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Monday, January 29, 2007

So What Do YOU Do When You Can't Sleep?.. 


Hey, kids, it's almost Monday as I'm typing this and, just so's you know, I'm having trouble getting to sleep...This lack of sleep thing is most likely due to the fact that I may have included a little too much caffeine in my diet today or maybe it's that the standup routine that I wrote for tomorrow's Freak train keeps traipsing through my fetid headmeats, leaving it's muddy footprints everywhere and refusing to hang it's coat on a hanger, like a civilized set of thoughts would...At any rate, I figured that if said headmeats were going to refuse to shut down, I might as well put them to good (HA!) use and bang out one of them blog posts that the kids (whomever THEY may be) seem to love so much. Ready? Good, here come the sentences...

***Update*** The egg on the face, it tastes...Like egg! It seems that "Submission Reviewer" is NOT affiliated with our local paper. It also would seem that I'm still somehow in the running for the whole reviewer thing at this point, provided I can make it to a specific location at 4pm this Friday...So in the long run, "SR" was just trying to make people sad by leaving scathing comments. WTF am I talking about here? Read on and find out...
Your Words, They Cut Like The Knife...
One of the people that I work with who also happens to have a blog (other than Collin and the lady-who-remains-nameless-even-though-we-all-go-for-lunch-'cause-she's-our-surrogate-Kathy) had a post on his blog last week in regards to our local paper holding a contest of sorts in order to find themselves a new dining critic seeing as their current (and soon to be former, if'n he ain't already) dining critic was (and this is seriously what they said) "looking to devote more time to his day job." What they wanted was for the unwashed masses to submit their own dining reviews so that they may be considered for the (lofty) position of part-time food critic at the ol' newspaper. Once I found out about this, I decided that, since I had more than a few "restaurant reviews" kicking around on the ol' blogsitething here (seriously, check the archives, I have tons of posts wherein I type about food, no wonder I'm so fat), I figured that I'd just use one of those as my "entry," choosing (foolishly) to use my review of Famous Dave's BBQ from when I was in Las Vegas a couple of years back...I figured "all I have to do is show a sample of my writing style as it pertains to food and they'll love me."

It's ok, you can stop chuckling...I've been wrong before, it ain't the first time...

Word to the wise: never use a blog post as an entry into a contest where actual journalist-types are judges. This blatant faux-pas will be seen as "half-assing" your entry (which...duh...It is) and the resultant comments which your submission will generate will be...Um..."less than kind." I know, I know, I didn't do myself any favors by choosing an old review of a chain restaurant which happens to be out of town. I also failed to focus on the "total dining experience" (you know, hours, prices, what the waitresses wear, shit like that) but...Well, I didn't give that any thought at the time. Anyhow, with the deadline for submissions having been this past Friday, I checked on Sunday to see if there had been any comments left on my entry and lo-and-behold, there had been. Of course, one was from a "shill" of sorts (my wife) and her comment was vaguely positive, which I liked...The comment which followed my wife's wasn't unkind either (the commenter called my review a "fun read" and then brought up valid points about my not describing the menu in enough detail). The next comment, though, illustrated the main problem with using an old review: there now happens to be a Famous Dave's location right here in town...I'm sure this commenter was thinking "why didn't you simply review the one IN TOWN, doofus? I wouldn't blame him (or her) if they had, it's a valid concern, but one that you kids already KNOW the reason behind...The next comment (where things start to go South, just so you know) hated, to the point of wanting to "barf" even, my gross overuse of the ellipses (you know, this shit: ... ). I can't really say anything to that outside of "sorry, that's just how I do things." I never claimed to know how to write but 'de ellipses, last time I checked, are a thoroughly acceptable way to denote a pause and...Well...I "pause" a lot, as you can probably tell by now...Anyhow, moving on to the next comment which was left by (dun dun DUNNN) the Submission Reviewer or "SR" (as I'm sure he (or she) is known to his (or her) friends). As you can likely imagine, SR did NOT like my little blog entry restaurant review one Goddamn bit. Outside of the valid complaints (I didn't go in depth enough, restaurant location isn't local, blah blah blah) SR was able to put in one of those Journalists-hate-blog-entries jabs by saying that "the writing was Junior High at best." SR follows up this slight by ignoring what he (or she) said just a sentence or two earlier about my choice of location and snidely recommended other BBQ restaurants in Las Vegas, including Memphis Championship which, ironically, I did review in another one of my (insipid) blog posts about Vegas...I just didn't send it in for this contest...

