Stooges Roofing, Inc.

Normal construction workers like to get up early. They like to start work the moment the job site is illuminated by the sunrise. The guys putting a new roof on my neighbor's house aren't normal construction workers.

I think they are Moe, Larry and Curley reincarnated as roofers.

On Monday they started the job. Sort of. Three guys showed up in two unmarked late-model trucks to have a look around. They climbed up on the roof and walked around a bit (it is not a very big roof). Then they left.

On Tuesday they rolled in at about 9:45am. Not exactly the crack of dawn. They proceeded to rip off most of the front side shingles and tack down some new underlayment cloth. Then they left. It was before noon.

This morning's arrival time was closer to 10am. They were ready to do some actual work but had forgotten something, and they sent Larry to retrieve it. He showed up over an hour later. It turns out he got lost on the way back - he was looking at the job sheet and searching for Elm Street. There is no Elm Street in my town. The homeowner's last name is Elm. He is an idiot.

Today did turn out to be a productive day, though. They got about half of the roof's shingles attached. They also narrowly missed hitting the homeowner in the head with a box that was thrown off of the roof. She yelled something at them, and then Moe yelled back that maybe she "should stay inside." She isn't the only one.

Curley readjusted the ladder when he was trying to carry a bundle of shingles up to the roof, only to get screamed at because it was "already perfect" and now the two Stooges on the roof might be stuck up there. Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk. The homeowner unplugged the air compressor for the nail gun (accidently, I think) and it took them half an hour to figure it out. Larry tripped over the new gutters that were staged in the middle of the yard and landed right on his back. Like I said, it turned out to be a productive day.

I'm just waiting for an anvil to fall out of the sky and hit one of them on the head.

All in all, though, I don't think I'd mind joining this team. They seem like they have some fun (minus the nose twisting and eye poking), they get up late, they go home early. Sounds like my kind of thing.

Just call me Shemp. I'll be over at about 10:00 tomorrow morning. Where are we going again?

The End Of The Album

When is the last time you bought an album? I'm not even talking about one made out of actual vinyl. I just mean a collection of songs by a band on a single archive of media. Better yet, when is the last time you listened to an album the whole way through? Without clicking next?

It used to be that an album was the only way you could get music (or so I've heard - I'm not all that old). Then you could buy a single of a released song complete with b-side. Now you can just buy one song at a time. Any song. And for as little as 88¢.

There goes the album.

The funny thing is that you can tell your iPod to show the album art of the song you are listening to, even though you would never even think about actually buying the whole thing. Artists don't even need to put out an entire album anymore. We're living in a single-oriented world. And I am a single-oriented girl. Or whatever.

But I still love the album. It's a collection of songs in the order that the musician intended for you to listen to them. Sadly, we will probably not see many more great ones in our lifetime. There is no need or incentive to put any effort into album making.

So, to eulogize the end of the album as we know it, I submit my top 5 albums of all time.

5) Foo Fighters
One By One




4) The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band




3) U2
Achtung Baby




2) Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness




1) Pink Floyd
The Wall



(click on the album covers for more information)

I'm sure after seeing my picks that you want to argue with me, or you at least have some of your own to share. Go ahead. Stop downloading that song for a second and post your favorites. Join me in celebrating the album.

The only rules are that no greatest hits or compilation albums are eligible for the list.

Goodbye album. It has been a fun ride. Rock on.

Posts Update II

Rabbit Stew
Toby has been given a stay of execution. Since PayPal had shut down their account, Toby's keepers have decided to sell a book instead. If 100,000 copies are sold by Thanksgiving Day, 2006, the bunny's life will be spared. There is even a press release about the change. Yes, the guys' names are James and Brian. No, I do not have anything to do with this.

$205,938,439.00
Things are back to normal in baseball. Since my comparison, the Yankees have improved dramatically and are only 3 games back in the AL East (and at the top of the Wild Card race in the American League). The Pirates are 32 games behind the NL Central leader. 32. And they are tied for the worst record in the NL. Boo. Oh, and about those 3 head-to-head games in June? The Buccos got swept in Yankee Stadium.

Episode III - Attack of the Marketing
I still have not seen the film. It comes out on DVD on November 1, so maybe I will watch it from the comfort of my own home. I have, however, eaten the "Choose the Dark Side" M&M's. They are silly.

The Replacements
Happily, I have no recent replacements to report. Since I have been asked repeatedly, I may (at some point) relate the entire story about the fuel pump in the Corsica.

