Don't Fake The Funk

I Met A Fisherman...

... on the bus home today. He said to me, "I go fishing to fish, not necessarily to catch."

Ow

This is what last night felt like.

G's Tips For Working Out At NYSC

• That Saturday morning belly-dancing class does not allow spectators.
• Never wear tightie-whities while doing split squats.
• In fact, never wear tightie-whities while doing any leg exercise.
• If a guy spots you during a set even if you don't ask for one, he's most likely hitting on you.
• If said guy asks for your number, he's definitely hitting on you.
• Always wear slippers in the shower.
• Don't get on a treadmill facing one that a girl with big boobs is running on, unless you like falling off the treadmill from the distraction.
• If, in fact, you do fall off the treadmill, don't bother to act like nothing happened. The trainers will be playing that particular security-cam tape over and over at their Christmas party every year for eternity.
• Hold yourself back from singing along to the music from your headphones.
• Yes, she's wearing a thong. Stop looking.
• Nobody in the gym is looking at you; they're all too busy looking at themselves in the mirror.
• Except me. I watch everyone.

Father's Day

Today my dad told me about his tenth birthday when my grandfather gave him a shoebox-shaped present. It seemed to my dad that the box itself was much heavier than a pair of shoes. When he opened the box, inside lay a hammer. A ten year-old kid would understandably not be happy about this. My dad sure wasn't. He asked my grandfather what it was all about and the answer given was, "Dignity of labor."

Despite feeling like he was jipped out of a good present, I have a feeling that that particular lesson rubbed off on my dad. He's one of the most hard-working men I know. And looking back, not only was he hard-working, but he was perhaps the best manager and fairest boss I have ever known.

Still, it's a good thing I never worked for him. Heh.

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More Father's Day stuff. Lolo (my grandfather on my mother's side) told me once that his father was a witch doctor and that he'd travel all over the visayas getting his witch doctoring on. Isn't that strange that only four generations ago my people were into witch doctoring?

Lolo, by the way, was ever the story-teller. He used to tell his grandkids about the time he was fighting the Japanese and was hit in the head with a grenade. Even though he was hit hard enough to leave a deep scar on his head (I've seen it), Lolo had the where-with-all to pick the grenade up and throw it back to the enemy.

Lolo had some cojones back in the day, man.

gmail / movies

All right, so I got invited to gmail. I have to admit that it's pretty cool, but in the end it's just another email service, isn't it?

I can't help but think, "Okay, what now?"

Obviously it's pretty exclusive since you have to be invited. I only know three other people personally that have it and two of those people I have zero interaction with these days.

I feel like I'm in a gang but we haven't decided who we're gonna rumble with yet. Like we're waiting for The Warriors to come into our neighborhood so we can come out and pla-ay. *clink* *clink*

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All DVDs should come standard with outtakes. I just watched the outtakes for Underworld and they're hilarious. "Pierce! Taylor! I love you."

Speaking of DVDs I now have to start buying them again now that both my brothers moved out of NYC. I suppose I could sneak down to Philadelphia and steal Kuya's movies -- that's not TOO far away. Incidentally, don't tell him (this means you, Michelle!) but I'm holding his Shao Lin Soccer DVD -- which I bought for him, by the way -- hostage until he returns my Boondock Saints.

Yesterday I bought both my brothers copies of the movie Ran on DVD. I just realized that I should have gotten a copy for myself, too, because I really want to watch it right now. For those of you who don't know, Ran is Akira Kurosawa's take on King Lear. It's an amazing movie visually. Much better than the Last Samurai and Shogun, too, in that there are no honkey heroes in it. Damn. Maybe I'll keep one copy for myself.

I saw that Denzel flick Fallen yesterday. It was pretty good but I guessed the ending about a quarter of the way into the movie. I hate it when I do that. Elias Koteas was in the movie briefly. Whenever I see him I keep thinking of him as "Casey Jones" from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I still need to see Troy, Chronicles of Riddick (after I see Bitch Plack... uh Pitch Black), Saved, Shrek 2, Imelda, Dodge Ball, and Harry Potter 3 -- but only because I wanna see what Hermoine looks like now. Yes, yes. "G, you sick bastard you."

Jury Duty

I didn't want to do it. But legally, I'm obligated. Good timing with the passing away, though, Ronald Reagan. His death got me a free day for my week of jury duty. That probably saved me from getting on a case, too.

The whole juror selection process is like playing Russian Roulette. First off I'm on telephone standby, which means at 4:30pm every day I have to call in and find out if I have to actually go into the courts. Friday I called and I didn't have to go in on Monday. I lucked out for Tuesday, too. But on Wednesday I had to go. It's like each day was a bullet and I blew my brains out on the third trigger-pull.

So there I was sitting in the big ol' waiting room and these two guys, who sounded like they were straight outta the Sopranos, are sitting behind me talking.

