6.4.2017 (originally posted this week 2001)
Ya hear
of Fong Schway? Well I dug up a little primer on the trend at a local
used book store. It's supposed to enhance the flow of positive energy in
yer home. You chuck a mirror here, throw a windchime there, plug in a
gurgly fountain and you're off to better livin'! Well I don't know about
that. Mirrors tend to confuse, windchimes piss off neighbors and those
fuckin' fountains ain't nothin' but algae ponds for the cats to drink up
and puke. The trend is pretty hot, though. Some folks making a bunch of
dough off suckers dumb enough to believe the arrangement of your sofa
and chair can affect the Positive Energy in your place. The Fongers call
this Positive Energy "chi." The Fongers go around the house with a
bunch of sticks glued together that they say can identify the
"Relationship Corner" and the "Wealth Corner" and such. Then you shove a
cut-glass crystal in that corner and bingo, yer old lady ain't gonna
leave you and you hit all six Lotto numbers. This little book was really
informative.
The last part said that there was wide latitude for
interpreting the "chip" ... or "chi" rather ... but it was careful to
point out that your bunch of sticks better be glued together right or
you risked the relatively unknown phenom of Fong Schwit. This is where
your windchime, if placed in the "wrong" place, will bring the fuckin'
sky down on ya. Yer dog'll run off, yer daughter will get knocked up and
you'll lose your shirt at the track. Then your car will break down on
the way home. That kind of nasty shit. Don't fuck with the Fong Schwit.
The
last chapter, or more accurately, the addendum focused on the new
school of Fong Schway called Fong Schwing. That seems to me at least to
be the most believable. That part says that the placement of domestic
light beer and rock and roll CD's and remote controls in proximity to
where you're sitting will enhance the harmony of the room. I have some
problems with the mirror and fountain placement nonsense, but the Fong
Schwing kinda rules. I suppose I've been livin' the vida Fong Shwing for
a while now, which is nice.
Tonight - The Homestead
note: We're half way thru the TNSC calendar year already!!
John Metsker won last week's Find the Reference! (The title of
the VA was "19.07 g/cc." That's the density of Uranium. Wow! Easy!) He
will enjoy a lovely prize. (An out-of-state subscriber also won. He too
will enjoy a lovely prize.)
Now
then. Who wants delicious drinks in a stylish location? Who wants to
enjoy these things with lovely List Members? If you do, like I do,
you're in luck! All that unfolds before us tonight. I'll bring
my friends and see you there.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Dingus and Dingus (REDUX)
6.4.2017 (first posted this week... w/ this destinatio , 2004)
Here's a TNSC bedtime story for ya all to tell each other and if ya got a wee one or are gonna get a wee one or gonna have a wee one or ARE a wee one and I know some of you got one or are gonna get one or gonna have one or are one you can tell it to them or listen up.
There once were two brothers and their Mommy and Daddy were too interested in hitting the booze than thinking of names for the boys that they remained nameless for years. They would be playing trucks together and one would look upon the other and say, "what's your name? Gimme that 'dozer," whereupon the other would reply, "what's your name? Okay, 'cept pass me that Excel Spreadsheet." The first brother looked quizzically upon his brother and said, "What's your name? We're playing trucks. I will not pass you the Excel Spreadsheet. I will pass you the dump truck." The other brother replied, "That's fine, what's your name? But don't you think we should think about refinancing this fleet of ours before too long, as depreciation is a bitch." The other brother, all tall and skinny and curly-haired, adjusted his tie and said, "Jeez, what's your name? I don't really care. I'm getting rather bored with these trucks, shall we get a drink?" And of course the other brother said, "what's your name? That's the best idea I've heard all day."
So they retired to the bar and enjoyed red wine and Beefeater martinis up/olives and wished each other happy birthday and bon voyage.
The End.
Tonight - Kickin' it DOWNTOWN: The House of Shields.
(progressively allowing women since 1976)
Be there! Bring yr pals - I know I will. It's Celebrity Night, after all.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Here's a TNSC bedtime story for ya all to tell each other and if ya got a wee one or are gonna get a wee one or gonna have a wee one or ARE a wee one and I know some of you got one or are gonna get one or gonna have one or are one you can tell it to them or listen up.
There once were two brothers and their Mommy and Daddy were too interested in hitting the booze than thinking of names for the boys that they remained nameless for years. They would be playing trucks together and one would look upon the other and say, "what's your name? Gimme that 'dozer," whereupon the other would reply, "what's your name? Okay, 'cept pass me that Excel Spreadsheet." The first brother looked quizzically upon his brother and said, "What's your name? We're playing trucks. I will not pass you the Excel Spreadsheet. I will pass you the dump truck." The other brother replied, "That's fine, what's your name? But don't you think we should think about refinancing this fleet of ours before too long, as depreciation is a bitch." The other brother, all tall and skinny and curly-haired, adjusted his tie and said, "Jeez, what's your name? I don't really care. I'm getting rather bored with these trucks, shall we get a drink?" And of course the other brother said, "what's your name? That's the best idea I've heard all day."
