Picture her as a literal cougar, sitting atop a precipice stalking her prey. Crouched, her legs are like springs, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Her eyes dart from side to side, her tail twitches in anticipation. And then… when her prey stumbles momentarily, her eyes widen, claws retract, and she leaps in for the kill…

Her prey? Any funny story I’m attempting to tell at a cocktail party or social gathering.

And just like a real cougar would, my wife will meticulously stalk a funny story from a hidden vantage point. She will wait for me to stumble in my recantation of the events, and then suddenly… she pounces! My funny story is unsuspecting, and puts up limited resistance to the surprise attack. Inevitably, my wife will snap the story’s neck, and haul the carcass up a tree to gorge on its entrails. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

You see, there are stories I enjoy telling in a group setting that my wife has heard a million times before. And whenever I find myself dispensing mirth in front of a new audience, my wife cannot resist gleefully cross-examining my testimony. She hangs on every word, just hoping, salivating, for a mistake that she can joyfully correct in front of a large audience.

Conversely, when my wife begins to tell a story I have heard before, I simply tune out. Although, to be perfectly honest, I generally tune out most of her first-run, original stories as well.

Not my wife though. Once a crowd has shifted their collective attention to me, she dutifully strives to prevent any embellishments in my storytelling. Unsatisfied with her role as the ombudsman of my narrative, she unfailingly decides that my solo act should really morph into a duet. A husband and wife storytelling duet! The irony, is that for many of my stories, my wife wasn’t there to witness the events firsthand to begin with anyway. Yet somehow, she knows the events of that particular night better than I do. And once she forcibly anoints herself the “co-storyteller” of one of my stories, it is only a matter of time before we are arguing with each other in front of our audience.

I look around, surveying the awkward discomfort of our friends. Nobody wants to make eye contact. I realize the story has been mortally wounded. If anything, I wish I had a blunt instrument nearby to put it out of its misery.

Thankfully, as is often the case, I am my own blunt instrument. As there is no way to win a fight with a hungry cougar, the best course of action is to withdraw. Remember to back away slowly and puff out your jacket or other loose clothing to appear bigger in stature. At a minimum, pop your collar and turn your pockets inside out. Never turn your back to the animal! Banging sticks or dinner plates together can also help provide a distraction for your escape. If possible, tossing a plate of hors d’oeuvres (especially baked brie) on the floor may cause the cougar to divert the attack elsewhere. Following these steps will insure you can live to tell another story someday… And sadly, this is how every cocktail party concludes for Mr. and Mrs. Centaur.

My Wife

Uh oh. Did you hear that? My wife’s ears just perked up at the sound of me typing this post. Her nostrils flare, as she gathers in the scent of her prey. Be forewarned, I guarantee she will soon begin refuting irrelevant details of this post in the comment section below…

I can’t break a wild horse or teach a rowdy dog to behave but I can coax that fart out of you.

Like tuning an old TV with rabbit ears, I will adjust your legs to unkink your intestines. My magic fingers on your abdomen will have you breaking wind like a teenager doing sit-ups in gym class.

I don’t rely on medical devices or over-the-counter fart suppressants. My methods are all-natural. I am the midwife of flatulence.

Just because I work in a respected and professional manner does not mean the farts reciprocate. They scream at me as they rush by. They disgrace themselves as they exit the premises. They are prone to violent outbursts when they are ushered out the back door.

But I am ready for whatever fight they put up. I’ve been doing this for so long, I know and understand each fart’s personality. There is the “bloater.” The “popper.” The “grumpy old man who lives like a hermit in the woods.” I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to introduce him back into society.

Not all farts are the same, however, and in my career I’ve had the good fortune to grapple with a few choice vapors that tested my every move and instinct. Like all worthy foes, I’ve given them a name and an epitaph, which I share below:

• Muddy Trumpet and his Big Ass Band – After a long night of partying and po’ boys in New Orleans, this jazzy number came out like a full-on fart orchestra (farchestra, if you will). Leading the band, Muddy Trumpet played a solo on my sphincter like a some kind of proctologist Louie Armstrong. Also, there was a lot of scatting.
• Turtlehead’s Monster – A fart is a fart until you crap your pants. Turtlehead’s Monster, as I’ve dubbed him, is the turd that doesn’t understand that simple rule. Like a periscope on a submarine, he pokes his head out, assesses the situation, and pulls back to live another day. However, in the process he has literally left all the calling cards of a creature from a bad horror movie. The stench. The trail of slime. The angry mob.
• The Drum-Major’s Daughter – Sure, she looks so sweet and innocent, but this little ripper can peel the new pink paint off the walls in your nursery room. With the precision of a drum-roll, this fart will have you marching right into a baby-wipe battle.

