Category: General Musings

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!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
If you have been a regular reader of my blog, you might remember that about 2
1/2 months ago I got a haircut that had gone wrong.  I finished

that blog with…

As much as "Piercing Girl" is nice on the eyes, I’m
thinking it might be nice to talk with Vita again, who’s also nice on the eyes,
and give her my family update, and see how hers is doing as well.  With getting
a haircut from Vita I’ve got to plan a little bit better in getting said haircut
in a little bit better fashion, but I know what I’ll get – A decent haircut and
comfortable conversation, and isn’t that what we are always looking for?  But
then again I might just be to lazy and pray I get Piercing Girl the next time
around.

Sometimes I’m such an idiot.  Happy Haircutting! …

It had finally come time for another haircut, which had I actually planned
properly I would have made an appointment a couple of weeks ago, and I would
have given Vita a call and been able to schedule a decent haircut with
comfortable conversation.  But no, I am, sometimes, such an idiot, so with
the haircut necessity pressing, I now had a different set of dilemmas.  My
first dilemma:  Go back to the same haircut chain place, pray "I’ve Got
Better Tools Girl" isn’t there, and I get "Piercing Girl" again.  My other
dilemma was that I would get "Perfect Haircut Girl," she would comment about how
bad my last haircut was, and I would have to rat out "I’ve Got Better Tools
Girl."  Dilemmas continue:  What if "I’ve Got Better Tools Girl" is
also there, and I get either "Perfect Haircut Girl" or "Piercing Girl," and they
asked me who butchered my hair the last time?  Do I rat out "I’ve Got
Better Tools Girl" right in front of her?  And if I did, how would that
make the person feel currently sitting in "I’ve Got Better Tools Girl"’s chair? 
So you know what I did?  I went to the same haircut chain, but at a
different location, because it was also on my way home, and now I’m just left
with one question – Is "Getting Easily Lost Dude" gay?

I walk in the door and the there are two, cute, dudette hair stylists, working
on a couple of high school girl’s hair, and a dude cutting a little dude’s hair. 
I have to wait a bit, but it is pretty obvious I’m going to get the dude to cut
my hair, and I start to wonder, especially since I had to sit in a chair that
had signage blocking the dudettes and I could only see the dude, if he was gay. 
I say this because he seemed to have many mannerisms which gay men seem to have,
and the "clip-clopping" flip-flops didn’t seem to help.  But then I also
thought, especially after my last haircut, and seeing the nice job he did on the
little dude in the chair, that gay or straight, all this dude seems to want to
do is give a decent haircut.  And thanks to "Queer Eye For the Straight
Guy," maybe a gay dude cutting your hair does pay a little more attention to
making your hair look good rather than some of the old "barbers" who used to cut
my hair when I was a youngin’, and seemed to think that no matter what age you
were, a "bowl cut" was always in style.

So I get in the haircut chair, and for whatever reason, I still wonder if he is
gay or not, and then I notice a wedding ring.  Now I’m wondering about the
woman who would marry a dude, with him wanting to be a haircut dude, working for
a national chain which I’m sure probably doesn’t pay that much, and standing by
her man.  Then he mentions what he has a house, and is pissed off about the
heat wave we have recently had in the Chicagoland area because he has constantly
been having to run his air-conditioning.  His small talk also mentions his
getting lost with some friends coming back from a wedding in the town I live in,
hence the "Getting Easily Lost Dude" moniker I have given him, because, and
knowing where he said he was at the time, it’s not that easy to get lost. 
All the while he seems to be doing a decent job on cutting my hair.

Gay or straight, the "Getting Easily Lost Dude" gave me an okay haircut, seemed
to have fixed some of the disasters I have been dealing with since "I’ve Got
Better Tools Girl" cut my hair, but still messed up on cleaning up my sideburns. 
I will say it again, "How fucking hard is it to use that clipper thing and keep
the sideburns, or in my case, my lack of them, straight!"

