A unique constellation of circumstances.....

Thought I was reasonably footloose and fancyfree yesterday, so I took Number One Son to go see "Bolt" yesterday at the Market Arcade. I would have preferred the new Bond flick but whatever, Bolt was okay but all the good lines are in the commercials. We ran a couple of errands and arrived at his house at 5:30 or so. I was planning on coming back here and checking on the Lasertron outting. Instead, it got decided on the spur of the moment that we needed to go hang out with an older cousin. Last night was the night picked to gather to eat drink be merry and distract our cousin. He lost his wife earlier in the week. The funeral is Friday, last night wound up being the informal get together for family. Just wish I would have known a little more in advance. There is a small circle of folk who I was looking forward to seeing, others who I had to introduce myself too (Oh, right, the nice white boy XXXX married) and some fools. One of the latter decided it was a good time to give me some flak about what kind of father would let number one son quit Tae Kwon Do. Grrrr. I hate when people especially ones who have no business passing out parenting advice decide to start in for the sake of starting in. Pisses me off to have to stand there, pretending to take things gracefully, when I had a perfectly fine invitation to go shoot stuff from a lovely soul (thanks again, (e:imk)). Apparently, giving my son a voice in his own world makes me an unfit parent. This same jerk was the one who decided that if I was any kind of man the ex wouldn't be gay. Christ on a bike. got home a little after 9, too late to make the shenanigans.

As usual, I would have preferred to be firing lasers with ya'all.

Got up this morning with an eye toward sponging off the folks and doing laundry for free and watching the Bills game with the old man. My folks both got health news (nothing serious, just annoying) and I thought it would be a good idea to have the kids come out. Instead they were booked till 2. Not wanting to be in Clarence all night, I ran downtown stairs and the laundry there was booked. Screw it, packed up the soap, the clothes, the ipod and headed for the laundramat. Got it all done in short order, picked up the youngins and broke bread over a good old starchfest in the burbs that perked everybody up.

The weekend was like a weekday of running around, just no work involved. That will change tomorrow with an educational video shoot at the Zoo. I have to take a guy in a bear suit through the Rainforest. That alone sounds like an old Letterman bit.

Blew off morning yoga to extend the coffee and blanket stuff in front of Charles Osgood, so back on the bike tomorrow night. I was beside myself on the last class. My balance for stuff is shaky at best, but I can start to do the on one foot stuff with some ease and actually held one on the poses for the entire time frame. Nearly made an unmanly noise of surprise.

Bumming over the pistol packing good time last night but the beautiful thing about estrip. There is always next time.....

Been reading a little about all the shenanigans involving the football game on Monday night. Having worked two night games last year on the Bills staff, it was decidely nicer to spend this game on my couch, warm and with the cold beer already paid for and no line for my reasonably clean bathroom. A few years ago, for a work function, I got to sit the M&T Club. That is one of the big monstrosities at the end of the stadium. 200 people private service, closed windows. It was like being a Roman watching the christians escape the Lions. But the past two seasons found me decked out in this splendor:



That was from the hockey game, but that was also my post for football days and nights. To the left were season ticket holders and pretty consistent in their attendence. To the right was a few season ticket types, walk ups, opposing fan types. Since it was the end zone, they were the last seats sold. Never a dull moment. When ESPN came to town last year, it was for a game with the Cowboys, which brought out the inner asshole in some Bills fans. The fights were clear cut. It's the near fights that put people on edge. The bulk of the stadium is fine, but something about the end zones and near end zones that. Something about somebody wearing the wrong team colors turns the joint into Lord of the Flies.

Game still sucked, but seeing the suckitude from the comforts of home is preferred.

Perhaps out of spite since I still have my hair, my Dad sends the occasional photograph to keep me on my toes. The one that arrived in today's email wasn't so bad. I worked for St. Bonaventure Unversity Radio Station when I was in school in the Mezozoic era (the mid 80's). We were almost a big deal, had many leatherbound books on shelves of rich mahogany....mostly because the four commercial stations down there at the time played either country or "music of your life." The attached is a picture from a remote broadcast from the Olean Center Mall, so long ago that my hair was a uniform color of brown and the picture was only in black and white. Enjoy.



