dirty deeds done

You may be wondering why I'm rollin' in the Jacksons. My crew and I have made our fortunes by doing our share of dirty work. Some things I do are things that nobody else would touch.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned Joe before. Actually, I just did a quick search of the blog and I guess I mention Joe quite a bit. He beats me in Guitar Hero all the freakin' time. One thing I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned is that Joe has an intensely hairy back. After this last Wednesday, I think he may possibly have the hairiest back in the state.

About a week ago, Joe borrowed my camera to enter 101.9 The End's "Bringing Sexy Back" contest. It was a hairy back contest. We always joked with him about his hairiness, but I didn't think he'd make the station's callbacks. He did. The station asked him to come into the studio to compete against two other hairy-backed guys. They also required him to bring in someone else to sculpt his back hair into some kind of artistic statement. Since, my boss was to be out of town the day of the contest, I volunteered to take the day off work to do the deed.

I had one demand: that we didn't just cave to catering by simply writing in the name of the radio station. Joe, Maria and I brainstormed a few pretty good back designs. Maria suggested the rock-on hand sign and wings. Joe loved the rock sign, but i didn't think I'd be able to make it look convincing. I liked the idea of the wings, because a hairy texture is close to a feathered texture; so I talked Joe into doing the wing thing.

We barely made it to the station on time and were escorted into the studio. We met Parker and Wendi, the two newest personalities on The End. He pretty much talks non-stop about how the Utah audience hates him. Nicer in person than I thought though. Wendi was super-nice, but slightly forlorn. His picture on the website makes him look like a total db, but his hair isn't actually that peroxided in person. One of the other guys was our age. He brought his sister with him. Both of the other guys were bigger gentleman, but the guy who came with his wife was quite a bit bigger. He was also a bit older. His wife did a lot of complaining about how weird it is to cuddle up with a guy with a hairy back. Anyway, they started off jabbing off with us for an unnecessary amount of time. I brought in my iRiver FM receiver to record the experience, but the reception in there was strangely bad. Maybe I should have just turned the microphone recorder on. I'll try to post what I got anyway.

I didn't think we really had a chance of winning until it was time to have everyone take their shirts off. The young guy was about as hairy as Joe, but the guy with the complaining wife hardly had anything. Hopefully after seeing the other contestants, she'll quit her yappin.' So then they gave us about 15 minutes to go ahead and work our magic. We forgot an electric razor, but the station provided a couple of them for us. We were prepared in just about every other way. I sharpied up some key locations, so that I could get the symmetry of the wings right (I still got it quite a bit wrong). We also brought some razor blades to do some close cutting on the edges for a deeper contrast, but they were only good for a swipe or two before they became clogged up with hair and useless (it's not like we had running hot water to rinse them out with). I messed up plenty on the texturing. I wanted to sort of make the triangular shape of feathers, but when I did I wound up taking off more hair than I wanted to (because of the curl variable etc.) and we wound up with plenty of very unneeded baldness. Because of this, I panicked and to Joe's chagrin I touched up the whole project with some sharpie outlining.

When time was up and we got a glimpse of the other contestants, I had a sudden surge of hope. To my delight, BOTH of the other teams went with the butt-kissing "101.9 The End" design that I vetoed initially. They also went overboard in coloring their poorly shaved designs with magic markers. We had to tell a couple of people what our design was, but once we told them, they ahh'ed with mild delight. The judges were the sponsors (a husband and wife team from the laser treatment place called Evea) and an up-and-coming Georgia band intensely loved by Parker called Five Star Iris (a sort of blend of Gin Blossoms, Keith Urban and an EFY tape).

After a short dismissal, we got back into the studio where the Evea guy (who has almost no body hair, btw) announced that Joe won (say hooray!).

After the contest, we were treated to a free mini-concert by Five Star Iris. They're pretty nice guys. Good thing, because nobody really knows who they are yet, so they'd be dumb to be divas already. After the show we chatted and got our picture taken with them.