I should pledge that for my next haircut I will call Vita with an early enough
warning so I can get my expected "decent haircut with comfortable conversation." 
She would probably love my stories about getting my hairs cut at these couple of
chain places, and the dilemmas I have faced.  But then again, "Getting
Easily Lost Dude" didn’t do that bad of a job.  Now I have three haircut
dilemmas:  Call Vita early enough to get a decent haircut with comfortable
conversation.  Go back to the previous national chain location and hope I
get "Piercing Girl" with her nice assets.  And finally, go back to the
recent national chain and hope I get "Getting Easily Lost Dude" because he did
seem to do a decent job on my hair.

I make my life so complicated sometimes.  And this this time it is about
getting a haircut.  I am such an idiot.

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

By:

The Dude on the Right
I did it.  I knew I would because I’m crazy like that some times, but I did
it.  I made a MySpace page.  So there I am, at

www.myspace.com/thedudeontheright, and I don’t really know why.  I even
wrote that for my first blog entry over there, because, well, I have a blog
here, why do I need a blog there?  I suppose I made it just to have a
MySpace page, but I think I also did it as a sort of promotional tool to maybe
drive an extra person or two over here to Entertainment Ave!

It was
interesting setting up the page because you start to analyze things you want
made public, and as a computer nerd, it also re-introduced me to CSS coding,
although I haven’t utilized any of it yet because at this time it was just
enough to get the page done, add some photos, and hope it’s not to dorky. 
I also found many sites out there that will automatically generate the coding
needed to change the layout and color scheme of the page.  Part of that
seems like cheating, especially when I would actually like to expand my CSS
coding knowledge, but in the end, I’ll probably use one of those sites and
cheat, knowing that by analyzing how the coding gets manipulated, it will
actually help my learning it.  Alright, enough technical workshopping. 
If you have a MySpace page, right now I’m looking for friends.  I got two
requests to be a friend this morning, one was from some girl with a naked photo
of herself on the page, and and the other with a page that had absolutely
nothing on it about the person, just looking like she was trolling for friends. 
I was going to add the naked girl, but then realized her photo would end up on
my "Friend’s" list, and felt like adding nudity at this time wouldn’t be a good
start.

In any case, I’m ready for the bashing I might take from my niece and
nephew for the page, but so be it.  I’ll survive.

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

For this podcast, The Dude on the Right has many dilemmas about starting his MySpace page, and doesn’t really solicit any help, he just doesn’t want to look like a total dork when he finally gets his page posted. The Dude also had a laugh at a YouTube clip of the TV show WKRP. Did you know that turkeys don’t, well, you’ll have to listen.

By:

The Dude on the Right
I have decided that I need to make a
MySpace page.  I think
the only reason why is because of peer pressure, no wait, not really peer
pressure, but because everyone else seems to have one and I don’t, I would like
more friends, but what about the humiliation if I don’t get any new friends? 
That alone sets up one of the many dilemmas I have found myself having on how to
really set up my MySpace page.  My life gets so overanalyzed when I let
myself overanalyze it, and now that I’ve decided to set up a page, my
self-diagnosed OCD kicks in because I want a cool page, want friends, and don’t
want to look like another total dork with a MySpace page that is a mess.  I
do know that I won’t be

setting up a Facebook page. 

Even with my MySpace complications, I did get a good laugh from a

YouTube link from a site I regularly visit.  It’s about Thanksgiving
and the fictional radio station WKRP.  It made me laugh, and it might make
you laugh, too, especially if you wait for the end of my podcast, or the end of
the YouTube video clip, whichever you are paying attention to.

Thanks for listening.

