Category: General Musings

By:

The Dude on the Right
I have to start out this blog by simply saying that I hate Stu Gotz.  Fine,
maybe it is really Mama Gotz whom I hate, because she first suggested this, but
Stu brought up something in the last couple of weeks that right now, well, it’s
the last damn thing I need.  Hopefully I’ll remember to have it out with
Stu on Monday when we do our Weekend Wrap-Up and let the world know why I now
hate Stu Gotz.

But I did find something I love today, and it was in a quest
for a telephone that I found it, and that is the store Fry’s Electronics, or
Fry’s, or whatever the hell it is really called.  All I know is I planned
on going for a walk today, on a warm, fall day, in the Forest Preserve near the
Dude-Pad, where the fall weather is bringing beautiful colors to the leaves, but
instead I found myself in a different kind of heaven, where I was able to find a
battery for the stylus of my Palm Pilot, a new phone for a client, the DVD of "Thank
You for Smoking," and had I already won the McDonald’s Monopoly game, there
would have been a whole lot of more spendin’ going on.  But I held back,
didn’t buy the HD TV I’ve been looking for, nor the combination bread-bagel
toaster that also cooks an egg, nor the refrigerator with the TV in it, nor the
CB antenna that I don’t really need right now, but as my Dad always says, "It’s
better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it."  Fry’s is
a store all about that quote.

Oddly enough going to Fry’s and walking around
for over an hour went totally against my movie viewing, although I did get the
exercise I wanted.  Heading to the theater this morning I intended to see "The
Departed," you know, the Martin Scorsese flick which is getting a lot of
critical acclaim, but the running time was over two hours.  This being one
of the last, warmer weekends here in Dude-Town, I said to myself, "Self, what a
waste to spend so much time in a movie theater when you could be out enjoying
Mother Nature!"  So I opted to see "Employee of the Month" today to cut my
time stuck indoors.  Then I went to Fry’s and spent the afternoon, well,
you get the point.  So much for Mother Nature, but I did see some fantastic
TVs that would look great in my living room, or my bedroom, or my office, oh
hell, they’ve got a butt-load of TV’s for every room, and some of them even had
Mother Nature scenes playing, so my getting out in the open air wasn’t a total
loss, even without seeing the beautiful colors of the leaves.

Now, as much as
my screwing up seeing Mother Nature today happened, tomorrow brings future
dilemmas because I am behind on my animating of our next episode of "Stu & The
Dude Reviewin’ the Movies for You," that being "Jackass Number Two," would like
to see "The Departed" and write a review for that movie, have seen "Employee of
the Month" and have to write a review for it, have a good twenty movie previews
to type, want to review the new X-Men DVD I have and the "Thank You for Smoking"
DVD I picked up today, and the Dude-Pad could really use a good, fall, cleaning
to get me to spring.  And to top it all off, The Chicago Bears play
tomorrow, trying to keep their undefeated season in tact, and to top it on top
of that, I still need to catch last week’s episode of "The Biggest Loser" which
might hopefully get me inspired to quit playing the McDonald’s Monopoly game.

So many things to do, and there never seems to be enough time, and with tomorrow
being probably one of the last, nice, weekend days to get out of the house, how
the hell do I figure out what to do?  It was easy in college, we would just
go up on the roof and get a suntan and drink maybe one or two beers.  It
sucks being older.

And to top all of that I had a dream the other night
involving a good friend of mine whom I’ve known for just about forever, where in
the dream she kept kicking me in the ass to get shit done that I haven’t gotten
done yet.  I suppose I should just listen to her and get shit done and quit complaining about it.

This Dude’s life is so complicated.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Either the folks at
McDonald’s are psychic, or they just hate me.  Here’s why…

It’s
Sunday morning and I am reading my morning newspaper.  There isn’t anything
totally exciting in the newspaper, then again, there usually isn’t, but I still
enjoy, even in this digital age, reading the newspaper.  So I finish the
news portion of the paper, and now it’s time to peruse the bundle of ads to find
stuff I don’t really need that’s on sale.  Nothing at Circuit City, nothing
at Meijer, nothing at the furniture stores, and there it was, the Best Buy ad. 
I know, right now you’re wondering what the hell a Best Buy ad has to do with
the people at McDonald’s hating me or being psychic?

