Brady’s Blog

my little brother was about two i’d guess..

he went into one of the bathrooms at our house and climbed up into the sink and was playing in the water and shampoo..

i’m sure the shampoo was there because my mom often washed our hair in the sink..

i have no idea why she did that so much..

or i guess for that matter why we don’t do that - i can’t remember washing any of our kids hair in the sink - at least not since they were babies..

weird..

anyway, my little brother got up in the sink and made a huge mess and was soaking wet..

so mom yanked him out and got on to him and spanked him..

and promptly put him right back in the sink to take pictures of him because it was so cute..

and that’s why he’s a serial killer..

just kidding..

i have no proof he’s killed anyone at all..

well.. i’m sure he has..

but serial killer.. that’s a little strong..

i mean.. serial implies like.. at least four..

and he’s pretty young..

i think i can say with a great deal of confidence there is no way my brother has killed more than two people..

tops..

ok.. maybe three..

no way he’s over three..

and seriously, if i’m called to the stand and forced to tell that story about him getting spanked and punished and put right back up in the sink like that..

he’ll get off scot-free..

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ok.. that’s the end of the post.. but..

can i just say..

i have never been more proud of a title for a post..

shampoo and conditioning?

get it?

he was messing with the shampoo.. but his behavior was being conditioned.. which is the same word as conditioner.. which goes with shampoo!!

holy smokes people.. seriously..

that’s pretty awesome..

and that just came to me.. out of nowhere..

just BLIP! into my head..

man.. you can’t coach that folks..

can. NOT. coach that.

i mentioned my alarm clock the other day..

i told you all about how it was of poor design and poorer function..

and yeah.. it is..

but i’m pretty sure that clock is about seventy five percent smarter than i am..

here’s what happened yesterday morning..

the alarm went off at 0530 hours..

normally i wake up right before the alarm goes off but for some reason i was totally out of it yesterday morning..

so the alarm started.. well.. alarming..

and so i groggily reached for it to turn it off..

but instead of the alarm clock, my hand found the base of the lamp which is next to the alarm clock on the bedside table..

so i fumbled and searched blindly all over the lamp stand for the button to the alarm clock - oddly to no avail..

and somehow, before realizing what i was doing, i managed to actually pull the lamp over onto the bed, smacking myself in the head with it.. hard..

so.. like i was saying.. obviously this clock is much smarter than i am..

i mean the thing figured out how to wake me up with a lamp to the head..

that’s pretty smart right there..

—————

bonus material -

just wanted to let you know i left out a joke here - i had an elaborate, contrived, unfunny pun about how the alarm clock’s name was indiglo montoya (like indigo montoya from the princess bride - since it has the indiglo function) and did i have six fingers and on and on..

just thought some of you might enjoy that - not the actual joke - just the idea of how dumb that joke would have been..

anyway.. it’s bonus material so.. you know.. no extra charge..

when i crashed my mitsubishi galant a few years ago, i decided to replace it with a jeep wrangler..

so i started watching for a good pre-owned tj..

and suddenly, there were jeeps everywhere..

i had never noticed them before.. because i wasn’t looking.. but since my mind was tuned to look for them, it seemed as though every third vehicle i saw was a jeep..

i’ve experienced this same phenomenon with words many times..

it seems like when i learn a new word, especially if it’s a particularly useful or interesting word (i remember this happened to me with the word didactic), it starts showing up everywhere..

turns out, that same thing can happen with comedians..

here’s what i mean..

i have known for some time that a person named paul f tompkins existed..

just like i knew jeeps were real things that people drove..

but then, a couple of months ago, paul suddenly became part of my conscious thought..

i think it first happened when he called in to talk to tom scharpling on the best show on wfmu..

i’ve mentioned the best show before so.. ya know.. google it or whatever.. it’s great..

anyway, i was listening to the best show as i always do and suddenly there’s paul f tompkins.. and he’s being very funny..

and he’s not “doing comedy” at all mind you..

what i mean by that is he’s not working prepared bits into the conversation like he’s on a promo visit for his act..

he’s just talking to tom and being funny..

he’s just a funny guy..

that’s what i like about paul - it’s not just the material that’s funny.. he’s actually funny himself..

he’s quick and clever and smart..

granted some of this can be written off to taste.. or what many comedians refer to as “sensibility”..

but to me..

he’s funny..

so anyway,

after that first call, he popped up on the best show here and there..

and then i heard him on a couple of other podcasts..

and then he was just everywhere..

