Subdivided We Stand Meets Marathon Man

Seen A Million Walls, and I've Drawn On Them All

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, was 14 years old in 1987.

Which happened to be the year that she got new wallpaper in her bedroom.  Which also happened to be the year that Bon Jovi played in her hometown and she went to see him.

How do I know all this?  Courtesy of the photo below, courtesy of her mother, who just this week decided to rip down all that wallpaper from 20 years ago -- only to reveal the following graffiti (please note that I've smudged out the offending party's name):

As someone with a well-documented history of dorkishness, it's nice to see someone else's past dorkitude on display.  Especially from a female.  I was so in awe of the babes back then that I never really gave much thought as to whether there might be females out there as dorky as myself -- but here's some evidence that such might be the case.

In other news, the following awesome message was in my spam this morning:

Don’t make women freak out when they take your pants off.

I will do my best, dear spammer.  I will do my best.

Blogfest Reminder

Blogfest...tonight...Finnegan's Wake.  Be there.  (Details)

Also -- Steely McBeam? 

(Update:  I reconsidered the image that was here, based on the fact that, you know, I do some work for the organization in question and would like to continue to do so.  Yes, I am a wuss.  I'll gladly email it to anyone who requests it, though.)

In Which I Pimp Joe's Novels

I hope you're enjoying Joe's serialized novel, Blacksmith's Girl.  I certainly am -- although at times I feel a little bit like Milhouse felt when he was watching Poochie's debut on "Itchy and Scratchy."  Although instead of "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory," I'm all like "When are they going to get to the sex?"

Hopefully, once Joe and family get back from visiting the Emerald Isle, he'll get down to writing some serious gettin' down.

Speaking of sex, there's plenty of it (albeit of the gay variety) in Joe's first novel, which is available right here.  Buy it, own it, love it.

Or, if gay-themed comic novels about hitmen and insurance aren't your thing, then check out his other novel.  I proudly own them both, and you should too. 

On a completely unrelated note, I tried something new at the gym this morning. 

I am, to be quite honest, a sweaty guy.  I sweat all the time.  Big, pit-stainy sweat.  (You're hot for me now, aren't you?  Admit it.)  Especially at the gym, where my t-shirts tend to be entirely drenched by the time I finish the cardio portion of my workout.  I kind of take it as a badge of honor, or a goal if you will -- I feel as though I'm slacking if there's even an inch of dry t-shirt by the time I'm done.

But it's really been getting disgusting lately, what with the oppressive heat and humidity.  So I decided to try one of these miracle-fabric shirts that banish your sweat to the land of wind and ghosts.

Guess what -- they work!  While my new shirt was, as always, soaked through this morning, I remained relatively cool.  The sweat had miraculously been whisked away from the inside of my shirt!  It was swell.

Although, as I learned, all that sweat has to get wicked to SOMEWHERE.  And where it gets wicked is right onto your shorts.

So, instead of a sopping wet shirt, I had a giant wet spot spreading outwards from my bidness -- looking for all the world as though I had peed my pants.

S.E.X.Y.!

Silver Bullet

The helpful, hardly-ever-fascist-anymore folks at the Coors Brewing Company have come up with a new gimmick to help you determine if your Coors Light has been chilled to the correct temperature.

See those blue mountains on the label up there?  That means that your Coors Light has been chilled enough to wipe out any of the taste that it may have once contained.  Drink up!  (Un-chilled Coors Light will display the mountains in their original silver.)

This latest innovation comes hard on the heels of their previous innovation -- by which you could tell merely by looking at the label that the beer within did, in fact, suck.  Here's how you can make this determination -- if the following is on the label of your beer bottle, then rest assured that the beer inside is tasteless swill unfit for human consumption:

Ar ar ar.  I got nothin'.  But for some entertainment, check out these awesome re-worked comic strips.  (Link via The Comics Curmudgeon.)

Solidio, Blogfest, Hair

Blogging Doldrums Week continues, with a couple of unrelated items:

Item the first:  My pal, former co-worker (twice), and all-around groovy gal Julie Graf has put the finishing touches on her Web site, which is all about her hand-made wood and metal craftwork.  Please give Solidio a look, I think that you'll find some excellent stuff there.  Probably not too late for Mom's Day...

Also, you can find Julie and her products this last Sunday at I Made It! at the Garfield Artworks.  (Oops!  J.G., gotta give me a little more heads-up next time!)  Ok, THIS Saturday you can find her at The Craft Factory at The Mattress Factory.

Item the second:  Pittsburgh Blogfest #10 will be held at Finnegan's Wake tomorrow (Thursday) night from 5:30 until whatever time such as we all get sick of each other.  Yours truly will be in attendance.  If you have a blog, if you're thinking about starting a blog, if you read a blog, if you're just bored and just want to say the word "blog" a lot, then come on down. 

Item the third:  My hairline has been receding, slowly, since roughly around 1983.  However, it's been a slow process, and while there's a lot more forehead up there than there used to be, I'm still miles away from being bald.

Last night, my barber mentioned that given my particular follicle impairment (receding hairline, but still plenty thick in back and on the sides, with nary a hint of male-pattern-baldnes), I'd be a good candidate for hair implants.

Now I've never even considered anything other than growing balder with dignity, and in general I'm not a particularly vain person -- but I do have to confess, the thought of preventing or maybe just minimizing my chrome-dome-ness does have some appeal.  I've always thought that hair implants, at least in the John Fedko thousands-of-little-sprigs-of-hair-on-your-forehead stage, look ridiculous.  But perhaps they've improved the technology?  Anybody have any first- or second-hand info on this?  Don't make me do a Google search on this, people -- help a follically-challenged brother out.

Oh, and just in case there's some reason that you don't read Tunesmith and Anthony on a daily basis -- first of all, shame on you, and second of all, enjoy this.

