Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

I was just informed in a comment from the last post that my blog has now "Jumped the Shark."

I didn't know what that meant, until about five minutes ago. But it was followed by "Step it up" so even I, could easily infer the slight.

According to Wikipedia, "Jumping the Shark" is used "to denote the point at which the characters or plot of a tv series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline." Which I always thought was the whole point of this silly exercise. In fact, I'm almost tempted to rename this blog "Jumping the Shark."

I am only disappointed in myself for not knowing the source of this expression - my boyhood hero, Arthur Herbert "Fonzi" Fonzarelli.

Please enjoy this colloquialism-defining TV moment.

I love me a good couple's fight

Especially over really petty shit, like forgetting to pick up the milk or clogging the drain with hair. Or making your partner attend "disgusting sex clubs." It makes me feel so much better about my own dysfunctional relationship. I found some examples on youtube and I think you'll agree - it's very watchable stuff.



But I draw the line when the fight breaks out right in front of a house I just poured my life-savings into. I have a property value to protect here. So when you classy couples pull your white Chevy Malibu not quite over to the side of the road, leaving the passenger door swinging wide and have at each other like some Jerry Springer stalwarts in full view of my home, well, that's when I step in.

Such was the scene I rode up to upon returning home from work yesterday. There was no, "gee, I wish you could respect my feelings..." It was more, "I hope your testicles rot with cancer you motherfucker!"

I needed to choose my words wisely, maybe even suggest a decent couples counselor before they go and do something stupid like split up. So I decided to pass the adorable little love birds and park my bike in the garage while I thought this through. But just as I returned to the sidewalk, it seemed my services were no longer required - the man was walking away from the woman while she shouted out after him, "I was never into your disgusting sex clubs, either! You're totally gonna get STDs. If you don't already have them!" (Wouldn't she have them, too?)

And off she went, screeching away in her Chevy Malibu way, while her disgraced man shook his head at the entire scene.

I hope they can refrain from choosing our street to air out their dirties in the future. But if anyone does see this couple going at it again, please let me know where. I'll bring the Raisinets.

My roommate slept with this guy's friend so he pissed in my closet (Part 2)

So now a little context before I continue onto part deux.

The man pictured below (Part 1), who shall remain nameless even though all five of my readers know that his name rhymes with "Randy Loopen," came to a large party at my house, sophomore year in college. I didn't know this Loopen at the time. He came with a friend. The same friend who my roommate slept with and who I wanted to sleep with but was never given the chance.

So it turns out, this friend was unhappy with the way my roommate was treating her at this party (after having slept with him) and she told her friend (Loopen) as much. He decided the best way to deal with the situation was to pee in my closet and not tell anyone. Now this was our sophomore year in college so what might smell like human urine coming from a closet to most people, just smelled like home to us, and said urine went undiscovered throughout the remainder of the year. We moved out and the urine stayed behind.

In the course of the next year, I'd become good friends with Loopen - through another friend all together - and enjoyed hearing about the frequent pranks he would pull of this nature. So when we were having a laugh at another friends party one night during our junior year, he felt a certain obligation to come clean with me - he peed in my closet.

And you know what? I didn't care. I thought it was pretty funny actually and our friendship endured.

Cut to senior year. I was living in yet another house, which surely had someone's urine on it somewhere unbeknownst to us, and coincidentally was directly across the street from the house with the peed-in closet. Another roommate of mine decided to order himself a delicious sub sandwich from Madison's favorite, Big Mikes (sadly, Big Mike's is now defunct and no logo was readily available to post here). He placed the order at around 11 pm and hoped it would arrive soon so that he wouldn't be eating it past midnight. No such luck. In fact, this roommate began calling Big Mike himself at around 12:30 am, demanding a sandwich to be delivered immediately.

At around that time, I had the urge to urinate and headed toward where people usually go to do that sort of thing. But this roommate of mine was so incensed, (he even had me a little fired up), that together, we decided I should hold my pee and release it into the Big Mike's delivery driver's car. The plan was that I would wait by the back door, while another roommate stood watch on the balcony overlooking the street. When the driver pulled up to the front of the house, I would run around to the car, relieve myself and run back to the rear entry with the driver being none the wiser.

The car finally pulled up shortly before one, at which point my bladder had my urethra in a headlock. I walked out the back door and listened patiently for the driver to walk up our front steps. That noise didn't come like it should have. And in listening for that recognizable sound of winter boots on a wood porch, I missed the sound of winter boots crunching ground along the side of the house. I looked up and the driver was about two feet in front of me asking if I knew where 508 W. Washington was. I replied no, and ran back into the house to pee. Of course, he eventually figured it out and noticed that I was inside the very address of which I claimed not to know the whereabouts. The plan was foiled and what was going to be a very exciting story, quickly turned very anti-climatic with the flush of a toilet.

