I again have underestimated the craziness of some human beings.

This might just be one of the weirdest and grossest things I've ever read about. Go read it now. Seriously. Go. I'll wait.

What the f was going through this woman's mind? I have seen some strange things on the subway (the "T") up here, but I am glad I didn't have to witness this lady popping a baby out right there on the floor.

AND THEN SHE JUST KEPT ON RIDING THE T?!?! What was she thinking? "Hmmm, need to buy some milk, some butter, get some eggs -- oh, there's the baby -- gotta return that movie, get the oil changed...."

I feel bad for the lady, too. I mean, she's been living in a motel with her two kids for the past year. But she's hopefully going to get some help now.

Ah, Boston. You never cease to surprise me with new and exciting things.

As a sprite young soon-to-be-25-year-old, I am thankful for my general physical health. I can play ball and run and skip and dance a jig to my heart's content without feeling like something is going to break and/or fall off. Yet as I watched my dearest wife (who is only 26) struggle with back pain this weekend I wondered...do we just officially start falling apart in our mid-20s?

My knees are in decent shape. Most of their problems stem from my moronic decision to be on the cross country team in high school. That decision combined with my family history, does not bode well for the old leg-benders. I was talking to my mom the other day about my knees hurting, as they have off and on since high school, and she said,

"Oh yes, mine hurt all the time, too. Honey, sounds like you have The Malinoski Knees."

Yes, it's the dreaded Malinoski knees -- named for mom's maiden heritage. Apparently these dreaded Polish knees (which thankfully do not resemble Polish sausages, and hopefully they never will) start irritating you when you're young, and then decide to slowly degenerate as you get older. Mine already have a lovely grinding cartilage noise when I bend down or stand back up, and therefore it will be exciting to see what other noises they'll make as I advance in age.

So here I am at 24, and I swear to the Big Guy Upstairs that my knees do hurt when the weather changes. It is pathetic, even though they are usually more accurate than the forecasters on TV--although my knees don't have that cool Nexrad radar or Doppler 5000. That would be sweet, but I don't know where I would store it.

But I digress. It is now established that my knees aren't the best, but they work well for now and have some interesting built-in weather capabalities.

More pain I get here and there comes from my back. Some of that again stems from cross country, and more of it stems from a stupid, stupid motion. One morning in college I was brushing my teeth and I merely bent down to rinse my mouth out when OW! My back just suddenly gave out. I had to lay completely motionless on the floor of my room for the next six hours. Ever since then, the back pain comes and goes as it likes, whether I lift something heavy (like beached whales or semi-trucks) or not.

I'm thinking that from now on, I'll just wrap myself up in a huge bubble-wrap ball and have someone roll me from place to place. How's that for low-impact?

Anyone else feel like they're falling apart at too young an age?

Backstage, Swallowing Glass, The Donnas, & Dead Hookers

I did it. Yes, my improv troupe performed at Lollapalooza. It was everything I thought it would be and so much more. This is a long story, but you'll like it.

We got to the show at about 10am to meet up with our contact. The show hadn't opened up yet, and we actually just walked right through the main gate without anyone really even noticing us. Just thought I'd point that out in case anyone ever wants to go see Lolla for free--show up early and walk in like you know where you're going.

We wandered around looking for the third stage and finally had to ask someone where our contact was. This was the conversation that started our day at Lollapalooza:

Us: "Hi, we're looking for Dan M---, do you know where he is?"
Roadie: "Yeah, he was right around here. Just look for the guy with stripes shaved into his head and knife earrings."

Oh yeah, it was going to be a good day.

We finally found him and he showed us the third stage. "Stage" was not the word they should have been using for the structure they were putting us on. "Tiny freakin' platform" would have been more suitable. But we didn't care, we were performing at fricking' Lollapalooza. They could have made us stand on milk crates and we would have done it.

