funniest thing i've heard this week

my sister and brother-in-law were visiting from out of town this past week and some of his friends came in from celina to go out to eat with us.

they also had relatives who were visiting so we all decided to hit a local thai restaurant.

first thing's first: possibly the best won ton soup i've ever had in my life there (and i've consumed a bit in my time).

secondly, i'm glad i'm not, nor have i ever been a stupid teenage guy who feels the need to prove his masculinity to all around him.

i watched as two kids raced to finish their number 12 (the spiciest in the menu) thai chicken.

these guys had sweat absolutely poring down their faces. each only stopping for water, breathe or the occasional forehead and nose wipe.

i remain mystified as to the relationship between accomplishing this sophomoric feat and the size of one's manhood.

...

so here's the funniest thing.

one of the little kids in the group, a five year old named landon, was walking around with a model ferrari in his hands.

since i always enjoy messing with kids, i got his attention and enquired about the toy.

he informed me that it was a ferrari and that it was very fast.

i asked him if it was the kind of car that he was going to drive when he grows up.

in a matter-of-fact way, he said, "nope. i'm gonna drive a dodge diesel truck."

i then furthered the questioning, "but what if you wan't to go really fast, like lightning mcqueen?"

he pondered this for a while and choosing his words carefully, said, "well... maybe... i would have both... a lightning mcqueen car AND a diesel truck."

continuing on with the interrogation, i asked, "but what if you want to take all of your friends out? would you also get a minivan?"

he screwed his face up at the sheer audacity of my question. "NO!" he said emphatically, "minivans are JUNK!!!"

enjoying the reaction, i pursued the subject, "you know what would be even better for hauling all your friends around? a schoolbus! don't you want one of those?"

his repugnance of the thought again showed all over his face. "NO WAY!!! they're junk too!!!"

"but what if you got a really cool paint job on it, like dragons and flames? would you drive it then?"

"no!"

"what if you could put a tv and couches in it?"

"nope!"

"what if you could put a playground and jungle gym inside?"

he paused.

"would it have mulch on the floor too?"

"not the stinky kind." i replied, as if this would be the deciding factor.

pursuing the thought further, i asked, "what if you could get one with a pool inside and a slide and a diving board? would you drive a bus then?"

"yeeaaahhh..." he said, warming to the thought. "then you could pee in your car and noone would notice!"

i laughed so loud that i think the entire restaurant turned to look at me.

least romantic proposal ever...

i was out eating lunch at a cheap Mexican restaurant with a large group of people last friday, when it happened.

the group consisted of my mom, sister and cousin, my cousin's super cute roommate, their friend tiffany and her husband, matt, tiffany's mom and her mom's friend, nancy.

we were generally being silly and enjoying ourselves when tiffany, paraphrasing the book of genesis, said, "thus noah and all who were with him were saved; eight souls in all."

she then jokingly asked, "so noah, there's nine of us here. who would you choose to save if there was another flood?"

approaching the joke in a very analytical manner, I gave her a serious answer.

"well," i replied, "if we're assuming that the earth needs to be repopulated then matt and myself, being the only males, are automatically in, and since you're his wife, you would be included as well."

tiffany's eyes got pretty big and, smiling, she said. "there's only so many women at this table that you're not related to..."

in response i turned to my cousin's cute roommate and said the words that every young woman hopes to hear a man say...

"well, looks like you're it by default."

...

it wasn't the most egregious error that i've ever made when it comes to the opposite sex, it just happens to be the most recent.

i'm bringing moderately attractive back

another quick story from puerto rico...

to the right is a photo of me with two of the staff members at the ranch where i was filming atv, horseback riding and mountain biking for about four days straight. their names are alejandro and liz.

on the second to last day, i wasn't sure if i would be back again, so i was saying goodbye to all of the staff.

they had all been so accommodating and had helped me get some amazing footage, which in turn made me look good in front of my boss.

i did the manly shake hands and hug thing with alejandro and told him that if, for some strange reason, he was ever lost in dayton, ohio, that he could crash at my house.

i turned to liz, shook her hand and leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. she returned the gesture and i told her how awesome she and her coworkers had been.

of course, one of the atv guides named sammy, could not let this friendly gesture go without making a sarcastic remark to liz in spanish.