Now, the only questions are when do I get my TV show and who will play the Fart Whisperer on the silver screen?

Similarly, if my accountant were to announce that he had done the math on my tax return entirely in his head, I would be equally nonplussed. While it’s an impressive feat, I would much rather he go ahead and fire up the calculator, sharpen a #2 pencil, generate a paper trail, and do his damnedest to get it right.

From the waiter’s perspective, there’s essentially zero upside to successfully memorizing our order. Why would you put the accuracy of my dinner order in jeopardy? Why even take that unnecessary risk? Who is this guy? Did our waiter recently abandon the cutthroat lifestyle of a riverboat gambler to wait tables at an Olive Garden?

Here’s the waiter’s job, in a nutshell: Relay the message of what I want for dinner to the kitchen staff. When they have prepared my meal, transport it safely from the kitchen to my table. No grandstanding is needed. You don’t need to dazzle me with your short-term memory skills, try to guess my weight or saw my date in half. Simply put, you don’t need to voluntarily make your job more difficult. Leave that to me.

Essentially, the only thing I want a waiter to memorize are the daily specials and what beers are currently on tap. Anything beyond that is excessive theatrics. And frankly, there’s just no room for showboating when it comes to bringing me my dinner.

I just have to ask. What’s next? What can top that? I wouldn’t be suprised if I turn on the tv next week and see some extreme food show host describing his meal as such:

“Most people eat the meat and the organs of the chicken. You’ve seen some other extreme show food hosts eat chicken feet or brain. That’s nothing. I’m here at a place that makes a dish solely out of chicken feather mitochondria.”

Or maybe…

“Oh my gosh! This bottlenose dolphin-fart soup has a unique biscuit and salt-water aroma. I have to taste it!”

That guy who travels to different countries will, no doubt, utter these words one day:

“The local cuisine here is designed to utilize the whole animal. In this case, the bat. Once a year, the townspeople gather to prepare the special meal before the hunt. I’m here, at the ceremonial feast where we are enjoying the first course… bat sonar gland jerky.”

So listen up Guy Fieri! I have some suggestions. Go find a diner, drive-in, or dive that will serve me:

1. Roasted Stalagmite Cave-Mold Spores
2. Toasted Bacteria Spine
3. Eagle-eyelid Marmalade
4. Scab Butter
5. Brain-fluid Lemonade

It’s like it’s 1990 and I’m collecting baseball cards again. Instead of Topps, Donruss, and Upper Deck, I’m on CBS Sportsline, ESPN, and Yahoo reading up on every player no matter if they are a starter or just a worthless common. I’m always scouting the next flyer I need to grab off the waiver wire. I hated football growing up as a kid (they called me a “skater fag”), but now I can tell you who every player is on every team. Living in New York, I’ve got the Super Bowl champion Giants and Brett Favre in my backyard now. I wish I had his rookie card!

This year, I got roped into being the commissioner of our fantasy football league and I took my duties very seriously. And now that the season is over, I am going the extra mile. I’ve once again enlisted the musical genius of Jon Solo (the Virtual Solos, in FF lingo) to lay down a hot beat so we could bust the ultimate fantasy football rap. Hut hut hike!

Download Fantasy Made a Fan of Me

Big shout out to all the dudes in the Bloody Sunday League!

Hollywood, CheesyPoofs, The Seachickens, J Mac Attack, Juicy Ju-Boys, U.S. Kids, Hong Kong Phoey, Zack Attack, Dyks on Byks, Colt 45′s!

Next year’s draft is right around the corner!

Commish and Virtual Solos over and out.

A Very Lucky Day

2008 Cherry Blossom Time-lapse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Vimeo.

Cranford Rose Garden Time-lapse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Vimeo.
 

1. No Pool. Admittedly, I didn’t expect there to be a pool for hospital guests so this is a minor complaint. I’m just thinking out loud here, but maybe if a hospital was a little more like a hotel, patients might recover quicker, and their guests wouldn’t be so bored waiting for them to recover. People that plan hospitals never think of things like this.

2. Our hospital room was apparently located in a tunnel. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why we didn’t receive cell phone service in our room. Aside from abandoned coal mines and black holes, I honestly didn’t think places existed anymore that didn’t receive cell phone service. Well, you can now officially add Sacred Heart room #2007 to that list. So, on one of the biggest spread-the-news events in my life, we had to spend our hospital stay without convenient contact to the outside world. For the record, I did notice that I had a signal at other parts of the hospital, but I refused to be one of those self-important a-holes that carries on a loud conversation in a crowded waiting room or while walking through hallways that are supposed to be quiet. Consequently, the few transmissions I was able to make actually came from the parking lot outside the hospital. Sweet one, Sacred Heart.