Before I move on from this, though, I feel the need to revisit SR's complaint about my writing: "Junior High at best." Down to the brass tacks, his (or her) comment means that even on my BEST day, which are few and far between, I can still muster up no more informative and descriptive power with my typin's than your average 8th grader. I see this as a bit of a disappointment...I had more on the end of this paragraph, but have removed it for the time being because I'm a total sellout.

Anyhow, I guess it's safe to say at this point that I won't be doing any paid dining reviews anytime soon (or ever). Of course, it's probably for the best as I barely have enough time in my week to foist my sub-sophomoric storytelling on you poor bastards (and bastardettes), let alone eat out all the time and get paid to type about it. On top of that, if I WERE a dining critic, I'd probably have to change my byline to H. Fatty Obesenstein...

Which leads me to another topic...

They Say The Camera Adds Ten Pounds...How Many Damn Cameras Were On Me, Anyway!?
I know I've mentioned before that, in my not-so-copious spare time, I've been officiating high school and middle school (see, it's not even called "Junior High" anymore) wrestling. As such, this past week, I was scheduled to be the JV referee at a dual meet which just happened to be one of the "televised" variety...When these sorts of things are televised, the cameras are only trained on the varsity mat which meant that I wasn't supposed to be "on camera" for any of the matches that I was scheduled to officiate. Anyhow, long story short(er), following weigh-ins, it was apparent that, of a possible 14 matches, the JV squads were only going to be able to muster 3 measly little matches for me to work over on the (lowly) JV mat. Because of this (the great JV match drought of ot-seven), once my matches concluded, I wandered over to the varsity mat to assist the varsity official. Now, in addition to me assisting him, the varsity official talked the varsity coaches into allowing me to officiate one varsity match just for the sake of expanding my experience. Anyhow, all of this led to my fat self being highly visible on the television broadcast of the event, which I was able to watch on friday evening. Now, before I go into detail about how grossly enormous I appeared to be on screen, I should ask you kids a question...Have you ever felt like "ok, I know I've put on a few pounds, but I don't look TOO bad" and then you end up seeing a picture of yourself or (God forbid) a video of yourself? If you have, then you know just how disparate your self-image and the image on the screen can be which was exactly the case when I saw the broadcast...I looked...Well, I looked like Godzilla AFTER eating Tokyo...Just a fat blob in black-and-white stripes and, to tell the truth, I was dumbfounded that I was able to move, let alone move so fast, pudge rolls a-jigglin'. Hell, with all of the fat hanging off of the extra fat (which, of course, was nestled close to fat I didn't even know I had), it appeared that I stood upright only through the workings of a miracle. Christ, I'm a circus freak...You want to talk about a quick way to become depressed...I was even starting to wonder, watching Fatty Fatterson play the role of me on the TV, if I would ever be able to fit into human-sized clothing again...

So I'm going to go back on a weight-loss program...I'll let you kids know how that goes...

And Speaking of "Half-Assing" Things (Oh, We Were)...
Later today (much later, actually) is the January Freak Train at the Bug Theatre in Denver. I mentioned at the very beginning of this already way-too-long post that I have a stand-up routine which I plan to unveil at said Freak Train running through my headmeats and preventing me from attaining sweet, peaceful slumber...The reason for this standup routine's forceful takeover of my brain is a simple one: I just got around to writing it. To be fair, I had SOME of the jokes written a couple month ago and I plan on doing a live version of one of my many audio entries which used to grace the pages of this sad little blogsitething on a semi-regular basis, so that's not terribly hard to memorize but...Well, the meat of the routine is all new...This, of course, means that I'm currently caught in the Hell of knowing that I need sleep but also knowing that I may get up on stage Monday night and completely space out what I'm supposed to say...Of course as you've probably already discerned, I'm trying to reconcile all of the aforementioned stress by typing up a shockingly long and pointless blog entry (this one). Since that is the case, though, I should probably mention that Justin Carmical plans on catching a ride with me up to the Train so that he can try out a standup routine which, if I remember right, he wrote in a fever dream. Should be lots of fun. I promise (HA! Look at me promising) that I'll bring my trusty video camera along in order to capture the moment for posterity...

So that should be that, kids...As always, thanks for stopping by. You all have a fine Monday now...

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