i knew it was about me because i heard the spanish word for "kiss" and sensed the generally smart-alec tone of his comment.

i completely understood her response in spanish, which was, "he doesn't want to kiss you, you're an ugly boy."

to which i added, "si, no beso para ti."

he laughed and said, "awww, no kiss for me?"

sidenote: it's overcast and forty frickin' degrees in dayton right now.

puerto rico - recap

holy moses!

what a surreal week it's been.

i'm in the hot-lanta airport trying to collect my thoughts but everything is such a blur.

maybe if i work backwards.

in the san juan airport, i got to stand behind a couple of real american b-holes who were angry at the world because they got to the airport late and felt that they shouldn't have to stand in line with everybody else.

an amazing string of highly uncreative expletives was coming out of the husband's mouth.

as he was telling the entire island of puerto rico to have sex with itself, i decided that I wasn't going to let this jerk ruin my trip so I cranked up the old ipod and totally tuned him out.

in actuality, we were only in line for a sum total of 20 minutes but then we he was told that he couldn't carry his big gulp past the screening area, he blew up and threw the drinks at the trash can, letting them explode soda and ice all over the floor.

he then blasted out the queen mother of all curse words no less that one dozen times to the crowd around him and the airport staff in particular.

a large black woman with a southern accent spoke aloud what everybody else was thinking. "that ain't gonna get you on the plane any faster."

on the plane, i was seated next to a serious chatter.

now i'm not going to cast the first stone when it comes to being talkative but good lord!

so many unfiltered thoughts escaped her lips that i began to wonder if she had some form of tourette's.

"is that one of those ipods? are you watching a movie on it? is that from a tv? can you watch survivor on that?"

even while talking to the stewardess, she continued to talk at me.

i seriously needed to be inebriated if this was to continue so i ordered a dirty martini on the rocks from the drink cart.

"why is it called a dirty martini?" she asked, "and who do you think was the first person to call ice 'rocks'?"

at that point I pulled on my headphones. it had worked for the ugly american in san juan, I was sure that it would filter out this walking brain drip.

...

before leaving the resort, i had my first spa massage complements of my boss for all of the hard work that I had done this week.

the masseuse seemed to be a pretty cool guy and i had a pretty good conversation with him. he told me that he was recently divorced but was dating a local girl who was also a salsa instructor.

i shared my similar taste in beautiful latin women with him and described one that I had seen in san juan a few days prior.

she was walking through the town square at noon looking ready for the clubs. she was wearing a yellow, form-fitting sun dress and completely working everything she had; long raven hair, full supple lips and a shake that made me wonder if it would be accompanied by french fries.

"just another ugly puerto rican girl." said the masseuse.

...

hopefully i will get stills of the video that I shot this week.

vaya con dios, faithful readers.

puerto rico - day 7: ¡mis pies estan hachicharo!

in english: my feet are fried!

unfortunately, my camera card went wonky on me and i lost all of my shot that i had taken for personal use.

but let me tell you, we had an event on a private island today and it was absolutely amazing.

i got to go parasailing and went up with my dvcaam from work. i got some pretty cool shots.

when i got back to the beach, i high-fived my boss and thanked him for my job.

hopefully, i'll be able to pull some stills from my video stuff.

when i got back to my room that night i noticed my feet were beginning to hurt.

i had put sunscreen on but hadn't considered that wading in ankle deep water would wash it off.

the rest of my legs aren't burnt.

see horrible image below.

bad pun of the month (belated)

i wish i could claim this one.

a few weeks ago i was having dinner with a group of friends when a 15-yr-old kid pulled out his ipod nano.

being an early adopter of the technology and also a serious music collector, i asked to see what he had.

the entire group began discussing music and i highly recommended sting's new album of 16th century lute music.

see itunes link here.

out of the blue, this kid says, "so when sting retires is he going to change his name to stung?"

to greg and to bad pun enthusiastic throughout the world.

puerto rico - day 4

i thought i'd upload a little panoramic shot from my hotel room.

i tried posting from my phone but i get no pix messaging down here.

puerto rico - day 3

as I walked down to the meeting hall in the resort this morning an old crone yelled at me, "beware the ides of november."

this being latin america and neither a shakespearean tragedy nor the middle of the month, I shrugged her silly comment off.

