MAGIC         PORK

If you don’t know what the title of this post refers to, consider yourself lucky. There was a movie out years ago - IMDB says 2003 and that sounds about right to me - called Biker Boyz. It’s about these guys that race motorcycles and do tricks with them on the streets of Los Angeles. It was based on an article about some guys that would do that in real life - but I assure you the movie was a work of fiction. My friends and I were given tickets to an advance screening of the movie. We had no desire to see the movie, but hey they were free tickets so we went.

It was horrible. One of those movies that’s just so unintentionally bad that you end up laughing out loud at all the clichés and ridiculous dialogue.

Another movie like that was Dante’s Peak. It was playing at the dollar theater and my friend Greg had seen it already when it was in the main theaters. He told our friend Kash & me all about how great it was and said we should see it. He wanted to go see it again. We’re like “really?!” because it looked silly to us. He said the first fifteen minutes it’s pretty bad but it gets really good after that. Great character development and everything.

So Kash & I went to see the movie and sure enough, it was really bad at the beginning. Two teenagers are making out in a little pool of water and suddenly the water starts boiling and it boils them alive. I looked at Greg and said “this better get better” and he said “oh it does!”.

Well I couldn’t figure out what the heck Greg was thinking because the movie just kept sucking. Then there came the scene where Pierce Brosnan is rowing a boat with these little kids and their grandmother in it. The water has turned to acid and it’s eating away the boat. So to calm everyone down he starts a round of “row row row your boat”. At this point it was quite clear to both Kash and me that there was no way Greg could have thought this was a good movie.

I looked at him like “what the???” and at the same exact time Kash leans over me and says to him “I’m gonna kill you”. Greg had seen the movie, knew it was absolutely horrible, and told us it was great just to play a trick on us. The funniest thing is that I had heard Greg blurt out “oh no!” when that scene started. I didn’t know why at the time, but after the scene, I realized it was because he knew we would see through his ruse at that point and that he wouldn’t be able to contain his laughter any more.

Cruel, cruel trick. But I have to admit, I got a good laugh at that movie.

So back to Biker Boyz… the reason I thought of this movie is that on Sunday, I was driving on 490 and I saw a real life biker boy. Some moron was driving a motorcycle down 490 (which is a 3-lane highway) and popping wheelies. Then he proceeded to not just pop a wheelie but stand up and ride the motorcycle on its back wheel. He had to be going 65-70 mph because I was going about 65, as were the other cars and he was weaving between lanes.

My friend Joe was in the passenger seat. We of course started talking about what a moron this guy was. At least he was wearing a helmet. His mom must be proud.

He was distinguishable from the biker boyz in the movie in a couple of ways though. One was that he didn’t have a crowd of people on the side of the road cheering him on. Another was that while riding on one wheel at 65 mph he crashed the bike into the concrete median, sending his body flipping over the median while the bike skidded onto the left lane of the highway, spilling out gasoline.

The cars in front of me pulled over to the right and slowed way down. Well I thought they were going to slow down but they came to a complete stop. Joe was immediately on the phone with 911 when we saw the crash. Some other idiot in one of the cars in front of me got out of his car, walking out into the highway and putting his hand up in a “stop” motion. I can’t have too much contempt for that guy because he was trying to do an admirable thing - warn other vehicles about the motorcycle in the highway. But come on, I’m pretty sure no handbook would advise someone to stop his car halfway into the right lane while the left lane is blocked by a motorcycle and walk out into the one remaining center lane. You might be better off driving forward a little and pulling off to the side of the highway, do ya think?? That is, if you’re actually going to be of help in some way and not just get in the way and cause more confusion and a greater risk of an accident.

Now amazingly the biker boy stood up on the other side of the median and was walking around a little. Some woman on that side pulled over and was talking to him to see if he was okay. He appeared to be fine, which means he’s one hell of a lucky guy. That’s like something out of the movies. We could see the bike wobbling before he crashed so I think it had slowed down a bit and I’m sure that helped. But even so, it looked like a pretty spectacular fall and I wasn’t expecting to see him standing.

The 911 dispatcher was asking Joe a slew of questions about the state of this guy. Joe had to repeat multiple times that he looked okay to him but we weren’t near the guy, we were in a car. She even asked him if they should send an ambulance. What did she expect him to say to that? “Nah, he looks okay to me.” He did look fine but we sure as hell weren’t going to make that call.

After I saw that these people in front of me weren’t going anywhere, and the guy moved out of the road, I managed to pull around back into the center lane and keep driving before it turned into a madhouse. There was already traffic backing up behind me and horns honking. I considered whether I was supposed to stay as a witness but there were no other vehicles involved. The only point I could think of staying would be to make sure his insurance company heard the real story of what happened. I could see him making up some story to the cops about how he just lost control or someone cut him off. I wanted to make sure it was on record that he was acting like a jackass so that he’d have to sell a kidney to get auto insurance again.