So they retired to the bar and enjoyed red wine and Beefeater martinis up/olives and wished each other happy birthday and bon voyage.
The End.
Tonight - Kickin' it DOWNTOWN: The House of Shields.
(progressively allowing women since 1976)
Be there! Bring yr pals - I know I will. It's Celebrity Night, after all.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, June 15, 2017
From Raising AZ
6.2.2017
I recently stopped using the stupid Apple "Photos" app and migrated my thousands of photographs from over the decades to Google Photos. (I highly recommend doing so yourself.) I was browsing the newly-uploaded and came across the pix you see above of the Walgreens drug store. It might look like one of any thousands of strip-mall Walgreens drug stores that blanket the country, but this one is in Phoenix, AZ, and it is where something dumb and funny happened. Here, I'll tell ya ...
I was in Phoenix for a reason I forget, but one Saturday night several of us trekked over to a bar and had a few. We threw darts, smoked cigs, tried to get Jimi to stop dropping his pants, and had a fun night at the bar. It got late.
When the barkeep yelled, "last call," someone asked, "do we have any beer back at the base?" The base commander said, "no. We're out." Someone said, "Shit!" A few of us looked at each other and we all said, "SHIT!" at the same time and we hightailed it out the door, everyone knowing what we were doing: Emergency beer run.
We jumped in a car, peeled out of there and the driver yelled, "WHERE?" After a sec, someone said, "Walgreens has a liquor department!!" Walgreens with liquor department was close and it was a good thing because if it was last call at the bar, it was last call at the Walgreens.
We lurched to a stop right out front, making screeching sound with the tires. Jimi and I were out before the car stopped moving and we ran madly into the store, banging the doors open furiously.
The speed at which we were moving for the previous three minutes hit a brick wall seconds after entering the store. To our right was a line of eight or 10 people waiting to check out. To our left was the liquor department, separated from the rest of the store. It was as dark as a tomb and a thin chain stretched across the opening. Jimi and I looked at each other. We looked at the closed liquor department, back at one another then to the lone employee behind the register. His mouth was wide open as were the mouths of nine of the ten customers. Everyone was staring at the two morons that barnstormed into the Walgreens. "What's up with the liquor department?" I pleaded to the employee.
"Closes early," he said. Jimi and I looked at each other. "SHIT!!" we said to each other at the same time. We turned and ran out as fast as we had come in, banging the bejesus out of the door again.
We jumped in the car. "Go, go, go!" Jimi yelled, and our driver, thinking maybe that our beer run was of the truest form of the act, punched it, squealing tires. "What did you get? she yelled. "Nothing! Liquor department was closed!" "Shit!" she yelled.
A few seconds later, which was a few minutes past last call everywhere, we managed to get a kid at a nearby Circle K to sell us a case. Whew.
The next day, Jimi and I laughed about the night before. We remembered how we barged into the Walgreens like madmen. "I'm sure at least one of them thought we were there to rob the place," Jimi said. "Oh for sure," I agreed, "it's a damn good thing none of them cowboys in line had a pistol on them. We'd be pushin' up the daisies if he had." Jimi agreed. We talked about it and laughed some more.
Tonight - Pagan Idol (a first for TNSC)
Happy Birthday to Founding Member Alan Alonzo Chimenti. He's 25. Come on out and buy him a gin martini.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
I recently stopped using the stupid Apple "Photos" app and migrated my thousands of photographs from over the decades to Google Photos. (I highly recommend doing so yourself.) I was browsing the newly-uploaded and came across the pix you see above of the Walgreens drug store. It might look like one of any thousands of strip-mall Walgreens drug stores that blanket the country, but this one is in Phoenix, AZ, and it is where something dumb and funny happened. Here, I'll tell ya ...
I was in Phoenix for a reason I forget, but one Saturday night several of us trekked over to a bar and had a few. We threw darts, smoked cigs, tried to get Jimi to stop dropping his pants, and had a fun night at the bar. It got late.
When the barkeep yelled, "last call," someone asked, "do we have any beer back at the base?" The base commander said, "no. We're out." Someone said, "Shit!" A few of us looked at each other and we all said, "SHIT!" at the same time and we hightailed it out the door, everyone knowing what we were doing: Emergency beer run.
We jumped in a car, peeled out of there and the driver yelled, "WHERE?" After a sec, someone said, "Walgreens has a liquor department!!" Walgreens with liquor department was close and it was a good thing because if it was last call at the bar, it was last call at the Walgreens.
