bigbadbob's Blog

Last week I wrote of the passing of TV giant Ed McMahon. That was sad enough, but then the gorgeous Farrah Fawcett leaves us and two hours after that “The King Of Pop”, Michael Jackson? What a major loss for the world! And if that’s not enough film & TV star Gale Storm and TV Pitchman Billy Mays, and now I’m told that a friend of mine and a client, someone I‘ve worked with for years, famed impressionist Fred Travalena, has also died…All within a one week period! I’m at a loss for words. We knew that Farrah was suffering but I think we were ALL praying for a miracle cure…That just didn’t come. And Michael, the musical genius and perennial “man-boy” to quote Paul McCartney, unexpectedly passes. I don’t know about you, but I’m dumbfounded and uncharacteristically at a loss for words!

 BIG,VERY SAD, BOB!

Last week I wrote of the passing of TV giant Ed McMahon. That was sad enough, but then the gorgeous Farrah Fawcett leaves us and two hours after that “The King Of Pop”, Michael Jackson? What a major loss for the world! And if that’s not enough film & TV star Gale Storm and TV Pitchman Billy Mays, and now I’m told that a friend of mine and a client, someone I‘ve worked with for years, famed impressionist Fred Travalena, has also died…All within a one week period! I’m at a loss for words. We knew that Farrah was suffering but I think we were ALL praying for a miracle cure…That just didn’t come. And Michael, the musical genius and perennial “man-boy” to quote Paul McCartney, unexpectedly passes. I don’t know about you, but I’m dumbfounded and uncharacteristically at a loss for words!

 BIG,VERY SAD, BOB!

ADVERTISERS! WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?!?!?!?

Is there any reason to be subjected to mind numbing commercials? They make it feel as if the programs are getting in the way of the ads!!!

First of all, it’s poor planning to run one car commercial after another. There was a time when the clients would pull their ads if that happened. It’s stupid and confusing, isn’t it?  What I get out of it is Ttest drive the new Chevy-Ram-Toyota-Jeep-Nissan-Volkswagen-Lincoln-Mercury
-Lexus-Infinity at your Chrysler-Audi-Land Rover dealer”.

What kind of insanity are they preaching?

 And then there’s the spot about the customer arguing with the store manager about the missing cardboard in the ‘Fibre One’ Cereal.  If I was that manager I’d grab the box from the guy and hit him in the head with it. “You wanted cardboard? There’s you cardboard!” You wanna be regular eat a salad!

And then they tell you about a great newiIce cream treat “Blue Bunny” followed by Valerie Bertinelli doing a Jenny Craig commercial?!?!? Can anyone explain the logic to that?

Those ridiculous, obnoxious, Geico comericials with annoying cavemen and the talking, green Geko! I’d like to see him get into fight with the Aflac duck and get busted by the ASPCA for brawling, being a public nuisance and “DISTURBING THE PEACE!”

Why do they continuously think that they can get us to purchase things, by insulting our intelligence?  I say BANISH the advertising infidels.  WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THAT?!?!?!

AGAIN WITH THE CELL PHONES!

It seems that you can’t go anywhere any more without encountering someone with some sort of cellphone-earpiece-farkocktah-device sticking out of their ears. Or walking around with their thumbs going at supersonic speeds texting on their whatevers! Some people even do this while they’re driving, which is scary to begin with, but even scarier while they’re playing THUMB HOCKEY!!! What IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??

And again with the LOUD talking on their cell phones! I’m driving back from the beach and this car pulls up at the light with a young girl shouting on her cell about trying to find a day when she can have her eyebrows shaved. I shout back, “Why not do it Tuesday?” She yells, “Why are you eavesdropping on my conversation?” I come back with,”Why are you talking so loud ya freakin’ pant-load?!?! And I got a better question, why do you wanna shave your eyebrows???” The light changed and off she sped! Just the day before I got on an elevator with a woman talking on her cell about organizing a BOTOX party. What the heck is a Botox party? Why do women feel the need to inflate their heads to look more attractive? It makes your faces look like balloons in the Macy’s Parade! Trust me, it IS NOT attractive!

