The Dude on the Right apologizes for any swearing that occurs during this podcast episode of "Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up!", but he and Stu Gotz are blaming Mama Gotz and her potty mouth, for her influence on one of the Little Gotz’s. But the dudes don’t swear during all of the episode, in fact, most of the conversations about a joke from Playboy, a naked Marge Simpson, Halloween outfits, and "Michael Jackson’s This Is It" are vulgar-free, with recommendations on some of them, including Stu’s love for "Army of Darkness." Stu didn’t have internet access yet still buried his gold, The Dude on the Right did have internet access and needs a Facebook intervention, and neither of them are caring that much about the Chicago Bears right now. And since it’s still new TV season, they dudes talk about some TV, too.
Author: Andy Labis
Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up! This Is It, Halloween, A Red Light, and A Facebook Intervention.
By:
The Dude on the Right
I’ll just start right out and apologize for any swearing that takes place during this “Weekend Wrap-Up!” podcast and just blame Mama Gotz. Yup, from what Stu tells me, she might be partly responsible for a red-light that one of the Little Gotz’s got, and oddly enough, even though we talk about the latest Playboy with a naked (sort of) Marge Simpson, most of that conversation is clean.
Since it was Halloween weekend, though, there is some talk of the good times Stu had with the Little Gotz’s and lack of trick-or-treaters, I tell Stu of my tales of fright, and no, I’m not talking about the fact that my BFF and I went to see “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” the Michael Jackson documentary/movie/it’s too damn bad he died because that would have been one hell of a concert story.
Stu, meanwhile, got wrapped up in some home improvement, some lack of internet access, an “Army of Darkness” B-Movie recommendation thanks to the acting of Bruce Campbell, and not caring about “A Christmas Carol,” while I’m looking forward to “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” can’t make up my mind about the Chicago Bears, and might need a Facebook intervention thanks to Bejeweled Blitz.
All of that and more, and hopefully a new podcast next week, that is if I can finally beat The W.G.N., and my Sis, in Bejeweled Blitz, unless, of course, my BFF breaks my wrist first.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the
Right!! L8R!!!
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Where Did My Morning Go?
By:
The Dude on the Right
For the life of me I was having a hard time figuring out why I didn’t have time to exercise in the morning. There I was, waking up around 4:30 (and sure, hitting the snooze pushed things closer to 5AM), but by the time I was trying to get out the door at 7:00 to head to morning meetings, well, I was rushing. What in the hell was I doing for nearly 2 1/2 hours, and why in the hell wasn’t part of it being spent on my exercise bike? Something was going on, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and then it occurred to me, even as I thought I was trimming things down:
Facebook, and more specifically Facebook applications, have destroyed my morning productivity.
I thought I had it licked when I was going to switch from Mafia Wars to Café World but it was yesterday, when I started trying to analyze my morning schedule, and as I sat there "training" my virtual fish in my Happy Aquarium, checking on my café, and still trying to take over the Moscow Mafia, that a bell went off over my head, sort of, and it simply rang out "What are you doing?" So this morning, being the dorky engineer I can be, I started my morning as I normally have been, up and at ’em at 4:45, into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, making my Count Chocula with chocolate milk, and heading to my computer bunker that isn’t really a bunker anymore, to see what was happening in the world. I fired up Firefox on the main monitor, opening a list of tabs to places like the Chicago Sun Times, The Drudge Report, The Weather Channel, Google Reader, and The Lorain Journal, just getting myself ready to rediscover the world after a night of broken sleep (broken sleep and the urge to drop-kick a dog out the window will be a topic for another blog), and on my secondary monitor, another Firefox window was opened, this time to my Facebook page. I scanned the world, not really paying as much attention to things as I used to (something my fiance made me realize the other day), and quickly shifted my focus to my Facebook world, or should I say worlds, because after not coming up with anything witty for my status and seeing that my friends haven’t done much in the past six hours, I pulled out the stopwatch on my iPhone to do a statistical analysis of part of my morning.
