Hey man...it's like...wow...you know?

One afternoon, I was going through some old photo albums with Ava.*

We came across a photo of my cousin Vito who literally would be the perfect image to use in a dictionary to illustrate the word "Hippie".

It is in fact this photo...

A little while later Ava became concerned that her grandfather also may or may not have been, as she puts it...“a filthy hippie”.

When he visited a week later, he took us to lunch.

During the meal, she repeatedly asked whether he used to be a filthy hippie and he of course denied he was such. She had several questions for him…

1. Did he have a job?

2. Did he walk around the dirty streets in his bare feet?

3. Did he shave?

As we left the restaurant, he went to his car and Ava to hers. He sweetly yelled over to her “Ava, see you back at the house"!

Ava yelled back “Hippie"! and got in her car seat.

Mission Accomplished.

* Old Man on the Porch Says...yes kids it's true, there are people out there who actually have books with photos in them instead of using an iPhone to store every single stupid moment of your vapid lives.

Shhhh, I'm in disguise...

Wasn't that on Cinemax?

Just back from a Caribbean vacation but as it was Christmas, my 4-year old spent a huge amount of time singing Christmas songs.

At one point, she was singing Jingle Bells...in her own way...

"Dashing through the snow,

In a one whore soap and slay".

And I thought to myself...that would be an excellent title for a porno-horror movie.

Don't you think?

To the Multiplex !!!

ONSCREEN:

MPAA rating - This trailer should never be viewed by anyone… anywhere.

VOICEOVER:

From the studio that brought you Love in a Pinto, Strangers in Pantaloons and Don't Touch My Pits! comes a vibrant and intellectually challenging story of redemption, ennui, nausea, poor penmanship, tragedy and slapstick...

FADE IN:

Lightning crashes, thunder rolls...a homeless man, yells "Whooooo"! Helicopter shot, we are racing over New York City.

VOICEOVER:

"In a world where anything can happen because we couldn't find a decent script but still have to get people into the theater".

CUT TO…

A kitten meows

A car explodes.

A man turns to the camera, startled. "Who are you"?

The Millennium Falcon, clearly stolen from the film Star Wars flies by the screen.

VOICEOVER:

"In a world where men and women get along all the time and dinosaurs are hired as baristas at Starbucks"…

CUT TO:

A chicken plays tic tac toe

Fighter planes race by, people look up and point

A kitten farts.

Same man…"no seriously, man, who the fuck are you"?

VOICEOVER:

In the future, when gas is seven bucks a gallon and milk costs even more…one man will rise up and show the world what a true hero is".

CUT TO:

Farmer milking cow….slowly.

Same man again "Gimme that camera, you bastard"!

Godzilla puppet on hand driving a car, people honking behind him.

Old woman folding socks.

VOICEOVER:

In a season, thats not winter, fall or spring…a sock puppet and his owner will take on the mantle of a dark knight (can we say that?, I don't want to get sued.) …um A Dark Evening type hero…

CUT TO:

Godzilla puppet (dyed black, mask askew on face..."Im Batman!"

Car explodes

Boat crashes

Hindenberg falls out of the sky.

VOICEOVER:

In a time when watches only go to 11:00pm, where calendars only have 8 months of pages…

CUT TO:

A child lets go of his balloon and it floats away. He cries.

The father laughs and points…" HA, HA, weenie"!

Boy falls to his knees… "NOOOOOOOOOOO"!

VOICEOVER:

This summer…or spring. Prepare yourself for a tour de force (whatever that means). A film that combines the special effects of Logan's Run, the romanticism of Schindler's List, the lust and bawdiness of The Muppets Take Manhattan and the random explosions of Michael Bay in a mishmash of bad writing, random neuron firings and if you're lucky some naked titties.

Remember to bring your whole family..and at least 200 bucks, popcorn aint getting any cheaper.

ON SCREEN:

Coming Soon.

Stop stealing my ideas!

I think they started the SkyMall magazine to prey on people who have to be on long flights. I think what happens is the longer you are in the air breathing that horrible recycled air composed of the concentrated burps, farts and the random virus or two, you start to think the things in the catalog are actually legitimate purchases.

Im here to help you…it's what I do.

First up is the Mustache Mirror. I had to really think about this one. Maybe the problem is I already have a mustache so I don't really look to my mirror to provide me with the illusion of a mustache when I can so readily grow a real one.

What weird is the choices of style seem so random. From left to right you have the "porn stache" in case you want to see what it would be like to be a refugee from a 1970's adult film. Next you have the barber shop quartet style favored by participants in that uncomfortable music style or perhaps you are a evil guy looking to tie a girl to train tracks. Last is the one made famous by the rich guy in the monopoly game, something that never goes out of style if you ask me.

