Dad's House » life

Celebrity Sightings

dadshouse — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:33:04 +0000

How can you top all the celebrity sightings at the Oscars? Why of course – with stories about meeting celebrities in real life!

One of my neighbors is in his sixties, and his hobby is restoring beat-up Ford Mustangs into super-charged kick-ass beyond-your-wildest dream vehicles. He’s not immune to the occasional race against a BMW’s snobby Silicon Valley owner. His Mustang always win (natch.)

The other day he told me about one day from his youth, when he was driving near Lake Merced in San Francisco. He pulled up to a stop light, and there next to him was Steve McQueen – Steve McQueen! Hollywood Star from The Great Escape, and Bullitt. Steve McQueen was in a souped up black Mustang. Maybe even the very car he drove in Bullitt.

My neighbor and Steve McQueen traded glances and nods, and when the light turned green, they drag raced up The Great Highway.

My neighbor won. And Herb Caen supposedly wrote up their street race in the San Francisco Chronicle the next day. I was impressed.

Not to be outdone, I told him a celebrity sighting story of my own.

“I was in Manhattan with a buddy, when an Asian man came toward us,” I said. “I look at the guy, and we exchange nods and glances. It was James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins.”

“Who?” my neighbor asked.

Okay, my neighbor is in his sixties. I can’t expect him to know who James Iha is. “He’s the guitarist for Smashing Pumpkins,” I said. “He and I exchanged glances – “
“The Smashing what?” he asked.
“Pumpkins,” I said.
“Is this some kind of band?” he asked.
“Yeah, a rock band,” I said.

He shook his head. “I know my rock ‘n’ roll, and I’ve never heard of the Smashing Whatever’s.”

“It’s alt-rock,” I said.
“What the hell is that?”
“Alternative rock. It’s what they play on Live 105.”
“That’s a radio station?”

Okay, clearly I wasn’t going to impress him with a Smashing Pumpkins brush with fame. I needed to refocus things on the celebrity nature of the moment.

“The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the biggest bands in the 90s,” I said. “And this guy was their guitarist.”

“Gotcha,” my neighbor said, nodding. “So this guy is in a Mustang? Or what?”
“No, he was walking,” I said.
“And you were in a Mustang.”
“No, I was walking the other direction.”

My neighbor looked confused and held his hands wide. Without a souped up car or a street race, I had lost him.

“I also walked by Donald Trump’s wife,” I said. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Now we’re talking!” my neighbor said. He smiled broadly.

Fast cars, beautiful women. What more do men need when they’re bonding?

Photo by aresauburn™, some rights reserved.

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Bathroom Business

dadshouse — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:33:01 +0000

WARNING: this post may contain TMI and other bodily waste tidbits that are way beyond anything you want to read.

Then again, it’s not much worse than anything in Angela’s Ashes. So suck it up, gentle reader, and read on.

The other day my toilets backed up. Both of them were near overflowing. Like a good home owner, I plunged the shit out of both bowls. (Not literally.) That is, I kept plunging until (WARNING – major gross alert!) water started seeping up through other bathroom pipes. (Use your imagination.)

As a frazzled single parent, I let it slide while I went to my daughter’s soccer game. I arranged for a plumber to come to my house late at night to fix the problem.

He came. He snaked. He rooted. He did not conquer.

“You need a clean out,” he said.
What the hell is that?
“It’s an access pipe added outside your house so we can really get in there and clean out your pipes.”

i.e. something labor intensive and expensive as all get out. And nothing any sane plumber would install at midnight in the rain.

The plumber left, and I went to sleep without a working toilet. I also wasn’t allowed to use the shower or tub.

No problem. I can go a day without bathing, and I can pee in the bushes.

But number two? Er… they better fix that drainage problem, quick.

The entire next day went by without a plumber able to install that clean-out thing. At least not someone who would do it at a reasonable price. Seems that guy was busy with actual clients. It was the non-busy plumbers who wanted an arm and a leg. (Go figure.)