The area we were in was not by the main stage. It was a big parking lot area where all the fun stuff was located, like a huge tent with video games inside and other distractions. It was also right by the second stage, where other musical acts were performing. Dan led us backstage where we could hang out until they got us our passes. Backstage for the second and third stage area was a tent behind the second stage. It was so cool. There was food and lots to drink, and we got to meet everyone else that was performing on the second and third stage. There was another comedy group, some rappers, a guy with long hair (more about him later) and this lady who was painting herself silver next to a guy that had just wrapped himself entirely in shiny mylar aluminum foil. Oh yeah.

And remember how I said in my last post that I really wanted to introduce a freak show where guys who hung heavy things from bodily piercings? Well, that was the guy with long hair. It was Turbo Tom's Freakshow. And he was Turbo Tom. More about him later.

The whole line-up for us was really sketchy. They were really disorganized and unclear about how long we were to be onstage and what else they wanted us to do. But whatever, we were performing at frickin' Lollapalooza.

We ended up going onstage at 1pm, and even though an hour before they said we would only have 15 minutes, five minutes beforehand they then told us, "Oh, well you can take the whole hour if you want." Wonderful planning.

So we performed. And it was not funny at all. We knew it wouldn't quite be the scene for improv comedy, but it was still pretty painful. We started off our set with the game called freeze tag and we asked for an opening and closing line from the audience (and by audience, I mean the three people that stood there for more than one minute). If this will classify what our performance was like, then I will tell you: We asked for the opening line of our game and someone yelled out, "Go f*ck your mom." So we used it. It is improv, we take what we're given. Wow, that sounded perverted. But you know what I mean.

So the show was bombing, and we decided to throw in some of the "other stuff" the organizers wanted us to do. We had a booty shaking contest--Oh geez, I forgot to tell another funny thing. When we first showed up that morning and were asking around for Dan, someone said, "Oh, you guys are third stage performers, you need to go over to the 'booty stage.'" The platform we performed on had a big neon pink banner hanging on it that said "Booty Camp." I shit you not.

Anywhore, we brought people up to play twister, and more. We messed with the crowd and it got better. Then we threw in some more sketches and got some laughs. So we did okay. Before the Twister game, actually, one of the "organizers" called me over to say someone was coming onstage at 1:30. I love how they tell us these things as we're performing. I ask her who it is. She says, "It's the fudgee bears" and points behind me.

I turn around to see about nine people dressed up in fluffy bras and they have boas and big fuzzy animal ear headbands and they're carrying huge squirt guns. I think to myself (for the 50th time that day), "Welcome to Lollapalooza." I ask the guy in the fluffy group how he wants me to introduce them (as if looking at them wasn't enough). He says in his hugely flaming gay man voice, "We are the magic dream circus theater and we'll be performing fudgee bear extravaganza." I just stared at him. He squirted me with the squirt gun.

So I go onstage and introduce them. I'm thinking they'll be doing something for about 15 minutes or so, it's a performance right? No. What followed was a surreal moment. The big crew of fluffy people with squirt guns perform to a techno song for about one minute. They're dancing around and shooting their squirt guns. I'm sure the drugged up audience was thinking, "What the f was in that weed I just smoked?"

And the freaks finish and I have to go back onstage to follow that. I grabbed the mic and say, "Anyone else feel like they just had some bad acid?"

Our show was fine, and then we had the rest of the day to hang out. We stuck around for the next hour to watch our new friend Turbo Tom the Freak. He did all kinds of crazy shit. He sucked a condom up his nose and then pulled it out of his mouth. He broke a light-blub and then ate the glass. He pierced his neck onstage. He hung a brick from his nipples. I had asked him backstage if I could hang from his nipples, since I'm a light-weight. But he thought that was a bit too much for the old nipples to take. He was awesome.

Later we got to ask him more about what it was like to go through life doing that stuff. He said he makes a pretty good living at it. He tours college campuses mostly. I asked him how much it hurt to swallow glass. He said, "Well, there's a technique. You make sure you chew off the sharpest parts, but you don't want to chew it up too much. It does hurt coming out, but a little internal bleeding never hurt anyone."