The contest prize was $200 (which Joe split evenly with me (hence the top photo)) and three free laser treatments, which I guess Joe will start participating in around Memorial Day or so. Of course If Joe wants to do it right, he'll have to order three MORE treatments after his free ones at close to a cost of 1000 bucks. In essence, the laser people will ultimately hustle him into it. On the other hand, the poor hairy guy has been meaning to do this for a long time, so he may as well get a huge discount on the process. Looks like Joe won't be the hairiest guy in the state for too much longer.

three things i learned at work today

There's been a theory floating around that one way to help overcome allergies is to consume honey that has been produced locally. Since bees make honey from the local pollen containing the allergens that cause allergic symptoms, eating local honey sort of produces an immunity in much the same way that vaccinations do. Rhett and I have thrown around this theory for the past few months. Today I found out at least two (2) people on the internet subscribe to the same theory. Although that doesn't prove its truth, the fact that I didn't stumble across anybody refuting the theory certainly doesn't dispel it. Of course they do recommend starting the "honey treatment" of a teaspoon a day three months in advance of allergy season. My allergies aren't nearly as bad as last year (when I actually saw a doctor because I was convinced I had more than mere allergies), but they've been pretty bad the past couple of weeks.

Years ago I read that the original guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers wanted to take action against the band because he wrote much of their first album and was shortly thereafter tactlessly fired from the band. It was probably about 15 years ago that I read that. Since then in every single magazine I've read and every single tv show I've seen that has had something to do with the Peppers I've been told that Hillel Slovak was the original guitarist and he died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Finally, a quick check on wikipedia informed me that Slovak was actually the original guitarist, but was also in another band with a record contract when the Peppers cut their first record. Slovak temporarily committed with the other band and re-joined RHCP after their first album was already recorded. The Peppers recruited a guy named Jack Sherman just for that first recording. I recall reading in that original article that the fired guitarist claimed that Anthony Kiedis and Flea were ridiculously abusive to him and that when they fired him they walked into the room giggling. Sherman's wikipedia entry didn't mention such abuse, but I can only conclude that the guy I read about must be him, even though we never ever hear about him being a part of the band.

(Speaking of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I also read that when Slovak died, their original drummer, Jack Irons (who was also in that other band (called What Is This?) with Slovak), said to the rest of the band, "This is not where I want to be. I do not want to be a part of something where my #*&$ing friends are dying." He then immediately left the band. Strangely, in the small world of rock music, he was asked to join a band called Mookie Blaylock. He declined, having formed a band of his own, but referred a singer to them by the name of Eddie Vedder. Mookie Blaylock later became Pearl Jam and Irons drummed (dram?) for them anyway between 1994 and 1998).

The weird creature I've seen crawling around our house isn't an alien, but just a house centipede. It looks pretty monstrous and unholy, but wikipedia claims that these things are actually great to have around because they cause no damage and consume unwanted pests. Plus, they don't really bite that often. Late last night I saw it and since it looked so different from a regular centipede I thought it might actually be an alien. I then imagined that it communicated with me that its species was dying and it needed milk or sugar or something to survive. It came to me because the species didn't want a lot of "Earth press" and they'd love to strike a deal under the table where the entire scientific and political community of the planet would not come down on them. I then readily agreed and in return for whatever nutrients they'd need, I would hire them as extras in a really awesome horror movie about bugs from outer space. Soon the celebrity would get to me and I'd inadvertently sever the deal and then the space bugs would kill me and most of Earth out of self-defense.

a non-joking aside

So I've totally lost count of how many jokes I've told so far this week. What's even worse is that I can't think of a single joke I've refrained from saying that I could tell at the end of the week. What that means is that even when I set a goal, put a time measurement on it and then tell everyone I'm doing it; I still don't bother to accomplish it. It's pretty depressing, especially coupled with an even deeper feeling that I automatically attempt humor as a defense mechanism. Does anybody remember that M*A*S*H where Hawkeye went 24 hours without telling a joke? He wanted to prove that he wasn't insecure. Even he made it 24 hours.

Anyway, badder news blending into better news...

Scott, the guy who runs the extralife link on the side of my blog page, recently made an open talent call for a new video game podcast he and this guy Blake are starting up. You can read the original call for entries here. I figured I'd totally try out even though at the time I decided to I didn't actually own a microphone or a Skype connection. I figured I'd worry about it if they actually liked what they heard, but more likely I would just fail and not have to worry about it.