About three months after this event took place, we hosted another party and one of our guests happened to be the aforementioned Loopen. We had a few drinks and I started to recount the Big Mikes story, thinking I would really impress him. But as I started to near the end of the story, I realized there was nothing impressive about what I had done. I just pissed in a toilet like everyone else. So I did what anyone with a few drinks and a captive audience would do. I ended the story with, "so the guy went up to the door... and I pissed in the back seat of his car!"

Just as those words were uttered, and my audience was howling with delight, the roommate who was supposed to keep watch that night from the balcony walked by and called me out. "No you didn't," he said and kept walking.

"You're right - I just totally lied." I was busted. For pissing into my toilet and not some dude's car.

And you know what? The guy who pissed in my closet liked me even better for lying to him.

My roomate slept with this guy's friend so he pissed in my closet (Part 1)

Wasted Material

The Portland Mercury, a free alternative weekly paper, comes out every Thursday. It's mostly full of trivial, vapid and useless information, but I dig it and I especially like the column titled "I Anonymous" found on the last page of paper, right next to the comics. Basically, this space is reserved for people to mouth off about somewhat common, yet obnoxious behavior that the writer has experienced and that hopefully the rest of us can relate to. And it can all be done in complete anonymity, of course.

It's a lot like my blog. But people actually read it. 

A recent incident I endured last week was so perfect for the paper's column that I refrained from recounting it here, and instead, submitted it to the Anonymous editor. My plan was to wait for it to be published and then post a link to it here. Well, today is Thursday and my rant wasn't published. And since I'm way too impatient to see if it ever gets published, I'm just going to post the entry here. 

"To the dude who sat next to me at the Stumptown coffee bar on Southwest 3rd avenue the other morning and proceeded to sing along to every word of Beck's "Mutations" playing over the cafe's stereo system, are you fucking kidding me? Were you trying to demonstrate your mastery of having committed these very catchy lyrics to memory. Or perhaps you thought the rest of us would be so taken with your glorious rendition of "Bottle of Blues" that we would hang on each mellifluous note to emerge from your mouth? I know you think you were singing quietly and to yourself, but this is neither your car nor your shower and when I come to the coffee shop and sit alone with my computer to get some work done, the last thing I want to be distracted by is some pretentious douche butchering what used to be one of my favorite albums."

For more I Anonymous rants, click http://forums.portlandmercury.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14 or just pick up the paper - it's free.

(Hey, what do you know - my submission was posted on their site under the title, "Public Singing Ban," but the version above is modified and better).

Jodeci hates me

Another oldie, but goodie that was specifically requested by a reader (see comments under the iLife post).

Back in the day, before I had a mortgage and a kid's college fund to feed, I wrote music reviews for the free weekly rag. It was cool. I got into all the shows, I knew some cool people who seemed like they were mildly famous and I could work in my skivvies from my home office. Making ten cents a word wasn't that cool and ultimately, I felt hollow criticizing other people's creativity rather than developing my own. So I quit.

As a weekly music reviewer, I mostly wrote previews for upcoming concerts, rather than reviews, which almost always got coverage by the big daily newspaper in town. Without having seen the current tour somewhere else first, previews are forced to rely upon the album said artists may be promoting and what you know about their past performances.

So when the Notorious B.I.G. came through Portland to play the Coliseum (yes, this happened a while back), he was billed to perform with six or seven other acts, all of the "urban" persuasion, most of whom I didn't know much about. I'm a huge Biggie Smalls fan and while the other acts didn't quite appeal (Junior M.A.F.I.A, Mary J. Blige...) I was just psyched to pimp Big Poppa's visit.

And then I learned he wouldn't even be headlining. Instead, some new school R&B act, called Jodeci would hold court. Biggie playing second fiddle? It made no sense.

I did my job and gave Jodeci's CD a listen. They were horrible. They were everything that's wrong with hip-hop - overproduced, synthesized poop with dudes harmonizing about "bitches" and their "gats". This was an injustice to pop music at the time. And I said as much in my column. I criticized the promoters for not understanding their audience and for not spotlighting the true talent of the night.

The article was submitted to my editor, the paper came out a week later and the show didn't take place for another five nights after that. I had all but forgotten what I wrote.

I came home late the night before the show and ran to answer a ringing phone.

"Hello," I said.
"Is this Geoff Abraham?" The man barked from the other end.
"Ummm, yes"
"I said, is this Geoff Abraham, motherfucker!"
"Not sure."
"Yo, bitch! You ever seen a Jodeci show?"
"Uhh, no."
"Well then, what the fuck are you talking all this shit about when you don't know shit about it?"