I guess my biggest problem is that of where you hang the mirror. If it's high enough for you, short people see the mustaches on the tops of their heads like some sort of strange toupee and if you have friends that are pro basketball players, they see the mustaches on their crotch like strange little stylish merkins.

OrbitWheels: Im not sure what use these are. I guess if you generally travel by skateboard (and most likely are 13 years old) then this may appeal to you. I can't see why this would be fun, generally humans walk forward so forcing yourself to slide sideways on twin circles seems counter intuitive to behaving like a normal person.

Of course this photo illustrates that he may not in fact be a normal person, in fact if I had to guess he appears to be the kind of person who has to wear a helmet all the time…if you catch my drift.

In fact in the picture he seems to be saying: "gosh I hope some ten year old boys don't come by and push me over and then violate my helpless prone form". Although if that happened, I think that would make me smile.

Litter Kwitter: This just seems wrong on so many levels, the least of which is the picture of a cat that seems to be saying "come a little closer, so I can show you how I really feel about this". It's a series of concentric plastic circles that teach the cat to crap into your toilet. As she gets better at balancing herself, you remove the smaller circles until finally she uses the seat the way most people do.

I say most people because I lived in South Carolina for a few years…and I'll say no more.

The reason this is stupid is apparent to any person who owns a cat and that is, you can't train them to do anything. They do what they want when they want to whom they want and if they want to crap in your shoes or on your windowsill or in your favorite pillowcase…then by God that's what you're going to have to deal with.

And I don't know about you but I drink a lot and the last thing I want to do in a drunken stupor is shit all over some plastic rings when I come home...cause cats are vindictive fuckers…it goes like this: she goes to use the toilet, finds my alcohol fueled dump all over her potty and then to teach me a lesson, goes and takes a dump in the toaster.

And then nobody wins.

Tex, The Armadillo Beverage Holder: Have you ever been sitting in front of the TV watching American Idol or something equally retarded and thought, "I wish I had someplace completely stupid to put my beer can". Then this is the product for you.

Monet Rain Boots: I've cropped it out of the picture but above the image it said…"Everybody Loves Them". Thats not true…it simply can't be. Everyone doesn't agree on the same thing…well except that breasts are fantastic fun or that Paris Hilton should be squeezed to death in a filthy trash compactor. But these boots…no way.

I don't know why someone would even create these unless they were looking for a way to make other people walk into incoming traffic because they aren't paying attention.

iRestore Hair Laser: You know when I was growing up, I watched Lost in Space a lot and I always wanted to have the really cool laser than Colonel Don West used. Having said that, at no time did I ever think I wanted to shoot someone's hair with it…this just takes all the fun out of owning a personal weapon of mass destruction.

Ok, now that I got that out of the way. This actually appears to be a device that promotes hair growth but I don't understand, I would think using an intense beam of energy on your head would burn away what little hair you had but judging by the photos Im wrong.

As you can tell from these very scientific pictures, the top band moves back and forth shooting lasers at your scalp over and over until you are either bald or in possession of a hairline that has never existed on earth before.

Anyway…my guess is this device grows hair about as well as watching Lost In Space reruns does.

Air Stupid...fly us!

So last week I had to fly on business for my new job. I had not been on a plane since 2006 and now I remember why.

I flew Continental on a 737 which is allegedly designed to seat around 180 people comfortably. Needless to say there were 824 passengers booked on the flight and God bless em, we managed to get every single one of them on board.

At least that's how it felt to me.

There's a great deal of controversy lately with people who are large being forced to buy two seats but as near as I can tell just about everyone needs to buy two seats on these flights.

The seats appear to be for someone who is 7 feet tall and weighs 79 pounds. Everyone else is crammed into a space clearly designed for a person who has no bones.

Anyway, logic dictates that you should board the flight from the rear of the plane so that you can get everyone to their seats in the least amount of time while also providing the flight crew with an idea of how much storage space is being used up.

Needless to say…this is not how it works. In order to extort more money from the cattle, Continental has come up with a variety of programs all designed to make you feel special when in fact you are no more important to the airline than a bag full of dirty socks.

So you have Continental OnePass and then FirstBoarders and then Ace Numero Uno Seating and then…the rest of the Great Unwashed…of which I am generally a part.

Once you load this random mishmash of program flyers, plus people with babies plus the woman who is using a walker and clutching her chest constantly so Im sure she is not going to survive this flight, you then get to board.

Of course by that point, the other two people who are in your row are already seated and watching a movie so when you show up, they're pissed that they have to stand up and move.

But fuck them! That window seat is mine, motherfuckers…move!

Anyway, they get up…I try to slide into the seat but fail miserably, getting tangled in the seat belts and generally trying to inch worm myself towards the right seat. After a few minutes of this disgusting spectacle it become apparent that shooting me would be a mercy to both myself and the spectators…

…who by the way don't offer to help at anytime.