And so, I headed to…
- "Café World" – I didn’t do anything crazy, and by crazy I mean I didn’t send any of my neighbors any gifts, visit any of their cafés, nor do any redecorating (which I could, because I have 200,000 café coins to spend), instead I’m concentrating on serving my pot roast and then cooking up some voodoo chicken salad.
CAFE TIME ELAPSED: 4-ISH MINUTES
That wasn’t so bad, but other work needed to be done so I’m off to my:
- "Happy Aquarium" – Here I start by sending the gift of fish food to my aquarium neighbors. Damn, I’m a good neighbor! Of course my fish tank has gotten dirty overnight so I scrub it clean, and then my fish are hungry so it’s time for their morning feeding, but as I’m also trying to make my fish smarter, what the heck, let’s train a couple of them! Sadly I can’t get one fish (I’m not sure which one it was, mostly because I have eleven different fish, all with different names) through the training program, but another made it safely through, so he, or maybe she, can now do some kind of special trick. Not done yet, I’m feeling helpful and greedy so I visit my seven neighbors’ tanks, do some cleaning at each of them, and click on the various treasure chests to get myself some more coin!
AQUARIUM TIME ELAPSED: 8-ISH MINUTES
But my coup de gras awaits, the game that has taken what must amount to months in lost productivity – I’m off to Moscow in:
- "Mafia Wars" – Yup, I head to New York City to bank some money from my properties, and I now have over $110,000,000,000 in fake, United States currency. But I’ve built my mafia over the months, and Cuba needs me, or at least my businesses in Cuba need me, so it’s time to sell off a bunch of product and bank my money there as I eclipse the C$11,000,000 Cuban peso mark! But as my Mafia domination is growing, well, I’m off to Moscow. I easily level up to 351 with the energy I’ve acquired while I slept, so I’m eager to spend my new, 2,190 units of energy doing something, although I’m not really sure what, even though there is some sort of story going on, but there I am, clicking my mouse insistently to earn more cash, finish the job, and move on, but my energy level is now too low to continue! Oh no! Ahh, but no, I’m not done! Thankfully my sister sent me an energy pack so I recharge, it’s time for another energy drain, I’m up another level, and I quickly scan that I’m going to need about R$40,000,000 rubles to get the items necessary so I can work on the next job in Episode 4. Not being able to continue with any jobs for now, and since I got an energy pack from my sister, I decided I should return the favor so I click on my giant mafia of 34 members and send energy packs to those people that I know are still playing the game.
MAFIA TIME ELAPSED: 12 MINUTES
With the breakfast hours slipping away I’m done with my café, my fish tank is clean, I’ve blackmailed a secretary in Moscow, but I notice, in the upper right corner of my Facebook main page, that I’ve got gifts to receive. I click and there they are, lots of little goodies from my friends, so what the hell, it’s a click here and new screen there, an "Accept more gifts" click here, another screen there, and REQUEST/GIFT TIME ELAPSED: 4 MINUTES.
I looked at my stopwatch realizing that this morning, in just "maintaining" and "advancing" in three Facebook games, I wasted nearly 30 minutes.
Now, mind you, I didn’t do any bowling with my buddies, happily I stopped playing Pirates of the Caribbean although I haven’t deleted the app yet, in Farm Town I have set up my farm with a lovely message for my BFF, a message that as long as my farming neighbors "water" it looks great so I don’t have to do anything, my Roller Coaster Kingdom is stalled, and I haven’t tried to increase my word vocabulary, but just heading to one of those would have meant being late for my first appointment this morning.
I wondered where my time went in the morning, and now I found out. The question now is what to do about it because people are hungry and my Voodoo Chicken Salad is almost ready to be served, my "fish" are hungry and I really would feel bad if I "flushed" them down the toilet, and after investing so much time, "money," and building a reputation as a mafia kingpin, well, I really hate to rat people out and go into witness protection. Then there is the feeling that I’m going to let all of my "neighbors" down if I can’t be, well, their neighbor. In the end, I guess my exercising might just have to wait, although if someone were to make an "Exercise World" for Facebook, maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!
Paranormal Activity, Hair Cuts, To H1N1 or Not to H1N1, and The Bears Still Suck.