tv, radio, youtube, podcasts..

just everywhere..

i even got to see him live at a show at the ucb theatre in los angeles..

now that obviously wasn’t just a freak accident - i went there to see comedians.. and he’s a comedian..

but according to the ucb website he wasn’t scheduled to be there that night..

but there he was..

and he was funny..

and so..

that’s how paul f tompkins is just like a jeep..

and that is one solid analogy..

so don’t go trying to find holes in it because there aren’t any..

i may not be angry enough about this to make it all that interesting, but let’s go ahead and dig right in and we’ll just find out..

i happened to catch a little bit of sportscenter on friday morning..

i wasn’t really looking for sportscenter, of course.. it just happened to be on before one of the football games..

so there was a talking head talking.. as is always the case..

and he was running through the stories of the day..

the saturday college match-ups that were scheduled, the nba results from the night before, etc..

and then.. out of nowhere and much to my disbelief..

comes a story about dancing with the stars..

as in the television show..

i’ll review the segment now even though i spat in disgust and changed the channel immediately and did not watch it..

it was treated like an actual sports story.. they interviewed one of the contestants and talked about his chances of winning and what a great time he’s had being involved..

there was highlights from the show, along with inside information on all of the hard work that goes into dancing at that level..

there was smiling and laughter and jocularity by the ton..

and i can almost guarantee this - at no point did anyone say something like “isn’t it interesting how we’re talking about this on a sports show even though it has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with sports?!”

and i bet no one also said “gee.. i wonder if this insipid, less than real reality show would get much coverage on this all sports network if the disney company didn’t own both that show and this network?”

seriously.. i know they don’t burn people at the stake anymore..

and that’s fine.. they probably shouldn’t.. i mean.. that’s mean..

but whoever green-lit the “dancing” segment on sportscenter?

that person should be tortured..

i mean what’s next?

are they going to interview goofy?

“goofy, tell us about the ‘42 olympics.. you were the champ that year right?”

i’m not kidding.. i think torture was absolutely made for situations like that..

that person should be tortured..

maybe not killed..

but definitely tortured..

one of our clients at my previous job was a sorority house..

it just happened to be mrs cracker’s sorority..

the job i did there was to go in at the start of each semester, usually with one other guy, hook up all the girls’ computers to the wireless network, install a couple of network printers, and try to clean up as much of the spyware, viruses and junk on those machines as we could..

it was kind of like being an electronic version of the doctor on the first season of deadwood..

if you’re expecting some kind of penthouse letter here, you’re going to be disappointed, but a couple of the girls did take me down in the basement..

that’s where mrs. cracker’s picture was hanging.. class of ‘94..

they had a lot of fun with that..

they couldn’t believe someone as old as me was able to snag someone like the girl in that picture..

basically they treated me like i was eighty eight years old..

pretty funny..

anyway, about the third time i went up there one of the girls that already had a laptop on the network showed up with a second machine..

cracker: “ok.. next..”

pi phi: “ok.. i need this one hooked up - and maybe move some stuff from this old one..”

cracker: “ok.. isn’t that the machine we just hooked up last time?”

pi phi: “yeah.. it’s my old one..”

cracker: “uh.. old? it was brand new like three months ago right?”

pi phi: “well.. yeah.. it was new then.. but it’s not working too good anymore - hey i saw your wife’s picture.. she’s a hottie..”

cracker: “i know right?”

pi phi: “yeah.. seriously.. she’s really pretty.. how old are you?”

cracker: “i’m terribly, terribly old.. but um.. you do understand my wife is no longer the same age she was when that picture was taken right? i mean.. she’s just as pretty now.. but she’s not still 19..”

pi phi: “well.. yeah..”

cracker: “so what’s wrong with that old laptop?”

pi phi: “i have no idea.. it’s just not working.. a couple of months after i got it it got a virus on it or something so my dad got me this one..”

cracker: “oh.. well.. that makes sense..”

mrs. cracker and i have a deal..

it’s what you might call a gentleman’s agreement between two people who are not gentlemen at all..

one for reasons of biology, the other for reasons of psychology..

here’s the agreement we have..

during thanksgiving and christmas, mrs. cracker has agreed that she will cook pecan pies by the scores..

i on the other hand have agreed to eat those pies as quickly as possible and spend the rest of the year complaining about how she never makes pecan pies except for on thanksgiving and christmas..

i also do my best to make her miserable in seven hundred and twenty one other ways, but the pie thing is set in stone..

i am after all a man of my word..

