Weekends Anonymous: My self-help group

In keeping with the entrepreneurial thrust of my recent posts, I’d also like to start a group for people with an affliction I know all too well:

Weekend Anonymous would work to help people like me who find too many weekends are spent anonymously.

Huh?

Let me explain. I, like many Americans (though they probably have a hard time admitting it), have a social life comparable to Howard Hughes in his latter days (but for the lack of long finger nails, the lack of bathing, the hair and the germ compulsion).

Sad thing is, but for fits and starts every so often, I’ve pretty much been like this for as long as I remember - which is to say, I live like a lot of the people I see in my parents’ not-so-active senior community.

This prepares me well for the solitude of my golden years. Still, deep down I know I need to get out more.

See, most Fridays, I know the routine: hit the gym a couple times, buy some food, play basketball Sunday mornings, surf the Internet, do laundry, pay bills, watch TV. Lather, rinse repeat.

It’s not that I don’t like to do things. It’s just that after a time I got tired of going places by myself (which means no one to bounce jokes off of, and, in the case of dining, unless its fast food, makes you feel like a guy on a perpetual business trip).
Part of it is I am a guy and find it hard to call people. Part of it is I am not sure my likes are the same as anyone else's in the circle of friends I do have but for the things I do go to with them. Plus, many of them are married, which already gives them things to do (at least until the kids move out of the house).

Part of it is it is hard to make new friends (as in I’m not necessarily the type to find them online in Sim City).

Anyway, Weekend Anonymous would be for people with the same affliction.

A first step, of course, is to actively find things to do on the weekend (and 3 day ones are the toughest, naturally).

Baby steps, just like in What About Bob? may be required.

As encouragement to those of you with the same problem as mine, I’ve kept a mental log since the start of the year which I will share to show.

New Year’s weekend: see King Kong; go to friends’ house in Chicago on Jan. 2 to watch football

Following weekend: go out drinking on Friday night with writer pal in from out of state at a South Side bar shaped like a castle; Saturday, take parents to Lithuanian restaurant in Bridgeport; Sunday, play basketball.

Weekend after that: go to Bears tailgating party on lakefront (for story for work) and get paid to have fun and write about it.

Weekend of Jan. 22: shovel out from 12-inches of snow to go watch cute synchronized skating team for writing story; play basketball Sunday.

Final January weekend: On Friday floating holiday, go to lunch at one of those places featured on WTTW show, Check, Please! with a buddy in Chicago; play basketball Sunday morning.

As you can see, it’s going to take work, especially after the Super Bowl next weekend, which is really the last get-together opportunity until mid March.

I could start writing a novel, which would hardly solve the problem, but at least it would be time with imaginary friends. If it turns out well enough, maybe I won’t even call it fiction.

Gotta go. The Blood Bank just called, looking for donations. Seriously.

Doing the Lord's biz with Cheeses of Nazareth

If you like my idea for a game show, you’re gonna love my concept for a food product: Cheeses of Nazareth.
The Cheeses of Nazareth brand will only sell fromage that comes out in shapes that vaguely resemble Jesus, his mom, his buddies the apostles, and his loyalists, the saints.

Think of the initial publicity as the faithful flock to the counters and the TV crews are there to watch them as they pray before the dairy cases.

This also saves such folks the trouble of poring through the stones at the bottoms of their fish tanks or inspecting stains on viaducts to find some image for them to worship.

I need a poducer: Karaoke Challenge

Inspired by the runaway success of American Idol (and I use inspired in this case as a term or both admiration and disgust) I has an idea for another TV show that won’t require writers (but in post-production to spice things up): Karaoke Challenge.

On Karaoke Challenge (hosted by some singer whose career is but a memory), each week an office competes against another office which throws down the challenge.

That is, in teams of five, each workplace will have a week, coached by vocal instructors hired by the show, to put together their material, which must include one group number and solos from everyone.

The format could be adapted so that each week the winning office defends its title; so that teams of has-been celebrities compete against each other; so that unemployed or homeless people sing for jobs and apartments; or any combination of the above.

20 questions about King Kong

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Bored on New Year’s Eve, I went to see King Kong. Granted it was a great looking film. But Peter Jackson really needs to learn how to be more concise.

When I movie with a surreal premise like this one drags, you start asking questions. At least I did.

1. I wonder how big King Kong’s crap would be?
2. Where did he go to the bathroom?
3. How much would he have to eat to stay that big?
4. Why did the natives roll their eyes back in their heads like in those old movies when white people stereotyped blacks?
5. What good was the wall around the city, when it turned out King Kong could jump it anyway?
6. What did he do with the other sacrificial virgins? Were they all white women, too?
7. If King Kong is a boy ape, where has his dong?
8. How come he could survive being bitten by T-Rexes?
9. What did he want with a little woman anyway? a friend?
10. How the hell did they get the ape back to New York?
11. How did the keep him knocked out that long?
12. What did they feed him and how did they feed him?
13. How come he could knock down brick buildings and crumble a balcony, but he could still slide across a frozen pond without cracking it?
14. Exactly how tall was Kong? He seemed to change size, though not as much as in the original.
15. As Kong appeared to be the only one of his species left, how old was he?
16. What happened to his parents? I mean, he was king of the island, so what did them in?
17. How come the bats didn’t bite the people, just King Kong?
18. What kind of drugs do you think the people who thought up the original were taking?
19. How did they rehearse the unveiling show?
20. What if King Kong has decided to go to the bathroom during the unveiling? I’ve seen that happen with circu animals.

Hmm, for some reason this movie has me fixating on crap. Go figure.

Kids, don't try this at the museum

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I hate the corporate, monolithic malling of America, where cretins behind registers are forced to say "have a nice day" (don't fucking tell me how to feel, OK?) while offering subscriptions to magazines and asking for phone numbers, and ringing up crap we don't really need (shitty movies that will sit on shelves, shittier music by prefab pop stars, phones with cameras, cameras with music players, TVs for cars, TVs that cost $5,000, et al).

...and then I got a new iPod.

Actually, then Christmas was over, which made way for my least favorite holiday, New Year’s Eve.

I do recall one funny thing from my college days from Dec. 31. One year four of us went to the Field Museum and played tag with plastic dart guns in the great halls among all the stuffed animals, mummy cases, and humans cut up in cross sections like steaks.

We pretty much had the museum to ourselves. A guard spotted us once and laughed.

Imagine doing what we did these days. At the very least we’d be arrested, perhaps even shot, no questions asked, and inevitably assumed to be terrorists up to no good.

And it would lead the TV news. Ah, my one shot (so to speak) at fame came before its time.