YES IT DID. But whatever, he was the coolest.

The rest of the day we got to hang out and meet the second stage bands. Our backstage passed only let us go so far, we couldn't get backstage at the main stage except for during lunch. During lunch we saw some members of the rap group Jurassic Five (who were very nice), and I stuck around after lunch long enough to see the lead singer of The Donnas walk offstage. She's hot.

I think my highlight of the day was my random moment. I was just walking over to a table that was selling some CDs of the bands performing that day. At the tent, I glanced up from the table, and there was the lead singer of The Donnas. No one was around her, I don't think anyone else recognized her. So I quickly said, "You guys are great, I really love your music." She said, "Wow, thanks!" and shook my hand. It was awesome. Then I saw The Donnas' drummer, who is also hotter than hot hot hot. I got to chat with her and shake her hand too. Sweet.

Around 6pm, the troupe was getting ready to leave. We stopped by the third stage to get our stuff, when one of the MCs called us over. He wanted us to judge a costume contest where the winners would get to sit onstage with Incubus as they performed. I love Incubus, so I was honored to get to choose which costume was worthy of going to meet them onstage.

There were 9 teams of two girls each, and the contest was that the girls had had all day to make a costume out of what they could find around the concert. Most of them had made their costumes out of trash they found, some being more creative that others. All the girls were really young, mid to late teens. The costumes ranged from the girls covering themselves in tree branches to girls who dressed up as a bag of weed to girls who had nothing on but branches and caution tape. That group was by far the most "out there." The pair had dressed up very scantily. One said she was mother nature, and she introduced her friend -- the one who had covered her boobs with caution tape -- as a dead hooker.

We had the chance to ask each pair a question (I most wanted to ask each group dressed up in trash "When did you first lose your self-respect?" but I didn't). Our question to mother nature and her dead hooker was, "Would you actually kill a hooker to get onstage with Incubus?" Mother Nature said, "Well, yeah, if it came to that, sure!"

We gave them the onstage passes. Any young girls f'ed up that much already deserve to hang around with rock stars.

By about 7pm, we were all pretty fried from the sun. We had watched a guy pierce his neck, we had awarded a dead hooker with onstage passes, I had met some of the hottest rock stars ever, and we had hung out with some really cool bands. We watched Incubus perform and then left.

We went over to another guy's house who is in our troupe but couldn't come that day to the show. We sat around in his backyard and ate hamburgers while talking about what we had done for the past eight hours. I've now decided that every one of my stories about the experience will start with, "So there's this dead hooker, right?"

Misc. (in no particular order)

Yesterday the "I'm the only one who ever sees a mouse" employee (see previous post) yelled to me from the breakroom:

"Hey, I just saw another mouse in here!"

I yelled back, "Is he missing a large patch of hair? If so, tell him it's stuck to the glue board next to the mini-fridge."

(It turns out that it's not the same mouse, unless the mouse took Tuesday to go to the hair club for mice. I should have known more would show up. Where there is one mouse, there are many many more.)

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Tomorrow I am going to Lollapalooza. I can say this because no one at works knows I have this blog. And I am saying that because a certain someone *cough*cough* is calling in sick to work in order to go. And that sick day is coming because I found out too late that I was going, so I couldn't take a vacation day. And I am going to Lollapalooza because my groovy little improv troupe managed to make it onto the third stage there--the non-music stage.

And I am going to call in sick to work to go do comedy at Lollapalooza because it's frickin' Lollapalooza, we get in free, we get to perform, we get to see all the bands, and then I can forever sit around like a bad-ass and say, "Oh yeah, I remember that time we played Lollapalooza." And I don't know that I'll be taking a bowling ball in the stomach, but I do know that the organizer for the third stage wants us to do "other stuff" besides just doing improv. And I don't necessarily know what he means by "other stuff," but I hope it means introducing other folks on stage that might be swallowing swords or hanging heavy objects from various bodily piercings.