Well, it seems Best Buy
has once again teamed up with McDonald’s, and there, in the Best Buy flyer, was
the announcement that the Monopoly game is starting up again at McDonald’s come
October 3rd.  Even though I have never won anything cool during McDonald’s
Monopoly promotion, there is a sense of excitement pulling those little pieces
off of the hash brown wrapper, off of the fries’ box, or off of my large Diet
Coke.  What will it be?  Will I be an instant winner of maybe a
breakfast sandwich?  Better yet, maybe I’ll win a cool prize instantly. 
Better yet, the excitement of wondering if this will be the piece that completes
my trilogy of Pacific, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania Avenues.  My game
board becomes filled, usually with that one elusive piece that makes me a big
winner missing for each block of properties.

I love the McDonald’s Monopoly
game, and here is why I know they hate me, or might be psychic.

I’m watching "The
Biggest Loser" last Wednesday and decide it is time to start my diet plan
and actually do some exercising.  But being the procrastinator I am, and
with the weekend coming up, I look at the calendar and decide that October 1st
would be the perfect day to start.  I could eat a little crappy on
Saturday, a nice steak with a big ol’ baked potato smothered with butter and
sour cream, but then go grocery shopping on Sunday for nothing but healthy food
and start hitting that exercise bike on Monday morning.  It was a perfect
plan up until Sunday morning when I saw that damn Best Buy ad.

Now what the
hell am I supposed to do?

I love the McDonald’s Monopoly game, but still want
to be a big loser, and herein lies the true dilemma.  If I skip the dieting
and play the McDonald’s game I’ll probably be a big loser, and if I don’t play
the game and eat healthy and exercise during October, I’ll be a big loser. 
Now I just have to decide which way I really want to be a bigger loser.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
I know e-mail programs are boring, but I was having problems using "Thunderbird"
today, but low and behold, actually reading some "help" stuff on their website
seemed to have solved the problem.  On a corporate level, in conjunction
with our move into the the fledgling website called
MySpace,
we are also considering adding our "Stu
& The Dude Reviewin’ the Movies for You" episodes into this brand new thing
I found called YouTube.  Like MySpace, the site doesn’t seem that popular
right now, but if we can help them grow a bit, well, who knows.  I’ll fill
you in on our YouTube profiling in a later blog or podcast.

All that other crap going on, the biggest problem I have right now, other
than it being a weirdly, crappy, movie-going weekend, is that the fall TV season
is coming up, and I think, especially for Thursday nights, I’m going to have to
hunker down and spend the money for the

dual-tuner TiVo that is out now.  How else can I juggle watching the
racially divided "Survivor,"
versus "My Name is
Earl" & "The Office,"
versus "Smallville,"
and versus whatever ABC seems
to throw at me.  My TV life is so complicated.

Thanks for listening.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
By blog accounts, this one is long, but damn it’s exciting.  Almost as
exciting as my day.  Let’s get to it…

So, I had an exciting day
planned.  First I figured I would catch a movie, and I did.  It was
the movie "Crank,"
and the review should be posted tomorrow (quick hint – stupid fun, with some
quality kills and gratuitous nudity).  Then I planned on getting the
dude-mobile washed, and I did that, too.  I also needed to buy some new
underwear.  Man, what an exciting day.

But two other things became of
interest to me as the day went on.  One deals with an always sore subject
with me, and that is the FCC and their messed up "censorship" guidelines. 
The second is I can see why a major retailer might be losing some customers.

First off, and maybe you never paid attention, nor thought it would affect you,
but thanks to our government raising the fines on what
five people decide is indecent,
CBS stations across the country are having to make a decision

if they should air "9/11," a documentary, because of some of the language
and content in the program.  Yup, thanks to the moniker of "saving the
children," five years after the 9/11 attacks, television stations are having to
worry a lot more about anything they might put on your TV, many times, now,
because of "back-door censorship" by the government, rather than if the show
just sucks.  Me, I find it sort of sad that when kids ask why other people
hate the United States enough to crash planes into our buildings, a lot of times
we tell them it’s because those people don’t like the freedoms we have. 
Yet at this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks a lot of you won’t have the freedom
to decide if you want to watch a gripping documentary about that day. 
Thank you Senators, House Representatives, and President Bush for raising the
fine.  And, oh yea, thank you also to the five people at the FCC who
decide, for all of us, what is indecent.

On another note, if the folks at
Sears find they are losing customers, they might be right.  I know today
they lost one for sure, and probably a second.  Carson Pirie Scott, on the
other hand, just gained a new one.

First, why I’m done with Sears.