So now Im in the freakin seat, I have to cram my bag under the seat in front of me which is hard enough without me sitting there, After a few minutes and few hail mary's I get everything situated only to realize that my damn iPad is in that bag and lord knows I aint gonna be able to make a 5 hour flight engaging in conversation with the idiot next to me.

The flight attendants walk through and inform us that we absolutely must turn off our electronic devices. Apparently this plane, this technological marvel with 144,809 parts sheathed in steel and aluminum containing a navigation system so powerful it knows to the square inch where we are in the air at all times can be brought straight down into the earth by a 9 year old playing his Nintendo DS.

So me and the rest of the cattle shut off our phones, power down our computers, deactivate our pacemakers etc.

The pilot comes on the intercom, he is supposed to sound strong and capable… a man we are trusting our lives to while we go screaming at 600 mph through the freakin stratosphere.

Instead he sounds like Don Knotts.

I am not comfortable.

He says: "Well folks…looks like we're gonna be on the tarmac in just a few minutes now. Beautiful night here in Orange County…it'd be a darn shame if you guys didn't make it back here again".

Now Im thinking does he want us to revisit or is he so bad a pilot that even he thinks we aint gonna make it back to NY?

The flight attendants who apparently are so overtaxed with handing out 7 dollar cokes and answering such brain stumpers as "Can I have a blanket", have given up explaining how the plane's safety measures work and are now reduced to pushing a button on a dvd player.

The DVD starts….a cheerful man (who I might add recorded this DVD while safely on firm ground) starts to tell us about how amazing this plane is, how new, how great their safety record is and how nothing ever goes wrong…then he starts in on all the ways that this flight can go wrong and what to do about it.

Much has been written about what to do in a water landing. I can assure you that not a single one of them will work. I am supremely confident that if you are a passenger on a plane spiraling into the ocean at over 500 miles an hour, you need not worry if your seat will work as a flotation device simply because you are about to be rendered into a squishy blob of pink paste that will fit into a single mayonnaise jar. With room to spare.

Anyhoo…we take off. So here we go…five freakin hours on this flight.

Now, Im glad we live in a country where anyone can buy a ticket but it would be better if some of these basketball-following, backwards cap-wearing, semi-shaven fuckwads would just do us all a favor and crash into a ravine on the way to the airport.

So…I get the iPad on and start to choose a movie and fuckwad decides he wants to ask about my new-fangled gizmo. He says and I quote: "zat one of them wachcallit…e-readers"?

I say "No, fuckwad…this is an iPad, an infinitely more powerful, useful and elegant device that an e-reader can't ma…can't you just watch your basketball game and leave me alone"?

Actually what I said was "No, it's an iPad, see, you can use it for more than reading books, you can…".

He says:"Does that thing get porn on it? Can you watch two ladies doin it…cause that would be sumthin".

I return; "Yes…that would be sumthin…but you can pretty much get porn on any portable device, wouldn't you say".

Then he launches into some long-winded half-witted review of a porno he just watched called "Squirt GangBang 4". A highly uncomfortable monologue wherein he utters the phrase "they can squirt pretty far, ya gotta watch your eyes".

I have never wished so hard that the wing of a plane would shear off in mid flight.

A simple goodbye would have sufficed...

So this is goodbye...

Well it seems that every time someone writes one of these, they drone on and on about how clever and creative everyone at Rockwell is and how they learned so much and blah blah blah…

So hold on to your panties…here we go:

From Monica, I learned just how high my blood pressure can be pushed before a brain aneurysm occurs.

From Sarah, I learned how to love again.

From Matt, I learned how to love again…a different way.

From Kendall I learned that there is no food you cannot put hot sauce on, including chocolate pudding.

From Ray I learned that it’s possible to suppress project-related-anger to an extent never before seen.

From Kate I learned that no matter how amazing your design is, someone above you will arbitrarily change it to a different color so they can justify their enormous salary.

From David Ostow, I learned how to be funny (this according to Monica, who insisted that he is so much funnier than me but I cant recall a single instance where David showed off his hairy belly to anyone like I did).

From Michele I learned how to use an upturned eyebrow and slight smirk to convey the words “fuck off” better than actually just saying them.

And so I will take all of this…I don’t know…let’s called it “mental debris” and tell it all to my therapist so he can justify his insane hourly rate.

And now I’d like to be sentimental if I could, please bear with me...

If it’s one thing I will take away from my experience at Rockwellgroup...it’s the fact that at no time were all the toilets in working order and that has meant more to me than anything else.

D.

aka Big D, Marchy, Mackinsoda, PimpJuice, Fatty Boom Batty, Dmarch and so on.