The Dude on the Right wasn’t cold nor frightened, and tells Stu Gotz why not during their “Weekend Wrap-Up!” podcast. In other news Stu has troubles securing a cheap haircut for the Gotz clan thanks to being a little late for Pat the barber. Both boys see lots of movies with “Paranormal Activity,” “Milk,” “I Love You, Man,” “Imagine That,” and “Caroline” being topics of discussion, Stu thinks the H1N1 vaccine manufacturers should watch “Star Trek,” The Dude unpacks, and leave it to Mama Gotz to ruin “Toy Story,” or maybe it was “Toy Story 2.” – Stu can’t remember.
Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up! Paranormal Activity, Hair Cuts, To H1N1 or Not to H1N1, and The Bears Still Suck.
By:
The Dude on the Right
I wasn’t cold, nor frightened while watching “Paranormal Activity,” so I tell Stu Gotz all about it during our “Weekend Wrap-Up!” podcast, while Stu tells me he got a haircut, but I couldn’t tell. The haircut thing really had Stu in a tizzy over the weekend, mostly because he was too late to see Pat at Pat’s barbershop so he and the Gotz boys ended up in a salon, but I still think he got ripped off.
We both saw a lot of movies, mostly thanks to cable and DVD’s, so I tell Stu if “Milk” was any good while Stu didn’t like “I Love You, Man,” even though I sort of did, nor did he care for “Imagine That,” and he lets you know if you should let your kids see “Caroline” or not.
Yes, we also talk about the Chicago Bears although we might not talk about them much more as the only good thing about the game for me was seeing my future in-laws, and we both wonder about the H1N1 virus, a.k.a. Swine Flu scare, and how Stu thinks the vaccine people need to take a lesson from Scotty in Star Trek when coming up with their vaccine production predictions.
All of that and more, and as always, thanks for listening!
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the
Right!! L8R!!!
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Paranormal Activity
The Dude on the Right wasn’t freaked out by the movie, but during his review of "Paranormal Activity," we find that the dude-pad and the movie set have something in common. As far as the movie goes, though, The Dude gets how the movie folks were going, even liked some of the "creepy" factor, but he doesn’t scare easily and thought the movie was too predictable. He also thought the ending ruined it by putting the movie over the top instead of leaving you with a "that could be my wife/girlfriend" the next time she sleepwalks. At least there wasn’t any gore.
I deleted “Mom and Dad” from my iPhone Favorites. I suppose it was just time.
By:
The Dude on the Right
I didn’t know when to do it but in the end it turned into a simple thing, just three presses on my iPhone screen, but I guess for a year I wrestled in my head if it meant I was forgetting, or moving on, or just because it made sense because still there, on the "Favorites" of my iPhone contacts, was "Mom and Dad." At times it seemed weird being there when I would see it, what with both of them dying last year, but until this morning I just wasn’t able to delete them from that screen. I guess this morning I just decided that one year after Mom died (although I will always consider her death anniversary as October 18th) it was time to well, just decided it was time.
The thing is, after my dad died back in January of 2008, I wrestled with changing the "Mom and Dad" to just read "Mom," even changed it for a few days, but when I went to make my Saturday morning call to Mom back then, and I went to press the "button," it just didn’t seem right so I changed it back. I mean, it was always "Mom and Dad," hell, they ended up married for over 40 years, and I would love to say they were always the best of years, but I’m going to bet that 99 times out of 100, if you ask anyone married for over 40 years, they will tell you there were some "not so best of" years. And as I was moving on, dealing with Dad’s passing as you have to do, Mom was there in her way to keep things in perspective.