Paisan One: So how do I get outta dis?
Paisan Two: What, you wanna get outta dis?
Paisan One: Yeah.
Paisan Two: Then put 'disability.'
Paisan One: How do you spell dat?
Paisan Two: D - I - S - A - T - I - B - I - L - L - Y.

I kid you not.

And then... again with the Russian Roulette. At around midday they make an announcement to see if anyone would volunteer to come back Thursday. If you volunteered you could leave right away and have the rest of the day free, but if you stayed there was a good chance you wouldn't have to come back the next day. However, the chances of being put on a case were equal for either choice. So I opted to go home, and take my chances with the next bullet.

As luck would have it, the next day we all get pulled into another room to be interviewed by a pair of lawyers for a lawsuit. They interviewed us eight at a time. This was a civil case so they needed only six jurors and two alternates. I wasn't part of the first group to be interviewed, so I sat there staring at the plaintiff's lawyer who was this really hot blonde girl with a very pleasant voice and light brown eyes. She kept looking my way, too. Musta been the scraggly beard and the faded maroon hoody and cargo shorts I was wearing.

One of the questions that they asked of the potential jurors was what they did for a living:

Hot Lawyer Chick: Mr. Daly, what is it exactly that you do?
Mr. Daly: I'm a tree-trimmer. (I don't know why but I chuckled at this.)
Hot Lawyer Chick: And Mr. Daly, where do you work?
Mr. Daly: Uh, on trees. (Oddly enough nobody laughed at that.)

I took the entire hour that they gave us for lunch so I was rushing in the bathroom. One of the judges was in there and I said, "Good afternoon your eminence." I don't think that was the correct way to address him, but oh well. Anyway like I said I was rushing and I wound up splashing water on my shorts so it looked like I peed on myself. Dang! I tried rubbing the wet spots with paper towels but it wasn't working fast enough, and I looked obscene doing it. Then I tried to push my crotch up to the hand-dryer thing on the wall and I looked even more obscene doing that.

So I wound up having to wait it out and rushed back into the jury-selection room two minutes late. It turned out that they had already picked four jurors and needed only two more, and two alternates. So they interviewed the second set of 8 people. I wasn't in that group either. The hot lawyer chick continued to look my way. I smiled but I don't think she was, by law, allowed to smile back, but she did hold my eye for a bit.

To make a long story short, I wasn't picked to be part of the jury. In fact I wasn't even interviewed. I think it's because the hot lawyer chick wanted to legally be able to speak with me. This is where, if we were in the movies, she'd slip me her number and we'd have illicit sex in the judge's chambers.

But this ain't a movie. I went home, and she went to court.

Love Can Be Disgusting

I took my parents to breakfast this morning for their 35th wedding anniversary.

Dad: When we first got married you were very aggressive.
Mom: I had to be. I was taming a lion.
Me: Ay, mag su-suka na ako.

Moving Stuff

Moved Kuya to Philadelphia this weekend. I just formulated an idea about how the definition of "moving" is different depending on your sex.

For women, moving means arranging and setting up and making things just-so.
For men, it means moving stuff.

Cell Phone Religion

"There are no cell phones in Heaven. But there's no signal in Hell."

I made that shit up at church. If you really really think about it, it's really deep. No really. Just think about it. Let me know what you get from it.

Love

Don't mess with it. It's dangerous to do so.

How Morbid Am I?

Happiness is a state of contentment.
Contentment breeds complacency.
Complacency begets stagnation.
Stagnation becomes apathy.
Apathy equals death.

Therefore happiness is death.

Racist Hypocrisy

An excerpt of Dallas Cowboy head coach Bill Parcell's news conference:

"You've got to keep an eye on those two (quarterback coach Sean Payton and defense coordinator Mike Zimmer), because they're going to try to get the upper hand. Mike wants the defense to do well, and Sean, he's going to have a few ... no disrespect for the Orientals, but what we call Jap plays. OK. Surprise things.... No disrespect to anyone."

Now I'm not Japanese so I wasn't offended. But I hear that many Japanese and Japanese-Americans were, and it's their right to be offended. What really irks me is that a black sports reporter named Michael Smith emphatically voiced his opinion on the show Around The Horn that it wasn't a big deal and that Parcells should not be fined. Replace "Orientals" with "coloreds" and "Jap" with "nigger," and I bet he would be screaming for the Tuna's head.

It's hypocrisy like this that really makes me proud to be an American.

Soundtrack Of My Mind

Check this out. It's like they made a commercial for me. Sing it:

Glenn!
Glenn, Glenn, Glenn!
Glenn, Glenn, Glenn.....

The Reason Why I Hate Allen Iverson

Practice.

He is a great talent.
He has the ability to be a franchise player.
But he is no leader, when he needs to be.

If I had AI's talent, y'all would forget who Michael Jordan was.

This Is So Cute

It figures that the cutest l'il thing, my "little sis" Cathy Ho, sent me this cute little website. It's so cute. Make sure your speakers are on though, the music is cute, too.

Thanks, Caffee!

http://members.cox.net/crashy/pics/namesong.mpeg