Another questionable fashion choice. 1984 was a kidney stone for such things.

Oh yeah, My eldest needed a baby pic for her senior page in the City Honors yearbook, so this is what is going in, apparently. Brace yourselves for a window into my decay.



She's the clean shaven one....

A man and a woman started to have sex in the middle of a dark forest.

After about 15 minutes of it, the man finally gets up and says, "Damn,
I wish I had a flashlight!". The woman says, "Me too, you've been
eating grass for the past ten minutes!"

Part of my job is taking meetings, even when there really isn't much point. You know, the dreaded networking meeting to scope out potential business partners and sponsors. The conversation is usually dripping in false sincerity and takes me back to the disingenuousness of my my dinners at Adelphia. I'm getting to be pretty decent at getting through them. (e:uncutsanflush) and (e:leetee) caught me showing off Zoo property to a potential partner last week (he later parted with $5,000) (See, told you I was good).

Well, on thursday night, I was dispatched to an affair run by the Buffalo Partnership. Various companies were exhibiting services and the partnership invited companies involved with the partnership and ones they like. So, I got to take my life in my hands and take the 190 after dark to the Grand Island Bridge (not an easy fit) and meander back twenty years down Whitehaven road to the Holiday Inn resort & Hotel that is on the river. It wasn't promising. After you cross the main boulevard on the island, it is full of nothing, light, structures, which was made all the more eerie by the damp evening. I half expected a fog horn in the distance. You're driving and you get to the point where you are sure you took a wrong turn, only off in the distance is the strangely comforting holiday inn neon green light.

I park and schlep my to the conference room where this little party is encounced. After necogiating my way past the check in nazis (who rightly noted that I wasn't Dr. Donna, nothing slips past the partnership crew), I got a drink and set about meandering. The food looked like what if White Castle served beef on weck. Not a wonderful concept, but keeping myself on a coca cola diet seemed the prudent coarse. I saw a couple former colleagues from my Adelphia. One noted that I looked a little thinner. Stories I could have told. The other was a little too amped up about selling tires.

After chatting a little with one of the folks from a magazine I buy advertising in, I was pounced on by a printing salesman. The guy looked like somebody called central casting and said "give us the greasiest, most uncouth, poorly suited, hygenically impaired stereotype and we'll let him talk to the public." Now, in my work, I have perfected the insincere, I really am listening, smile. It looks like I'm there for you, but in reality, I'm mentally out back having a drink.
I had to call upon those skills while this putz complained about how his newspapers publish the zoo press releases, but we don't send him any printing business. While he's making this complaint, I'm mentally noting that I'm not sure if that was a moustache he's sporting or if the nose hair is running amuck, because you can't tell where one stops and the other begins.

I pretend to rifle through my swag bag looking for a card or something and blessedly an announcement breaks up his ethical complaint for me to slip to the bar. A conversation gets started up by a woman from the presenting organization who knows a little too much about my family. Turns out she is a Clarence resident who knows my folks. Turns out she also played a role in my Mom getting squeezed out of the town planning board. Turns out if she was on fire, my mom might write a note to the fire department about coming to put that out....when they had a minute. And so it goes...

By this point, I've filled two hours and done the deed. I even got a potential sponsor for something at the Zoo. The whole exercise makes me feel like I need a shower. I get to my car and place a call for good food from Mr. Pizza who fucks up the order but even with delay, my takeout and I are home for 30 Rock, along with a new collection of pens, flashlights, candies, folders and whatnot.

Had to laugh, because there was a company there who did nothing but sell promo crap that the other 19 booths were foisting on people.

First believable word I heard all night was from the Mr. Pizza guy who offered a pop for the messed up order.

Sometimes you just have those days...

Not good, not bad, just ripe for a scene in a workplace sitcom.