Back to number two. I used the facilities at Starbucks. Ever the good customer, I even bought a coffee. (Grande Americano, light room.)

But later that night, when nature called again, I wasn’t in the mood for more caffeine. This time, I hit my local library.

When a public restroom becomes a trip destination twice in one day, it’s time to reconsider that arm and a leg approach.

But only one arm. Else how could I wipe. (Ba-da-boom!)

(sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

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I Heart Old People

dadshouse — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:30:26 +0000

Romantic Valentine’s Day ideas aren’t even on my radar this year, but I still have a place in my heart for a certain special someone (or two) .

No, I’m not talking about hot French women.

For some odd reason, I really like old people.

Even the ones who get in my way, taking forever to do whatever it is they’re doing.

Actually, especially those particular old people.

Take your walker and shuffle on over to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog to read why:

I Heart Old People

(If that pre-programmed link doesn’t work, go straight to Dad’s House posts at SV Moms)

Leave a comment, then come on back and have a prune juice martini. My treat.

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Just Breathe – Pearl Jam

dadshouse — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:33:42 +0000

I’m exhausted. Sleep would be good. Short of that, I remind myself to just breathe.

Before I explain why just breathing is my elixir of choice, let me run down my day.

I spent the day nursing a massive head cold – I slept in, avoided work as long as possible, made one of my favorite old home remedies: grapefruit tea (with an eye on a tequila shot later that night).

In the afternoon, I went to watch my teen daughter compete in a sporting event – a soccer match in the rain. As a lifelong Californian who simply doesn’t take rain seriously, I don’t own an umbrella. Yep, I stood in the rain for two hours. (My daughter’s team won, and she played great.)

At night I attended a lecture given by Silicon Valley luminary Guy Kawasaki (former Apple software evangelist for the Mac, and founder of Alltop. I’ll blog about that next week.)

My saving grace in all of this was hearing a song by Pearl Jam. It was cold and rainy, and I was driving from one place to the next, and Just Breathe came on. Something about this song touches me to the core.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pearl Jam, Just Breathe youtube video

Maybe because when I’m faced with something I fear or dread, I know I can get through it if I just breathe. If I’m sad or distraught and wonder where and when the happiness will come, I just breathe. If I’m home alone wondering when I’ll have company, I just breathe. If I’m spooning with a lover in bed, I just breathe.

Focused breath is conscious intent. No matter how tired or stressed I get, I can just breathe and things eventually fall away.

I know my connection to breathing is probably different than Pearl Jam had in mind. But it sure was comforting to hear them on this rainy day, when I was otherwise not here and not functioning very well in the world.

Just breathe.

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Free Stuff is Fabulous

dadshouse — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:32:24 +0000

From football playoffs, to friends and fun times (sorry, needed another F word for alliteration purposes, and I’m trying to keep this blog PG-13) – I had a friggin’ great weekend. Best of all, I got a ton of free stuff. And that, my fine friends, is fabulous.

The free finds first flowed with a friend fielding my invite for a film. For some reason my fledgling rental company thinks I’m a fine customer and favored me with a coupon for a free flick. My fickle friend and I filled our fancy with Moonstruck. If you haven’t fallen for this film since forever, feel free to fit it into your future. Family, feuding, frolicking, funny, and with Cher and Nicolas Cage, no featherweights in the starring roles.

Free stuff continued with a matinee showing of Avatar 3D, a fetching fantasy. No, we didn’t find tickets through Fandango (though that would have formulated a fine F-word tie-in.) Instead, we cashed in a rain check ticket from a film that faltered the first time we saw it. (Not Avatar, something far different. ) Unfortunately, we only had one rain check. Frankly, we should have only gotten one Avatar seat for free. But the frumpy manager was familiar with my frugal friend, and footed the bill for the second seat. Go figure!