Lawn Care
Appropriately enough, a 40 oz. bottle of Iron City Beer showed up on my neighbor's side yard the day after this post. He did not put it there. I'm sure the bottle's owners were trying to hit my lawn, but I guess consuming that much "Premium Lager" can throw off your aim.

Lawn Care

I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't own a dog. And I haven't sold lemonade to neighborhood folks in about 17 years. But you would never know it from all of the evidence on my front lawn.

When I cut the grass I usually have to stop multiple times to pick up debris. In the past few years I have found many things in my yard, including but not limited to: cigarette butts, a working lighter, a chewed up cigar, beer cans & beer bottles (empty & full), the packaging of an entire McDonald's Happy Meal, a "Lemonade - 25 cents" sign, half a lemon, plastic spoons & cups, a 7 of diamonds, love notes, class notes, batteries, a mortgage payment stub (not mine), roof shingles, and a white undershirt. Oh, yes. And dog poop. Lots of it.

I don't know how all this stuff ends up in my yard. Does the wind just end at my front lawn? Does the stop sign on the corner let drivers pause to throw junk out their car windows? Do people walking by just hate me? Or is someone planting evidence to frame the characters in the Dogs Playing Poker paintings?

Whatever the reason, about once a week in the non-winter months, there I am. Not smoking but with a back pocket full of butts. Not drinking but with a recycle bin full of Budweiser cans. And don't get me started about the other uses for a gardening shovel.

I mean, one of the thousand reasons I don't have a dog is that I don't want to clean up after it. But judging from some of the other stuff I've found out there, maybe it isn't the dogs that I should be worried about. Lemonade, anyone?

Sportsburgh

It has been quite a week for sports in Pittsburgh. All three major sports seasons are starting to overlap, and the city is buzzing with excitement.

The Penguins won the NHL draft lottery and used the first pick to select future Hall of Famer Sidney Crosby. He is supposed to be the next Mario Lemieux. How appropriate.

Even though he is going to save the team and bring multiple Stanley Cups to the city, very few people around here even know what he looks like. Here is a picture of young Sidney. Please don't run him over in your mad dash to the season ticket counter or on the way to get your #87 jersey.

The Steelers have started training camp, the first stop on the road to Super Bowl XL. That stands for "40" in football numerals. The crazy fans in this football town always look forward to this symbolic opening of the season, and this year expectations are as grand as usual. 16-0. One for the thumb. I think I saw some people tailgating at Heinz Field already.

The Pirates snuck past last Sunday's trade deadline, managing to give away only one decent player to a division rival in exchange for some guy you never heard of that was pretty good two years ago. They have officially given up on this season and are calling up players from the minor leagues. So why is everyone excited? They have unveiled the All-Star Game logo for next year. That's why. Can you say Home Run Derby into the Allegheny River?

Not to be outdone by our professional sports, the Bassmaster Classic was held in Pittsburgh last week, too. What, you say? Bass in the three rivers? I've never caught one and I don't know of anyone who has. Carp, sure. There are carp as big (and ugly) as a Toyota Prius in there. But very few bass. Case in point - the winner of the event actually had the lowest three day total weight ever, setting a Bassmaster Classic record for futility. And these were the best fisherman minds in the country.

What did they expect? Even the fish were busy paying attention to all of the sports excitement that was going on in Pittsburgh. Maybe if the so-called "Bassmasters" had used pieces of kolbassi dipped in Iron City Beer as bait they might have had better results. Go Pens! Go Steelers! Go Pirates (next year).

Not Working Out

It took me a while to drag my weight bench out to the curb for garbage pick up. It wasn't really that heavy. Just awkward. It has a big pulley system that sticks up at one end and a leg curl bar that is attached to a hinge at the other. I narrowly missed both cars, the garage door, and the stop sign in my front yard on the way out. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I got a better workout carrying it out to the trash than I ever did using it for its intended purpose. That's why it is sitting out there.

It was time for the weight bench to stop taking up space in my basement. I have finally realized that I will probably never lift weights again in my life. I'm just not a workout guy.

When I was younger I tried to fool myself into thinking that I could get a chiseled shape using the aforementioned bench and accompanying round heavy things, and that THIS time I would stick with it longer that two weeks. It never worked. There was always something else to do. School. Movies. Dessert. Sleep. All of these things were more exciting and less repetitive.

Earlier today I watched Lance Armstrong win his 7th consecutive Tour de France. This is a man who beat cancer, then came back to dominate his sport at the highest level. Incredible.