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Last night Amy and I got Episode II of the Star Wars prequels. I warned her about it, but she still wanted to see it. I told we could only get it if I was allowed to make fun of it the whole time. It was free from the library, so it's not like I wasted any more money on the stinker.

We were only about five minutes into it when she says, "Okay, this needs to be made fun of now."

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My dad is okay. They took care of the spot on his face and it appears they got all the skin cancer there. Now he has to go get his face sewn up. We made jokes about whether they would use a staple gun or a sewing machine, or whether the doctors would graft skin from his butt onto his face, and then the family could be serious when we call him a buttface -- or he could say "kiss my butt" while pointing to his cheek. This is my family.

Half-Naked Mouse

If you know me, and some of you do, you know that I am an office manager for a decent size office in Boston. Being an office manager means I do everything from systems administration to billing our clients to ordering supplies to setting up mouse-traps in our office. Our building is fairly old and I guess we have a history of rodent tenants. I fortunately missed the era when there was the occasional rat wandering in and out. Eeesh.

But now it means that we have mice. Months ago the sales reps were complaining that their food was being nibbled and that there was evidence of mice throughout the office. So the exterminator put out mouse-traps. And months passed by and we caught nothing but we also didn't see much else, so we were okay.

A few weeks ago one of the sales reps commented that he saw a mouse in the breakroom. This does not surprise me because they (the reps) regularly leave the breakroom in a state of "hey look, a bunch of animals just tore apart their lunches with their teeth in here." There are always crumbs all over. We may as well have set up a salad bar for the mice, it was so messy in there. I try to keep things clean, but I can and will only do so much. I am the office manager, I ain't yo momma.

So the sales rep says, "I keep seeing that mouse in the breakroom." I ignore him for a while, but then the rep gets annoyed with me and comments that he saw him again on Monday. I finally decide to re-position some glue traps from around my desk to the breakroom. I put one down next to our little mini-fridge, and then I try to put one behind the water cooler. There wasn't room, so I start moving the cooler out a little, and as soon as I touch it, the mouse comes flying out of the back of the water cooler.

I am not afraid of mice as I used to have various rodents for pets as a kid, but this one still startled me because it came out of nowhere. I jump back and then comment to our general manager (whose office is right next to the breakroom) that I just saw the little furball. It's funny because the guys in our office are the wimpiest about this. The GM goes, "Eeeewww, please just get rid of it."

I go back into the breakroom, and much to my surprise, the little bugger is already stuck to a glueboard. We've had traps out for about 8 months and caught nothing, but then I move one about 12 feet and whoomp, there it is.

Now this is the sad part. The poor little guy was now stuck. And actually, he wasn't all that little. I'm used to tiny little house mice, but this guy had obviously been dining at the breakroom restaurant for some time now, all while living in the back of our water cooler. So now I have to decide what to do with the mouse that's stuck to the trap. Our GM whines again, "Eeew, please get it out of here. I don't do well with rodents."

What the f am I supposed to do with him? Who the hell is the guy who said glue traps are more humane than snap traps? I ask the sales rep who had been complaining about the mouse to give a hand. He goes, "Oh, geez, just keep it away from me."

And then I asked Jord from our production section to help out. He says, "Well, I have plastice knife...maybe we could take him downstairs to the alley and pry him off?" Sounds fine to me.

So Jord and I walk down the hallway with a plastic knife and a mouse stuck to a glue board. Our account manager walks by. "Don't ask," I say.

And in the end, the little mouse made it off the glue board with some prying. He lost a bit of hair in the process. He's probably pretty scarred now as well. I imagine if I was his size and became stuck to a huge piece of plastic and had these two huge humans staring down at me with a knife, I'd be scarred for life as well.

Now I just picture this little half-naked mouse sitting in a mouse bar, drinking alone in the corner. Some other mouse goes, "Man...what happened to you?" And he just says, "I don't wanna talk about it."

Behold the tech skills of ME!

Okay, so it wasn't all that challenging, but now I have a comments section for each post and a little place to check up on the stats of this dork's website. Sweet.