I finished my fine Sunday watching football with a friend, eating fries and drinking foamy stout. We also ordered a quesadilla for our fiesta, but the food served to us would have made Napoleon Dynamite fear for his life. Too greasy, and that is felonious! We cried foul, and the friendly freckled female server furnished a free beer. Not just any beer, but a frosty bottle of fourteen-percent alcohol French beer! (It was actually 13% and Belgian, but F rules the day)

Finally, I must bring this fashionable blog post to a finish.

This focused foray of free stuff was funded by the letter F. And no F-bombs were flipped while forming this feeble post.

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Cash Back Recycling – Brilliant!

dadshouse — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:13:50 +0000

On trash pickup days, we put our recyclable materials in curbside bins: glass bottles, plastic bottles, tin and aluminum cans. The garbage company hauls them all away for recycling.

“Do we get the CRV?” my teen son asked.

California Redemption Value is a nickel for small bottles and containers, and a dime for big ones.

“No, we just let the truck take it all away for free,” I said. “And we feel good for recycling.”

My son was aghast. He needs money (to put those teen ripped abs to good use), and he’s too young to work. We were giving away cash! Ever the industrious teen, he kept the recyclable containers aside until we had a month’s worth of bottles and cans. It was a huge pile of loot, with plenty of those big dime-value containers.

We drove to our local recycling center, and were promptly told to sort our cans and bottles into bins. No problem! We had already separated the glass and plastic. How hard could it be?

“Clear glass here, colored glass there, aluminum here, plastic there, tin here,” the guy running the place said.

A gruff-looking man rode up on a bicycle with huge plastic bags full of recyclables that we guessed he collected off the street. He didn’t need a tutorial, he went straight to work at sorting his find. Hey, if he can do it, so can we.

“Just make sure it says CA CRV on the label,” the recycling station manager said to us.
“Don’t they all say CA CRV?” we asked.
The recycling station manager cracked a smile. “Nope.”

For the record – California pays cash back for containers that held water, soda, beer, wine coolers, mineral water, sport drinks, coffee, tea and juice. (The redemption value is added on to the price of the beverage when you buy it.)

Those milk cartons we brought? Bzzzt.
Those liquor bottles? (Whiskey, tequila, vodka, gin) Bzzzt.
Those plastic yogurt containers? Bzzzt.
Those tin cans that had healthy vegetables? Bzzzt.

For the stuff we returned that had redemption value, our cash back totaled a whopping 70 cents. That’s not even enough to buy a taco!

“So much for getting rich off our own recycling,” my son said.
My teen son gives up too easily. Clearly, we’re eating the wrong things.
“No more milk in your cereal,” I said. “Soda pays cash back.”

Caching!

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Russell Should Have Won Survivor!

dadshouse — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:30:43 +0000

All right, I don’t normally write about TV shows. But this season’s Survivor: Samoa should have been won by Russell. Natalie didn’t deserve it at all. She rode Russell’s coat-tails throughout the whole game. I think the jury voted for her because Russell out-witted all of them, and they were pissed off.

One player, Eric, said he felt Natalie’s qualities as a player were more virtuous than Russell’s. To which I say “who cares?”

Memo to Eric – Russell kicked your ass. He outsmarted everyone out there.

When TV viewers voted for their favorite player, Russell won. But when the jury of his peers – the people in the game who he outsmarted and outplayed voted – Natalie won.

Sorry, Eric and all the other jury members. But that’s just lame. Without Russell, Natalie was nothing. Without Russell, this season would have been boring. Russell was the man we tuned in for every week. Russell played the game with vigor, while the rest of you just wanted a love-fest of friendliness. How is that playing the game?

It sort of reminds me of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. Without a man taking charge and running things to his own advantage, everyone else in Survivor would have been content to lay around getting a suntan, as if they were in Club Med. (Go watch the tape – that’s what many of them were doing.)

Russell – you kicked ass. You deserved to win. My kids and I were rooting for you up until the end.

Natalie – you rode Russell’s coat-tails. You don’t deserve one penny of that million dollars. You owe everything to the man – Russell.

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