I, however, am typing this blog, watching tv, and eating Chex Mix. Mmm. I like the triangle cheese crackers.

So maybe my final decision about the weight bench is Lance's fault. Instead of being an inspiration, he has made me realize that world domination through fitness isn't in my future. I don't have any realistic workout goals. Being healthy is one thing. Weight bench usage is something different.

But I'm not the only one. We have some garbage pickers who come through our neighborhood - guys who drive around late at night before trash pickup and take things that people have put on the curb. Usually they grab big things - desks, doors, a bag of stuffed animals, etc. One man's garbage is another man's Sunday night activity.

So these two pickers stopped out front of my house just a bit ago. They discussed my weight bench for a few minutes, then got back in their rusty truck and drove off without it. Why did they leave the bench in my front yard? Maybe it was too awkward. Maybe there wasn't enough space left beside the rest of the junk they had already acquired.

Or maybe they decided that they would never really use it. Good for them. It took me 15 years to come to the same conclusion.

The Replacements

The past two weeks have been interesting. Since I last posted I have been to the beach and back. I have also been dealing with replacements.

For me, replacements are new items that have no new benefits or features. They are just substitutes for objects that no longer work. They add nothing. They only fix the status quo and make you pay for being able to do the same things as you could before. Here is a list of my recent replacements.

• Clothes Iron - The old one could only take so many falls from atop its ironing board perch. It started to leak water constantly, even in the upright position. We got a new one.
• Water Heater - I came back from the beach and turned the temperature on the old water heater from “vacation” back up to “warm.” It started hissing at me and proceeded to dump 15 gallons of water all over the floor. We got a new one.
• Fuel Pump in the Corsica - There has been some controversy about this one. There is a chance that the car ran out of gas and ruined the old fuel pump. There is also a chance that the pump went on its own (the car has almost 82k miles on it). I'm going with the natural causes, even if it is just to make me feel better. Regardless of the blame, we got a new one.

You see? I have no more benefits than I did before. My ironing, showering, and driving are the same. The money is gone, but I really have nothing to show for it.

As if that wasn't enough replacing for two weeks' time, the story gets better. When we came upstairs from mopping up after the old water heater, we started sifting through our vacation backlog of mail. One of the letters was from DSW. It shared with us the following information:

"As you may have read or seen in local or national media reports, DSW was the victim of a significant theft of customer data.

...we have now verified that your credit card was among the customer information that was stolen."
 
Don't tell me - I need to get a replacement credit card. Sure, why not. I just wish that all of the replacements were as sorry for their respective inconveniences as DSW claims to be.

Sweating With The Oldies

Some of the drama! Very little of the pageantry! The 10th semiannual Summer Senior Olympic Games are being held in Pittsburgh through June 18th.

Apparently there aren't enough old people roaming around town in the late springtime, so we've decided to invite about 10,400 more. And not just regular elderlies. Izzy Mandelbaum types. They'll be sauntering through all of the usual Summer Olympic events (in fact, if you've never seen an 85 year-old woman throw a shot put you should click here).

But the fun doesn't stop with track & field and swimming. There are also scheduled events in racquetball, horseshoes, and, of course, shuffleboard. Followed by personal accounts of The Great Depression, a visit to the lottery ticket booth, and shopping at Kohl's with the senior discount.

These games claim to be more about promoting fitness and a healthy lifestyle than the competition itself. But I was watching the news the other day and some lady on the defending champion softball team was talking trash about winning the title again. As she yelled into the reporter's microphone, she pointed at the camera like some professional wrestler. I'm not sure that she was concentrating on the fitness aspect.

I don't mean to make too much fun of the athletes. They are the best in the U.S. at their sports, and they are in better shape than I am. In the 100+ age group, Sam Pate won a bowling gold medal when he finished his third game with a strike and 6 straight spares. A Senior Olympic gold in bowling is one of my goals when I am 103 years old, too. Right after "being alive" and "still able to eat solid foods."

I actually consider myself an honorary old person. Let's look at the facts - I am semi-retired, relatively curmudgeonly, and I drive a powder blue Chevy Corsica. I'm just not quite old enough, yet. But I'm working on it. Day by day. I am already in training to take part in the 2027 Senior Games (in my first year of eligibility).

But for now I might as well cash in on the estimated $30 million that is expected to be brought into the Pittsburgh area because of the Olympiad. I'm heading downtown tomorrow with a trunk full of hearing aid batteries and few pair of black socks that will hopefully be sold for a profit by 3:00 or 3:30 pm. Just in time for dinner.