We lurched to a stop right out front, making screeching sound with the tires. Jimi and I were out before the car stopped moving and we ran madly into the store, banging the doors open furiously.
The speed at which we were moving for the previous three minutes hit a brick wall seconds after entering the store. To our right was a line of eight or 10 people waiting to check out. To our left was the liquor department, separated from the rest of the store. It was as dark as a tomb and a thin chain stretched across the opening. Jimi and I looked at each other. We looked at the closed liquor department, back at one another then to the lone employee behind the register. His mouth was wide open as were the mouths of nine of the ten customers. Everyone was staring at the two morons that barnstormed into the Walgreens. "What's up with the liquor department?" I pleaded to the employee.
"Closes early," he said. Jimi and I looked at each other. "SHIT!!" we said to each other at the same time. We turned and ran out as fast as we had come in, banging the bejesus out of the door again.
We jumped in the car. "Go, go, go!" Jimi yelled, and our driver, thinking maybe that our beer run was of the truest form of the act, punched it, squealing tires. "What did you get? she yelled. "Nothing! Liquor department was closed!" "Shit!" she yelled.
A few seconds later, which was a few minutes past last call everywhere, we managed to get a kid at a nearby Circle K to sell us a case. Whew.
The next day, Jimi and I laughed about the night before. We remembered how we barged into the Walgreens like madmen. "I'm sure at least one of them thought we were there to rob the place," Jimi said. "Oh for sure," I agreed, "it's a damn good thing none of them cowboys in line had a pistol on them. We'd be pushin' up the daisies if he had." Jimi agreed. We talked about it and laughed some more.
Tonight - Pagan Idol (a first for TNSC)
Happy Birthday to Founding Member Alan Alonzo Chimenti. He's 25. Come on out and buy him a gin martini.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, June 08, 2017
Pitch a Tent
6.2.2017 (first posted this week, 2004)
I hope all y'all enjoy camping and by that I mean "car camping" because it ain't really camping w/o scads of icy-cold Coors Lights. I hope you enjoy camping cuz it's fun to sit and stare at a real live fire that YOU built all the while drinking icy-cold Coors Lights and thinking mebbe it's time to pull the trigger on them sausages you got stashed in the non-beer cooler. It's fun to hit logs w/ hatchets. It's fun to pitch a tent in the out-of-doors ... if you catch my meaning.
Got a couple expectations when camping: Yr gonna get rather filthy. Yr gonna smell pine forest and clean air. Yr gonna get dirt and sticks and leaves and such in the tent no matter how hard you try not to. Yr gonna hear the calls of the wild creatures who LIVE in the forest. Yr gonna stay up late and yr gonna eat eggs in the morning. Yr gonna pee on a tree.
Another expectation when yr camping: Yr not gonna be woken in the middle of the night by an air-raid siren. Call me crazy but I never thought the campground in the Sierra Nat'l Forest near Huntington Lake at around 9000 feet elevation was a strategic target for whatever airborne enemies we got but clearly someone up around there does and remains vigilant 24/7 cuz they must have spotted some tell-tale sign of impending aerial assault on their radar and signaled the sound-asleep Memorial Day campers with the unmistakable klaxon that the bombers approached! I was eagerly awaiting the KRUMP! KRUMP! of the triple-A as our host fought off the hordes and dreading the bombs through the pines and dogwoods. And us without our helmets!
Not a fuckin' thing ever came of the air-raid siren. No ack-ack guns, no secondary explosions and no searchlights sweeping the heavens. Mebbe it was a drill or something. Mebbe the bombers turned back. Who the fuckey fuck knows?
Tonight - Spec's 12 Adler Museum Café
**CASH ONLY**
(Happy BDay, Ted!)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
I hope all y'all enjoy camping and by that I mean "car camping" because it ain't really camping w/o scads of icy-cold Coors Lights. I hope you enjoy camping cuz it's fun to sit and stare at a real live fire that YOU built all the while drinking icy-cold Coors Lights and thinking mebbe it's time to pull the trigger on them sausages you got stashed in the non-beer cooler. It's fun to hit logs w/ hatchets. It's fun to pitch a tent in the out-of-doors ... if you catch my meaning.
Got a couple expectations when camping: Yr gonna get rather filthy. Yr gonna smell pine forest and clean air. Yr gonna get dirt and sticks and leaves and such in the tent no matter how hard you try not to. Yr gonna hear the calls of the wild creatures who LIVE in the forest. Yr gonna stay up late and yr gonna eat eggs in the morning. Yr gonna pee on a tree.