i own the single worst alarm clock radio ever manufactured..

it’s some kind of old timex thing..

i don’t know exactly what model it is but it says “indiglo” on it in a couple of places..

i’m pretty sure indiglo is spanish for “impossible to see”..

because this thing is impossible to see..

well.. i mean.. at night it is..

or.. you know.. early morning hours..

any time it’s dark.. that’s when the visibility drops..

basically, if you need an alarm clock that’s really easy to see in broad daylight, this thing is for you..

also, it has about fifty buttons on it and not one of them is within six inches of where you would expect to find it..

it is in essence a county fair blue ribbon prize winning piece of counterintuitive junk..

and i’m angry about it..

but i’m not mad at timex..

at all..

i mean.. i could be mad at timex if the thing was new and bad..

but i’ve had it for about ten years..

and it hasn’t changed a bit..

it’s been impossible to see and difficult to use since the moment i got it..

but i’ve just used it..

well.. actually..

i don’t use it all that much..

because mrs. cracker has a clock too..

and i don’t really need the actual alarm function that much because i almost always wake up two minutes before it goes off anyway..

so i’ve had this alarm clock sitting on the side table for ten years for me to stare at for a few minutes each time before raising my head up to look over at the clock i can actually see..

i really am a genius..

in honor of thanksgiving, i will now tell the proposal story of cracker and mrs. cracker..

yes, one man’s thanksgiving is another woman’s tet offensive..

mrs. cracker and i became acquainted while working together at chili’s in fayetteville, arkansas..

we also might well have run into each other at the university of arkansas, since we were not only enrolled at the same time but also happened to both be communications majors and therefore had many classes in the same buildings, etc..

we might have, that is, if i had actually attended class once in a while.. which i did not..

so our time together was spent mostly in the romantic setting of the underbelly of a chain restaurant where i was not only her trainer for a couple of days but also saved her life when she burned her finger on a fajita skillet..

i followed her around the entire shift spraying burn spray on her finger and trying desperately to deflect her fumbling advances..

she was coming on pretty strong in those early days.. always dropping lines on me like “please don’t talk to me..” and “i would like it better if you didn’t speak to me..”

and the ultimate playing-hard-to-get-but-obviously-totally-into-me line “i said don’t talk to me.. why are you still trying to talk to me after i’ve so politely asked you not to do so? seriously stop it..”

anyway, fast forward a couple of years and i’ve finally fallen completely under mrs. cracker’s spell..

and it now seems time for the proposal..

back then, mrs. cracker and i both liked to do crossword puzzles..

so i had a friend of mine build a crossword puzzle..

and the answer to 11 across or whatever was “mrscrackerwillyoumarryme”

pretty clever, huh?

anyway, we still have that very crossword puzzle.. it’s framed and hanging in our house..

and every day mrs. cracker kneels before that framed crossword puzzle, crosses her heart, and thanks the lord above for bringing me into her life..

i haven’t actually seen this ritual but i’m pretty sure she does that..

every day..

twice on thanksgiving..

hopefully you haven’t heard all the ridiculous controversy which has surrounded the arkansas razorback football team over the last couple of years..

because it’s embarrassing..

basically, we had a top quarterback recruit come up right in the back yard here..

he came to the university along with his high school coach and all manner of intrigue and drama followed them..

and boy has it been one long boring story after another off the field, interspersed with world class mediocrity on the field..

mitch mustain was the qb.. he’s gone now - transferred to usc..

by all accounts he’s doing well there and may actually have a shot at starting next year..

anyway, mitch was at a birthday party for my nephew gage last year..

he was already on the way out at the time, but the kids that were there all still knew him as a razorback..

so a couple of them had him sign razorback stuff..

and he was a great sport about it..

he was also a good sport when stew took the irony one step further..

which makes me hope mitch goes on to be the greatest football player in the history of the universe..

because our boy stew will have the most valuable autographed baseball in the world..

cracker (to teenage girl at ute group): “sweet ipod.. is that new?”

ute: “yeah.. my dad got it for me..”

cracker: “right on.. sixty gig?”

ute: “um.. i dunno.. yeah.. i think..”

cracker: “cool.. so.. what’s on it?”

ute: “oh.. everything pretty much..”

cracker: “like what?”

ute: “oh.. everything.. i like all kinds of music..”

cracker: “really? so.. like what then? like.. name a band or something..”

ute: “oh.. i dunno.. i mean.. just everything.. i mean.. i like eighties, nineties, and today..”