Me being
a dude, you can probably guess the state of my boxers as I went to the local
mall in search of some new ones.  First stop – JCPenney.  I’ve always
had decent luck shopping there for clothes, but their Labor Day sale on
underwear, and the disarray of the display, left slim pickin’s for this dude. 
I had three other shopping options for underwear:  Sears, Marshall Field’s
(now almost Macy’s), and Carson Pirie Scott.  Figuring Sears would be the
better frugal choice, I cruised around the mall and found myself in their men’s
underwear section.  They didn’t have the brand I was looking for, but the
Hanes’ stuff was on sale and even though their display was also in disarray, I
was able to find enough in the size and color I like to replenish my boxer
drawer.  Now I have to preface this a tad because I was already a little
perturbed at Sears because of my mother’s latest dealing with them (more on that
later), but under the assumption that shopping at Sears would save me a few
bucks, I was sticking with my underwear purchase there.  That was until I
tried to pay for them.

I head for the first cashier area where no one seemed
to be working, but people in line seeming to hope someone would show up. 
So I head around the corner and down the aisle to the next cashier area, only to
find a line of five people and the cashier just getting on the PA system asking
for a manager.  I ain’t got time to wait for that.  So I head to the
next cashier area.  One cashier and this time about ten people in line
(granted by this time I found myself in the women’s clothing area, where I did
find it odd that the men’s restroom was there, behind the lingerie display, but
being in the women’s area, I thought it might be busy), and I headed to the last
cashier area on the floor.  Again, one cashier.  Again, ten people in
line, and already being upset at Sears, deciding my underwear purchase, no
matter the state of my current ones, didn’t warrant waiting that long in line. 
Being the nice guy I am, I did put the boxers back in the underwear display, but
I was still without new underwear to buy, and rather than shop at Marshall
Field’s, the Chicago institution it is, soon to be named Macy’s by the Macy’s
people, I took a protest of my own against the name change and said to myself,
"Self, what the hell, let’s give Carson’s a shot."

So I cruised around the
mall a bit more, and I almost stopped at Radio Shack, and no, not for underwear,
but no one else was in the store and I didn’t want to be pestered by the sale’s
folks there, so I took a pass.  I’m sorry, I digress.  Back to Carson
Pirie Scott.  Walking to the men’s clothing area, there, in the middle of
one of the aisles, was a well organized display of the Jockey underwear I was
originally looking for.  And you know what?  They were on sale. 
At this point they were still a little more expensive than if JCPenney’s had had
them, and Sears still had the best price of all with the Hanes, but I really
needed the boxers so I figured I would suck-up the extra couple of bucks. 
I head to the cashier area, staffed with two cashiers and only one person in
line, they finish their transaction, I put my underwear on the counter, and on
top of the savings I was getting from them just being on sale, the sale’s
associate seemed to scan a coupon that I didn’t have.  Suddenly my
underwear purchase was cheaper than both JCPenney and Sears, and with that,
Carson Pirie Scott has gained a new customer, and combined with the following, I
will find it hard for me to return to Sears.

The other customer that Sears may
have lost is my mother, and this blog is already too long, so I’ll save her
complete story for another blog.  To put it simply right now, I took her to
Sears to get a new microwave a little while ago, a KitchenAid (Mom likes
KitchenAid).  It was a special order, and the Sears’ folks were also hired
to install it.  The install folks came, put in a microwave, and Mom was
initially happy, only something didn’t seem right, her spices fit between the
microwave and the top of the stove.  Eventually Mom figured out that it
wasn’t the microwave she paid for (sadly, it was a lesser microwave).  The
Sears’ folks did refund my Mom her money, correcting for the microwave that was
installed, but from what Mom tells me, the salesperson who handled the refund,
rather than taking any responsibility, told my brother (he took care of getting
things straight), that the KitchenAid people must have shipped the wrong
microwave.  The more I think about it, that excuse seems like a quick
copout, and it is also burning up my Mom because she feels the same way. 

Anyway, more on Mom’s microwave during a later blog, otherwise this blog
might go on forever, especially if I get into another tangent about the cool
fountain at the mall, why I was thinking of heading into Radio Shack, and my
experience at the car wash.

So Sears, sorry, but I’m not planning on shopping
with you anymore, and I have a feeling my Mom might be done with you also. 
Carson Pirie Scott, the next time I’m looking for clothes, I think I’ll stop by
your store first.  For a sale, you’re not as expensive as I assumed you
were.

Sometimes you can’t seem to find the underwear you want, sometimes you
can’t seem to get the microwave you paid for, and sometimes you don’t have the
freedom to watch what you want on TV.  What a wonderful world.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Another solo podcast.  It’s Labor Day Weekend and as much as I sort of wish
I had gone to New Jersey for a quick vacation, thanks to Tropical Depression
Ernesto, I’m not so bummed about it.  Football season is coming (Yay!),
baseball season is coming to a close (Boooo!), and I have a couple of new
MySpace friends.  I
would like to congratulate all of the women out there on their Labor duties, and
remember when
Bill Cosby
was funny.