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

By:

The Dude on the Right
I don’t know why, but for all of my life I have liked high school-themed films. 
They can be the one’s geared at the dudes, the one’s geared for the dudettes, or
those geared for everyone.  So I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised
when this morning came around and as I was deciding whether to see "Scoop,"
the Woody Allen movie, or "John
Tucker Must Die," the high school movie, I opted for seeing if John Tucker
would find an untimely demise.  I have to admit that I feel kind of silly,
and I’m sure I get some weird looks, going to the local gigaplex box office,
alone, and asking "One for ‘John Tucker Must Die’ please."  But there I
sat, in the theater, myself, about ten, teen girls, and a mom.  I got some
of the jokes the girls didn’t, the girls got some of the jokes I didn’t, so I
guess it worked for all of us on some level.

And as much as going to see the
"John Tucker" film sort of made me feel old, it was seeing the Chicago Cubs game
on Friday that again reminded me that those days of college are way behind me. 
Sure, it was like 93 degrees, sun blazing down, and humid, but back in those
college days, drinking water at a ballgame never even came around as a little
bit of a thought.  Granted I don’t think they were even selling bottled
water back then, but in those days, even with the heat, it was all about beer. 
Sure, I was driving home from this Cubs’ game, so drinking a lot of beer wasn’t
an option, but even after having the few I had before the game, and one at the
ballpark, all I wanted was water, and lots of it.  So there you have it – I
think my body has officially decided it has grown-up, but I suppose my mind and
sense of humor have a long way to follow, especially choosing a high school
flick over a Woody Allen movie, even if the Woody Allen flick did have Scarlett
Johansson in it, whom I want to stalk.  I guess I’m kinda hoping my mind
never catches up with my body.

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

By:

The Dude on the Right
I am very happy my mother celebrated her 80th birthday yesterday, but somewhat
sad I couldn’t be there for it.  But what also makes me sad it I can’t find
a great caricature our resident artist did of my mom, my niece, and me, a bunch
of years ago, so I can’t post it here, yet.  If I can find it, buried on
one of my back-up files of a back-up of an old hard drive, I’ll post it later.  I also
found it odd that the City of Chicago folks are doing all they can to

drive businesses out of city, and maybe Target will actually

stick it to the aldermen, but sadly, that also means a lot of jobs lost for
people who really can use them, by closing some stores in the city.

But the other story really bugging me right now is about a

PBS documentary that might not air as originally intended for fear of getting
fined by the FCC.  You want community standards, well, I’m thinking
community standards will say that veterans of World War II might drop a bad word
every now and then when they talk about getting shot at.  But we’ve got to
save the children  because Lord knows they aren’t using any of those words,
like shit or fuck.  The good kids, like me, even at 39, know not to use
them in front of their parents, at least most of the time.

And, oh yea, congrats to the folks at

ExxonMobil!  I’ll remember you when I’m filling up the Dude-Mobile with
some go-go juice tomorrow morning on my way to the Chicago Cubs game. 

Thanks for listening.

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

For this podcast, The Dude on the Right is disappointed at missing a classical music concert, is trying to see four movies in two days, laughed during “Trapped in the Closet,” and gets a little teary knowing his niece needs sensitivity training.

By:

The Dude on the Right
The last podcast I did solo, well, I tried to keep it under 10 minutes, and came
pretty damn close.  I did this specifically at the request of my sister and
my niece.  What thanks do I get? – A slam from my niece.  That being
written, for this podcast I give you some incite into the world of "Carmina
Burana" from Carl Orff, and discuss my plan for seeing four movies in two days,
namely "My
Super Ex-Girlfriend," "Monster
House," "The
Lady in the Water," (or as Ivan Reitman calls it, "The Chick in the Pool"),
and "Clerks
II."  It’s a busy weekend for me.  I was also happy to see
Comedy Central
re-run the South Park episode of "Trapped in a Closet" and I give a teary-eyed
discussion about my niece needing sensitivity training.

And if you know the secret to printing a
Google Calendar in
color, in an easy manner, I’ve got a free Entertainment Ave! golf shirt and hat
for you if you’re the first to e-mail that secret to me at
podcast@entertainmentavenue.com.

Thanks for listening.

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