3. No turn-down service for the beds. Actually, I have an additional complaint that there was no turn-up service either. If you are a spouse staying in the hospital, it’s a given that you’ll be sleeping on the couch with whatever random bedding supplies that can be scrounged. And while it may seem like easy pickings, it is generally frowned upon to steal blankets off of a sleeping baby.

4. My wife controlled the TV through her hospital bed. Wow. Talk about a design flaw. While there are several problems with this arrangement, the biggest was that my wife has horrible taste in television programming, as evidenced by her love of the show “The Biggest Loser.” Or, as I like to call it, “The Fattest Loser.” I think that pretty much sums up what I had to endure for three days. And naturally, even though it was readily available, the nursing staff refused to give me any morphine for my pain and suffering.

5. Room service doesn’t understand how most people use condiments. I ordered French toast, they sent it without butter. We called for some fries, but they didn’t send ketchup. They even sent a sandwich up with just bread and meat. You don’t realize how important condiments are until you are deprived of them. Your food just doesn’t taste right, and some things are downright inedible. Even though all hospital condiments come on the side anyway, they must be specially requested, or they assume you want everything served totally plain. Evidently, their philosophy is to err on the side of disappointing 99% of their patients.

To be fair, I do have a significant level of praise for the staff at Sacred Heart. They delivered a healthy addition to the Centaur family, meet Annie Jane: (Born 3-13-08, 7lbs 1oz.)

And here I am with both kids:

Please note that some of their Centaur features haven’t developed yet, as typically their horse legs and tail don’t blossom until their senior year of high school, just like the movie Teen Wolf. And yes, since these things sometimes skip a generation, I won’t bother to tell them of their pending transformation until they are freaking out in a bathroom prior to an important high school dance.

While we’re here, I wanted to address the lack of posts over the last few months. As you know, I am a busy, busy man. And having kids not only eats up a lot of my time, but it really saps my energy as well. While my I can still zombie my way through my workday, my evenings are now devoted to providing constant discipline to my children.

So, I do appreciate the column ideas people have sent to me (there have been several good ones), but lack of ideas isn’t the problem here. I promise, things will pick up again. All in due time.

Finally, regarding item #2 above, when I was finally able to receive a cell phone signal, I had over two dozen messages from Zillionaire nation waiting to congratulating me on the birth of Annie. Thanks everyone, you guys are the best.

In essence, Krusty Force measures the comedic impact of someone accidentally destroying a functional piece of furniture through seemingly normal use. It is named after my good friend, and fellow Zillionaire, Krusty… for obvious reasons.

Here’s how it works: Krusty Force is created through the unfortunate mixture of leverage, awkward placement of body weight, and overall girth that puts undue pressure on a piece of furniture, causing it to instantly crumble into a worthless piece of garbage beneath you.

All of us have witnessed this phenomenon at one time or another. Perhaps it involved watching someone try to sit in an aluminum camping chair, only to see it immediately collapse into a twisted piece of scrap metal under their weight. Maybe you recall watching someone lean innocently against a table, forcing the legs to buckle and causing the offender to fall flat on the table while food and drinks spill onto the floor. The resulting finger pointing and laughter from onlookers is the product of Krusty Force.

Some of you might argue that these events could be explained through ordinary physics. I disagree, on the grounds that ordinary physics cannot measure the comedic impact of two objects colliding. That’s where the Krusty Force comes into play.

So how does one quantify Krusty Force? Well, mass and velocity must be taken into account, as well as four other important variables:

Quality of the Item Destroyed (Q$): Obviously, anyone can demolish a cheap piece of furniture without the use of Krusty Force. For that reason, furniture from IKEA is exempt from this analysis, as pretty much everything they sell is a rickety piece of garbage right out of the box. In fact, I believe that Saturday Night Live buys all of their prop furniture directly from IKEA, as everything they sell is basically constructed to turn to splinters under a Chris Farley belly flop right at the factory.

Timing and Irony (T&I): Just as a tree falling in the forest doesn’t make a sound, someone clumsily breaking a piece of furniture without an audience doesn’t get a laugh. Therefore, the Krusty Force is greatly increased when antiques, family heirlooms, or furniture belonging to in-laws or bosses meet their demise, especially before a significant crowd. And as you would expect, the more people present, and the more awkward the social situation, the greater the Krusty Force.