I have also realized I say "so" and "in any case" way too much during these
podcasts, so I apologize and will work on that for the future.  Sorry if
that annoys you.  Hell, it even annoyed me.

Thanks for listening.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Sometimes I drive myself nuts.  Case in point was this morning.

So this
morning I got up a little later than normal because I was up the night before a
little later than normal.  Driving to get my #2 breakfast with a large Diet
Coke for $4.04, I was debating on seeing another movie today, namely
"Invincible," or skipping the film, even though I did want to see it, and use
the extra time to working on the animation for our next "Stu & The Dude" episode
of "Snakes on a Plane."  My decision was to skip the movie.  So I got
back home, reading my Sunday paper and enjoying my breakfast, with "Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban" on the TV.  I finish reading the paper,
breakfast was done, but there I sat, on my couch, missing a new movie and
spending most of the time I should have been animating by watching Harry Potter
get his ass kicked by the Dementors.  Needless to say our "Snakes
on a Plane" review isn’t done yet.

But I did see "Beerfest,"
and it was okay, pretty much most of what I expected, although it did have one
flaw because anyone who has tried to drink out of a yard glass would know that
the secret to "Das Boot" is rotating the glass, or so I’m told.  The movie
also had me recall some college memories where I was a kickass "Thumper" player. 
There are a couple of secrets to being a kickass "Thumper" player, but those
will rest me me.  I was never good at the chugging thing, couldn’t open my
throat, and I preferred to consider myself a distance drinker, able to just hang
out on the roof of the fraternity house waiting for the sun to rise.  I
suppose being good at drinking games is good in one respect, because you don’t
get as drunk, but being good at drinking games is bad in another respect,
because you don’t get as drunk, which is really the goal of most drinking games. 
What a dilemma.  In Kamikaze Checkers, however, there is no winner,
although it does lead to laughing your ass off when it precedes
Jesse
Jackson reading "Green Eggs and Ham" during Saturday Night Live, or so I’m also told.

Well,
enough reminiscing and probably giving my mom some chest pains about my college
days, it’s back to some animating and watching the
Emmy Awards.

Thanks
for reading!

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Just a couple of quick things to blog about while I take a break from animating
our "Snakes on a Plane" review…

If you listened to

my latest podcast you already know about my latest dilemma, but in case you
didn’t listen, I wrote what I think is a cute parody song concerning the demise
of Pluto, but right now it isn’t the criticism of the funniness of the song that
is stopping me from recording it, but the making fun of my singing by everyone
in internet-land, especially by those of my immediate family.  I suppose I
should just suck it up since I know I’m no

Pavarotti, or even
Weird Al.  We’ll see how the weekend goes if "The Dude on the Right’s"
singing debut goes public.

It was also an exciting week in The Dude household
as I’m a new dad (sorry mom for telling you this way)!  Ever since

Bill’s passing last December, my other two "kids," Steve and Ashley, just
haven’t been the same.  I think they are too young to understand the
concept of death, but they seemed to always sense that someone was missing from
their home.  And so, needing a replenishment of snails and crabs, and since
my fish tank seems to have stabilized after my

last cleaning debacle, I decided it was time for Steve and Ashley to get
some new siblings.  I could have replaced Bill with another Bill, but
decided on something different on the swimming side, and also added a couple of
starfish.  I’m trying not to get too attached to them right now, waiting to
make sure they end up nicely adapting to their new home before dying on me, and
so they don’t have names yet, although one of them is close to being called
either Bam, Betty, or Becky.  I don’t have pictures yet, either, because
they are still kinda skittish about coming out in the open.  One of the
starfish, as it is want to do, also just likes to bury itself in the sand, so my
only hint it is still alive is that the sand looks to move.  More on my
growing family at a later date.

And finally, I don’t want to give my
commentary on this right now, other than I found it interesting and odd, but one
of the sport’s talk radio stations pointed out something very interesting about
a quote by Cubs’ Manager Dusty Baker as printed in the Chicago Tribune. 
I’m listening to "The Boers and Bernstein Show" on
The Score here in
Chicago yesterday, and they pointed out that while Dusty was discussing pitch
counts, the Tribune wrote "Baker pointed to Greg Maddux’s high pitch counts
early in his career, claiming Maddux had thrown 167 pitches in one start. 
‘If I left somebody out there 167 pitches, you’d [criticize] me,’ Baker said." 
You might be saying something like "Fine, so Dusty might have said something
like "shit all over me" and the Tribune decided to replace that phrase, in
brackets so you knew it wasn’t exactly what Dusty said, with "criticize." 
Only the boys at The Score played the tape of the interview and what Dusty Baker
actually said was "If I left somebody out there 167 pitches, you’d lynch me."