In my family we all carry two cells, a Verizon & a Nextel. We never give out the numbers to anyone because we’re constantly fielding calls at our home office. The rule is if we’re not home let the voicemail deal with our calls. When we do call each other we try to keep it brief and find a private place to talk. I was shopping with my wife at Walmart when she went to look at shoes so we split up. I went to look at barbecues. I’m in the gardening center alongside a woman who’s talking on her phone about Beverly’s C-section and the new baby’s first poop. Double gross!! “I’m telling you Marge it was so ripe, Harry and I almost puked.” I looked at her and said, “Lady, keep your conversation to yourself! You’re grossing me out over here.” She gives me a dirty look and says,” I’ll call ya later.” She stuffs her cell in her purse and says to me, ”Well I never!” I say, “I believe you lady!” At that point a very loud “BOBBY, ARE YOU THERE?” blares out of my Nextel radio in my back pocket freaking the nasty woman out and causing her to climb up the clay pot display! Ya know, being a drummer, my hearing is shot which is why I had the volume on maximum. Ya know lady…payback’s a b#*ch!

With summer coming it's time to post this again! Hope ya don't mind!

With Memorial Day Weekend almost upon us, signaling the true beginning of Summer, I would like to share some fond memories from my past.

            For most of my life, I have been an apartment dwelling, city-type person.  Eating outdoors meant chomping on a Devil dog and drinking a Pepsi while sitting on my stoop!  It wasn't until an uncle of mine moved to the suburbs that I had my first experience at a "barbecue".  There were those ant and bug infested picnics we used to go to when I was a child, but I would like to focus on the metamorphosis that takes place in man, when he owns a home and insists on cooking outdoors from the time the first bud appears on a tree, and continues until the last leaf falls off that same tree!.... Especially when one of the prerequisites to purchasing the house, was that it have a "state-of-the-art" kitchen!  The uncle, who has since passed on, was a tough, meat-and-potatoes type of guy, who demanded that his food be on the table when he got home.  Although he was a great cook, he would no sooner prepare a meal then wash a dish.  In his old way of thinking, all of that was "WOMAN'S WORK!"  So what made him change?  Was it the fresh suburban air?  Was it owning a house?  I think it was both, coupled with his discovery of the BARBECUE GRILL!

            When he purchased his first barbecue grill, he was magically transformed from THE MAN OF STEEL, to THE MAN OF VEAL!  From that point on, every time I went out for a visit, his topic of conversation wasn't to complain about his tough commute or sports. Instead, he would go to the freezer, take out a box of hamburger patties and brag about this new butcher he found, and how the guy would personally grind the meat in front of my uncle so he knew how lean and fresh the patties were.  Then he would pass them around to all of his guests for inspection.  At the time I was young and single and I never knew how to react.  I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I'd say something like "Wow, I don't ever remember seeing a more perfect box of lean, frozen, fat-free, burgers before.  Boy, if I ever need a butcher expert when I get married, you're definitely the one I'll call, Uncle Bill!"

            Spending the weekend at good old Uncle Bill's became a nightmare of burnt food.  We ate barbecued breakfast, barbecued lunch, dinner, and snacks!  If it was meant to be ingested, he BARBECUED it.  My lips and gums were ripped to shreds, from trying to bite through over-burnt, bullet proof, chicken skin.  When I'd try to remove the skin, he'd bark, "How can you do that!?!  The skin is the best part of the chicken!"  The burgers were so well done, when I swallowed them, they'd bounce around my lower digestive tract like a ball in an indoor squash court.  I promised myself that when I got married, I'd NEVER get bitten by the barbecue bug.

            I kept that promise until we had our first house, and I found myself wandering through the out door section of the department store.  Before long I was magnetically drawn to a huge display featuring every type of barbecue unit known to mankind.  What was worse was that I began to salivate at the thought of purchasing one.  The next day, I found myself standing in our back yard, wishing the hours away so I could try out my new charcoal grill.  That's right, big deal, so I bought one, got a problem with that?  So any way, let's see if I can remember how "Good Old Uncle Bill" did it.  I empty half a ten pound bag of charcoal into my new twenty four ninety five beauty and build what appears to be a ten foot high ebony pyramid.  My wife sticks her head out the door and asks why, at nine fifteen in the morning, am I starting the barbecue, and can't I wait until dinnertime? I tell her I can't wait that long and thought we'd kick off the day with a BARBECUED BRUNCH!  Then she looked at Mount Briquette and said, "Isn't that a bit much?  What're we having BARBECUED MOOSE?!"  As always, she was right, so I put most of the charcoal back in the bag.  Now with what I deemed to be a reasonable amount stacked on the grill, I can't seem to get the darn stuff to light!  The wife, noticing my frustration, brings out a tray of sandwiches, as it is now lunchtime, and the family sits at our new redwood table, (yeah, I got one of those too!) and takes nourishment.