Now to just sit back and let the cash roll in.

Oh wait....

Laughs, Karaoke, & Bruised Knees

It's nice to have an active weekend. Sometimes I get to work on Monday and I think, "Wow, I had two whole days to do whatever I wanted, and I did nothing."

Yet today I feel a bit of triumph from my weekend activities. Saturday night we had our improv show, which went fairly well. It was not our best show, but it was also not our worst. I directed this show, and while I don't enjoy directing at all, I'm glad I did it at least once. I actually think Saturday shows aren't that great for the troupe. I feel like our Friday shows are better because we're all coming off of work to let off some steam and cut loose. On Saturdays, we've had the whole day to relax and bum around, and then oh yeah, we have a show, let's go be funny. But whatever, people laughed, it was pretty good, and I now don't have to direct a show again unless I want to.

After the show our opening troupe Spinprov invited us to go do some karaoke with them. We thought, why not? So about 10 of us piled into the karaoke bar down the street and tore it up. Even my introvert wife belted out "Living on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi as the rest of us sang along and cheered. Hell, she even threw in an air guitar solo and an air guitar smash-up solo. It was awesome.

Then I did my favorite song to karaoke, "Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix. I had done this song once before a few years back. I was in western Mass. with some AmeriCorps friends, and the place to hang out in the little town was a VFW bar with karaoke. So I did Foxy Lady and brought the place down. My back-up dancers couldn't even dance because they were laughing so hard as I gyrated and then crawled across the floor and rolled around.

So this time I had to make sure I used the same skills to get the crowd into it. I did all that and more, as I draped myself over the karaoke screen and hit every note. I guess I made such an impression that it was enough for the table next to us to buy me a beer. That was cool, no one's ever done that before!

On Sunday, my friend Greg took Amy and I rock-climbing. I went rock-climbing once back in high school, and then I climbed the rock wall in the gym back in college once or twice, so it's been some time. We did about a 40 foot rock face in Newton, and it was really fun. I learned how much of a difference climbing shoes make, as Amy went first and only had heard sneakers on. It took her some time to get to the top. Then I went, but we saw that the folks climbing next to us were taking a break, so I asked to borrow their shoes. Wow, I felt like spider-gal. It's so invigorating doing something like that, you feel like you've really accomplished something --- like you've earned your dinner. My knees are all beaten and scratched up and today my hands are so tired it's hard to use a writing device. But it was awesome.

And today it's back to the desk, but that's not bothering me too much right now.

Knock the Wind Out of My Sails

Yesterday was a shitty day. The night before was fine because Amy finally came home and I felt okay again. But then I got to work the next day. First off, I got an email from the folks at WGBH and Frontline saying my reject ass didn't get the job there. I didn't even make it to the interview stage, which is freakin' crazy because I was really qualified for that job. I thought I would have at least made it to the interview stage. So, that's shitty email #1.

The second shitty email was from my dad. He emailed to tell me he has skin cancer and that that day he was to go in and get a spot on his face removed. It happened very quickly, which is why he said he didn't call me about it. He went in yesterday at 2:30 to get the spot removed.

It was a punch in the stomach. Parents are invinceable, or at least to me they're supposed to be. I had dealt with hearing about mine having really high cholesterol and blood pressure, and they were doing things about that. And then I get that email.

So I'm sitting there at work first thing in the morning not knowing what the hell just happened in the two minutes it took me to just read those two emails. Every time I look at my inbox, my eyes well up with tears.

I managed to make it through the day, and then I called home when I get home from work. Dad sounds like he's doing pretty good. He says they'll know within a week whether they got it all. Mom sounds like she's doing okay.

Amy got home and she hadn't heard the news yet. I didn't know how to get a hold of her yet at her new job and she didn't have email access for the whole day either. I let her talk about her new job for a while. I like pretending that nothing had happened, I was watching what life was like before I knew about all this crap. She was talking about work and changing out of her work clothes and I was making dinner.