A couple of nights ago I made a goal to finally get my audition mp3 sent over to him. That night was absolutely horrible. I already recorded my voice at work and some Nintendo sound effects onto my iRiver mp3 player the night before. I actually went a little crazy the night before because I couldn't find my double 1/8" wire (pretty much a wire with a headphone jack on both ends). This is pretty serious since it's the wire I had to buy to replace the wire my former boss stole from me (that's probably worth a story sometime). I did find a similar wire, but for some reason it recorded the Nintendo sound effects pretty low. I figured it would be no big deal since I shouldn't have any problem increasing the volume (it's a different story altogether if the volume was too loud and permanently distorted). Now all I had to do was edit the thing together, export it and email it. Unfortunately, both Soundtrack (non-Pro) and Garageband don't have (at least that I could find, I'm still new to this Mac thing (I should really name that thing, maybe it'll be more forgiving after I do)) a very good system of straight-forward audio amplification. I wound up downloading Audacity, a scrappy little free program I used to use all the time when I recorded the FreeCapitalist show. It let me down, though, when it couldn't read Soundtrack's mega bizarro sound files. After an inability to locate the mp3 conversion of the files by iTunes I finally wound up burning the audio to cd and then ripping the same cd back onto the computer I just burned from. As someone who even partially considers himself a computer user, I found the process sickening. Afterward I discovered the missing mp3 files were actually in a pretty obvious place after all. Must've been incredibly tired and agitated. Anyway (ever notice that I'm only long-winded when I talk about computer problems?) I compiled my voice (taken from three separate takes) with clips from the Wii main menu, Trauma Center: Second Opinion and the original Legend of Zelda. At 1 am, I emailed the completed mp3, by that time not really caring about the impeccable quality I was planning for. All I cared about was that my assignment was finished (a strategy I used through all of college) and that it could be sent to Scott and Blake (the other host of the future podcast).

I bet since I had such a hard time putting the thing together, they'll totally want me to do it. So... should I tell them I don't actually have Skype (yet)?

i've only told six jokes so far

That last entry was written very poorly and I apologize. Now is about the time I automatically tell a joke. Today I discovered that I really have to think about not being in a humorous mood. I think it might be a defense mechanism or a stress reliever or something.

Getting on with things, I've already had a really hard time and have actually given in a few times. Here are the jokes I slipped up on (marvel at how stupid they are that I totally sold out my integrity so soon):

1. During our V.I.P. Media morning meeting my boss, Pete, said that our latest video project was shown at some kind of library fundraiser that raised $100,000. I responded with "So, what's our cut?" This was almost not a joke, since I kind of legitimately wanted to know how much the company makes during these things. I didn't get an answer, though, so I guess it was just a joke.

2. During the same meeting, Chad, a co-worker mentioned that when he was in school he took a sound class. For the final, the professor removed all the sound effects from the movie Silverado and the class took about a month to develop the sound effects and re-edit them into the movie. I said, "So you didn't just rent Silverado and put the same effects back in?"

3. We got new candy in the candy bowl at work. One of the candies is actually called "Mary Jane." I had to ask, "So do we just eat this? Does anyone have a lighter?"

4. I've been consistently coming into work at 9:15 am. Pete told me that we're meeting at Village Inn tomorrow at 8:30 am to award the winning bracket of the office March Madness contest. I said "There's an 8:30 am now?" Of course this is really an example of a totally different type of joke that I'm trying to overcome. It's pretty much a direct Simpsons quote.

5. Jarem was at my house with his girlfriend, Chantel, and he got on the phone with his mom to ask her if Chantel could come over for dinner on Wednesday. Suddenly, Mike and Rhett started yelling about coming along too until Jarem finally asked his mom if they could come too. After all the commotion died out I uttered, "I'm so very hungry." Same thing as joke five. That was a direct Futurama quote.

6. Chantel remarked that my customized Catan game just needed one adjustment to make an island of each resource. I told her, "I'll take it up with the committee," referring strictly to myself. It could be argued that the remark isn't a joke at all. It's also a longshot quote from Empire Strikes Back. Han said aloud to "Take it up with the committee," to which Leia yelled back, "I am not a committee!"

Also, since I made this list of six i was watching the big basketball game tonight and when the ball was passed to an exceptionally short player I instinctively yelled "dunk it!"

*sigh* See? these jokes aren't even that funny.

Okay, that's not a very good start, I admit it.

lent on loan

I'm taking a miniature Lent break in this week before Easter. For the next seven days I'm giving up humor for Lent. I haven't decided if I can still write humor in the blog or not or if I can still say, "ever see that Simpsons where..." Mostly I'll be getting rid of sarcasm.

It may actually be a nice break. I'm hoping it won't be hard at all. For the past 20 years or so in just about every situation I'm concentrating on thinking of something funny to say. I know a lot of jokey people sometimes just want to "be taken seriously," which is a pretty annoying phrase, so sorry for saying it. Sometimes I'm concerned that I don't take myself seriously. Now maybe I can concentrate on more serious things.

So I'm not going to be telling any jokes from now until this Sunday evening. If something pops up in my head, I'll write it down and totally tell you later.