Since I'm completely bereft of ideas, time, and energy this week, I'll resort to the old standby of posting YouTube videos that I find interesting.  Here's one on Penn State wrestler Rohan Murphy, who was just named one of five winners of this year's Wilma Rudolph Student-Athlete awards.  The Rudolph award is given annually to student-athletes who have overcome great personal, academic, or emotional odds.  Even if you hate PSU, which I know a lot of you do, give this a look.

Here's a little more info on Mr. Murphy.

Coexisting Peacefully

A little pressed for time at the moment -- so let's have a little fun with The Decider, shall we?

UPDATE:

In other news -- anybody else think that this guy needs a 24-hour cattle prod suppository?

Keep Me Searchin' For a Harvest Gold

I'm a little short on time and light on topics this week -- so here's a fun email I received yesterday in response to my June 2, 2006 post regarding my dad's 70's Kitchen.

Dear Bob,

I want to thank you for coming to my rescue today with the picture of your Harvest Gold refrigerator from the 70’s. My wife and I live in a 1960 National Homes prefab home in Terre Haute, Indiana and while the outside windows are no longer aluminum and glass anymore, the insides have remained virtually the same since the foundation was poured. It started off with some vintage 50’s and 60’s ad’s for Morton’s salt. Then some ‘retro’ salt and pepper shakers, drinking cups, silverware (of a fashion) and chrome sided yellow kitchen table with matching plastic coated yellow bent tube chairs.

The cabinets, while original and steel, are painted in multiple shades of a dull, dusty white paint applied many years ago and now covered with layers of cooking residue and age. Then it hit me.

We need to repaint them!

But what color. Avocado green? Harvest Gold? Those seem to be the only colors I remember from that period. Unfortunately, it’s hard to walk into Lowe’s or Menard’s of True Value and say, “I want a can of paint – harvest gold – like from when I was a kid.”

You can almost see the clerks eyes glaze over.

So, tonight… with Google image scan guiding my way – there you were. Smiling that same smile I smiled in my own mom and dad’s kitchen in 1974 when I graduated high school thinking I knew all the answers when in fact I didn’t have a clue even what the questions were. But it didn’t matter then. I had polyester shirts and double knit pants and disco wasn’t far away. Sigh.

So, Bob, thank you for taking to time to put out here in cyberspace a virtual national treasure – a landmark as worthy as any Mt. Rushmore or Grand Canyon or pet rock that by it’s very presence evokes memories of sideburns, long hair, Emerson Lake and Palmer and a small car with a nice back seat – the Harvest Gold Refrigerator.

I start painting tomorrow… but first I’m going to scrub the cabinets down with some TSP – Tri-sodium phosphate cleaner – you remember phosphates don’t you? They were responsible for the slime almost taking over lake Erie and were banned in the 70’s.

Regards,
John

A Quick One While I'm At Work

Happy Anniversary to the lovely Mrs. Subdivided!  Eight years of putting up with yours truly.  An amazing feat of tolerance.

In other news, we've all seen acts of idiocy on the highways.  In fact, if you're paying attention, you probably see at least one daily.

This morning I saw an entirely new brand of idiocy.  One for the ages.

As I'm pulling on to the entrance ramp for I-279, I see a driver in the middle lane of the highway slowing down.  As I approach the top of the ramp, he pulls across both the right-hand lane as well as the top of the ramp, where he comes to a complete halt.

After I have passed him, I look back in my rear-view -- and lo and behold, this einstein is backing his car down the ramp.

Now, we've probably all seen people miss their exit ramps on highways, and then pull over, back up, and take their exit.  In fact, I've probably done this myself.  It's a stupid thing to do, but given the massive amount of driving stupidity that goes on out there, not so bad.

This guy, however, took it to a whole new level by not only passing his exit, but pulling over and backing his car down an entrance ramp.

Moron.

A Cavalcade of Joes

Three separate items about three different Joes...

How great was last weekend with the Marathon Man family?  Well -- really, really great.  If you have a weekend to spare, I highly recommend that you head on down to D.C. and spend it with the Kellys.  You'll be rewarded with big laughs, great conversation, good beer, some out-of-this-world Chinese food, the world's greatest doughnuts, and much more.  Personally, I would steer clear of the cat-pee-scented wine -- but that's just me.  Your mileage may vary.

I'd love to be able to come up with a laundry list of fabulous things we did together, the Marathon Man family and I -- but the truth is, while we did do our share of museum and monument visitation, the best parts of the weekend were just sitting around the apartment, b.s.'ing with the boys and watching their short films (if you go, be sure to ask for a screening of "Uncle Skeeter," a truly funny piece that I'm hoping will have a sequel with a small walk-on role for yours truly.  Nik and Sean, I look forward to the production of "Uncle Skeeter 2:  Skeeter's Revenge"), or dvd's of classic rock performances.  (We watched a clip of The Who from what was clearly their peak period as performers.  I'd tell you the name of the song, but I was too embarassed to admit that I had never heard it before -- I think it was from The Who Sell Out.  Perhaps Joe or Nik or Sean will fill in the blanks here.)

Anyway, thanks to Rebecca for putting up with all of us, and most of all thanks to Mrs. Subdivided for putting it together.  It was fabulous.

And on to Joe the Second...

I've just received word that Joe Matis, whose letters from Kuwait have been excerpted here on this blog, is back in the States -- indeed, he's back home here in Pittsburgh.  Welcome home, Joe, and thanks for a job well done.

And finally, on to Joe Deemer, former co-worker and author of the fine blog "Face Down in the Muck"...

Congrats to Joe on having his play selected to be part of a showcase in New York City.  Here are the details, and here's where you can go to see a short clip from the play.

So that's it -- everything I know about every Joe I know.