Then I told her. She knows what cancer is like. She lost her mom to breast cancer five years ago. It makes me sad and glad that she understands. Sad because no one should have to go through what she did with her mom, but glad because she can help me through it.

I told her talking to my mom was just like sitting in a room with my mom and a huge elephant, but not talking about that huge elephant. I mean, mom and I talked about it, but then I changed the subject because it got quiet on the phone. I told her I didn't get that job and we joked around about how I was going to be all mature about it and tell them, "Oh yeah? Well, I didn't want to work for your big dumb organization anyway!"

Amy said that's normal, I mean, what the hell are you going to talk about anyway? There's only so much you can talk about. There's only so much a person can handle and your mind needs a break from thinking about it.

I'm glad I have her. Otherwise I think I would just be sitting there on my living room floor, staring at my stuffed animals while thinking myself crazy.

I like knowing random useless facts. A friend at work pointed out this site to me.

That's not the point of this post. The point of this post is for you to read the fact that is second from the bottom on that page:

"In 1997, Michigan became the 16th state to allow the blind to hunt."

WHAT THE HELL?!!

Note to self: Never EVER walk around in the woods in Michigan.

Note to self: Research and figure out the other 15 states, then never EVER walk around in the woods there either.

So I'm doing all right being home alone all week. My friends have been doing a good job of keeping me occupied in the evenings. It's funny, I'm doing a lot more social activities than I would if Amy were around.

Wednesday night I did laundry with a friend and then we drank beer and watched the Red Sox game. Last night a friend made me a yummy dinner at his place and then we made chocolate chip cookies and watched the Red Sox game. Tonight I'm going to go see an improv troupe that is opening for my improv troupe at our show next Saturday. Tomorrow I'm going to this cool festival in Providence, Rhode Island, called Waterfire (check out that poorly designed website! Eeek!).

I don't know what I'm doing on Sunday yet. It's nice to have things to keep me occupied so I don't think of aliens and zombies being in the apartment with me at night. I also make sure to read a little before I go to bed each night, and I also leave the radio on for the entire night--which makes for interesting dreams.

Oh, and I finally saw the movie The French Connection the other night. It's very good, and I recommend it. It's also pretty violent, but the action makes it worthwhile. And the chase scene that I had always heard about from it was very cool. Must be fun to make a cool action flick like that!

Mountains & Alien Zombie Axe Murders

Amy and I spent the holiday weekend up in Jackson, New Hampshire, seeing some friends get hitched. If you've never been to the White Mountains, you need to go. It's such a beautiful place.

Living in the city now, I had forgotten what trees and grass mountains and unpolluted streams look like. Sometimes on my lunch break I go down to the huge Christian Science Plaza, take off my shoes and socks, and walk around on their grassy knoll. It reminds of that part in the movie "Pretty Woman" where Richard Gere is wearing a suit and is doing the same. I used to walk around barefoot in my yard all the time growing up in Ohio. I miss having a yard!

Anywho, the White Mountains are really fun. Amy and I spent some time at White Lake. It's a beautiful lake that is shallow enough around the edges that you can walk about 50 feet out or so without the water going up much past your knees. So we hiked in a lake and saw all kinds of critters like loons and tadpoles and chipmunks and such.

We also got a chance to swim in a bunch of local swimming holes all weekend. It's amazing up there because there are rocky streams everywhere, which make fun swimming holes. We spent Saturday morning lying on a huge granite rock in the middle of this rocky stream. The water was about 60 degrees, but that doesn't feel so bad when it's 95 degrees outside with a million % humidity.

But alas, it's back to work now. And then Amy leaves tomorrow to go home for a week. I do like being alone at times, but certainly not for extended times. Whenever I am home alone, I think of every horror film out there (both seen and unseen by me) and automatically picture everything from axe murderers to aliens to zombies to ghosts in the apartment with me--but they're in every room and hallway where I am not, waiting for me.

I am a wimp. So here goes a week on my own.