Restoration (R): Can the recently flattened piece of furniture be fixed and restored to its original condition? This is critical, and the answer must be “no.” While Krusty Force generally renders furniture completely useless, at the very least, the item must not ever be able to function as well or look right ever again. If not immediately discarded into a dumpster or set ablaze, the item must bear scars of its encounter with Krusty Force for the rest of its life. And in doing so, it will forever become more of a conversation piece than a piece of furniture.

Duplication (D): This aspect is tricky. First off, only a select few can wield the Krusty Force upon unsuspecting furniture. And those of us that can, do so unwittingly. Therefore, demonstrations of Krusty Force must happen completely by accident, causing witnesses to marvel that a piece of furniture they once thought sturdy could disintegrate so easily. In essence, the duplication factor measures how likely it would be for such a feat to inadvertently occur a second time.

To summarize, Krusty Force (KF) = (Q$ – R + T&I / D ) Mass x Velocity

Finally, as you might have guessed, my passion to study the phenomenon known as “The Krusty Force” was fueled over an episode that affected me personally.

We were playing a board game, I shifted my weight against the armrest of my chair, and it snapped instantly. This was a nice chair, made of solid pine, and it was part of our dining room set. While others laughed openly at my misfortune, I gasped in horror.

You see, I’m not particularly strong or heavy, yet I snapped the armrest like a toothpick. Knowing Krusty for 20 years, I realized that when no other known property of physics can properly explain the destruction of a piece of furniture, chalk it up to Krusty Force.

Facing the fact that I would spend the rest of my days wreaking havoc on innocent ottomans and coffee tables, I called the world’s foremost authority on the subject, hoping he could offer me some words of advice. Here’s what Krusty said:

“Well, you definitely need to pre-test every piece of furniture from now on. And you should always have a funny comeback in your head in case it does break, because people will always laugh at you.”

Fantastic. I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with it. Now that I am capable of wielding Krusty Force, the world is my China shop, and I am the bull.

I absolutely love it. I am pretty much a fanboy.

Confession: I have a macrumors.com account. I have posted there once.

Well, today is the 2008 Keynote so I want to bring some of the excitement of the fanboys to the masses (all 10 of you left reading this site). Here are my 2008 MacWorld Keynote Predictions:

iPod
Apple could go a couple of different ways with the next generation of iPods. (By the way, are iPods’ lives calculated in dog-years or something. How can one year go by and we call it a “generation” in reference to an iPod?) I’m really hoping they release a wireless iPod. No charging wire, no syncing wire, no headphone wires. The music just beams into my head when I want it to. All I do is look at my iPod and pull up my Mental Dashboard iTunes Widget and think-select a song. If I’m walking down the street and I see someone else with a wireless iPod, I can just ask them to let me think-type in my Apple iTunes ID into their list of acceptable iTunes AirWavers and I can hear what they are listening to as well! Or I can just cut off one of their ears. That works too because with the new iPod Air, you can only beam a song to your digitally-fingerprinted ear canals.

iLife
This will be the year that Apple realizes that most people don’t make movies, write songs, take pictures, or any of that crap that iLife software such as iMovie, Garage Band, and iPhoto let you do so easily. They will finally put out software for my boring iLife. iLoser lets you keep track of how fat and out of shape you are getting while always reminding you how pathetic you are (using the patented one-click iLackSelfConfidence voice abuser system). And bundled with iLoser? A mac version of Minesweeper!

Laptops
These will become obsolete with the next version of the iPhone. Apple is offering a $10 credit when you return a laptop and buy a new iPhone.

iPhone
As always, Steve Jobs will save the best for last and announce the latest updates to the iPhone at the end. I’m guessing the new iPhone comes in 5 different colors! And you can jog with it now! It will be the first jogging phone! You set up your route with Google Maps, create a playlist, and boom, the two of you are out jogging together! You can set it to Rocky mode and have it run a few steps ahead of you, always pushing you to keep pace, or you can tell it you are in a lazy mood and want to chill. Either way is cool with your iPhone. It only jogs when you tell it to jog. You can also set it to block incoming calls during your jog or go instantly to speakerphone, if you want to be one of those jackasses that jogs and talks on your jogging-in-front-of-you iPhone.

No matter what happens at this year’s MacWorld, I know one thing is for sure. Me and bunch of other fanboys won’t be quite so lonely and unhappy tonight because we’ll have some expensive shiny new trinkets to distract us! Hooray! Now I’m off to macrumors.com to follow the Keynote speech live via text updates from inside the convention!