Another expectation when yr camping: Yr not gonna be woken in the middle of the night by an air-raid siren. Call me crazy but I never thought the campground in the Sierra Nat'l Forest near Huntington Lake at around 9000 feet elevation was a strategic target for whatever airborne enemies we got but clearly someone up around there does and remains vigilant 24/7 cuz they must have spotted some tell-tale sign of impending aerial assault on their radar and signaled the sound-asleep Memorial Day campers with the unmistakable klaxon that the bombers approached! I was eagerly awaiting the KRUMP! KRUMP! of the triple-A as our host fought off the hordes and dreading the bombs through the pines and dogwoods. And us without our helmets!
Not a fuckin' thing ever came of the air-raid siren. No ack-ack guns, no secondary explosions and no searchlights sweeping the heavens. Mebbe it was a drill or something. Mebbe the bombers turned back. Who the fuckey fuck knows?
Tonight - Spec's 12 Adler Museum Café
**CASH ONLY**
(Happy BDay, Ted!)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, June 01, 2017
I Got the Microwave Oven!
6.1.2017
What do ya do on a Sunday morning in October, '92 when da Bears are stinking up Soldier Field and you were counting on a good game to eat part of the day? You paw through the Sunday Trib is what you do.
On this particular Sunday I guess I was pretty bored, or inspired, or bored and inspired, because as the game got worse for the Monsters of da Midway, I found me a pair of scissors, some tape and started having-at the Trib's Sunday magazine and did me some collage'n.
Here's what I came up with:
That's ol' Art Linkletter and one of his mechanized chairs, a butcher knife that was on sale somewhere, the head of some jolly old bespectacled fellow and a couple hunks of bone-in "cowboy style" ribeye that was on sale at Dominick's. I think it turned out quite well.
So skip ahead a bit and I'm at work at the Loyola University Center for Instructional Design - or LUCID, if you wish - and the above collage was in one of my spiral notebooks. Why it was in there is to keep it flat (my guess), or that I lost track of it (more likely). Whatever the reason, it was in a spiral notebook that I was using to log some footage from a shoot of the Niles College administrative staff about their pending absorption into the Loyola system.
For another unknown reason, my boss's boss - a strange, serious and very jumpy woman named Kate - found the collage and, uh, did something with it.
I found all of this out later from the assistant director of LUCID who was a really cool lady named Betty and who told me the story: Kate was absently leafing through my notebook and found the collage and was shocked! Oh my goodness! Decapitation! Slaughter! Kim found the collage, freaked out, took-it-to-a-psyc-professor-she-knows and asked him if whoever made this was a threat to themself or - more importantly - others.
Betty said that the psyc prof said, no, and to please get the fuck out of his office because he's busy (her words). I laughed and asked Betty what she thought and she said her pal is the GM of a commercial post production facility and they needed a tape librarian. I got the picture, got the job and the rest is history.
And just a week ago, while looking through boxes in the garage, I found my beloved - one-time controversial - collage. And here you go.
Tonight - Orbit Room (where it all started)
Another "TNSC Founders Night" c'mon out!!
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
What do ya do on a Sunday morning in October, '92 when da Bears are stinking up Soldier Field and you were counting on a good game to eat part of the day? You paw through the Sunday Trib is what you do.
On this particular Sunday I guess I was pretty bored, or inspired, or bored and inspired, because as the game got worse for the Monsters of da Midway, I found me a pair of scissors, some tape and started having-at the Trib's Sunday magazine and did me some collage'n.
Here's what I came up with:
That's ol' Art Linkletter and one of his mechanized chairs, a butcher knife that was on sale somewhere, the head of some jolly old bespectacled fellow and a couple hunks of bone-in "cowboy style" ribeye that was on sale at Dominick's. I think it turned out quite well.
So skip ahead a bit and I'm at work at the Loyola University Center for Instructional Design - or LUCID, if you wish - and the above collage was in one of my spiral notebooks. Why it was in there is to keep it flat (my guess), or that I lost track of it (more likely). Whatever the reason, it was in a spiral notebook that I was using to log some footage from a shoot of the Niles College administrative staff about their pending absorption into the Loyola system.
For another unknown reason, my boss's boss - a strange, serious and very jumpy woman named Kate - found the collage and, uh, did something with it.
I found all of this out later from the assistant director of LUCID who was a really cool lady named Betty and who told me the story: Kate was absently leafing through my notebook and found the collage and was shocked! Oh my goodness! Decapitation! Slaughter! Kim found the collage, freaked out, took-it-to-a-psyc-professor-she-knows and asked him if whoever made this was a threat to themself or - more importantly - others.
Betty said that the psyc prof said, no, and to please get the fuck out of his office because he's busy (her words). I laughed and asked Betty what she thought and she said her pal is the GM of a commercial post production facility and they needed a tape librarian. I got the picture, got the job and the rest is history.
And just a week ago, while looking through boxes in the garage, I found my beloved - one-time controversial - collage. And here you go.
Tonight - Orbit Room (where it all started)
Another "TNSC Founders Night" c'mon out!!
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
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