At this point in the conversation I tried to explain the bit about how we're a weekly publication and so we write previews instead of...

"I don't give a fuck about none of that."
"Well, what would you like from me," I asked.
"We know where you live."
"Are you coming here?"
"I said I know where you live motherfucker."
"I'm sure you do - I'm listed in the phone book. Are you coming here? Because I'm leaving if you are."

And then the nice man hung up.

I went downstairs and checked my caller I.D. (high-tech at the time) and it read "The Mallory Hotel." I called the Mallory and asked if they had a band called Jodeci staying there. They refused to give out that information and then I explained my predicament. They still wouldn't give me the name of the group, but they did admit that a musical act, made up primarily of African Americans with a very large entourage was staying at the hotel.

I called the police who took my information. As I provided it, the other line rang. I clicked over.
"Yo, you get the cops involved and we're gonna beat yo ass down."

I clicked back over to the police.
"Thanks. I got it all settled, no need to bother."

My roomate and his girlfriend walked in the door right about then and I told them the whole story. They didn't believe me. And then the phone rang again. It was another call from the Mallory hotel. My roommate answered.
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No Geoff's not here. I'll let him know."

My roommate hung up the phone, grabbed his girlfriend and headed for the door.
"We're gonna crash at her house tonight. We'll leave the dogs with you. You should be fine."

I followed them out the door, with the dogs, and spent the night at a friends house.

Nothing ever came of all this excitement. But about a week after the show, which I sadly could not attend, a friend who did go, ran over to me at a local club.
"Dude, were you at that Biggie show last week?"
"Nah, was it any good?"
"You weren't there? Dude! Jodeci took the stage after Biggie rocked it. They took the mic and in front of a packed house, opened with, 'Yo! Fuck Geoff Abraham! And fuck Willamette Week!'"

I must admit, I was touched.

Ed. Note: My roommate at the time just reminded me, and would like it to be included here, that shortly before we evacuated the house, we all crouched down below the window line, hoping that the trajectory of potential gun fire would simply pass over our heads. I'm pretty sure that's standard operating procedure in a drive-by.

Not living the iLife

I bought my first Apple product, an LCIII in 1987. Ever since, I've been a staunch supporter of the brand. User-friendly interface. Kick-ass design. A hipster status symbol for nerds. And while these products might require a greater financial commitment from users, we all know, cool will cost you.

I'm ok with this. So much so that those early iPhone buyers who complained of getting ripped off to the tune of $200 ($100 after the good faith rebate) simply for purchasing the device in the first two months of it's release, never got my sympathy vote. There's a premium on being the first kid on the street with the fresh new toy, which may be easier for me to say, as I was not a victim.

Here's where I believe the apple went rotten, and I'm surprised there isn't more talk about this:

My brand new MacBook came with the iLife suite pre-installed and a 2-month free trial of a ".mac account," which plays so nicely with the software. Dot mac makes it so you can share personal photos, videos, and all other kinds of media online with some very simple, intuitive clicks. Awesome, right?

Wrong. First, Apple pretty much won't let you start up your new computer without registering a .mac account - the two months of free service are just enough to whet your appetite before they stick you with the $90 annual bill to keep things running (they constantly remind me how many days I have left before it's not free anymore). Remember, this is a web site, that allows you to use APPLE products, which you've just purchased from APPLE.

I could begrudge a fee for this service if I didn't own a mac (.mac accounts would work with PCs, just not as fluidly). I could even forgive them a few bucks if I needed more online space than the introductory amount allotted. But if they want me to continue buying their iTunes, and iPhotos and all the other iCrap that I've long been a disciple of, then give me some iSpace so I can spread the gospel.

Until such time, my blogs will appear here - not at .mac - and my online photo galleries will have to be posted to rival, Snapfish, who will host my pictures for free, in hopes that friends and family will purchase a few images while they're there.

I recently likened this greedy corporate behavior to Starbucks. The coffee giant sees themself so vital to the world wide cafe-goer, that they can charge customers a per minute fee to use wi-fi in their stores, a practice virtually unheard of elsewhere in the industry. If you've taken a gander at Starbucks stock in the last year or so, this is just one business model that is not working for them. And from what I hear, it's about to change.

Mac seems to think that customer rewards are simply the release of more life-changing products for us to spend more life-changing disposable income on. Why should they actually "reward" us with incentives for buying their glorious things? Oh, and curiously, Apple shareholders aren't exactly going ahead with that second home or 40-ft. sea cruiser at the moment, either.

Note: It has not been lost on me that this post deviates from my blog's theme in that, my opinions/ actions haven't actually pissed anyone off, inadvertently. Quite the opposite. The intent of this rant is to totally and, advertently piss the apple executives off.

I'm not holding my breath.