            Just as I'm getting ready to resume the task at hand, we get a surprise visit from our two best friends, who happen to be apartment dwellers.  (For the sake of this article, let's refer to them as Jack and Jill.  Their names have been changed, to protect our friendship!)  Jack immediately spots the barbecue and starts ribbing me.  "You actually bought one of those things?" "No", I answer, "it fell out of the sky!  Yeah, I bought one, what're gonna do about it?"  Noticing that I was not amused by his remark he says, "Gee, I didn't mean to hit a sore spot, what's the problem?"  "Aw, I think the salesman sold me some FIRE PROOF BRIQUETTES!  I've been trying for hours to light this thing and nothing I do seems to work."  Soon Jack and Jill realize that, to me, this is a serious dilemma.  So they put their heads together and tell me how, when they go on picnics, they use newspaper and dried twigs to start the fire in the barbecue pit.

            So, before I know it, Jack and Jill go up the hill to fetch a pail of kindling.  Jack, as it turns out, is a CLOSET PYROMANIAC and starts a roaring fire in the grill, the kind people use to signal passing ships when they're marooned on a desert island.  I don't want to criticize him because he did something I couldn't do, namely start a fire, but as the flames die down, there's such a thick smoke screen in our back yard, we can't see the garage or our trees, and from the bay, we begin hearing FOG HORNS!  As the flames die down however, we notice that the briquettes, although warm, do not seem to be affected by this tactic.  Jack thinks for a minute, then goes into the house and comes out with a coffee can filled with something.  Soon he's spooning bacon grease onto the smoldering twigs and before long we are experiencing another SIGNAL FIRE, with twice as much smoke and LOUDER foghorns from the bay!

            Now it's getting close to dinnertime, so we send out for pizza.  The elderly gent who delivered our pies said, "Hope ya don't think I'm buttin' in or nuthin', but I had no problem finding your house, son... alls I did was follow the smoke!...So I figure, either you have a volcano in your back yard, or it's yer first time with a barbecue."  After fessing up to the latter, he informed me that I should buy self-starting briquettes or a starter fluid that could help me to be successful in my grilling endeavors.  I thanked him, gave him a generous tip and Jack and I went out and bought both. I didn't want to take any more chances.

            Returning to my back yard, I filled the grill with the self-starting briquettes, put a match to it and voila, I actually got a fire started.  Unaware that once the flame goes down, I'm supposed to wait until the coals turn gray, I panicked and threw on half a can of starter fluid....WHOOOSSSHH!...another SIGNAL FIRE!  Once the flames died down, we rapidly began putting the raw patties on the grill.  To keep the flame going, I continued squirting starter fluid on the coals until they were all cooked beyond recognition.

            Not wanting to hurt my feelings, everyone ate their share.  Even with all the barbecue sauce that I used, our breath reeked of lighter fluid.  We were a yard full of human Molotov cocktails!

            Since then, a lot has changed, we've moved into another house and one of my first purchases was a "GAS GRILL", which I've learned to operate properly (No, we do not burp butane!).  Yes, I have entered the BIG LEAGUES, in my never-ending "QUEST FOR FIRE"!

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A NEW YORKER 15!

1)   If you know that Subway’s a ride not a sangwich!

2)   If your mother has her own form of martial arts called “NUNJA!” Nunja do that!

3)   If what people in the burbs call a ‘walk-in closet’ you call an apartment! 

4)   If you can read a newspaper and drink coffee while standing on a subway!

5)   If you know someone who owns a cement shoe store!

6)   If you’ve ever lost someone in a pothole!

7)   If you pluck you eyebrows with needle-nose pliers!

8)   If you can change the hinges on your kitchen cabinet, using a nail clip!

9)   If you can make fish cakes and Franco American spaghetti into a gourmet meal!

10) If you can talk in complete sentences using only vowels!

These were sent to me by a friend.

