The Rants of Mister P

I know what you're thinking: "Golly Mister P., great Photoshop job... that mouth almost looks real!" Alas, truth is stranger than fiction my friends. This is an un-retouched image, her choppers really are that freaky looking.

This movie is the holiday season's "put a bullet in my head" film. No male should see this movie. I don't want to hear "my girlfriend wanted to see it" or "I had no choice, I had to take my wife." You're a Man, start acting like one. Do NOT get suckered into this.

Truth in Advertising

OK look, I don't want to sound like a little 12 year old giggling in the schoolyard, but come on... This aired on NBC tonight. Don't you think somebody should have, I don't know, shuffled things around at least a bit?

This is Mister P.'s Clip of the Week. (924k, QuickTime)

Be sure to watch all 30 seconds.

Brrrrrr

My condo building has an outdoor hot tub. It's kind of neat to sit in it at night and see the city lights and even an occasional star up in the sky. The only problem is that on cold nights like tonight, it can be rough getting out of the water. The secret is to get out quickly, then wrap yourself in a giant cozy towel and dry off fast. You pretty much need to dry off outside because the building has sort of a hotel feel to it, so you can't walk through the halls and elevators dripping wet.

I went down there tonight and hung my towel on the railing. There was a little bit of wind and the towel fell to the ground, landing right in a huge hot-tub-spill-over puddle. The thing was drenched. I wasn't sure what to do; as long as I stayed in the water I was fine, but I knew that as soon as I got out I would be freezing and would have no way to dry myself off. Maybe I could just stay in the pool overnight until the morning sun heated up the air again?

There is a bathroom about 50 feet from the pool so I jumped out, grabbed the VERY heavy water-soaked towel and ran inside. It doesn't sound far, but believe me, it's a long cold run. I spent about 10 minutes drying myself off with paper towels and trying to wring out the towel as best I could.

People tell me I need to try to relax. I do try, but this is what happens.

How Steven Seagal ruined Return of the King

The best movie theater in the L.A. area is arguably the Arclight (the old Cinerama Dome). Not only do they have state-of-the-art sound and projection, but when you order tickets you get an assigned seat. You can show up to a movie 5 minutes before it starts and not worry about where you're going to sit.

A Guy I Work With is a big Lord of the Rings fan needed to order tickets for opening night (Dec. 17) which went on sale today. Unfortunately he was going on vacation and would be on a plane all day and could not get them. He recruited me, and it was a mission I was proud to accept. If you need someone to obsess over something, I'm your man. He needed two tickets; one for him and one for his girlfriend, possibly a third ticket for a friend of his.

Getting tickets isn't as easy as it sounds. There are rules. Because you get a choice of seats when ordering, I had to make sure I got the right section in the right theater at the right time. For example, it would be better to get a good seat on Thursday than a bad seat on Wednesday. The target was a 7:00 showing, seat N22 in the non-dome theater.

We tried to do a run-through yesterday on how to order seats, but the entire ticketing system was down. We didn't even know what time tickets would go on sale. I was going to be on my own. Around 9:00 last night, A Guy I Work With called me to make sure I was good-to-go, and to tell me that he couldn't reach his friend so I should just get the two seats.

I tried logging into the theater website shortly after midnight, thinking maybe tickets went on sale at 12:01. Couldn't get them yet. I put my wireless laptop next to my bed so I could check for tickets as soon as I got up, and went to bed. I woke up at 6:00, went online, and bought tickets:

December 17th
8:20 PM
Seats P17-P18

Not bad. I sent a confirmation text message to A Guy I Work With's phone, then went back to bed.

Around 7:40, the phone woke me up. It was A Guy I Work With. He was in Vegas transferring planes, and got my message. He asked "um... did you check your email?" "No." "Oh. We sent you an email around 12:30 last night. We actually needed 3 tickets." His friend is a writer and was hanging out at Steven Seagal's house all day and didn't get back to him regarding the movie until late. Oh well. Tough noogies for him I guess.

Even I was a little disappointed that I didn't get the coveted N22 seat (if only I got up at 5:00 instead of 6!) but I still thought P17 was pretty good. A Guy I Work With told me "well they're certainly not bad seats."

Gee thanks. And you look good for your age, too.

Toilet Vultures

I have a question for just the men out there. Ladies, you can go here instead.