A Wasted Hour

I got some digital pictures printed at Ritz yesterday. The process takes one hour. It is relatively pointless to try to go home and come back, since that would take a majority of the 60 minutes. So I wandered around the South Hills Village Mall. It went something like this...

Minutes 0 - 6: I walk down to the Cingular store. Our one year cell phone contract with AT&T is up, and since they merged with Cingular I wanted to see if we would be better off switching to a new plan. You know, with the "Rollover" minutes that you hear so much about. In short the answer is no.

Minute 7: I am stopped by a guy at the T-Mobile kiosk who is trying to talk to me about my cell phone plan. His "deal" is more expensive and has less included minutes than I am getting now. I tell him that I just signed a contract and I have a whole year to go. He quickly gets disinterested in talking to me, which was the point.

Minutes 8-15: GameStop is my next, well, stop. I figure that I can waste a bunch of time playing the video games they have set up in the front of the store. Unfortunately, both demo consoles are broken. A kid pushes past me and starts banging on the controller of one of the demo units, and I quickly understand why neither is working properly.

Minutes 16-17: I get back to walking since PlayStation 2 games in their boxes aren't all that exciting. As I pass Abercrombie & Fitch, I decide that I could take steps to become more stylish.
Step 1 - Throw away my iron and ironing board.
Step 2 - Start a savings account to purchase jeans.
Step 3 - Figure out why the music is so loud in there.

Minutes 18-20: Food Court time. There is always a guy standing outside the Asian fast food place with samples. I try some saucy chicken on a toothpick. I turn my baseball cap around and come back from the other direction. He offers another taste. Yummy.

Minutes 21-32: A stop in the Yankee Candle store is usually fun for me. I like to smell candles. But today I am the only customer in the store, and the guy working there is a little too into his job. He explains the limited edition scents and the layout of the store, and then he keeps talking. About candles. He finally leaves me alone, but I overdo it on the smells. Raspberry Cream puts me over the top and I start to get nauseated.

Minutes 33-38: I recover from the candle store on a mall bench.

Minutes 39-46: Gap. Straight to the men's clearance section in the back left corner of the store. Nothing is interesting today unless you have a 28" waist. I do not.

Minutes 47-54: I decide to just walk around until I find a store that I want to visit. I do 3 laps without stopping anywhere.

Minutes 55-59: Since all of my ideas are used up, I walk back down near Ritz and have a seat. This happens to be right by the children's play area, and I witness a little girl attempting to climb up the slide. She catches her foot on the top and rides down on her face. Her subsequent screaming annoys the businessman sitting opposite me, and he starts talking louder on his hands-free cell phone contraption. This makes it easier to eavesdrop on his conversation about the big client meeting (and what an idiot some guy named Steve made out of himself).

Minute 60: It is finally time to get my pictures. They are just coming out of the back when I get to the counter.

What a waste of an hour. The only things I have to show for it are some decent printed photos and a couple of toothpicks. And a Yankee Candle catalog. Don't laugh - it has a scratch & sniff page.

Episode III: Attack of the Marketing

The final installment of the epic Star Wars series is debuting right now across the country. This movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, is supposed to tie together all the loose ends of the double trilogy and tell us how the geeky little pod racer pilot becomes the dark Lord of the Sith.

I was into the first 3 Star Wars films. They told a great sci-fi adventure story, and even though they were a bit cheesy, they were at least fun to watch. But I'm concerned about how things are going. In the 4th movie we had to deal with Jar Jar Binks. And I swear the acting got worse as we moved to the 5th film. If that was possible.

Now we all have to deal with the money machine that Star Wars has become. I understand selling action figures from the movie. But I think the marketing deals are taking away from the aura of the film.

Chewbacca in the sound studio doing voice overs for cell phone ring tones? Darth Vader staring down the creepy Burger King? Why? Is it all about the money? I don't recall any M&M's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And I'm pretty sure that Yoda doesn't need to use the Force to snag himself some Diet Pepsi. It's kind of sad. These characters are getting a little too familiar.

What's next? The Skywalker family on the Maury Povich show? Mr. Vader, I have the DNA results right here. You ARE the father.

All this being said, I will probably go see the movie anyway. I do want to see how everything comes together. And I'm just waiting for that moment when Anakin first puts on the robotic black costume and becomes the evil Lord Vader. But I hope that James Earl Jones' voice doesn't then ruin the mystique of the character and tell me how much money I can save by switching my phone service to Verizon.