Going Through TV Withdrawals, and a Bitch at the Racetrack.

By:

The Dude on the Right

We had pretty much a perfect weather weekend here in the Chicago area, and I’ll
talk to Stu about it during our podcast tomorrow.  So because I can’t give
you a synopsis about what I did this weekend, I’ll just give you some ramblings
off of my head.

In any case, last week I was in a funk.  I think I am
going through TV withdrawals since all of my standard shows are done, except
"The Sopranos" which concludes its season tonight.  I almost got sucked
back into "So You Think You Can Dance," but baseball was on.  I didn’t
accomplish much for the web site, at least on the surface (or at least that you
could see).  I accidentally made some huge errors during the animation
process that has delayed our latest episode of "Stu & The Dude Reviewin’ the
Movies for You!", our review of "Over the Hedge," about a week.  I watched
too much baseball, for some bizarre reason kept getting sucked into "Batman
Begins" on cable, which I think is a fabulous film, even bought the DVD, but
still haven’t reviewed it (that’s really got to be remedied soon), but I did
accomplish something and you can now find some small accomplishments on the "Movie
Preview
" page.  So far there are fourteen new movie previews posted,
with six more to come in the next day or so, and another six to ten ready for
posting by next weekend, just in time for your summer "What the hell movie
should we go see this weekend" questions.

And for some reason some of my
thoughts also keep coming back to my trip to
Arlington Park (a
horse racetrack here in Illinois), and I don’t really know why.  One
thought was the fact that the one jockey won every race he was in, five races in
all.  As someone always looking for easy money, and even though the horses
he was riding weren’t long shots, it would have been easy to double most of your
betting money that afternoon, if only you would know.  But isn’t that the
thrill, and danger, of gambling, the fact that you never know?  I did come
home with more money than I figured I would lose, so I still consider myself a
winner on the gambling front.  The other thing that really struck me about
that day was this bitch of a woman we encountered, and how I still wish I could
be creative on my feet rather than thinking of things to say later in the day.

Anyway, it was still early in the afternoon and the six of us there grabbed some
eats to get us through the afternoon.  Looking for a nice spot to eat our
pulled pork sandwiches and corn on the cob, I think it was Trash who spotted a
dude sitting by himself at a picnic table.  She nicely asked him if he was
saving the picnic table, to which he replied that he was only waiting for one
person, so if we wanted a spot to eat, to go ahead.  So half of us did. 
Our intention was simply to eat our food and be on our merry way, and the dude
seemed to truly understand that.  About halfway through our meal, the
person he was waiting for showed up, a dudette, and she proceeded to start to
chew him out a little bit for giving up part of the picnic table.  It
wasn’t a loud berating, but we could hear it, and it seemed bizarre, on the
level, that for this picnic table, you wanted it all to yourself, just the two
of you, where you could really be a lot more cozy on the lawn.  Anyway, I
don’t know if the dudette was his wife, girlfriend, sister, mistress, but at
least he had the balls to pretty much say "Just shut up and sit down," knowing
we would be leaving on our merry way soon.  Therein lies the "I wish I
could have been quicker on my feet" thing.  How many options would there
be?  Oh, the options are so many.  The first, and easiest, would have
just been to sit there the rest of the day.  Let my friends go on their
merry way betting and such, but just sit there, telling them "No, I like this
spot, I think I’m going to camp out here all afternoon, maybe fake phoning them
my bet for the next race."  Then there would be the "Pretend we are from
out of town and make her look like a dumb-ass" move by putting on a fake,
southern accent, and nicely go to the dude "Thank you so much for you
hospitality, sir, and giving us a nice spot to eat.  I hope we didn’t cause
any problem between you and your misses" as we were leaving.  And so many
other thoughts kept coming to mind, bending on the obnoxious to the making her
look like a complete horse’s ass (get it, we were at the horse races, horse’s
ass – oh man, I kill myself sometimes).

In any case, maybe getting that off my
chest here in this blog will help me to move on, realize that "Big Brother" will
be starting back up in a few weeks, and maybe I should use this time of lack of
TV shows productively.

On tap this week for Entertainment Ave! hopefully will
be our podcast of "Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up," more movie preview
postings, movie reviews of "Cars,"
"The
Omen
," and "A
Prairie Home Companion
," and I really want to do some CD reviews of the new
Dixie Chick’s album, an album from Blue October, and I’ll try like hell to get a
DVD review of "Batman Begins" done.  I’d like to say I promise to get all
of that done, but there is the season finale of "Deal or No Deal" that might eat
into some of my reviewing time.  God I sometimes hate TV.

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