I certainly didn’t want the guy to die, but couldn’t he at least have broken a leg or have a rib poke through his skin or something? I looked online later to try to find any news story about it, but couldn’t find anything. I was hoping it would say A) whether he was ticketed for anything and B) what his injuries were. Call me a horrible person, but it irks me that it’s possible he got away without any repercussions other than the damage to his bike - and even that looked like it was fixable.

Last Wednesday, I ordered a large pepperoni pizza and wings from Pizza Hut. Normally if I eat pizza, I just get a slice or two if it’s just me eating it. But I was getting some minor medical procedure done the next day. I got my generous uvula removed. No, I joke. Although my doctor did tell me that if it continued to be a problem, I could get it removed. Apparently the uvula doesn’t really serve a purpose. But I’d still hate to have it removed. It’s like that guy from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones that doesn’t do anything except dance around. The band would be just fine without him but it just wouldn’t seem right.

Nevermind what the procedure was. It’s not a big deal, I just don’t think I need to share every medical thing that comes up with the world and I think with how much I’ve been discussing my uvula you’re agreeing at this point. Point is, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to drive at all the next day because of getting drugged up so I figured having some leftover pizza in the fridge would be a good idea.

But before I go on with my pizza story, I have to pause and comment on the wings. I’m not a wing snob. There are some that are better than others, but I figure you can’t really mess up a chicken wing. Yet I’ve heard tales from people that have lived in other parts of the country - parts further away from wing mecca Buffalo - about how awful wings can get. I think I have an idea now of what they’re saying.

Do not get Pizza Hut wings. Fatty, soft… ugh just don’t.

I had a bunch of pizza left over so I put it on a plate and tightly wrapped it in plastic. (I can’t say that without thinking of Twin Peaks: “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.”) Next day turns out… hey who woulda known the doctor would recommend against eating greasy pizza that day. So it went to waste and then for various reasons I didn’t end up eating it over the next couple days either.

Then I started to think “well, it’s been sitting there a while, I shouldn’t eat it now” and avoided it but didn’t get around to actually throwing it out. So fast forward to today, the following Tuesday. Six days later.

I took out the pizza, intending to throw it out, and looked at it. Hmm still looked good. I peeled back the plastic. Sniffed it. Mmmm smelled good. Crust must be stale by now though. Wow, no crust didn’t feel stale. Now I realized I was seriously considering eating this.

But no I thought, it can’t still be good to eat this six days later. So I turned to - who else? - my trusty friend Internet. According to a few sites, pepperoni pizza is only good refrigerated for 3-4 days. Oh well, it’s as I suspected. So I went to toss it but hesitated. I just couldn’t get over that it seemed fine!

I hazarded a tiny bite. Still tasted fine. Then I thought no don’t be silly, it’s not like I’m in the poorhouse here, just toss it. And I did. Not worth risking my health. But then afterwards I regretted it. Those guidelines are just for the average person - not a Rochestarian who’s subjected his system to garbage plates. Those must have built up some immunity.

Doctors should be trained to ask about this.

Patient: I just swallowed a bottle of Drano!!

Doctor: I see… How many garbage plates have you eaten in your lifetime?

Patient: What? Like ever? I don’t know, maybe 2-3 dozen.

Doctor: I wouldn’t worry. Just go home and sleep it off. If you’d like, you can pick up a chili dog from the stand outside on your way home.

What do you think? Was it safe to eat?

I’ve never heard of this concept but looks like there’s something called a “meme” that bloggers will “tag” you with. Then you’re supposed to tag other blogs with it. I don’t know, but Fran of patandfran.com tagged me in the comments to my last post. Usually I don’t go along with these chain-letter-type things (thanks Fran!) but since she’s such a sweet person I’ll give her this one.

The rules of this meme-thingie are:

• Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

If I were to tag 7 random people’s blogs they truly would be random since I don’t read that many blogs. So sorry Fran but this link of the chain will end with me. But I’ll go ahead & do the 7 random and/or weird facts about me.

1. I think “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is a great song.

2. When I was in high school, I memorized the first few paragraphs of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, just to annoy my friend who hated Douglas Adams. And get this… I still remember most of it. Let’s see how I do - I swear this is from memory:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 98 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended lifeforms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has, or rather had, a problem which was this: Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, most of which involved the movement of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on a whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained, most of the people were unhappy and many of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Now let me pull my old book off the shelf and compare. This is the actual text. Ignoring stuff like punctuation and capitalization, I’ll bold the parts that are different:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Pretty damn close huh? I memorized that about 15 years ago!! I also can still remember most of the Romeo & Juliet speech I had to learn for 9th grade English class. (”It is my lady, oh it is my love… oh that she knew she were…”)

[Edit: WHOA! How weird is this? I just checked out the website of the person that originally tagged Fran (http://stelladevine.livejournal.com) and she mentioned as one of her seven weird things "I know large tracts of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by heart." I swear I wasn't stealing her idea, I didn't read that until just now! How odd is that that we both decided to share that random thing about ourselves?]

3. I once walked into a gay bar with a fedora on my head and handcuffs hanging from my belt. But that’s for a different post.