Then it was Mom’s turn to pass a year ago, and luckily, by then, I had re-met the girl who would become my fiance, and they were able to meet before Mom died, which was nice because I know it made mom happy I had met someone so special, and she really liked my BFF. But it’s been a weird year since then, in reflection, and sometimes you don’t always look back, but over the last couple of days I’ve made some mental rememberings of things she, and dad (although I have to be honest that dad and I weren’t always the best of conversationalists) would have had many thoughts about. Simple thoughts entered my head, like how I so wish I could have called mom the morning I proposed to my BFF because she would have been so ecstatic. She’d be concerned, yet so supportive of my BFF’s change of careers; she would liked to have gotten the pictures of when I went on vacation; and she would be so proud of her granddaughter graduating from high school, yet wishing she could have been there. There would be some great disappointment in some family matters that are going on right now, I know because I can still see the hurt in her eyes when I unfortunately had to give her the news when it sort of all started, and although somewhat selfish, she would have loved the fact that I would have had to make decisions on which family to spend which holiday with. It would have been a winter, last year, of talking about how bad the Browns were and how she would know that the Cavs would blow it in the end. I would have kept telling her how promising the Indians seemed, but she would have told me that they will always suck until they fired Eric Wedge – she never liked him, and I can’t even print some of the things she said about him – and I would have loved to have made that call to her the minute I found out he got canned. There would have been Saturday morning talks about work, wedding plans (damn you WGN!), our American Idol e-mails, that even she was finished watching "Dancing With the Stars," and maybe we both would have finished the project we started of labeling hundreds of old, old pictures.
I do know that it is okay to reflect on things sometimes, but I suppose it’s also time to move forward a bit, and I guess I realized, that in the end taking "Mom and Dad" off of my Favorites didn’t mean they weren’t my favs, it just meant that their phone number didn’t work anymore. It’s funny, because I think I "talk" to them more now than I ever did when they were alive, looking for advice or just knowing what they would be thinking, but I guess, sometimes, it would be nice to hear their voices on the other end of that call, although, for the most part, I know what they would say, especially mom watching the Browns this year: "They suck.”
I love you Mom and Dad! I hope you’re not mad that I deleted you!
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!
Staying in Bed, Management, Toy Stories, Not Being Prepared, and Balloon Boy!
The Dude on the Right and Stu Gotz wanted to both be in bed, only not together, and for different reasons, and they explain why during their “Weekend Wrap-Up!” podcast. Neither reason had drinking to excess involved, just klutziness and flu-ness, but they both had some movieness with “Management” and the 3-D versions of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.” The boys also discuss Balloon Boy and the hoax that is ensuing, a topic that somehow shifts into the musical styling’s of The 5th Dimension and Monty Python. All of that, plus some Chicago Bears’ talk, some Sweetest Day talk, and chocolaty goodness of Count Chocula.
Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up! Staying in Bed, Management, Toy Stories, Not Being Prepared, and Balloon Boy!
By:
The Dude on the Right
I wanted to crawl back into bed this morning, and during our “Weekend Wrap-Up!” podcast, Stu explains that he wanted to do the same, but for a very different reason. Me, I was in full klutz mode for a couple of days, destroying a vase with flowers that I couldn’t remember properly why I got them, then dumping a couple of quarts of iced tea on the dog, and also nearly taking a header in the shower, while Stu, well, Stu has a cold. But neither stopped us from having super-exciting weekends as I wept with joy at the taste of “Count Chocula” while wallowed in tears thanks to the loss by the Chicago Bears, and Stu wondered about the “Being Prepared” moniker of the Boy/Cub Scouts. At least we both had some movie viewing, with me snuggling with my BFF to “Management” while Stu and the Gotz Family enjoyed the 3-D versions of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.”
The weekend also brought some resolution to the story of “Balloon Boy,” and his dad, a story that also had Stu investigating the song styling’s of The 5th Dimension which somehow led to Monty Python. Oh well, at least we didn’t have Olympic talk this week. Oh, wait, we did, thanks to drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro. How do we talk about so much stuff, including reminiscing about “The 5th Element,” in so little time? Listen and find out!
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the
Right!! L8R!!!
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The Proposal
The Dude on the Right liked "The Proposal" in the theater, so for this Blu-ray review of the movie it’s no surprise that he still likes the movie. What he doesn’t like is the lackluster effort at "extras" for the DVD. Pretty much he felt he wasted his time watched the deleted scenes, the outtakes, and all he got out of the "alternate" ending was the fact that he was happy with the original ending, although the alternate ending did reinforce that some filming did not take place in Alaska. He still thinks it’s a good "snuggle on the couch with your honey" kind of movie, so dudes, suck it up because you do get Sandra Bullock almost naked.