Gentlemen: you enter a small public restroom. There are one or two urinals, but only one stall. You will need to be sitting down, but somebody is already in the stall. Do you:

A) Step out of restroom and wait in the hall
B) Stay in the restroom and wait it out

The answer is A, right? I just think it's creepy having a hover-er right outside. I know I wouldn't want to be listening in on someone else if I didn't have to. (Larger restrooms with multiple stalls is an entirely different situation. Hovering is allowed.)

Dude, seriously, step outside and stop pressuring me.

Overhearing a 4-year-old boy in the bathroom at Disneyland yesterday:

"The potty flushed all by itself!"

Ah yes, the Magic of Disney.

My old car is dead-dead. Engine seized up. It can't run, it can't be fixed. I left it at the garage a month ago, and they told me it was no problem leaving it there until I figured out what to do with it. The garage is not in a nice part of town, and they had a parking lot full of dead cars so I wasn't feeling too guilty about leaving it there.

I just got notice in the mail that my car was towed away October 27th and will be going up for sale on December 8th. I am responsible for towing, processing, and storage fees, which is currently $500 and increasing $25 a day.

It will cost me $500, plus more towing, just to bring the car to a junkyard.

I have been going to this same garage for about 5 years. they've done a lot of work on it. When I called them to drop off the car, the guy recognized my voice: "Oh, you're the guy with the blue Firebird". They knew my car intimately. They knew me as a customer. I don't even want to know how many thousands of dollars of business I have given them over the years. I think at the very least they could have given me a phone call asking that I remove my car.

I don't even know how to begin to solve this problem.

Long story short, we may be making a short film about our adventure seeing the Matrix. We had a script meeting at work today in one of the conference rooms. There is one line which was written two different ways:

"Son of a bitch, I'm sitting in gum".
"Son of a bitch, I sat in gum".

I wrote out the two versions on the white board to demonstrate how the first one is much funnier than the second. (It has an extra syllable which accentuates the latter part of the delivery, thus giving it more punch.)

Driving home, I realized that I hadn't erased it. I didn't think it was appropriate to have "Son of a bitch" written on a company white board. Twice. So I called someone still in the office and asked them to erase it for me. I was told that it was already erased. Which probably means someone (most likely a senior vice president) came in to use the room, saw the inappropriate language, and got rid of it.

Son of a bitch.

In an old episode of Wings ("where every episode is a pilot episode"), the gang gets bored and decides to go out for a wild night on the town in Boston. They hear about a great party, and where is it located? IN MY CONDO COMPLEX! Yes, they used my building for the establishing shots of where the hip people go to PAR-TAY. The only real difference between my home and the party they go to is that my place isn't filled up with hookers.

On tonight's Simpson's, Homer breaks his mother out of Springfield Penitentiary. Find out where he plans on hiding her in Mister P.'s bonus clip (228k QuickTime)

Calhoun for President for America



I've made up my mind regarding who I endorse in the presidential election. I'm going with independant candidate Tim Calhoun. Here's a clip of where he stands on some of the issues. It's a long clip, almost 3 minutes, but if you have the bandwidth stick with it.

This is Mister P.'s Clip Of the Week.(3.2MB QuickTime)

Greatest Movie Run Evar

We went to see Matrix Revolting last night. Before you read any further, you must see the Attack Plan I made. Do it.

I arrived at theater at around 4:00, and was the 2nd person in line. Which meant I was the 8th person in line (she was holding spots for a group of people.) At 6:00, they started letting us into the theater. At first, there was only one person taking tickets, which was fine. But then a second guy shows up and says "I can help people over here." I broke ranks and followed 2 people in front of me and went over to him, but then discovered to my horror that he was a Ticket Fumbler. He was just incredibly slow. I broke into a sweat as I watched the original ticket-tearer-upper stream people past her.

Eventually I was let in, and then the unbelievable happened: behind me, I hear Pusateri yell out "Hey, is that Keanu Reeves?" Oh My God, he's actually executing The Plan! Someone else in the crowd yelled out "hey, I think it is!" Because of my Ticket Bumbler, Travis was slightly ahead of me and he took the near entrance to the theater. That was slightly against The Plan, but like any good soldier he improvised under extreme cicrumstances. I therefore took the far entrance.

Pat was a bit behind us, and was slowly walking inside. He was with Craig, a last-minute addition to our group who didn't know about The Plan. He told Pat "Come on, we need to get our seats quickly." Pat held his ground and said "no, this is my job. I'm supposed to block." Craig is a big guy and immediately says "hey, I can do that!" So the two of them leisurely walked into the theater side by side, creating a backlog of people behind them.