4. The only time my high school friends saw me furious - possibly the only time any of my friends have seen me furious - was during a game of Monopoly, on my birthday of all times. I was mad over them ignoring a rule (don’t get me started but I remember exactly what it was!). I think that may be the last time I’ve ever played.

5. I have a generous uvula. OK, OK I talked about that already on this blog.

How about this? I very rarely remember my dreams. I know I have them because I’ll often wake from one, but it’s gone in an instant after waking up and I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what it was about. Occasionally when I do remember, it makes no sense whatsoever. And when I say no sense I don’t mean “Pat Sajak was presiding over my briss” type nonsense - that still follows some semblance of logic. I mean totally random things that can’t even be explained but seemed to make sense at the time - like characters starting out one person but ending up another. It boggles my mind when I hear some people recount these complex dreams they had because even the very few dreams that I can remember that actually made some sense haven’t come anywhere close to that.

6. As part of my liberal arts requirements I had to take an English class in college. The professor was some writer, or at least aspiring writer, who was teaching part time. So even though he was supposed to be teaching about how you shouldn’t start a sentence with “so” and proper punctuation and run-on sentences and stuff like that; he instead just taught us about writing. He’d teach things like “honesty” in writing. Interesting stuff, but the majority of the class failed the standardized exam you take at the end and had to take it over. (I passed thank you very much.)

I brought this up to say there was one time he asked the class to write a poem and gave us like 10 minutes. It was one of those types where it has a certain number of syllables - no, not a haiku. I wrote “The mass murderer sharpened his knife on the skull of the poor victim who was buying groceries to feed herself and her cat”. (Again with the memory!) When I discussed this with a couple friends after, no one got that he wasn’t actually sharpening his knife, it meant that he was getting better at killing each time so in effect sharpening… oh nevermind. I didn’t realize he was going to make us read these to the class. I didn’t know anyone else in that class. I was so embarrassed reading this thing that I could feel myself blushing and my voice cracked when I said “murderer”. I think he just said it was interesting or something. Nowadays he’d be notifying the dean about me.

7. When I read a novel, I’ll usually read each paragraph twice, sometimes more. I especially do this if it’s dialogue-heavy because I’m trying to picture exactly how they’re saying it, what their expressions are like, what they’re feeling. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, it’s kind of annoying really.

There… I think I wrote enough about this meme that I’ve excused myself from any future ones.

Why isn’t this band more popular? Sometimes I’ll hear a good band but I realize they don’t have the type of sound that will make them hit it big, such as Architecture in Helsinki. But other times I’ll hear a good band and be surprised months or years later when they’re not popular. I’m not talking U2 popular, but at least Buckcherry popular. (BTW I saw Buckcherry at Water Street Music Hall last year. Most memorable moment was during “Lit” when they got the crowd chanting “CO… CAINE!! CO… CAINE!!”.)

Morningwood was one of those bands. I heard “Nth Degree” on some commercial and a TV show but then that was about it. There was also Hot Chip. The Warning is an incredible album. I also saw them live at Lollapalooza and they put on a great show. (If you follow that link to their MySpace page, check out “Over and Over” and “Look After Me”.) But how much later is this, and still they’re not well-known. (Note that I’m talking about in the U.S. not U.K. where they have more of a following.) Again - I’m not saying they should be topping the charts, but at least on the radar. Hearing “And I Was A Boy From School” playing in Express For Men doesn’t count.

The Subways are another band that I saw at Lollapalooza in ‘06 that I thought for sure would be bigger by now than they are.

But back to Under The Influence Of Giants…

More so than any of those other bands I mentioned above, this band has a perfect pop-rock sound. I first saw them on MTV. Yes MTV does still play videos, just at strange hours like 6 AM but with my TiVo I don’t care when they’re on. “Mama’s Room” was catchy, the band had a unique (well, uniquely retro) look, and the video had hot scantily-clad girls in it. What’s not to like there? I thought they’d just go up from there but whenever I mention them to someone I’m just met with a blank stare so I assume they didn’t get any Top 40 play. I really don’t get why. I read online that they were pretty popular downloads on iTunes but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about popular-popular not Internet-download-popular.

Go to that link above and click on the “Music” link. You can listen to the entire album online. So if you have a high-speed connection you have no excuse to not check out their music. If you don’t have a high-speed connection and you live near me, maybe I’ll let you borrow it. My favorite tracks are “Against All Odds” (not a Phil Collins cover), but it would be hard to pick a runner-up between “Got Nothing”,”In The Clouds”, “Mama’s Room”, and “Heaven Is Full”. That was a problem when I was putting together a playlist for a little get-together I had a few weeks back. I had to stop myself from adding the entire CD on there and have people say “who the hell is this band you keep playing??”.

Did you listen to them yet? Well what are you waiting for? I’ll be here when you’re done.

OK so now do you agree? They’re not going to make music history, but they’re catchy and fun and in my book there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a perfect CD to play in the car and bop along to while drumming my hands on the steering wheel. On an R.E.M. scale, I’d place their sound somewhere north of “Imitation of Life” but south of “Shiny Happy People” in its pop-ness.

Let me know what you think, or if you think they are popular and I’m just out of the loop.