   These are actual comments made on students' report cards by
teachers in the New York City public school system. A ll teachers were
reprimanded (but, boy, are these funny!)
   
   1. Since my last report, your child has reached rock bottom and
has started to dig.
   
   2.. I would not allow this student to breed.
   
   3. Your child has delusions of adequacy.
   
   4. Your son is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
   
   5. Your son sets low personal standards and then consistently
fails to achieve them.
   
   6. The student has a 'full six-pack' but lacks the plastic thing
to hold it all together.
   
   7. This child has been working with glue too much.
   
   8. When your daughter's IQ reaches 50, she should sell.
   
   9. The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train
isn't coming.
   
   10. If this student were any more stupid, he'd have to be
watered twice a week.
   
   11. It's impossible to believe the sperm that created this child
beat out 1,000,000 others.
   
   12. The wheel is turning but the hamster is definitely dead.

   

I just got back from the Super Market...whic is why I'm posting this blog again!! Grrrrrr

THE NOT-SO-SUPER MARKETS!

You get on the shortest line in the supermarket, you empty your shopping cart onto the belt, only to find out that there’s a computer glitch/pricing problem, and it’s the checkers first day. GREAT! She tries to fix it on her own thus making it worse and turning your shopping trip into a miniseries. So you start piling everything back into the cart and, just as you finish, they fix it!    Different day, different supermarket, longer line, much longer wait!!  At last it’s my turn…I’m finally going to get out of here. OH YEAH? That’s what I think.  They pick MY moment to have their infamous CHANGING OF THE GUARD ceremony….the changing of the checkers!  They exchange money boxes, have a lot of small talk , take the time to exchange family photos and some other ritualistic mumbo jumbo, all this while the woman behind me and her tribe are screaming,  kicking and sneezing all over me.   And now I have to go to the bathroom…GET ME OUTA HERE!!   Okay, okay…today I’m gonna do better!!  OH, NO I’M NOT!!  Not if the woman on line ahead of me has anything to say about it.  She has a KNAPSACK FULL OF COUPONS, and by the time she’s done…they’re PAYING HER and offering her SHARES IN THE STORE!!  It seems it’s TRIPLE COUPON DAY… and the coupons keep coming…day goes into night, seasons change and most of my produce has gone bad.  But it’s TRIPLE COUPON DAY!!  You know what? I’ll think twice the next time my wife says, “Honey, if you’re going out, can you pick me up a few things??”

Hearing Loss

A concerned husband went to a doctor to talk about his wife. He says to the doctor, "Doctor, I think my wife is deaf because she never hears me the first time and always asks me to repeat things."

"Well," the doctor replied, "go home and tonight stand about fifteen feet from her and say something to her. If she doesn't reply, move about five feet closer and say it again. Keep doing this so that we'll get an idea about the severity of her deafness."

Sure enough, the husband goes home and does exactly as instructed. He starts off about fifteen feet from his wife in the kitchen, as she is chopping some vegetables and says, "Honey, what's for dinner?" He hears no response.

He moves about five feet closer and asks again. No reply. He moves five feet closer. Still no reply.

He gets fed up and moves right behind her, about an inch away, and asks again, "Honey, what's for dinner?" She replies, "For the fourth time, vegetable stew!"

Got this one from the wife.....Think that she's trying to tell me something????   Signs You're No Longer in College... --

   You no longer know what time fast food drive-thru windows close.

-- Your potted plants stay alive.

-- You pay at least a dollar more than the minimum payment on your credit card bill.

-- Your friends' hook-ups and break-ups are now marriages and divorces.

-- You attend parties that the police don't raid.

-- You're not expected to leave the room when the adults are talking.

-- You refer to college students as "those kids."

-- You drink wine, scotch and martinis instead of just beer, beer and beer.

-- You feed your dog Science Diet instead of leftover pizza.

-- At 6 a.m., you're putting your contact lens in instead of taking them out.

-- Naps are no longer weekday options.

-- Dating involves dinner and a movie, not keggers and Ecstasy.

-- Grocery lists contain more than toilet paper and potato chips.

-- You leave parties because you have a busy day tomorrow, not because the EMS guy has strapped you down.

Here is a link to another "PHENOMENAL" music video from "PLAYING FOR CHANGE" that is a MUST SEE from beginning to end!

TRUST ME ON THIS ONE! BBB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWFxFg7-GU

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