stuff it in my pocket, which probably contributes to the problem.

I go in and the friendly people there asked me if there was anything that I was looking for. I answer like I always do that "No. I'm just looking around. Thank You." which is followed by "Well, we have a lot of specials so feel free to ask" response.

I glance around at some of the MP3 accessories and look for the earphone pads. They're not in the usual spot, so I ask the guy behind the counter where they are. They had thoughtfully rearranged the store so he finds them for me.

As I'm paying for this 4 dollar item, the guy behind the counter makes sure to tell me that "As usual, we have our batteries on sale."

I mutter, "Uh huh."

I make the mistake of "glancing" at the back wall because they are filled with flash drives. The guy notices my "interest" and starts telling me about the wonders of flash memory. I am literally trying to walk away and he's going "I just got this 2 gig flash drive and it's really great because it comes complete with security on it and Firefox, which is really great."

I'm trying to walk away still, but at least he's trying to wrap it up fast.

"Whenever I work on someone's computer, I use the drive to put programs on it that I'll need like adaware, Spybot and a few others so that I don't have to download them from download.com."

I smile and say, "All right then."

Hate to be hard on the guy, but what part of my "I'm trying to walk out of the store" motion did he not understand. Plus, I have a flash drive and while handy it isn't as great as he describes. You mean you can actually put stuff on the flash drives and take them with you to put on someone else's computer? Get out of town!

So actually it was a bad half day. Maybe I just hate people?

Remember the Tornado Party when we had to take cover?

Saturday, September 17th was interesting to say the least. We were throwing a small get together at my house to watch the USC/NU game on ABC. The game was not what I liked to see. I was hoping that NU might build off some sort of offensive success early in the game and compete to win, but what we were treated with was run after run that only exposed how my Nebraska team still needs a lot of help on the offensive line and a lot of help in the defensive secondary, but that's not what this story is about.

One of the guests mentioned to me that the thunderheads developing outside to the east were really tall, so tall that they no longer were in our atmosphere, but in the stratosphere...

I kind of know what she meant, but not really. But hey, the clouds did indeed look extremely tall, so I went with it and even started telling people at the party, "You should see the thunderhead clouds forming outside. They're so tall that they're no longer in our atmosphere..."

A little after halftime, the weather started to get a little scary. Thunder started booming and some rain started. On the TV, the weather guy broke in with a split screen to mention that some possible tornado clouds had been spotted in our area... and were headed right towards us. At this point, it was decided that we should probably move downstairs to some more safety.

One of my wife's co-worker's joked, "Oh this is great! If only I had stayed at home, I'd be well clear of this storm. Out west, we're in the middle of it."

Another one quipped, "Yeah, for years, we'll be going 'Hey, remember when we went to Laura's tornado party and had to take cover in the basement?'"

Our neighbor was next door looking after her baby while her kids were downstairs with the rest of us. Laura suggested that we should go next door and go get her, so she could be in the basement with us since our neighbor's basement was unfinished and she was upstairs with the baby, not exactly the safest place. Laura called her up and headed over to her house to help her come over. A few minutes later, I get a call that I think is from Laura.

I hear nothing but wind and then I hear, "Hello?..."

I ask, "I'm here... "

"HellO?"

"Yes!"

"Bob?"

"Yes! Talk to me!"

"Oh sorry, this is Jessica (my neighbor down the street). I was just letting you guys know that you should get everyone in the basement."

"They are," I replied.

"Good. Because there is a funnel cloud that is hanging over my house. It keeps going up and down, but it hasn't touched ground yet."

I panic and sprint upstairs and throw open the door. I step outside and there in what seems to be the middle of the road right at about rooftop height, is a fairly large, white funnel cloud. It wasn't exactly the text book one that you would expect from a spinning cloud, but it was close enough for me! I look over to my left and see my neighbor and her baby. I usher them inside the house. I look the funnel cloud again and over to my left again and see Laura fiddling with the neighbor's door. She's carrying a dog carrier that must have their dog, Snoopy, in it. I yell, "Hurry up!"

She's moving slow.

I yell louder, "HURRY UP!"

She looks at me a little confused. I point behind her. Laura turns around, glances at the funnel cloud and starts hightailing at a much faster pace towards our house. I guess it's nothing like a storm right in front of you to get people moving...

We run inside. I close the door and (for some odd reason) lock the deadbolt (as if that would stop the storm). We run downstairs. I take a quick inventory of the people down there. Everyone seems accounted for. I decide to get the cats rounded up.

The storeroom has a hole in the wall for the cats to jump through to get to the food and their litter. I quickly block the hole with a large box and throw other heavy items behind it. I walk out of the storeroom and grab the two cats that were down there, Moe and Susie. I think Murphy (our other cat) is still upstairs.

I yell to Laura, "I'm going to get Murphy! The tornado's outside! (for some reason I yell this as it wasn't a tornado yet).

I start upstairs and Julia asks, "Tornado? Where?" She starts mounting the stairs to follow me! "I want to see!" she exclaims excitedly. One of Laura's co-workers quickly grabs Julia and takes her back downstairs telling her "we're going to have some fun!"

I rush upstairs and head towards the bedroom. I look in the bedroom and don’t find her. I run out back into the living room and look behind the couch. There she is. I pull the couch out and grab her. Murphy protests with some “rororr” sounds. She starts to thrash a little bit and giving her tendency to scratch me with her hind legs, I hold her back feet with my free hand while running down the stairs. Her heart is racing as we pass by the people downstairs. She protests again and I feel something warm on my chest.

I drop her in the storeroom and close the door behind me. I examine my shirt. It’s wet in a spot. So are my shorts. Murphy has peed on me!

This happened one other time when we were just getting ready to show our house to some people who were going to buy our house. They had brought their parents to show them the house. It was my duty to round up the cats and shove them in a large pet carrier so the buyers could tour the house without a cat attack. I get Moe in first, but Murphy protests and proceeds to pee a large amount of urine all over me. I am completely soaked on one side of my body. I had to rush upstairs, change out of my clothes and change fast before the buyers walked in. Thankfully, Murphy didn’t blow that sale.

With my clothes soaked in pee and a potential tornado outside, I did what most guys would do in that situation, I went back upstairs to change.

I ran into my bedroom again, grabbed a shirt and a pair of shorts and went downstairs into the storeroom with the cats to change.

When all was said and done, I joined our guests downstairs as we waited for the storm to subside. The funnel cloud didn’t drop, so we were spared damage.

The next day, I told my brother, Bill, about the experience.

His first question was: “Did you get video?”

Yeah… Because that was my first instinct! Screw getting my family safe and the animals safe. I needed to make sure that I got some sweet video of a possible tornado. Granted, that would have been cool, but my mind was elsewhere…