oh that I would have listened to her message of doom, because I was not prepared for today.

the morning started off fine enough. we put on a good meeting and I successfully performed all of my required duties. (see image to the right of our awesome stage set-up)

i was then assigned to follow a group to hike through the rain forest.

the only caveat was that my boss didn't want me to be off site for the entire tour.

he suggested that I request a ride back on the bus after getting the desired shots.

unfortunately, for safety's sake, the bus had to remain at the tour site, in case emergency transport was needed.

i relayed this to my boss and he asked me to follow up to see if I could get a driver to take me out in a chase vehicle.

this took some doing and about a half hour before the tour was to leave, we got the cost estimate in.

$400 smackaroos.

my boss, eager to keep costs down, declined this option and then said, "let's see if we can get the loaner SUV that the company has on site for you to follow behind them."

what I understood that to mean was that he would locate the vehicle for me since he was in the staging office and I was at the front entry way.

i was wrong.

i waited until all the sales reps were on the bus and called my boss back.

"just checking on the status of the SUV." I said.

"you were supposed to get that." He replied.

"sh*t. I am SO sorry." Was my response.

what else could I say?

...

and that was only the beginning.

i'll give you the bullet points

- mucho difficulty uploading meeting video files, including accidental unplugging and battery death while uploading, then a copy-status window that read 5-minutes remaining for over 20 minutes.
- manager stress at the spa where I was shooting walk-ins and -outs, because when you have a camcorder and you're hanging outside a spa and you look like me, you tend to get people asking you to get the heck away.
- a near-missed second video shoot at the beach. (I was told that the ferry went out every half-hour. And I arrived 12 minutes after the last one had left.)
- last minute background music request with none of the appropriate music loaded to my ipod.

and now it's 1am and i'm sitting at a hotel bar with three vodka and cranberries in me trying to get the adrenalin to slow down.

and a 7am call for tomorrow morning.

on the plus side, my boss thanked me for all my hard work before he turned in for the night.

i talked to my mom earlier tonight and she asked if I was getting to enjoy any personal time on this trip.

i told her that it was all about perspective.

i'm working in puerto rico eyeing a bevy of attractive latin women while generally running around and doing non-office related work.

it's not MY vacation but it sure beats dayton.

---

Updated:

I just realized that I'm at a bar in Puerto rico and I'm drinking alone updating my blog.

My two readers better enjoy my dedication to this stupid thing.

a chance encounter in the mythical city of atlanta

ah... atlanta!

my favorite ancient underwater civilization with both a coke plant and a delta hub.

the strangest thing happened while waiting for my flight out to san juan.

i was reading a religious journal and the woman across from me recognized it and casually showed me that she had the same one.

we quickly struck up a conversation.

i asked where she and her family was from and what congregation she attended.

she replied that they were from colorado but originally from pennsylvania.

i enquired which part, as i am also from the keystone state.

she said pittsburgh, to which i said, "me too!"

she asked what part, to which i replied "beltzhoover, on the south side."

she said that they had moved 10 years ago. i told her that we had moved to ohio almost 20 years ago.

i told her which congregation we used to attend, to which she exclaimed, "my parents go to that congregation!"

she asked if i knew a certain man who has lived in that area and attended the same congregation for many, many years.

"of course, i know bob!" i replied.

"he performed our marriage ceremony!" she said, pointing to her husband.

"he performed my mom and dad's!" i said in disbelief.

"who are your parents?" she asked.

when i gave the names, her jaw dropped. "my sister and your mom were best friends in high school."

"waitaminute," i said, "YOU'RE amy's sister?!?!?! my mom named my little sister after her!"

"and YOU'RE peggy's grandson! she gave me the most beautiful crib for my first son." she pointed at the man sitting next to me. "i then gave it to your mom when she became pregnant with her first son."

"she still has that crib." i said. "in fact, all of us kids used."

i looked at her son sitting next to me, who was now a grown man.

"dude," i muttered. "we slept in the very same crib as babies."

i then called my mom and handed the phone to her long lost friend.

we exchanged info and they invited me to stay with them in colorado near the resort that their family manages.

i remain dumbfounded even as i type.

puerto rico - day 1

7 total items checked. 2 carry-ons. i feel like a pack mule.