Boers and Bernstein weren’t criticizing Dusty Baker’s choice of words, they
actually had their reasoning for Dusty’s using the word "lynch."  Nope,
they wondered why the Chicago Tribune, who own the Chicago Cubs, would seem to
decide to replace an inflammatory word with one not so inflammatory?  My
question is simply in what thesaurus can you find "criticize" as an appropriate
replacement for "lynch?"  Nothing in my mind, nor my online source,

www.thesaurus.com, comes close.

Anyway, back to animating!  Thanks
for reading!

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

For this podcast, The Dude on the Right laments about some rude people he has found in his hometown of Lorain, Ohio, is sort of sad he went home last weekend and not the weekend of September 9th when Artie Lange from The Howard Stern Show is actually doing his stand-up comedy act in his hometown. He is also an Elvis person, and he wants to give away a golf shirt.

By:

The Dude on the Right
Well, Stu and I didn’t get together for a weekend wrap-up, so for this podcast I
thought I would talk a little bit about the rude people in Lorain, Ohio, how
Lorain actually got mentioned on The
Howard Stern Show
thanks to Artie Lange,
and Elvis died 29 years ago, so I played one of my favoritist Elvis songs. 
Me,

I’m an Elvis’ dude, not a Beatles’ Dude.  I’m also looking for a
plumber who might be trying to start a vintage toy store and has a G.I. Joe
Mobile Headquarters for sale, "Snakes
on a Plane" opens this weekend, and if you listen to the entire podcast, you
just might be able to win a free shirt.  So much packed into so little
time.

Thanks for listening.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
So here it is, Sunday morning in beautiful
Lorain, OH, and sure, I should probably be at church or something like that, but
“Cocoon” is on the basic cable that my parents subscribe to and I just can’t
seem to break away.  Here on an extended weekend to visit the parents, I have
found out a few things about my hometown.  First, it seems

to have corruption just like Chicago, yet nowhere near the same scale.  I
have also found that there seem to be many folks who really don’t respect people
in wheelchairs, let alone elderly people in wheelchairs.  I know this isn’t
indicative of all people in the Lorain area, at least I hope not, but I did find
it a tad shocking.  I suppose I’ll explain more either when I talk to Stu
during our weekend wrap-up podcast, or save the specifics for a later blog. 

Lorain also seemed to always have a thing for
building their streets out of concrete, instead of concrete with an asphalt
surface, and that concrete road is great when the roads are first put in, but
not so great 10 to 30 years later when the City doesn’t have the money to
rebuild the roads, the concrete crumbles, and the patchwork fixes makes it seem
like you are driving on the moon.  Mom tells me that a few years ago there
were plans to try to set up a roadway fund by making owners of registered vehicles pay for
a "City Sticker," much like Chicago and tons of other cities do, but one of the
ex-mayors, an older dude, rallied many of the other older folks to defeat the
measure (the sticker was supposed to cost like a whole 5 to 10 bucks).  I
hope those older folks are happy as they bounce around in their Buick’s with
suspensions that need a hell of a lot more work than the original 5 or 10 bucks
it would have cost them for the sticker.

But enough complaining about
Lorain.  It’s a great city, really, and would have had the potential to be
even greater if the damn horse track and religious nuts long ago hadn’t rallied
to defeat a measure to put a casino in downtown Lorain.  I would have
gladly gone there this weekend and lost a few bucks which might have helped pay
for the repair of a sewer catch basin collapse in front of my parent’s house that
hasn’t been fixed in years.

Anyway, although I haven’t been able to catch a
new movie this weekend (and there weren’t many I was excited about anyway), I
have been able to catch up on writing all of my movie previews, so those should
be posted shortly, and watch a lot of baseball, golf, "Jeopardy," and "Wheel of
Fortune."  As much as Mom always says, when I’m sitting our living room, to
watch what I want I want, I know she doesn’t really mean it.  She really
means "Watch something that I’ll also want to watch."  Since mom likes
baseball, golf, "Jeopardy," and "Wheel of Fortune," that’s what I want to watch.

In any case, as much as it is nice to be home, it is always a little weird, and
sometimes makes me sad, because Lorain has such potential to be a great town,
with its river and lakefront location, but sadly they seem to keep shooting themselves
in the foot when it seems they have a chance to take a step forward, and can’t
even seem to get the corruption to turn the city around, either.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!