Travis and I scrambled up into the stadium section from opposite sides and converged at seat 9 in 2 different rows. (Our group grew to 7 people, so we decided we'd do the 4-3 split.) We had excellent seats.

Two things amazed me:
1) People actually executed The Plan.
2) The Plan worked flawlessly.

As far as our last-minute civilian additions are concerned:
Chuck arrived very early to wait in line with me. He will make a fine recruit for future missions.
Craig demonstrated excellent blocking skills.
Martell... Well, Martell showed up at 6:35 for a 6:30 movie, delayed by the armful of food he picked up at the concession stand. He'll have to go to basic training, but we'll make a soldier out of him yet.

Oh, and the movie sucked.

I am so mad...

We're going to see The Matrix: Revolting tonight, the 3rd and thankfully final movie in The Matrix trilogy. My boss' boss decided to do a lunchtime screening of The Matrix Rebloated in our kick-ass conference room today, in preparation for tonight's movie. I just watched Rebloated 2 days ago with Travis so didn't want to see it again. I spent about 30 minutes in there eating my lunch, then left.

We have a pretty good sound system in there, so I can feel the floor rumbling as the movie continues on without me. But I don't understand one thing; are these people actually ENJOYING the movie?! I think some of them are. Don't they understand the suckage?! Travis and I watched it on Monday not to enjoy it, but rather to be reminded how bad it was so we could compare it to number 3.

Every time the floor shakes, I think of my co-workers sitting in there with smiles on their faces and it makes me sick. They need to Free Their Minds.


UPDATE
Career Limiting Behavior

Stay with me on this one... My boss' boss is always amazed at how much thought (or stress) I put into doing normal, everyday activities, such as going to see a movie. In the past, I have set up elaborate plans on how to buy tickets for him, how to wait in line in shifts to get good position when entering the theater, then how to run in and grab the best seats. Then, he just sort of wanders into the theater and takes one of the seats we've saved for him, oblivious to all the work that went into getting him that seat.

This morning, I sent out a set of instructions on how to get good seats for seeing The Matrix Revolting tonight. I was only half-joking. He seemed to enjoy the plan, so he posted it on his blog. Take a look at it here. Go on, I'll wait.

Note what he writes at the bottom: "This is how true geeks plan a trip to the movies." While he was in the conference room watching the end of The Matrix Rebloated, I went over to my boss' office and started ranting:

"Can you believe what Pusateri wrote on his blog?! What does he mean 'this is how true geeks plan a trip to the movies.'?! He doesn't plan anything! WE'RE the ones who do all the planning! He has no right to imply that he's a true geek!" Blah blah blah.

Then my phone beeps. It's him. "Everything OK over there?"

I entered bullet-time, and the camera spun around me as I looked up and turned in slow-motion to see Vice President Mr. Pusateri right down the hall. He wasn't in the conference room as I thought. Instead, he was sitting there listening to me blather on about his geek status.

How is it that I have not been fired? Oh that's right, the photos...

Below Average Joe

I've been looking forward to the new reality show "Average Joe" for quite some time. It's basically your standard modern dating show, where a single beautiful woman has to eliminate a bunch of eligible bachelors to find her one true love. The twist here is that rather than having a bunch of pretty-boy models, they're all "average joes". Basically, self-proclaimed geeks; my kind of people.

They've been showing ads for it for 2 months now and it looked hysterical, but they left out one tiny detail: I sat there in horror as the show started and there on the screen I saw....

HOSTED BY KATHY GRIFFIN

Nooooooo! Man, do I hate her. She is just loud and obnoxious, and I think NBC knows it. Otherwise they wouldn't have gone to such great lengths to keep her presence a secret.

The show is ruined before it starts.

Phabulous Phone

A friend from college was in town on business and wanted to see the big Halloween festivities, so we went to West Hollywood Friday night. It was pouring rain, and I was cold, wet, and miserable.

At some point in the evening, I lost my cel phone. It fell out of its clip or something, and was gone. I was more worried about it actually being found, than having to relpace it. I envisioned some drag queen finding it, callling one of the speed dials, and having some senior executive get this call:

"Hi there, this is Candy Apple, I found Mike's cel phone, I'll just leave it at the Lusty Leatherman for him to come pick it up."

I would have had some 'splainin to do. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Sure enough, when I got home there was a message from Bob on my home answering machine. Some woman (so he thinks) called him from my phone. Fortunately, she just left it at the Coffee Beanery.

There are still good people in the world.